Thursday, November 13, 2008

The Brown Daily Herald T hursday, N ovember 13, 2008

Volume CXLIII, No. 112

U. locks in heating oil prices early

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

THE HERALD POLL

‘ a g ai n st t h e ti d e ’

Number of TAs fine, students say

By BrigItta Greene Contributing Writer

The University is trying to take advantage of the uncertain economy to lower its energy costs. Facilities Management signed an agreement Wednesday with World Energy Solutions, a move that allows the University to lock in energy commodity prices as far as two years in advance, said Chris Powell, director of sustainable energy and environmental initiatives.

Until now, the University has bought oil and gas up to a year in advance of when they would be needed, hoping to lock in prices while they were low. The new agreement, which Powell said is a “very significant” change for the University, allows it to expand that strategy, letting it invest in energy for as far ahead as 2010 using today’s prices. Powell said he expects prices will increase with time.

World Energy operates a market for energy buyers and suppliers. It will work as a middleman between Brown and oil and gas suppliers, allowing a greater number of suppliers to bid as part of a reverse auction.

Yet like any investment, this one is not without risks. Energy prices for this year were locked in June, mainly in response to fears that a continued upward trend in prices would force an expansion in the Facilities budget, Powell said. But when the economy and consumer demand turned south in recent weeks, energy prices started to fall below the cost the University bought energy at months ago.

Although oil and gas prices have decreased significantly since June, the University will continue to pay at elevated rates until next year, Powell said.

“Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose,” he said. “We don’t have a crystal ball.”

He added that the University saw the opposite effect last year, saving money by locking in very low prices before costs surged. On balance, Powell said locking in future prices saves the University money.

Finding new ways to keep energy costs under control has been a priority for several years. The University’s heating costs are up 25 percent this fiscal year, with the total energy budget now reaching $23 million.

The University saved about $600,000 by switching most of its heating operations last year from oil to natural gas, The Herald reported in February. Unlike the heating oil the University once used, natural gas is listed on the New York Mercantile Exchange, a large commodities market that Powell said gives Brown access to many more suppliers, helping lower costs.

Facilities Management also spent $800,000 to replace 1,400 steam traps on campus in the past year, a project that is expected to save the Univer-

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By Anne Simons Senior Staff Writer

Min Wu / Herald

Former Sen. Lincoln Chafee ’75 hosted a reading and a signing of his book at the Faculty Club Wednesday.

Spanish bank to help fund scholar visits

By George Miller Senior Staff Writer

University officials and the chair of Banco Santander, Spain’s largest bank, will sign an agreement today to create a series of meetings that will bring together rising and more established scholars from around the world to campus.

The International Advanced Research Institutes will launch in June 2009 and continue in subsequent Junes, according to a University statement.

In addition to creating an “intensive workshop-like setting” at each of these institutes, the agreement will create grants for Brown students to study abroad, student internships at world banks affiliated with Banco Santander and a Spanish language program offered in conjunction with the Cervantes

in organizing such a program to create a proposal for this summer’s sessions. Ileana Porras, a visiting professor at the Watson Institute, will direct the institutes this summer.

The institutes are designed to help scholars from poorly represented areas of the world be heard, according the International Affairs Web site.

Banco Santander will support the agreement through the global division of Santander Universities, which was founded in 1996. The group currently supports over 700 academic institutions, according to Santander’s Web site.

A signing ceremony today between Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98 and Banco Santander chairman Emilio Botin P’86 P’87 will make the partnership official.

continued on page 4

From prof ’s lab, a way to undress you electronically

By Gaurie Tilak Senior Staff Writer

Professor of Computer Science Michael Black has the decency not to undress you with his eyes. But he’s more than happy to do it with his computer.

Black and Alexandru Balan GS have developed a program that allows a computer to determine the shape of a person’s body based on images of the person wearing clothes.

FEATURE The two developed the program to meet a need for realistic models of the human body. “We’ve been working on tracking humans in video for a number of years,” Black said. “But until now, our models of the human body looked like the tin man from ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ ” The technology could have applications in several fields, includ-

postgets po’, wanders Providence for possibilities and wonders whether or not to go

www.browndailyherald.com

Institute, a nonprofit created by the Spanish government.

“We expect the (institutes) to make a significant contribution to global research through transnational academic collaboration,” David Kennedy ’76, vice president for international affairs, said in the statement. The institutes will contribute to the University’s stated goal of gaining a greater international profile, noted Kennedy, who is also the interim director of the Watson Institute for International Studies.

The institutes, lasting one to four weeks, will be “immersion experiences,” according to the call for proposals on the International Affairs Web site. The programs should focus on training and collaboration between new and old scholars, the document states. It calls for departments interested

Despite some controversy about the supply of teaching assistants for undergraduate courses, a recent Herald poll found that the majority of undergraduate students are satisfied with the number of TAs in their classes.

Of students polled, 76.6 percent reported being either “very” or “somewhat satisfied” with the number of TAs in their courses, with 34.1 percent saying they were “very satisfied.” Only 17.9 percent reported being “somewhat” or “very dissatisfied.”

Students, in general, weren’t surprised by these results.

Benjamin Friedman ’09 said respondents “are going to answer that they’re satisfied because most students don’t talk to their TAs.” He speculated that the results would have been different if students wanted one-on-one interaction with their TAs. Elizabeth Schaja ’11, who said she was “pretty satisfied” with the number of TAs in her courses, also speculated that poll respondents would say they were satisfied because they don’t go to discussion sections. She said she has classes for which section is optional, and “usually people don’t go.”

Friedman, who has worked as a TA in the Department of Geology, said that when he offered to give help or review sessions, “barely anyone reached out.”

“I think the big problem is that students don’t seek out TAs enough,” he said.

The poll also showed that first-

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METRO

Courtesy of Brown.edu

New software developed by Professor of Computer Science Michael Black can determine a person’s body shape.

ing forensics and medicine.

Black started by looking at a model already used by the graphics industry. The problem with the

thayer gets more artsy John Zib brings art to Thayer by setting up televised art installations in Open Art Cafe

5

CAMPUS NEWS

existing model, he said, is that it can only determine the shapes of people wearing tight-fitting clothing.

But regardless of what one

Math whizzes beat mit Four of Brown’s math concentrators defeat MIT in Microsoft’s Puzzle Challenge

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

11

OPINIONS

wears, everybody’s shape is relatively constant, he said. So by comcontinued on page 4

outraged about prop 8 Sarah Rosenthal ’11 argues against Prop 8 and the idea that marriage is ‘sacred’

News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com

T oday Page 2

Thursday, November 13, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

We a t h e r TODAY

Vagina Dentata | Soojean Kim TOMORROW

rainy 59 / 49

rainy 52 / 43

Menu Sharpe Refectory

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

Lunch — Cheese Tomato Strata, Zucchini Pie, Wild Colonial Risotto, Vegan Tofu Pups, Hot Ham on Bulky Roll

Lunch — Sloppy Joe Sandwich, Falafel in Pita Bread, Enchilada Bar, Cauliflower au Gratin

Dinner — Spinach and Rice Bake, Beef Saute with Cumin, Spice-Rubbed Pork Chops, Cajun Corn and Tomatoes

Dinner — Roast Turkey with Sauce, Shells with Broccoli, Stuffing, Sweet and Sour Shrimp Saute

Free Variation | Jeremy Kuhn

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

Fizzle Pop | Patricia Chou

Enigma Twist | Dustin Foley

RELEASE DATE– Thursday, November 13, 2008 © Puzzles by Pappocom

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

ACROSS 1 Math exercise 8 Not serious 15 Go around 16 First name in a Beatles title 17 Like horses, anatomically 18 Syrup-topped pastry 19 Like toads 20 Go __ a tangent 21 *Paris resort operator 27 Two-time 1980s skating gold medalist 28 Urban renewal target 29 One way to deal with a budget deficit 31 Normandy battleground 32 Sneezing cause 33 Young newt 35 Little pest 37 Plato, to Aristotle 43 Viscount’s superior 46 Friction 49 Like the old explorers, often 50 “Garfield” pooch 51 *Medal for valor 53 Café con __ 55 Containing gold 56 Hiking boots, e.g.

59 Fairly commonplace 61 Pigged out 62 Citizens 63 Ayn Rand’s first screenplay 64 Newman role DOWN 1 Exceptional skill 2 Dauphine automaker 3 Fail to sustain, as an objection

4 *Last place 5 Bridges of Alameda County 6 She raised Cain 7 __ school 8 Watergate figure Magruder 9 Schnozz ending 10 Zaire’s Mobuto Sese __ 11 *Corner-cutting efforts 12 Up the creek 13 Sign of dissent 14 Bequests 22 401(k) cousin 23 Mineo of “Exodus” 24 Goose egg 25 Legal conclusion 26 “__ out!”

