Tuesday, March 4, 2008 by The Brown Daily Herald

The Brown Daily Herald T uesday, M arch 4, 2008

Volume CXLIII, No. 28

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

City preps for primary crowds

Recycling race baffling Bruno again By Alessandra Suuberg Contributing Writer

Brown students have five weeks left to step up their recycling rates if they want to break a record of “middle-of-the-pack” finishes in the eighth annual RecycleMania. Until April 5, colleges across the country will compete to collect the most recyclables and produce the least amount of trash, with week-by-week results posted on RecycleMania’s Web site. According to the most recent tally, Brown was ranked 69th out of 85 schools participating in RecycleMania’s Whole Campus Grand Champion competition as of week four, which ended Feb. 23. That competition is one of several that make up RecycleMania, which began on Jan. 27. Coordinators at individual colleges report numbers of recycled materials every week, according to the contest’s Web site. In its fourth year of participation, Brown is one of 400 schools from 46 states plus the District of Columbia taking part in the contest, according to Andres Perez-Charneco, an assistant at RecycleMania. Perez-Charneco said the competition is seeing record-breaking participation rates, helped in part by the use of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. Perez-Charneco also said RecycleMania could expand further to take on an international scope in the near future. He said the contest was opened this year to schools in Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean, though none actually participated this year. continued on page 4

By Colin Chazen Contributing Writer

Courtesy of Joshua Asen and ilovehiphopinmorocco.com

Jennifer Needleman’s ’02 and Josh Asen’s ‘02 friendship on College Hill led them to a Moroccan hip-hop festival.

Old friends see rap rise in foreign land By Gaurie Tilak Staff Writer

On her first day at Brown in the fall of 1998, Jennifer Needleman ’02 befriended Josh Asen ’02. At the time, neither could have known that almost a decade later the duo would release their first full-length film as business partners. Last year, Rizz Productions Inc., a company the two started in 2004, released the documentary, “I Love Hip Hop in Morocco,” which follows the development of the first Moroccan music festival in the country’s history dedicated entirely to hip-hop. The film “follows the whole story from the earliest conversation with the main characters,” Asen said, and has been featured on CNN as well as in film

festivals across the globe. The film begins with Asen issuing a proposal for the music festival to the U.S. Embassy in Rabat, Morocco. After securing funding from the government and the Coca-Cola Company, Asen and a number of Moroccan hip-hop artists spend months organizing and preparing

FEATURE for Morocco’s first ever hip-hop festival, which shares its title with the film. The documentary focuses heavily on the stories of the artists, who perform and speak in Moroccan Arabic, French and English. But Asen said the film — and filmmaking in general — was not something the pair considered until after they left College Hill.

After graduating from Brown, Needleman and Asen parted ways temporarily. Asen, who majored in French and music studies, took a job with a hip-hop music label. His interests in hip-hop and the Middle East soon converged on a chance trip to the region. “I initially went to Morocco just to visit an ex-girlfriend of mine who was studying abroad there,” Asen said, adding that he “just stumbled on hip-hop” there. He then grew interested in studying hip-hop as an emerging musical style in Morocco. On the advice of his then-girlfriend, Asen applied for and won a Fulbright scholarship in 2004 to do research on hip-hop in Morocco. continued on page 4

Space Club’s boldest to attempt NASA ‘Vomit Comet’ By Devin Gould Staff Writer

Courtesy of nasa.gov

In the “Vomit Comet,” students will perform experiments in simulated zero gravity, as the plane makes a series of steep climbs and dives.

METRO

RaBid reporters John Kerry speaks to “belligerent” journalists at the Providence Newspaper Guild’s Follies ’07

www.browndailyherald.com

CAMPUS NEWS

bombs away! URI gets explosive research center and receives bomb threat, in unrelated incidents

OPINIONS

No matter what club students join at Brown, they can pretty much guarantee they won’t end up floating inside a Vomit Comet, a plane that rapidly climbs and dives to simulate zero gravity. That is, of course, unless they join the Brown Space Club. The Space Club has been accepted to NASA’s Microgravity University, as it has nine of the past 10 years. Five members of the group will travel to Johnson Space Center in Houston for 10 days. There they will conduct experiments inside an airplane that uses repeated ascents and descents to create the experience of weightlessness because of microgravity, a state in which the effects of gravity are almost nil. The plane is dubbed the “Vomit Comet” by participants and the continued on page 4

Get with the times Sarah Rosenthal ’11 calls the Republican party into the present and away from Ronald Reagan

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

rain, 49 / 28

Facing a competitive presidential primary, Rhode Islanders are expected to vote in record numbers today. The record turnout could create problems as cities and towns across the state have closed more than 80 polling centers since the 2004 primary, when only 6.7 percent of registered voters cast ballots, according to a Feb. 27 article in the Providence Journal. But a Providence election official says he does not expect there to be any problems. “We’re ready,” said Laurence Flynn, executive secretary of the Providence Board of Canvassers. “At the last moment, we made the necessary steps to make it easier for the voter to not get jammed up in lines.” The original plans for the primary were laid out months in advance, Flynn said, and had to be revised at the last minute when it became clear that voter turnout would be higher than usual. At each polling center in Providence, there will now be a monitor to help organize lines and direct voters to the correct polling sites, something the city has never done before, Flynn said. Additional set-up crews will also be used to ensure polls open on time, he said. Still, the closed sites may create difficulties for voters. “Now that people are going to turn out in record-high numbers, polling place confusion this Tuesday will be inevitable,” Ariel Werner ’09, a coordinator for Students for Barack Obama, wrote in an e-mail. On Providence’s East Side, three districts, including the one that represents Brown, have been merged together into a single site, Flynn said. The Salomon Center will be the polling site for the combined 2,501 registered voters from the three districts. Voter turnout in the city of Providence could double from the 8,000 in the 2004 presidential primar y continued on page 4

Where to vote on the East Side Ward 1 • Dist. 1, 2, 3, 4: Vartan Gregorian School, 421 Wickenden St. • Dist. 5, 6, 7: Salomon Center Ward 2 • Dist. 1, 5, 6: Temple Beth-El, 70 Orchard St. • Dist. 2, 3, 4, 7: Jewish Community Center, 401 Elmgrove Ave • Dist. 8: EPOCH, 353 Blackstone Blvd. —Source: Providence Journal

tomorrow’s weather If today’s election crowns a clear winner, even tomorrow’s rain won’t dampen his or her spirits

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Tuesday, March 4, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

But Seriously | Charlie Custer and Stephen Barlow

Sharpe Refectory

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

LUNCH — Tuna Noodle Casserole, Couscous, Stewed Tomatoes, Muffeleta Calzone, Butternut Apple Bake, Vegan Tofu Pups

Lunch — Hot Turkey Sandwich, Vegetarian Pot Pie, Mashed Potatoes, Spinach with Lemon, Fudge Bars, Peanut Butter and Jelly Bar

Dinner — Eggplant Parmesan, Salmon with Herb Lemon Sauce, Basmati Rice Pilaf, Cauliflower, Asparagus, Onion and Dill Rolls

DINNER — Shepherd’s Pie, Vegan Vegetable Couscous, Baked Sweet Potatoes, Italian Vegetable Saute, New York Style Cheesecake

Sudoku

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

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RELEASE DATE– Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Los Angeles Times Puzzle C r o sDaily s w oCrossword rd

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Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 Herr Schindler 6 Comeback 10 It usually thickens 14 Easily duped 15 Env. routing indicator 16 Winter Olympics event 17 Carrier for a dangerous snake? 19 Golden State sch. 20 Swoon 21 Uses an awl 23 Algerian city 25 Bring up 26 Do a Web search on a big number? 32 Semi bars 33 “__ the night before ...” 34 Word after power or cat 37 Fervor 38 Black cats, to some 40 Pic, in ads 41 Whatever 42 Mae West persona 43 Fashionably passé 44 Soap opera about Life? 47 Ireland’s patron, for short 50 Idiot 51 Dense fog, metaphorically 54 Lochinvars 59 Mascara recipient 60 Passenger in a rental truck? 62 Flu harbinger 63 Often 64 Broadway flower seller 65 Ease, as hostilities 66 Kid’s interlocking block 67 Bunsen burner cousins

4 Hertz rival 5 Updates factory machinery 6 Cattle identifier 7 Windy City rail and bus agcy. 8 URL starter 9 “Dedicated to the __ Love”: 1960s hit 10 “Men” or “women” 11 Susan of soaps 12 Stares at lustfully 13 Rib 18 Make better 22 Cupid’s Greek counterpart 24 Shopping list site 26 Middle East’s __ Strip 27 Yoked beasts 28 Skin care brand 29 Hair stiffener 30 Possess 31 Argon or neon 34 “The Little Red Hen” response 35 Name on a razor 36 “The Hustler” game 38 Scull 39 Lady of Fr.

40 Backin’ in the election 42 Presidential power 43 One relocating to Arizona, maybe 44 Nut used in Asian cooking 45 Score less than 46 Derogatory comment 47 Gelatinous thud 48 Show the ropes

49 Ottoman VIP 52 River through southern Russia 53 Gomer of TV 55 Pinball violation 56 Chief Norse god 57 Exiled Shah Mohammed __ Pahlavi 58 39-Downs, across the Pyrenees 61 Hound

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Free Variation | Jeremy Kuhn

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3/4/08

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T he B rown D aily H erald 3/4/08

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M etro Tuesday, March 4, 2008

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Brief

City residents voice approval for India Park ordinance On Monday night, the Providence City Council Ordinance Committee held a public hearing about a proposed ordinance that may block the development of high-rise condominiums near India Point Park. Of the roughly 50 people who attended the meeting, nearly all voiced approval for the proposal. The property in question is the Shooters parcel, named after a former nightclub in that location. The Rhode Island Department of Transportation can sell the property to the highest bidder. The ordinance, if passed, would make the land public. Representatives from groups in favor of the ordinance, including Friends of India Point and the Fox Point Neighborhood Association, seemed to assume that the highest bidder would build a high-rise condominium. The ordinance, proposed by Ward 1 Councilman Seth Yurdin, seeks to make the Shooters parcel public land, placing it under city control. Yurdin told The Herald his “council colleagues are concerned with the park and will support this.” The public hearing featured comments by members of the audience, which included State Senator Rhoda Perry P’91, who represents District 3, and Providence Director of Planning and Development Thomas Deller. Most speakers expressed support for Yurdin’s proposed ordinance. They spoke about what high-rises would mean to Providence’s landscape. India Point Park is one of the only public spaces with access to and a view of Narragansett Bay in Providence. Citizens at the hearing expressed concern that a high-rise would block the view of the bay and diminish the park’s beauty. David Riley, a co-chair of Friends of India Point Park, suggested that the Shooters parcel was unsafe for development, as it lies beyond Providence’s defined hurricane barrier. Yurdin told The Herald that the ordinance would probably be passed in the City Council Ordinance Committee, but may face legal action from the DOT. A lawyer for the DOT said at the hearing that if the land were made public, it would be owned by the state — not the city — and the DOT could sue Providence for control of the land. — Simon van Zuylen-Wood

Budget may cut state colleges’ funding By Simon van Zuylen-Wood Senior Staf f Writer

While Brown has finally agreed to supplant its loan-based financial aid program to reduce student debt, Rhode Island’s three public colleges may have to raise tuition and reduce aid in response to proposed cuts in state aid. Gov. Donald Carcieri’s ’65 proposed budget for the 2009 fiscal year includes $17.8 million cut in funding for the University of Rhode Island, Rhode Island College and the Community College of Rhode Island. Carcieri proposed a massive budget cut in January to slash the state’s growing deficit — projected to be $151 million by the end of the 2008 fiscal year, which ends June 30, and up to $384 million by the end of the 2009 fiscal year. The original bill, proposed in mid-January, also proposed cuts in state aid to local cities and towns, state employee layoffs, an “early leave” policy for prisoners and less aid to health and food services programs.

