Monday, April 20, 2009

Daily Herald the Brown

vol. cxliv, no. 54 | Monday, April 20, 2009 | Serving the community daily since 1891

Student assaulted in shower

By Brian Mastroianni Senior Staff Writer

A female student was assaulted by an unidentified male while in a Sears House shower on Friday around 6:30 p.m., according to an e-mail sent to students from the Department of Public Safety Friday night.

The woman –– who did not sustain any injuries –– reported to authorities that the man displayed a knife and shoved her before fleeing the scene, the e-mail said.

“Our detectives were investigating this case (Saturday) ... but I can’t tell you any more than what the crime report mentioned,” said Mark Porter, Brown’s chief of police and director of public safety.

The Providence Police Department and the Department of Public Safety searched the scene but were unable to identify the woman’s assailant, according to the e-mail.

The incident comes a little more than a month after a female student was photographed by a stranger while she was showering in the first-floor bathroom of Diman House, where the sorority Kappa Alpha Theta is located. That incident is still under investigation.

Sears House is home to Brown’s other sorority, Alpha Chi Omega.

The e-mail to students described the suspect as “a male with a light complexion; possibly white or Hispanic approximately five feet six inches tall, lean build, dark hair, cut short, with a week’s worth of facial hair growth.”

The suspect was seen “wearing a longhemmed athletic jacket made of swooshy material that was dark in color, light-colored blue jeans ... slightly too short so they did not cover his white sneakers properly,” according to the e-mail.

— With additional reporting by Ellen Cushing

Justin Coleman / Herald

Before performances by Nas (right) and Of Montreal (below), a student coasted headfirst down a slippery Wriston Quadrangle.

Sunny, warm Spring Weekend delights

By Sydney Ember Senior Staf f Writer

By the time Of Montreal’s dizzyingly psychedelic per formance closed with an explosion of feathers Saturday Evening, Mother Nature had given little cause for complaint about this year’s Spring Weekend.

Both concerts were held on the Main Green for the first time since 2006, anchoring a weekend marked by warm weather, vibrant performances and an annual sing-along with acoustic guitarist Dave Binder on Wriston Quadrangle.

“Ever ything went immaculately,” said Stephen Hazeltine ’09, the Brown Concert Agency’s administrative chair. Almost all of the additional tickets made available after BCA announced the concerts would be held outdoors were sold, said BCA’s booking chair Daniel

Spring Weekend in Color See photos, pages 6-7 Ain ’09. Both shows sold to 90 percent capacity, he said — almost 4,500 people per show.

The total count of eight transpor ts by Emergency Medical Ser vices was slightly less than last year’s. Two transports were reported for Friday night and six for Saturday night, said Vice President of Campus Life and Student Ser vices Margaret Klawunn.

She said there were also a number of students who were evaluated

by EMS but did not require further aid. There were 10 EMS transports in 2008 and four in 2007, The Herald reported last year.

“As far as I know, this year went pretty well,” Klawunn said. “The continued on page 2

Lester ’11, Wertheimer ’10 Your Brown transcript, off College Hill finalists for top UCS post

By Nicole Friedman Senior Staff Writer

By Ben Schreckinger Senior Staff Writer

inside

Ryan Lester ’11 and Clay Wertheimer ’10 will face each other in a run-off election for president of the Undergraduate Council of Students after receiving the most votes for the position last week. Neither received the 50 percent of the vote needed to win outright.

Jose Vasconez ’10 defeated Salsabil Ahmed ’11 to become chair of the Undergraduate Finance Board.

This year’s elections saw an increase from last year in competition

News.....1-4 Ar ts........5 Spor ts...9 Editorial..10 Opinion...11 Today........12

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for the top UCS and UFB positions.

Voter participation also increased dramatically, with 2,279 ballots cast, up from 1,364 last year, according to Elections Board Chair Lily Tran ’10.

The vice presidential race for UCS will also go to a run-off, between Harris Li ’11 and Diane Mokoro ’11.

Voting in the run-off elections will begin Monday at 12 p.m. and will close at 6 p.m. Wednesday. As in the regular election, ballots will be cast online through MyCourses. continued on page 3

At the end of four years, students have surprisingly little physical evidence to show for their time at Brown. Graduating seniors leave with only a transcript, a diploma and lingering questions about how their education will be received by the world beyond College Hill.

Though high school seniors clamor to study under the New Curriculum, its impact on students’ lives after Brown is less clear.

“There’s no way to know what a Brown education does or doesn’t do for someone,” said Associate Professor of Music David Josephson P’00, who has taught at Brown

since 1972.

Forty years after its implementation, the New Curriculum is no longer a trial run. Elements that were once shocking — like the option to take any course on a Satisfactory/ No Credit basis and the elimination of distribution requirements — are now inseparable from Brown’s identity. Yet current Brunonians find it hard to gauge just how well graduate schools and employers understand the curriculum.

‘Forty years of experience’ Before the implementation of the New Curriculum, Brown did not have a nationally recognized identity, said Ira Magaziner ’69 P’06 P’07 P’10, who led the original

The New Curriculum at Forty: Part three of four in a series

Group Independent Study Project that proposed overhauling the Brown education.

The school attracted “brighter people” in the decades after the New Curriculum’s implementation, Josephson said, adding that it was “vital in putting Brown on the map.”

The New Curriculum is now an essential component of Brown’s image. When the Admission Office asks matriculating students their top three reasons for chooscontinued on page 4

Arts, 5

Sports, 9

Opinions, 11

A Taste of Verde Students in AmCiv create an exhibit about Cape Verdean immigrants

Making Waves M e n ’s c r e w s w e p t Nor theastern on the Seekonk this weekend

Do your part Anthony Staehelin ’10 says the success of ADOCH depends on all students

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

C ampus N EWS

Monday, April 20, 2009

“Emotional balance is for the mediocre and the lazy.”

— Sculptor Dave Cole ’00, speaking at a Brown Degree Days event

Degree Days connect department concentrators with alums

By Juliana Friend Staff Writer

As the last remaining sophomores dropped their concentration forms into the registrar’s unceremonious black bin last week, the University concluded a month-long program intended to help students connect their concentrations to real-world careers.

In the program’s pilot year, Brown Degree Days “exceeded expectations,” hosting over 30 events that attracted high student attendance, said Associate Dean of the College for Upperclass Studies Karen Krahulik.

For example, at least 72 students attended the Brown Degree Day hosted by the physics department, according to Chung-I Tan, professor of physics and chair of the department. A luncheon with over 30 alums, a roundtable discussion and three guest lectures created “a very interactive environment,” in which students learned about what they could do with a physics degree, said Associate Professor of Physics Meenakshi Narain, who helped or-

ganize the event.

The concept for Degree Days was developed after a successful alumni panel organized by the English department last year, Krahulik said. Last fall, Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron met with members of the Task Force on Undergraduate Education to discuss hosting a new series of alumni panels to improve the curricular advising system, Krahulik said.

The result was a month of events starting in mid-March with former concentrators in fields from physics to art, designed to get students thinking about “both the obvious and the not-so-obvious” ways to apply their liberal arts degrees, Krahulik said.

“It’s always comforting to hear the voices of alumni on campus, because they suggest that career pathways don’t have to be so linear,” said Erinn Phelan ’09, who attended and helped organize the second-to-last Brown Degree Day last Tuesday night about careers in public service.

The event, titled “Living an Engaged Life,” brought together alums from diverse concentrations. Their advice testified to Phelan’s idea that career paths are constantly in flux.

Saeromi Kim ’96, a psychology concentrator who now works as a clinical psychologist at Rhode Island College’s Counseling Center, said the conflict between her personal desires and others’ expectations never quite goes away.

“It took a lot of guts to choose clinical work,” she said during the roundtable discussion Tuesday.

Likewise, Mary-Kim Arnold ’93 MFA’98, an English concentrator as an undergraduate, said her new role as executive director of the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities has sparked a change in perspective.

“I’m on an anti-balance campaign,” Arnold said during the discussion.

