Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Page 1

Daily Herald the Brown

vol. cxliv, no. 29 | Wednesday, March 4, 2009 | Serving the community daily since 1891

Endowment fell to $2 billion by year-end by Nicole Friedman Senior Staf f Writer

U.S. Senate

Former Sen. John Edwards

Edwards to speak Tuesday

Former senator cancelled fall date

The University’s endowment was valued at $2.01 billion at the end of 2008, a top administrator said at a faculty meeting Tuesday, offering a hard reckoning for the first time of the enormous losses suffered in the last six to eight months. Before the announcement, from Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Beppie Huidekoper, the University’s only recent statement on the endowment had been a January e-mail from President Ruth Simmons. In

that message to the community, Simmons said Brown was working under the assumption that the fund would be worth roughly $2 billion at the end of June. The University had not provided an explicit estimate of the endowment’s current worth. The endowment hit a high-water mark of $2.8 billion last summer, but has lost almost 30 percent of its value since then. Despite the fact that six more months of market turmoil could make the University’s $2 billion continued on page 4

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News.....1-4 Higher Ed...5-6 Spor ts...7-8 Editorial..10 Opinion...11 Today........12

www.browndailyherald.com

0% -5% -5

Administrators’ assumptions Corporation’s revised outlook

10%

2010 and thereafter -6%

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-2

Expected 2009 returns

5% 0

2

4

6

8

10%

Along with the revelation that the endowment had already fallen to the $2 billion mark administrators said would reflect the fund’s value in June, a top administrator provided details that explain the Corporation’s decision to demand deeper budget cuts than had been proposed. The Corporation had a more pessimistic outlook for the prospects of economic recovery.

Lt. Gov. Roberts ’78 setting her sights on top office By Emmy Liss Features Editor

By Ben Schreckinger Senior Staff Writer

Former Senator John Edwards will speak in Salomon 101 next Tuesday after cancelling a separate lecture here last fall. Edwards was scheduled to give the Gov. Frank Licht ’38 Lecture last fall at Brown. But after he admitted in August to having an extramarital affair with a campaign staffer, Edwards cancelled all speaking engagements until the November elections, saying in a statement that he did not want to distract from the presidential campaign. Professor of Political Science Marion Orr, who oversees the Licht Lecture series as director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy, said there was “mutual agreement” with the Edwards camp that the lecture should not go forward in light of the controversy. The Licht Lecture was rescheduled for April and will feature Democratic strategist Donna Brazile. Edwards spoke at Indiana University immediately after the election and at a private conference in California. But since then, the former senator has kept a low public profile. The upcoming lecture, sponsored by the Brown Lecture Board, is not related to the cancelled Licht lecture, Orr said. Andrew Chapin ’10, a president of the lecture board, said Edwards has not informed the board of “an official speech topic.” A vice president for the Harry Walker Agency, Edwards’ booking agency, declined to comment in an e-mail to The Herald. But a profile on the Harry Walker Agency’s Web site advertises Edwards’ standard speaking topic as “America: The Land of Opportunity,” about the

Guessing endowment returns Guessing endowment returns

When Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts ’78 was in college, had you asked her if she would ever run for public office, she said she “would have looked at you like you had two heads.” The first woman to hold the position of lieutenant governor in Rhode Island, the former human biology concentrator spoke to a group crowding the first few rows of MacMillan 117 yesterday about women in politics, finding an unexpected career path and her potential run for governor.

Kim Perley / Herald

Rhode Island’s Lieutenant Governor, Elizabeth Roberts ’78, spoke yesterday about women in politics and her days as a student.

Getting started By Rhode Island standards, Roberts said, she is not quite a Rhode Islander — she grew up near Washington D.C. and moved north to attend Brown. While in college, she volunteered at Women’s and Children’s Hospital, which solidified her interest in health care and established her connection to Providence. Most of her classmates

went on to medical school, but Roberts was “fascinated” by the health care system itself. She earned her MBA in health care management from Boston University, attending school part-time while she worked at Pawtucket Memorial Hospital. Roberts got her first taste of local Rhode Island politics volunteering for campaigns, which she recommended as the best way to get star ted in politics and mull over electoral politics as a career. In working for races “you really care about,” she said, you have the opportunity to learn a lot and make a difference. Plus, she added, “It’s almost like summer camp.” Roberts worked doing issue research for a candidate in the early 1990s. Though the candidate lost, Roberts was next hired to be on Gov. Bruce Sundlun’s policy staff at the State House. But with two preschoolers and a minimal government salar y, Roberts only stayed for 14 months. continued on page 2

ResLife rejects video, but its creators aren’t surprised By Dan Alexander Staf f Writer

Residential Life rejected a video submitted to the housing lotter y “first pick” competition last month due to its sexual content, obscenity and drug and alcohol references. The students behind “Phyllis’ Baby” agree it pushed the limits of propriety. “I knew that the movie was going to be extremely inappropriate,” said cast member Zach Bleckner ’12. “And I loved it.” The six-minute video tells the stor y of five male students who have to move out of their rooms

for various reasons. One student runs into trouble with the law, while another has his dorm taken over by a leopard — who has already eaten his roommate. Bleckner agreed with the decision not to allow the video. The director of the movie, Avery Houser ’12, said he thought it should have been allowed, but added, “I respect their decision.” “Brown tends to be ver y liberal in terms of what they allow,” Houser said. “I think that’s why we took that liberty.” In one scene, five male roommates share a bed with one female student. Later, one of the

roommates asks: “Which one of you guys impregnated my girlfriend?” That is not the video’s only sexual reference — one scene includes nude pictures — nor is it the only scene that pushes the boundaries of what administrators consider appropriate for the competition. Characters swear freely throughout the video, two underage students drink gin and beer in another scene and a student shoots a policeman after the officer finds narcotics in the student’s room. Residential Council Housing Lotter y Committee Chair Ben

Lowell ’10 said ResLife chose not to show the video at the Feb. 19 competition screening in Sayles Hall due to concerns that the content could make students uncomfortable. “When I was watching it with an administrator, I personally felt uncomfortable,” Lowell said of his initial reaction to the video. “If I felt that, I didn’t know how people who were just going to this competition just to see the videos would feel.” Lowell said he didn’t know if the students who made the video fully continued on page 2

Higher Ed, 5

Sports, 7

Opinions, 11

Juicy Campus 2.0 Men’s crew team is the subject of gossip on anonymous forum

Water Polo wins Women’s water polo team win ECAC championship

Not enough green? Boris Ryvkin ’09 says Brown can’t afford to go green

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