Wednesday, September 17, 2008

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, S eptember 17, 2008

Volume CXLIII, No. 72

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

Partnership helps lower bills, save the environment

More students benefiting from financial aid

By Emmy Liss Senior Staff Writer

Now that the University has admitted its first class under an enhanced financial aid policy, it is clear the changes are affecting a significant number of students.

At Tuesday’s meeting of the Brown University Community Council, Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98 addressed the effect of the boost to financial aid approved by the Corporation in February, and provided new data on the financial aid makeup of the student body.

The number of students whose families do not have to make a contribution to tuition, for example — those earning less than $60,000 a year, under the new policy — has jumped from 284 to 818. Also, a greater number of students will not have loans in their financial aid packages this year, Kertzer said — 1,479, up from 143 last year. Sixty-one percent of students on financial aid, Kertzer said, will leave Brown debt-free.

The Council meeting also included discussion of the University’s upcoming re-accreditation visit by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges and the institutional self-study it has prepared in advance of it. Brown will have the opportunity to take stock of its institutions and curriculum, President Ruth Simmons said.

The University is accredited every 10 years by NEASC, whose purview runs the gamut of educational institutions, from elementary schools, to community colleges, to private universities. NEASC evaluates institutions based on 11 standards, which include the undergraduate academic program, faculty and financial resources. “It’s not a grade,�

Simmons said. “It will be a narrative report and they will tell us what they think. It’s an opportunity for us to learn how we’re seen.�

The University has put together a description, appraisal and projection for each of the 11 standards, said Associate Provost and Director of Institutional Diversity Brenda Allen, who led the effort. Undergraduate education is a special focus of Brown’s continued on page 4

Students provide efficient light bulbs to low-income families Justin Coleman / Herald

From left, Brown professors Katrina Gamble, Tricia Rose MA’87 PhD’93 and University of Southern California professor Ange-Marie Hancock discuss issues of identity in politics and their representation in the media at a panel in Salomon 101.

Minorities ignored by media, profs say

By Nicole Dungca Staf f Writer

Speaking to a half-full Salomon 101 Tuesday afternoon, three professors touched on topics ranging from the near-invisibility of the African-American female voter in the mass media’s current election coverage to various aspects of identity politics in their discussion of gender and race in the 2008 presidential election.

The panel, sponsored by the Taubman Center for Public Policy, included Assistant Professor of Political Science Katrina

Gamble and Professor of Africana Studies Tricia Rose MA’87 PhD’93, both from Brown, as well as Associate Professor of Political Science Ange-Marie Hancock, from the University of Southern California.

Associate Professor of Political Science Sharon Krause moderated the event, which gave professors a chance to speak on their own before letting audience members ask questions.

Gamble acknowledged that this election season is a chance to begin serious discourse on race and gender, but said that most

discussions on the topic ignore the intersectionality of race, class and gender. When media coverage refers to the “women’s vote,� she said, it often ignores women of color.

Gamble also discussed how references to the “working class� vote tend to ignore people of color, often largely referring to white workers.

She also said that so much focus has been put on the historical aspects of the nominations that much of the substance on continued on page 4

Visiting writer Thida fights injustice at home

BY Melissa Shube Senior Staff Writer

While in prison for her political activism in Myanmar, writer and doctor Ma Thida sometimes practiced Theravada meditation for up to 20 hours a day. She meditated so much, in fact, that she was temporarily unable to write. “After practicing meditation a lot, I became less emotional than ever,� Thida said. “For that reason, as soon as I was released, I couldn’t write much emotional things such as short stories or the novels,� she said.

Thida is this year’s recipient of the Watson International Writers Fellowship, which brings writers to Brown who face danger or oppression while writing in their home countries. In addition to her fiction writing, Thida’s political and

humanitarian activities have thrown her into the international spotlight.

At her reading Tuesday night, Professor of Literary Arts Peter Gale Nelson introduced her as “a tireless voice for human dignity.�

Myanmar, which has been ruled by a military junta since 1962, faced a wave of mass protests in 1988.

Thida was active in the protests against the regime, working with the Writers’ Union and with the Cartoonist and Artists’ Union, editing an underground newspaper called New Color and helping injured protesters.

General Saw Maung seized power of the government in 1988 and ended the protests with military force, leaving thousands dead in the process. Maung then formed the State Law and Order Restoration Council, which still governs today as the State Peace and Development

Council.

In 1990, General Maung allowed democratic general elections. Thida traveled and worked for Aung San Suu Kyi, the democratic opposition leader and founder of the National League for Democracy. When Suu Kyi won the election, the SLORC refused to recognize the results and arrested Suu Kyi. It has remained in power ever since.

Thida was arrested for her political activities in 1993 and charged with endangering public serenity, contact with illegal organizations and printing and distributing illegal publications. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Yangon, though she served five years and six months before she was released.

She became ill while in prison and suspects her early release may have continued on page 4

University presidents sign on to support lowering drinking age on college campuses and help prepare students “to make responsible decisions about alcohol,� according In ancient Greece, amethyst was to the initiative’s Web site. believed to ward off drunkenness But the movement is meeting and prevent the negative effects of forceful resistance from groups like intoxication. This purple Mothers Against Drunk gemstone is now the sym- HIGHER ED Driving, which maintains bol for a national movethat any reduction in miniment, the Amethyst Initiative, which mum legal age would be counterseeks to open debate on America’s productive. minimum legal drinking age.

Although Brown has not joined One-hundred and thirty college the movement, former President and university presidents and chan- Gordon Gee and leaders at peer cellors have endorsed the initiative institutions including Dartmouth in an effort to curb binge drinking continued on page 6

$RINKING TRENDS AT AGE

By Jacob Tower Contributing Writer

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Lab on Wheels Researchers use food to lure students into “Data Trucks� for psychology experiments

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PAST YEAR INTOXICATIONS OF DRINKERS

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ROTH AT THE BOOKSTORE An interview with Philip Roth was broadcast via the Internet to the Brown Bookstore

11

OPINIONS

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Steve DeLucia / Herald

IS Brown TOO PERFECT? Ariel Hudes ‘11 complains that students have nothing to complain about

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

12 SPORTS

By Colin Chazen Senior Staff Writer

Danny Musher ’10 gave the final twist on Rozie’s last light bulb and turned to the resident of the Lockwood Plaza apartment community on Prairie Avenue. “These should use about 25 percent less electricity,� he said from behind a box of compact fluorescent lamps. “Good, because last month my National Grid bill was over $50,� said Rozie. “My sister, she’s on a fixed income. How’s she supposed to afford that?�

Musher and his partner Libby Kimzey ’09.5 were in Rozie’s home as part of Project 20/20, a joint partnership between Brown and Wal-Mart to help low-income families switch

FEATURE to energy-efficient CFLs and reduce their electric bills. The bulbs will save Providence residents over $750,000 in energy costs while significantly reducing carbon emissions, said Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Steven Hamburg, the founder of the project.

The project, which has installed close to 15,000 light bulbs in over 800 homes so far, began last year as a part of an effort to offset the University’s carbon emissions by reducing energy use at Brown and in the Providence community. “Ultimately we want our behavior to be representative of how everyone should solve the (energy) problem,� Hamburg said. “We used the CFL project as an example of how that could be done.�

CFLs, which cost around $2 each, are more expensive than incandescent light bulbs but use less energy and last longer, saving money over the bulb’s lifetime. The spiral-shaped bulbs have been around for almost 20 years, but new technological advancements have reduced their cost and improved the quality of their light, Hamburg said.

Despite the benefits of CFLs, Hamburg said convincing consumers to switch has been hard. Incandescent bulbs are cheap and produce a familiar yellow glow that’s difficult to recreate with fluorescent lights. “If you replace the bulbs slowly, you’ll see the change. It’s not worse, it’s just different,� Hamburg said. “This is about getting people comfortable with the idea of change.�

One thing Hamburg has going for him is that Project 20/20 distributes and installs the bulbs for free. He has been working with Wal-Mart for the last few years to push the sales of CFLs in the retailer’s stores and has convinced the continued on page 4 Off to a strong start Women’s cross country team wins first meet; men’s team places second

News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com

T oday Page 2

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

We a t h e r

Vagina Dentata | Soojean Kim

TODAY

TOMORROW

partly cloudy 73 / 47

partly cloudy 75 / 54

Menu Sharpe Refectory

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

Lunch — Polynesian Chicken Wings, Sweet and Sour Tofu, Stir Fried Rice, Green Peas

Lunch — Italian Sausage and Peppers Sandwich, Vegetable Strudel, Green Peas Francaise, Chocolate Frosted Eclairs

Dinner — Salmon Provensal, Cheese Quesadillas with Salsa and Sour Cream, Mushroom Risotto

Opus Hominis | Miguel Llorente

Dinner — BBQ Chicken, Hamburgers, Fire Roasted Garden Patties

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

Epimetheos | Samuel Holzman

Enigma Twist | Dustin Foley

Puzzles by6,Pappocom RELEASE DATE– Wednesday,©February 2008

Los Angeles Times Puzzle C r o sDaily s w oCrossword rd Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

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DOWN

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Alien Weather Forecast | Stephen Lichenstein and Adam Wagner

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Dunkel | Joe Larios

xwordeditor@aol.com

2/6/08

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H igher E d Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Harvard launches inquiry into profiling by police

By Connie Zheng Staf f Writer

In response to allegations of racial profiling resulting from an August incident, Har vard launched an investigation late last month into its campus police force.

