The Brown Daily Herald M onday, M arch 10, 2008
Volume CXLIII, No. 32
U. gives grad students more cash
Since 1866, Daily Since 1891
Studying abroad? Then have a smoke
It Made a sound
By Sophia Li Senior Staff Writer
By Debbie Lehmann Higher Ed Editor
On Feb. 23, the University’s highest governing body announced a budget that would increase the net investment in graduate education to $12.4 million from $10.8 million. The increased funding will allow the Graduate School to expand the first-year class without having to reduce the level of support for each student, said Sheila Bonde, dean of the Graduate School. Stipends for both current and entering doctoral students on University support will increase from $18,500 to $19,000, said Richard Spies, executive vice president for planning and senior adviser to the president. Spies said the change in stipend will not affect master’s students. “Most of those programs do not regularly provide fellowship support.” Spies said that Brown’s more competitive stipend will be more attractive to prospective doctoral students. “Obviously, any increase in sti-
David Gumbiner ’08 had never smoked a cigarette before he spent a semester in India, China and South Africa last spring. But while he was abroad, Gumbiner started to smoke
FEATURE
Min Wu / Herald
One of the trees on the Front Green fell during the weekend, damaging part of the natural art installation created in 2006 by artist Patrick Dougherty.
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For charity, med students become doctors of love By Connie Zheng Contributing Writer
Program in Liberal Medical Education and Alpert Medical School students strutted and stripped on the stage of List 120 to a full house Friday night for the second annual “Date-a-Doctor,” a charity auction designed to raise money for asthmatic children. The event raised $2,091 for the Community Asthma Programs at Providence’s Hasbro Children’s Hospital from donations and bids for the 18 students auctioned off, said Lauren De Leon MD’10, the event’s organizer. The winning bids ranged from $60 to $145. Last year’s Date-a-Doctor brought in $3,641, with a top bid of $469, The Herald reported last year. The auction was again hosted by Breeze Against Wheeze, a group run by Brown medical and undergraduate students that sponsors an annual five-kilometer run in Providence. Conceived in 2001 by a Brown medical student, the race raises about a quarter of the total costs for the Hasbro Children’s Hospital’s Asthma Camp, according to the Breeze Web site. Date-a-Doctor primarily seeks to raise money for the weeklong summer camp, which is for asthmatic nine- to 13-year-olds from any income level, according to the Asthma Camp Web site. At the camp, the children participate in outdoor activities while learning to manage asthma.
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ARTS & CULTURE
An Rx for Love Top Fetchers at Date-a-Doctor $125 $120 $120 $110 $110
Lauren De Leon MD’10 Armando Bedoya ‘07 MD’11 Laura Slavin MD’11 Tina Charest ‘07 MD’11 Monica Kaitz MD’11
“Let’s remember why we’re here,” said Adam Vasconcellos ’07 MD’11, one of the auction’s two emcees, after bids for the first participant stalled at $25. The quip drew loud laughter from the audience, and the bids for Michael Gart MD’10, a Breeze co-president, eventually soared up to $100 as Gart flexed his chest muscles through a tight shirt for the audience. After reading each participant’s brief autobiography — while often making a few raunchy changes of their own — emcees Vasconcellos and Andrea Dean MD’10 opened up bidding to the audience. The bids typically started at $20 but were sometimes higher when a particular line from the biography struck a chord with the audience. “You want walk beach with me?” Aleksey Novikov ’07 MD’11 asked the audience in an exaggerated accent, after the emcees told the crowd that Novikov enjoyed walks on the beach. Novikov’s line elicited much laughter from the audience. Not all high bidders received dates from their doctors, with
Cultural Collage AASA showcases beats, breakdancing and boardbreaking abilities
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CAMPUS NEWS
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Incoming first-years may see rooms in 3-D By Chaz Kelsh Senior Staf f Writer
A Brown student’s business venture could vastly reduce the shock incoming freshmen feel when they see their dorm rooms for the first time. Digital Wingman, Inc., co-founded by Jake Powers ’09 in January 2007 to produce three-dimensional renderings of dorm rooms for colleges and universities nationwide, could create images of Brown residence halls, said Richard Bova, senior associate dean for the Office of Residential Life. The renderings give future residents a full picture of their rooms from different angles, including not only the size and shape of the room but also the furniture supplied. The images can also include the actual textures of the furniture. Brown could purchase renderings from Digital Wingman to have them available as soon as next fall, Bova said. “I would so much look forward to being able to provide (the renderings) to students,” he said, adding that it could help incoming firstyears and current students entering the housing lottery. Bova said he has asked the company to submit a proposal for evaluation this spring. He said he has “no sense of cost,” and that the project could be funded either through ResLife or through special funding. ResLife had to “verify and cull” the floor-plan data for Brown’s more than 2,500 rooms into a special computer-aided design format to provide to Digital Wingman.
Wriston on the Web Former Brown President Henry Wriston’s biography makes its online debut
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OPINIONS
Courtesy of uga.edu
The three-dimensional floorplans (above) were created for UGA by Jake Powers ‘09 (below). Based on this information, the company will be able to create an accurate proposal, including the potential cost, he said. The business’s clients include Belmont, Nor th Carolina State, Stanford and Johnson and Wales universities, the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the University of Georgia, the University of California at Berkeley and Williams College, Powers said. To produce the images, Digital Wingman gathers traditional floor plan information on residence halls as well as photographs of the intericontinued on page 6
Slippery slurs Matt Prewitt ‘08 calls himself out on campus classism
sunny, 46 / 28 www.browndailyherald.com
bidis — small cigarettes popular in South Asia — with some participants in his program. Gumbiner said it became “part of our friendship to sit around and smoke.” But cigarettes lost much of their cultural appeal when Gumbiner returned to Providence — he said they were “more exciting in the developing world.” Though he continued to smoke “one or two” a day throughout the summer — more than when he was abroad — he eventually quit in the fall. Cigarettes are right next to escargots, siestas and new idioms on the list of things students try when they go abroad. But though a number
195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island
Min Wu / Herald
tomorrow’s weather If only you could have foreseen your freshman double like you can tomorrow’s morning flurries
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