But Carcieri decided not to go through with a funding cut for programs for the mentally disabled. This change comes in the wake of a protest at the State House last Wednesday. Before the new budget was proposed, state colleges had already increased tuition for the fiscal year starting this July by about six percent from this fiscal year. URI’s tuition was set at $8,678, RIC’s at $5,552 and CCRI’s at $3000. If the new budget passes, the rates may be raised 6 or 7 percent more than was planned, bringing the total tuition increase to more than 12 percent in the 2009 fiscal year, said Rhode Island Commissioner of Higher Education Jack Warner. The bill has a few months to go before the Rhode Island General Assembly and Senate can vote on it, said State Rep. David Segal, D-Dist. 2. The budget plan for the 2008 fiscal year and 2009 fiscal year must pass Finance Committee Hearings before it is voted upon by the state legislature. Segal forecasted a late spring date for a possible vote on

the new budget plan. “We already support public education less than many other states,” said Segal, who opposes the bill. If the bill passes, all three colleges would have to deal with the funding cuts, but the University of Rhode Island may be affected the most. URI students already pay thousands more per year in tuition than RIC and CCRI students. For out-of-state students, the price is even higher — close to $25,000 per year, not including room and board. The tentative “cut of $12 million for the University of Rhode Island puts into serious consideration tuition increases for the entire year,” said URI director of communications Linda Acciardo in a phone message. James Hanbury, Rhode Island College’s director of financial aid, said there might be an enrollment fallout connected with the tuition increase if the budget passes. “There may be some students continued on page 6

Kerry, Buddy and Ambien reign at Follies ’07 By Ben Leubsdorf Staff Writer

SWANSEA, Mass. — Even with Rhode Island’s hotly contested primary just a few days away, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., told the crowd at the Providence Newspaper Guild’s Follies ’07 Friday night that most presidential candidates couldn’t make it to the annual bash at the Venus de Milo, a restaurant here. The former Democratic presidential candidate joked that Republican candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee couldn’t find space to park his double-wide mobile home and 71-year-old Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had too many bad memories — “he used to date Venus de Milo,” Kerry said. Kerry was a surprise performer at this year’s Follies, an annual musical comedy show that skewers local politicians and news from the past year, put on by the Providence Newspaper Guild, the union representing journalists from the Providence Journal and other local papers. Traditionally held just across the Massachusetts border, in Swansea, the show, now in its 35th year, is clubby and scathing, requiring a deep and wide understanding of local news and personalities to understand most of the humor. But in a presidential election year — and with the closely contested Democratic nomination process headed for a vital showdown in today’s primaries in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont — national politics played a large role in the show. Scott MacKay, reporter for the Providence Journal and one of the evening’s emcees, joked that if Hillary Clinton attended, she would have to be seated away from Providence Mayor David Cicilline ’83, who backs the New York senator for president but was banned from her events in the state because of a long-running dispute with the local firefighters’ union. MacKay also took a shot at Clinton’s rival, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., saying that Obama took one look at the demographics of Follies guests and decided to go to Brown’s campus instead to sign copies of his new book, “The Audacity of Hype.”

Kerry made a surprise appearance early in the show and lit up the crowd with a series of one-liners mostly targeting Republican candidates, starting by noting that “I come before you as I always do — not as president.” The crowd, he noted, was 99 percent white, “very belligerent” and “angry that you paid so much for so little, which makes you just like Mitt Romney’s backers.” But when Kerry’s speech veered into an all-too-serious plug for Obama, whom he has endorsed, some Clinton backers began shouting “Hillary,” and Kerry quickly wrapped up his act, as some attendees stood and clapped and others booed. Clinton’s daughter Chelsea also attended the show, though she did not take the stage. Local politicians got into the act, too — the night’s “mystery guests,” Obama-backing Attorney General Patrick Lynch ’87 and his Clinton-

REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK backing brother, state Democratic Party Chairman Bill Lynch, sparred good-naturedly on stage at the close of the show. Their mother came out and ended the sketch by proclaiming her support for Oprah Winfrey as the country’s next president. But the meat of the show was, as in past years, Rhode Island politics. MacKay skewered Republican Gov. Donald Carcieri ’65 for what MacKay termed his “reverse Titanic plan” for trimming the state budget — “you know, throw the women and children overboard.” To raise money, MacKay also suggested selling naming rights to the state to a well-known local philanthropist, changing the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations to the State of Rhode Island and Alan Shawn Feinstein Plantations. The many songs, performed enthusiastically by Journal staffers, had several high points, including a song about the state’s attempt to treat 17-year-old criminals as adults to save money. Singers in orange prison outfits crowed to the audience that they are being put in prison “when we’re still too young to shave ... where we could be a sexual slave” — all to the tune of the Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There.” In a song poking fun at a recent

bribery scandal involving former state legislators and Woonsocket-based CVS/pharmacy, three singers wearing CVS bags sang — to the tune of The Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes” — that “No one knows what it’s like to be the bag man” and that, “My bags, they weren’t as empty, as my ethics used to be.” State and Providence officials also came in for ridicule for their botched response to last December’s snowstorm, during which schoolchildren were trapped on the road in buses for hours, while Carcieri visited Iraq. “Even though we’re living in New England,” performers in parkas and hats sang, “we screw up when it snows.” One of the evening’s best moments was the high-energy “Bald Ambition” two-song set, about the return of the colorful Vincent “Buddy” Cianci, the former Providence mayor recently released from federal prison, where he served almost five years for corruption charges. Women in slinky silver dresses sang that Cianci, now back on the radio, made them “smile to know you haven’t changed, the only thing that’s missing is your toupee.” They were followed by a Cianci stand-in who sang briefly about how he is “popular and powerful,” as the women sang that he is “simply irresistible.” Other local politicians didn’t escape ridicule. Sen. Jack Reed, DR.I., is reportedly on the Democratic short-list for vice president, MacKay said, but he noted that the diminutive senator is “not on anyone’s tall list.” Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., who in 2006 entered rehab for drug and alcohol addiction, is “getting almost as boring as Jack Reed,” MacKay said, adding that the Guild is filing a class-action lawsuit against him to get him hooked on Ambien again, presumably to glean more material for the Follies. The show’s content was often cutting, but most Rhode Island politicians and other luminaries still made the trek to Swansea to be mocked. Why do they do it? “The one thing worse than being mentioned in the Follies,” Guild administrator Tim Schick noted in the program, “is NOT being mentioned.”

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Tuesday, March 4, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Little Rhody primed to take big political stage continued from page 1 election to close to 16,000 this year, but a rain forecast might reduce those numbers, Flynn said. Flynn said he expects voter turnout in Brown’s district to be especially high, though many students are registered to vote in their home states. Rhode Island sends only 32 delegates to the Democratic National Convention, compared to a combined 389 delegates from Texas and Ohio, which, along with Vermont, will also be holding primaries today. But the Ocean State’s influence outmatches its size, said Jennifer Lawless, assistant professor of political science. If Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., wins both the Texas and Ohio primaries, she would probably stay in the race. But if she wins only one of those states, “winning Rhode Island will help her because she can say she won two of the four states,” Lawless said. Since Vermont voters are leaning more heavily towards Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., Clinton has focused her efforts on a state she

has a better chance of winning, Lawless said, adding that “the spin will be the total number of states.” Clinton leads Obama, 49 percent to 40 percent, among likely voters in the Rhode Island Democratic primar y, according to a Fleming and Associates poll conducted from Feb. 24 to Feb. 27. Eleven percent said they were not sure whom they would vote for. Independent voters are allowed to vote in the presidential primary of either party in Rhode Islan.That could be a large factor in a state where they make up the majority of the electorate. In other states’ primaries, independent voters have been key supporters of Obama, Lawless said. Though many are registered to vote in other states, Brown students make up a large component of campaign volunteers for both Obama’s and Clinton’s campaigns in the state. “That activism translates into votes,” Lawless said. The polling station in the Salomon Center will be open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. today.

Kim Perley / Herald

Brown took 69th in a national competition among colleges and universities to recycle as much material as possible.

Once again, Brown is trashed by recycling peers continued from page 1 But Brown has plenty of competition in the United States. Student recycling coordinator Kai Morrell ’11 said the University has always ranked “in the middle of the pack” in RecycleMania contests. She said it has been difficult for Brown to excel, given the number and variety of schools involved. “It’s always hard for a school like Brown to compete with a really small liberal arts college that has a strong environmental focus,” Morrell said, but added that Brown even ranks slightly below some Ivy League schools. The other Ivies that participated in the RecycleMania’s Whole Campus Grand Champion competition — Princeton, Harvard, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania — all currently rank above Brown. One way to boost Brown’s numbers is to improve the accessibility of recycling on campus, Morrell said. “What we’re working on right now is making sure that all faculty and staff who live on or near campus, or who work in Brown buildings, have access to recycling,” she said. Morrell said she plans to take part in an effort to raise awareness for the next five weeks by including weekly recycling tips in Morning Mail and displaying them on adver-

Ivy rankings for Whole Campus Grand Champion 32 33 55 65 69

Princeton Harvard Yale Penn Brown

tising screens around campus. “There are a lot of recycling opportunities at Brown that I think a lot of people don’t know about,” she said, citing ink cartridges, batteries and used compact discs as items that tend to be overlooked. “All of this stuff can be recycled, but it’s not quite as easy as putting it in the can right outside the door.” The only official prizes at stake in RecycleMania are bragging rights and “trash-art” trophies, Perez-Charneco said. But learning about recycling proves worthwhile, he said. “I always found that to be the best experience over any sort of winning,” he said. Increased awareness, one of RecycleMania’s primary goals, is a prize Brown could benefit from as a result of this year’s competition, Morell said. “It’s good to get the word out there, so people can make an effort to recycle not only for the next five weeks, but all year round, as well,” Morrell said.

Courtesy of Joshua Asen and ilovehiphopinmorocco.com

Joshua Asen ‘02 used his Fulbright scholarship and connections to help jumpstart Morocco’s first hip-hop festival.