“Who needs balance when you love what you do?”

While Tuesday’s event suggested that a diverse range of concentrations can prepare students for work in the non-profit sector, a panel hosted by the Department of Visual Art demonstrated the diversity of careers that can result from a single concentration.

Dave Cole’s ’00 sculpting career represented a more traditional way of applying a visual arts degree. He

said accomplishing difficult sculpture projects — like an enormous fiberglass teddy bear — requires sustained effort and intensity, including pulling all-nighters when necessary.

“Emotional balance is for the mediocre and the lazy,” he said.

Clay Rockefeller ’03, who works at the Steel Yard, a public art cooperative, stressed the importance of risk-taking. “I always had faith in my ability to start over,” he said. “We’re all going to live many different lives in one.”

Will Machin ’00, who produces public art on commission, told current students that feelings of uncertainty and doubt linger even after graduation. “I still wonder if I’m good enough to make art,” Machin said.

This honesty provoked varied reaction among students. Quinn Fenlon ’10.5 said the fact that, even 10 years out of college, professionals do not necessarily have their careers figured out “doesn’t make me feel any better.”

The Career Development Center, which partnered with the Office of the Dean of the College and Alumni Relations to implement the program,

is still in the process of gathering statistics about student attendance at the Degree Days events, said Barbara Peoples, senior associate director of the Career Development Center.

Indeed, Brown Degree Days assumed another level of importance for seniors confronting the job market next year. Rachel Moranis ’09, an art history concentrator, said the state of the economy contributed to her interest in the Visual Art panel.

“A lot of my friends are losing their jobs right now,” she said. “I want to hear stories about what people in the art realm are doing.”

The alums’ reflections about their own non-linear career paths helped reassure Phelan, whose future plans were abruptly altered when her job offer was rescinded. She said the lack of job options in the current economy has liberated her from external pressure to follow the “standard trajectory” for the first years out of college.

The testimonies of the panelists reinforced Phelan’s belief that “as long as you do something you learn from and are passionate about, that’s enough,” she said. “It’s a very freeing idea.”

Weekend concerts ‘super-duper’ continued from page 1 good weather made it an enjoyable weekend.”

Klawunn said the only cause for concern was noise complaints by neighbors during Friday night’s concert. Though Klawunn said negotiations to hold the Friday night concer t outside were resolved before 2007’s Spring Weekend,

this year’s concert was the first night concert held on the Main Green. The last two years were relocated to Meehan Auditorium due to rain.

Because of the complaints, Klawunn said there would be evaluations this week with Senior Director for Student Engagement Ricky Gresh to determine next year’s sound volume and concert hours.

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Next year’s concerts may start and end earlier, Klawunn said.

The festivities began Thursday afternoon with the annual SPEC Day carnival, which featured snow cones, cotton candy and giant inflatable structures and games.

Friday’s show opened with local indie folk band Deer Tick, who entertained the fast-growing crowd with impassioned lyrics and twangy guitars.

Retro soul group Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings followed with a dynamic and commanding performance to prime the audience for hip-hop star Nas and his controversial ire.

“This crowd is crazy,” Nas announced in the middle of his set to a wild, feverish audience. “A crowd like this, with it, you don’t want to go home.”

Saturday’s concer t drew a slightly more subdued crowd.

Many concert-goers lounged on blankets as the smell of curry from a booth catered by Taste of India flooded the Green.

The student band Doss the Artist and PGA Tour, winners of a battle of the bands competition, featured an eclectic mix of rap, brass, bass and guitar, setting the stage for Toubab Krewe’s worldfusion funk.

The audience packed the center of the Green to see the bombastic and authoritative rhymester Santigold, who overwhelmed the crowd with her sleek money-print suit and backup singer-dancers clad in sunglasses and gold jackets.

Her final number, the insistent dance-infused “Creator,” featured an on-stage dance party with about 10 audience members.

By the time Of Montreal took the stage wearing garish makeup and brightly-colored costumes,

Katherine Regalado / Herald

“This crowd is crazy,” rapper Nas shouted during the Friday night show.

“A crowd like this, with it, you don’t want to go home.”

many in attendance were visibly exhausted. The band’s 90-minute set — dampened by an occasional raindrop — featured animal masks, ninjas and frightening silver men parading across the stage in a frenetic spectacle.

“Santigold rocked it,” said Chris Archuleta ’11. “I just thought the concert was awesome.”

On Friday, with the sun blazing and the temperature approaching a much-appreciated 70 degrees, Aruchuleta participated in an impromptu race on Wriston, he said.

“We put ourselves into the large trash cans and raced down Wriston,” he said.

“It was a little out of control, to be honest,” Archuleta said.

Many students also said the weather made the weekend more enjoyable.

“It was super-duper,” Cameron Meyers ’12 said of the concerts. “It was just a lot of fun. I liked seeing

ever yone out.”

“It was nice to see the trees blooming,” said Austin Miller ’12.

Despite the weather, Miller said he left in the middle of both concerts because he was “bored.”

The only unforeseen circumstance of the weekend was a wedding in Manning Chapel on Saturday morning when Of Montreal was preparing to have their sound check, according to Hazeltine. But he said ever yone — the BCA, Of Montreal and the wedding participants — worked together to coordinate the timing of the sound check and the vows.

Next year’s Spring Weekend will be the 50th anniversar y of the event, Ain said. He said the BCA hopes to work with the Undergraduate Finance Board to procure additional funding, allowing for an especially popular headliner.

“Our hope is to put on something pretty big,” he said.

Monday, April 20, 2009

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

C ampus N EWS

“Brown has not disappointed me for one second.”

Transfer students embrace life at Brown

By Alexandra Ulmer Staf f Writer

They don’t rave about their freshman units and may get lost on parts of campus, but otherwise, transfer students are at home at Brown — at least according to Head Transfer Student Adviser Melea Atkins ’10.

A transfer student herself, Atkins acknowledged that while some of her peers may remain isolated, most transfers are very active and integrated on campus.

In addition to her role as an adviser, Atkins is the captain of “Team Tranny,” an intramural softball team, which is symbolic of her view on the evolution of transfer students on campus. Atkins and her close friends created the team as a way to stay in touch after transfer orientation.

But now, with 20 members — only half of whom are transfers — and the runner-up title in last season’s championship, Team Tranny is representative of transfer students’ initial separation and progressive increase in participation in the larger Brown community.

Alex Vogel ’10, who did not transfer to Brown, joined Team Tranny anyway because he likes “to dabble in the transfer crowd.”

“They are all ver y indicative of the normal Brown student,” Vogel said. “You wouldn’t be able to tell the difference from anyone else.”

Despite their comfort on campus, the members of the team often burst out with jokes about being transfers. “We perpetually joke that we don’t know what’s going on,” Atkins said. “The ironic part of that joke is that we are pretty involved.”

Atkins transferred from Cornell to Brown as a sophomore in the fall of 2007, principally because she found Cornell too socially and academically intense. “It was definitely a hard decision to make,” she said. “But it was a great decision.”

To make the decision to transfer equally positive for others, Atkins coordinates the Transfer Orientation Programs at the beginning of the fall and spring semesters. During the three-day sessions, transfer students have meals together, meet with deans and are informed about how to transfer credits.

The University has undergone a “large improvement” in the way it welcomes transfer students, Atkins said. This year, for the first time, every incoming sophomore transfer student was paired with a Faculty Advising Fellow. The fellows help transfers as they navigate Brown’s unique academic environment.

The workload at Brown was a challenge after transferring from North Virginia Community College, Keith Sado ’10 said, but he considered Brown his home by the end of his first semester.

“I had the impression it was this hippie, hacky-sack type people,” Sado said. “But the classes have been enjoyable and the people really interesting.”

Sado’s sentiments were echoed

by Miriam Joelson ’11, a sophomore who transferred from Bryn Mawr College last fall. “Many of my relatives were afraid that Brown couldn’t possibly live up to my sky scraping expectations,” she wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. “But Brown has not disappointed me for one second.”

