The Brown Daily Herald T hursday, F ebr uar y 7, 2008
Volume CXLIII, No. 12
Since 1866, Daily Since 1891
Joining frats, sororities an unexpected choice for many
G ames , games , games
By Emmy Liss Senior Staff Writer
Min Wu / Herald
St. Anthony Hall hosts its first Games Night Open House at its King House headquarters.
As the University’s 12 Greek houses gear up for rush, the recruitment process which officially started Jan. 28, students are beginning to consider the idea of pledging. But many of the upperclassmen members as well as students rushing now were not always set on going Greek. In fact, many came to Brown with no aspirations to do so. “I did not consider myself to be the stereotypical frat boy by any means,” said Matt Dennis ’09, president of Delta Tau. Dennis was part of the pledge class responsible for Delta Tau’s revival — when he rushed in 2006, the house only had four seniors remaining and was on the brink of extinction. Enticed by the prospect of an immediate leadership role, he, along with 29 other freshmen,
leapt at the opportunity to recreate the house. Now, he said, he cannot imagine his Brown experience without the fraternity. Steven Alerhand ’08, president of Alpha Epsilon Pi, also felt unsure about Greek life and did not join the fraternity until his sophomore year. “I unfortunately made the same mistake that first-years tend to make: I made a pre-determined judgment about AEPi and fraternities in general, deciding prematurely that Greek life was simply not for me,” he said. In the manner that Alerhand described, Julia Schuster ’11 has already decided not to rush this year. “I’m satisfied in not knowing that much about (sororities) and deciding not to participate,” she said. continued on page 4
Role reversal: Brown’s first Muslim chaplain to leave at semester’s end students teach at Wheeler Sophia Li Senior Staff Writer
Cameron Lee Staff Writer
On a Wednesday morning at the Wheeler School, two high school juniors read aloud from “The Aeneid” as part of their Advanced Placement Latin class. “Careful with your ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs,’” says their teacher. Later that day, the same teacher heads to Brown for her own classes — Lana Robinson-Sum ’10 is not only a Latin teacher at Wheeler. She is also a Brown student. “It’s nice because it’s not this forty-year-old teaching the class,” said Sophie Whitin, a student in Robinson-Sum’s Latin class. “It’s more laid back, but we still get a lot of work done.” The benefits of the teaching arrangement seem to be mutual. “(The students) are very talented and hard-working,” said RobinsonSum, a Latin concentrator. “I’m learning as much from them as they’re learning from me ... it’s fun helping them see what’s so amazing about the academic subject that I’m passionate about.” There are approximately 40 Brown students who currently teach at Wheeler, said Mark Harris ’70, director of an enrichment program at Wheeler. Harris, who has been at Wheeler for 36 years, said he has spent most of his time with the school developing an enrichment program for students in first through twelfth grade. Many Brown students have been involved with the program over the years, working as teachers, chess coaches and assistant coaches for sports teams,
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Rumee Ahmed, Brown’s first Muslim chaplain, and his wife, Community Director Ayesha Chaudhry, will leave Brown at the end of the semester, concluding two and a half years of work. They have both accepted tenuretrack positions in Colgate University’s Department of Religion. They will each begin teaching after the completion of their dissertations — for Ahmed that will be this fall, and for Chaudhry, next fall. Associate University Chaplain Ahmed is a doctoral candidate at the University of Virginia, and Chaudhry at New York University. “We are sad to be leaving,” Chaudhry said. They were “blown away by the students,” Ahmed said. “That’s what we’re going to miss the most.” The idea of having a Muslim chaplain had been considered since 1998 but was not realized
until Ahmed was hired in January 2006. Chaudhry said many other universities followed Brown’s example by creating Muslim chaplain positions, expanding existing ones or turning existing volunteer positions into paid posts. The position at Brown was “the first of its kind,” Ahmed said. Chaudhry said most other Muslim chaplain positions that existed were voluntary and required only five or 10 hours of work per week. In addition to building on existing programs like Thursday dinners at the home of University Chaplain Janet Cooper Nelson, the couple focused on expanding resources for Muslim students. “The idea we had when we came here was to build a safe space for students to express religiosity,” Ahmed said. “Being religious on any campus can be a potentially alienating experience. Students feel they have to guard their religiosity.”
Ahmed said he wanted students to explore their religions and be self-critical. “(Ahmed) was there to challenge your faith and make yourself stronger in your faith,” said Rashid Hussain ’10, president of the Brown Muslim Students’ Association. Ahmed and Chaudhry worked with the BMSA to plan events, bring speakers to campus, aid student communication with the administration and provide guidance, support and advice for students. The couple opened their doors ever y other Monday night for “dhikr” — “remembrance” in Arabic — and dinner. Hussain said by being so welcoming, they “fostered a sense of community.” One popular initiative was the establishment of a nightly “iftar” dinner during Ramadan for Muslim students to break their fasts together. They organized food for 60 to 70 students for 30 consecutive nights, Chaudhry said. After the first year of the pro-
Courtesy of Brown.edu Associate University Chaplain Rumee Ahmed
gram, the students gave them a thank-you card. Chaudhry recalled that one junior wrote, “You have changed what it means to be a Muslim on campus for me.” She said the message made everything — all the stress of organizing the program for the first continued on page 4
JCB world map may have first named America By Noura Choudhury Staff Writer
Alex DePaoli / Herald
The John Carter Brown Library houses a map that may have first named America.
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CAMPUS NEWS
ALPHABET SOUP UCS plans to create a task force to oversee UFB, which some in the council say lacks transparency
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Encased among the treasures of the John Carter Brown Library lies a document that may be “America’s birth certificate,” according to Ted Widmer, director of the JCB. Over a century after its purchase, it is still unclear whether this map or one advertised by the Library of Congress as “The Map That Named America” is truly the first to include the name “America.” “The key is that the word America appears in both maps,” Widmer said.
Up In arms Michael Ramos-Lynch ‘09 thinks you should be packing heat
195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island
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The two maps were crafted by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, who is credited with the naming of the new landmasses as “America.” Rather than name the region after Christopher Columbus, he chose instead to honor Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian explorer. The JCB map was purchased from British book dealer Henry Stevens, who claimed it was the first map ever to ascribe the word “America” to the territory after its discovery, Widmer said. Shortly after Stevens sold the map to the JCB, a much larger and more comcontinued on page 6 tomorrow’s weather What else would you expect from a city with the 40th-worst weather in the nation?
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