Filmmakers see trend’s rise in Morocco continued from page 1 There, he noticed that most hip-hop groups had access only to small clubs and youth centers, and he recognized a demand for more large-scale performance opportunities. “Many groups had been trying to make a name for themselves for five to 10 years,” said Asen. “The groups all had the same idea but were unable to find sponsorship.” Though Asen was not the first to propose a Moroccan hip-hop festival, the project could not have been completed without him — as a Fulbright scholar, Asen was connected to the U.S. Embassy in Morocco. He said that his main role initially was to find sponsorship for the festival. “We had a very difficult time getting the funding,” he said. Up until the start of the festival, budget cuts from the festival’s two main sponsors plagued the event’s organizers. But despite concerns about the festival’s feasibility, it ran from May through June in 2005 — and “it exceeded our expectations,” Needleman said. Needleman joined Asen in coordinating the festival and documenting its progress, capturing the organization process on film and later using the footage to create their documentary. Needleman, who studied creative writing at Brown and wrote features for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle for a year and a half, said her experience as a writer influenced her heavily as a filmmaker. As a features writer, she covered “whatever wacky thing was happening in Brooklyn.” Needleman

said working for a newspaper helped her develop as a writer and “taught me where to find stories.” She later attended the University of Southern California’s Graduate Screenwriting Program, and graduated in 2006. She said film was a late pursuit for her. “She has an exceptionally strong sense of voice and a joyous sense of humor that always finds its way on some level into her work,” said Gale Nelson, assistant director of Brown’s literary arts program and one of Needleman’s close mentors during her time on campus. “She was exceedingly serious about her writing,” said Nelson, who also wrote a letter of recommendation for Needleman when she was applying to film school. “She has a peculiar — in the best sense of the word — point of view.” The subject of the film, a musical festival, reflects Asen’s and Needleman’s strong musical backgrounds. “I grew up in a musical family,” Asen said. “Two of my grandparents were professional musicians.” But despite his early appreciation for music, “hip-hop was something I came to much later,” Asen said. “In college my passion for hip-hop really matured.” His senior thesis at Brown focused on translating the debut rap album of Notorious B.I.G. from English to French. Coincidentally, Needleman also has a history of translating hip-hop music. While taking a class with Nelson on “potential literature” — a branch of literary theory that involves writing with self-imposed constraints — Needleman translated a hip-hop

song into the style of a Shakespearean sonnet. Both Needleman and Asen worked at Faunce House’s Underground while at Brown. Needleman was a disc jockey, and Asen produced their weekly hip-hop shows. Needleman and Asen both said working together was a formative experience for both of them. “It gave us the first taste of a business partnership,” Asen said. With one film now securely under their belts, Needleman and Asen — who share producer and director credits on the film — said they are looking to branch out to other forms of film. “We’re looking towards narrative and fiction,” she said. “As an artist and as a filmmaker, it’s where I want to go.” “Documentaries are really difficult,” said Needleman, who works full-time for Rizz Productions in Los Angeles. “They don’t get as much credit as they deserve.” Asen currently teaches English as a second language to students primarily of Middle Eastern descent at a Brooklyn, N.Y., public school. He said he enjoys his current job but hopes that in the next few years his career will focus more on film. As for the future of Rizz Productions, Needleman and Asen are optimistic. “We’re hoping to open our official New York office this summer,” Needleman said. She added that the two have come a long way since their more modest beginnings. “It took a long time,” Needleman added, “but I think we’re finally here.”

Zero-gravity plane not for faint of heart continued from page 1 “Weightless Wonder” by NASA. Over two days, four students go up in the airplane, making 30 to 60 cycles on the plane each time in order to perform their experiment. Jon Zucker ’09, co-president of the club, described the feeling of weightlessness: “It’s like swimming with no concept of up or down, and when you move you don’t actually get anywhere.” “The plane flies in parabolas in order to simulate zero gravity,” Matt Kretschmer ’10, a member of the club, explained. The continued loops create 25 seconds of weightlessness on descent followed by 35 seconds experiencing twice the effects of gravity, he said. “That’s really how people get sick, the transition from microgravity to

2G,” or two times the force of gravity, he said. This year, the club will attempt to study the use of sound waves to manipulate liquids at zero gravity, Kretschmer said. “We thought there might be a need in space travel. If there is a spill, there is a need to contain it,” he said. The club works to draft the 25-page proposal, which it sends to NASA. Throughout the year, members of the club also visit local schools to talk about their experiments and to teach the importance of the space program. “There’s a lot of invention that you wouldn’t have expected to come from the space program — such as velcro,” Zucker explained. “How to inhabit space could be very important.” The trip to the Johnson Space

Center includes a full tour of mission control, a view of the swimming pool where astronauts are trained and an in-depth discussion with an astronaut. “I didn’t want to be an astronaut until I went down to Johnson Space Center,” Kretschmer said. Over the past decade, the focus of the experiments has changed with the interests of club members. “We have a wide variety of people in the club,” Zucker said. Concentrators in biology, engineering, neuroscience and economics can all be found among the approximately 15 members of the club, half of whom are freshmen, he said. The club receives some resources from the University and gets a grant from the Rhode Island Space Grant Consortium, an organization that encourages interest in space exploration.

C ampus n ews Tuesday, March 4, 2008

News

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

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Brief

Transfer deadline passes quietly for now Saturday marked the deadline for transfer applicants to the University, but the Office of Admission won’t know how many applications it received for a few weeks, Dean of Admission James Miller ’73 wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. “At the moment, we are fully focused on the Class of 2012, and won’t turn our attention to the transfer pool for some time,” Miller wrote in his e-mail. Decisions on regular applicants to the College will be mailed in the first week of April. Students who are accepted to the University may choose to enter in either the fall or the spring semester, but March 1 is the universal deadline for all transfer applicants. In January, 22 mid-year transfers arrived on campus, while 56 matriculated in the fall. Transfer applicants must have at least one year of college credit before matriculating but are discouraged from applying if they have more than two years of credit because Brown requires students spend a minimum of two years in residence at the University before granting a degree, according to the office’s Web site. The transfer acceptance pool has fluctuated in recent years. More than 150 students were accepted as recently as the 2005-06 school year. Konstantin Kashin ’10, who transferred from Cornell this fall, said he noticed the large fluctuations in the number of transfer applicants accepted in recent years but still thought, from his own transfer experience, that Brown accepted a reasonable number of transfer applicants. He said he would tell potential transfer applicants not to let the fluctuations deter them. “You never know how those factors are going to add up,” Kashin said. Transfer hopefuls, such as Elspeth Boynton, a freshman at Duke University, will receive decisions in mid-May, according to the office’s Web site. Boynton said she was drawn to Brown for its liberal atmosphere and its diversity. She said she did not enter Duke with the idea of transferring, but decided to transfer around September. “It’s one of those things where you’re not sure if you want to go there until you get there,” Boynton said. Though Boynton said she thought she would be happy if she completed her four years at Duke, she realized she could be happier elsewhere. She said she likes Brown’s close proximity to Boston and New York and the social atmosphere that does not emphasize the Greek system as much as Duke does. She said she found Brown’s transfer application relatively straightforward, especially since she completed the regular decision application her senior year of high school. She advised students thinking about transferring not to let the application process deter them, but to think carefully before beginning the process. “Before deciding to transfer, make sure you’ve tried to make yourself happy first,” she said. — Noura Choudhury

SASA dinner raises $12,000 for India’s neediest By Kyla Wilkes Contributing Writer

On the same day the Brown Corporation met to discuss plans for a slate of new buildings on campus, a small group of organizers were raising money for a much more humble purpose — toilets. The South Asian Students Association raised more than $12,000 for sanitation projects in Pune, India, on Feb. 23 during abenefit dinner, said SASA Community Outreach Coordinator Sumbul Siddiqui ’10, who has been working since September to plan the event. Sunil Bhatia, associate professor of human development at Connecticut College, approached SASA last April about organizing a fund-raiser similar to one held earlier by the Connecticut College Asian American Association, Siddiqui said. Bhatia, who is originally from Pune, has been involved with an NGO

Josh Marshall MA’93 PhD’03, editor and publisher of the blog Talking Points Memo, recently received the 2007 George Polk Award for Legal Reporting for his leading coverage of the firings of several U.S. attorneys last year. “Marshall’s tenacious investigative reporting sparked interest by the traditional news media and led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales,” the Polk Committee said in a press release. His work “connected the dots and found a pattern of federal prosecutors being forced from office for failing to do the Bush administration’s bidding,” the committee said. TPM, which can be found online at talkingpointsmemo.com, is the first blog to win the prestigious award. TPM integrates readers’ tips with both local and national reports as well as first-hand investigative coverage, operating as a small professional newsroom with seven fulltime reporters on staff in New York City and Washington, according to the site. The site gained popularity with coverage of political scandals and grew to include ads in 2003, which brought in enough money to support Marshall and his staff, according to a Feb. 25 article in the New

York Times. Professor of Political Science Darrell West said he sees the award as the established media’s recognition of blogging as a serious form of journalism. “Blogging has really taken off this year,” he said, noting the crucial role the Internet and sites like Marshall’s will play in the 2008 election. The site has an average of 400,000 page views every day and 750,000 unique visitors each month, according to the Times article. Marshall said he feels that the operation should not get much larger. He said he wants to “keep doing what we’re doing for as long as possible.” His future plans also include writing books, he added. In the same week that the Polk award was announced, the Justice Department also put Marshall back on the list of reporters with credentials. TPM Muckraker, the site’s primar y investigative arm, had been removed the previous year in a move Marshall called petty. “They kicked us off and we did a number of things to tr y to get it reversed and were successful,” Marshall said. He said that though TPM deals with loaded material, the site does not often experience that sort of backlash. “Most people are grown-up enough to deal with things differently,” he said.

an intern last summer with Shelter Associates helping to implement the project. According to its Web site, Shelter Associates is an NGO made up of architects, social workers and community workers that provides infrastructure planning with the urban poor in mind, specifically women. Bhatia said he initially got involved with Shelter Associates when he saw the work they were doing around his hometown. The toilets built using funds from the banquet “go to mothers who have children and are on aid and manage a family, maybe a handicapped family,” he said. “This money goes to the real needy in that sense. There are lots of women and children who die because they don’t have access to good, clean water.” Siddiqui said the issue greatly continued on page 6

URI gets explosives research center, bomb threat By Alex Seitz-Wald Contributing Writer

The Department of Homeland Security has selected the University of Rhode Island and Northeastern University to lead a research program on explosives detection, the federal agency announced on its Web site in a Feb. 26 news release. In an additional development apparently unconnected to the announcement of the new research center, URI evacuated two of its buildings Monday afternoon after campus police were informed of an apparent bomb threat, the Providence Journal reported on its Web site Monday. The buildings were reopened after a state fire marshal

Alum’s journalism award a first for blogs BY Susan Kovar Contributing Writer

called Shelter Associates, which builds toilets in the slums around the area where he lived. Siddiqui said SASA immediately wanted to take on the fund-raising project. “We’ve never ... done something like this before,” she said. SASA was able to hold the dinner with the help of donations from several of the University’s academic departments. The event, held in Alumnae Hall, included a banquet style dinner and performances by Brown Badmaash, a South Asian dance team. An estimated 215 people attended, with about 60 people donating an average of $200 — which is approximately the amount needed to build one toilet for an Indian family, Bhatia said. Interspersed among the Badmaash performances were presentations by Bhatia, Siddiqui, and Sheila Dobbyn, a former Connecticut College student who worked as

Marshall spoke highly of the time he spent at the University. “I loved Brown and I loved Providence,” he said. “That’s where I really learned to write.” He cited several professors of history as his mentors — Professor of Histor y Gordon Wood, Associate Professor of History Doug Cope and the late Professor of History John Thomas PhD ’61. Wood said he was not surprised that Marshall won the Polk award. “He is a great writer,” he said. He added Marshall wrote a “firstclass dissertation” on Indians and slavery in the 17th century. Marshall said he knew early on that he would rather be an opinions journalist rather than an academic one. He founded TPM “as a sideline project” covering the Florida recount in 2000 while he was writing for The American Prospect and freelancing. Shortly thereafter, running TPM became his full-time pursuit. Created in 1949 in memory of the CBS correspondent, the George Polk Awards are among the most respected honors for journalism in the nation. Polk died in Greece while reporting on the countr y’s civil war in 1948, according to the awards’ Web site. Marshall, who attended Princeton as an undergrad, currently lives in New York City with his family.

