Friday, April 18, 2008 by The Brown Daily Herald

The Brown Daily Herald F riday, A pril 18, 2008

Volume CXLIII, No. 54

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

Becker ’09 wins UCS presidency in landslide

f i r e fl i es

Tran ’10 next UFB chair, runoffs for vice chair By Chaz Kelsh Senior Staff Writer

Brian Becker ’09 won the presidency of the Undergraduate Council of Students in a landslide over Martin Bell ’10, receiving more than twice as many votes, UCS officials announced last night. “I’m very excited about my win,” Becker said. “This is just the first step to keeping the Brown that we love.” Lily Tran ’10, a Herald sales manager, was declared chair of the Undergraduate Finance Board over Jose Vasconez ’10. Becker received 703 votes, or 69 percent, to Bell’s 316 votes, or 31 percent. Tran received 509 votes, or 56 percent, while Vasconez had 392 votes, or 44 percent. No winners were declared in the race for UCS vice president because neither Ellen DaSilva ’10, a Herald account manager, nor Michael MacCombie ’11 received the required 50 percent of the vote. Runoff elections will be held on MyCourses from noon next Wednesday to 6 p.m. Thursday. The referendum to abolish class representatives passed with 85 per-

Courtesy of Brian Becker

Brian Becker ‘09 won UCS’ top spot with 69 percent of the vote. cent of the vote, or 759 “yes” votes, to 138 “no” votes, or 15 percent. The elections were held on MyCourses from 5 p.m. Tuesday to 5 p.m. yesterday. Results were announced to the candidates and a crowd of friends and supporters on the steps of Faunce House shortly before midnight last night. 1,346 total ballots were cast, though many ballots contained abstentions in some or all races, Elections Board Chair Rakim Brooks ’09 said. continued on page 4

Lauren Pischel / Herald

Artists perform as part of “A Night of Tranceformation,” held in the Starr Plaza at the Watson Institute for International Studies. The event was organized by Ivan Goodman ’08, as part of his senior honors project in the visual arts.

From the dinner table to the speedway Engineer-artists make cruising cuisine at tasty race By Alex Seitz-Wald Contributing Writer

A crowd of about 50 spectators cheered as a raw turkey impaled with corn-cob axles and rice-cracker wheels careened down the ramp, only to crash in a spectacular cloud

SPOTLIGHT

Laura Buckman / Herald

Arthur Kim ‘09 on the Violin and Pete Drinan ‘11 on the saxophone performing during Spring Weekend, when The Trolleys opened for Saturday’s acts.

A campus mainstay, Trolleys soon to leave this station By Franklin Kanin News Editor

Last Saturday, during Spring Weekend, students saw Umphrey’s McGee, M.I.A. and Girl Talk make their Brown debuts. But just before those artists played their first concerts at Brown, a homegrown band played one of its last. After winning the Spring Weekend Battle of the Bands competition last Thursday, the Trolleys got to be the opening act for the Saturday Spring Weekend concert. The band, which has been play-

ing as a group for two years, consists of four seniors — Arthur Kim ’08, Tim Drinan ’08, Stephen Cellucci ’08 and John Cockrell ’08 — and Drinan’s brother, Pete Drinan ’11. “We started playing on campus and that turned into off-campus,” Kim said. “Off-campus turned from downtown Providence to downtown Boston.” Kim had been planning to start a band when he came to Brown, he said, and when he was a sophomore, he joined with Tim Drinan, Cellucci and Cockrell to play at a

BIRDS AND BEES Couldn’t get into that sex education class? A new ARTS & CULTURE Brown exhibit could fill the void.

www.browndailyherald.com

continued on page 4

CAMPUS NEWS

of improvised poultry and vegetable car parts. The turkey car competed against zucchini mobiles and bagelwheeled buggies at the Xtreme Edible Car Competition last Thursday afternoon on “Manning Speedway,” in front of Barus and Holley. The rules were simple. Teams had one hour to construct a gravitypowered car made entirely out of food that could be found in a typical grocery store. Cars also had to have at least three wheels, “so you can’t just roll a cantaloupe,” said Julie Sygiel ’09, the event’s organizer. Once assembled, vehicles were rolled down a ramp and judged on their distance traveled and their appearance. Professors of engineering judged the distance portion of the event, while Brown Dining Services Executive Chef John O’Shea lent his culinary expertise to evaluate the aesthetics of the cars. The Xtreme Special Events Committee, a group of engineers that organized last December’s Xtreme Gingerbread House Building Com-

Stand up comedy Tom Flaherty ’08 is the second-funniest guy we know — and he could go national in stand-up

OPINIONS

Courtesy of John Abromowski

Engineering concentrator Julie Sygiel ’09 with an edible racing car. petition, sponsored the edible car race along with the Division of Engineering and the Society of Women Engineers. However, many of the competitors were not engineering concentrators. Because every car part had to edible, teams had to employ considerable ingenuity to design their cars. Heavy vegetables such as squash and eggplants were popular choices for their weight, in order to aid acceleration. For axles, peppermint sticks, carrots and pretzel rods were all prevalent, but peppermint sticks offered the best strength-to-weightratio, according to one designer. As for wheels, rice cakes were the most common choice, but other teams went for lollipops, sliced squash, bagels and Oreos. To assemble their edible parts, teams employed various sophisticated engineering techniques: sharpening carrots, applying marshmallow fluff

Air Vent Adam Cambier ‘09 vents about poor airline maintenance and getting stuck in Cleveland

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

sunny 69 / 47

and, for one team, licking a candy cane into the perfect shape. John Szymanski ’09, designer of the turkey car, brought a number of tools to aid construction including a power drill, various knives, a potato peeler and a 114-piece drill set. He said he hoped the weight of the turkey would allow their car to travel farthest. “We’re probably going to win,” Szymanski said before the competition, unaware of the morbid fate awaiting his Thanksgiving-on-wheels. For a while, his team did seem to be the favorite — other teams nudged each other and praised the impressive car under their breath. Michael Huang ’08 and his team of two engineers and one physicist went for a three-wheeled eggplantmobile and aimed for nothing short of victory. “We’re here to compete,” he said, “not to make friends.” continued on page 4

tomorrow’s weather The weather appears to be celebrating Martin Scorsese’s arrival on campus just as much as we are

News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com

T oday Page 2

Friday, April 18, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

But Seriously | Charlie Custer and Stephen Barlow

Sharpe Refectory

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

Lunch — Chicken Jumbalaya with Bacon, Gyro Sandwiches on Pita, Tomato Basil Pie, Snickerdoodle Cookies

Lunch — Chicken Fingers, Baked Vegan Nuggets, Greek Style Asparagus, Vegan Rice Pilaf, Blondies

Dinner — Grilled Salmon with Minted Pea Puree, Manicotti Piedmontese, Rice with Peas and Coriander

Dinner — Salmon with Provensal Sauce, Grilled Chicken, Tortellini Italiano with Sausage, Pueblo Bread

Nightmarishly Elastic | Adam Robbins

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

Vagina Dentata | Soojean Kim

RELEASE DATE– Friday, April 18, 2008

Los Angeles Times Daily oCrossword Puzzle C r o ssw rd Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 Is sweet on 6 Bust __ 10 Station posting, briefly 14 Extended period 15 Top-drawer 16 Reverse 17 Luxurious dwelling 18 Struck thing 19 Half an indirect course 20 Force exerted by museum pieces? 23 Ply a scythe 24 ESPN reporter Paolantonio 25 Victor at Fredericksburg 26 Extra floor material? 32 Spin on the ice 35 Kind of luck 36 Shine, in ads 37 Arena cheer 38 Big elec. users 41 Startling word 42 Fail to keep up 43 Small shot 44 Bowed out 46 Decline 48 Aid in the Pyrenees? 52 2007 NFL pass receptions coleader Welker 53 IM delight 54 Snap up 58 “Do not seek the Grail in this place”? 62 “Ironside” star 63 Tennessee state flower 64 Ethiopia’s Selassie 65 Cardinal point 66 Film 67 Provoke 68 Late-spring commemoration 69 Gunpowder holders 70 Bassless? DOWN 1 Burton of “Reading Rainbow”

2 Share views 3 Eponymous Italian physicist 4 One on 9/22/2006 had a central duration of 7 minutes, 9 seconds 5 NBA nickname 6 Face the judge 7 Tried to get hits 8 Old atlas abbr. 9 1960 John Wayne epic 10 Creedence Clearwater Revival hit 11 Use needles 12 Pushing the envelope 13 Recommendations 21 Longtime 8Down rival 22 Long-winded 27 Gifts of recognition 28 Crawler’s goal? 29 Difficult to watch 30 Sparkle 31 Deli option 32 First actor to play Loman 33 Goya’s “The Duchess of __”

34 Shambles 39 Shark’s tool 40 Tristan’s title 45 “You’re __ me!” 47 President Hamid Karzai, for one 49 Like most keyboards 50 Second-column listing 51 Ending with tact 55 Hold sway

Gus vs. Them | Zachary McCune and Evan Penn

56 “If I Only Had a Brain” composer 57 Like a keg party smell 58 University area 59 Heavenly beast 60 Home of Gannon University 61 Key to this puzzle’s theme, in English 62 Brook bottom

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Classic Deo | Daniel Perez

xwordeditor@aol.com

04/18/08

Classic How To Get Down | Nate Saunders

04/18/08

If you do one thing on College Hill today... Watch Ari Gold’s “Adventures in Power,” a film on a New Mexico miner who goes deep with air-drumming 9 p.m. in Salomon 101

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A rts & C ulture Friday, April 18, 2008