During the summer and fall of 2008, Joelson was in contact with Maitrayee Bhattacharyya, assistant dean for diversity programs and the transfer student academic adviser, as well as other deans and academic advisers. As a result, she wrote, the transition was a “breeze.”

After the transition period, Joelson dove into many activities through which she met non-transfer students, who today account for many of her friends. “It really boils down to compatibility,” she wrote.

“And for that, it doesn’t matter if you’ve transferred or not.”

Transferring internationally can multiply the difficulties, according to Petros Perselis ’10, who transferred to Brown from the National Technical University in Athens this fall. “My first thought was to leave a major Greek engineering school to search for better opportunities here in the U.S. and mature academically,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.

Brown’s engineering program, the New England culture and the opportunity to do research with professors also appealed to Perselis.

He wrote that he felt ver y welcomed at Brown, especially through the International Mentoring Program. “I met many international students — both freshmen and transfers — and with which I am still friends,” Perselis wrote. But now, Perselis added, “I have friends which do not belong to a single category; freshmen, transfers, Americans or internationals.”

Transfer students cannot be categorized, wrote Sara Wilf ’10 in an e-mail to The Herald, because “each of us has our own, highly individual reasons for being here.”

But Wilf highlighted the determination of all transfer students. “We weren’t happy at our old schools, for whatever reason,” she wrote.

“But instead of staying there we actually did something about it.”

It’s new.

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Wilf transferred from Vassar College this fall because she was displeased with the size and location of the school and was in search of a more intellectual atmosphere, she wrote. At Brown, Wilf immediately became very close to fellow transfer students during orientation, and she still counts transfer students as her best friends.

“It would be strange not to, considering we’re all in the same position and are all nervous about making new friends,” Wilf wrote.

But “ever y single transfer has expanded outside of the transfer group in some way and has made lots of “real” Brown friends (as we like to call them).”

She praised the involvement of transfer students in extracurricular activities and suggested that this was due to their excitement at being at Brown and their strong determination.

“I am profoundly grateful to be here,” Wilf wrote. “I feel so fortunate to have been given this opportunity that I want to make the most of every single day.”

— Transfer student Miriam Joelson ’11

Vasconez named UFB chair after unopposed race continued from page 1 Candidates need only a plurality of votes to win — nullifying the effect of abstentions.

The Elections Board will announce final election results at the UCS general body meeting Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. in Petteruti Lounge and submit them to the council for certification.

The winner of the vice chair race for UFB is Juan Vasconez ’10, who ran unopposed after Neil Parikh ’11 withdrew his name from the ballot Wednesday. As a result, Elections Board officials determined Thursday night that Vasconez needed only 5 percent of the vote to win, which he received.

On Thursday, Tran confirmed earlier reports that Parikh was caught removing posters belong to both Jose and Juan Vasconez on Tuesday night, and that she and another member of the board “suggested” that he withdraw his name

from the race.

In other voting, Rober t Taj Moore ’11 was elected chair of the UCS Academic and Administrative Affairs Committee.

At-large representatives on UFB will be Herald Senior Staff Writer Mitra Anoushiravani ’11, Herald Sales Director Ellen DaSilva ’10, Adam Kiki-Charles ’11, Soobin Kim ’11, Jason Lee ’12 and Herald Opinions Columnist Tyler Rosenbaum ’11.

The three candidates who ran uncontested for UCS Executive Board positions each received at least the necessary 5 percent of the vote necessary to win.

Of those Ben Farber ’12 will be the Campus Life chair, Brady Wyrtzen ’11 has been elected to be Student Activities chair and the Admissions and Student Services chair will be Andrew Bergmanson ’11.

The position of UCS treasurer will be vacant because no candidate ran for the position and no write-ins received 5 percent of the vote.

www.browndailyherald.com

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

C ampus N EWS

Monday, April 20, 2009

“This is a Swiss cheese of a curriculum.”

— Associate Professor of Music David Josephson P’00

The New Curriculum, outside the gates continued from page 1 ing Brown, they most often cite the curriculum, according to Dean of Admissions Jim Miller ’73.

The “self-selective group” of students who come to Brown are seen as “intellectually adventurous and more creative in what they’re doing” than students at the University’s peer schools, Magaziner said.

Brown students have “never been hurt” by the curriculum in applying to the University of California at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, said Edward Tom, its dean of admissions. He added that Brown has a strong reputation as one of the law school’s top feeder colleges, and good grades from Brown stand out more than a “3.8 from the University of the Bahamas.”

Brown transcripts are not viewed any differently in graduate school admissions because of the New Curriculum, said Pamela Schirmeister, associate dean of Yale’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Rather than evaluating a student’s undergraduate work as a whole, she said she focuses on students’ performance in the field for which they are applying.

Even if employers are not familiar with the details of the curriculum, they understand the openness and diversity of ideas that Brown students offer, said Laura Joshi, manager of employer relations for the Career Development Center.

Employers “value what a Brown education represents,” said Barbara Peoples, interim director of the CDC. The center sends information packets to employers to explain Brown’s curriculum, but Peoples said not many employers ask for transcripts.

Peoples said she has never known the New Curriculum to be “anything but a positive” for students in their post-college endeavors.

“Graduate schools and faculty elsewhere have long experience, 40 years of experience, with undergraduates as products of the so-called ‘New’ — the aging New Curriculum,” Dean of the Graduate School Sheila Bonde said.

“That said, I think people regu-

larly, not just in graduate schools but elsewhere, kind of misunderstand and assume that there are no requirements” at all, she added.

Though there are no distribution requirements, Brown requires that students complete 30 classes, finish a concentration, and demonstrate proficiency in writing.

“By and large, Brown has a very strong reputation as a producer of competitive and creative students,” Bonde said.

‘All of that crap’ The original student proposal for the New Curriculum, produced by Magaziner’s GISP, suggested eventually phasing out grades altogether in favor of written evaluations. This idea was eventually scrapped over concerns that it would impact graduate school admissions, Magaziner said.

The committee that finalized the curricular proposal decided to instead eliminate “the pluses and minuses — all of that crap” and give students the option to take any class on an S/NC basis, he said. That professors can now grade any class on an exclusively S/NC basis is an option members of that committee envisioned many courses would take advantage of, Magaziner said.

All literary arts workshops and non-fiction writing courses are currently mandatory S/NC. This “makes a lot of sense,” since such courses require qualitative rather than quantitative assessment, and giving students “grades, pluses or minuses defeats the purpose of what I’m trying to do in the class,” said Senior Lecturer in English Catherine Imbriglio, who teaches several small non-fiction classes.

One disadvantage is that students assume S/NC courses will be less work, Imbriglio said, adding that she tells students on syllabi not to take one of her writing courses as a fifth class.

The University generally advises undergraduates to take courses in their concentration for a grade. This is, of course, impossible to do in full for literary arts and non-fiction writing concentrators, which “may pose a little bit of a problem” for students

who want to continue on to graduate school in a discipline other than writing, Imbriglio said.

Though transcripts mark classes that are mandatory S/NC with an asterisk, Schirmeister, associate dean of Yale’s graduate school, said she was not aware that some courses at Brown required such grading.

Grades of “satisfactory” are “kind of hard to assess,” Schirmeister said.

“You’d have to be pretty terrible to fail.”

S/NC grades can make graduate schools rely more on letters of recommendation and personal statement essays, Bonde said.

Taking every class S/NC, though possible, would be a “very poor decision on the part of the student,” said Professor of Music Emerita Rose Subotnik, who is retiring in May after teaching at Brown since 1990.

“The outside world doesn’t want to work that hard. They don’t want to read all those course reports.”

Course performance reports, which a student can request for any class, include sections written by both the professor and the student about the student’s work in the course.

Schirmeister and Bonde both said graduate schools read course performance reports carefully.

But professors worry that “they don’t get read nearly so much as a clean grade does,” Josephson said.