Amid criticism that Har vard University Police Department officers were targeting black students and professors, President Drew Gilpin Faust convened a six-person committee in order to review the department’s “diversity training, community outreach, and recruitment efforts,” according to a letter Faust issued publicly on Aug. 26.

The incident in question involved a black high school student who was attempting to remove a lock from a bicycle on the night of Aug. 8, when HUPD of ficers responding to a call confronted him. An exchange “laced with obscenities” ensued, according to an account in the Har vard Crimson, the school’s daily newspaper. According to Faust’s letter, the individual was a Har vard employee for the summer, who was tr ying to remove a lock from his bicycle because the key had broken off.

“There have been so many incidents like this in recent histor y,” said Timothy Turner, president of the Har vard Black Students Association and a member of the Black Men’s Forum, “but (this case) was probably the last straw.”

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Still, the senior said, “I don’t think the HUPD are actively targeting black students. It’s more an issue of updating their policies.”

In an e-mailed statement, the university said the police department’s internal review was “obviously confidential in nature.” The school declined to answer any further questions for this article.

The incident was one of a number of recent racially tinged confrontations between members of the Harvard community and its police force. According to an Aug. 27 article in the Boston Globe, HUPD officers, after receiving calls from various Har vard students, interrupted a field day event in 2007 hosted by two black student groups and questioned their presence — despite the groups’ permits to host the event. In 2004, campus police also stopped a prominent black professor in the middle of the Quad, having mistaken him for a robber y suspect, according to the same article.

But Har vard is not the only Ivy that has recently had to address criticisms of the conduct of its campus police. In 2006, Brown’s Department of Public Safety and the Providence Police Department were accused of police brutality after an incident in which Chipalo Street ’06 GS was asked to present his ID and was arrested when he continued on page 6

Professors take data collection on the road

By Connie Zheng Staff Writer

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have taken the lab to the people. Outside of some Pittsburgh bars and restaurants, exiting patrons become prospective test subjects, lured into a mobile laboratory with the promise of snacks or a few bucks.

Places like airports and other transportation hubs used to be choice locations for conducting behavioral surveys. That is, until Sept.

11, 2001, after which heightened security made such sites mostly inaccessible to researchers.

“That knocked out my biggest source of easy-to-collect data,” said George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at CMU. Enter the Data Truck. Dreamed up by Loewenstein after Sept. 11, the mobile lab is 36 feet long, 13 feet high and equipped with eight laptop computers used to survey the decision-making behavior of subjects in a range of conditions.

The truck also boasts a flat-screen TV, a refrigerator, a table and chairs, internet access and air conditioning.

In operation since last summer, the truck has given Loewenstein and his colleagues inroads to a whole population of prospective test subjects.

From inebriated bar-hoppers to people exiting the movie theater, pedestrians are invited into the Data Truck to complete a survey or to participate in a brief experiment.

In exchange, they are rewarded

with popsicles, candy bars, money or other small gifts, said Jessica Wisdom ’04.5, a doctoral student at CMU studying behavioral economics and health psychology.

“It’s hard to get people to believe that you’re going to pay them,” Wisdom said. But the word “Research,” emblazoned on the side of the truck in black capital letters, “makes it seem more legit,” she said.

In one of many experiments conducted this summer by researchers at CMU’s Center for Behavioral Decision Research, Wisdom parked the Data Truck outside of a Subway restaurant, asking passersby to flip through different menus and make choices about what food they wanted. Wisdom observed different choices based on the location of the items in the menu and whether or not calorie contents were listed.

Both Wisdom and Tamar Krishnamurti, another CMU graduate student of Loewenstein’s, said the Data Truck has opened new doors in their research. Previously, participants had to register for experiments on the CBDR Web site.

“We were getting people who already knew about (the experiments),” said Wisdom, who added that the Data Truck has made their studies much more accessible to interested subjects.

“The difference is incredible,” Krishnamurti said. “Often you’re getting student participants ... (but with the Data Truck), you can access a totally different demographic.”

Access to a larger participant pool is a problem for more than just CMU

researchers. Economics professors Louis Putterman and Pedro Dal Bo, who run the Brown University Social Science Experimental Laboratory, say that they focus on student participants in their research out of “convenience.”

“Getting American adults with regular jobs to show up in a university laboratory is difficult,” said Putterman. “You need large amounts of money, and even then it’s hard to reach them.”

“We would like a more diverse pool,” Putterman said. But, he adds, “Brown subjects are very smart and cooperative. Our incentive to go far and wide is weakened by the fact that the Brown student subject pool is very pleasant to work with.”

Through mailbox slips, advertisements and monetary compensation of up to $25 per student, Putterman and Dal Bo have assiduously courted student interest for over two years now. Getting funding for experiments and obtaining an experimental laboratory, rather than recruiting additional students, is BUSSEL’s primary focus, Putterman said.

Although an ideal experiment works from a perfectly random participant pool, “no sample is truly random,” Loewenstein said. “Even if you randomly dial the telephone, you’re getting a random sample of people who have telephone numbers and answer the telephone when you call. ... In a sample, all data sets are biased.” continued on page 4

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Wednesday, September 17, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

3TUDENT BORROWING PER STUDENT

!MOUNT OF FINANCIAL AID IN THE FORM OF REQUIRED LOANS 5PPERCLASSMEN

Better lightbulbs, for an even better price continued from page 1

&RESHMEN

3TUDENTS WHOSE PARENTS HAVE NO REQUIRED CONTRIBUTION

3TUDENTS WHO DO ./4 HAVE TO TAKE OUT LOANS

Steve DeLucia / Herald

Self-study, housing issues dominate BUCC meeting continued from page 1 self-study, and the process has been informed by the Task Force for Undergraduate Education’s report, Allen said.

Copies of the self-study will be made available to the Brown community for feedback in early October, before they are submitted to NEASC in January. NEASC representatives, who are educators at other schools, will visit in April.

The visiting committee will go through a rigorous process of interviews while on campus in order to learn as much as possible about the University, Simmons said. “As an institution, we have the public’s trust,” she said. “People are trying to ascertain whether we are honoring that.”

Those present at the meeting Tuesday also discussed the current housing shortage, caused by an unusually large freshman class.

Margaret Klawunn, vice president

for campus life and student services, said the increased class size has impacted both first-year and upperclass housing. She said that creating new space for first-years is “tricky” because of the unit configuration in dorms, which led to the relocation of some upperclassmen.

Lounges, kitchens and other common spaces were transformed into bedrooms across campus.

Wriston Quadrangle, home to over 900 students, does not have a single remaining kitchen, Klawunn said.

The University experiences a natural attrition each semester and will relocate students accordingly, which will enable the Office of Residential Life to re-open lounges and common spaces, Klawunn said.

After some meeting attendees raised concerns about the lack of lounges in first-year units, Klawunn reiterated that moving students out of lounges is “our priority as well.”

company to donate $100,000 along with $50,000 in light bulbs towards Project 20/20. The University contributed an additional $100,000.

Project 20/20 began distributing light bulbs last spring but picked up momentum this summer, hiring more than 25 students to switch out incandescent light bulbs for CFLs in local homes. The project is designed to serve low-income residents making around $45,000 per household, Hamburg said, but accepts anyone that requests the service.

“We let people self-identify,” he said.

“You don’t have to come show us your income tax form.”

The organization has been working with the Providence Housing Authority and local churches to identify low-income communities and inform residents about the project, said Kimzey, the project’s external coordinator. Rozie, the Lockwood Plaza resident, found out and signed up for the program during a presentation at her sister’s apartment building.

Though Kimzey and Musher had only made two appointments to change bulbs that day, word spread quickly around Lockwood Plaza. Several residents had already heard about the program, but had neglected to sign up before hearing that the students were nearby. Others encountered Kimzey and Musher while standing in front of their homes, talking to friends.

“Ok, how much?” asked Juan, after listening to Kimzey explain how the light bulbs will reduce his electric bill and save him money. “They’re free — gratis,” Kimzey said, before being

the topic of race and gender has “been lost” over the past two years of campaigning.

“Beyond the symbolism, what does it mean for a black man to receive the Democratic nomination for the United States presidency? What does it mean for American women to have a woman on the Republican ticket?” Gamble asked.

Rose later touched on the same subject when she spoke, asking what real str uctural changes would be ushered in with the first black president or the first female vice president.

“If we can’t make those changes, then this symbolism is a baitand-switch,” she said.

Rose, who said she was “deeply saddened by the trajectory of the elections,” focused largely on the idea of the post-racial environment in which the elections seem to be taking place.

“We’re not post-racial structural inequality, we’re not postwhite substantial advantage across class, mind you, but we’re post-race,” she said. “Which means we’re post-talking about racism.”