30 Letters before F? 34 Leaves in a bag 36 It’s often on 42Down 38 They’re rolled in Mexico 39 XVII x LIII 40 Aug. doesn’t have one

41 Part of SASE: Abbr.

42 Sandwich choice 44 Put on again 45 Bank heist, e.g.

46 Kind of sign seen in this puzzle, and word that can follow the start of answers to starred clues 47 Conceive

48 Told to attack, with “on” 52 Borrower’s concern 54 __ Varner, Lee Remick’s role in “The Long, Hot Summer” 57 Punch sound 58 RR stop 59 49ers’ org.

60 60 minuti

Alien Weather Forecast | Stephen Lichenstein and Adam Wagner

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Brown Meets RISD | Miguel Llorente

xwordeditor@aol.com

11/13/08

T he B rown D aily H erald Editorial Phone: 401.351.3372 Business Phone: 401.351.3260

University community since 1891. It is published Monday through Friday during the aca-

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once in July by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. POSTMASTER please send corrections to

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By Dan Naddor (c)2008 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

11/13/08

The Brown Daily Herald (USPS 067.740) is an independent newspaper serving the Brown demic year, excluding vacations, once during Commencement, once during Orientation and P.O. Box 2538, Providence, RI 02906. Periodicals postage paid at Providence, R.I. Offices are located at 195 Angell St., Providence, R.I. E-mail herald@browndailyherald.com. World Wide Web: http://www.browndailyherald.com. Subscription prices: $319 one year daily, $139 one semester daily. Copyright 2007 by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.

m etro Thursday, November 13, 2008

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

High school broadcasts City Council

By Shara Azad Contributing Writer

“money-making machine,” said he wants to set up an interactive network of Open Art Cafes for artists to display their work, which would be accessible through the Web. If his plan comes to fruition, Zib said he envisions that “anyone can contribute work on a broad network of screens that are not designed to be commercially driven.”

Though Zib is open to selling and installing signs for small businesses, he said he would not do so for commercial purposes. A network of digital signs, used for commercial marketing or otherwise, would promote digital media on a broader level, for projects like Open Art Cafe.

On Thursday evenings, the Providence City Council meets to debate laws and city ordinances in the City Hall downtown. Behind the scenes, however, seven Hope High School students tape and edit the weekly meetings for broadcast, as part of a new program that gives Hope High students the opportunity to learn more about their municipal government and to gain experience with video-editing technology.

The “Hope High School video editing team,” as Program Coordinator Brendan Hanrahan calls it, started last April, when the city council asked for help in televising its meetings biweekly.

The council had been considering televising its meetings for quite some time, following the lead of other local cities, such as Warwick, said former councilman and City Council Chief of Staff Thomas Glavin. Councilman Michael Solomon drafted the initial proposal in 2007, and after a few “unexpected delays,” the council was finally able to get the program underway.

The city first approached the Dunkin Donuts Center for help with the production of their broadcasts, but then discovered that Hope High was working with the center to teach students video editing. Seeing their shared interests, the two parties eventually “came to an agreement,” Glavin said.

Through the program, seven Hope High Schoolers — selected through “a rigorous application process,” according to a City Council press release — travel downtown to tape city council meetings on the first and third Thursdays of every month,

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Min Wu / Herald

The Open Art Cafe on Thayer Street catches the attention of passersby with thought-provoking television displays.

On Thayer, one man’s bid to spread digital art worldwide

By Simon van Zuylen-Wood Senior Staff Writer

One day in mid-October, three television screens appeared in the windows of the Thayer Street brick establishment formerly known as Geoff’s. On the screens, was a two hour loop of contemporary art pieces. Above them a message: Art Reflects Society.

Just a day before, the sign told passersby that Society Reflects Art. John Zib, the mind behind Open Art Cafe, doesn’t care so much what people are looking at, as long as they’re noticing. Open Art Cafe is a digital media project that aims to display contemporary art through an open network of local coffee shops.

The installation loops “Interrup-

theque,” highlights of last month’s “Interrupt” digital media festival, sponsored by and held at Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design.

Zib set up three screens on Oct. 17 and another in February in Roba Dolce next door.

Zib is not an artist, but Open Art Cafe is not really a cafe either. The front door will not open until another business fills the vacancy left by Geoff’s, which closed its doors this past summer. The installation is part of a larger scheme that Zib said he hopes will spread across Providence, and eventually overseas.

Inspiration for the Open Art Cafe came from a similarly named Londonbased network of coffee houses, in which various initiatives and projects

were organized and shared, where people “got together and made things happen,” Zib said.

Zib, originally from San Francisco, has lived in Providence for the last two-and-a-half years. He has also lived in Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Prague and Israel.

To convince businesses and artists alike to buy into the project, Zib said dozens of networks have to be available.

“We have units trying to be placed in Europe, the Middle East and Asia,” Zib said.

He said he was underwhelmed by the response in New England, which he said was “still conservative” in its response to new media and art.

Zib, who calls digital media a

Paiva Weed first female State Senate president

By Ben Schreckinger Contributing Writer

In an already historic election year, Rhode Island Democrats made another first yesterday, electing Teresa Paiva Weed, D-Newport, as State Senate president, the first woman to hold the post.

Paiva Weed’s ascension to the post came after the former Senate president, Democrat Joseph Montalbano, unexpectedly lost his seat last Tuesday, creating a spot for new Senate leadership. Paiva Weed was previously Senate majority leader.

Though disappointed with Montalbano’s ousting, State Sen. Rhoda Perry P’91 said she is “elated” with last Tuesday’s national and local election results. “I think we have a clarion call for change in the way in which our government functions,” she said.

And while Rhode Island was no exception to the nationwide trend of Democratic gains this election cycle, Perr y said that the large Democratic majorities in the state legislature do not tell the entire story. There are “many progressive Republicans” and “a good num-

ber of conser vative Democrats” in Rhode Island’s government, she said.

Despite Montalbano’s loss, Perry said that this election represented a net gain for progressives in Rhode Island.

Senate Democrats did not anticipate Montalbano’s ouster, said Perr y, who represents the district including Brown’s campus and most of the East Side.

After the election, it’s clear that redrawn districts compromised Montalbano’s chances for his 11th term in the Senate. The former Senate president agreed to redraw his district as part of a redistricting effort designed to increase minority representation in the state’s legislature, Perr y said.

Montalbano’s district was redrawn to include parts of Lincoln, which leans fur ther right than the rest of the district, said Perr y, whose district was also redrawn slightly.

Specifically, Perr y said she is “ver y excited” by the election of a woman as Senate president.

Paiva Weed “is and has been a stellar leader” who is “honest” and “full of integrity,” Perr y said.

“She worked her fanny off tr ying to reshape the welfare system fairly,” said Perr y, who called Paiva Weed’s management style inclusive and open-minded.

Paiva Weed’s ascension to the Senate presidency without a “painful” leadership struggle is “emblematic of her style,” Perr y said.

Perr y said in an inter view with The Herald last month that she hoped the new legislature will override a veto by Gov. Donald Carcieri ’65 that maintains Rhode Island’s practice of putting parolees back in jail when they are charged with a crime, even if they are not convicted.

She called the veto “nonsensical” and said the governor applied his power “arbitrarily and capriciously” in blocking the bill.

“I’m going to let Sen. Paiva Weed have a week” before bringing up the possibility of an override, Perry said. But, “I’m definitely going to ask,” she said.

Though Perr y said she looks for ward to the next term, she added, “We’re going to have to make so many ver y, ver y difficult decisions.”

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Thursday, November 13, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

U. wants lower energy costs Professor’s scanner can see you naked continued from page 1 sity $300,000 annually, and reduce carbon emissions by 2,000 metric tons. Steam traps prevent steam from escaping a radiator, allowing condensate to be reused and improving overall system efficiency, according to a Facilities Management fall newsletter.

Efforts to keep heating and energy costs low are closely tied with efforts to reduce carbon emissions at Brown, according to Michael Glassman ’09, a leader of the student group emPOWER. EmPOWER worked with Facilities Management to set University-wide emissions goals last year, aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 42 percent below 2007 levels by 2020.

Powell said Brown produced 73,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in the 2007 fiscal year, which ended June 30, 2008.

Following the switch from oil to

predominantly natural gas heat in 2007, that figure fell seven percent, to 67,890 metric tons.

As part of the joint initiative to improve both financial efficiency and environmental sustainability, Facilities Management recently replaced the heating system in Minden Hall, installing thermostats and control valves to each room. Previously, only one thermostat controlled heating for the entire building, and heating was inefficient and imbalanced, said Kurt Teichert, environmental stewardship initiatives manager.