Arts

Y ou can leave you r f r i ends beh i nd

Min Wu / Herald

Never got ‘the talk’? Now’s your chance The 13th floor of the Sciences Library isn’t the only place on campus to learn about sex. Running through May 23, “Beyond the Birds and the Bees: Sexual Education in the 20th Centur y” will be on display at the John Nicholas Brown Center. The exhibit, curated by the masters students in the public humanities program, traces the history of sexual education in America throughout the 20th century. Beginning at the turn of the century, a segment titled “In the Barracks” looks at attitudes and concerns about venereal disease during the two world wars. According to exhibition materials, the military’s attempts at educating soldiers about these concerns represent the beginning of contemporary sex education. Setting the scene with military camp beds and other equipment, “Barracks” features dramatic warning posters, including an illustration of a sexualized woman smoking a cigarette, reading “She may be a bag of trouble — syphilis-gonorrhea.” Several other posters in the exhibit attempt to identify certain venereal diseases with women. A silent film titled “The End of the Road” was created by the American Social Hygiene Association in 1918 and follows the diverging fates of sisters Mary and Vera. According to exhibition materials, Vera leads a promiscuous life, leading to an early death from venereal disease, while Mary follows strict moral guidelines, becomes a nurse during World War I and marries a respectable doctor. A second segment of the exhibit, entitled “At Home,” addresses sex education as carried out by parents and educators in the 1950s and 1960s. Various domestic scenes — the kitchen table, the children’s bedroom — are presented in conjunction with guidebooks for parents seeking to educate their children about sex. The bedroom scene features two children’s beds littered with the objects and materials that may influence them beyond their par-

ents’ control. The “feminine” bed is strewn with advertisements for sanitary belts, bras and a set of Barbie and Ken dolls. The “masculine” bed, draped with a race car-patterned bed spread, features an old Playboy magazine, a sports letter jacket and a discreet stack of National Geographic magazines. A nearby television loops classic sex education films such as 1953’s “Molly Grows Up” and 1957’s “As Boys Grow,” both by Medical Arts Production. Exhibition materials also referred to the 1946 animated film “The Story of Menstruation,” a collaboration between Walt Disney and sanitary product manufacturers. A separate room, “Hanging Out,” depicts notions of sexuality based on the media of the 1980s and 1990s. The room arrangement centers on a futon surrounded by stacks of Madonna CD’s, romance novels and a television looping shows such as “My So-Called Life” and “Beverly Hills 90210.” The final space, “In the Classroom,” represents current views about sex education and its politicization, culminating in a collection of educational books, pamphlets and brochures. Similar to last year’s “Pulp Uncovered,” “Birds and Bees” was created to provide public humanities students an opportunity to practice the skills they have learned in class, said Project Manager Stephanie Fortunato GS. Students submitted exhibit proposals and then voted from about the seven or eight candidates, she said, noting sex education appealed because it taps into a sense of collective memory. The students began researching and decided to tackle the topic as a chronological history, she said. Many of the objects in the exhibit were obtained from eBay, while the images largely came from a number of archives, she said. Fortunato added that the multiple sites of sex education depicted in the exhibit represent that there is “no one way any person learns about sex education.” There are two upcoming programs in conjunction with the ex-

i n

Brief

Ivy Film Festival to begin tonight

Students enjoyed yesterday’s warm spring weather with an exuberant display of African dance on the Main Green.

By Robin Steele Ar ts & Culture Editor

Page 3

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

hibit — on April 23 at 5:30 p.m., Megan Andelloux of Miko Exotic Wear will present “Confessions of a Sex Educator” at the John Nicholas Brown Center; and on May 1 at 7 p.m., Norma Swenson, co-author of “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” will present the exhibit’s keynote address in Smith-Buonanno Hall 106.

This weekend, the primary events of the seventh annual Ivy Film Festival will bring visitors from colleges and universities around the country to campus to watch student films and attend a class taught by Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese. The festival acts as a venue for undergraduate and graduate students to screen their films and learn from each other and from professional guests and speakers from the film industry. Planning for this year’s festival began the day after last year’s events ended, said the festival’s associate director, Elizabeth Backup ’08. “It’s definitely a year-round process,” she said, noting that a group of 40 students has been working hard all year to get the screenings, lectures and contestants organized. Scorsese’s visit is garnering the most attention, Backup said. “Having such a filmmaking legend really allows us to make the festival better as a whole because it provides us with more publicity and allows us to get more sponsorship and catch the eye of Brown students.” Tonight, Ari Gold’s “Adventures in Power,” the story of a miner whose love of “air-drumming” helps him escape small-town New Mexico, will be shown in Salomon 101. The film, which was also screened at Sundance Film Festival, will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Gold. Saturday will feature several workshops for the filmmakers in the morning, more student film screenings, Scorsese’s Masterclass at 3 p.m. in Salomon 101 and, at 8 p.m., the award ceremony for student filmmakers, to be followed by a lecture by Tom Rothman, co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment. Scorsese’s new Rolling Stones documentary/concert film “Shine a Light” will be screened at 12 p.m. and 5 p.m. at the Avon Cinema on Thayer Street. Tickets will be available today at a table in the post office or on the Main Green. Four major awards will be given on Saturday night, for domestic films, screenplays, international films and machinima films — those made using video game graphics and characters. The machinima award is new to the festival this year. The screening of the winning student films at 2 p.m. on Sunday will conclude the festival. The directors are expecting about 75 student filmmakers and their guests to arrive in Providence this weekend, Backup said. About 20 of the visiting student filmmakers are from Ivy League schools. — Max Mankin

Page 4

Becker ’09 to head UCS continued from page 1 Every candidate running in an uncontested election was elected to his or her desired position. Stefan Smith ’09 will be UFB vice chair, while Herald Opinions Columnist Tyler Rosenbaum ’11 will be chair of the Academic and Administrative Affairs Committee. Ryan Lester ’11 will be chair of the Student Activities Committee and Harris Li ’11 will be UCS treasurer. Junior class representatives will be Greg Abdo ’10, David DesPrez ’10, John Giannuzzi ’10, Clay Wertheimer ’10 and Alex Wilpon ’10. Sophomore class representatives will be Whitney Talbott ’11, Jerry Cedrone ’11 and Sammy McGowan ’11. Because the position was abolished, the class representatives will become at-large representatives. Salsabil Ahmed ’11, Jeremy Harper ’11, Akshay Rathod ’10, Cecilia Strombeck ’11 and Herald business staffer Juan Vasconez ’10 will be UFB representatives. “I honestly don’t think there were an uncharacteristically high number of abstentions,” Brooks said. He added that some of the completely blank ballots may have been submitted because voters did not save their answers in the My-

Friday, April 18, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Courses ballot despite “concerted efforts” from the elections board to prevent this. The results were announced after the UCS elections board held a meeting to decide whether to count ballots that contained no votes as ballots cast. The UCS code of operations says that elections to officer positions are “by a majority vote,” but do not specify whether abstentions should be counted as votes. The board decided that abstentions should not affect the election. Becker was chair of the UCS campus life committee last year and worked to add salads to Josiah’s and a DVD collection to the Friedman Study Center. He ran on a platform of “small and simple” improvements to the University, he told The Herald. He said UCS should deal with both campus life issues and larger issues like Banner and the “possibly changing ideals” of the New Curriculum. Tran serves as a UFB representative and ran on a platform of increasing UFB’s transparency and the advising it gives to student groups in their budget requests. “I really hope I do get a chance to implement my plans,” an overwhelmed Tran said after hearing the election results.

The Trolleys expand beyond College Hill continued from page 1 friend’s birthday party. They originally planned to cover 1990s songs for the concert, but Tim Drinan requested they play some of the songs he wrote instead. “We were all of four bars into (Third Eye Blind’s) ‘Semi-Charmed Life’ and Tim got bored,” Kim said. “He said, ‘This goes against my musical principles. Can we do some of my songs?’” The rapport of the band was so strong that the members decided to make the project more permanent — and they’ve been playing Tim Drinan’s songs ever since. During Spring Weekend in 2007, Pete Drinan, who had been waitlisted at Brown, came to visit his brother. He sat in and played saxophone for one of the Trolleys’ shows at a sorority, and ended up joining the band permanently. “The first time we played, we sort of couldn’t deny the chemistry was awesome,” Pete Drinan said. “I didn’t even know (Tim Drinan) had a brother until he played with us,” Cockrell said. Pete Drinan explained that when he was on the wait-list, his brother and friends wrote letters to the Office of Admission urging them to accept him. “He was finally officially inducted with his acceptance letter into the Trolleys,” Cockrell said, who noted that three out of the five members of the band were originally wait-listed at Brown. Now, a year later, and with the graduation of four band members looming, the Trolleys plan to stay together. The four graduating members are moving to New York City, and Pete Drinan still plans to play with the band despite being at Brown. Though they haven’t yet figured out the logistics of practicing, Pete Drinan will join the other four for shows in New York City, Providence, Boston and — they hope — other Eastern locales stretching from Kim’s home state of Tennessee up to Maine. Cellucci plans on studying music in India in late 2008, and once he returns, Pete Drinan will take off the spring and fall semesters of 2009 to play with the band full-time,

Courtesy of the Trolleys

The Trolleys, made up of four seniors and a first-year, are headed for New York.

he said. “We know that we’re young and we have time and energy now, and we have good chemistry,” Tim Drinan said. “We’re going to give it a year till the end of 2009, try to build it as big as we can, see where we are.” Kim added that the Trolleys have good reason to try to succeed as a band. “We wouldn’t be doing this if there wasn’t some evidence that we could succeed at it,” he said. “Almost every show that we play has resulted in us getting booked for another show. Every time we meet people and play a venue and then go back a second time, we’ve built a larger following.” The differing musical interests of each band member help make the band successful, they said. While Kim is into classical music and adamantly against jazz, Pete Drinan was trained in jazz and hopes to be a professional jazz musician some day. Tim Drinan was exposed to rock music when he was younger — citing the Beatles and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, as well as more modern artists including Dispatch and Jack Johnson. Cockrell said he is into punk and alternative rock. He only recently started playing bass, which he does in the band. Cellucci, the drummer, credits hip-hop music as much of his influence, though he also plays Indian percussion. “I try to sneak in as many hiphoppy beats as I can without Arthur and Tim noticing,” Cellucci said.

“The subtle interactions (of the various musical genres) make a lot of the songs interesting,” Tim Drinan said. “The key thing is that when we bring a lot of genres into the song, we all happen to be tasteful rather than forceful,” Cellucci said. Tim Drinan, the band’s songwriter, said he has been writing music since he was in eighth grade. He noted that many of his songs have a strong American influence in them. “When I first wrote a song, I played it for my friend, and he said ‘It’s pretty good, but it’s not what you listen to. Why don’t you write the songs you like?’” he said. He also noted that most of his songwriting is now a collaborative process, in which every member of the band contributes to the songs while he’s writing them. Drew Durbin ’08, roommate of Tim Drinan and Cellucci, who lends his car to the band and has been their fan since the start, said the Trolleys are one of his favorite bands. He said their shows are always packed and full of energy. “I don’t even really like dancing, but I always get up and dance at the Trolleys’ concerts,” he said. Tim Drinan said he and his bandmates have been able to balance being students and musicians, but recently, the band’s activities have started taking over their time. “At first we were primarily students playing music. Now we’re almost primarily musicians trying to be students on the side,” he said.