bomb squad conducted a search of the areas, the Journal reported. The URI team of the Center of Excellence for Explosives Detection, Mitigation and Response will be led by Jimmie Oxley, a professor of chemistry and an “internationally renowned expert in explosives,” according to a Feb. 26 statement released by URI. Of primary concern to her team, Oxley told The Herald, will be improving detection of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. IEDs have been used since World War II, but the type employed by insurgents in Iraq today presents new challenges. As the U.S. militar y improved its detection of militar y-grade explosives, insurgents began to use homemade

devices which the military doesn’t know much about, Oxley said. Her team is investigating ways to improve several high-tech methods of detecting IEDs — including infrared sensors, devices that detect polymers commonly found in explosives, and ion mobility spectrometers, which are currently used in airports to screen carr yon baggage. She said she hopes to see her work employed in the near future and noted that DHS is “funding things quickly to solve problems as soon as possible.” Oxley’s team, which will include about 50 URI students, will also work to improve transpor tation security through improved bagcontinued on page 6

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Governor’s cuts tighten Badmaash performs at URI gets budgets at R.I. colleges SASA fund-raising dinner explosive continued from page 3 who decide they want to hold off — they want to go part-time instead of full-time,” Hanbury said. “One-third of our students are independent, non-traditional students. They don’t rely on parents, using loans.” Jack Warner, the state’s higher education commissioner, was sympathetic to the nature of the cuts, and said that “in this climate, some cuts are inevitable.” Still, he acknowledged the problem the budget proposal poses for public colleges. He estimated that the money would come out of not only tuition and scholarships but cuts within school administrations, including firing college employees. The colleges are trying to minimize the impact the cuts may have on students, as well as the schools’ budgets, Warner said. “We’ve been dealing with bud-

get challenges for some years now. Students see the value in what a college education provides for them. I don’t see any dropping off of student desire to get a college education,” Warner said. Elizabeth Huidekoper, Brown’s executive vice president for finance and administration, said the cuts won’t affect Brown directly, but they might affect the “economic health of the state.” Brown’s faculty and administration “don’t want to come into a state with budget problems,” Huidekoper said. Brown “certainly wanted to work with the state to create jobs,” she said. Though some Brown students may be pleased with new financial aid packages, their public college counterparts could find themselves in an economic bind. “If we had to reduce $6 million — for us, I can’t imagine. I’m sure it’s a huge challenge,” Huidekoper said.

continued from page 5 moved her. “It’s all about human rights. It’s all about dignity,” she said. Siddiqui said the crowd was very diverse, with many different South Asian groups represented. She added she was proud that they all came together for the cause. “I don’t care where you’re from and what language you speak — you’re all people,” she said. The attendees were made up mainly of local residents because they comprised SASA’s donor base, Siddiqui said. The event was publicized in the Rhode Island community through e-mails and word of mouth. The ongoing goal, said Bhatia, is to raise a total of $20,000 to build 100 toilets for the neediest families of Pune. With the $12,000 raised by SASA and the money raised at Connecticut College, Bhatia said he is at about 80 percent of his goal, with around $14,500. The money will be sent to Shelter Associates as it is received, and the organization will immediately use the funds to start looking for families and building toilets, Bhatia said. He added that he plans to go to India in June for a two-month trip to see the results

of his fundraising and to write his second book on globalization. Although the crowd was made up largely of families from the community, a small group of students, including the students in Badmaash, attended. Rhea Wharton ’10 said she thought the event was very well done, adding that she thought all the speeches were powerful. “It’s an issue that kind of speaks for itself,” she said. Rashid Hussain ’10, who said he attended because he is interested in general development work, agreed with Wharton. “The presentations were very moving,” he said. “It was very good to be exposed to the sanitation conditions” in India. Both Bhatia and Siddiqui said they were very pleased with the night. Bhatia said he was especially proud of the all the work the Brown students put into it. “I cannot say enough about their devotion,” he said, “The Badmaash performances were terrific. They brought the house down.” Siddiqui said she was happy the night went smoothly and that the organizers were able to raise so much money to ensure that more of India’s poor have clean water and bathroom privacy. “It’s a simple thing,” she said, “but it’s so important.”

fed. grant continued from page 5

gage screening and liquid explosive detection. DHS will grant the university up to $2 million a year for four to six years. Established in 2002 to coordinate national security efforts against terrorism, the federal agency granted $44 million for fiscal year 2009 to universities around the countr y for research, according to ExpectMore.gov, a Web site maintained by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and other federal agencies. Along with the URI-Northeastern collaboration, the agency established four other “centers of excellence” which will explore various aspects of national security, including border security, maritime and port security, natural disasters and emergency management security and transportation security, according to the DHS news release. According to the URI press release, Oxley has extensive experience with explosives and has worked with several law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, the Federal Aviation Administration and the British and Israeli governments.

McCain looks for finishing blow in Texas By Tom Brune Newsday

WACO, Texas — John McCain made it clear Monday he is raring to go on his general election campaign -- he’s already stepping into disputes between Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton -- but first he must try to finish off GOP rival Mike Huckabee on Tuesday. After weeks of Huckabee hanging on and slowing down McCain’s repositioning for November, McCain and his aides say he will finally collect the 1,191 delegates needed to clinch

www.browndailyherald.com

the presidential nomination in today’s four primaries. But since there is no official delegate count, no one but Huckabee can decide if and when he will quit. “Obviously we are guardedly confident that we can get a sufficient number of delegates with victories in Vermont, Rhode Island, Ohio and Texas tomorrow and move on to the general campaign,” McCain said Monday morning at a news conference in Phoenix. “But we still respect Governor Huckabee’s right to remain in the race,” McCain added, “as long he

feels it’s necessary to do so.” Yet in the news conference and later in a town-hall meeting here at the Heart of Texas hall, McCain never mentioned Huckabee again, focusing instead on positions he will take in a general election against either Obama or Clinton. McCain attacked Obama, for example, for suggesting he would unilaterally renegotiate the NAFTA trade agreement between Canada, Mexico and the United States, saying that raised serious consequences for U.S. trade and defense. But McCain raised the starkest contrast with his potential Democratic rivals by stepping into the intramural fight between them raised by Clinton in a television ad that asks who is better equipped to handle a crisis phone call in the middle of the night. McCain said it would be him. “Well, I think many Americans, when they consider the three of us, I would believe that my knowledge and experience and background clearly indicates that if the phone rang at 3 a.m. in the White House and I was the one to answer it, I would be the one most qualified to exercise the kind of judgment necessary to address a national security crisis,” he said. “I’ve been involved in every major national security challenge for the last 20 years that has faced this country. And sometimes I have agreed with this administration. Sometimes I have not,” he added. “I look forward to having that debate.” McCain stepped around a question about whether Obama or Clinton were qualified, saying, “I am not running against their qualifications, I am running for mine.” Asked about his “red phone” moments, McCain paused, then mentioned his time as a pilot in the Cuban missile crisis in 1960s and his advocacy for the troop “surge” in Iraq last year.

W orld & n ation Tuesday, March 4, 2008

In Los Angeles, his own wall of China By David Pierson Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — Zhao Yan Feng finally lost his cool minutes before the bell sounded, signaling the end of fourth period. For nearly two hours, his classroom had teetered on anarchy. Students chatted on their cell phones. They put their feet up on desks. Some had their heads down, sleeping. A clique of girls debated loudly where best to shop for jeans. “I need your cooperation,” Zhao pleaded in a clumsy Chinese accent. “If you don’t want to learn this language or be in my class, just don’t interfere with others learning. I’m just a guest teacher.” It had been three weeks since Zhao (pronounced Jow), 27, left his hometown in northern China to join a program that sent dozens of Chinese teachers to school districts across the United States. His two-year assignment: teach Mandarin at Dorsey High in South Los Angeles, where test scores are well below state and national average, two-thirds of the students live near the poverty line and most have had scant exposure to Chinese culture. “Why do I do this?” he said to the students, who were silent for the first time. “Because I want to be your friend.” Two girls in the back of the classroom giggled at the remark. Others stared at their desks. The bell rang, and the teenagers charged out the room — except for a boy who was still asleep. Zhao tapped him on the shoulder and told him to leave. It was the end to another humiliating day. “Two years,” Zhao said. “Sometimes I don’t know how I’ll do it.” Before he left China for Los Angeles, Zhao, a university instructor, had been optimistic. A partnership between the College Board in the United States and Hanban, China’s language council, had selected him and other teachers to bring Mandarin

WASHINGTON — The United Nations imposed new sanctions on Iran Monday, capping a year of difficult diplomacy that may represent the Bush administration’s final bid to mobilize international action against Tehran over its controversial nuclear program. Just five months after President Bush warned that Iran’s alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons could lead to “World War III,” the White House had to settle for a watered-down U.N. resolution that makes most trade and financial sanctions voluntary. The Security Council voted 14-0 to sanction Iran for refusing to stop its uranium enrichment program, falling one short of the unanimous vote the White House sought to signal the international community’s resolve. U.S. diplomacy was undercut by China’s growing oil trade with Iran, Russia’s ties to Tehran’s nuclear energy program and skepticism among four developing countries on the council about the need for yet another U.N. resolution. But Washington’s own National Intelligence Estimate in December — which concluded with “high con-

Ohio could divide vote along geographic lines By Scott Martelle Los Angeles T imes

Bryan Chan / Los Angeles Times

Zhao Yan Feng, from northern China, teaches at a South Los Angeles school.

to American students. Imparting a language to others, he thought, was a profound gift. “I want my parents to know their son isn’t a common person living a common life,” he said a few weeks before starting at Dorsey. “I think it’s meaningful to teach these kids Mandarin, to give them something you have.” Zhao had been told by other Chinese teachers that American high schools can be tough. They said the neighborhood around Dorsey was dangerous and that he should always carry $30 in cash. If he was ever mugged, they said, the money could save his life. When he arrived, he saw police stationed in squad cars outside the campus. He assumed there had been an incident. He soon learned the police are there all the time. He thought Dorsey looked like a prison. The campus is surrounded by a tall fence, and just getting in and out was a challenge. Zhao immediately stood out. He seemed to be the only Asian on a campus divided between black and Hispanic students jawing loudly about their summer vacations. During his first week, he decided to poll the class. “What do you know about China?” he asked.

One student said she’d heard of Shanghai. The room fell silent except for the hum of the air conditioner. Zhao tried again. “Do you know what the Great Wall of China is?” More silence. Then a student looked around and asked: “What’s the Great Wall?” One morning a few weeks later, Zhao woke up in a cold sweat. The situation with his students had only gotten worse. This morning, like every other, Zhao left his tiny Chinatown apartment at 6:30 and caught the first of two buses that would get him to Dorsey by 7:45. He would give his first quiz. He wasn’t expecting many of his students to get more than half the questions right. Zhao had heard a rumor: Another teacher in the program — somewhere in the Midwest — had quit and returned home. Zhao was secretly jealous, but he knew he’d lose tremendous face if he left, especially so soon. Still, he felt the weight of the cultural differences. He was grappling with the way some of his students treated him. In China, teachers traditionally command unquestioned authority. At Dorsey, the few good students were being overshadowed continued on page 8

UN imposes new sanctions on Iran By Robin Wright and Colum Lynch Washington Post

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fidence” that Iran had shelved its nuclear weapons program in 2003 — did more than anything else to undermine the prospects for a hardhitting resolution, according to current and former U.S. officials. In early December, the administration worried that its diplomatic initiative on Iran might die completely. Although he had been briefed on the NIE’s conclusions, Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns was sworn to secrecy before meeting his counterparts from Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany in Paris on Saturday, Dec. 1, to discuss strategy on Iran, U.S. officials said. Ending months of debate, the world’s six major powers agreed on the outline of a resolution, though differences remained on specifics. Then on Monday, Dec. 3, the U.S. intelligence community released the NIE, undermining Washington’s longstanding claim that Tehran was pursuing a nuclear weapons program. “The NIE put a stake through the heart of diplomacy on Iran,” said Bruce Riedel, a former senior CIA and national security official now at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center. “It pulled the rug out from under them in every way. The administration now can’t go to war and can’t even apply much pressure.”

