Thursday, October 8, 2009

Daily Herald the Brown

vol. cxliv, no. 81 | Thursday, October 8, 2009 | Serving the community daily since 1891

Summer scholarship attracts less interest in second year

By Emily Kirkland Contributing Writer

As it enters its second year, the International Scholars Program is in an unexpected position: It has more scholarships to offer and fewer applicants vying for them.

The program hopes to send 20 Brown students — six more than last year — abroad this summer for internships, public service projects and academic research. The deadline for applications this year was Oct. 5.

Last year, more than 40 students applied for 10 spots, said Vasuki Nesiah, director of international affairs. Impressed by the number of promising projects, the Office of International Affairs scrambled to find the funds necessary to sponsor additional scholars. In the end, 14 students participated, traveling to sites including rural Kenya, coastal Mexico and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

The selected students received $5,000 to cover the cost of international travel, work and living expenses, making the program one of the most

generous fellowships on campus.

Students who participated last summer said they were pleased with the scholarship.

“We were a happy bunch,” said Elizabeth Adler ’11, who traveled last summer to Nepal to work with an nongovernmental organizations focused on women’s health.

This year, the Office of International Affairs doubled the original budget of the project, raising the total number of fellowships to 20, Nesiah said.

But the number of applicants did not rise in accordance with the increased budget, said Hayden Reiss, project coordinator and head of logistics at the office of international affairs. In fact, the applicant pool shrunk to about 30.

Those in charge of the scholarship could not explain the decline in applicants. Feedback from the scholars who traveled abroad was positive, Nesiah said, adding that the only major change to the program is the addition of peer mentoring — in which previous recipients will be asked to continued on page 3

specia l d e l i v er y

Nicholas Sinnott-Armstrong / Herald

Members of the Student Labor Alliance hand-delivered a petition with 1,155 signatures to President Ruth Simmons Wednesday, which opposed proposed changes to Dining Services workers’ health-care plans. Simmons told Jesse Strucker ’10 (left) she was “concerned about all employees” and would read the petition.

Grants give local ‘knowledge economy’ a boost

By Dana Teppert Staf f Writer

This fall, the local “knowledge economy” will get another boost.

The Innovation Providence Implementation Council announced recently that it will be awarding $100,000 in grant funding to bolster the local knowledge-based economy.

The term “knowledge economy” refers to “economic activity

that is based on human capital, on ideas,” said Richard Spies, executive vice president for planning and senior adviser to President Ruth Simmons. Spies is also the vice chair of the Innovation Providence council.

“It’s businesses, research enterprises, educational activities that center around the creation and dissemination of ideas, with a particular interest in the ways those ideas create commercial

activity,” he said.

The “knowledge economy initiative” was created in 2007 to develop the health care, technology, research and design and alternative energy sectors of the local economy.

As the state continues to experience economic troubles, the knowledge economy initiative aims to unleash and commercialize the talent of the region, create jobs and wealth and increase the local tax

base, said Janet Raymond, senior vice president of economic development at the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce.

The council is currently accepting proposals for projects that will grow and strengthen the regional knowledge economy sectors.

Grants of $10,000 to $25,000 will be awarded to individual projects.

The funding comes from the continued on page 6

Fate brings writer from College Hill to Concord

By Sara Luxenberg Contributing Writer

inside

Julia Kim / Herald Susan Cheever ’65 spoke about her journey from College Hill to literary non-fiction.

News......1-4 Metro.....5-6 Sports.....7-8 Editorial...10 Opinion....11 Today........12

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In April of 1843, Sophia Hawthorne scratched the phrase “Man’s accidents are God’s purposes” into a window of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Concord, Mass. home, which frequently hosted Hawthorne, her writer husband Nathaniel, Henry David Thoreau and Louisa May Alcott.

Writer Susan Cheever ’65, the Concord group’s biographer, told a nearly full Smith-Buonanno 106 Wednesday night how she has come to embody the phrase, re-

Students draw lessons from graphic novels

By Gaurie Tilak Staff Writer

Tired of reading Marx and Freud?

Getting hand cramps from drawing benzene rings? This semester, nine students in a Group Independent Study Project on graphic novels are reading “Calvin and Hobbes” for class instead — and drawing their own multimedia masterpieces.

FEATURE

counting her meandering path from College Hill to a distinguished career as a novelist, biographer and memoirist.

In telling her story, she shared her beliefs about the importance of her craft, ethics and the writing process.

Cheever’s work spans a wide range of subjects, including her late father (author John Cheever), the “genius cluster” of the great Concord authors and Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson.

After joking that the room

Emma Buck ’11 first had the idea for the GISP, “Exposing the Invisible Art: Creating Graphic Novels,” after taking AMCV 1611V: “Color Me Cool: A Survey of Contemporary Graphic Novels.”

Buck said she was excited by how much possibility there was in the interplay between text and images and wanted to study the art of graphic novels in greater depth — as did eight other students, who are all taking the course S/NC. Buck got together a group of interested students in a variety of disciplines, including literary arts and computational biology, to create a GISP that forces participants to look

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Metro, 5

Sports, 7

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judgment day Obama nominates alum for U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit

unbeaten roll Men’s soccer records a tie and a win to keep its record blemishless

highlights disability, gets high and adores us some meaty threesomes all fierce-like

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“You try a lot of things that you normally wouldn’t.”

— Nikolos Gonzales ’12, on GISP experimentation

Brunonia goes online: A physician’s love for writing, theology iTunes page launches

By Lindor Qunaj Contributing Writer

By KAte Monks Contributing Writer

There’s a new way to get a taste of Brown that doesn’t involve setting foot in Providence.