This race probably best done on empty stomach continued from page 1 Team Beast, a group of thee firstyears, expressed similar competitiveness. After winning second place in the gingerbread competition, they had high hopes for their zucchini car outfitted with a Twizzler “roll cage to protect the driver,” Peter White ’11 said. John Voorhees ’09, Jordan Chesin ’09 and Jeanine Pollard ’09 had an early setback when their eggplant chassis ruptured while being penetrated by a cucumber axle. It was “very depressing,” Chesin said. “Can I just start eating it?” Pollard asked. Hoping to intimidate the competition, another team designated a member to operate a graphing calculator and murmur faux-physics calculations out loud. Other teams decided to forgo the physics and focus on the appearance of their cars. Teams were judged in the categories of “creativity, engineering ingenuity, edible driver, colorfulness and theme and car name,” O’Shea said. He said he had been very involved in culinary competitions in the past, both as a judge and competitor, but this was “a little different.” “Some are very creative,” he

said, surveying the field. “Some I’m concerned about.” Ky Krieger ’08, a member of Brown’s Formula SAE car racing team, said his experience designing and building real cars “did not help at all.” Nonetheless, his cucumber and bagel car did well on Manning Speedway, and was one of the few to make it off the ramp and across the bricks to any considerable distance. The winner of the distance event, mechanical engineering concentrator Andy Nager ’09, chose a simple design. He said he figured an unaltered grapefruit rolling down the ramp would beat anything else, so began with a grapefruit and modified it as little as possible to make it comply with the rules. Is it a coincidence that a mechanical engineering student won, or was this competition a real test of engineering prowess? Professor of Engineering and competitor Bill Curtin was not convinced — it’s “engineering on the loose side.” Curtin entered the event with his six-year-old son, Peter. After facing some early trouble with drills and lollipops, the father-son team’s candy car did not perform exceptionally well. He added that the event does teach how to engineer with constraints,

which is a legitimate concern for engineers. Senior Research Engineer Christopher Bull, a judge of the event, saw a purpose outside of engineering in the competition. “The intent of the ‘competition’ is not to demonstrate or apply engineering skills,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Herald, “but to build community; which perhaps is a skill all of us can improve.” But regardless of the applicability of an edible car race, wacky competitions seem popular among engineers. XSPECS — the Xtreme Special Events Committee — held a gingerbread competition, asking engineers to build the strongest gingerbread house out of limited ingredients like graham crackers and icing. A team of mechanical engineers won when they crumbled gingerbread flavored graham crackers into a mold and used liquid nitrogen to freeze it into a super-strong gingerbread igloo. Before settling on edible cars for this competition, XSPEC considered pitting giant paper planes against each other in a throw-off from the roof of Barus and Holley. Sygiel said this idea was abandoned, since we “didn’t want people to fall off.”

C ampus n ews Friday, April 18, 2008

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

No joke: Flaherty ’08 could be top comic Student hangs out in Christian Martell Staff Writer

It doesn’t take much for Tom Flaherty ’08 to start up a conversation with you. The same can be said about him making you laugh. Flaherty was named the runner-up at RooftopComedy.com’s regional competition held in Boston’s Comedy Connection comedy club on April 8. The regional competition consisted of Brown’s eight-person team, chosen at a campus competition in March, going head-to-head with Emerson College’s comedy team to produce one finalist who would then have a chance at winning one of four national finalist spots. The regional finalist for the night was Emerson’s Jordan Clifford, but Flaherty still has a chance to advance to the national competition in Aspen, Colorado, on May 30-31, if enough people vote for him on the RooftopComedy Web site before Sunday. “The more people I can make laugh, the better,” Flaherty said. “If I could do anything I wanted that would also make me money, it would be comedy.” Flaherty was born in Kingston, England, but considers himself a Hong Kong native. He still sports

a British accent, which is something one of the other comedians on Brown’s RooftopComedy.com team said helps him out. “His accent adds an air of novelty to his performance,” said Billy Doyle ’09, also a member of the Brown Stand-Up Comedy club and the creator of the Facebook event “Vote for Tom for Funniest College Comedian!” Flaherty started doing stand-up comedy this year when he and a friend decided to audition for the Brown Stand-Up Comedy club. “Most of my material comes from everyday observations,” he said. His comedic style is through storytelling. But Doyle claims Flaher ty’s biggest asset as a comedian is his confidence. “He is someone who is extremely confident performing in front of people,” Doyle said. This confidence transcends into other things he is involved with on campus as well. “I’m a tour guide and I love it. It’s me talking for 50 minutes,” Flaherty said. Though he has a large enough audience on the tours to test out some material, he said he sticks to the usual tour guide jokes instead.

“I keep it clean,” he said, explaining how his material can sometimes be rude. “I don’t think I’m a mean person, but that’s just the kind of comedy I do.” His girlfriend, Zoe Chao ’08, said she always asks Tom if she can show her mother video clips of his performances, and the answer is always no for the same reason. “Sometimes I wonder whether some of his jokes would be funny if he didn’t curse as much,” she said, trying to imitate his accent. Flaher ty will graduate from Brown having concentrated in religious studies, though he is pre-med. He eventually wants to become a doctor — though he doesn’t know what kind — and will be attending medical school in New York City through a program much like the Program in Liberal Medical Education. “Sometime I joke that I want to be a proctologist,” he said, adding that a proctologist is a doctor that studies “assholes.” Flaherty is very chatty, bantering away, so he often talks straight through his jokes, not even realizing he’s making them. “After you meet Tom, it’s not a surprise that he does stand-up comedy,” Chao said. “He’s a natural performer.”

Phi Beta Kappa elects 117 seniors By Brian Mastroianni Senior Staff Writer

117 students were elected to be members of the Rhode Island Alpha of Phi Beta Kappa on April 7. Founded in 1776, Phi Beta Kappa is the oldest undergraduate honors society in the nation. The Rhode Island Alpha chapter has been a part of Brown since 1830, according to the Encyclopedia Brunoniana. “We have an induction ceremony twice in the year, once for juniors earlier in the second semester, and then once during Commencement weekend for seniors,” said Professor of Economics George Borts, faculty secretary of Phi Beta Kappa. The Registrar provides a list of qualifying students, who are then voted on anonymously by the junior members. “This year’s senior class had slightly more than previous years. Admission really depends on the number of people who qualify each year,” Borts said. A senior who would have completed the normal seven semesters prior to graduation would be expected to complete a minimum of 26 courses. A minimum of 20 of those classes would have to be grades of A or S with Distinction, Borts said. “Admission is determined solely

on academic achievement. If you had a C, you lose an A — a C immunizes an A,” he said, adding that the society has admitted students with C’s on their transcripts. The list of senior inductees follows: Adrienne Allen, Daniel Altman, Maha Atal, Elizabeth Backup, Shawn Ban, Jacob Baskin, Thalia Beaty, David Beckoff, Devin Beecher, Madalasa Bista, Joshua Bocher, Casey Bohlen, Michael Boyce, Lindy Brady, James Brandt, Lena Buell, Stephanie Buss, Stephanie Carmack, Stephen Cellucci, TePing Chen, Ashley Chung, Charles Custer, Courtney Davis, Timothy Drinan, Nathaniel Duckles, Drew Durbin, Sarah Eisenstat, Sara Epstein, Jennifer Fieber, Dana Frankel, Henry Freedland, Gabrielle Fuentes, Nicole Fuerst, Hannah Furst, Michael Geier, Elana Goldberg, Hannah Goldstein, Jessica Gorkin, Ryan Graddy, Benjamin Gray, Leah Harrison, Rachel Hoffman, Julia Horwitz, Jessica Howard-Anderson, Alexis Howland, Kevin Hug, Tomomi Ibe, Jacob Izenberg, Jana Jarolimova, Kyle Jay, Anne Jonas, Margot Kabalkin, Nathan Karp, Christopher Kendall, Craig Kennedy, Rachel Kantor-Kepnes, Yoonha Kim, Zachar y King, Jeremiah Kittredge, Ksenia Klimovsky, Annie

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Koo, Andrea Korb, Joyce Kwok, Anastasia Latsos, Jay Levin, Jonathan Levin, Johnny P. Lin, Elena Lobo, Jana Loeb, Jill Luxenberg, Behzad Malek-Madani, Olga Maymeskul, Julie McFarland, Melissa Monteleone, Jacqueline Munoz, Itay Neeman, Natalia Obolensky, Elisabeth O’Connell, Allison Pappas, Katherine Pecore, Lenson Pellouchoud, Hannah Pepper-Cunningham, Hannah Perrin, Andrew Potter, Kelly Qu, Nevena Radoynovska, David Rangaviz, Erik Resly, Yael Richardson, Rafael Rincon, Julia Rocco, Sarah Rodriguez, Carly Rush, Rebecca Russo, Aar tik Sarma, Benjamin Savitzky, Yael Shavit, Elizabeth Sher, Rebecca Silverman, Sergey Stavisky, Carly Stewart, Nicole Summers, Jennifer Tarr, Nicholas Taylor, Maya Taylor, Eng Teo, Andrea Titus, Kelly Trout, Kumar Vasudevan, Jessica Vosburgh, Dinah Walker, Hannah Watson, Daniel Weisberg, Jenny Weissbourd, Robert Williamson, Wesley Wu and Ryan Wyrtzen

PPD cruiser at Fish Co. Man with hallucinogenic mushrooms arrested By Max Mankin Senior Staff Writer

The following summary includes all major incidents reported to the Department of Public Safety between April 10 and April 16. It does not include general service and alarm calls. The Providence Police Department also responds to incidents occurring off campus. DPS does not divulge information on open cases