In a scramble to keep allies on board, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley called their counterparts in Moscow, Beijing, Paris, London and Berlin to explain why they should not abandon a new resolution, U.S. officials said. The NIE, they argued, was about Iran’s past efforts to develop a nuclear weapon, whereas the new resolution would focus on uranium enrichment, a separate and ongoing process that can be used for peaceful energy and to develop a weapon, and an effort Tehran acknowledged hiding for 18 years. “There was a real concern at the beginning about whether we’d lose the consensus for a sanctions resolution and whether we would be able to hold the coalition together,” acknowledged a senior administration official familiar with the diplomacy. “We didn’t get into substance. We just wanted to find out: Will they stay with us or not?” Burns, who had flown from Paris to Australia, was left to get the answers from allies. From Canberra, he got through quickly to the Europeans. “They were all surprised by the NIE,” said the official, although in the end they agreed to pursue the U.N. route.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination that has pivoted on race and gender could be decided here Tuesday by another divide — the state’s urban north versus the rural south, pitting Ohio’s popular governor against a cadre of big-city mayors. While Sen. Hillar y Rodham Clinton of New York and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois have built their own campaign organizations here, they also have tried to tap into the political machines directed by successful Democratic political leaders, local analysts said. Clinton has the backing of freshman Gov. Ted Strickland, a former long-serving congressman from the southeastern Appalachian region. But Obama has the backing of the mayors of the state’s three largest cities: Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati. The mayors’ close ties to local political bases could be significant in a state where recent polls showed Clinton with a 6-point lead, and 1 in 10 voters were still undecided or could change their minds. “I would rather have the mayors in the major cities (than Strickland’s backing) because that is where more of the vote will come from,” said Herb Asher, a political analyst at Ohio State University who has watched Ohio politics for more than a quarter-century. Ohio is a state whose political texture changes by geography and in which the social and political personality has its own Mason-Dixon line — Interstate 70, which bisects the capital city of Columbus. The north is anchored by old industrial centers such as Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown and, separated by farm areas along Lake Erie, Toledo. In the south, with the exception of Cincinnati, the state is rural and, to the southeast toward the West Virginia line, Appalachian coal country. The split among Democrats also follows a racial fault line with Strickland, who is white, on one side and Michael B. Coleman, the black mayor of Columbus, Ohio’s largest city, on the other. The split is rooted in local politics. In early 2005, with an open

governor’s seat up for grabs the next year, Strickland ended speculation that he would seek the office by announcing he would run for re-election to his congressional district representing a ribbon of Ohio from the Pennsylvania line southwest along the Ohio River across from West Virginia and Kentucky. With Strickland out, Coleman announced his candidacy for governor and quickly became the presumptive Democratic nominee. But in May, Strickland changed his mind amid reports of party concerns about Coleman’s chances. Coleman withdrew that November after his wife pleaded guilty to drunk-driving charges, citing family concerns and the pressures of campaigning while running Columbus. Other internal Democratic rifts opened, including a battle over the state party chairmanship won by a Strickland backer. Against that backdrop, the state’s black Democratic political leaders were slow to endorse Strickland. The divide was never completely bridged even though once Strickland won, he tapped Coleman to run his gubernatorial transition team. Analysts here believe Strickland does not have the on-theground political networks that can be tapped by the mayors. Of the state’s eight largest-city mayors, four have endorsed Obama, three are neutral and one — Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic — has endorsed Clinton. “Strickland largely incorporated a lot of his political machine into the governor’s office,” said Jerid Kurtz, who runs the Buckeye State political blog and is backing Obama. “That means he doesn’t have the people in place right now to go to to run the phone banks and get local offices in place.” Under the Democrats’ arcane rules awarding delegates, whoever wins the north — particularly the northeast — could walk out of Ohio with most of the 141 delegates up for grabs Tuesday. Of those, 49 delegates will be awarded proportionately based on the statewide results. The other 92 are awarded proportionately among the state’s 18 congressiocontinued on page 8

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Surveying At L.A. school, a Chinese teacher struggles to inspire Ohio’s voter landscape continued from page 7

continued from page 7 nal districts. But the districts in the north — which have more Democrats — award more delegates per district than those in the south. Ten mostly northern districts (some extend south of I-70) will award 56 of the 92 delegates. But four of the six districts that will award an odd number of delegates — giving the winner of each district the chance to pick up an extra delegate — are in the south, a possible advantage for Clinton, who polls show is doing well there, buttressed by Strickland’s endorsement. Obama is doing well in the central part of the state around Columbus — Coleman country — and in Cleveland, where he is backed by white Mayor Frank Johnson in a city whose population is divided almost evenly between white and blacks. The rest of the northeast is up for grabs. And except for a few forays, that is where most of the candidate visits have occurred. “Why are they spending all this time up north?” said Gerald J. Austin, a longtime Democratic strategist who is not aligned in the race. “When you go duck-hunting, you go where the ducks are.”

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by those who walked around the classroom to talk to friends, sent text messages and defied Zhao’s orders to pay attention. He could not understand why his efforts — traveling all the way from China to share a resourceful language — stood for nothing to so many. It didn’t help that the students could not understand Zhao’s stilted English at times, and that he rarely offered encouragement. In China, a simple “hao,” meaning “good,” is often the extent of their praise. “You can’t put these characters together, it’s wrong,” Zhao sternly told a girl during a writing exercise. As Zhao walked away, the student carried on, unsure how to complete the exercise correctly. Zhao decided he had to tr y something new. He hoped that Chinese paper cutting, or gifts such as chopsticks and watercolor paintings, would provide some incentive. He stayed up until 3 a.m. making name cards with Chinese characters for each of his approximately 50 students in both his classes. He told a girl that he would give her one if she would participate just once in a dictation exercise. She told him she didn’t care if she got one or not. Zhao gave her the card anyway, and she started mouthing the words moments later. Now it was time for a quiz — 15 true-or-false questions, a translation exercise and then a stab at writing Chinese characters for a few basic words. This was the first time Zhao would see if his students had learned anything. As Zhao dropped the tests on their desks, a girl picked hers up, examined it and loudly blurted an expletive. For the next 45 minutes, the class seemed to fall in and out of consciousness. Some attempted to answer such questions as: “Chinese culture was the cradle of Japanese, Korean and some Southeast Asian cultures — true or false?” Others looked as if they were sleeping with their eyes open. But something changed the moment Zhao started explaining the answers. A competitive spirit emerged among some in the classroom. When they got a question correct, they cheered. When they got

another one right, they started moving their shoulders in a dance. “I knew that one. I’m a genius. That was easy,” said a playful Alena Monet Cox, a 12th-grader who straddled the line between those who misbehaved and those who paid attention. She selected Chinese because she was tired of studying Spanish. She had visions of visiting China one day. Her enthusiasm set the tone for the class. When she participated, so did the clique around her. On this day, Zhao was impressed. Monet, as she chose to be called, had even remembered how to write her name in Chinese. She had signed her quiz that way. A boy next to Monet raised his hand. “How do you say in Chinese, `You a G?’” — slang for hoodlum. Monet rolled her eyes. “How do you say `stupid question’?” Zhao packed his things, waited for the bell and walked out smiling. A few minutes later, Zhao was in the teachers’ lounge, meeting with Sharon Markenson, a veteran Dorsey instructor charged with coaching neophytes such as Zhao. Zhao again recounted how much trouble he was having controlling the class. Although he had seen progress in the quiz, some students didn’t write anything. “I don’t know how to deal (with it),” he said. “The way to get them cooperating is to hold them accountable,” Markenson said. “This is a work environment. Break up the friendships and racial groups.” Markenson reminded Zhao that many of Dorsey’s students live in poverty and lack family support. “Some of our students are depressed,” she said. “That’s why our scores are so low.” Zhao had never seriously considered the effect of poverty on his students. In China, 900 million of its 1.3 billion people are still essentially farmers. Being poor was commonplace — but so was studying hard no matter your lot in life. He remembered a banquet he had attended a few days earlier in Chinatown. Many of the guests immigrated decades earlier and spoke about eking out a living in America. They toasted the news that one of their children

had been accepted into Harvard. It made Zhao think that Chinese parents would do anything to ensure their children receive the best education. Zhao thanked Markenson for her suggestions. He promised to think about setting boundaries and developing activities for his students. All good, he thought, but could he put it into practice? He would come close to answering that question several weeks later. Zhao was losing patience with a student using her cell phone. She had repeatedly ignored his orders to put the device away. Sitting to the side of the room grading papers that day was Noah Lippe-Klein, a popular history teacher whose students would file in once Zhao’s class ended. Zhao asked Lippe-Klein to step into the hallway. “I don’t know what to do about this student,” Zhao said. Lippe-Klein told Zhao he needed to confiscate the phone. Zhao was reluctant. He wanted to see Lippe-Klein do it. Moments later, Lippe-Klein took the phone. Within days, Zhao was taking away students’ cosmetics and phones. He stared down those who talked over him. Scolding students didn’t give Zhao any satisfaction. But now that he was beginning to control his classroom, he was pleased with how much more time he had to teach the students who had a keen interest in Mandarin. That faction grew over the months, joining the likes of Monet. Antonio Carrillo, 17, was a quiet student in Zhao’s fourth period who was growing more interested in Chinese each week. To him, it felt exotic compared with Spanish or French. Antonio cringed any time his classmates mocked Zhao’s English. It wasn’t fair, he thought. His own parents struggled with English when they moved to Los Angeles from Mexico. He felt no one had the right to disrespect others for their accents. Antonio and other students distinguished themselves by asking questions and staying after class to chat with Zhao. They came alive when he discussed Chinese culture. He showed pictures of modern Shanghai and once played a video of haute Chinese cuisine. They shrieked

when they saw a photo of a whole fish with its tail and head hanging out of a bowl of soup. The students quizzed Zhao on everything from “Are there Wal-Marts in China?” to “Do you know martial arts?” On the last day of school before a three-week winter break, Zhao reviewed the last few weeks of work. On the white board were intricately drawn objects: a watch, a hand, a watermelon, maps of America and China. Zhao was so detailed that he drew the folds of skin on the knuckles of the hand and the stripes and seeds on the watermelon. He drew two columns — one for the boys, one for the girls. They would have to compete against each other, pointing at the objects he named in Chinese. Slowly, volunteers started going to the front of the class. “Xigua,” Zhao said, prompting a girl to push her male counterpart aside and stab her finger at the watermelon. “Meiguo.” The girl pointed at the outline of America. “Excellent job,” Zhao said. “Oh, my God, all correct. Excellent, excellent.” More students began raising their hands to come to the front. They cheered and argued over who had pointed first. Students in the front did a dance every time they scored correctly. When a usually uncooperative boy in the back of the room interrupted to ask Zhao if he could go to the bathroom, two-thirds of the class shouted “No!” In recent weeks, students were taking matters into their own hands. They’d sometimes snap, “Bu yao shuo hua. Qing anjing.” “Stop talking. Be quiet.” Zhao zeroed in on a boy near the middle, his eyes half-closed. “Ni xiang mai shenmo?” “What do you want to buy?” The boy looked bewildered. “What?” A classmate next to him explained the question in Spanish. “Que quieres comprar?” The boy gave it a try, slowly. “Wo ... xiang ... mai ... xigua.” “I want to buy watermelon.” When class was over, a boy carrying a guitar thanked Zhao and said he would try to visit Chinatown during winter vacation. Zhao gave him his cell number and told him to call if he wanted a tour of the neighborhood. Antonio jotted down Zhao’s email so that he could continue to practice the language while he visited family in Mexico. Then the two said goodbye. “Zaijian.” Zhao and his students returned to class last month. Maria Hernandez rattled off all the Chinese nouns she could remember. The 15-yearold, wearing hoop earrings the size of coasters, said the words so fast that Zhao couldn’t keep up recording them on the white board. At the back of the room, three boys played cards below their desks, oblivious to the lesson. During the next period, some students participated in a spirited vocabulary review. But they were districted by another student who was loudly chatting with other classmates. Twice Zhao took her into the hallway, telling her to stop. It had become his routine: limit the damage done by the unruly students and continue to reach the interested ones. It’s not the dream of teaching in America that Zhao had when he arrived, but for now it’s the best he can do.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Page 9