She mentioned that the seemingly “post-civil rights, post-racial, non-gendered” environment of

the election has made it difficult for politicians of color to pursue effectively progressive politics. “(Sen. Barack Obama) is black, but he can’t talk about race,” she said. “He can’t mention racial inequality in any meaningful way, he can’t address the complexities of that condition, for fear that he might be black.”

Rose applied the same idea to Sen. Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign, saying Clinton could not fully address gender inequalities because she might have been seen as having a “feminist agenda.”

Hancock also talked about the Democratic primary season, which she said “fractured the conversation among women, instead of bringing them together.”

Hancock then touched upon Obama and his place within “new black politics,” an idea discussed at length in an Aug. 6 New York Times Magazine article.

While a number of new black politicians seem to operate in a “raceless” context because of this idea, she said, such things as the constant “whisper campaigns” about Obama’s faith, a recent poll about his standing among Jewish voters in Florida and his own life stor y “necessitate attention to him as a racial-biased candidate.”

tive motion injury. The organization is still thinking about what to do with the thousands of incandescent light bulbs they’ve removed. Jesse Coen ’10 said she plans to use about 10,000 of them to construct a large Lite-Brite, painted to form a pixelated image for a visual arts project. Ian Sims ’10 said he’s been thinking about organizing an afternoon where project members get together and glue the bulbs together to form a CFL-shaped sculpture.

Hamburg said he has been contacted about the project by several other universities, and sees it as the first step in a larger shift towards increased energy efficiency in the United States. “If we’re going to create a low-carbon economy, this is one of the steps where we learn to crawl,” he said. “Most people can reduce energy demand by 30 to 40 percent with existing technology.”

He said he would like to create a project to swap regular thermostats for programmable ones and to replace old furnaces with more energy efficient models, though these changes would require another level of funding and expertise to execute.

“Most homes could reduce their carbon emissions by 30 percent and make money doing it,” Hamburg said.

“People are buying less-than-efficient appliances.”

Hamburg also said there is more that the University can do to improve energy efficiency on campus. The last time Hamburg visited President Ruth Simmons’ house and the Corporation room, he said, they were both lit by incandescent bulbs. “There’s a certain hypocrisy that needs to be confronted,” he said. “It’s about making choices.”

‘Data truck’ brings science where people are continued from page 3 Though Loewenstein said he and his colleagues have always been able to find test subjects “some way or another,” one of the Data Truck’s unique qualities is that it allows researchers to target specific pools,

Election coverage forgets minorities, profs say continued from page 1

invited into Juan’s tidy apartment to replace his light bulbs.

The project installs the CFLs personally, rather than distributing them to residents, as a way of developing a dialogue about the project and ensuring that recipients do not resell them.

Replacing the incandescent bulbs all at once also maximizes the benefits of the CFLs and allows people to see an immediate change in their electric bill, Musher said.

“We want to go in and talk to the residents. We’re trying to create a consumer behavioral shift,” Musher said. “We’re not just dropping off bulbs and going. We want to be a face in the community educating people.”

Entering hundreds of people’s homes does lead to some strange encounters. Musher has been offered everything from steak tortillas to Corona, and once spent an afternoon being driven all around Providence to deliver CFLs to the homes of one enthusiastic bulb-recipient’s relatives. Encounters with animal lovers tend to leave the most lasting impressions.

“There definitely have been a lot of Puerto Rican bird ladies,” he said.

“They’re really nice but they have an unnatural number of birds.”

The students, who receive $10 an hour for the job, always work in pairs for safety reasons. On average, they replace 17.8 light bulbs per house, though residential communities like Lockwood plaza require fewer because they are often lit by fluorescent overhead lights, Kimzey said. Spending hours unscrewing hot light bulbs and neatly folding cardboard bulb packages does take its toll — Kimzey stopped doing installations briefly to recover from a repeti-

She also insisted that the idea of “new black politics” must pay attention to the intersectionality of race, gender, class, age and generational status, noting that media coverage of the phenomenon ignored the presence of powerful black, female politicians, such as San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris.

Once the floor was opened to the audience, several people asked questions, including Rakim Brooks ’09, who asked how positive and productive discussions of identity politics should begin.

In her response to the question, Rose mentioned forcing the recognition of whiteness in identity politics and getting rid of the idea that “whiteness” is completely neutral and does not deserve to be interrogated.

Kelly Eng ’11, who asked panelists a question about the effect that Obama’s father’s history as an African would have on his ability to relate to African-Americans who have been here for generations, said she found the panel eye-opening.

“They were having a conversation that you really don’t see in mainstream media,” she said. “I had never thought about it before — race and gender has been regarded as this 800-pound gorilla in the room.”

such as retirees or citizens of lowincome neighborhoods.

“The truck is useful for collecting data from people you might have trouble in getting to come to a lab,” he said.

“I wouldn’t say that it’s fundamentally changed my work in any way,”

Loewenstein said, but he believes that as a method for making data collection easier, the Data Truck is “a wave of the future.”

“I don’t think that many people know about it,” said Loewenstein, “I think that when word gets around, every major university will want one.”

Burmese writer doubles as doctor continued from page 1 been due to her illness, the lobbying of Amnesty International and the regime’s interest in improved relations with the U.N., she said.

After her release, she formed a teen magazine with an educational focus, and edits, writes and publishes the magazine.

“High school education is so poor, especially after 1990,” she said. “Because all the political actions were started by students, the military government is really afraid of students, so they just want to destroy the education system, all the students’ networks, everything. ” She said some universities have implemented a system of distance learning where curriculums are sent to students in the mail. Students have to be physically on campus for only ten days each year, and can spend the rest of their year working.

The magazine tries to teach students about research and provides diverse views to supplement students’ education, Thida said.

Thida splits her time between writing and medicine, unwilling to choose one over the other. “I started writing at medical school so both of my careers grew together,” she said.

She is a part-time surgeon at the Muslim Free Hospital and Medical Relief Society in Yangon. “For me, doing surgery is quite hard work, after hospital I can get a rest at the magazine

office,” she said. “Different environment, different subjects, for me it’s quite refreshing.”

She provided medical care after Cyclone Nargis devastated parts of Myanmar in May, and has just recently started a health clinic in a township which lies at the gateway to the delta where the cyclone hit. The organization is called “Piti,” which means “a smile with empathy, a smile with happiness,” in Burmese. Thida wants to start a resource center in the same town to provide more health-related information to the local residents and youth, especially those who are illiterate and cannot read her magazine.

While spending the year writing on Brown’s campus, Thida says she wants to write about Myanmar, which was restricted by the Press Scrutiny Board at home. “They screen each and every word and every presentation,” she said.

“It’s really hard for us to write without touching any politics,” she added.

Thida said she tries to focus on the “feeling and struggle of the ordinary people,” adding that this, too can be considered political.

She does not yet know what she will write about, but said she has a direction. “As a Burmese, wherever we live, inside prison, in Burma, or in exile, all of us have a similar feeling of lacking freedom and having fear,” she said. “I have to think about the plot to portray that essence.”

C ampus n ews Wednesday, September 17, 2008

T h e spark of lif e

Author Roth reads at Bookstore, virtually Technical problems mar Webcast by prize-winning writer

By Alexandra Ulmer Staf f Writer

“Ever y book is, for me, difficult,” writer Philip Roth said in a live Webcast interview broadcast at the Brown Bookstore last night. “I start with the grains of nothing.”

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author fielded questions from fellow writer Benjamin Taylor about his new novel, “Indignation,” on the day his 29th book went on sale.

The interview, which took place in New York, was broadcast across the countr y to 50 bookstores chosen by Roth’s publisher, Houghton Mifflin.

“We thought this would help reach out to the community, especially the long-standing Jewish

Brian Kelly / Herald

A blood drive that began yesterday in Sayles Hall continues today.

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RISD launches own shuttle service SafeRIDE, the former BrownRISD shuttle service, will now function as two separate services, Brown safeRIDE and RISD Rides, after the Rhode Island School of Design decided to opt out of the partnership and use a different contractor. However, Brown and RISD’s separate shuttle services will still be available to students at both schools with a student ID. Even though Brown and RISD are now using separate operators, there shouldn’t be any effect on students, said Carleia Lighty, Brown’s transportation manager.

“Brown and RISD students can still use each other’s systems,” she said.

Elizabeth Gentry, assistant vice president for financial and administrative services, said that with the Brown-RISD safeRIDE program, RISD used Brown’s shuttle operator but still paid separate rates for its own routes. Therefore, Brian Kelly / Herald financially, RISD’s decision to outsource to another operator has The new RISD Rides program is open to Brown and RISD students, serving many very minimal impact on Brown. of the same stops as Brown’s safeRIDE. RISD’s new shuttle vans have GPS locators and can be tracked online. The service runs until midnight, whereas safeRIDE runs until 3 a.m.

Up until two years ago, Brown and RISD also shared an on-call shuttle service through the same contractor. But at that point, RISD created its own To-Your-Door service, separate from Brown’s onCall service but still using the same contractor. The main difference between RISD’s and Brown’s on-call services is that while they have the same coverage area for residences, they only serve from homes to areas proximate to their respective campuses. For both RISD and Brown students venturing off campus late at night, this posed a problem.

