The Brown Daily Herald T hursday, D ecember 4, 2008
Volume CXLIII, No. 123
Recession clouds future of ’08.5 grads
Disciplinary council to hear charges against SDS
25 People you Should KNOW
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includes some of their peers, rather than one administrator. On the day of the protest, eight students made it up the stairs to just outside the room where the meeting was being held. Seven of the eight charged students have been identified by the University as making it up the stairs, SDS member Chantal Tape ’09, who has also been charged, told The Herald in a Nov. 18 article. The University is alleging that the eight charged students “caused a meeting of the University Corporation to be disrupted,” “forcibly entered a University building that was closed” and “caused University personnel to be injured” in the process, according to a letter sent to the charged students by Associate Dean of Student Life Terry Addison. Seven of the students are also being charged with failing to present identification upon request. The University contends that two DPS officers and President Ruth Simmons’ Executive Driver James Trail sustained minor injuries while trying to keep students out of the building, according to SDS members. The UDC panel must consist of a minimum of five members of the larger UDC, including at least one member of the faculty and some students and staff, said Vice Presi-
By Joanna Wohlmuth Senior Staff Writer
Networking especially valuable in poor economy, CDC says
Like many of his classmates, Dan MacCombie ’08.5 has been looking for consulting jobs. But with the economic crisis making many of these opportunities evaporate, the soon-to-be graduate is setting his sights south: He plans to travel to Ecuador in January and February, working to develop a sustainable beverage company that he might pursue when he returns to New York in March. “Everywhere I talked to that had job postings up in the spring is no longer hiring,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. “I don’t know where I’ll end up, but I’m going to bust my chops trying to find something good,” he wrote, adding, “There is, of course, always retail...” The 93 undergraduate students finishing their Brown careers alongside MacCombie this Saturday will enter an economy in a now-official recession and face a national unemployment rate that reached 6.5 percent in October. “It would seem that 2008.5 graduates have been impacted by the poor economy, however it’s difficult to gauge the extent,” Bill Bordac, communications and public relations officer for the Career Development Center, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. There has been a decrease in organizations recruiting on campus, he wrote, adding that finance and banking have been hit the hardest. Finance, construction work, real estate and banking are feeling the economic downturn more than other fields, though these effects will spread, according to Senior Lecturer in Economics Rachel Friedberg. “There is kind of a trickle-down. A lot of funders and big donors earn their money in finance. That could hurt nonprofits.” But students should not worry about long-term job prospects, Fried-
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post- Magazine’s 25 Brown students you should know includes a mathematical genius, writers, volunteers and a Rhodes Scholar.
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Three-quarters of letter grades in humanities are A’s By Sophia Li Staf f Writer
More than half of the grades given at Brown last year were A’s — but not all disciplines are created equal. According to data from the Office of Institutional Research, the proportion of A’s out of all letter grades awarded in the humanities was 75 percent last year, greater than in any other discipline. In other disciplines this number ranged from 58 percent to 63 percent. But the life sciences awarded the greatest proportion of A’s out of all grades — including Satisfactory and No Credit. Last year 53.4
percent of grades in such courses were A’s, representing an increase of 11.8 percentage points over 11 years, more than in any other discipline. 51.3 percent of all grades, including S/NC grades, given in humanities classes were A’s. But the proportions of B’s and C’s awarded in these classes were significantly lower — 15.9 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively, compared to 26.3 percent and 7.1 percent in the physical sciences. “It is a complicated thing to try to explain,” said Dean of the
A University Disciplinary Council hearing will be held Tuesday to adjudicate charges against eight members of Students for a Democratic Society. It will be the first time such a hearing has been held in at least four years. The eight SDS members are facing disciplinary action following the group’s protest of a Corporation meeting in University Hall on Oct. 18. Members of the group tried to enter the building — which was to remain closed during the meeting — to speak with members of the Corporation. But they met resistance from Department of Public Safety officers and University personnel, who officials say were injured during the encounter. The students face the most severe level of disciplinar y action, which can result in separation from the University. They were able to choose to have their case heard by either a UDC panel consisting of students, faculty and administrators or a hearing before a single administrative officer. Carly Devlin ’09, an SDS member who has been charged, said the students chose a UDC hearing because “we thought it would be a more democratic process.” She added that members are more comfortable with a hearing in front of a group that
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Percentage of A’s by discipline in 2007-08 80
75%
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63
60 51.3%
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51.8
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50 40 30 20 10 0
Humanities
Life Sciences
Physical Sciences
A‘s as % of all grades
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Social Sciences
A‘s as % of letter grades
RISD alums helping with return to moon By Brigitta GreenE Contributing Writer
Courtesy of NASA
Two recent RISD graduates are helping design a NASA lunar rover, being tested in the Arizona desert, to carry two astronauts comfortably for up to two weeks.
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tear down this wall The University has abandoned its plan to remove the historic stone wall around the OMAC
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It’s the kind of night to stay inside: negative 170 degrees, pitch dark, silent. But no matter how nice a cup of tea sounds, the urge is best left unfulfilled — because, of course, it’s not easy using a toilet on the moon. Carl Conlee and Evan Twyford, 2005 graduates of the Rhode Island School of Design, have been
A cold war brewin’ Tempers flared when the Corporation and SDS came faceto-face at a UCS meeting
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working at NASA for two years solving problems just like these. Their challenge: to design a lunar rover capable of housing two astronauts comfortably — relatively speaking — for two weeks. “It’s like tr ying to pack all of the amenities of an apartment into something the size of a minivan,” Conlee said. His designs, ranging from food storage to astronaut seating, include a toilet that handily pulls out like a drawer.
Iron Curtain Descends The neuroscience department at the Alpert Med School splits into two starting in the spring
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Conlee and Twyford, industrial design majors and one-time roommates, are part of a 30-person team working to develop the pressurized lunar rover. This rover, about nine cubic meters in volume, is par t of a larger NASA program, Project Constellation, which aims to create a permanent colony on the moon, Conlee said.
16 SPORTS
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NORTHEASTERN BLOC Fifteen football players receive All-Ivy honors in a championship year
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