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

M. lacrosse prepare for Women cruise, men lose at heptagonals Denver’s high-altitude play continued from page 12

continued from page 12 very windy.” He also credited the Hofstra defense, which was very aggressive all day. Though Bruno did not get the bounces in the first quarter, it turned the game around in the second, putting three straight on the board early in the quarter. Midfielder Zach Caldwell ’10 opened the scoring 3:55 into the period on a pass from Andrew Feinberg ’11, and from there Muldoon took over. With 9:53 left in the half Muldoon scored his third goal of the season. Just 46 seconds later, added another on a pass from attackman Jack Walsh ’09. Though Hofstra tied the score with 5:30 to play in the half, Muldoon sent the Bears into the intermission with a 4-3 lead when he tallied his third goal of the quarter with 59 seconds to play before the break. “I was put in the right place at the right time,” Muldoon said. “It wasn’t anything magical. I just let our offense come to me.” After leading Brown in scoring last year as a freshman, Muldoon is clearly the Bears’ go-to guy this season on a very young offensive unit that starts two sophomores and junior transfer Reade Seligmann ’09 at midfield, as well as two sophomores and a freshman at attack. But Muldoon feels the offense works as a whole, and he just takes the opportunities he is given. “I don’t feel pressure because I have faith in my teammates,” he said. “The only pressure is from myself because I am trying to play well for (my teammates) and they are doing the same for me.” Muldoon did spark the Brown offense against Hofstra, though the young unit still struggled and was outshot 37-19 on the day. “The experience we have on the team is on the defensive end,” Tiffany said. “These are the guys we got. They are not going to get a year older in a week, but we are going to tell them they have to.” Muldoon was optimistic about the prospects of the offensive unit as the players gain more experience

with each other. “The more we play together, the better we are going to get. We’ve got a great rotation,” he said. In the second half, Hofstra swung the momentum that Muldoon had stolen from them back to the Pride’s side. Hofstra outshot Brown 12-3 in the third quarter, dominating the time of possession. The Bears also committed 10 penalties to Hofstra’s six. “They played with more composure. They played more consistent. Our offense didn’t play with as much poise,” Tiffany said. The Pride put in two goals after the break to take a 5-4 lead, but attackman Andrew Feinberg tied the game at five with 3:42 to play in the third quarter. But Hofstra kept the pressure on and took the lead for good just 50 seconds into the final quarter to go up 6-5. Hofstra’s Kevin Ford, who had a hat trick on the day, added an insurance goal, which proved crucial because Muldoon found the back of the cage for the fourth time with five seconds remaining in the game, making the final score 7-6. But Bruno cannot get down on the loss because it faces a formidable challenge this weekend. The team will travel to Colorado to face Denver on Saturday and Air Force on Sunday. Tiffany said Denver will be tough because of its aggressive defense that double-teams the ball often. It will require the Brown offense to play with a much more poised style than it did against Hofstra. Not only will the team have to deal with long-distance travel, but it will also have to battle the infamous Denver altitude. To prepare, the team is planning to drink extra fluids and to focus on extra conditioning in practice this week. One thing the team has going is that it fields a lot of players. Tiffany said he expects to play as many as he normally does, if not more, to combat the thin air. “We are going to get going tomorrow,” Hall said on Sunday. “We are going to practice hard all week and hopefully get two victories.”

After weekend sweep, w. tennis looks to more home matches continued from page 12 position earlier in the season and he said she has stepped up her game. In addition to being mentally stronger in her new position, Finkelstein said she has made big improvements in her serving. “Everything (is) finally all fitting together, and not just one thing is dominating,” she said. After her three-set win against Bucknell on Saturday, No. 4 Tanja Vucetic ’10 looked strong in her 6-3, 6-4 win against Syracuse. Down 4-3 in the second set, Vucetic buckled down and served consistently to take the last three games. No. 5 Marisa Schonfeld ’11 turned in perhaps the grittiest performance of Sunday. She breezed to a 6-1 first set win in just 23 minutes, but she dropped the second set 6-4. Since Brown had already clinched a victory, the third set came down to a tiebreaker. In the end, Schonfeld outlasted Syracuse’s Chelsea Jones, 13-11, although neither player seemed ready to walk off the court at any point dur-

ing the marathon tiebreaker. Each woman had staved off three match points in the tiebreaker with the score locked at 11-11. Ultimately, Schonfeld broke service and held her own ser ve to take the tight match. After a strong second set by her opponent, Schonfeld said she stayed focused and kept her emotions in check. “I didn’t want to let anything bother me or frustrate me,” the freshman said. “Maintaining your composure and intensity is going to give you the best chance to win.” The lone Syracuse point came against No. 6 Alexa Baggio ’09, 6-4, 6-3. But commanding wins against URI and Bucknell left the strong hitter 2-1 on the weekend. The Bears will ride their fourcontest winning streak into next weekend, when they will play host to Massachusetts at 3 p.m. on Friday and West Virginia at 10 a.m. on Sunday, both at the Pizzitola Center. Now having won 23 out of their last 24 individual singles matches, the team has shown it can do more than just talk the talk.

she suffered during the event. “It was tough to watch Thelma Breezeatl pull her hamstring in the 60-meter dash, where she had broken her own Ivy League record in the trials the day before and was the number one seed,” Head Coach Craig Lake wrote in an e-mail. “Losing her in the 60-meter dash, as well as the 200-meter dash where she was the second seed going into finals, was tough on our team.” In the 800-meter Samantha Adelberg ’11 finished in second place. The 3,000-meter run yielded the same result, as Smita Gupta ’08 finished second as well. She also picked up a Brown best in the onemile run by finishing fifth. The Bears also found success in the field. Grace Watson ’11 earned a second-place finish in the high jump with a 5-08.00 foot jump, while Natasha Smith ’11 finished right behind her at third. Tiffany Chang ’08 was able to capture fourth place in the pole vault. King’s success on the track carried over to the field as she finished third in the triple jump with a distance of 39-05.25 feet and fourth in the long jump with a leap of 18-10.00 feet. Danielle Grunloh ’10 earned a second-place finish in the shot put, while Smith was crowned Ivy League Champion in the women’s indoor pentathlon. “Smith was the Ivy League Champion in the pentathlon and

was fierce. She is a true competitor and performed amazingly well under pressure,” Lake wrote. The Bears are looking to build on a successful indoor season as they prepare for the outdoor season to begin. The team will take the momentum from this emotional weekend and carry the Bears into their first outdoor meet. “There was just so much energy at Heps up at Cornell this weekend. It felt like our team really got loud and laid it on the line,” Gupta said. “We were all really happy to have beat Cornell, but because we were within points of beating Princeton — it was extremely emotional as well. We have so much incentive going into outdoors, though.” The men’s team did not have the same team success at the Championships. The Bears finished seventh out of eight, with Cornell coming in first with 205 points. Princeton (149) finished in second, followed by Yale (58), Dartmouth (50), Penn (44), Columbia (39), Brown (30) and Harvard (14). David Howard ’09 was the top competitor for Brown this weekend. He picked up his second consecutive Ivy title in the shot put with a distance of 56-08.00 feet and captured a fifth-place finish in the weight throw, with a 58-03.75 feet toss. Teammate Tyler Prince ’09 finished the weight throw with a distance of 54-04.00 feet. Howard, unsatisfied with his performance on Saturday, took his pent-up emotion

into the competition on Sunday. “I did not (set a personal record) in the weight and, as a result, I was not happy at all about what happened on Saturday,” Howard said. “So I carried that feeling with me on Sunday to step up and win shot put.” Reginald Cole ’10 rounded out the top Brown finishers in the field by posting a distance of 48-02.00 feet in the triple jump, which was good enough for fifth place. Strong finishes continued on the track for the Bears with Sean O’Brien ’09 finishing fourth in the 800-meter run in a time of 1:53.74 minutes. Ari Zamir ’08 picked up fifth in the 5,000-meter run, while Christian Escareno ’10 and Duriel Hardy ’10 finished sixth and seventh, respectively. Matthew Jasmin ’09 crossed the finish line fourth in the 60-meter hurdles, with a time of 8.18 seconds. Other notable performances included Kevin Cervante’s ’10 seventh-place finish in the 400-meter dash. John Loeser ’10 finished 10th in the one mile with a time of 4:21.06 minutes. “Overall, the men competed very well,” Lake wrote. “We are not pleased with seventh place of course, and want to improve on that during the outdoor season.” Although the Bears are finished with their indoor season, their outdoor season is right around the corner. They compete in their first meet on March 22.

Swimming seniors end on ‘good note,’ one says continued from page 12 was placing. “I couldn’t really have asked for more than that,” she said. “Bailey’s placing was a big shift in momentum for our team,” Goodman said. Of her own finish she added, “I was really excited. I haven’t done that well in backstroke since I’ve been at Brown. I was proud to represent Brown and be in a position to score points for our team.” On the final day of the meet, Dillon Delaney ’08 started Brown off with a 12th-place finish in the 1650 free. She was followed by Katherine Wargo ’11 in 17th place. Kelley Wisinger ’11 snagged one of

the Bears’ two ninth-place finishes of the day in the 200 back. Sage Erskine ’11 finished two seconds behind her in 15th place. Langner was back again with a 12th place finish in the 200 breast. Wyatt was less than two seconds behind, claiming 13th. Natascha Mangan ’11 captured the Bears’ second ninth-place finish of the day in the 200 fly. The conclusion of the meet was bittersweet as the team will say goodbye to five seniors. “We (seniors) got really emotional,” Zatorski said. “This year, the dynamics have been great — I love this team,” she added. “I ended on a good note, and I think everyone did.”

Thanks for reading.