“I know a lot of kids go to Brown over the weekend for parties, and surely Brown kids come to RISD for the same reason,” said Becki Choi, a RISD sophomore, “but unfortunately, they don’t have the security of using an escort service across both campuses.”

While the on-call service change occurred two years ago, the shuttle service change only took effect at the start of this academic year.

A RISD spokesperson did not return calls for comment.

— Vinny Locsin

community,” said Bob Geake, staff assistant at the Bookstore and coorganizer of the event. “ ‘Indignation’ is a tragic stor y of youth,” Taylor said in an introduction to the inter view. Roth gave a detailed plot summar y of the book and said its themes include the Korean War, overprotective parents and the culture of the 1950s.

“Indignation” is the first time the Korean War acts as the backdrop of Roth’s work, a theme which he said was initially more decisive than the characters.

“This is a fertile field, but what am I going to plant in it?” Roth said he asked himself after deciding to write about the war.

Roth said his own childhood was also important in imagining the 1950s suburban New Jersey life of the young protagonist. “Like any number of writers, I too have been drawn back to where I come from,” Roth said.

Comparing himself to other authors, including Mark Twain, he added, “Newark is my Mississippi.”

In Newark, the protagonist, Marcus, is burdened by his overprotective father, a butcher. He leaves for Winesburg College in Ohio, where he meets a sexually free and reckless young woman.

Marcus’ explorations lead him to drugs, and, Roth said, “The bulk of the book is a morphine reverie.”

All the male characters are subject to indignation, Roth said, and added that the title came from a World War II-era Chinese song.

The intimate audience endured 11 interruptions of the Webcast due to technical difficulties.

Brian Lin ’12 said he now had a sense of who Philip Roth is as an author.

“I would say he is my favorite author that I haven’t read,” Lin said.

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Simmons not among presidents supporting petition continued from page 1 and Duke University have.

Though Allen Ward, senior associate dean for student life, declined to comment on the University’s position on the Amethyst Initiative, he said that University administrators and faculty are aware of the movement.

“Independently, lots of folks are looking at this,” he said. “In general, (underage drinking) is a concern and I don’t think it’s any greater or less of a concern than at any other institution.”

In an e-mail to the Herald, Vice President of Public Affairs and University Relations Marisa Quinn wrote that Brown usually doesn’t sign external petitions because “most issues are generally more complex than can be addressed in a single statement.” She added that “every institution of higher education has a particular point of departure on this matter. ... Brown’s approach is to emphasize efforts to educate students and to ensure safe and responsible decisions.”

Cultures of Drinking In 1984, the federal government mandated that all states set their minimum legal drinking age to 21 — which brought the minimum up from 18, 19 or 20 in many states. Suzanne Colby, an associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior who has researched drinking habits for two decades, says the culture surrounding alcohol on campus was different prior to that change.

Before a “legal divide” separated college students and faculty, they would smoke and drink socially together, she said. “Relationships weren’t as polarized as they tend to be now.”

Professor Emeritus of Anthropology Dwight Heath, who has been writing about cross-cultural drinking for 50 years, echoed Colby’s recollection of the different alcohol culture. In his college days, Heath said, drunkenness was rare and

“generally an accident.”

According to Heath, “the earlier people start to drink, the less people have problems.” In Western European countries, he said, like “France, Spain and Italy, where everybody drinks from 5 or 6 years up,” adolescents “learn to drink in a moderate manner.”

“They learn about it around the dinner table,” he said. Heath suggested that drinking should be “learned in an appropriate context with supervision.”

In these Western European countries, the rate of alcohol consumption is generally high, Heath said, but binge drinking is less common. In the United States, though, trends show that raising the legal drinking age in the 1980s reduced the amount of drinking overall in the United States, but has increased the frequency of binge drinking, he added.

“The fact that we’re concerned with binge drinking among college students — that is a major change in culture,” Heath said. But “if culture could change one way in a generation, it could presumably change back in a generation.”

A Controversial Debate But not everyone wants to reopen the debate on America’s drinking age. Mothers Against Drunk Driving strongly opposes the Amethyst Initiative and has launched a campaign to dissuade university officials from adding their names to the movement’s petition.

In an Aug. 19 press release, MADD accused the signers of the petition of endorsing “a misguided initiative that uses deliberately misleading information to confuse the public on the effectiveness of 21 law.”

“As the mother of a daughter who is close to entering college, it is deeply disappointing to me that many of our educational leaders would support an initiative without doing their homework on the underlying research and science,” MADD

President Laura Dean-Mooney said in an Aug. 28 press release. “Parents should think twice before sending their teens to these colleges or any others that have waved the white flag on underage and binge drinking policies.”

MADD has also initiated a letterwriting campaign in order to put pressure on leaders of universities who have signed the Amethyst petition, successfully getting several to remove their names.

Nancy Barnett, an associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior who is affiliated with the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, said the data support the claim that the higher minimum drinking age has correlated positively with saving lives over the past two decades.

“In a nutshell, the research shows very consistently that raising the drinking age to 21 resulted in a reduction in fatal car crashes.

I don’t think that is easily contradicted,” Barnett told The Herald.

And if there is “empirical evidence that having a higher drinking age has saved lives,” then “the rationale for lowering the drinking age back to 18 (would have to be) extremely compelling,” she wrote in an e-mail.

On the other hand, the argument that “the higher drinking age is directly linked to things like binge drinking” is “very difficult to quantify and show empirically,” Barnett wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.

In any case, she added, it’s important to keep the debate open: “I don’t think it is wrong to review the issue and consider both pros and cons of lowering the drinking age.”

Heath said University officials should not be intimidated by MADD. “They’re using scare tactics,” Heath said. According to Heath, MADD is tr ying to portray the signers of the Amethyst Initiative as “looking to change the law, looking to avoid responsibility.”

Most of MADD’s research showing a decrease in car crash fatalities since the drinking age was raised nationwide in the 1980s “totally ignores seatbelts, airbags and speed limits — all of which have become common in the same time period,” Heath said.

Voices for Change “I really support the reduction of the minimum legal drinking age, and I don’t take that position lightly,” Colby said.

While acknowledging that “the vast majority of researchers are not in favor” of reducing the minimum legal drinking age, Colby said she is concerned that current laws infantilize students and young adults, separating them from the adult models that could show youth how to drink responsibly.

“Underage drinking is marginalized and it gets much, much riskier as it’s driven underground,” both on university campuses and in the wider culture, she said.

Heath said that he agrees that the “21-year-old drinking age is counter-productive.” He said he strongly supports the Amethyst Initiative.

In light of the recent attention the Amethyst Initiative has brought to the question of minimum legal drinking age, the coming months, Barnett wrote, will “tell us whether this movement really has enough substance to move policy.”

But Colby said that she doesn’t see a change in the law “happening any time soon.”

“The discussion is so taboo,” she said, that legislators probably won’t endorse any movement on the current position for the same reason that the University hasn’t: Staying with the “status quo” is an “easily defensible position.”

“The government is very invested in keeping the drinking age at 21,” she said.

And even if the law does change?

“The culture is probably going to take decades to change back.”

Harvard’s police scuffle recalls 2006 Brown event continued from page 3 allegedly assaulted a police officer. In 2002, similar outcries arose from an incident in which police arrested two black students after a heated exchange and a scuffle.

Among students, such accusations have generated skepticism of DPS conduct, but also of the accusations themselves.

“There are two sides to ever y stor y,” said Quentin Youmans ’09, of the 2006 incident at Brown.

“I think at Brown, (people) tr y to be cognizant” of racial profiling, said Youmans, a South Carolina native. “Where I’m from, they don’t care so much.”

Chief of Police and Director of Public Safety Mark Porter said DPS has collaborated with various student groups since 2006 to focus on issues like race relations.

“Right now we have a ver y strong and proactive community policing approach,” he said.

Porter, who is black, also said there were ongoing student-officer dialogue sessions, two of which are slated for later this semester.

Associate Provost and Director of Institutional Diversity Brenda Allen added that of ficers have participated in diversity training workshops — one of which focused exclusively on racial profiling — and discussions concerning diversity.

“If you want to tr y to build bridges across cultures, literature shows you ver y clearly that it’s really about contact — finding ways to come into contact with people around common issues,” Allen said.

While Youmans applauded the University’s recent efforts to have better dialogue about race issues, he emphasized there are always improvements to be made.

“I think a college campus can never do too much to try to build healthy race relations,” Youmans said. “You’ll never have everybody feel that they’ve been treated fairly,” he added.

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Suit against in-state tuition for illegal immigrants moves ahead (Los Angeles Times) — A state appellate court has ruled that a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a California law granting in-state tuition to illegal immigrants can move forward.

A group of out-of-state students and parents filed a lawsuit in 2005 in northern California’s Yolo County Superior Court against California’s public university and community college system, alleging that they were being charged higher tuition and fees than undocumented immigrants.

A lower court dismissed the suit, but Monday’s ruling by the 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento means the case will continue.