EmPOWER has also been working with Powell on a project to increase public awareness of energy use at the University.

Glassman said the project has two goals: the creation of a Web site that would allow students and staff to monitor energy use in different buildings, and a large public display, such as a television screen in Faunce House, that would show the same information.

continued from page 1 bining images of people in different poses, the computer can “see” a person’s body.

For a computer, an image is just a bunch of numbers, Black said.

The computer’s function is to derive information from that string of numbers.

“We had to teach the computer what people look like,” he said. To do so, Black and Balan used detailed laser-range scans of 2,400 different people. Each person stood still in a scanner while lasers mapped out their bodies. Using the data gathered from the images, the pair then used statistical analysis to find the variations among people.

The result of their work is a program that allows the computer to “see” a person based on the input images and extract information about that person, such as height and waist measurements. The computer can determine a person’s height to within a few millimeters of the actual value. Waist and chest sizes are more difficult to determine because they vary more based on the clothing somebody wears, so the program can determine someone’s waist measurement to within one to

two inches.

The research earned enough attention that Black and Balan were invited to present it at last month’s 10th European Conference on Computer Vision in Marseilles, France.

Black said the University has filed for two patents on the technology, which has a multitude of potential uses.

Director of Intellectual Property Luann Cserr, who is overseeing the patent application process, said the technology has potential applications in forensics, fashion, graphics, gaming, film and even medicine. “It could enable doctors to be more accurate” in determining whether patients’ body types puts them at risk for a disease, she said.

“People are getting really excited about using the program,” Black said, adding that the Rhode Island State Police have been in touch with him about applying the technology to surveillance tapes to help catch criminal suspects.

“Obviously, suspects robbing a convenience store aren’t going to do it naked,” he said. The new technology will allow the police to determine the proportions of the person responsible for a crime, even if the suspect is wearing a mask or baggy

clothing.

Currently, in order to determine a person’s height and weight from video footage, the police must measure the scene of the crime and determine the person’s proportions based on the size ratio of the person to the surrounding environment, said Lieutenant Dennis Pincince of the Rhode Island State Police. He said the new technology will make identifying suspects much easier because it will allow the police to take the suspect’s measurements directly from the video.

The technology could also be used in online shopping, Black said.

“The fashion industry is very interested in virtual tr y-on,” he said. Such a technology would allow people shopping online to see what clothes look like on their bodies without having to try them on in person.

As for negative consequences of such a technology, Black does not believe it is harmful. “I don’t see that there are major privacy concerns because it’s not actually an invasive technology,” he said, adding that currently, all scans are voluntary.

In the meantime, there are still a few kinks to work out of the system.

Poll: Undergrads don’t notice TA crunch continued from page 1 years and sophomores were more likely to be satisfied with the number of TAs in the courses than juniors and seniors.

Friedman, a senior, said he is “quite satisfied” with the number of TAs in his classes.

But Rachel Katz ’10 said she thinks her macroeconomics class, ECON 1210: “Intermediate Macroeconomics” has too few TAs. They don’t respond to e-mails or hold review sessions, she said. In another of her courses, SOC 1620: “Globalization and Social Conflict,” the professor had to cut down on the number of exams he offered because he doesn’t have enough TAs for the class, she said. Katz added that before these two courses she “never had a problem” with TAs. Despite the undergraduate satisfaction rate, The Herald reported in October that the faculty was dissatisfied with the number of graduate TAs since there is not a large enough graduate student population to support the growing faculty.

For example, Patrick Heller, associate professor of sociology, who teaches the “Globalization and Social Conflict” class Katz is in, said that he had to reduce the number of exams in his course because he does not have enough graders. He said he “suspects that there is a shortfall” in TAs.

Kay Warren, professor of anthropology, said she is “concerned as a faculty member who teaches a very large class that there will be sufficient TAs to cover the class.” She added that the success of the course, ANTH 1251: “Violence and the Media,” which she taught last spring, relied on a dedicated and available group of TAs to help students work through complex material and issues. Warren is not teaching the course this spring because she can not call for a large number of TAs every spring.

“We all have to adjust” to the realities of current TA availability, she said, adding that professors need to consider capping courses or changing the organization of the course according to the number of TAs they have.

“There just aren’t enough graduate students available to TA,” he said.

In the sociology department, they haven’t been able to meet the one TA per 50 students ratio, he said.

Yet Dean of the Graduate School Sheila Bonde called the ratio a “rule of thumb,” not official policy. She added that the Graduate School has been funding a stable number of TAs for several years.

Bonde said the poll results “gratified (her)” and that she’s “happy when people are happy.” The Graduate School “monitor(s) very closely” the satisfaction of academic departments with a variety of issues, includ-

ing the supply of TAs, by meeting with the chairs and administrative assistants of each department to discuss issues, she said.

Heller said he suspects that TAs and faculty are “self-exploiting,” pushing themselves to do more work in order to maintain the quality of the course. Many professors are using “patchwork solutions,” so they’re meeting the need, but have had to adjust, he said.

“This year seems to be especially bad” but it’s “always been very tight,” Heller said. He’s “never seen a surplus.”

James Doyle, a Ph.D. student and president of the Graduate Student Council, said some graduate students are taking on heavier teaching loads, he added. He knows other grad students who are having to teach larger sections than usual, which means more work grading and answering questions, he said. It can be a challenge for grad students to find the balance between their TA work and researching, Doyle added.

The Herald poll was conducted Oct. 27 and Oct. 28 and has a 3.6 percent margin of error with 95 percent confidence. A total of 649 Brown undergraduates completed the poll, which was administered as a written questionnaire to students in the University Post Office at J. Walter Wilson, outside the Blue Room in Faunce House and in the Sciences Library.

C ampus N ews Thursday, November 13, 2008

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Obama’s election has big implications for country, professors agree in panel

By Emmy Liss Senior Staff Writer

Courtesy of Tenika Versey

Brown’s team took first prize in Microsoft’s fifth annual College Puzzle Challenge.

Triumphant, Brown’s ‘Sons of Tamarkin’ crush brainiacs

By Suzannah Weiss Contributing Writer

This Saturday, Brown’s enigma-solving team “The Sons of Tamarkin” won Microsoft’s fifth annual College Puzzle Challenge, beating the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by a margin of 180 seconds.

“The Sons of Tamarkin,” consisting of four graduate students in the math department, traveled to Microsoft’s Cambridge, Mass. office to decode puzzles and solve a fictional myster y involving the theft of the Rosetta stone.

Microsoft invites students from schools where it recruits, according to Microsoft Senior Program Manager Lead Brandon Bray. The goal of this contest is “to share what it’s like to work at Microsoft” and show that its employees “enjoy creative stimulation outside of what we do on a daily basis at work,” Bray said.

About 1,300 students — more than ever before — participated this year.

Competitors came from 19 schools, most of which brought between 15 and 30 teams each, Bray said. Brown was the only school to enter just one team. The runner-up was MIT’s Vinyl Juntdown!!, and the second runner-up was Stanford’s PhDeez, he said.

Brown’s team named itself after a portrait on the first floor of the math department’s building that portrays a former chair of the department.

The most creative team name this year, Bray said, was Cornell’s HereForTheDrinksPleaseFeedUsBeerAndNotWater. “Unfortunately, we weren’t able to serve beer.”

This was Brown’s first time participating in the College Puzzle

Challenge, as well as the first puzzle competition for three out of four group members. Team member Dan Katz GS, who will receive a Ph.D. from Brown this May, has had a lot of experience with “puzzle hunts,” he said.

Thomas Hulse GS said being enclosed in an overheated room for the seven hours and 36 minutes it took the group to solve the puzzle was “not that different from being in the math department.”

“We were so busy that we didn’t really have time to talk to each other and get sick of each other,” said first-year grad student Diana Davis GS. “The math department is pretty close-knit, so we see each other a lot as it is,” she added.

Katz said he found the experience “inspiring because my three teammates pretty much had no experience doing cooperative puzzle events. ... It was fun to see the looks on their faces when they would solve something for the first time and it was correct.”

The highlight of the competition for Hulse was winning, he said, especially since the team was in third or fourth place for most of the time.

Brown’s victory over MIT “was very unexpected,” said Joris Weimar GS. After solving puzzles involving number sequences, word patterns and other feats requiring logic and critical thinking, participants discovered that the thief was Dr. Solvem, a character who often comes up in Microsoft’s puzzles, Bray said.

Once the team put all the clues together, though, the final answer to the puzzle was “woohoo,” Davis said, adding that the answer was meant to congratulate the team on its success.