E ditorial & L etters Page 10

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Staf f Editorial

A ‘global university’? Internationalization — it’s such a big word that no one has stopped to figure out what it means. The word has eight hefty syllables, but its usage is often tautological. For example: “(S)ystematic attention to the issue of internationalization is necessary if we are to achieve our goal of being a global university,” as the recently released review of the Plan for Academic Enrichment says. But the length of the word does not make up for its lack of definition. “International” cannot simply mean “anywhere but America” if we seek to diversify our student body and truly become a “global university.” A key component of internationalization is recruiting students from abroad, as Vice President for International Affairs David Kennedy ’76 recently told The Herald. The Office of Admission’s Web site currently boasts that it received applications from 72 countries this year and that the current student body hails from 63 nations. But while the admission site has only a list of countries, the Office of Institutional Research gives the numbers of students from each region and shows a more telling picture of our student body. Of the 9.4 percent of undergrads enrolled in Brown in 2006 who are foreign, over a fourth come from East Asia. Add the next three most-represented regions — Canada, Western Europe and Southeast Asia — and 68 percent of the international population is accounted for. By contrast, only three students from Central America make the list. South America offers 10 and the entire continent of Africa, 22. Despite being a large country and a neighbor to the States, Mexico did not have a single representative at Brown in 2006, according to OIR. We recognize the two significant barriers to bringing in students from less-represented areas of the world. The first is that these regions also have fewer secondary schools with English instruction and advance courses that prepare students for Brown academics. Though we recognize this difficulty, the University should reach out all the more to students in these regions that have prepared themselves and increase the frequency of recruiting trips there. The second barrier to enrolling more students from these regions is financial. The finances of American applicants don’t affect their chances of getting into Brown, and the University should hold the same standards for international applicants. We repeat our recommendation that admission for international students be need-blind. Their perspectives and scholarship make a Brown education more valuable. To this end, we applaud the recent announcement of the Advancing Africa Scholarship fund, which will help bring students from sub-Saharan Africa to Brown. This step is the first in internationalizing our student body. Of course, Brown hosts many students with American citizenship that have cultural backgrounds in these less represented countries. Still, true internationalization calls also for students who have been raised and educated abroad. The definition of this cumbersome word is grand but simple — it is the process of making our student body reflect the diversity of the whole world.

T he B rown D aily H erald Editors-in-Chief Simmi Aujla Ross Frazier editorial Arts & Culture Editor Robin Steele Asst. Arts & Culture Editor Andrea Savdie Higher Ed Editor Debbie Lehmann Features Editor Chaz Firestone Asst. Features Editor Olivia Hoffman Metro Editor Rachel Arndt Metro Editor Scott Lowenstein News Editor Mike Bechek News Editor Isabel Gottlieb News Editor Franklin Kanin News Editor Michael Skocpol Opinions Editor Karla Bertrand Opinions Editor James Shapiro Sports Editor Whitney Clark Sports Editor Amy Ehrhart Sports Editor Jason Harris Asst. Sports Editor Benjy Asher Asst. Sports Editor Andrew Braca Asst. Sports Editor Megan McCahill

Senior Editors Taylor Barnes Chris Gang Stu Woo Business Darren Ball General Manager General Manager Mandeep Gill Susan Dansereau Office Manager Alex Hughes Sales Manager Lily Tran Sales Manager Public Relations Director Emilie Aries Jon Spector Accounting Director Claire Kiely National Account Manager University Account Manager Ellen DaSilva Darren Kong Recruiter Account Manager Credit Manager Katelyn Koh Ingrid Pangandoyon Technology Director

J on G uyer

L e tt e r s MPCs are not selected based on race To the Editor: I would like to clarify the process by which Minority Peer Counselor selection is made. As peer advisors living in the undergraduate residence halls, MPCs’ responsibilities include providing advice and support on issues that relate to race, class, gender, sexual orientation, academics and social life; planning educational workshops on oppression; handling urgent situations and reaching out to the greater Brown community. MPCs are also expected to remain in good academic standing. In applying to be an MPC, students write an essay stating why they want to become an MPC and submit two letters of recommendation: one from a peer and one from a professor, administrator, coach or former high school teacher. All applicants are interviewed by administrators, faculty members and students who are current or past

MPCs. After interviews, each applicant’s file is read by two members of the selection committee. MPC candidates are evaluated on their skills of listening and communication, leadership, time management and problem solving; their ability to relate to people who are the same as and different from themselves; and their ability to manage the discomfort that occurs naturally as we learn to live and grow in a diverse community. Race is not a basis for selection or rejection of a candidate’s application. Karen McLaurin-Chesson ‘74 Associate Dean of the College, Director of the Third World Center March 3

photo Rahul Keerthi Meara Sharma Min Wu Ashley Hess

Photo Editor Asst. Photo Editor Asst. Photo Editor Sports Photo Editor

post- magazine production Steve DeLucia Production & Design Editor Chaz Kelsh Asst. Design Editor Copy Desk Chief Catherine Cullen Adam Robbins Graphics Editor

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Aubrey Cann, Alex Unger, Stephen Delucia, Designer Paula Armstrong, Ayelet Brinn, Joyce Ji, Jenn Kim, Copy Editors Michael Bechek, Emmy Liss, Chaz Kelsh, Jenna Stark, Night Editors Senior Staff Writers Sam Byker, Nandini Jayakrishna, Chaz Kelsh, Sophia Li, Emmy Liss, Max Mankin, Brian Mastroianni, George Miller, Alex Roehrkasse, Caroline Sedano, Jenna Stark, Joanna Wohlmuth, Simon van Zuylen-Wood Staff Writers Stefanie Angstadt, Caitlin Browne, Marisa Calleja, Noura Choudhury, Joy Chua, Sophia Lambertsen, Cameron Lee, Christian Martell, Anna Millman, Evan Pelz, Leslie Primack, Marielle Segarra, Melissa Shube, Catherine Straut, Gaurie Tilak, Matthew Varley, Meha Verghese, Allison Wentz Sports Staff Writers Peter Cipparone, Han Cui, Lara Southern Business Staff Diogo Alves, Steven Butschi, Timothy Carey, Jilyn Chao, Pete Drinan, Dana Feuchtbaum, Patrick Free, Sarah Glick, Soobin Kim, Christie Liu, Philip Maynard, Mariya Perelyubskaya, Paolo Servado, Saira Shervani, Yelena Shteynberg, Robert Stefani, Lindsay Walls, Benjamin Xiong Design Staff Jessica Calihan, Aubrey Cann, Serena Ho, Rachel Isaacs, Andrea Krukowski, Joe Larios, Joanna Lee, Alex Unger, Aditya Voleti, Pete White Photo Staff Oona Curley, Alex DePaoli, Erik Maser, Kim Perley, Quinn Savit Copy Editors Ria Ali, Paula Armstrong, Kim Arredondo, Ayelet Brinn, Aubrey Cann, Rafael Chaiken, Stephanie Craton, Erin Cummings, Katie Delaney, Julianne Fenn, Jake Frank, Anne Fuller, Josh Garcia, Jennifer Grayson, Rachel Isaacs, Joyce Ji, Jenn Kim, Tarah Knaresboro, Ted Lamm, Alex Mazerov, Seth Motel, Lisa Qing, Alex Rosenberg, Madeleine Rosenberg, Elena Weissman, Jason Yum

C O R R E C T I O N S P olicy The Brown Daily Herald is committed to providing the Brown University community with the most accurate information possible. Corrections may be submitted up to seven calendar days after publication. C ommentary P O L I C Y The staff editorial is the majority opinion of the editorial board of The Brown Daily Herald. The editorial viewpoint does not necessarily reflect the views of The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Columns, letters and comics reflect the opinions of their authors only. L etters to the E ditor P olicy Send letters to letters@browndailyherald.com. Include a telephone number with all letters. The Herald reserves the right to edit all letters for length and cannot assure the publication of any letter. Please limit letters to 250 words. Under special circumstances writers may request anonymity, but no letter will be printed if the author’s identity is unknown to the editors. Announcements of events will not be printed. advertising P olicy The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. reserves the right to accept or decline any advertisement at its discretion.

O pinions Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Page 11

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Providence School District gets ‘NECAPped’ MICHAEL RAMOS-LYNCH Opinions Columnist The New England Common Assessment Program was administered to 11,600 public school students this past October. Providence students’ scores were disappointing, but their math scores were particularly disturbing: Only 10 percent of eleventh grade students’ scores qualified as “proficient,” according to the NECAP. Reading and writing scores were also low, with 45 percent of eleventh grade students scoring “proficient” in reading and 27 percent scoring “proficient” in writing. Scores across the state were not much better. Only 21 percent of all eleventh graders in Rhode Island were judged “proficient” in math. It is important to note that this test is new and that the mainstream opinion of education officials is that it is much more difficult than previously administered tests. While NECAP suggests that Providence schools could do a better job of educating their students, especially in math, the Providence district should be commended for improving scores in both reading and writing. Still, it is clear that the district needs to improve in all three core subjects: math, reading and writing. Hope High School, an urban facility with a large population of students of color located only a few miles from Brown’s campus, was recently divided into three different schools:

Hope Arts School, Hope Information Technology School and Hope Leadership School. The percentages of students who performed at the “proficient” level in the math section of the NECAP were zero percent, 1.15 percent and 3.51 percent, respectively. In addition, both the reading and writing scores for Hope were significantly below the state average. The NECAP reveals two main problems. The first is that the Providence Public School District is lagging behind the rest of Rhode

The increased difficulty of this year’s test in no way excuses the underwhelming results. Providence schools still score much lower in math, reading and writing compared with other school districts in the state. It is unclear why the Providence School District is not on par with neighboring districts — the entire state has encountered difficulties in implementing policies to boost students’ educational achievement. Despite the extremely low test scores, Gov. Donald Carcieri ’65 and state

The increased difficulty of this year’s test in no way excuses the underwhelming results. Providence schools still score much lower in math, reading and writing compared to other school districts in the state. Island in reading, writing and math. The second is that there is an achievement gap between students of color and their white counterparts and between affluent and poor high schools. This achievement gap is not unique to Providence, but that is no reason to sit by passively and watch local public schools fall victim.

education officials have publicly supported standards set by NECAP. It’s worth asking how to help students meet these standards. According to the Providence Journal, “More than half of the state’s 58 high schools have still not integrated the state’s grade-level expectations in all subjects that were rolled out several years ago.” The best possible solu-

tion seems to involve attracting better teachers to Providence public schools. But drawing talented teachers to work in underserved high schools that often lack the proper resources can prove challenging, if not impossible. I have previously supported raising teachers’ salaries, but I think that raising salaries above a certain level would be misguided. Admittedly, low salaries probably deter people from entering the teaching profession in the first place. But we don’t want educators who are primarily motivated to teach by financial considerations. Enticing teachers with high salaries might lead some teachers to value money above all else: above personal convictions, responsibility and moral obligations. In order to improve education at the local and national levels, we will have to figure out how to attract bright and talented individuals — people who could earn more in the private sector — to teach in underserved communities. A good starting point would be to get the word out about the failures of our education system. We must unite as a nation to solve the shortcomings of our public schools. If we truly want to live in a democracy, in a nation where we all have a voice, then we must recognize the grave problems with the public education system and the threat that they pose to our survival as a people. We must invest in empowering youth with the ability to think critically and to represent themselves and their individual interests in an increasingly competitive and globalized society.

Michael Ramos-Lynch ’09 is hooked on phonics

Moving past ‘What Would Reagan Do?’ BY SARAH ROSENTHAL Guest Columnist Ronald Reagan is dead. He has been for nearly four years. Then again, Princess Diana has been dead for far longer than that, and many in the media still haven’t gotten the message. It may be snide and petty to bring up the dead messiah of the Republican Party, particularly this week, when the tears for patron saint William Buckley Jr. are still fresh. Still, I can’t help but hope that, with the Republican nomination all but secured, we are emerging from the long dark night of Reagan-worship. I don’t say this to insult Reagan’s memory, or minimize his accomplishments. I did not personally experience his presidency and I don’t claim to be able to pick it apart. However, I think the problem for the right is deeper and more worrisome than whether Reagan was wise in increasing the deficit or whether he deployed the cynical Southern Strategy during his campaigns almost 30 years ago. For me, the issue is that this all happened almost 30 years ago. In an election in which youth voters are turning out in higher numbers than ever before, it would behoove the Republicans to realize that the 18 to 24 year old slice of the electorate is either too young to remember life under Reagan or was not even born when he left office. That slice is going to get bigger as the years wear on, and all the mythologizing in the world of the 40th president isn’t going to give young voters the same nostalgia and affection that their parents and grandparents possess.