The out-of-state students argue that federal law requires states that provide in-state rates to undocumented immigrant students to offer the same benefit to out-of-state students.

Ralph Kasarda, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, said California’s policy encourages illegal immigration. Anti-illegal-immigration groups say the outcome of the case could affect California as well as other states that offer breaks to undocumented students.

“We are pleased with the ruling,” said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors stricter controls on illegal immigration. “Not only are valuable seats being given to illegal aliens, everybody else is being required to subsidize it.”

The defendants maintain that California’s law does not violate the federal statute. They say that more U.S. citizens benefit from the law, known as AB540, than undocumented immigrants.

To obtain in-state tuition in California, students must have attended three years of high school in California, graduated in the state and gained admission to one of the state’s colleges.

Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights legal director Robert Rubin said these students are the state’s “best and brightest.”

“We should be doing everything we can to encourage their higher education so they can be fully contributing members of our society,” Rubin said.

Cynthia Valenzuela, director of litigation for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said she was disappointed by the ruling. Valenzuela said the organization had received numerous calls from worried students, but she pointed out that California’s law remains in effect.

Study links BPA to health problems WASHINGTON (Washington Post) — The first large study in humans of a chemical widely used in everyday plastics has found that people with higher levels of bisphenol A had higher rates of heart disease, diabetes and liver abnormalities, a finding that immediately became the focus of the increasingly heated debate over the safety of the chemical.

The research, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association by a team of British and American scientists, compared the health status of 1,455 men and women with the levels of the chemical, known as BPA, in their urine.

The researchers divided the subjects into four statistical groupings according to their BPA levels and found that those in the quartile with the highest concentrations were nearly three times as likely to have cardiovascular disease than those with the lowest levels, and 2.4 times as likely to have diabetes. Higher BPA levels were also associated with abnormal concentrations of three liver enzymes.

Although the researchers described them as preliminary, the findings were the buzz of a public hearing the Food and Drug Administration held Tuesday to discuss whether BPA is safe for continued use in food packaging and liquid containers.

“This is the nail in the coffin,” Frederick vom Saal, a reproductive scientist at the University of Missouri at Columbia and one of the first to document evidence of health problems in rodents exposed to low doses of BPA, said outside the FDA meeting in Rockville, Md. “This is a huge deal.”

On Capitol Hill, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, cited the study as he opened an investigation of the way the FDA has regulated the chemical, joining several Democrats led, by Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., who have been looking into whether chemical manufacturers unduly influenced the agency’s stance.

One of the authors of the new study, David Melzer of the Peninsula Medical School in Exeter, England, briefed the FDA gathering about the research.

He said that the study did not prove that BPA causes health problems and that additional studies are needed. “This needs to be replicated as soon as possible, and we need to understand the mechanism,” he said.

Data on the health status of the study subjects, who ranged in age from 18 to 74, came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The BPA levels in the study were below those the government deemed safe.

Trade groups representing the chemical industry and metal can producers dismissed the results.

Thanks for reading.

Fed to rescue AIG in $85b finance plan

By Peter G. Gosselin, Maura Reynolds and Martin Zimmerman Los Angeles T imes

WASHINGTON — In the largest single financial intervention in the nation’s history and a measure of the depth of America’s financial crisis, the Federal Reserve will loan insurance giant American International Group Inc. $85 billion to finance the company’s liquidation over the next two years, people familiar with the decision said Tuesday.

The loan represents an abrupt turnaround for the Fed, which as late as Monday night indicated that the nation’s big investment banks would provide emergency financing for AIG and as recently as last weekend appeared to be signaling an end to government rescues of private firms by allowing Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. to go belly up and Merrill Lynch & Co. to be snapped up in a rushed purchase

by Bank of America.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke acted after AIG, the world’s largest insurer, told the government that without aid the company would file for bankruptcy Tuesday evening, a move that Fed officials concluded would send devastating ripples through the global financial system and jeopardize economies around the world.

Bernanke and Treasur y Secretary Henry M. Paulson went to Capitol Hill at 6:30 p.m. to brief top House and Senate leaders in the offices of Senate majority leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. But people familiar with the discussions said the central bank chairman and the top Bush administration official had already made the decision on the loan by the time they arrived.

The two-year loan will be backed by all of AIG’s assets and is expected to be repaid by sales of the company’s assets. It will give the U.S. government an 80 percent stake in the company and the power to veto dividend payments to common and preferred shareholders.

In a statement issued at 9 p.m., the central bank said the Fed board approved the loan after determining that “in current circumstances, a disorderly failure of AIG could add to already significant levels of financial market fragility and lead to substantially higher borrowing costs, reduced household wealth and materially weaker economic performance.”

AIG has its corporate fingers in 130 states and nations across the United States and around the world.

The New York-based holding company with its scores of subsidiaries is the second-largest insurer in the United States in direct written premium and the largest in the world when measured by its approximately $1 trillion in assets.

Its best-known subsidiar y in California is 21st Century Insurance Co., a Los Angeles-based low-cost leader for automobile coverage. It also owns aircraft leasing giant International Lease Finance Corp. of Los Angeles.

News of the federal action should spark a stock rally when the market opens Wednesday, said John

Buckingham, chief executive at Al Frank Asset Management in Laguna Beach, Calif. He noted that rumors of an AIG rescue sparked a rally Tuesday afternoon even in the face of investor disappointment over the Fed’s failure to cut interest rates.

“We had people bailing out of the market today on speculation that things were going to get dramatically worse,” said Buckingham, who owns AIG shares in his portfolio.

“Now, if they don’t, you’ll see a lot of that negative action unwind.”

AIG’s stock, which traded at $70 in October 2007, closed at $3.75 a share, down $1.01. The stock was lower in after-hours trading as investors weighed the effect of the government plan on the company’s shareholders.

The rush to rescue AIG took some of the spotlight off the Fed’s decision earlier Tuesday to leave its short-term lending rate unchanged at 2 percent. Many investors had feared that inaction by the Fed on interest rates and a failure to work out a rescue of tottering AIG could mean a repeat of the selling that lopped more than 500 points off the Dow Jones industrial average Monday.

As it was, the Dow dropped 100 points immediately after the Fed said it wasn’t cutting rates. But as rumors circulated that government officials and AIG executives were meeting in New York to work on a rescue package, the market reversed course.

The Dow ended the day up 141.51 points, or 1.3 percent, at 11,059.09.

“You’ve got to say `hallelujah’ that the market was remarkably patient today,” said Nick Sargen, chief investment officer at Fort Washington Investment Advisors in Cincinnati.

Despite fears that a collapse of AIG could cause financial chaos and an improved report on inflation, the Federal Reserve decided to keep interest rates where they have been since spring.

The Fed’s inaction came despite pressure from Wall Street for easier credit to lessen the continuing crisis.

Yields on Treasury securities jumped after the Fed held its key rate steady. The 10-year Treasury note yield, a benchmark for mortgage rates, rose to 3.44 percent from 3.39 percent on Monday. Treasury yields had tumbled in recent days as many investors sought havens and as some bet that the Fed would ease credit.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, said the Fed was right to keep rates where they were because with the markets nearly paralyzed, it’s not clear a rate cut would have much effect. But he said a rate cut is only a matter of time.

“Ultimately, they will have to ease probably by the end of the year,” Zandi said. “The economy is weakening and will weaken further because of the recent turmoil, and they will have a green light because inflation is lower.”

The Dow’s slide on Monday came after investment bank Lehman Bros. filed for bankruptcy protection and AIG said it faced a severe cash crunch.

In recent days, banks frightened by the possible collapse of AIG, which insures billions of dollars of Wall Street deals, hoarded their reserves, deepening the credit crunch and intensifying the risk AIG could crumble. The spread between the Fed rate of 2 percent and the rate banks charge each other has widened to as much 5 percentage points.

But in a carefully worded statement, the Fed signaled that it remained as worried about inflation as it does about economic growth and would address the financial markets problems by providing cash and liquidity by other means.

“Tight credit conditions, the oncontinued on page 9

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Rochelson ’09: Yanks will be great — just wait continued from page 12 should hang on to every prospect and never trade for current stars.

Hell, I certainly don’t want to sit through a ten-year rebuilding process. But Cashman’s current strategy of fostering young talent is just what New York needs, even if temporary mediocrity is the cost.

Giving youngsters time to develop at the Major League level, in tandem with a core of productive

veterans like A-Rod and Jeter, will return the fun to New York baseball.

Missing the playoffs is a bitter pill to swallow, but Rome wasn’t built in a day.

To paraphrase Humphrey Bogart: “(The Yankees will be great again.)

Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon, (maybe in 2010.)”

Ellis Rochelson ’09 says vote NO to Manny in the Bronx.

W. golf riding high after rain-soaked final round continued from page 12 round,” Griffith said.

The Bears’ practice round also proved to be important preparation for Sunday’s rain-soaked final round.

“It was actually raining harder during our practice round than it was on Sunday,” said Robinson. “We’re all used to playing in the rain, and it actually cleared out after the sixth hole, so it wasn’t really an issue.”