When Marion Orr was in middle school, ABC News hired Max Robinson as the first African-American television news anchor. Every day, Orr left the playground at 6 p.m. so he could hear Robinson on the news.

Though he tuned in just to see Robinson, he began to absorb the information the anchor delivered.

Now, the director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy credits ABC’s hiring of Robinson for his interest in politics and current position at Brown.

Orr, who is black, told this personal stor y while moderating a panel discussion with members of the Department of Political Science yesterday about President-elect Barack Obama’s success — and what it means for the future.

Assistant Professor Jennifer Lawless, Associate Professor Wendy Schiller and Department Chair Professor James Morone presented their views on the significance of last week’s election and took questions from a MacMillan 117 audience of mostly students.

For African-American children today, Orr said, seeing the Obama family in the White House is “the most powerful symbol.” But he posited that the victory is more than just imagery and will change the future of politics.

Morone talked about the role of race in the United States and mentioned a question he raises in his classes annually: Are troubled race relations an anomaly in America or inherent in its societal structure? The question was always rhetorical for him, he said, since he believed racism was an ingrained problem.

Fifty-two percent of the population voted for Barack Obama, but 67 percent said they were proud of what happened, according to Morone. Those numbers show that something is changing now, he added.

Turning his attention to the future of party politics, Morone said the challenge lies in how each party

brands itself. The Republicans can no longer revert to the Reagan platform, despite how well the brand once worked, he said. Democrats, on the other hand, lost their brand in 1968. The disadvantage of being in power is that they will now have to “articulate what they stand for and what it means.”

Lawless said she was speaking without notes or Morone’s optimism. She said it is unclear that a liberal tide swept the nation. Given the economy and the current administration, the Democrats “really had an election they were going to win.”

Voters demonstrated a “clear need for change at the presidential level,” she said. She cited a lower than expected swing of House seats — many of which were won by “pseudo-Democrats” — and the passage of ballot measures preventing gay marriage.

Despite Obama’s win, the gains for other traditionally marginalized groups were less obvious, she said, adding that women fared “horribly.”

She added that turnout results demonstrate that Americans have not gotten past the Bradley effect — the idea that voters lie to pollsters so as not to seem racist.

“Race, gender, class and liberalism are not going in the direction I’d like them to,” she said.

Schiller also acknowledged the role President Bush’s low approval ratings played in this election. She said voters felt the government was no longer working for them and lacked accountability.

Obama’s biggest challenge as president, she said, will be balancing three key groups: a very eager liberal wing, a skeptical moderate wing that voted for him and a skeptical conservative wing that did not.

“Every move he makes will be interpreted more and more than any other president,” she said.

Though Obama’s race does make his victor y unprecedented, she said, “it goes beyond that.”

Schiller attributed the lack of a trickle-down effect in part to an ineffectual Congress that did not

follow through on its 2006 campaign promises. She added that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was seen as “hyper-partisan and hyper-liberal,” which cost the Democrats elections.

One student asked why none of the panelists even mentioned Sen. John McCain.

Morone called him “a man at war with his own campaign” and said he was “prepped to say things he didn’t believe.”

Lawless referenced Newsweek’s expose of the two campaigns and said that McCain ran a “passive-aggressive” campaign, while Obama’s was far more disciplined.

Morone called him an honorable person, however, and Lawless said it would be hard to imagine how any Republican candidate could have gotten more than 47 percent of the vote.

Many students asked about what this election means for the future, both in terms of Obama’s presidency and future elections.

Regarding diversity on the cabinet, Lawless said every president has a responsibility and cannot do less than the president before. She noted that few women have been placed on short lists, though.

Orr mentioned President Ruth Simmons in the cabinet discussion, saying that the Brown faculty is on “pins and needles about Ruth.”

All of the panelists agreed that Hillary Clinton will make a career of the Senate — where she will gain influence in the fashion of Sen. Ted Kennedy — rather than take a position in Obama’s administration.

Asked about the role of the vice presidential candidate in this election, Lawless said, “the Palin pick means (future) candidates won’t take risks” with the first large decision they have to make.

A student asked what would happen if Obama fails, especially for the youngest generation of voters.

“There will be failures,” Morone said. “What’s really important is young generations getting involved and staying involved. That’s what makes democracy vital and a generation powerful.”

Got something to say? letters@browndailyherald.com

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Digital art comes to Thayer Students film gov’t continued from page 3

“The future is coming,” Zib said. “(I need to) put my stake in the ground and do something different.”

Beyond Open Art Cafe, Zib said he is seeking to use Memo, his Providence-based digital media company, to encourage the use of digital signs for nonprofit, community-based initiatives such as a locally displayed alternative television station.

“We need to create a more responsible future — things that are more socially beneficial.”

Open Art Cafe is only four screens old, but Zib’s digitial media pitch garnered attention from Johnny Rockets.

The 50s-themed hamburger joint has agreed to install one of Zib’s high-resolution, digital screens on which to display its menu.

Brown and RISD have not shown much interest in his digital signs, for art or for communications purposes, even though there is an inevitable push towards digital media in the marketing field, Zib said.

“Do you know what the fourth most-watched television station in the country is?” Zib asked. “The (informational) screens hanging in

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Wal-Mart.”

“Half the U.S. population goes and sees those screens every two weeks,” he said.

Zib said the “Interruptheque” street displays were one of a kind, adding that similar public art is not on display in New York or Los Angeles.

“Interruptheque” was also on display last month at the Sciences Library and in the window of the Modern Culture and Media building, both on Thayer Street.

Nico De Martino, co-owner of Caffe Roba Dolce and Open Art Cafe’s first client, said customers often asked why there was a screen showing slides of abstract contemporary art.

Posed the same question, De Martino said half-jokingly that he loves it for more than just its aesthetic value.

Originally from Naples, Italy, De Martino said he watches soccer games on it once in a while.

Zib said he wants Open Art Cafe to thrive now before digital media gets too big and is bought out by bigger firms.

“Do we want to wait 10 years and let CBS buy (the digital screens)?” he said. “No, it’s about art. It’s about community.”

continued from page 3 Hanrahan said. The team then edits the tapes using the University of Rhode Island’s facilities, though they are considering moving the editing process to the high school, he said.

On the Saturday following each meeting, the tapes are broadcast — on channel 31 for Verizon subscribers and channel 18 for Cox subscribers. On the alternate Saturdays, Warwick broadcasts its meetings.

“I think the students are definitely seeing how government works,” Hanrahan said. “It empowers students once they see what local government is doing.”

Glavin said the program could have an impact on the greater community.

“We are now able to open our meetings to a wider audience, and people get to see local government in action,” he said. “Citizens are now able to interact with council people one-on-one.”

Paulson changes bailout

BY Peter G. Gosselin and Jim Puzzanghera Los Angeles T imes

The Bush administration formally abandoned the centerpiece of its $700 billion financial rescue plan Wednesday, reflecting the remarkable extent to which senior government officials have been flying by the seat of their pants in the deepening economic crisis.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the administration would continue spending the available bailout funds on efforts to thaw the nation’s credit markets — a shift it began a month ago — and scrub plans to buy troubled mortgage-backed securities.

“You’ve had a tremendous amount of improvisation here,” said Douglas Elmendorf, a former Federal Reserve economist and an informal adviser to Obama’s transition team. “Even smart people get things wrong when they have no models to follow and are acting quickly, so it’s natural that there’d be some reworking.”

Paulson, who originally dismissed emergency government investments in financial institutions as a recipe for “failure,” said that most of the first half of the $700 billion already had gone to emergency investments in banks and other institutions aimed at reviving the regular borrowing and lending that’s crucial to the economy.

Although Paulson said those actions helped thaw credit markets and avoid “a broad systemic event” in the global economy, he acknowledged that most financial firms still are deeply reluctant to lend.

“Illiquidity in this sector is raising the cost and reducing the availability of car loans, student loans and credit cards,” Paulson said in a speech in Washington. “This is creating a heavy burden on the American people and reducing the number of jobs in our economy.”

“First and foremost, because the system remains fragile, we must continue to stand ready to prevent systemic failures,” he said. “The stability of our system remains the highest priority.”

But the effort to provide that stability is in flux.

“This was an opportunity for Paulson to finally articulate the principles by which the government would aid some firms and not others. He didn’t do it. He is drifting,” said Vincent R. Reinhart, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and a former director of the Federal Reserve Board’s Division of Monetary Affairs.

Not only did Paulson publicly acknowledge that the administration was shifting gears, but he said that the government’s financial rescue mission was entering a “timeout” period as Obama prepares to take office. During that period, Obama and Congress must decide the role federal officials should play in the housing market, Paulson said.