CRIME LOG that are currently under investigation by the department, PPD or the Office of Student Life. DPS maintains a daily log of all shift activity and general service calls which can be viewed during business hours at its headquarters, located at 75 Charlesfield St. Thursday, April 10: 1:34 a.m. DPS was called to respond to an incident at Fish Co., during which a student had walked up to a PPD cruiser, opened the door, entered the car and refused to get out. He was loud and disorderly when speaking to the officers. After several attempts to get him to disperse, he was placed into custody by PPD. 8:43 a.m. An employee reported that he observed the screen on his window in Arnold Lab ripped. After investigation, officers found four more damaged screens. It is not believed that the perpetrators gained entry to the building. DPS detectives are investigating. 11:07 p.m. Officers responded to a report of a damaged toilet on the fourth floor of Everett House. When they arrived, the officers found a toilet and stall wall severely damaged. People reported hearing a loud bang and seeing a male coming out of the bathroom mumbling something. Facilities Management responded and disabled the water supply to the toilet. Friday, April 11: 8:02 a.m. The complainant reported that he parked his car in Lot 44 at approximately 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 10. When he re-

turned to the lot at 7 a.m. on Friday, April 11, he noticed that four center hubcaps were stolen from his automobile. There are no suspects at this time. 9:59 a.m. A report was filed regarding damage to multiple door knobs that were either bent or missing in Chapin House. There are no suspects at this time. 8:06 p.m. A student was arrested at King House for possession and distribution of hallucinogenic mushrooms. Saturday, April 12: 1:03 a.m. A student reported that he left his room in Marcy House and locked his door. When he returned, he noticed that his laptop computer was missing. 8:54 a.m. A student reported that her laptop computer was taken from her room in Chapin House. She stated that around 2:30 a.m., she used her computer and then went to sleep. When she woke up at 8:30 a.m., she discovered that her laptop was missing from her desk. There were no signs of forced entry into the room and her door was left unsecured overnight. Sunday, April 13: 1:07 a.m. A uniform hat was taken from a DPS officer while at a detail at Wayland Arch. The male subject was chased but not caught. 2:03 p.m. A dean informed a DPS officer that a student was in possession of a gas can near Harkness House. The student had dipped film into the gas and said it was for a school project. The student was advised that this was very dangerous. Officers took the items and advised the student that the matter would be documented and turned over to Student Life. Monday, April 14: 7:53 a.m. A parent of a potential student stated that he parked his vehicle in Lot 64 on Sunday, April 13. When he returned to his vehicle on Monday, he found that the passenger front window broken and that an iPod was missing from the vehicle. continued on page 6

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Friday, April 18, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Over last seven years, suicide bombings up

C hatte r tock i ng

By Robin Wright Washington Post

Min Wu / Herald

The Chattertocks performed their spring concert, along with dance group Badmaash, last night in Salomon 101.

DPS officer’s hat stolen continued from page 5 10:56 a.m. A vendor’s truck struck the edge of a pillar on the George Street Gate and knocked the cement top down onto the sidewalk below and damaged the top of the truck. 7:10 p.m. A Sterling security officer reported by radio that four males were throwing fire crackers out of a car window in Lot 5. The Sterling officer saw the driver throw a lit fire cracker out of the driver’s side window towards another male. DPS officers arrived and the male stated he did not want to press any charges regarding the incident because everyone was just playing around. Officers confiscated a box of fire crackers and the individuals were told that the matter would be turned over to Student Life. Tuesday, April 15: 4:48 p.m. Officers were dispatched to respond to a report of people smoking on the Roof of Hegeman Hall E. Three students were found and were told they could not be there. They were cooperative and left without incident.

WASHINGTON — Suicide bombers conducted 658 attacks around the world last year, including 542 in U.S.-occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, according to data compiled by U.S. government experts. The large number of attacks — more than double the number in any of the past 25 years — reflects a trend that has surprised and worried U.S. intelligence and military analysts. More than four-fifths of the suicide bombings over that period have occurred in the past seven years, the data show. The bombings have spread to dozens of countries on five continents, killed more than 21,350 people and injured some 50,000 since 1983, when a landmark attack blew up the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. Friday is the 25-year anniversary of that attack, the first of a series of large suicide bombings targeting Americans overseas. “Increasingly, we are seeing the globalization of suicide bombs, no longer confined to conflict zones but happening anywhere,” said Mohammed Hafez of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., and author of the book “Suicide Bombers in Iraq.” He calls the contemporary perpetrators “martyrs without borders.” The unpublished data show that since 1983, bombers in more than 50 groups from Argentina to Algeria, Croatia to China, and India to Indonesia have adapted car bombs to make explosive belts, vests, toys, motorcycles, bikes, boats, backpacks and false-pregnancy stomachs. Of 1,840 incidents in the past 25 years, more than 86 percent have occurred since 2001, and the highest annual numbers have occurred in the past four years. The sources who provided the data to The Washington Post asked that they not be identified because of the sensitivity of the tallies. The data show more than 920 suicide bombings in Iraq and more than 260 in Afghanistan, including some that killed scores of U.S. troops. All occurred after the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. The exact number of U.S. casualties from the bombs in Iraq is classified “because it might show the effectiveness of the enemy’s weapon,” said Maj. Brad Leighton, a U.S. spokesman in Iraq. “They won’t even give the number to me.” More than 3,420 Americans have died in at least 10 major sui-

cide bombing incidents, beginning with the embassy bombing in Beirut, which killed 63 people, including 17 Americans, and injured more than 100. The bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut six months later killed 241 and still ranks as the largest loss of American military life in a single incident since the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. Both attacks caught Washington by surprise, despite suicide bombings against the Iraqi embassy in Beirut in 1981 and an Israeli military headquarters in south Lebanon in 1983. “We at the embassy collectively saw the political situation as improving,” said Richard Gannon, the regional security officer at the time. The FBI and the CIA still do not know the identity of the bomber who, 25 years ago, drove a dark delivery van loaded with explosives past the red-and-white striped security booth straight into the seven-story embassy overlooking the Mediterranean, ripping off the entire front facade. Anne Dammarell, who worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development, vividly remembers being pinned under concrete with 19 broken bones, unable to move as flames approached. She said she decided to gulp smoke to “suffocate before being burned to death. I thought that would be easier.” The FBI eventually blamed a cell of Shiite extremists that later evolved into Hezbollah, and said Iran provided aid and direction. But few specifics are known to this day, and no one has been brought to justice, as in many such attacks. At least two-thirds of suicide bombings since 1983 have targeted U.S. policy goals, intelligence officials say. “They may be targeting the U.S. but not hitting either the American homeland or American interests in other countries,” said Gary LaFree, director of the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. Few of the perpetrators have been identified. “We’re dependent on the terrorist group to make a public claim or release a martyrdom tape,” said Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University, author of “Inside Terrorism.” “But if the bomber was never fingerprinted or governments do not have their DNA, he or she usually remains anonymous. What makes it so formidable a tactic or strategy is these legions of unknown soldiers deployed against us.” The State Department will hold a commemoration of the Beirut attack Friday morning.

W Orld & n ATION Friday, April 18, 2008

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

House backs bill to boost student loans By Ben DuBose Los Angeles T imes

Barbara Haddock Taylor / Baltimore Sun

York County Community Against Racism members Ryan Sattler, left, board chairman, and Adrienne McNeil, executive director, stand outside the organization’s headquarters on George Street in York, Pa.

In York, Pa., a test of racial concord By David Nitkin Baltimore Sun

YORK, Pa. — Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters sits on the edge of downtown York, next to a store selling hip-hop clothing. A few blocks away, Latin music blares from an open window draped with a Puerto Rican flag facing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s office. Halfway between lies prime real estate that has become the latest reminder of York’s troubled racial past. Mayor John Brenner wants to erect a statue at George and Market streets as part of an initiative he calls “Healing York,” an effort to soothe lingering pain inflicted by a deadly race riot nearly four decades ago. But disagreement over the design is causing damage of its own. At meetings, “people are cr ying; they’re angry,” said Adrienne McNeil, executive director of York County Community Against Racism. “It’s a huge thing right now.” This is the treacherous terrain facing the campaigns of the Democratic presidential candidates as they seek votes in south-central Pennsylvania, a sometimes overlooked slice of the next big primary

state. York and its suburbs offer a test of whether voters are ready to move beyond the challenges of racial divisions, a topic much discussed during the run-up to Pennsylvania’s primar y on Tuesday and thrown into doubt by recent events. In this compact city of 41,000, where the Continental Congress convened during the Revolutionary War and the Underground Railroad sheltered runaway slaves seeking freedom across the Mason-Dixon Line, blacks, whites and Hispanics live and work side by side while struggling to overcome a history marred by discrimination and inequality. Blacks make up a quarter of York’s population, and Hispanics about 17 percent, according to the census. Race has been a subtext in the presidential campaign, largely because of the candidacy of Obama, son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas. For months, it seemed as if Obama would run as a black candidate emblematic of a postracial world. Then came the publicity over fiery comments by Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who in a 2001 sermon told his Chicago

church that the United States perpetuated AIDS to wipe out blacks and that the nation was damned, not blessed, by God. While pundits pondered whether Obama’s long relationship with Wright would alienate white voters, the remarks seemed to have slid past York voters with barely a ripple. Here, discussions of race take a back seat to more immediate concerns such as the Iraq war, gas prices and a lack of jobs with pay that keeps pace with inflation. Inside the Front Line urban clothing store next to Obama’s headquarters, Alonzo Seay is sipping vegetable juice to shake off the effects of a night of revelry as his sister vacuums the carpet. Seay, 41, has lived in Newark, N.J., and Baltimore and prefers the pace of York. “This is much safer than Baltimore,” said Seay, who is black. “We all get along.” Seay is an Obama supporter, saying that “we need a change in Washington,” particularly on U.S. policy in Iraq. “It’s time for our boys to come home. Let Iraq deal with Iraq.” But personally, he is more wor-