During the final round, Guarascio, whom Griffith refers to as the team’s “No. 1” golfer, returned to form after a difficult first round by shooting a 79 on Sunday. Heather Arison had another impressive round, carding a team-best 78 on the day, followed by Robinson (79), Bennett (81), Arison (82) and Tuohy (84). The team’s final score of 629 was good for third place overall at

the tournament, just behind firstplace Harvard (616) and Dartmouth (625).

“Our goal is to consistently break 320 every round all season, and we accomplished that on both days,” Griffiths said. “The main thing we gained from this tournament is our girls know that we can play not only with anyone in the Ivy League, but teams outside of our league as well.”

The Bears will look to build on their success this weekend as they head to New Jersey to play in the Princeton Invitational.

“This was the best performance by a Brown women’s golf team I’ve seen since I’ve been here,” Bennett said. “We’re going to focus on improving our short game this week, because that’s an area we all need to work on, and we’re excited to keep improving.”

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Mugabe is off hook for political violence HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe’s new prime minister said that President Robert Mugabe could not be held accountable for the political violence during his 28-year-rule but that others might face prosecution.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, spoke at his home Tuesday, the day after his longtime opposition group signed a power-sharing agreement with Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party.

The deal left in question whether Mugabe would dominate the new power-sharing government and how Tsvangirai would work with bitter opponents in the long-ruling ZANUPF. Many likely members of the cabinet, which will be split between the ruling party and former opposition, are hostile to the new prime minister; some were responsible for past violence against his colleagues and supporters.

Tsvangirai needs to attract Western aid to rebuild the country. And critics are questioning why Tsvangirai signed the accord without knowing who will control the security forces and which cabinet posts his party will get.

The deal was signed in a bid to resolve the political crisis over disputed elections, after ZANU-PF lost control of parliament in the March vote. Tsvangirai then outpolled Mugabe in the first round of the presidential vote, leading to a political impasse and violence that killed more than 120 opposition activists.

On Tuesday, Tsvangirai predicted that some ministers would work against him but said that Mugabe would not be a problem because he had given up” -- despite the president’s defiant speech upon signing the accord.

“There’s an inherent suspicion, there’s inherent mistrust of Robert Mugabe,” Tsvangirai said.

“It’s understandable given his history, given his role. It’s part of his legacy.

“But he also must understand that the future is not in the hands of Robert Mugabe,” the prime minister added. “The future is in the hands of those who are advocating for change of direction, because that is what is going to rescue this countr y. And I think he appreciates that.”

He said the president’s speech only half-heartedly supporting the deal was “vintage Mugabe at his best, unrepentant, defiant, even when he was giving up.”

The question of prosecutions for political violence and killings is so contentious that it was left out of talks on the deal. Any move to pursue Mugabe or top security officials could topple the agreement.

One senior ZANU-PF figure said the president would unleash violence rather than face prosecution.

However, Tsvangirai said Mugabe’s past actions were “not prosecutable.”

“I don’t think Mugabe himself as a person can be held accountable,” he said. “But there are various levels of institutional violence that has taken place and I’m sure they’ll be able to look at that.”

— Los Angeles Times

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Fed steps in with loan to save insurance giant continued from page 7 going housing contraction, and some sowing in export growth are likely to weigh on economic growth over the next few quarters,” the Fed said. “Over time, the substantial easing of monetary policy, combined with ongoing measures to foster market liquidity, should help to promote moderate economic growth.

“The downside risks to growth and the upside risks to inflation are both of significant concern to the (Federal Open Market) Committee,” the Fed said.

In recent months, the Fed has relied less on its interest rates and more on new lending facilities to help banks and other financial institutions that find themselves short of reserves.

The Fed now lends to a variety of financial institutions and accepts a variety of collateral for its loans.

That practice continued Tuesday when the Federal Reser ve Bank of New York unexpectedly injected an additional $50 billion into the financial markets.

The Fed action followed a good report card on inflation released

earlier in the day. After months of heating up, consumer prices cooled slightly in August, declining 0.1 percent as prices for gasoline and other fuel fell off their midsummer highs. Excluding food and energy costs, consumer prices rose by a slight 0.2 percent.

The Federal Reser ve pays close attention to the “core” rate of inflation on goods other than food and fuel, and it has been on a slow, steady climb for much of the year.

Over the last 12 months, consumer prices have climbed 5.4 percent, the Labor Department reported. Excluding food and energy, prices are up 2.5 percent over the last year-above the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2 percent.

Oil prices fell more than 3 percent Tuesday and are down more than one-third from their summer highs.

“The Committee expects inflation to moderate later this year and next year, but the inflation outlook remains highly uncertain,” the Fed said in its statement.

— Times staf f writers Tom Petruno and Marc Lifsher contributed to this report.

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Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Staf f Editorial

Students against deterring debate Today’s Herald reports on the Amethyst Initiative, a petition to open debate on the minimum drinking age. The petition, supporters say, is designed to use discussion as a means to prevent binge drinking and help students make responsible decisions regarding alcohol use.

As is becoming the norm, Brown will not sign the petition, citing an internal policy against the device. But with the heads of 130 colleges and universities, including a former Brown president and the heads of Duke and Dartmouth, signing on, the idea behind the Amethyst Initiative is hard to ignore.

Well, at least for some. Mothers Against Drunk Driving and other groups oppose the initiative on the grounds that any discussion of lowering the drinking age is counter-productive and dangerous. Calling it “a misguided initiative that uses deliberately misleading information to confuse the public on the effectiveness of 21 law,” the group encourages parents to “think twice” about sending their children to schools that sign on to the petition.

Although the University hasn’t yet “waved the white flag” on drinking, as MADD calls signing the petition, we couldn’t disagree more with the mothers. We’re not convinced either way about whether lowering the drinking age is a wise choice, but opposing any discussion of the matter is simply a way of ignoring a serious issue that affects college students’ health and safety.

Understanding the cultural and social influences on the student drinking environment is crucial to making wise choices. It may be that the evidence suggests a higher drinking age actually promotes alcohol abuse by characterizing drinking as a rebellious act. If that’s the case, perhaps MADD would actually favor a lower drinking age. By refusing to even discuss the issue, it may be acting against its own mission.

From prohibition to a national drinking age, the regulation of alcohol has been at the forefront of the nation’s cultural battles for some time.

We have admired Brown’s and other universities’ efforts to study such a contentious issue in a reasoned, academic manner.

Considering that binge drinking is most prevalent among people our age, we hope universities will continue to act as leaders in the debate over how to ensure students drink in a safe way. If that means lowering the drinking age or cracking down on underage sales or providing alcohol for free, so be it.

With a health issue as serious as this, let us open the debate to whatever ideas we can think of. Let’s evaluate them using empirical, reasoned analysis, and find ideas that work. But closing the doors on discussions before they even begin is just wasting time.

C arly H udelson

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O pinions Wednesday, September 17, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Task force report misunderstood

BY JASON BECKER | Guest Columnist As a student representative on the Task Force on Undergraduate Education, I, too, count myself amongst the exclusive club of those who read the report — about 8 times. I am quite pleased that students are reading “The Curriculum at Forty” and that our conversation has been extended to and is being continued

by Brown students. That being said, I’m disappointed that the language of the report led to what I feel is a misinterpretation

by Alvin Kerber (“Empty Introductions”, Sept. 15) While the problem of watered-down introductory courses is abundant at universities across the nation, it is largely at those with general education requirements and at those which determine funding of departments based on student enrollment. The issue at these schools is that students must take a course in a broadly defined subject area and departments attempt to cajole students their way to ensure greater funding from the university. This problem does not exist at Brown, which has neither distribution/general education requirements nor a funding structure that directly rewards high enrollments.

What the task force suggests when asking that introductorylevel courses be developed that introduce students to the “spirit” of a discipline is that departments develop offerings, not unlike first-year seminars or the now defunct “Modes of Thought” courses, which provide depth over breadth while still demonstrating how to think like a disciplinarian.

There are two ways of approaching introductory courses — provide breadth and foundation for further study or pursue depth, hoping to provide students with the start-to-finish approach to problem solving as a member of that discipline. Both of these pursuits occur at some level in all introductory courses, however many disciplines at Brown are burdened by the need to supply foundation at the expense of exploration deeper into areas of interest.

The result of these burdens is the current system where most introductory courses serve as surveys across a wide spectrum of knowledge. In many ways, this is a necessary evil — there are certain expectations of content knowledge required for higher level courses. But how does Organic Chemistry attract a student who wants to take one semester of chemistry and learn to approach problems like a chemist? It’s rather difficult to engage and excite that student by providing a one-year background on basic organic synthesis and structure analysis unless that interest is innate.

A depth-based, topical approach can be more accessible to some students than the breadth-foundation approach taken by many departments here at Brown. Courses like the first-year seminar CHEM0080B: Molecular Structures in Chemistry and Biology provide an in-depth look at something that may be con-

sidered more engaging by some students. Professor Gregory Williard also teaches a course at the 100-level which specifically looks at Nuclear Magnetic Resonance.

