The Brown Daily Herald T uesday, J anuar y 29, 2008
Volume CXLIII, No. 5
ADOCH will not include early admits
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Nothing ‘ominous’ about subpoena, U. lawyer says
Mr. Speaker...
By Debbie Lehmann Higher Ed Editor
Students who were admitted early decision will not be invited to A Day on College Hill this year, as the Office of Admission prepares to make the event more intimate and address increased competition with peer schools. With about 2,000 students and parents descending on campus each April, overcrowding in recent years has started to take its toll on ADOCH, which Dean of Admission Jim Miller ’73 called “the most important matriculation event we do all year.” In post-ADOCH surveys, students who chose not to attend Brown often noted chaos, overly small venues and a lack of parking around campus, Miller said. “I think they felt it was ver y amorphous,” Miller said. “We want to make it more personal.” The Office of Admission considered holding two ADOCHs but found that this was “logistically impossible” and that it “made sense to focus on the students choosing which institution to attend,” Miller said. The decision to downsize ADOCH comes as the University faces increased competition with peer institutions. Har vard and Princeton recently dropped their early decision programs, so many students who would have applied to these schools early will now apply to Brown as well, Miller said. “We’re going to have a lot more overlap with our competition,” he said. In addition, the new financial aid policies at Har vard and Yale have “put added importance on the whole ADOCH experience,” Miller said. “Financial aid will be a ver y important factor, which makes it very important that students have the best possible experience at ADOCH,” Miller said. The University will offer other visiting opportunities to students who were admitted early decision, including the faculty lunches and tours that the Office of Admission holds each spring. Miller said early decision students “brought real energy to the program” and that the decision to exclude them from ADOCH was not an easy one. Besides a more intimate atmosphere, ADOCH will see a host of other changes this year. The Office of Admission has turned to the event planning group from Public Affairs and University Relations to organize the event. The event planners at PAUR will take the place of admissions officers who used to plan the event “late at night after reading files all day,” Miller said. There will also be classes designed specifically for admitted students. Though he has not heard from continued on page 6
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METRO
Ch-ch-ch-changes Thayer Street says goodbye to Tom’s Tracks and hello to frozen yogurt, sandwiches and sushi
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U. plans to respond to study abroad inquiry by March By Michael Bechek News Editor
fessor of environmental studies, as they collaborate with students and faculty in exploring the issues they work on. “The program brings together people from the developing world who care about problems we deal with and are working with them day in and day out,” he said. The selective program, which
The subpoena Brown has received from New York’s attorney general in connection with his investigation of college study abroad programs is “not unusual” and is not a cause for concern, the University’s top lawyer told The Herald on Monday. “There’s nothing as far as I can tell that is ominous about it,” said Beverly Ledbetter, vice president and general counsel. The subpoena, which was also sent to 14 other schools earlier this month, requests general information about how the University conducts its study abroad program, but was “not tailored to Brown” specifically, she said. Such “broad inquiries,” Ledbetter added, do not mean anything is amiss at Brown’s Office of International Programs, and the information demanded by the subpoena was probably identical for all 15 schools. Andrew Cuomo, the New York attorney general, began his investigation in August after a New York Times article revealed objectionable practices
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Meara Sharma / Herald
Students in New Pembroke 3 gathered to watch President Bush’s final State of the Union address Monday. See World & Nation, page 7
WISE guys arrive at U. to study nature By Alex Roehrkasse Senior Staff Writer
How does industrial growth affect groundwater pollution? What’s the effect of soil disturbances on aquatic ecosystems? This year’s Watson International Scholars for the Environment, who arrived on campus last week, hope to lend an alternative perspective to such issues, and hone the expertise it takes to
tackle them. The seven WISE scholars, hailing from Zimbabwe, Brazil, India, Nepal, Papua New Guinea and Trinidad and Tobago, will spend a semester at Brown receiving training and participating in a seminar on land-use change in the developing world. By sharing their experiences and expertise, the scholars act as both students and teachers, said Steven Hamburg, associate pro-
Whitehouse praises U.’s environmental efforts By Isabel Gottlieb News Editor
Min Wu / Herald
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-RI, spoke Monday in Salomon 101, arguing President Bush’s environmental policies are based in ideology instead of science.
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CAMPUS NEWS
more protests Med school students protest the governor’s plan to end some health benefits for low-income citizens
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OPINIONS
The Environmental Protection Agency under the Bush administration “has simply not lived up to its name or its mission,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-RI, told a full Salomon 101 on Monday afternoon. Whitehouse also addressed both national politics and local issues and praised Brown for its environmental initiatives. The Bush administration “has let politics govern policy and put blind ideology before scientific fact,” Whitehouse said. Whitehouse is a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which last week held a hearing on the request by 16 states, including Rhode Island, to set their own regulations for vehicle tailpipe emissions, according to a Jan. 25 press release from Whitehouse’s office. The 16 states account for half the U.S. population and more than 30 percent of vehicles on American roads. In 2005, California set new emissions standards that will affect
Kid power Graham Anderson ’10 argues that minors deserve the right to vote, just like their parents
195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island
cars built in 2009 and afterwards. If the states adopt California’s new standards, as much as 392 million metric tons of emissions could be cut by 2020, the press release said — the equivalent of removing 74 million of today’s cars from the road for a year and potentially saving the country $25.8 billion of gasoline. But in December the EPA denied the states’ request. In response, the EPW, led by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., introduced a bill on Jan. 24 that would “direct the EPA to reverse its decision,” according to a Jan. 25 Washington Post article. Whitehouse commended Brown on having achieved in 1991 “one of the lowest energy densities and carbon footprints of universities of its kind.” He also recognized other University efforts, such as recycling about 35 percent of solid waste materials and reducing energy consumption in building projects, purchasing fuelefficient vehicles and delivering 90 percent of food left on dining hall trays to a local pig farmer, “resulting in what I’m sure must be among continued on page 4 tomorrow’s weather Cold, like the world won’t be in 50 years, according to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse
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