WASHINGTON — In a bid to keep the global credit crunch from cutting into financial aid for college students, the House overwhelmingly approved a bill Thursday to expand access to federally backed loans. The measure would give the Department of Education temporary authority to buy existing student loans at a discount to give lenders more cash for new loans. It also would allow the Education secretary to send federal money to certain guarantee agencies, allowing them to act as “lenders of last resort” to make new federally backed loans. The bill, sponsored by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., passed 383-27. Sen. Edward Kennedy, DMass., already has introduced a companion bill in the Senate. “We’re not waiting for a problem to develop,” said Miller, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. “The unprecedented nature of the season in the credit markets has spilled over, to some extent, into the student loan market, as institutions have tried to recapitalize their ability to make future loans. And in today’s loan-dependent education environment, it turns out that time is money.” The bill also increases the aggregate loan limits for students. Students who are dependents

of their parents would be able to borrow up to $31,000, an increase from $23,000, while the independent student limit rises from $46,000 to $57,500. Some education officials, however, worry that increased limits could cost students more in the long run. “We believe an increase to the aggregate loan limit at this time is a misguided policy that will have long-term negative, unintended consequences,” wrote Constantine Curris, president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, in a letter to Kennedy. “While undoubtedly born from good intent, this proposal would in fact facilitate major tuition increases and result in even greater student debt.” The legislation also would allow parents to defer repayment of federally guaranteed loans for up to six months after their children leave school, as well as increase the circumstances in which parents with an adverse credit history are eligible to receive loans. John Remondi, the chief financial officer of Sallie Mae (the Student Loan Marketing Association), the nation’s largest student lender, testified at a Senate hearing Tuesday that the U.S. was “facing a scenario where demand for student loans will significantly outstrip supply.” He added that without government help, the industr y would have a “material shortfall” in student loan access in 2008.

continued on page 8

JFK gets scanner that sees under clothing By Steve Ritea Newsday

NEW YORK — A new body scanner installed Thursday at John F. Kennedy Airport allows security screeners to look beneath travelers’ clothing for concealed weapons. Officials from the Transportation Security Administration, which is gradually introducing the machines at airports nationwide, said use of the new machine is strictly voluntary. Passengers flagged for a secondary screening can choose either to walk into the revolvingdoor-sized machine or agree to a physical pat-down. Each machine presents a fuzzy, three-dimensional image of a person’s body, exposing some curves. Some present an image of passengers in their undergarments, although others could show travelers without them. TSA spokeswoman Lara Uselding said the images are too fuzzy to

expose details of the anatomy. The scan is visible only to an of ficer in a separate room who never interacts with the passenger, she said. Faces are automatically blurred to ensure privacy and images are never saved — even if a weapon is detected, Uselding said. A single machine was installed at one checkpoint in Terminal 8, which ser ves American Airlines, American Eagle, Finnair, Jet Airways and Malev. “We waited to roll this technology out to address some privacy concerns,” Uselding said. Jay Stanley, a privacy expert with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the organization is concerned nonetheless. “These things often are introduced ver y gingerly with all the protections, but over the years they’re stripped away,” he said. “How long are they going to be voluntar y? How much assurance

can we really have that images are not going to end up on the Internet?” Uselding said the agency has purchased 30 more machines, each costing about $150,000, and plans to install those at other airports nationwide over the next year. A similar scanner was unveiled Thursday at Los Angeles International Airport. Another was installed at Phoenix Sky-Harbor International Airport in October. Each scan takes about 15 seconds after passengers step in and lift their arms. Uselding said the machines pose no health risk and emit about 10,000 times less energy than a cell phone. Called “millimeter wave scanners,” the machines are being used on a trial basis while the TSA evaluates their effectiveness. They also are in limited use at international airports in seven countries, as well as a handful of courthouses across the nation.

Thanks for reading.

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Friday, April 18, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Pope prays with sexual abuse victims Jews ‘drawn’ to Passover By Jacqueline Salmon, Michelle Boorstein and Alan Cooperman Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Pope Benedict XVI talked and prayed with a small group of victims of clergy sex abuse Thursday, the first publicly known meeting between a pontiff and victims since the most recent scandal erupted in Boston six years ago. The 25-minute meeting at the Vatican Embassy put an intensely personal focus on the subject that has become an important part of the pope’s Washington visit. It followed a morning Mass that Benedict celebrated for about 45,000 people at Nationals Park, the new baseball stadium in Washington. Later, he met with interfaith leaders and Catholic educators, telling the latter not to stray from the mission of the church. The pope’s visit to the nation’s capital ends Friday morning, when he flies to New York. There he will meet with United Nations officials. The Mass was the third time in as many days that the pope addressed the sex abuse issue, telling the silent crowd: “No words of mine could describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse. ... Nor can I adequately describe the damage that has occurred within the community of the church.” A few hours later, the pope met with at least five abuse victims, all middle-aged men and women from Boston. Benedict requested the meeting, said Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the Boston archbishop, who was present during the gathering. “It was very positive, healing I think, and very prayerful,” O’Malley said, describing some of the victims as being in tears. “It was a moving experience.” The meeting was not announced in advance, and the names of the victims were not made public. Each of the victims had a brief private conversation with the pope. Afterward, O’Malley gave Benedict a list of more than 1,000 people victimized over the years in the Boston archdiocese and asked the pope to pray for them. David Clohessy, national director of the 8,000-member Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, called the meeting “a positive first step, especially if real change results.” Clohessy, who said his group was not consulted about the meet-

ing, remarked that “talk can lead to action, or talk can lead to complacency.” He called on the Vatican to demonstrate “clear public consequences for bishops who ignore or conceal child sex crimes.” While Benedict was planning his trip to the United States, some U.S. cardinals urged him to include a meeting with victims, according to Bishop Gregory Aymond of Austin, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse. Other parties had urged him to visit Boston, the epicenter of the scandal. The pope also warned educators gathered at Catholic University in Northeast Washington against a betrayal of their purpose. He told them that “any appeal to the principle of academic freedom in order to justify positions that contradict the faith and the teaching of the Church would obstruct or even betray the university’s identity and mission.” At the stadium, on a towering gold and white stage dominated by a 14-foot crucifix, the 81-year-old pontiff preached a message intended to buoy his wandering American flock while acknowledging the pain suffered by some of the more vulnerable members of American society. He spoke of the “injustices endured by the Native American peoples and by those brought here forcibly from Africa as slaves.” Yet “hope, hope for the future, is very much a part of the American character,” he said. At the Mass, a glowing Angela Clare Davis, 43, an office manager from Charlestown, W. Va., said, “I can die now.” She won a ticket to the Mass in a church raffle. “This is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me,” she said. “I am going to receive the Eucharist consecrated by the Holy Father’s hands.” Papal experts have said Benedict does not like stadium Masses as he prefers to worship in a liturgically sacred space whenever possible. Nationals Park, however, had been turned into a hybrid ballfield-sanctuary. The service took place across the outfield, with the towering stage in center field and white-robed clergy in far right and left fields. Much of the new grass was covered with white tiling to protect it from the hundreds of people seated in chairs facing the pope. The crowd was uncharacteristi-

cally still for a ballpark gathering. Few of the thousands of worshipers moved during the homily delivered in Benedict’s heavily accented but calming voice. People listened quietly until the end, when Benedict broke out into a short message in Spanish, immediately prompting a whoop and shouts of “Viva!” The scene in the hours before the Mass was celebratory and upbeat, not unlike a World Series game. Lines were huge, with more than 50 waiting at most women’s restrooms. There were also crowds at stands that sold rosary rings, postcards, yellow golf shirts with Benedict’s insignia, T-shirts with the message “The one who has hope lives differently” and baseball hats with the words “Christ our Hope.” Tables that usually hold condiments were covered with ornate white clothes and signs: “Priest/ deacon check in, to the right, confession plaza to the left.” Security was extremely tight, creating long lines at the entrances as thousands poured through. In addition to passing through 25 metal detectors, worshipers were scanned with a wand, and their bags were searched. Sonia Bungcayao and her niece Helen Ford bought rosary rings, prayer cards and bumper stickers to give to friends. They hope to have them blessed by priests. “It’s holy, you know?” said Bungcayao, who traveled from her home near Chicago to attend the Mass. “I might not see him (the pope) again. He might not come to the U.S. again. This is our last chance.” At the ballpark, dressing for Mass meant different things to different people. People wore jeans, military fatigues, blue and green Catholic school plaid skirts, suits and flowery Easter-style bonnets. Anthony Christian wore a police officer’s uniform, because he was on duty when, about 9:30 a.m., a loud roar, not unlike what would follow the crack of a home run, was heard from the field. The pope was circling the field in the Popemobile. People started racing across the aisles, their cellphone cameras ready, as the crowd leapt to its feet. In the lower levels, people reached out over barriers to try to touch the Popemobile. For many in the upper desks, all that could be seen of the pope was a waving hand visible through an open window. “I’m excited, and I’m not even Catholic!” Christian laughed to his partner. “We all believe in the same God. It’s just a wonderful thing to see the pope.” The super-size service required super-size accommodations. Three hundred deacons were stationed around the stadium so that Communion could be offered to everyone in less than 20 minutes. Before Mass, hundreds waited in line to say confession under white tents inside the ballpark. With pairs of chairs as confessionals, 65 priests in ivory robes leaned forward, listening to the penitents’ sins, while sisters from the Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Martara, baseball caps over their waist-length blue veils, corralled people into lines. “I’m due,” said Rob Donovan, a Gettysburg College senior, who acknowledged that it was his first confession in two years. “This is an event where you want to return to your faith, and it’s time to take my faith a little more seriously.” As 10 a.m. and the start of the Mass drew near, dozens were still in line, so priests began hearing confessions under the stairs and by the soda machines.

holiday, to start Saturday By Joie Tyrrell Newsday

MELVILLE, N.Y. — Considered one of the most important Jewish holy days, Passover begins this weekend with Jews setting out the traditional seder plate after sunset Saturday. “There is something about Passover that everybody is drawn to,” said Rabbi David Nesenoff, of Temple Beth Sholom of Smithtown. “There is something about it that has just lasted. It is the holiday in which we celebrate in becoming a people.” The holiday lasts for eight days and begins Saturday night with the ritual of seder, which includes the ser ving of special foods, arranged on a special plate, that help recall Jews’ exodus from Egypt. While customs differ, vegetables, bitter herbs and salt water symbolize the hardships of

forced ser vitude. A shank bone represents a lamb sacrificed in ancient times before Passover, and a roasted egg symbolizes the temple sacrifice and the continuing circle of life. Charoset — a mixture of nuts, apples and wine — represents mortar, which the Jews used to bond bricks during their enslavement, while matzoh is symbolic of the unleavened bread the Jews took with them as they fled from their captor, the pharaoh. “Research shows that Passover is the most observed holiday of any of the Jewish holy days, and even people who are less obser vant tr y to get together with family and friends,” said Rabbi Moses A. Birnbaum, of the Plainview Jewish Center. “I have always attributed this to the fact it is ver y home-centered.” In addition, some synagogues are also hosting second-night seders Sunday for the community.