Now, a first-year with no chemistry experience can have access to some of that information even as a novice. Having offerings in both “entrance points” into the discipline will serve more of the student population’s interests. We already have many courses like this in the FYS program, and expanding these entrance points to upperclassmen who may not want to survey the entire field but would love to examine a complex problem through the lens of a chemist will hopefully increase students’ natural distribution of courses.

There are many recommendations related to introductory courses that Kerber chooses to ignore, some of which address his concern.

The task force recommends that we “provide more opportunities for students to engage in active, hands-on, multidisciplinary learning” and that curricular development resources “should be available to develop introductory courses in all departments,” and that we “create additional resources to enhance instruction” across introductory courses. None of these recommendations would lead to the dismal vision of courses watered down simply for the sake of larger enrollment that Kerber appears to have.

As a group, the task force felt it was critical to address the dissatisfaction some students felt with introductory courses here at Brown. We echoed the sentiments of the Task Force on Undergraduate Science Committee which sought to expand the appeal of introductory courses not necessarily through accessibility, but through improvement and effective instruction.

Along these lines, the Task Force recommended that departments begin to “develop (a) plan to offer more seminars for sophomores, juniors, and seniors” not designed for concentrators as part of an overall goal to “encourage departments to create undergraduate offerings in their field to promote exploration of the curriculum.”

It’s misleading to suggest that courses which are made to be “engaging and attractive” must “dumb down” a course and replace “difficult concepts” with the “superficially interesting.”

The “spirit” of a discipline is learning precisely the “reasoning and thought processes central to the subject,” and we are seeking to develop introductory courses which go after those processes as opposed to breadth acquired through “simple problems and rote memorization.”

Is it so hard to imagine at Brown that we can demand courses that are both engaging and attractive and teach the “spirit” of the discipline? The task force didn’t think so, and neither do I.

Here’s the good news — this isn’t going to be a column about the election!

Here’s the bad news — I have no idea what to write.

I come from Columbia where there is no shortage of things to complain about, programs to critique and people to berate. Being generally displeased is part of the culture there. I didn’t like that — but, as a columnist, it certainly made my job easier.

Here at Brown, things are different. Shockingly so. I’m struggling with what to write — what to take a really strong opinion about. People are so happy. Everyone I’ve encountered is here because they really wanted to be here. Everyone loves their unique curriculum; everyone is involved in a group they are obsessed with.

I’ve yet to hear one person utter the Columbia mantra (“Well, I really wanted to go to Yale, but...”). People who aren’t happy blame themselves — for taking too many classes, not taking advantage of some opportunity, whatever. It’s not Brown’s fault. It’s certainly not beloved Ruth’s fault! When little complaints come up they’re laughed aside. Who cares? We love this school.

So, what do I write about? It’s an opinion column. I want to take an opinion uniquely Brunonian. Not national, not Columbian, not anything else. I want to have something to say about Brown. Taking a strong opinion seems to imply some level of discontent.

And ... I feel like there is nothing to say except how happy I am.

Huh. Maybe innate in all this problemlessness is a problem. Could there be such a thing as loving a school too much? Loving it enough that we decide to turn a blind eye to the bad in favor of the overwhelming, but not complete, good?

Because what about those little annoyances? At other schools, already miserable people would seize on them. They’d get yelled about. They’d get blown out of proportion. They’d eventually lead to further overarching discontent and annoyance. But here, in such a utopian place, no one wants to make a stir over minor

How Clinton can beat Palin ZACK BEAUCHAMP Opinions Columnist

concerns.

Last year at Columbia, a group of students and faculty went on a 10-day camp-out-jamboree-hunger-strike on the campus’s one and only lawn. They stated demands as confusing and unrelated as hiring a new Vice Provost of Multicultural Affairs and withdrawing Columbia’s proposal to rezone the Manhattanville section of Harlem. With the one meek lawn tainted by hideous tents, strikers, anti-strikers and anti-anti-strikers (seriously) canvassing the campus with their own uniquely absurd lists of why everything was wrong with Columbia, it was a depressing time to be a student.

That’s taking the idea too far. I don’t want that for Brown.

But the positive side of the strike, what it represented, was the willingness of all those students (every striker, anti-striker and anti-anti-striker) to address something they were unhappy with.

And that should be a part of every campus.

Rash and rampant discontent doesn’t make for a happy student body. But it’s not all bad. Vocalizing it ensures that every problem gets heard loud and clear. Nothing is laughed aside. Everything is addressed. Whether big, small, stupid or consequential, every student and faculty member is bombarded with all the gaping (usually not) problems of the Discontent University.

In places like Columbia, that goes too far. I’m not enough of a Brown expert yet to comment on whether it goes far enough here. But my guess would be that there is a true utopian middle ground — between happiness that goes so far it impedes progress and discontent so malignant that it stifles the undergraduate experience — in which students are secure enough in what they love about their school that they’re willing to challenge what they don’t love.

It’s not about fishing for problems where there aren’t any. It’s not about hunger-striking every time we get annoyed with the Ratty or Banner or whatever else. It’s about knowing that even when we love Brown oh-so-much, it’s okay to not love every last thing. It’s okay to speak up when we don’t like something. That won’t thwart our overall elation with this place. In fact, it could make it even better.

“No ‘cat fights.’” That’s what Hillary Clinton’s former communications director, Howard Wolfson, said on his blog, and so far his former boss seems to be taking his advice to heart — Clinton has been uncharacteristically demure on the topic of Sarah Palin, hardly mentioning her in stump speeches.

This is a huge mistake. When John McCain picked Sarah Palin, he changed everything. Given his health and her exceedingly thin resume, the McCain campaign’s old narrative — “vote for the guy with 30 years of experience over the guy with less than four” — became transparently untenable.

Team McCain needed a new line, and if Palin’s acceptance speech and the Republican convention are any indication, that line seems to be “vote for the war hero and small town gal (emphasis on the gal) over the arugula-eating elitists.”

So far, the new and “improved” ticket, combined with some extraordinarily dirty electoral tactics, seems to be doing the trick — the fivethirtyeight.com model, a highly accurate electoral prediction system, favors McCain for the first time in months.

The current Palinmania provides the Obama campaign with a golden opportunity to use what right now seems to be McCain’s biggest asset, Palin, against him. The Obama campaign should let Hillary Clinton loose.

Clinton is uniquely positioned to take Palin on — the Republicans, and Palin in particular, have gone out of their way to praise Clinton and her candidacy, granting her protection from charges of sexism and other Republican attacks that no other Democrat has. It would be hard to imagine Republicans even beginning to label Clinton a “gender traitor” for starting a “cat fight” given their fervent desire to snatch her voters from Obama.

So what might Clinton say in this hypothetical stump speech? After the necessary boilerplate, she could start by pointing out that Palin’s record is, in a word, abysmal. As mayor of Wasilla, she took a town that had balanced its budget and drove it $20 million in debt (that’s about $3,000 per Wasillan).

Her tenure as governor makes a mockery out of her claims to be a reformer — far from taking initiative to end the Bridge to Nowhere, she was actually in favor of the project and only changed her mind when the federal dollars stopped coming.

Her total lack of understanding of foreign policy is readily apparent (her interview with Charlie Gibson was an embarrassment), and her position on social issues ... extreme is an understatement.

So why, Clinton might rhetorically ask, did McCain pick Palin? Because McCain believes that women will vote for him with her on the ticket based on the mere fact of her gender.

McCain picked a totally unqualified woman, Clinton might say, to exploit her telegenic appearance and femininity while all the while keeping her in the junior role, a particularly resonant attack given McCain’s long history of sexist comments (he made a horrifically demeaning joke about Chelsea Clinton, called his wife a “c*nt,” and made light of rape during his first Senate run).

In this context, Clinton’s critique of Palin’s inexperience and general incompetence would not only not be perceived as sexist, but actually would come across as downright feminist — a vote against McCain-Palin is a vote against the idea that it’s acceptable for a man to appoint a woman as his subordinate in order to advance his own career.

This message would resonate with both women concerned with gender equity and men (and women) who are only marginally concerned with sexism but do not know the enormous risk the country would be taking by electing a ticket that might result in a President Palin. If these perceptions stuck in the respective target groups, McCain-Palin would be paddle-less on the proverbial creek.

This strategy is not without its risks: It’s possible the Republicans could find some way to twist Clinton’s words to their advantage, and the message is somewhat schizophrenic (Clinton is arguing that McCain is being anti-feminist by putting Palin in a subordinate role while at the same time arguing that a Palin presidency would be disastrous).

However, good speechwriting and delivery can solve both of these problems, especially given that the group mostly likely to be persuaded by Republican criticisms of Democratic attacks on Palin — white women — are way more likely to rally around Clinton than Palin.

It seems unlikely that Obama and his staff (or Clinton and her staff, for that matter) will go for this idea, but I hope they’ll at least consider it. I can think of 18 million Americans that might be interested.

Ariel Hudes ’11 can’t wait to start hating Brown!

Zack Beauchamp ’10 thinks you’re more qualified than Palin.

Jason Becker ’09 was a member of the Task Force on Undergraduate Education.

If it ain’t broke ... fix it anyway?