Rather than tell graduate schools what grade a student would have received in a course, the reports should function as a dialogue between the student and the professor, Imbriglio said.

Course performance reports were created to make evaluation a part of the educational process, Magaziner said.

“The idea that you’re doing it in order to get graded or sort of classified in some way by a letter — as if a letter could represent the sum total of what somebody is or has accomplished — was offensive to us,” Magaziner said.

‘Loading the dice’ Forty years later, the freedoms of the New Curriculum may have had unintended and possibly nega-

Herald File Photo

Members of the Special Committee on Curricular Philosophy spoke to the University’s Curriculum Committee in April 1969.

tive results, especially for students who prioritize the strength of their transcripts over the quality of their undergraduate experiences.

Because the lack of distribution requirements makes it easier to complete multiple concentrations, around 20 percent of each class completes two concentrations, and a few students each year even complete three, according to Registrar Michael Pesta.

Tom, the law school dean, said having two majors does not necessarily improve an applicant’s chances.

“A lot of people falsely think that having a double major gives you brownie points,” he said. “It does not.”

Josephson urges the students he advises not to double concentrate just because they can, even if they are only one or two courses away from fulfilling the requirements. “I ask them, ‘What do you mean, if you just take one more (course)?’” he said. “It means you deprive yourself of 150 others.”

But Gale Nelson AM’88, lecturer in literary arts and assistant director of the program, said he encourages the students he advises to “seriously consider” double concentrating — or at least to take clusters of courses in disciplines other than their concentrations — so as to have as many options after graduation as possible.

Jeremy Goodman ’10 is one of just a few students who have three concentrations, though he acknowledged his choice could be a “failing on my part of not exploiting the Brown curriculum to the fullest.”

Goodman, who is concentrating in physics, philosophy and cognitive neuroscience, has only taken two courses that do not count toward any of his concentrations. “It’s been pointed out to me to me that it’s kind of insane,” he said.

“I wanted to take certain classes regardless, so it just ended up happening,” he added. “I didn’t go into this trying to triple concentrate.”

Though the New Curriculum can make it easier for students to add achievements to a transcript, its lack of structure makes it difficult for graduate schools and employers to get a complete view of a student, Josephson said.

Just as there are mandatory S/ NC courses, he said, students should be forbidden to take introductory courses that teach essential skills for a discipline on an S/NC basis.

Allowing students to take even core

concentration courses S/NC and not recording failing grades denies external reviewers a “full, transparent, honest accounting of how you did when you were here,” he said.

For example, Tom said, taking a course S/NC would only hurt an applicant if he or she were to receive an NC, but that situation would never appear on a Brown transcript.

The New Curriculum is “loading the dice against the academic standards” in some areas towards the interests of students, Josephson said. While most students do not try to abuse the system, some would choose to fail or drop a course when “faced with a recorded C versus a hidden NC,” he said.

But students are not the only ones who prioritize final grades over educational experience. In the 20072008 academic year, over 50 percent of all grades recorded by professors were A’s.

Not having pluses and minuses increases grade inflation, Subotnik said. Teachers “end up knocking that B-plus to an A when it wasn’t really deserved,” she said. “If you can give a kid a B-plus, then it’s clear that the kid was in the top echelon and you don’t feel quite so bad that they didn’t get an A.” But grade inflation is “so rampant” across the country and around the world that not having pluses and minuses could only account for a “minor wrinkle” in that, Bonde said.

Grade inflation can mostly be traced to the “intense” pressure for students to get into graduate institutions, which fuels a “natural impulse to give students the benefit of the doubt” in order to see them succeed, said President Ruth Simmons. But because grades are now expected to be high across the board, “they start to fade into the background” in admissions decisions in favor of other methods of evaluation, she said.

“You’re rarely looking at grades anyway,” she added.

People see the curriculum through many lenses, Josephson said. It is its individualistic spirit that makes its effects so hard to understand and leads to disagreement about its value.

“This is a Swiss cheese of a curriculum,” Josephson said. “And whether you see the cheese or the holes depends on who’s doing the looking.”

Arts & Culture The Brown Daily Herald

AmCiv class studies local Cape Verdeans

By Anita Mathews Staff Writer

Students in Professor Steven Lubar’s AMCV1550: “Methods in Public Humanities” will unveil their collaborative final project –– an exhibit about the community of Cape Verdean immigrants that inhabited the Fox Point region in the 1930s –– on Saturday, May 9 at the John Nicholas Brown center.

The class, which examines the curatorial aspects of public showcases, puts up an exhibit each year. The students voted to create the Cape Verde project through a partnership with Claire AndradeWatkins, a professor of visual and media arts at Emerson College and a visiting scholar at Brown’s Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.

Andrade-Watkins grew up in one of Providence’s tight-knit Cape Verdean communities. The neighborhood, once concentrated in the area around Wickenden Street, has since devolved into smaller pockets around the state. The fragmentation of the neighborhood is attributed to many causes, including the construction of Interstate-95.

The focus of the exhibit, however, is on the “Golden Age” of this Cape Verdean community from the 1930s to 1950s, not the reasons be-

hind its recent splintering.

Andrade-Watkins, whom Dan Lurie ’11, a student in the class, calls “the driving force behind this project,” has been the primary link between students and the families who have since moved from Fox Point to East Providence, South Providence, Cranston and other areas. All the artifacts used in the exhibit were provided by these Cape Verdean community members, a change for Lubar’s course from years past when most pieces necessary for the final exhibit could be gathered from the University’s existing collection.

Lurie, who is part of the project’s publishing team, hopes visitors to the exhibit will gain an understanding about how much the area has changed, evolving from a residential area to an area that caters almost exclusively to shoppers and restaurant-goers.

Fox Point “used to be a community center,” he said. “Now it’s just a place we go on the weekends.”

Lubar echoed Lurie’s sentiments, saying, “Many Brown students would be surprised to learn that 50 years ago it was a very different kind of place. It’s important for students to have an understanding of that local history that disappears too easily.”

Both Lurie and Lubar drew at-

tention to the gentrification of the area and how the restaurants and businesses have taken over spaces which used to house Cape Verdean immigrant families. Utrecht, the art supply store, Lurie pointed out, used to be a hardware store, and a library from that “Golden” era is now an antique store.

Lubar said the port on Narragansett Bay, which used to provide most of the jobs for the working men in the Cape Verdean community, has now almost completely disappeared.

As the students put the final touches on the Fox Point exhibit, Lubar said he hopes it will act as a truthful representation of Fox Point’s Cape Verdean district, becoming as informative a project for visitors as it has been for his students.

“The challenge in an exhibit like this,” said Lubar, “is that it has to be both a useful educational experience for the students who are doing it, but at the same time respectful and interesting to the community that it is about.”

The exhibit, which will run through October, will be on display in the Carriage House Gallery at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage.

Monday, April 20, 2009 | Page 5

Seniors’ home-spun podcast spins its own story

By Rosalind Schonwald Staff Writer

The Ladies Village Improvement Society is the next logical step for the maturing MySpace generation.

With their online podcasts, Rachel Blatt ’09 and Lacy Roberts ’09 aren’t attempting radical moral “Improvement,” but rather are transforming the traditional radio form to fit the do-it-yourself world of open-source Internet platforms. These friendly Internet personalities have charged themselves with weaving together collections of stories, perspectives and happenings in each of their NPResque installments.

“Everyone has a story. It’s our way of improving the world,” Blatt

said, as she and Roberts prepared to record their most recent show. The episode included a section featuring Wag’s Revue, a literary journal recently started by Brown seniors.

The podcasters have made the most of their local resources, often promoting and using the services of Brown alums and local Providencedwellers. Blatt and Roberts reached out to friends at Brown to develop their project. Roberts contacted Emma Price ’09, asking her to put her cartooning skills to use to help make illustrations for lvisradio.org, the official Web site for the podcast.