In York, Pa., race is still very much a major issue continued from page 7 ried about finding a job. The area is filled with factories that offer good pay, including the HarleyDavidson Motor Co. and York International air conditioning. But many jobs are filled through temporary agencies, and Seay said he was dumped from one job he enjoyed after a few months, before getting the chance to become a full-time employee. His criminal background might be a factor, he acknowledged. “As far as jobs, you can’t get them,” he said. At York’s Central Market, Renaldo Raymundo, 35, was finishing a sushi lunch with his girlfriend as discussion turned to Pennsylvania’s primar y. Raymundo, an Obama supporter, said he will vote for Republican John McCain in November if Clinton is the Democratic nominee. “I feel as though the Clintons had their chance,” Raymundo said. “It’s too much Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton.” A native of the Bronx, N.Y., Raymundo is puzzled by York’s racial mix. Shortly after he arrived here in 2001, 23 people were arrested when white supremacists marched through the city and clashed with anti-racist groups. He was shocked to learn that such hate groups “really exist.” The same year, the city’s thenmayor, Charlie Robertson, was indicted for his role in the 1969 riot. He was a police officer at the time and was acquitted of charges that he dispensed bullets that led to the killing of a young black woman. “Race is one of those things people would rather not talk about,” Raymundo said. York resident Barbara Robertson, 51, said her top concern is how the country cares for senior citizens. She’s worried about her aging parents, who took out a reverse mortgage on their home to make ends meet. Acknowledging that Clinton might have more experience with such social service issues, Robertson, who is white, said Obama “has my vote.”

“I think Obama will step up to the plate,” she said. “I don’t want Bill back in the White House.” White voters such as Robertson may well be crucial to winning Pennsylvania, where Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a Clinton backer, has said that some conservative whites might not be ready to vote for a black president. The Wright episode has shifted the internal tensions confronting white voters, said Matthew Woessner, a public policy professor at Penn State, Harrisburg. For some, Obama’s race has always been repellent, but others want to support the Illinois senator to “demonstrate America’s commitment to transcending the racial question,” he said. “After the Reverend Wright controversy, I think racial animosity has become a more powerful force,” Woessner said. “It’s going to be difficult for (Obama) to maintain the mantle of transcending race.” Clinton’s lead in Pennsylvania has shrunk to single digits, according to polls released recently, but she is polling solidly among white working-class voters, the demographic that contributed to her Ohio victory. Toni Smith, 74, is a City Council member who plans to vote for the New York senator because, she said, “I like what Hillary is saying about health care.” While Wright’s comments “did a lot of damage, if you didn’t understand the black community,” Smith said, Obama still enjoys strong support from young voters who don’t hold the same racial grudges as past generations. But prejudices in York are not hard to find. McNeil, the anti-racism group director, who is black, recalled arriving at the Country Club of York for a Junior League meeting last year at which she had been invited to speak. A white doorman held his hand to her chest and said, “Are you lost? I don’t think you belong here.” She said she’s making sure the Junior League doesn’t meet there again.

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Friday, April 18, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Star m. lacrosse goalie divulges a superstition

Caldwell ’10 helps m. lax in close win

continued from page 12 mediately right after the game I shave. Then I let it grow out again until after the next game. So it’s like a hockey play-of f beard but for ever y game? (Laughs) Yeah. Last year there was a game where I shaved before the game and we lost 11 to 3, and ever since then I haven’t shaved before any games. Do guys from the other team ever tr y and get into your head? Do you hear a lot of trash talk? I really haven’t heard any this year. I’ve heard a little bit in the past but not too much this year. I think the other guys get to deal with more of the trash talk but I don’t hear much of it in goal. The Har vard game was really intense, as both teams were only separated by a goal for most of the game. What did you think of the atmosphere and how did you handle that pressure? The atmosphere was great. We had a bunch of fans and it was a typical Ivy League game. Ivy games are always close all the way to the end so we didn’t panic and we found a way to win. You’re leading the nation in goals against average and save percentage. Was that an individual goal of yours? Have you thought about the possibility of being named an AllAmerican? I tr y not to think about that stuff. Right now we’re only thinking about being 4-0 in the Ivy League and that we have a chance to beat Cornell and Princeton to win Ivies and go to the (NCAA) tournament. Having good save percentages are goals of mine but all

I’m really focused on is winning the Ivy League. Do you follow major league lacrosse? Do you have a favorite team? I like to watch it on TV when it’s on but I don’t have a favorite team. I’ve never been to a game or anything, but I hope for the sake of the game that it continues to grow and is shown on TV more so it’s easier to follow and more people watch it. Would you like to play professionally after you graduate? Yeah, if the opportunity arises. ... It’s definitely something I’d be interested in doing. It’s tough because it’s a summer league so part of playing depends on if your job allows you to play, so I guess it would partially depend on what I’m doing after school. Any ideas what you’d like to do after graduation? Not really, I guess maybe something in financial services or sports marketing. (Laughs) I don’t really know, I have no real idea. Obviously your team’s goals are to win the Ivy League and make the tournament, but overall where do you see your team being at the end of the year? We have three games left right now. We’ve got Providence on Saturday and then the Ivy games with Cornell and Princeton. We’re on an eight-game winning streak and right now our focus is just on taking it one game at a time. We want to end the season going 3-0 and that’s a realistic goal for us.

continued from page 12 Harvard had a few more chances to equalize in the middle of the first quarter, but was unable to convert, even when it got in close on Brown goalie Jordan Burke ’09. The Brown defense has been excellent all season at forcing low percentage shots, but Wednesday the Crimson found their way near Burke’s crease. “Harvard is a smart-shooting team compared to everyone else,” said Head Coach Lars Tiffany ’90. “They are selective in where they shoot from.” As usual, Burke was up to the Crimson’s close challenges, as he made five of his 13 saves in the first quarter. “I love those situations because I’m not supposed to make those saves, so when I do it can be a momentum changer,” Burke said. Harvard finally beat Burke with 3:54 to play in the first quarter just after a man-up opportunity ended. It came after Brown had already killed off three penalties. “We got a few penalties early on,” Burke, an All-American candidate, said. “We don’t like to be killing penalties but we are confident with our man-down. It’s not something we want, but it’s not something we’re scared of either.” Harvard largely controlled the possession in the first half, mostly because it won 14 of 19 face-offs. Face-offs were an Achilles’ heel for the Bears last season, and though they have improved this season, it is still not one of the team’s strongest areas. “Their face-off guy is good,” Burke said. “It seems like every Ivy team has a stud face-off guy.” Tiffany said that Harvard’s deliberate offense made the discrepancy even more obvious. “Its ten extra possessions in a

lacrosse game and that’s a lot,” he said. “Against a patient offense like Harvard you really feel it.” Despite the possession imbalance which led to a 38-18 shot advantage for Harvard, Brown stayed tough to force a 3-3 tie at the half. Brown’s two goals came from attack Kyle Hollingsworth ’09. His second goal came on a helter-skelter play, where Jake Hardy ’10 kicked a loose ball toward midfield. It was then kicked back by a Harvard defenseman at midfield, and defender Peter Fallon ’11 grabbed it out of midair and started a fast break the other way. Fallon dropped the ball, but then flicked it to his right to attack Jack Walsh ’09 who caught it one-handed. Walsh flipped it to Hollingsworth running towards the net with no defenders in front of him. Just as he was passing the cage at full speed, Hollingsworth underhanded the ball by Pike in the bottom-left corner. “Highlight film for sure,” Tiffany said. “That will be the number one play of the year on the highlight reel at the end of year. Top play of the year.” Bruno jumped out to a lead two minutes into the second half, when Walsh drove along the right side of the goal, drawing the defense, and found Caldwell up top with some room to wind up and score his first goal. Brown had a chance to extend the lead when Harvard committed two penalties on the same play, but the Bears didn’t even get a shot on net due to sloppy offense. Instead, Harvard’s Dean Gibbons scored with 7:53 to play in the third quarter when he found himself all alone right in front of Burke after a scramble for a ground ball. Harvard scored again to take a 5-4 lead with 4:08 left in the third, but then Caldwell took over.

Poor pitching leads to loss continued from page 12 Kristie Chin ’11, who was unable to stop the bleeding. Chin gave up four runs and would exit the game after 1 1/3 innings of work. The final Brown pitcher of the night was Jessica Iwasaki ’10. Iwasaki had more success against the tough Huskie lineup, giving up only two hits against the eight batters she faced. Using three pitchers in one game has been unusual for the Bears this season, but Enabenter-Omidiji expects this to happen more often toward the end of the year. “We have an idea of what our pitchers’ strengths and weaknesses are and we are trying to change things up before the opponent finds out what our pitchers’ strengths and weaknesses are,” she said. The Bears look to get back on track this weekend as they travel to Cambridge, Mass., to take on Harvard in a four-game set. “We’ve been focusing on producing runs and I think that if we bring what we’ve worked on and accomplish it in the games this weekend, we’ll be very successful,” Anderson said.

Have a fantastic Friday!

After the Brown ride forced a turnover near the end of the third quarter and a subsequent time out by the Crimson, Caldwell took the ball up top, dodged his man and ripped a shot by Pike to tie the game at five. “Once I scored that first one, coach thought I’d have success dodging from top-center,” Caldwell said. “I had a lot of success with that last year. We had been trying a lot of wing dodges but we dodged from the top once before and it worked.” Caldwell dodged his man and scored on the run again with 11:40 to play in the game, giving Bruno a 6-5 lead. Harvard answered to tie it with 7:37 to play just after a man-up situation was ending. But Caldwell came back again to put Brown ahead for good. Muldoon picked up a loose ball after a scrum behind the cage and lobbed it into the middle, where Caldwell caught it, attacked the net and beat Pike for the fourth time. “It was a real scramble,” Caldwell said. “It was a great, hard play. Thomas made a great look.” Brown then turned it on even further, drawing another pair of penalties with less than three minutes remaining in the game. This time the man-up unit converted, as Muldoon fired a shot from the top that went off of the left pipe, off of the goalie, and in. Gibbons scored his fourth goal of the day with 11 seconds left, but all 1,489 fans knew it was too late. “We really appreciated almost 1,500 fans on a Wednesday night — and it wasn’t the warmest night,” Tiffany said. The Bears will be at home again at 7 p.m. on Saturday, as they hope to extend their winning streak to nine against cross-town rival Providence College at Stevenson Field.