BY ARIEL HUDES | Opinions Columnist

Page 11

S ports W ednesday Page 12

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

W. golf starts season with 3rd place at Dartmouth

Missing the playoffs: A necessary evil The year was 1993. Ace of Base and Boyz II Men topped the charts, Bill Clinton began his first term in office, and the World Wide Web was born. It was also the last year that the New York Yankees failed to reach the postseason.

In 2008, after 14 straight playoff appearances, the Yankees will be partying like it’s 1993 — watching October on Ellis Rochelson their flat screen MLB Exclusive TVs. ’Bout time.

I am an unwavering Yankees fan, don’t get me wrong, but this season is exactly what this lump of overpaid, unmotivated stars needed. Were we really happy the last seven years, reaching the playoffs but winning no World Series? A new direction and a breath of fresh air was necessary.

So General Manager Brian Cashman took a chance.

Instead of trading Phil “Messiah” Hughes for proven ace Johan Santana, Cashman stuck to his guns and hoped that the young Yanks could produce at the major league level. They didn’t. Hughes has been out for months with a rib injury, Ian Kennedy was shockingly hittable and Robinson Cano regressed to a fetal level of production. Twentytwo-year-old Joba Chamberlain was dominant – opposing batters hit just .232 – but even Joba spent time on the disabled list. The transition to a younger generation was, to say the least, a bit rocky. And it didn’t help that every veteran player except for Mike Mussina has significantly underperformed.

Yet despite tremendous bad luck — Chien-Ming Wang hurt his foot running the bases, for crying out loud – Cashman has finally put the Yankees back on track to becoming a winning team that is fun to watch.

It just might take a while.

Just look at the Tampa Bay Rays.

In their first 10 years of existence, the Rays were a perennial last-place team (they finished in fourth place in 2004) and never approached anything resembling a winning record.

Now the Rays are the most lovable team in baseball with one of the best records in the majors. They achieved this success with a strategy that is diametrically opposed to the traditional New York mantra — they held onto their young prospects and gave them time to develop.

Young studs like Evan Longoria and David Price likely would’ve been used as trading chips had they been on the Yankees; in fact, Rays’ catcher Dioner Navarro was a prized prospect in New York’s farm system before he was traded as part of a deal for Randy Johnson. Navarro is now hitting nearly .300 as Tampa’s starting catcher; Big Unit lasted two years in the Bronx and had an ERA of 5.00 in ’06. And most importantly, no one in New York liked Randy Johnson. He was not fun to root for, he scowled at reporters, and he was 41 years old. Meanwhile, the Rays have approximately one-fifth the payroll and five times the “root-ability.”

My point is not that the Yankees continued on page 8

By Megan McCahill Spor ts Editor

Ashley Hess / Herald File Photo

The women’s golf team, though young, earned third place at the Dartmouth Invitational. Four players — three of them first-years — scored 80 or below.

The young women’s golf team played like seasoned veterans over the weekend, coming in third place at the Dartmouth Invitational. The tournament was Brown’s first of the season, and the Bears were excited about getting their year off to a strong start.

“I was very happy with how we performed,” said Head Coach Danielle Griffiths. “I wasn’t surprised because I know the six girls we had at the tournament can break 80 (strokes) at any time, and I was extremely happy with the first round of play.”

Although the squad has no seniors, Brown’s youth was anything but a problem. Four players, including three freshmen, shot rounds under 80 on the opening day of the tournament. Heather Arison ’12 (76), Julia Robinson ’11 (77), Carly Arison ’12 (79) and Megan Tuohy ’12 (79) led the way for Bruno. Those scores, combined with an 87 by Sarah Guarascio ’11, put

Brown in second place with a team score of 311, three strokes behind host Dartmouth (308) heading into Sunday’s final round.

“I feel like I was so much more nervous as a freshman for my first tournament than the freshmen were for theirs this year,” Robinson said.

“They were amazing, I was really impressed with how they handled the pressure, and I think a lot of that comes from the fact that even though they’re freshmen, they’re really experienced golfers who have played in some national tournaments.”

Grif fiths pointed out that a strength of the team this year is leadership, and the more experienced players on the team worked to make sure the freshmen were as prepared as they possibly could be for their college debuts.

“Sarah, Julia, and Kendalle (Bennett ’10) had all played this course before, and they were instrumental in helping the freshmen get to know the course during the practice continued on page 8

Cross-country teams grab top spots at invitational

By Nicole Stock Sports Staff Writer

The men’s and women’s cross country teams started their seasons on a positive note this past weekend at the Dartmouth Invitational in Hanover, N.H. The coaching staff, including newcomers Jill Miller and Kevin Myles, was delighted with the outcome of the weekend for both teams.

“It is so early in the season, (and) we were training right through this meet, so we were pleasantly surprised to win the women’s meet and to be so close to winning the men’s meet,” said Head Coach Craig Lake.

Although the coaches held the top six men’s runners and the top three or four women’s runners from the race, both teams had strong outcomes and proved that Brown is going to be a top contender this season.

The women’s team won its first race with a combined score of 51 points. Finishing behind the Bears were Northeastern with 73 points, followed by Boston University (75), Dartmouth (76) and Maine (115) to round out the top five. While other schools ran their varsity squads in the race, Lake decided to run only

the freshman women in the heat to get an idea of where the team stands at this point. This race was a good building block for the team because it now knows what will be expected as the season takes its official start Saturday, Oct. 3.

Anchoring the women’s young squad on Saturday was Eliza Webber ’12, who finished with a time of 20:30.90 to take second place.

“I had no expectations going into the race,” Webber said. “It was exciting and weird running in a new college uniform. I was glad to be opening my season and running my first college race in my home state of New Hampshire.”

Although Webber finished second overall and was the first Brown runner to cross the finish line in her first collegiate race, she is already looking beyond Saturday’s race to becoming a force on this young Bruno squad.

“Individually, I hope to improve my high school personal bests and contribute as much as possible to the team by scoring low at Heps (the Ivy League Heptagonal Championship),” Webber said. “This race was a great confidence boost and starting point to the season.”

Following closely was teammate Michaeline Nelson ’11, who crossed

the finish line in 20:35.20. Coming in fifth overall was Caitlin Stone ’12, just 10 seconds behind Nelson.

With three runners in the top five, Brown was poised to capture its first win of the season. Rounding out the scoring for the Bears were Amanda Hermann ’12 and Brianna Rogers ’12, placing 17th and 24th, respectively.

The men’s team also had a strong showing on Saturday, finishing second overall with a score of 57, behind Ivy rival Dartmouth, which finished with 39 points. Placing behind the Bears in the top five were UMass (59), Boston University (102) and Maine (125). Leading the way was Matt Duffy ’12, who finished fourth overall with a time of 26:18.50.

Duffy was extremely nervous as well as excited going into his first collegiate race, but he seemed to handle it well as he led the way for the Bears. Despite his individual success, however, his main focus is the team.

“This season my only individual goal is to help out the team. I am young and inexperienced compared to many of the older guys, and I need to absorb their knowledge and perform my best in order for us to succeed,” Duffy said.

Sp

o r t s

Although this was Duffy’s first college race, his performance was not a surprise to the coaching staff.

“We were expecting great things from some freshmen and Matt Duffy did not disappoint! He is extremely talented and has a ton of potential and will certainly impact our top five right away,” Lake said.

Placing behind Duffy in sixth was Brian Schilder ’11, with a time of 26:25.70. He was followed by Tom Elnick ’12 and Ethan Hickey ’12, who placed 12th and 16th, respectively.

Other Brown times added to the overall score were those of Max Long ’12, Tom’s twin Mike Elnick ’12 and Alex Stern ’10.

With this past Saturday serving as a good building block for the young team, Lake is confident that this team will be prepared to be a force all season.

“Our goal is to be the toughest and grittiest team come race day,” Lake said. “In addition, it is my hope that we are the most dedicated team both during and outside of practice.”

Both teams look for ward to opening the official season Oct. 3 in Bethlehem, Pa., at Lehigh for the Paul Short Invitational.

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Water polo has rookie, player of the week

Ashley Hess / Herald File Photo

Mike Gartner ’09 was named player of the week by the Collegiate Water Polo Association’s North Division. Toby Espinosa ‘12 was named rookie of the week.

The men’s water polo team played a tough schedule last weekend, and while their record may not be on par with other teams in their Collegiate Water Polo Association’s North Division, their competitive edge was reflected nicely after garnering two major CWPA North awards for the weekend. Both hailing from California, Mike Gartner ’09 and Toby Espinosa ’12 were named the division’s Player and Rookie of the Week, respectively, against some of their hometown teams.

The No. 19 Bears finished 2-3, beating No. 15 Santa Clara (10-8) and Division III No. 2 Johns Hopkins (12-11), while dropping close games to No. 20 Princeton (14-9), No. 3 Stanford (12-4) and No. 20 Cal Baptist (14-13 in 2OT).

The 12 goals and 33 ejections drawn by Gartner made a worthy case for his award, while Espinosa led the Bears’ defense while also scoring a goal in the upset of Santa Clara.

—Sports Staff Reports