Michael Fruta ’09 helped with the technical side of Web site design. continued on page 8

Justin Coleman / Herald

Justin Coleman / Herald Justin Coleman / Herald

Living on Wriston Quad can be dingy and unpleasant sometimes, but not on Spring Weekend. Why? Ignore the broken bottles, the beatendown plots of grass and the sticky-sweet smell that seems to be everywhere, and what do you have left? Lady GaGa, blaring from the southern wing of Chapin House. So, Thete, here’s to you, for using your (somewhat unexpected) love of techno remixes to make the lives of your fellow Patriots’ Court residents a little more fabulous.

Katherine Regalado / Herald

It’s hard to produce self-respecting soul about the enslavement of Africans and the genocide perpetrated against Native Americans in the United States. Unless you’re Sharon Jones, in which case you mix together some utterly uninhibited dancing, a killer voice and a communicative impulse so unfettered and sincere that listening to your story becomes everyone’s top priority, no questions asked. Irony would have killed this, so past atrocities were incorporated into a biography written in movement, an ecstatic celebration of the body — feet, knees, hips, arms, neck and head. That doesn’t account for the soul, but never mind — this performance had soul to spare.

The conservative establishment has not been kind to this campus. Just two weeks ago, Rush Limbaugh accused some Brown students of having “spoiled, rotten little skulls full of mush with brains that represent the arid expanse of the Sahara Desert.” And don’t even get us started on Bill O’Reilly. So thank you, Nas, for helping us release years of built-up tension and resentment as we sang along to “Sly Fox” on Friday night.

Trust us, we’ll watch what we’re watchin’. That’s why we have MCM.

spring Justin Coleman / Herald

6

Justin Coleman / Herald

Katherine Regalado / Herald

weekend Justin Coleman / Herald

Justin Coleman / Herald

Katherine Regalado / Herald

Justin Coleman / Herald Justin Coleman / Herald

Leading off with driving performances of “You’ll Find a Way” and “L.E.S. Artistes,” Santigold’s performance was miraculous from the start. Her undefinable music deftly evades labels, but its essential nature is, quite simply, irresistible, as we all learned firsthand on Saturday. Santi White (to use your real name): The jumpsuit made of money was fierce, but perhaps superfluous. Don’t deny it — you are money.

Katherine Regalado / Herald

Justin Coleman / Herald

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. But everyone with half a brain expected Of Montreal to deliver a Boschian fever dream of a performance that would at once perplex, freak out and exhilarate its audience.

Hypersexualized and so completely post-gender binary, they’ve always been one of the Brown-iest of bands around — who else would sing about falling in love with a girl because she could “appreciate Georges Bataille?” And, oh, Benefit Street homeowners? That caterwauling you heard on Saturday — that was hundreds of college students vainly attempting to produce the magnificent, cathedral-worthy chords in “Gronlandic Edit.” Sorry. We’ll send you a fruit basket.

— Ben Hyman Justin Coleman / Herald

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Page 8

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

A rts & C ulture

Monday, April 20, 2009

“I feel really happy and really lucky to have found such an awesome collaborative relationship.” — Lacy Roberts ’09

Ladies Village hits Internet through students’ podcasts continued from page 5 “We’ve gotten a lot of help from people from Brown and RISD. Not just Brown but Providence people, too,” Roberts said.

The story of the Ladies Village Improvement Society actually started far from Providence, in Blatt’s hometown of East Hampton, New York.

“There’s a thrift shop there called the Ladies Village Improvement Society, and all the fancy ladies from Long Island donate stuff there,” said Roberts. “It’s great, and it’s cheap and we just thought it was funny.

We went through a lot of ideas for names and wound up choosing that one.”

The podcasts are largely homespun, despite all the help the hosts have in overall production.

In the self-starting spirit so familiar at Brown — and with the do-ityourself approach of the YouTube crowd — Blatt and Roberts do all of the recording, editing and writing themselves, using various locations on campus as their workshops.

“One of the ways that we’ve made this space our own is we’ve hidden thumbtacks in the walls,” said Roberts during their most recent recording session, as Blatt stuck the three-page script to the wall of a clandestine practice room

in Orwig.

Their most recent podcast, called the “Site Specific Show,” revolved around the theme of spaces — their associations, back stories and what makes them special. This theme is particularly relevant to their transition to post-college life and also to the continued existence of the podcast — the future of which is uncertain without a fixed broadcasting space.

The two don’t yet have plans for life after graduation but dream of moving to the Bay area, living together in a three-bedroom house and continuing to run their podcasts.

The house would have three bedrooms, of course, because one would be reserved as space for a recording studio, Blatt said.

“Me and Rachel work together really, really well,” Roberts added.

“I feel really happy and really lucky to have found such an awesome collaborative relationship. ... We’re graduating in the spring, and we don’t exactly have plans. We’re trying to organize moving, hopefully close together.”

Roberts said the best chance for this podcast to thrive in future years is to attract listenership. “The more people who listen to it, the more people are going to listen to it and the bigger a chance we have of keeping it going.”

SportsMonday The Brown Daily Herald

Strong starts not enough for w. lax

By Dan Alexander Spor ts Staf f Writer

Leading 2-1 at halftime against No. 3 Penn (13-0, 7-0 Ivy) Saturday, the women’s lacrosse team (6-7, 2-3) gave up a huge second half, giving the Quakers a 14-4 win and the Bears their second loss of the week.

In their first game of the week on Tuesday, the Bears took an early 3-2 lead at Quinnipiac (12-2) but began their slide with five minutes left in the first half. They ultimately fell 11-6.

Captain Lauren Vitkus ’09 led the Bears with two goals against Quinnipiac, but couldn’t find opportunities against Penn and she didn’t take a single shot on Saturday.

Vitkus was helped by Jesse Nunn ’09, Kelly Robinson ’09, and Paris Waterman ’11, who each scored a goal in both games.

Quinnipiac 11, Brown 6 The Bears started strong against Quinnipiac, gaining a 2-1 lead 8:49 after the opening draw, but it was the Bobcats who were on top after the final whistle.

Quinnipiac came into the game on a hot streak, having won five consecutive games. They shredded defenses over that stretch, averaging more than 18 goals per game.

Vitkus said Brown’s defense was one of the only strong points in a tough day for the Bears. “We played terribly,” Vitkus said. “But

our defense did play solid.”

The Bears held the Bobcats to fewer goals than any other team since Quinnipiac began its run on March 29.

Quinnipiac scored its second goal at 19:41, but Brown regained a one-goal lead on Vitkus’s first of the afternoon at 23:27. The Bears were not ahead for long, as the Bobcats scored three goals in under three minutes and never looked back.

The Bobcats extended their lead to 7-3 with two goals early in the second half.

The Bears looked like they might stage a comeback when Nunn scored her first goal of the afternoon at 9:18 and Vitkus added her second just over two minutes later, making it a 7-5 game.

Quinnipiac widened the gap by rattling off four consecutive goals in ten minutes to go ahead, 11-5, with less than eight minutes left on the clock.

Waterman scored one more for the Bears, but the final score ended 11-6 in Quinnipiac’s favor.

When asked what Quinnipiac did well, Vitkus paused before saying, “I think they did a good job capitalizing on our mistakes. I don’t know what they did necessarily — I think we sort of beat ourselves.”

Penn 14, Brown 4 The Bears returned to Ivy League play on Saturday when they took on league leader Penn,

which had not lost a league game since 2006.

Penn got off to a slow start in what proved to be its 22nd consecutive Ivy League win.

Robinson put Brown on the scoreboard first when she netted an unassisted goal 10:40 into the game.

The Bears added another goal 3:21 later when Nunn scored her second of the week and 22nd of the season to put Brown up 2-0 on its home turf.

The two teams combined for only 12 shots in the first half, and the scoring was similarly low.

“They like to slow it down, and we were going to slow it down against them, so it was a 2-1 game in the first half — which is ridiculous,” Caldwell said. “They’re used to scoring at will.”

Penn finally got its only first-half goal with less than six minutes remaining in the half, making it 2-1 Brown going into the break.