Paulson’s views on that are at odds with those of Obama and many congressional Democrats.

The Treasury secretary said far-reaching proposals to dramatically reduce home foreclosures by modifying existing mortgages would “require substantial government subsidies” that still need to be justified. He also turned aside calls to use some of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program fund to aid General Motors and other tottering U.S. automakers.

“We care about our auto industry in the U.S. They’re a key part

of our manufacturing industry,” Paulson said. “We need a solution, but the solution has got to be one that leads to viability. The intent of the TARP was to deal with the financial industry.”

The change wasn’t received well on Wall Street, which has been reeling all week from deepening worries about the economy. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 411.3 points, or 4.7 percent, to 8,282.66. Shares of Citigroup, which would have been one of the chief beneficiaries of the buying plan, plunged nearly 11 percent to a decade-plus low of $9.64.

On Capitol Hill, reactions ranged from nonplussed to I-toldyou-so.

“My mouth is open,” Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., told a television interviewer, comparing Paulson to a football team’s quarterback changing the play at the line of scrimmage. “It was a very hard vote for many of us who voted for that package, and now all of a sudden we have an audible and we’re spending it on something else.”

The $700 billion rescue plan approved by Congress authorized the Treasury secretary to spend half that amount immediately, while setting added requirements for releasing later tranches.

Wednesday, Paulson offered no specifics on how he planned to spend the second half of the rescue package money — suggesting those decisions would fall to the incoming Obama administration. Senior Democrats on Capitol Hill were clear about where they thought the remaining money should go.

“Obama should tell Paulson, `Thank you, but you should ask for the money and use a substantial portion for mortgage foreclosure reduction,’” said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

Schumer said he might seek new conditions on how the additional $350 billion will be spent, such as reducing foreclosures and inducing banks to lend.

“If the economy needs it, Congress is going to approve it,” Schumer said of the final installment. “But we might approve it with certain provisos.”

Paulson’s effective scrapping of the mortgage-securities buying plan that he sold so passionately only months ago is just one example of the kind of recasting of emergency measures that Washington has witnessed in recent days.

Monday, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reser ve overhauled their aid package to insurance giant American International Group. In September, they had given AIG an $85 billion line of credit to help it liquidate over the next two years, and less than a month later they added $37.8 billion. But with those moves proving inadequate — the company reported a $24.5 billion loss Monday — the bailout was retooled, and the price tag boosted to $150 billion.

In addition, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York announced it was delaying a plan to help stabilize money market funds by purchasing up to $540 billion of shortterm debt. The plan, announced last month, was intended to help the funds handle the crush of nervous investors seeking to get money out.

Lawmakers were reluctant to criticize Paulson, noting the importance of his task to help right the economy.

W orld & N ation Thursday, November 13, 2008

Iran suddenly suspicious of Obama

BY Thomas Erdbrink Washington Post

Since 2006 Iran’s leaders have called for direct, unconditional talks with the United States to resolve international concerns over their nuclear program. But as an American administration open to such negotiations prepares to take power, Iran’s political and military leaders are sounding suddenly wary of President-elect Barack Obama.

“People who put on a mask of friendship, but with the objective of betrayal, and who enter from the angle of negotiations without preconditions, are more dangerous,” Hossein Taeb, the deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, said Wednesday, according to the semi-official news agency Mehrnews.

“The power holders in the new American government are trying to regain their lost influence with a tactical change in their foreign diplomacy. They are shifting from a hard conflict to a soft attack,” said Taeb.

For Iran’s leaders, the only state of affairs worse than poor relations with the United States may be improved relations. The Shiite clerics who now rule the country came to power after ousting Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a U.S.-backed autocrat, in their 1979 Islamic revolution. Opposition to the United States, long vilified as the “great Satan” here in Friday sermons, remains one of the main pillars of Iranian politics.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent Obama a congratulatory letter last week, but by Wednesday his welcoming tone had dissipated.

“It doesn’t make any difference for us who comes and who goes,” he said in a speech in the northern town of Sari. “It’s their actions which are studied by the Iranian and world nations.”

On Wednesday Iran test-fired a two-stage, solid-fuel rocket, Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammed Najjar announced on state television.

He said the missile has a range of 1,200 miles — meaning that it could reach Israel and U.S. targets in the Middle East.

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he could not “independently confirm media reports indicating an Iranian missile launch,” but added that “Iran’s missile program is a concern that poses a threat to its neighbors in the region and beyond.”

In recent interviews, advisers to Ahmadinejad said the new U.S. administration would have to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, show respect for Iran’s system of rule by a supreme religious leader, and withdraw its objections to Iran’s nuclear program before it can enter into negotiations with the Iranian government.

“The U.S. must prove that their policies have changed and are now based upon respecting the rights of the Iranian nation and mutual respect,” said Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, the president’s closest adviser.

Ahmadinejad’s media adviser, Mehdi Kalhor, said that “in fair circumstances” Iran would be open to talks. “But that is not when you have a bayonet pressed at your arter y,” he added, referring to the U.S. forces deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in the Persian

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Gulf.

Iran’s leaders have long said they want to resolve the international concerns over its nuclear program through negotiations. Western governments have expressed concern that Iran’s enrichment of uranium and other nuclear activities have been part of a weapons program.

The Bush administration has demanded that Iran suspend uranium enrichment before talks can take place, a precondition that Iran has rejected on the grounds that the nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. In 2006 Ahmadinejad said that Iran “is after negotiations, but fair and just negotiations. They must be without any conditions.”

Obama has advocated “direct tough presidential diplomacy with Iran, without preconditions,” according to his campaign Web site, and has said that a nuclear-armed Iran would be unacceptable.

Two weeks ago, in comments that may have set the tone for some of the rhetoric being used to describe the incoming U.S. administration, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that the conflicts between the two countries were deep-rooted and went beyond political differences.

“This is because of the numerous conspiracies of the U.S. government against the Iranian country and nation throughout the last 50 years, and not only have they not apologized for this, but they have continued their arrogant actions,” said Khamenei, speaking at commemoration of the taking of 52 hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. Khamenei has final say in all matters of foreign policy.

Kalhor, Ahmadinejad’s media adviser, said that Iran’s “policies and position towards America have not changed at all.” He added: “Our problems with America are strategic.”

The list of outstanding issues between the two governments is long.

Apart from suspicions over Iran’s nuclear program and concerns about its development of missiles, the U.S. opposes Iran’s support for the Palestinian Hamas movement and Hezbollah in Lebanon, two organizations branded as “terrorist” by the Bush administration.

Iranian leaders see themselves as a flag bearers in a struggle against what they call the “global imperialist system,” meaning the U.S. and Israel. Iran’s nuclear program has become a test case to prove its independence from the West. The Iranian leadership does not recognize Israel as a state and refuses all contact with the country.

In comments during his first press conference, Obama set some Iranian leaders on edge. “Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon I believe is unacceptable. We have to mount an international effort to prevent that from happening,” Obama said. “Iran’s support of terrorist organizations, I think, is something that has to cease.”

Ali Larijani, speaker of Iran’s parliament and a political rival to Ahmadinejad, heard echoes of the past. “Obama’s words were tantamount to moving on the previous wrong track,” Larijani told reporters.

In 2007 Iran and the U.S. held direct ambassador-level talks over the security situation in Iraq. A year later Larijani said that it was wrong to say improvements in security in Iraq were thanks to its “surge” in U.S. troop numbers. “Credit should go to the Iraqi government and its neighbors”, he said.

Iran’s worries are growing over a possible security pact between the U.S. and Iraq that would provide a legal basis for American combat troops to remain in the country until the end of 2011.

“Any pact that would guarantee the presence of U.S. forces in the region would not be regarded as valid by Iran,” Kalhor told.

Samareh Hashemi said that Obama’s campaign promises regarding Iraq were one of the reasons that Ahmadinejad sent his congratulatory letter.

“Mr. Obama has mentioned a program for the withdrawal of U.S. forces in Iraq. He explicitly said that he does not support U.S. troops remaining in Iraq. He said he would have a specific program and timetable to get the troops out.

This all deserved Iran’s attention,” Samareh Hashemi said.

He also said Obama drew support from American voters because of his positions on foreign policy.

“Generally, all of these issues were merged into one slogan: change.

But that must mean change of current policies, change of militaristic policies, change in the unacceptable meddling in the affairs of other countries,” he said.

“If these policies really change, then the deep gap, the distance between Iran and the U.S. will become less. If these promises are acted upon there will be more chance for closeness between the two nations,” Samareh Hashemi said.

Obama would not be welcome in Iran as president, were he to decide to come here, Kalhor said. “He can come as a tourist.”

— Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson in Washington contributed to this report.