E ditorial & L etters Page 10

Friday, April 18, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

S t a ff E d i t o r i a l

Diamonds and coal A diamond to safeRIDE for expanding its “special onCall” ser vices to include free 24-hour shuttles between College Hill and Providence’s sleaziest strip club district — now we’ll save a lot on taxi fares to get to those onCallgirls. A diamond — nay, a Magic 8-Ball to the Brown Concert Agency. It sure did pour on Saturday. Coal to President Simmons for calling the class of 2012 the “brightest, most creative and most diverse class yet,” as well as the “most beautiful and most handsome,” just like she said to classes last year and the year before. Stop toying with our fragile emotions! A fourth-place Miss Teen USA diamond to Ann Dill, associate professor of sociology, for her thoughts on the candidates for vice president of campus life and student ser vices, “We are in the place ... where the only people who know the candidates are candidates are the candidates and us.” YouTube stardom? Signs point to yes. Coal to the brave soul who locked himself in a Providence Police cruiser outside Fish Co. Sure, those sirens are fun to play with, but we got enough of them on Saturday from M.I.A. Coal to the Janus Forum for the panel discussion on climate change this week. Go ahead, burn it — global warming that doesn’t happen in our lifetimes doesn’t matter at all, right? Reply hazy; ask again later. D an L awlor

A diamond to Professor of Mathematics Richard Schwartz for your April Fools’ Day joke. We think think you’re onto something with the random selection of applicants — as long as they’re from a J.Crew catalog Ruth would approve of. A radical cubic zirconium to Brown students for being such good activists during ADOCH this week — except that prospective students were greeted by three mass graves on our central greens. Will we be able to play frisbee anytime soon? Outlook not so good. A diamond to the cop who sarcastically told Colin O’Brien ’10 and Scott Warren ’09 that they would be spending the night in a D.C. jail. But hey, Provost David Kertzer ‘69 P’95 P’98 says getting locked up was “the best company he ever kept.” Then again, he was with Norman Mailer.

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

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

Photo Editor Photo Editor Sports Photo Editor

post- magazine Matt Hill Rajiv Jayadevan Sonia Kim Allison Zimmer Colleen Brogan Arthur Matuszewski Kimberly Stickels

Managing Editor Managing Editor Features Editor Features Editor Associate Editor Associate Editor Associate Editor

Letters Brown should provide space for dance To the Editor: I read with great dismay the article documenting the lack of dance space at Brown (“Dancers stepping on toes for space,” March 18). It seems unconscionable that a school that has graduated many wonderful dancers and choreographers (Chris Elam ’99 for example) has apparently done so little to provide the facilities necessary for dancers to practice and perform. As a parent of a child who has very solid dance credentials and is considering applying to Brown, I now must reluctantly

revisit my suggestion that she apply for admission. I also wonder what kind of outreach program is in place to solicit funds from alumni to support dance at Brown. I have to believe that if a willing administration combined with a supportive alumni group, inadequate dance space would not be a problem at Brown. Jim Roth ’81 Apr. 17

we wont judge your speling or punctuation, write us a letter letters@browndailyherald.com

Steve Delucia, Designer Katie Delaney, Max Mankin, Seth Motel, Elena Weissman, Copy Editors Isabel Gottlieb, Max Mankin, Brian Mastroianni, Robin Steele, 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, Marisa Calleja, Noura Choudhury, Joy Chua, Ben Hyman, Cameron Lee, Ben Leubsdorf, Christian Martell, Anna Millman, Seth Motel, Evan Pelz, Eli Piette, Lauren Pischel, Leslie Primack, Marielle Segarra, Melissa Shube, Anne Simons, Catherine Straut, Sara Sunshine, Gaurie Tilak, Matthew Varley, Meha Verghese, Allison Wentz, Connie Zheng Sports Staff Writers Peter Cipparone, Han Cui, Meagan Garza, Lara Southern, Nicole Stock, Katie Wood Business Staff Stephanie Cheung, Veronica Yu, Jay Guan, Jennifer Chang, Jamie Phinney, Anna Reisetter, Kartika Chourdhury, Serena Ho, Akshay Rathod, Galen Cho, Maryrose Mesa, Van Le, Maura Lynch, Grant LeBeau, Jacqueline Goldman, Dana Feuchtbaum, Geraldo Guanaes, Lauren Presant, Lindsay Walls, Lucy Wang, Ruyi Jiang, Saul Lustgarten, Diego Gomez, Laura Sammartino, Ava Amini, Charley Chen, Lee Chau, Rory Stanton, Oliver Bowers, Katherine Richards, Alison Greenberg, Lilia Royanova Design Staff Jessica Calihan, Serena Ho, Rachel Isaacs, Andrea Krukowski, Joe Larios, Joanna Lee, Alex Unger, Aditya Voleti 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

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O pinions Friday, April 18, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Page 11

The silver airlining ADAM CAMBIER Opinions Columnist Anyone who knows me knows that I love planes. I boast a collection of nearly four dozen airline safety cards (the laminated inserts stuffed in seatback pockets that tell you how to brace yourself in case of a crash), and I nearly had an aneurysm over spring break when I saw planes from dozens of different airlines at Charles De Gaulle Airport. For the past two years, the wallpaper on my laptop has been a picture of a hideous green Russian airliner; I’ve tried to change it to something mildly less esoteric, but I missed the chartreuse monstrosity too much to let it go. It should come as no great surprise, then, that I have been following the recent collapse of the American airline industry with an undue level of intensity. The chaos began when a handful of inspectors working for the Federal Aviation Administration revealed a multi-tiered problem within the industry. Not only did massive low-cost carrier Southwest Airlines have significant maintenance problems, but the New York Times reported that the inspectors in question had been discouraged from taking Southwest to task for these irregularities. This discouragement was seen as symptomatic of a new dogma in the FAA since the attacks of Sept. 11 — whereas before the administration had been focused on cracking down on airline offenders, their wish to keep the airline industry afloat in troubling times led them to take a softer approach when con-

ducting inspections. This strategy seems to have worked. Airlines have managed to keep business up despite fears of terrorist attacks and rising fuel prices, and the country hasn’t seen any major accidents since an American Airlines flight crashed in Queens in November 2001. It’s great that crashes are down, but nothing riles people up like a juicy, potentially lethal cover-up. In the wake of the revelation from the FAA investigators, other airlines began to fall like dominos. Southwest cancelled a hefty chunk of flights as it conducted long-overdue

larly scheduled passenger services. American Airlines soon cancelled over 1,000 flights as it took all the MD-80s in its fleet out of commission to inspect the planes’ wiring. Although the grounded planes are just now getting back into the air, hundreds of thousands of passengers were grounded in the aftermath of the collapse. I can empathize with those who have been screwed by the fleet groundings. Thanks to delays and too-short layovers, I’ve been lucky enough to spend hours (and even full nights) in such glorious locales as Chicago’s O’Hare

There’s not much that can make you more miserable than being stuck in an armpit of a city without contact lens solution or a clean pair of underwear, knowing all the while that you ought to be with your family or friends wherever your destination may be. safety inspections on its planes, all the while facing a record $10-million fine. Four minor airlines were forced to fold over the course of a week in the ensuing controversy: Aloha Airlines, Champion Air, ATA Airlines and Skybus Airlines all ceased operations around the first week of April. Additionally, Frontier Airlines declared bankruptcy, although they planned to maintain their regu-

Airport and the Airport Comfort Inn in Cleveland, Ohio. There’s not much that can make you more miserable than being stuck in an armpit of a city without contact lens solution or a clean pair of underwear, knowing all the while that you ought to be with your family or friends, wherever your destination may be. There is one upside to the recent airline

bankruptcies and cancellations, however. There are two movie genres that are triedand-true winners, guaranteed to put butts in seats and rake in millions of dollars. The only thing people love more than movies based on a true story are crazy buddy travel movies. You know the type I’m talking about — films like “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” “My Fellow Americans” and “Rat Race” feature kooky and mismatched groups of people trying to get from Point A to Point B without being able to avail themselves of the ease and convenience of going as the crow flies. Our intrepid travelers get wrapped up in screwball antics like marching in gay pride parades with a bunch of Dorothy impersonators or giving a speech dressed up as Hitler in front of a group of World War II veterans. They live, they love, they learn and hilarity ensues. By the end of the movie, everyone realizes that it’s the journey that’s important, not the destination. So to those of you screwed over by the collapse of the airline industry, don’t worry. Take the road less traveled — whether you take the bus and get drooled on by a sketchy individual who hasn’t showered in at least a week or you hitchhike and get roped into a murderous cross-country road race, know that you’ll eventually make it home with an epic story (not to mention physical and emotional scars to match). If you’re lucky, you can sell the rights to your tale to a major studio for a pretty penny, trading your time and dignity for a veritable mint. Make the most of your problems, and let the tires, the cameras and the good times roll.