“We were pretty pumped up,” Vitkus said. “We knew they were going to come out extremely strong in the second half — we heard their coach kind of yelling at them.”

The Quakers exploded in the second half. They scored 3:09 after halftime, tying the game 2-2 and sparking a 13-1 run over the next 21:44.

Penn had possession for most of the second half. The Quakers led the draw control count by only

Monday, April 20, 2009 | Page 9

Justin Coleman / Herald File Photo

The Bears lost to Penn and Quinnipiac last week.

9-7, but Caldwell said the statistics were misleading.

“We won a lot of (draw controls) and lost them within a couple of seconds of gaining possession, so we never actually got on offense,” she said.

Caldwell scored Brown’s lone goal during that stretch with a free position shot at 7:30.

The Quakers’ win completed a 7-0 Ivy League season, making them the Ivy League Champions for the third year in a row.

The Bears will continue their Ivy

League campaign when they head to Princeton, N.J., to face the No. 7 Princeton Tigers (11-2, 5-1) next Saturday. The Tigers have taken nine of their last ten contests, including a 14-4 win over Dartmouth last Saturday. Their lone loss in that stretch was a 10-5 game at Penn.

“You can count on Princeton being extremely cocky and confident always, so I think that we can — I mean I know that we can — really give them a run for their money,” Caldwell said. “But we have to be completely on our game.”

Crew sweeps weekend races

By Andrew Braca Sports Editor

In front of a boisterous home crowd, the men’s crew swept four races from Northeastern on Saturday on the Seekonk River.

“It was a really strong showing by all the boats in the program,” said Mike Snyder ’09. “To sweep a crew like Northeastern shows a lot of depth, and I think it’s a testament to how hard we’ve been working this season.”

Sandwiched between three runaways, the varsity eight battled the Huskies down to the wire before pulling out a win by less than three seconds to win the Dreissigacker Cup for the fourth straight time.

“Northeastern traditionally is a very tough crew,” said Scott Morgan ’10, who was in the sixth seat. “They were able to hang with us and give us a big challenge down the course, but I think that’s the type of race that’s really going to prepare us for the championship season.”

Saturday was a memorable day for the Brown crew program. The men alternated races with the women, who swept Boston University in five contests.

“For both the men and the women to win all the races, that’s something to be proud of,” said men’s Head Coach Paul Cooke ’89. “The strength of the program as a whole was apparent for both squads.”

The afternoon began for the men

with the third varsity four. The Bears pulled away early and kept growing their lead, crossing the line at 6:32.93 — about 12 seconds ahead of the Huskies.

The second varsity eight posted a similarly strong finish, clocking in at 5:36.56, while Northeastern followed at 5:48.94.

The varsity eight faced a tougher challenge. Even though Brown got off to a fast start, the Huskies put up a fight that Cooke said the Bears weathered well.

“They kept their cool,” he said.

“There were a couple times in the middle of the race where it seemed like they had some pressure put on them, but I think they handled it well and pulled away at the end.”

Brown crossed the line at 5:30.04, followed by Northeastern at 5:32.76.

“It was a really challenging race,” said coxswain Rob O’Leary ’09. “They really tested us all the way down the course. We expected them to come out and really put a lot of pressure on us, and it’s exciting that we were able to respond well and pull out a win.”

In the final men’s race of the day, the freshman eight cruised to a comfortable win, crossing the finish line at 5:41.72 — 10.84 seconds ahead of the Huskies — to complete the fourrace sweep.

Zack Gazzaniga ’09 said the strong performances across the board would lead to a good atmosphere when the boats train against each other.

“If every boat comes off a win fired

up, then they’re going to train better next week, which will consequently make every boat faster the following week” in competition, he said. “Having a boathouse filled with guys that are fired up and ready to go really makes a difference.”

After the race, both the men’s and women’s crews headed down to Marston Boathouse for a boisterous cookout. Snyder said the men enjoyed racing with the women.

“They’ve clearly been really successful the past couple of years,” he said. “It’s nice to sort of have them to work with in the boathouse, because we know they’re going fast, and it sort of inspires us, how well they do. It’s fun to get everyone together.”

After winning just two out of five races against Harvard the previous weekend, the clean sweep was an important step forward as the team prepares to face Dartmouth next Saturday in Hanover, N.H., in its penultimate dual race of the season.

“The guys got some wins under their belt, they bounced back after the loss last week to Harvard in the varsity, and I think they’re eager and looking forward to getting better in the coming week,” Cooke said.

Morgan agreed that the coming week of training would be critical.

“We have a big week of training ahead,” he said. “We know we have another tough opponent, so we’re going to get back to the grindstone and really get to it next week and work hard.”

T-minus 4

Editorial & Letters The Brown Daily Herald

Page 10 | Monday, April 20, 2009

e d i to r i a l

Young trustee elections At an upcoming meeting this May, the Brown Corporation will likely approve a proposal to reserve a few spaces in its membership for young alumni trustees, according to recent Herald coverage. Under the proposal, young alums, defined as students who left Brown less than seven years ago, would be appointed by the Corporation Committee on Trustee Vacancies and would serve for three-year terms, as opposed to the usual six-year tenure for trustees.

The purpose of the proposal is to make sure that student perspectives are given more weight in Corporation decisions. This is a worthwhile aim for a body that has drawn criticism for its isolation from student concerns.

But if the Corporation is truly committed to obtaining input about the undergraduate experience, it should use a more representative selection process. To that end, we recommend making young alumni trustee an elected position.

All and only recent alums — again, those who left Brown under seven years ago — should have a vote. Elections might entail narrowing down the pool of candidates to a reasonable number. We suggest letting anyone run in the first election, and, if too many people enter the race, requiring a minimum number of signatures for eligibility in future elections.

Elections for the young alumni position would best advance the Corporation’s goals. The Corporation cannot adequately take account of student opinion — that’s the basis for designating spaces for young alums in the first place — and it will run into the same problem in trying to pick alums that understand student priorities. No individual can represent the student body, but elections would increase the likelihood that the young alumni chosen are those most in touch with campus affairs.

Some might argue that Corporation members are in a better position than recent alums to choose a young alumni trustee with the right qualities. We’re inclined to disagree, but we would encourage the Corporation to provide voters with a description of the trustee’s duties so that they can make a more informed decision.

Elections offer another advantage over appointments. By giving recent alums a bigger stake in University decisions, the Corporation would foster young alumni participation in the Brown community. Increased alumni engagement, and the ensuing dialogue about what makes for a good trustee, will ensure that the Corporation gets the full benefit from its newest position.

Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.

t h e b r o w n d a i ly h e r a l d Editor-in-Chief Steve DeLucia

Managing Editors Michael Bechek Chaz Firestone

editorial Arts & Culture Editor Ben Hyman Hannah Levintova Arts & Culture Editor Features Editor Sophia Li Features Editor Emmy Liss Higher Ed Editor Gaurie Tilak Higher Ed Editor Matthew Varley Metro Editor George Miller Metro Editor Joanna Wohlmuth News Editor Chaz Kelsh News Editor Jenna Stark Sports Editor Benjy Asher Sports Editor Andrew Braca Asst. Sports Editor Alex Mazerov Asst. Sports Editor Katie Wood Graphics & Photos Graphics Editor Chris Jesu Lee Graphics Editor Stephen Lichenstein Eunice Hong Photo Editor Kim Perley Photo Editor Justin Coleman Sports Photo Editor production Kathryn Delaney Copy Desk Chief Seth Motel Copy Desk Chief Marlee Bruning Design Editor Jessica Calihan Design Editor Anna Migliaccio Asst. Design Editor Julien Ouellet Asst. Design Editor Neal Poole Web Editor

Associate Editors Nandini Jayakrishna Franklin Kanin Michael Skocpol

Senior Editors Rachel Arndt Catherine Cullen Scott Lowenstein

Business General Managers Office Manager Shawn Reilly Alexander Hughes Jonathan Spector Directors Ellen DaSilva Sales Director Claire Kiely Sales Director Phil Maynard Sales Director Katie Koh Finance Director Jilyn Chao Asst. Finance Director Managers Local Sales Kelly Wess National Sales Kathy Bui University Sales Alex Carrere Recruiter Sales Christiana Stephenson Credit and Collections Matt Burrows Opinions