U.S. moves to drill offshore

BY Cynthia Dizikes Los Angeles T imes

The federal government announced Wednesday that it would be taking the first major step to expand offshore oil drilling after a long-standing ban on new energy exploration off much of the U.S. coast expired last month.

Officials with the U.S. Minerals Management Ser vice, which oversees oil and gas development in federal waters, said that starting Thursday it would begin the process that could lead to leases at a potential site at least 50 miles off the coast of Virginia — an area that has never seen offshore drilling.

Although the move involves only one coastal area off one state, it represents the first turn in a much larger offshore-drilling campaign that rose to a fury this summer and now stands to increase energy exploration in federal waters around the country, including off the coasts of California, Alaska and Florida.

“We’ve had some discussion, but now we’re getting serious about it,” said Randall Luthi, director of the Minerals Management Service.

“This is actually an important step in our nation’s energy security picture.”

It could be a temporar y step, however.

Democratic lawmakers and President-elect Barack Obama have said that they would consider offshore drilling as a compromise in a comprehensive energy policy and as a way to wean the U.S. off foreign oil.

But, whatever approaches prevail, they figure to be more restrictive than the current rules under the lapsed ban, which technically allow oil companies to drill as close as three miles offshore with federal approval.

“The issue of of fshore drilling will be addressed by the next president and the next Congress,” said Drew Hammill, spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,

D-Calif., who recently supported letting states decide whether to permit energy exploration 50 to 100 miles off their coasts.

Since 1981, a congressional moratorium on new offshore drilling has prevented the Interior Department from establishing leases in virtually all coastal waters outside the western Gulf of Mexico and some areas of Alaska. The ban was enacted after a massive oil spill devastated the Santa Barbara coast in California in 1969.

Last month, however, Congress allowed the moratorium to lapse amid pressure from the White House, Republican lawmakers and even members of the Democratic caucus who had come under attack for not doing more to bolster domestic energy supplies with gas prices topping $4 a gallon this summer.

As it stands, the process in Virginia would begin with a 45-day public comment period, starting Thursday and ending Dec. 29. The Interior Department does not expect to start leasing the area until 2011, after an environmental analysis.

Virginia’s governor and Legislature have supported offshore gas exploration. According to estimates, the Interior Department believes there could be 130 million barrels of oil and 1.14 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the area they expect to begin leasing.

But environmental groups and some Democrats have argued that the resulting gasoline could be years away and probably would do nothing to reduce prices any time soon. The U.S. Department of Energy has estimated that crude oil and gas production would not be substantially affected until 2030.

“It is not going to make a meaningful difference in terms of gas at the pump,” said Daniel Hinerfeld, spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It is just a distraction from our need to cut off our dependence on oil.”

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Singer ’09: Losing makes winning better continued from page 12 Sox. The reason is that the ’04 team had compiled over 86 years’ worth of untimely losses and late-inning blunders that collectively built toward a culture of suffering. So when the tables finally turned and Boston triumphed in a statistically unprecedented scenario (down 3-0 in a seven-game playoff series in professional sports), the elation of that moment was unmatched by anything I’ve experienced with regard to sports. There was a palpable aura of excitement in Boston for at least three months following the 2004 World Series. After the 2007 World Series, the excitement lasted maybe a week.

Point is, unless a team is closing in on a historic record of success,

the frequency of winning mitigates the gains of each win, a classic example of diminishing marginal utility.

Does that mean that winning transforms a team with a unique history into just any other team afterward? Maybe, but the payoff for those that were there to experience that improbable event is more than enough to make up for whatever enchantment is lost.

Still, I am envious of what Chicago Cubs fans will one day be able to celebrate because I experienced it four years ago. Not to mention the fact that given a long enough drought of success (see Lions, Detroit), the cycle can start up again.

While losing is never something to strive for, it is what makes winning worthwhile.

Think back to that time in first grade P.E. class when you played kickball with no outs. Sure, it was fun because everything is fun when you’re seven years old and kickball is awesome, but it was pointless beyond that. Nobody would pay to watch professional sports if all the games ended in ties. In that sense, the ecstasy of winning and the heartache of losing are both entwined and necessary for the game to mean something.

As far as I can tell, the two greatest emotional feelings are what would come with achieving perfection and what comes from finally experiencing triumph after a long road of adversity, blunders and misfortune. I don’t know anybody familiar with the former, but the latter isn’t too shabby.

URC may budget for more athletic trainers continued from page 12 schools to tend to other schools’ athletes.

“It’s all pre-arranged,” he said.

“We would notify, say, Har vard, ahead of time and say, ‘We are not able to send a trainer — could you cover?’”

Though he could not comment specifically on the Nov. 1 volleyball game, Goldberger said “the ultimate responsibility” to make the correct decision rested with the trainer present — regardless of what team he worked for. “The responsibility of the trainer (is) to

give a professional assessment of the circumstances, and to make a decision based on that.”

Neither Goldberger nor Fiore commented on the liabilities Brown might face if a serious injur y were to befall an athlete.

Not being able to send trainers to all away matches is “a tough situation,” Goldberger said. The athletic department is “tr ying to make sure that communication is better, and that people know what’s going on,” he added.

At the top of the department’s priority list to be presented to the University Resources Committee,

which recommends Brown’s annual budget, is to get one or two more athletic trainers, Goldberger said.

Fiore agreed, saying that increasing the number of trainers would “give us the ability to better care for our athletic teams.”

For its final weekend of away games, the volleyball team will again not be accompanied by a trainer.

But Meyers said she feels that there have been improved efforts to keep the team out of the dark. “I do think they are being fair about it,” she said.

Thanks for reading.

E ditorial & L etters Page 10

Thursday, November 13, 2008

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Staf f Editorial

Losing sight of justice Brown has a lot on its plate right now. Simply surviving the economic crisis is a challenge, but the University signed up for a huge financial aid commitment just a few months ago. It is also trying to stick to ambitious building plans and work on boosting its international reputation.

On these fronts, Brown has done fairly well. Though some capital projects may be delayed and a staff and administrative hiring freeze has been announced, administrators say they’re sticking to the financial aid commitment. Today, the provost and a Spanish banker will inaugurate a partnership that will give students more opportunities abroad.

These are stories of moderate success. Lurking in the background is one of failure — an example of the University getting in over its head on an extremely sensitive issue. President Ruth Simmons’ announcement in 2003 that Brown would start to examine connections to the slave trade in its past garnered national response. Rightly so — no other American institution had attempted the same on such a scale. Her decision set Brown apart as an academic institution interested in the whole truth.

Five years later, the slow progress shows the difficulty of going beyond committees and reports in an academic setting. But it also proves that administrators took their eye off the ball. The administration has always been concerned about making Brown look better, in national rankings and to the world. As financial troubles deepen, however, administrators may have missed their chance to fundamentally set us apart.

Several factors have contributed to an absence of accomplishment, though one stands out. Simmons decided in 2007, when the recommendations of the slavery and justice report were endorsed by the Corporation, not to appoint a separate oversight committee. Instead, the Brown University Community Council was given the responsibility. Given that committees often take a long time to make decisions, Simmons’ hesitation is understandable. The lack of oversight of committees tackling smaller goals, however, meant little pressure was placed on those who were supposed to get a job done.

It’s hard to know where to begin. Would another meeting, or another committee, really help? Though administrators seem to care about reaching the goals, none seem to care about the details necessary for change.

The announcement of the report on slavery and justice two years ago was not met by wide support by the student body, as most students never read it, or move us up in national rankings. But it committed Brown to doing something that would improve the future for students in Providence schools, for other institutions following our lead and for us — students who could benefit from a new academic center. That chance comes along once in a while, and, as other pressing needs grow, it seems like it’s slowly slipping away.

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A lex yuly

L e tt e r s SDS members should not be charged To the Editor: On Saturday, Oct. 18, Students for a Democratic Society held a large rally at University Hall, where a meeting of the Brown Corporation was underway. Now eight members of SDS are facing charges from the Office of Student Life.

The rally was part of a larger, ongoing campaign

by SDS to bring accountability, democracy and transparency to the Corporation, which currently operates behind closed doors with no mechanism for meaningful input from members of the Brown community. Over 1,000 students, faculty and staff signed a petition demanding four democratic reforms to the Corporation: open meetings, public meeting notes, community input into the agenda and community referenda on all major decisions made by the Corporation.

The demonstration was planned by SDS with wide support across the University, and it is unacceptable that individuals are being arbitrarily singled out and held responsible for collective action. Rather than prosecuting students who are engaged in efforts to effect change, the administration should be supporting them.

If, however, the Office of Student Life continues to hold that University policies were violated, then the organization responsible for the action, not the individuals, should be charged.