Adam Cambier ’09 is now free to move about the country

The anarchist’s library book BY JACOB SCHUMAN Opinions Columnist In an IR 180 Sec. 95: “Global Media: History, Theory, Production” class last spring, documentary filmmaker Eugene Jarecki expounded on the revolutionary potentials of camera phones, internet media and Web 2.0. By way of analogy, he cited a 1945 George Orwell essay, “You and the Atomic Bomb,” in which Orwell offers a view of human history guided by weapons technology. When firearms are expensive, complicated and hard to make, society leans in the direction of tyranny and order. When weapons are cheap, easy to use and widely available, the masses tend toward revolution and anarchy. Jarecki asserted that in the post-modern age of media production, the ability to produce pictorial, audio and video media — and to disseminate them widely — has finally passed from the elites who controlled the big networks to the average person in possession of a camera phone and YouTube. He pushed our class to imagine the political possibilities of such a transition. Yet Jarecki’s observations on the state of media in the contemporary era only capture a slice of a much larger change. In fact, recent developments portend a coming revolution not just in who captures media and how they disseminate it, but in the very production of knowledge itself. In high school European history class, students are taught to regard Johannes Gutenberg’s 1436 invention of the printing press as a seminal moment in European history. Yet in another few hundred years, future students will likely regard the developments of our time — the Internet, Wikipedia and the undermining of traditional notions of academic authority — as even more fundamental changes in the history of how humans con-

struct knowledge. Although Gutenberg’s movable type printing press allowed the passage of knowledge production from the cloistered Christian scribes of European monasteries to the businessmen of industrial print-capitalism, European thought nevertheless remained the preserve of the (slightly expanded) elite. The universities and religious institutions that produced the theories, histories and sciences that ultimately became classroom instruction for the public were reserved, primarily, for European, Christian males. An appreciation of the deficiencies of this model is central to the Brown education and

control of universities, scholarly institutes and publishing companies, to just about anyone with internet access. This change is more than merely speculative, abstract theory. Already, Wikipedia is increasingly regarded as the authoritative body of information on almost all subjects. In a debate with friends about, for example, how many people died in the Civil War, how quickly does recourse to Wikipedia become the ultimate deciding factor? For a student curious about Algerian history, or the operations of the enzyme telomerase, or the back-story of Final Fantasy VII’s Cloud Strife, or the production of N.W.A.’s “Straight Outta Compton,” a stop by Wikipedia

Wikipedia is truly the anarchist’s library book, a compendium of knowledge assembled in the most open, equal and universal way possible. the New Curriculum. Rather than restrict the intellectual canon to a particular tradition and set of historical figures, one should seek to expand knowledge by including groups that European thought traditionally excluded. Thus, within the classic framework of universities producing knowledge through print capitalism, we see the emergence of feminism, queer studies and post-colonialism. These disciplines have had profound intellectual and political consequences over the past 50 years. Enter Wikipedia. Now, knowledge production has expanded once more, from the

provides quick, easy and above all, authoritative and trusted answers. More importantly, anyone, absolutely anyone, who disagrees with the site’s characterization of the Algerian War of Independence can debate and edit this constantly developing definitive history. Wikipedia is thus the closest approximation to universal, egalitarian and “perfect” human knowledge. It takes the significant step towards the democratic production of information offered by the printing press and expands it, theoretically infinitely, to the point where every living person can contest and contribute to its collected storehouse of

the human experience. Naturally, obstacles remain. Not everyone on Earth has a personal computer or Internet access, and these inequalities will continue to skew the production of information through Wikipedia towards the privileged elite. Moreover, many Wikipedia articles continue to rely on the authority of past texts and citations, which retain the old authority of classic European thought. Nevertheless, expanding broadband Internet access, the One Laptop Per Child program and increasingly inexpensive computing and Internet options promise to actualize Wikipedia’s potential of providing the closest possible approximation of perfectly universal human knowledge. As society continues to place more of its trust in the authority of Wikipedia’s accumulation of humanity’s knowledge, the biased influence of old citations will disappear. Aspiring anarchists should put aside their Molotov cocktails and temper their expectations of an imminent and perfectly egalitarian utopia. As Orwell notes in his essay, the military weapons of the contemporary age — attack helicopters, guided missiles and nuclear bombs — are more expensive, complex and exclusive as ever. Yet the “weapons” of knowledge production, the tools with which humanity can democratize the construction and dissemination of information, are more egalitarian than at any other time in human history. Wikipedia is truly the anarchist’s library book, a compendium of knowledge assembled in the most open, equal, and universal way possible. Though it has not achieved perfect inclusivity yet, the goal of creating an ideal collection of the entire human experience — and the endless political possibilities this process opens — cannot be too far away.

Jacob Schuman ’08 thinks Facebook might be the anarchist’s little black book

S ports W eekend Page 12

Friday, April 18, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Huskies devour softball, 7-3

The bearded man behind the mask By Megan McCahill Assistant Spor ts Editor

By Nicole Stock Sports Staff Writer

Fresh off its first Ivy win of the season, the softball team traveled to Storrs, Conn., to take on UConn in a midweek matchup. Unfortunately, Brown could not keep the momentum alive from last Sunday’s win, as the Huskies chewed up the Bears in a 7-3 loss. UConn (20-16) struck first in the bottom of the first inning with doubles by Justyne Roy and Danielle Del Ponte. Although the Bears (6-20) gave up an early lead, they fought back in the top of the second with a run of their own. Andrea Browne ’10 singled up the middle to get on base and Linnea Anderson ’08 drove in the game-tying run with a double to right-center. Browne was successful at getting on base for the Bears all afternoon as she went two-for-three at the plate. “As a slapper, I was focused on staying relaxed and hitting the ball through the infield and getting on base, then relying on my teammates to gain RBIs,” Browne said. However, in the bottom of the third the Huskies would regain the lead on a two-run double by Allie Gendron. In the fourth the Huskies broke the game open with four runs, widening the gap to 7-1. “I thought we also misplayed a few fly balls that allowed UConn to extend a couple innings (the fourth inning in particular),” said Head Coach Andrea Enabenter-Omidiji. “Defensively, we have to close the door with two strikes and two outs, and we have to stop extending innings.” With a large hole to dig themselves out of, the Bears continued

Sports

Earlier this week, men’s lacrosse goalie Jordan Burke ’09 was named the Ivy League Player of the Week for the second time this season after helping lead No. 14 Brown to an 8-5 win over Pennsylvania with 19 saves. Burke leads the Ivy League with an average of 13.5 saves per game, and also leads the

ATHLETE OF THE WEEK countr y in goals against average (5.78) and save percentage (.707). On Wednesday, Burke helped move the Bears to 4-0 in Ivy League play with 13 saves in an 8-7 win over Harvard. For his outstanding play, The Herald has named him our Athlete of the Week, and here we tr y and get to know the (bearded) man behind the mask.

Ashley Hess / Herald

Kelsey Wilson ’09 played solid defense and scored a run against UConn on Wednesday. Unfortunately for the Bears, her run wasn’t enough. Brown fell to the Huskies, 7-3. to play hard. Brown was unable to score a run in the fourth or fifth innings but began to heat up in the sixth. The rally began off the bat of Emily Chaddock ’11, who singled, followed by Browne getting on base for the second time in the game with a fielder’s choice. Kelsey Wilson ’09 reached base on an error by the UConn second baseman and Anderson singled down the right-field line to score Browne from second.

i n

The two-out rally continued with Maria Macrina ’11 hitting a single to left-center to bring in the Bears’ third run of the game. The Bears tried to keep the inning alive but ultimately ran out of steam as the game ended in a 7-3 loss, despite Bruno’s eight hits. Both Browne and Anderson had solid showings at the plate going two-for-three. Browne scored two runs for the Bears and Anderson

had two RBIs on the afternoon. The team’s pitching, which has been the solid backbone of the team all year, struggled on Wednesday, as three different pitchers faced the UConn lineup. Michelle Moses ’09 started the game and left in the bottom of the third after giving up five hits, allowing three runs and striking out one batter. In relief of Moses was continued on page 9

Brief

Second freshman baseball player named Ivy League Rookie of the Week In his first year at Brown, first baseman Pete Greskoff ’11 is already off to a great start. Greskoff was named Ivy League Rookie of the week on Tuesday after his breakout game against Dartmouth on Sunday. In just his second and third Ivy League starts against the Big Green Gresskoff went five-for-seven, belting two home runs and two doubles that contributed to the eight runs he drove in for the Bears on Sunday. In Bruno’s first game alone, Greskoff drove in six of the team’s seven runs. In the second game of the day, he scored two and drove in two more for the Bears. Over the weekend, Greskoff raised his batting average to .320, going eight-for-25 and tying for the team lead for home runs at four. Three of his home runs came against Ivy League opponents which also ties him in the League at third. Greskoff follows fellow first-year Matt Colantonio ’11 as the Bears’ second player to be named Ivy League Rookie of the Week. He will likely see more time on the field after his outstanding performance and is currently slugging .880 on the year and 1.308 in the Ivy League.

M. tennis’ Kohli ’08 named Student-Athlete of the Week Captain Saurabh Kohli ’08 has had a standout week for the men’s tennis team, helping Bruno to beat both Cornell and Columbia in its two most recent matches in New York this weekend. Kohli won all four of his matches, two at No. 1 singles and two at No. 1 doubles. The win against Columbia was significant because the Lions are the defending Ivy League champions. The weekend wins raised Brown’s record to 3-1 in the Ivy League, putting them in second place and keeping them alive in the race for the Ivy League title. — Whitney Clark

Herald: When did you start playing lacrosse and what made you want to be a goalie? Burke: I started playing in sixth grade. A bunch of my friends had played before me, and when I got to middle school and wanted to play the team needed a goalie. So I gave it a shot and I loved it. I’ve been doing it ever since. Did you play any other sports growing up or in high school? I played just about ever ything growing up as a kid, but in high school I just played ice hockey and lacrosse. What made you decide to play lacrosse in college? I guess it was just a little easier for me to do. Ice hockey has always been my first love. I still play club hockey up here, but I had the chance to play lacrosse in college so that’s what I ended up doing. Penn put 57 shots on you last weekend. Do you like games where you get a lot of shots better than games where you don’t see many? (Laughs) I don’t necessarily like getting too many shots. I mean I’d be happy not to get any shots in a game and see us win. But I like getting the chance to help the team win by making stops.

Ashley Hess / Herald

Jordan Burke ’09 looks to make one of his saves against Harvard on Wednesday.

M. lax dodges Harvard By Jason Harris Sports Editor

With the score tied at 3-3 coming out of halftime, Zach Caldwell ’10 struck four times for the men’s lacrosse team to help Bruno to an 8-7 win over Harvard at Stevenson Field. The win avenges Brown’s close loss to the Crimson last year and makes the No. 14 Bears 9-2 overall and an undefeated 4-0 in the Ivy League. The first half was back and forth, with neither team able to

get more than a one goal lead. Each team had a few chances in the opening minutes, with the best coming when a dangerous Harvard pass snuck right in front of the net but the attack who came up with it fired wide. Finally, Thomas Muldoon ’10 broke through for Bruno seven minutes into the game when he used a Reade Seligmann ’09 pick, dodged from right to left and beat Harvard goalie Joe Pike. continued on page 9

This might be kind of a dumb question because it seems obvious, but does it hurt when you get hit by the ball? Do you have a lot of bruises? (Laughs) I have a few bruises right now but I’m pretty used to it. Getting hit really doesn’t hurt too bad now. But I got hit in the thumb the other day and that really hurts. That’s the worst place to get hit because a lot of goalies break their thumbs. But getting hit in the legs, chest and arms doesn’t really bother me anymore. Do you have any pre-game superstitions? Yeah, I have a few. Before a game I tr y and do the same thing I did the previous week. But my one big superstition is that I never shave before a game, and then imcontinued on page 9