Opinions Editor Sarah Rosenthal Editorial Page Board James Shapiro Editorial Page Editor Nick Bakshi Board member Zack Beauchamp Board member Sara Molinaro Board member William Martin Board member Post- magazine Arthur Matuszewski Editor-in-Chief Kelly McKowen Editor-in-Chief

Jessica Calihan, Leor Shtull-Leber, Designers Kathryn Delaney, Miranda Forman, Frederic Lu, Copy Editors Hannah Levintova, Brain Mastroianni, Anne Simons, Night Editors Senior Staff Writers Mitra Anoushiravani, Ellen Cushing, Sydney Ember, Lauren Fedor, Nicole Friedman, Britta Greene, Sarah Husk, Brian Mastroianni, Hannah Moser, Ben Schreckinger, Caroline Sedano, Melissa Shube, Anne Simons, Sara Sunshine Staff Writers Zunaira Choudhary, Chris Duffy, Nicole Dungca, Juliana Friend, Cameron Lee, Kelly Mallahan, Christian Martell, Heeyoung Min, Seth Motel, Jyotsna Mullur, Lauren Pischel, Leslie Primack, Anne Speyer, Alexandra Ulmer, Kyla Wilkes Sports Staff Writers Nicole Stock Senior Business Associates Max Barrows, Jackie Goldman, Margaret Watson, Ben Xiong Business Associates Diahndra Burman, Stassia Chyzhykova, Caroline Dean, Marco deLeon, Katherine Galvin, Bonnie Kim, Maura Lynch, Cathy Li, Allen McGonagill, Liana Nisimova, Thanases Plestis, Agathe Roncey, Corey Schwartz, William Schweitzer, Kenneth So, Evan Sumortin, Haydar Taygun, Anshu Vaish, Webber Xu, Lyndse Yess Design Staff Katerina Dalavurak, Gili Kliger, Jessica Kirschner, Joanna Lee, Maxwell Rosero, Leor Shtull-Leber, John Walsh, Kate Wilson, Qian Yin Photo Staff Qidong Chen, Janine Cheng, Alex DePaoli, Frederic Lu, Quinn Savit, Min Wu Copy Editors Sara Chimene-Weiss, Sydney Ember, Lauren Fedor, Miranda Forman, Casey Gaham, Anna Jouravleva, Geoffrey Kyi, Frederic Lu, Jordan Mainzer, Kelly Mallahan, Madeleine Rosenberg Web Developers Jihan Chao

franny choi

l e t t e r to t h e e d i to r s

Bring students to the Corporation To the Editor: While the Corporation would likely benefit from the addition of younger members, it is precipitate to set any demographic requirements for candidates. The sole criterion for membership should be the likelihood that a candidate will contribute to the effectiveness of the Corporation. Diversity will occur naturally with such a standard. Women and other minority members became an important part of the Corporation because they had something to offer. It would be demeaning and counterproductive to mandate an “African American” position or “Female Hispanic” position — the same logic should apply to age.

I would like to propose an alternative to the ‘young alum’ position on the committee. Perhaps UCS could internally elect a student to become the “Corporation

Liaison.” Not just anybody should be considered — the liaison must be a general body member (meaning he or she must attend two UCS meetings and collect 150 signatures). The liaison could try to coordinate more student and corporation interaction. He or she should lobby to have corporation members come to UCS meetings and for students to attend Corporation dinners; the liaison could pass along the concerns of the student body to Corporation members and foster communication and transparency in the often arcane corporation. What a sweet idea ... I don’t know why we don’t have a Corporation Liaison already.

Will Wray ’10 April 15

HEI misrepresented To the Editor: Members of the Student Labor Alliance appreciate The Herald’s coverage of our presentation Tuesday to the BUCC. However, we would like to clarify a few facts.

HEI Hospitality is NOT a union, as the article mistakenly states. HEI is a hotel management company which has taken steps to discourage its workers from forming a union and ignored its employees’ request at several of its properties to choose whether or not to join a union in an environment free from fear and intimidation.

It is because of this behavior that we have called on Brown to: Write a letter to HEI demanding that the company respect workers’ requests for a fair process to decide

whether to form a union.

Make a public statement calling upon HEI to respect workers’ request for a neutrality agreement and stating that the university will not fund HEI until they do so.

Encourage its peer institutions to do the same, as most of HEI’s capital comes from prestigious University investments like our own.

Lily Axelrod ‘09 Andrea Dillon ’11 Lenora Knowles ’11 Jesse Strecker ’10 Dani Martinez ’10 Becky Fish ’09 Members of the Student Labor Alliance April 16

C O R R E C T I O N S P olicy The Brown Daily Herald is committed to providing the Brown University community with the most accurate information possible. Corrections may be submitted up to seven calendar days after publication.

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Opinions The Brown Daily Herald

Monday, April 20, 2009 | Page 11

Think, before you (invite someone to) speak Nick Werle Opinions Columnist

When John Yoo, the author of the Bush Administration’s infamous “torture memos,” came to Brown in February, he was welcomed as an honored guest. Yoo, who served as an attorney in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2001 to 2003, came to campus in order to debate the existence of universal human rights with Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA. As anticipated, there were some protesters on the Main Green as students filed into Salomon 101 for the talk, but fewer than many people expected. By most accounts, the event, sponsored by the Political Theory Project’s Janus Forum lecture series, was a success.

I guess the University got its money’s worth. As is customary, the Political Theory Project paid appearance fees to both speakers. Though he could not recall the exact amount spent to bring Yoo to campus, Associate Professor of Political Science and Political Theory Project Director John Tomasi told me his group usually pays Janus speakers about $5,000.

The image of John Yoo, a man currently unable to legally enter Spain due to a pending war crimes investigation, cashing a Brown University check disgusts me. I want to be clear: It’s not that I object to Yoo’s mere presence on campus, though Brown did le-

gitimize him by inviting him to the debate; it’s that I object to the Political Theory Project paying him with University money. The fact that Brown paid a man who is directly responsible for some of the most morally repugnant actions in our nation’s history does not, I think, reflect well on our community.

Of course, the issue is complex. It’s both healthy and necessary for the University to host controversial people airing unwelcome opinions on contentious issues. There are compelling reasons to hear Yoo out, and it

litical discourse, even though I disagree with their positions.

And though I’m not terribly excited about helping fund Santorum’s family vacations, I don’t have the same moral objections to his lecture that I do in the case of Yoo. Like all moral issues, it’s difficult to establish a clear and universally applicable standard for whom it’s acceptable to pay to speak on campus.

Yet I feel strongly that wherever one might choose to draw that line, Yoo is on the far side of it. Torture is a serious matter;

The image of John Yoo, a man currently unable to legally enter Spain due to a pending war crimes investigation, cashing a Brown University check disgusts me. is crucial that the nation honestly come to terms with his reprehensible actions. As a largely progressive institution with a politically aware student body, Brown is well-suited to host such a debate.

More broadly, it’s important to bring speakers whose positions conflict with the majority opinion on campus. A number of influential conservatives have visited Brown in the last few years including Former Penn.

Senator Rick Santorum, Former Gov. Mike Huckabee, Bjorn Lomborg and Former UN Ambassador John Bolton. I think their lectures were valuable additions to campus po-

American interrogation policy was used to justify and then cover up flagrant abuses of human rights that violated both international and domestic law. And through it all Yoo was neither an innocent bystander nor an academic writing journal articles in support of someone else’s policy. He wasn’t even a legislator debating this from a distance. The legal framework for torture was written on this man’s desk. He is not complicit. He is responsible.

So what exactly was Brown paying for?