Furthermore, the charges are due to a situation created not by SDS but by actions of the Corporation itself.

By keeping students, faculty and staff excluded from processes that directly affect them, the Corporation has initiated an antagonistic relationship with any community members who try to exercise their democratic right to have a voice on campus. The Corporation is responsible for the context in which SDS acted. On these grounds,

the Corporation itself is largely responsible for the actions taken on Oct. 18.

Finally, the students are now engaged in a judicial process executed by administrators that are paid by the Corporation. Under these circumstances, how could the non-academic judicial process be objective or fair? In light of such a massive conflict of interest, it is impossible for us not to fear that the disciplinary proceedings are nothing more than the Corporation seeking retribution against those who are trying to change it. If Brown is to live up to its ideals as a place that values justice and the student’s right to determine the course of his or her own education, the University should reward and encourage those who act in accordance with those ideals, not punish them.

Alex Tye ’10 Sophia Lambertsen ’11 Carly Devlin ’09 Alexander Campbell ’10 Julian Park ’12 Chantal Tape ’09 Mark Morales ’10 Amy Littlefield ’09 Daniel Patterson ’12 Nathan Bergmann-Dean ’12 Vale Cofer-Shabica ’09 Yesenia Barragan ’08 Atilio Barreda ’12 Kelly Nichols ’09 Naima Brown ’09 Daniel Patterson ’12 Chris Norris-LeBlanc ’12 Brent Mylrea ’11 Nov. 11

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O pinions Thursday, November 13, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Page 11

No on Yes on Prop 8

BY SARAH ROSENTHAL Opinions Columnist Apparently, everybody’s got to hate somebody.

Racism has been out of vogue for years, and last Tuesday we elected a black man to be the leader of the free world. Yet on that same day, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida and California approved discriminatory ballot measures that limit the rights of same-sex couples. The adoption of California’s Proposition 8, which amended the state’s constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman, is as instructive as it is disheartening.

California’s successful Yes on Prop 8 operation is the ver y model of the modern anti-gay marriage campaign. The modern anti-marriage campaign, though largely funded by the Mormon Church and other tax-exempt religious organizations, does not acknowledge the biblical basis for objections to homosexuality. It insists that gay marriage is not an issue of equal rights or religion, but instead is all about the children.

This should raise red flags immediately.

When we protect the children, we do things like levy a $550,000 indecency fine for a splitsecond view of Janet Jackson’s breast, or dole out prison sentences for 17-year-old boys having consensual sex with their 15-yearold girlfriends. Of course, children do not have nearly as many sexual hang-ups as their parents, but who could say no to protecting them?

I could.

I could when “protecting the children” is so transparently about something else.

Whenever gay marriage comes up, its detractors will inevitably say that it is a “threat” to the “sacred” “institution” of “traditional marriage”— a phrase so full of meaningless, intellectually lazy buzzwords that I hardly

know where to begin.

From the underage, incestuous, polygamous sort of marriage found in the Bible to the Catholic Church’s prohibition on divorce to the anti-miscegenation laws that remained in the Alabama constitution until 2000, our society no longer adheres to traditional definitions of marriage. Perhaps it is our abandonment of these “traditions” that has led us to obscenely high divorce rates, rising incidences of adultery and Las Vegas wedding chapels, but same-sex marriage is

ably myopic. The biblical Holiness Code, where one can find the prohibition on homosexuality, also prohibits eating pork and shellfish, wearing polyester-cotton blends, using lawn seed mixtures and shaving. It permits slavery and requires the death penalty for adulterers (there goes John McCain).

Predictably, Christian Coalition types are able to zero in on the one verse that takes away other people’s rights while ignoring all those that limit their own.

As the Reagan Revolution ran its course,

Whenever gay marriage comes up, its opponents will inevitably say that it is a “threat” to the “sacred” “institution” of “traditional marriage” — a phrase so full of meaningless, intellectually lazy buzz words that I hardly know where to begin. hardly the real “threat.”

According to the Census Bureau, gay marriage-a-riffic Massachusetts has had the nation’s lowest divorce rate for most of the decade, while Arkansas, fearlessly led by strong families crusader Mike Huckabee, had had the highest besides Nevada.

Marriage is indeed ancient, but to call it sacred just because it’s in the Bible is laugh-

the voting public became aware of the frightening hatred and hypocrisy of these Christian Coalition types, so the Yes on Prop 8 campaign masked any trace of a religiously motivated agenda.

A video on the campaign’s site, which employs the same pedantic tone and imagery as a Schoolhouse Rock cartoon but without the snappy tunes, tells the stor y of Tom,

Jan and their gay next-door neighbors. Tom mows his lawn on Saturday (though hopefully he doesn’t use lawn seed mixture) and Jan likes to cook (though hopefully not anything that involves pork or shellfish). They want to teach their children traditional family values and are scared of the gays taking over their schools. Tom and Jan decide “there’s too much at stake to leave these things to chance” and vote for Prop 8. They remain friends with the gays next door, because being a good neighbor is important!

They’re right, of course, and if the strong family crusaders didn’t insist on stopping at the verse that gives them sanction to hate, they’d see that the next chapter in the Bible says to love your neighbor as yourself. I believe that most opposition to same-sex marriage emanates from misplaced fear, bigotry, and religious fanaticism, but even if I actually believed that most people who voted for Proposition 8 did so due to deep philosophical concerns about judicial activism, I still wouldn’t find it acceptable.

Our new president-elect has opposed same-sex marriage on the campaign trail.

Traditional marriage, as it was defined at the time in much of the country, would have prevented Barack Obama’s parents from getting married, yet he takes a decidedly weasely position on gay marriage. Now that he has been elected president, he ought to be taking the lead to guarantee maximum equality for all Americans.

We’ve gone from Jim Crow to a black president in little more than a generation.

Hopefully sooner rather than later, we will look back on the success of Proposition 8, be ashamed of where we were then and be proud of how far we’ve come.

Sarah Rosenthal ’11 is an agent of the radical homosexual agenda.

Academic freedom at Brown

BY TYLER ROSENBAUM Opinions Columnist Brown sometimes has a hard time getting students to provide feedback on its intermittent reviews of institutional and curricular structure. This might dismay those administrators and faculty behind such reviews, especially those who advocate for changes.

But it’s actually a good sign.

Apathy in the face of opportunities to chime in owes to students’ almost palpable contentedness with the current state of affairs. This satisfaction with the ways things are run becomes evident when one considers students’ adverse reactions to even the smallest suggested changes (adding pluses and minuses to the transcript, for example).

Because the New Curriculum, implemented in 1969, is no longer particularly new, the University has conducted a number of self-studies to reassess the continuing resonance of the principles embodied in the curriculum.

Unsurprisingly, these reviews have found widespread support for the curriculum and the scholastic freedom it permits. They also correctly noted that this liberty has become an intrinsic part of Brown’s identity, and it is one of those factors that distinguishes this University from its peers with comparable financial resources.

What’s more, though the New England Association of Schools and Colleges explicitly requires that colleges have some sort of general education, or distribution requirement, it has reaccredited Brown at least three times since the implementation of the New Cur-

riculum. This is considerable vindication for those of us who continually have to reassure skeptical outsiders that Brown isn’t some wayward, hedonistic studentocracy.

Now I am not one to get all misty-eyed while waxing poetic about the intangible “spirit” or “culture” of Brown. But I do strongly believe in the importance of unbridled academic expression and exploration in higher education.

The changes wrought by the New Cur-

cants. Four years of math, science, language, histor y — all done. Of what use to us are another four years of Big Brother holding our hands? College should be more than a repeat of high school where the electives get cobbled together into a major.

But University-enforced general education requirements are not the only thing standing between students and academic freedom. And so our work implementing the spirit of the New Curriculum remains

The changes wrought by the New Curriculum are not merely one more remnant of the tumultuous 1960s, waiting to be rescinded when cooler heads prevail. Rather, they embody the fundamental, timeless value of selfdetermination. riculum are not merely one more remnant of the tumultuous sixties, waiting to be rescinded when cooler heads prevail. Rather, they embody the fundamental, timeless value of self-determination.

We all went to high school and jumped through the onerous distributional hoops that colleges require of prospective appli-

unfinished.

The recent enforcement of course prerequisites makes this point clear. Before such prerequisites lay dormant, acting as guidelines that demonstrated to students the suggested order in which they take their classes. Now prerequisites stop students from enrolling in the courses they

choose. Prerequisites are an unnecessar y impediment to students and even a source of bother to some professors, and they should be removed.