And what powerful affection it is! The Republican candidates, over the course of their 20-odd debates, invoked Reagan’s name so often that it gave me the impression they all wanted to gay-marry him. Over the course of the debates, Romney mentioned him 28 times, McCain 21 times, Huckabee 15 times and Giuliani an astonishing 44 times. Thankfully, that’s all water under the bridge now, but it’s indicative of a more serious problem with the Republican Party, both in image and substance. A refusal to reach out to anyone

a podium isn’t actually Protestant. To their credit, all except the demagogic Tom Tancredo participated in the Univision debate; however, their more moderate rhetoric on immigration in front of Hispanic audiences only served to remind the nation (for better or worse) of their games of illegal immigrantbaiting one-upmanship in previous debates. (Curiously, in their rabid condemnations of amnesty, they failed to mention that their hero signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, and that he wrote in a signing

If Republicans want to save themselves from being the backwards-looking party, they’re going to need some work. besides that 20 percent of a polling sample that will support President Bush no matter what he does is not a sustainable strategy. At various points, the Republican front-runners chose not to attend the youth-oriented MTV-Myspace debate, the debate at historically black Morgan State University or the NAACP convention. It sends a message, especially because this is a party whose claim to diversity is that one of the middle-aged white men standing behind

statement, “The legalization provisions in this act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society. Very soon many of these men and women will be able to step into the sunlight and, ultimately, if they choose, they may become Americans.”) If Republicans want to save themselves from being forever the backwards-looking

party, they’re going to need some work. When a candidate and a party show opposition to gay rights, an unwillingness to confront global warming or even a reluctance to answer questions submitted via YouTube, it sends out a message to voters. It says, “We are behind the times, and we’re going to stay there until you drag us kicking and screaming into the present.” But I suppose that’s why they’re called conservatives. Now the question is whether or not it’s possible to recreate the glory days of the Reagan coalition — fiscal conservatives, foreign policy hawks and values voters — while still living in the 21st century. A part of me understands why Republican leaders are desperately clinging to the Great Communicator, especially when the party is lacking in vision, and in such disarray that it reminds one of the Democrats. By all accounts, Ronald Reagan made people feel optimistic. He made them feel good about being Americans again during a period fraught with “national malaise.” (Incidentally, there’s a current candidate across the aisle that has been accused of having the same qualities.) But he’s dead, and continually positing the “What Would Reagan Do?” credo isn’t going to bring him back. In fact, it will only hurt the Republican Party in the long run. So when John McCain endlessly boasts of being a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution, he should try to imagine if the candidates in his first election spent so much time praising a long-dead Calvin Coolidge that they ignored what was happening in front of them.

Sarah Rosenthal ’11 supports GPRR: Gay Polygamy for Ronald Reagan

S ports T uesday Page 12

M. lax sniped in last test before West trip By Jason Harris Sports Editor

It’s a new season, but the men’s lacrosse team was plagued by an old problem. Falling into an early hole, Brown fought 6 Brown back, but was 7 Hofstra not unable to close out the game in a 7-6 loss at Hofstra. The result leaves both teams at 1-1 on the infant season. Hofstra dominated the first quarter, just as many of the Bears’ opponents did throughout last season. The Pride were up 2-0 after the first frame, and it could have been much worse had goalie Jordan Burke ’09 not brought his A game. “Jordan played really well,” said tri-captain Brian Asher ’08. “He kept the game close.” Burke was aided by what Head Coach Lars Tiffany ’90 called a “bend but don’t break” defense, anchored by close defensemen Reed Deluca ’08, tri-captain Brian Sharnick ’08 and Jake Westermann ’10. Still, Hofstra was able to beat Burke, who had 13 saves, and the Bruno defense twice because of a large possession discrepancy early on. “We just didn’t have the ball enough,” Asher said. “We didn’t get enough ground balls.” Hofstra scooped up 38 ground balls on the day to Brown’s 20. The possession disparity was also partly due to turnovers by the Brown offense in the first quarter.

After three days of competition, the women’s swimming and diving team finished sixth in the Ivy League Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships on Sunday with 643 points. Winning the tournament was home team Princeton (1651.5), followed by Harvard (1494), Columbia (1016), Yale (986) and Penn (959.5). Dartmouth and Cornell brought up the rear with 624 and 381 points, respectively. But Lauren Zatorski ’08 said these numbers don’t do justice to the team’s individual efforts and accomplishments. The Bears graduated 13 seniors last year and spent the majority of this season without a pool. Yet the women still managed to come up with some big wins in their final meet, matching last year’s sixth-place finish. “It was everything it could have been, this last meet,” Zatorski said. “A lot of people got their personal best times, which is a huge thing.” On the first day of the competition, Brown opened the meet with a seventh-place finish in the 200 free relay with the team of Zatorski, Candice Sisouvanvieng-Kim ’11, Sarah Goodman ’09 and Susannah Ford ’10. Ainsley McFadgen ’09 came in 12th in the 500 free with a time of 4:56.76 minutes, beating her personal best from last season by almost two seconds. This was followed by a 12th-place finish for Bailey Langner ’10 in the 200 individual medley “B” final, while Ally Wyatt ’08 was just behind her to claim 13th. In the final swimming events of the day Sisouvanvieng-Kim

W. track falls just short in bid for Ivy championship By Nicole Stock Contributing Writer

Ashley Hess / Herald File Photo

Thomas Muldoon ’10 scored four goals in the Bears’ 7-6 loss at Hofstra over the weekend. He led the team in scoring as a freshman last year.

“Our passes were all pretty low. It took time to get into the game plan,” said attackman Thomas Muldoon ’10. “We really just couldn’t pass and catch.” Tiffany said the offensive struggles were a result of the Bears being on their first road game, against a

W. swimming finishes sixth at Ivy League Championships By Anne Deggelman Contributing Writer

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

W. swimming and diving 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Princeton Harvard Columbia Yale Penn Brown Dartmouth Cornell

1651.5 1494.0 1016.0 986.0 959.5 643.0 624.0 381.0

placed 15th in the 50 free and the Bears snagged a fifth-place finish in the 400 medley relay. Katie Olko ’10 and Jacquelyn Rudis ’08 ended the day on a high note for the Bears in the one-meter dive. Olko placed ninth for the Bears’ highest finish of the day, and Rudis placed 15th. “I was very, very happy with how the girls did on one-meter,” said diving Coach Guy Pollino. Olko, who finished 11th in the prelims, “really stepped up and did great that second time around,” Pollino added. As for Rudis, her finish was “one of the highlights of the meet for me,” Pollino said. “She really stepped it up.” The excitement continued on the second day of the competition with two top-eight finishes for the Bears. Langner was the first to place in the top-eight, taking fifth in the 400 individual medley. Goodman followed with an eighth-place finish in the 100 back. Langner, who dropped eight seconds over the course of the meet to achieve her personal best time in the 400 individual medley, said that the highlight of the meet for her continued on page 9

good opponent that is always difficult to beat at home. The conditions did play a factor, as tri-captain Jeff Hall ’08 mentioned that “it was tough hearing the offensive sets because it was continued on page 9

The men’s and women’s track and field teams headed up to Ithaca, N.Y., last Sunday to compete in the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships. The men finished seventh out of eight, while the women finished second only to Princeton. On the women’s side, the Tigers finished with 114 points, while the Bears were only seven points behind with 107. Third went to the Big Red of Cornell with 100 points, followed by Harvard (46), Penn (45), Columbia (45), Yale (36) and Dartmouth (34). Princeton, which picked up its first title since 1998, ended Cornell’s six-year winning streak. The Bears held off Cornell for the second straight time this season, although it was not quite enough to capture the Ivy title. The Bears ended the indoor season with several strong individual performances. This week, it was Nicole Burns ’09 that lead the way for the Bears on the track. She picked up several key points with her first-place finish in the 400-meter dash in a time of 55.78 seconds. She continued her success in the 200-meter, crossing the finish line second in 25 seconds flat, while teammate Akilah King ’08 finished third in the event. “My mental capacity to lay it

Men’s Heptagonal 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Cornell Princeton Yale Dartmouth Penn Columbia Brown Harvard

205 149 58 50 44 39 30 14

Women’s Heptagonal 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Princeton Brown Cornell Harvard Penn Columbia Yale Dartmouth

114 107 100 46 45 45 36 34

all down on the track and trust in my training gave me the strength to win the 400-meter,” Burns said. “I think my training has gotten me back into shape, after taking off last outdoor season. I overcame my fears and did the best I could for my team. It was a very emotional meet for me.” King captured another thirdplace finish in the 60-meter dash at 7.75 seconds. Thelma Breezeatl ’10, who has had previous success in the event, finished eighth in the dash because of a hamstring injury continued on page 9

W. tennis serves up Orange crush at the Pitz By Seth Motel Staf f Writer

The women’s tennis team correctly predicted that it would face a Syracuse team that made a lot of noise. But on Sunday, it was the Bears’ ability to raise their intensity that left the Orange feeling blue. With relative ease, Bruno swept its three weekend competitions at home, improving its season record to 5-4. The team’s 6-1 victory over Syracuse (6-8) on Sunday came after two 7-0 victories on Saturday against the University of Rhode Island (1-2) and Bucknell (2-5). Sunday’s meet started off close, with the Bears clawing their way to win two of the three doubles pro sets. They then rode the momentum from the 1-0 start into singles play, where they showed they could ignore their opponent’s chatty sideline, headed by former pro and ESPN commentator Luke Jensen. No. 1 Bianca Aboubakare ’11 demonstrated the Bears’ surge of energy. She bounced back from a 6-3 loss in the first set to dominate the next two sets, 6-1, 6-1. After a first set filled with an uncharacteristic amount of unforced errors, she turned up the heat on Syracuse. “I felt like they couldn’t show us up on our own court, so I felt like I had to … get pumped up,” Aboubakare said. Head Coach Paul Wardlaw said Aboubakare tried too hard in the first set to “outdo” her opponent’s strong first shots instead of engaging in long rallies. “Once she rode out the first strike, she was fine,” he said. Adding to her win against Bucknell on Saturday, the three-

Ashley Hess / Herald File Photo

Brett Finkelstein ’09 won all three of her weekend matches, contributing to Brown’s sweep of University of Rhode Island, Bucknell and Syracuse.

set victory was Aboubakare’s sixth straight triumph. Sara Mansur ’09 continued Brown’s string of victories and won both her matches over the weekend, winning 6-1, 6-4 against URI as the No. 1 seed and 6-0, 6-2 against Syracuse as No. 2. She said she tried to stay consistent against a Syracuse team that came in “with a lot of energy.” After being abroad during the fall semester, Mansur, who received an All-Ivy Honorable Men-

tion last season for her doubles play, said she has regained last year’s rhythm. “I feel like I’m pretty much pretty close to being back,” she said. No. 3 Brett Finkelstein ’09 swept her three weekend matches, finishing up with a 6-2, 6-1 win over Syracuse. Her winning streak now stands at five matches. Wardlaw moved Finkelstein from the No. 4 seed to the No. 3 continued on page 9