The Political Theory Project invited Yoo to speak because the Janus Forum steering

committee, which is composed of student representatives from various campus political groups, must have believed that he could best advocate for the continued use of “enhanced interrogation.” Yoo is profiting off his experience in the OLC, which is unique precisely because he created these policies allowing torture. Had he been something other than a rubber stamp for the vice president’s office, he certainly wouldn’t be invited to speak about human rights. Maybe that’s why we haven’t seen Jack Goldsmith on campus.

By virtue of its privileged position in our campus’ political discourse, the Political Theory Project must be more reflective when choosing whom to invite. Guided by an ambition to invigorate campus discourse and backed by millions of dollars from rightleaning think tanks (including the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship) and wealthy individuals (led by the University’s Chancellor, Thomas Tisch ’76), the Janus Forum will continue to host some of Brown’s most controversial speakers. Together, the Janus Forum Steering Committee and Tomasi should be careful to think about how they use their substantial resources to avoid forking over large amounts of cash to people who are objectionable not for their views or voices, but for their actions.

Nick Werle ’10 is a physics and modern critical philosophy concentrator from Port Washington, New York.

A Day On College Hill: A campus-wide responsibility!

Anthony Staehelin Opinions Columnist Tomorrow afternoon, hundreds of prospective students will arrive on campus to register for A Day On College Hill 2009. As most Brown students know, every April about 600 admitted students and a comparable number of parents pile onto campus for what has become Brown University’s biggest matriculation event of the year. ADOCH is a twoday/one-night program designed to give admitted students a preview of Brown University and hopefully influence their college decision.

Though ADOCH is extremely important for the admitted students, it is even more critical for the University. One of the key features of the Brown community is our vibrant, engaged, curious and caring student body. Therefore, year after year, continuing to attract classes filled with such amazing students is essential for our school’s success.

After months of reading essays and recommendation letters, comparing GPAs and SATs and learning about each applicant’s extracurricular activities, the Admission Office has selected the best and brightest students who are most compatible with Brown and has granted them admission.

As these are indeed the best students in

the world, most of them have also been admitted to other leading colleges and universities. They are currently making the difficult decisions that many of us had to make only a few years ago: Harvard-Brown? StanfordBrown? Yale-Brown? ADOCH is the unique opportunity to give admitted students the answer to those questions.

Thankfully, many Brown students realize how important ADOCH is. Although organized under the supervision of the Admissions Office, ADOCH is primarily a student-

students.

A second change to the program this year is a heightened focus on the parents of admitted students. As parents are instrumental in the college process and in helping their child decide where to matriculate, the ADOCH Committee has created new events for them. For example, this year, current Brown parents will greet prospective students’ parents at the parent welcome event.

Parents have just as many questions as their children about life at Brown — rightfully so,

Although the ADOCH Committee has done everything in its power to ensure a great ADOCH, ultimately the event’s success is up to all of us, as members of the Brown community. run program. About 20 students have been working since September, planning this event from start to finish. They have been working with faculty, student leaders and many of Brown’s offices to ensure that every aspect of ADOCH is a success.

With the goal of constantly improving the program, the ADOCH Committee is implementing a few innovative changes this year.

One of these improvements is increasing the efforts to welcome students on the first day (tomorrow!). A large welcome barbecue will kick off ADOCH 2009 and give admitted students the opportunity to meet their future classmates as well as current Brown

given tuition costs — and this is a tremendous step toward assuaging those concerns.

So what does any of this have to do with you? The goal of this column is twofold.

First, it is an attempt to alert the campus that ADOCH is happening tomorrow. For reasons I still don’t understand, over the last few years the Admission Office has been unable to obtain permission to send a campuswide e-mail announcing ADOCH and has limited their announcement to an entry in Brown Morning Mail. (I know the head coordinators are still pushing for an e-mail announcement this year, and I hope they are successful.) The second goal of this column

is to explain, as a past ADOCH Coordinator, how important campus-wide involvement is.

Although the ADOCH Committee has done everything in its power to ensure a great ADOCH, ultimately the event’s success is up to all of us, as members of the Brown community. The responsibility is on all faculty, students and staff members to open our campus to the admitted students and welcome them to Brown. It is our responsibility to help them have an amazing time here and convince them that Brown is the best place to get an undergraduate education. Campuswide involvement is even more necessary, considering the Admissions Office decision last year to only invite “regular decision” students. Although this measure was necessary, it means that we can no longer count on all the “early decision” students, who are committed to Brown, to help convince their fellow admitted students to enroll.

We all care deeply about Brown University and we must therefore play an active role in ensuring the students that were chosen by our Admission Office for their achievements and their potential value to Brown, actually end up enrolling here! So answer their questions, tell them why you love Brown and let’s get an amazing Class of 2013!

Anthony Staehelin ’10 is the current vicepresident of the Bruin Club and a past ADOCH Coordinator. He can be reached at Anthony_Staehelin@brown.edu

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Today, April 20

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2 PM — A Latin American Response to the Crisis, Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute

4 PM — William Miles ­— My African Horse Problem, Watson Institute Conference Room

7:30 PM — Fifth Annual Interlandi Lecture on Contemplative Studies with Donald Rothberg, Salomon 001

7 PM — An Evening of Javanese Music, Grant Recital Hall

Cabernet Voltaire | Abe Pressman

menu Sharpe Refectory

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

Lunch — Popcorn Chicken with Dipping Sauces, Cheese Raviolis with Sauce, Italian Vegetable Saute

Lunch — Fried Clam Roll, Manicotti with Tomato Basil Cream Sauce, Fresh Sliced Carrots

Dinner — Pirate Ship Pork Loin, Lemon Rice, Brown Rice Garden Casserole, Belgian carrots

Dinner — Roasted Honey Chili Chicken, Vegan Vegetable and Tempeh Saute, Fresh Vegetable Melange

RELEASE DATE– Monday, April 20, 2009

Enigma Twist | Dustin Foley

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

ACROSS 1 Good-sized piece of meat 5 Play-of-color gem 9 To the left, at sea 14 Volcanic output 15 White House staffer 16 Medium for FDR’s fireside chats 17 Sign of things to come 18 Start of many a corny joke 20 O’Hara’s estate 21 Flavorful 22 Canadian tribe 23 Neighbor of Swe. 25 Scat singer Fitzgerald 27 Start of a trucker’s communication 34 Crude in a gusher 35 Sea World performer 36 Heredity units 38 “Metamorphoses” poet 40 Like milk on the floor 43 Outside, as a chance 44 Knot again 46 Classic grape soda 48 “Fourscore and seven years __ ...”

49 Start of a sound man’s mike check 53 Cancún cash 54 Pampering place 55 Manuscript encl.

58 Remove by percolation 61 Kept from swelling 65 Start of a newsboy’s cry 67 City near Sacramento 68 Jewelry fastener 69 High-performance Camaro 70 Finished 71 Church belief 72 Bulletin board sticker 73 Monthly expense

DOWN 1 Opening for a coin 2 Tibet’s Dalai __ 3 State with conviction 4 Fruit high in potassium 5 Acorn producers 6 __ colada 7 Big fusses 8 Hannibal the Cannibal 9 Genesis craft 10 Breakfast stack 11 Olfactory reception 12 Pilaf grain 13 Casino gratuity 19 NASCAR’s Petty or Busch 24 Gives a thumbs-up 26 Fall behind 27 One lacking manners 28 Fastener for Rosie 29 Upper crust 30 Music genre in the ’hood 31 Jewelry in the ’hood 32 China’s Zhou __ 33 King’s tenure

37 Unhealthful skyline obscurer 39 Scatter 41 Give permission 42 2007 William P. Young Christian-themed best-seller 45 Summer in France 47 AOL, for one 50 Cruise ship stop 51 “You can’t get out this way” sign

52 One whose job is fitting?

55 Religious offshoot 56 Wheel shaft 57 Ollie’s sidekick 59 Gillette razor 60 Gator’s cousin 62 Sheltered inlet 63 Garden site in Genesis 64 Malicious gossip 66 Suitable

The One About Zombies | Kevin Grubb

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