Some threats to academic freedom are beyond the University’s control. As Brown’s aspiring doctors well know, the pre-medical program diminishes the educational experience for a sizeable minority of Brown students. Required to take as many as 12 classes on top of their majors, many pre-meds’ undergraduate experiences have been compromised by distributional requirements. The course of action is less clear in this instance, but it is apparent that burdensome pre-med requirements restrict many students’ freedom to explore.

Of course, unrestricted academic freedom forces students to craft their own educational path instead of following a structured, predetermined path. As a consequence, advising is paramount.

As I noted in a previous column, Brown’s advising needs improvement. While Brown does a better job of advising than some of its peers, advising is more central to the academic experience here than it is elsewhere.

The University should give advising its due by rewarding professors who excel at it.

Academic freedom should not be unique to Brown. Despite being one of the only colleges to have implemented an open curriculum, we have demonstrated that it produces graduates who can and do thrive. Now Brown needs to fully realize its commitment to academic freedom, and to defend it against any attempts to curtail its scope.

Tyler Rosenbaum ’11 wouldn’t mind living under a hedonistic studentocracy.

S ports w ednesday Page 12

Thursday, November 13, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Sp

The value of losing As I watched Woody Paige on “Around the Horn” ramble on about the significance of tonight’s PatriotsJets NFL game, two thoughts occurred to me.

One, Woody Paige expends more energy talking than any other human Ben Singer being. Watch High Notes his mouth the next time you see him: It looks like it’s struggling to form words without suffocating.

Two, although a loss tonight for the Pats would damage their playoff hopes more than any loss last season would have, I find myself caring much less about the outcome.

There are a lot of differences between this year’s Patriots team and the one from 2007, but what’s important here doesn’t really have anything to do with the New England team. It has to do with failure.

Human beings have a tendency to feel the pain of losses more fully than they appreciate the pleasure of accomplishments. This is by no means a mind-set exclusive to sports — it’s just easier to frame it within that context. The idea of perfection, in any sport just as in life, is so pointless we don’t even consider it.

So when a team like the 2007 Patriots comes so close to a perfect season and then falls short at the last moment, the reason there’s a letdown (for some of us) is because we’ve been teased with the possibility of something seemingly impossible. When that possibility is erased early on, as it has been this year, you feel a sense of relief.

I’m not suggesting that everybody go out and flunk their first course at Brown so they alleviate the pressure of striving for a perfect GPA. First off, if you flunk a course here it doesn’t count, so you can still get a 4.0 unless you get a B or something. More importantly, losing can still be a useful anchor to reality. It helps you focus on the more fundamental goals. In the case of the Patriots, realizing that you still have to get into the playoffs before you can make it to the Superbowl.

But the value of losing isn’t just a sobering reality check. There’s a flip side of that too. When you aren’t accustomed to succeeding, the pleasure of success feels that much greater. That sounds like a lame fortune cookie. Here’s an example: fans of the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays (yes, they exist) probably felt way more joy when their team finally made it to the World Series than fans of any other MLB team this year. Why? Because it had become second nature to doubt the success of a baseball expansion team that spent its lifetime prior to 2008 as the Cincinnati Bengals of the AL East.

I may know how to use Microsoft Word, but I can’t truly know how other people feel. So let me use a more personal example. In the past decade, I’ve had the luck to experience a lot of winning by Boston spor ts teams. Winning feels good. But none of the Patriots championships, the Celtics last year or the 2007 Red Sox banner comes even close to the 2004 Red continued on page 9

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Field hockey gets Ivy win Leslie Springmeyer ’12 finished her outstanding first season in convincing fashion, tallying a hat trick while also notching an assist in the field hockey team’s 4-1, season-ending win over Yale, which gave the Bears their only Ivy League win of the season.

Springmeyer’s performance in the Yale game earned her Ivy League Player of the Week and Rookie of the Week honors. It was the third time this season that a player from Brown had been named Rookie of the Week, with Abigail Taft ’12 winning the award two other times this season.

Springmeyer also earned Honorable Mention All-Ivy honors, after finishing the season with eight goals and five assists, both team highs. Her 21 points, 14 of which came in the final five games, ranked tenth in the Ivy League. Springmeyer is joined on the Honorable Mention by Victoria Sacco ’09, who finished her career at Brown with four goals and one assist in 2008, and was a consistently strong defensive presence for the Bears.

Rounding out the All-Ivy selections for the team was Sara Eaton ’09, who was named to the Second Team after finishing the season with one goal and four assists. As a four-year starter, Eaton tallied 13 career assists, good for eighth all-time at Brown.

Justin Coleman / Herald

The women’s field hockey team ended their season with a 4-1 win over Yale, thanks to a hat trick by Leslie Springmeyer ’12.

— Benjy Asher

Captain’s concussion highlights need for more trainers

By Etienne Ma Contributing Writer

Volleyball injuries are often limited to nagging ankle tweaks, knee sprains and dislocated shoulders.

It’s not considered a contact sport — players rarely even touch one another when the ball is in play. To see a concussion occur during the course of the game is a “freak accident,” Head Coach Diane Short said.

In her 14 years of coaching at Brown, Shor t said she had witnessed only one concussion, when the player involved hit her head on the floor and was taken out of the game. Concussions do happen, she said, but they are not common.

On Nov. 1, Short saw a second concussion, during a game against Harvard, when Natalie Meyers ’09, captain and setter of this year’s volleyball squad, was elbowed in the head and suffered a concussion.

As Meyers and her teammate scrambled for the ball, the two, according to Meyers, weren’t “sure where the ball was, and (my teammate) ended up elbowing me in the head.”

The “ball (was) low and fast to the net,” Short said, and Meyers is “a go-getter. (She) tries to get the ball every time.” The problem was that her teammate was also there to help, and because players are not allowed to touch the net, her teammate whipped her hands back

quickly, striking Meyers’ forehead with her elbow. Though the Bears won the point, Short called a timeout immediately after the play to check on Meyers.

The team had not brought a trainer for the game, nor had they done so for two consecutive weekends, which included matches at Har vard, Dartmouth, Columbia and Cornell. The Harvard trainer who came to examine Meyers recommended that she sit out the rest of the game, but was reluctant to insist upon the removal of a key player of the opposing team. He left it to the discretion of Short and Meyers.

Meyers opted to play on. Her coach asked how she was doing at each timeout, and Meyers repeatedly insisted she was fine, despite having a “goose egg” on her forehead, being “very dizzy” and having foggy vision, she said.

“I don’t remember the rest of the game at all, even though I played,” Meyers said.

Short said she realizes that she should have used more caution, in spite of Meyers’ willingness to stay in the game.

“I should know — it’s typical that players want to keep playing, even when injured.”

Though Meyers was unworried at the time, she said she only found out after the match that “it could’ve been fatal if I had been hit in the same spot. I could have lost permanent brain function.”

A need for trainers?

The incident highlights the lack of trainers during the transition period between the fall and winter seasons — a gap which also occurs between the winter and spring seasons. Even prior to the injur y, Meyers had met with the athletic department to discuss the issue, one which had gotten the team “really fired up,” she said.

“A trainer should be a basic need that any Division I athlete is provided.”

For the past three years, the volleyball team has always had a trainer during its away games.

But just two days before the trip to Columbia and Cornell, Meyers said, the team members learned that a Brown trainer wouldn’t be accompanying them. The sudden change lacked adequate justification, she said. The mid-season changes were strange, Meyers said, especially given that “no one even talked to us about it.”

“We just have a limited number of trainers,” Director of Athletics Michael Goldberger said. “Unfortunately, that’s the way it is.”

For six weeks in October and November, “there are sometimes more events to provide medical care for than we have staff available,” Head Trainer Russell Fiore wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.

“The majority of colleges in this countr y have the same problem,” he added.

Even so, Goldberger says, “We

actually have what is close to the standard number of trainers within the Ivy League.”

According to Fiore, Brown has eight trainers, which is the same number that Yale, Penn and Columbia have. Dartmouth and Princeton each have nine, he said, while Har vard has “nine or ten” and Cornell has 13. But Brown’s trainers have more responsibilities than some at other schools, Fiore said, because Brown has more sports in which players are prone to serious injures — Yale does not have a wrestling team, and Penn and Columbia do not have ice hockey teams.

“The (head) trainer has to make tough decisions in terms of what we cover and what we don’t cover,” Goldberger said. The decision is “based on which sports have the least likelihood of injury,” he added.

According to Goldberger, the annual reports by the NCAA say that softball and volleyball have the lowest likelihoods of both general and severe injur y.

“We would like there to never be a situation where there’s not a trainer,” Goldberger said. “Our trainers know our athletes better than, you know, the Harvard trainer would know our athletes.”

Despite the lack of a traveling trainer, Goldberger said, there is a mutual agreement between continued on page 9