After a pilot period starting in May, Brown plans to launch its own page on iTunes U this week, joining hundreds of other colleges that already post free audio and video of lectures, student performances and virtual campus tours online.

Though Brown-specific content has already been available on Apple, Inc.’s media application by clicking through a link on Brown’s Web site, the official launch sometime at the end of this week will make Brown’s page searchable, and thus available to a wider audience.

Though the program is only now exiting the pilot phase, plenty of Brown students and staff have taken advantage of the new mediasharing technology.

Students in a Brazilian literature class are using the site to record themselves reciting poetry in Portuguese. The Attitude Dance Company has posted videos of some of its performances. The Watson Institute for International Studies has uploaded nearly 300 educational podcasts about global issues targeted at high school students.

Even President Ruth Simmons has uploaded a video of her address at this year’s Convocation.

Over 200,000 audio and video files are available for free download from the site’s contributing

universities, including Yale, the University of Oxford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

And universities aren’t the only ones jumping on board. The site includes institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress.

Scott Turner, the University’s director of Web communications, has played a key role in rolling out iTunes U at Brown. “This is a public conveyance in imagery and sound of life across the Brown community,” he said.

Some interested faculty members have already been trained to develop and post content for iTunes, he added.

More content, available next week, should be added to the site soon in preparation for the launch, Turner said.

Though no full courses are offered online just yet ­(Yale, for example, has 13)­, Turner said full online classes “could happen.”

“We’re certainly open to the idea,” he said.

Natalia Nazarewicz ’11, who works as a social media assistant with Turner and has worked on Brown’s iTunes U project, said she hopes that publicity and word of mouth will help the site’s content to grow.

“Hopefully when students see there’s this place for them to put up content, they’ll be contributing more to it,” she said.

Until the official launch, students can access Brown’s iTunes U content at brown.edu/web/ itunes.

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Editorial Phone: 401.351.3372 | Business Phone: 401.351.3260 Stephen DeLucia, President Michael Bechek, Vice President

“Chris Adrian tries things.”

With this simple statement, Professor of Medicine Michael Stein encapsulated the achievements of the physician, author and student of theology, who spoke to a half-full MacMillan 117 Wednesday about the intersection of medicine, literature and religion.

A graduate of Eastern Virginia Medical School and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Adrian spent most of his talk describing how he discovered the confluence of the three distinct fields.

He told the stor y of Cindy, a 21-year-old patient he met during his pediatric internship in 2001. Cindy, a life-long sufferer of “short gut syndrome,” frequently visited the hospital where Adrian interned, and eventually became addicted to the drug Benadryl. To wean her off the medicine, Adrian gradually reduced her dosage until it was almost zero, finally telling her she was no longer dependent on it.

Her reaction to the news wasn’t one of gratitude. Instead, she was angry at being tricked.

This incident served as the inspiration for his short story “A Child’s Book of Sickness and Death,” told from Cindy’s point of view.

“What I came away with was a hyperawareness of trust, but also a great deal of guilt,” Adrian said at the lecture. “I was writing a novel at the time, but it drifted into this story without (my) explicitly intending to write about it.”

Such experiences led Adrian to consider the interplay between his interests in writing and medicine with religion, he said. Along with his writing, he is attending the Harvard Divinity School and completing a pediatric oncology fellowship in San Francisco.

Throughout his career, Adrian has continued to write, having his fiction featured in magazines such as The Paris Review and The New Yorker.

Ultimately, Adrian said his goal is still to end up as an oncologist who has had ministerial and pastoral care training. Asked by a woman who introduced herself as a teacher how divinity school will affect his position as a doctor, Adrian said he was “a little afraid” of what being a “physician-chaplain” will mean. He

expressed uncertainty about how patients would perceive a doctor they knew to have a particular religious affiliation.

“It is hard to reconcile what I see as a physician and what I see in school,” he said. “It’s not impossible to reconcile the two but I’ve had trouble finding that place for myself.”

Asked by another audience member how he was able to balance his medical responsibilities with his writing and other ventures, Adrian explained that during his residency he frequently wrote after his on-call hours.

“I’d fall asleep on the keyboard and wake up with pages and pages of unintelligible face-on-keyboard text,” he said. Though he often had time off during which he could write, most of his progress was made between his busy work hours “when writing is the mildly forbidden thing.”

Adrian spoke as part of the 17th annual Harriet W. Sheridan Literature and Medicine Lecture, which began in 1993 in honor of Sheridan, a late dean and professor of English who believed that literature and writing were critical to the training of physicians.

GISP gets graphic for nine students continued from page 1 beyond their individual strengths.

Creating graphic novels is a highly collaborative art, said course adviser Rick Benjamin. Benjamin, a visiting lecturer in literary arts, is a trained poet who incorporates other types of art into his work. The creation of a professional graphic novel requires four or five different types of specialists, he said.

“There are some people who will

just do line drawings and others that will just do coloring or lettering.”

Likewise, all of the course’s projects are collaborative — but every student works on every aspect of creating comics.

“You try a lot of things that you normally wouldn’t,” said Nikolos Gonzales ’12, a student in the GISP. Even skilled artists experiment with alternative media such as photography, he said. “It allowed for growth even in really good artists,”

he said.

The course structure is based on the book “Making Comics” by Scott McCloud, Buck said. Each week, students lead a discussion about a different chapter of McCloud’s book, with topics including text, paneling and images. After the discussion, students work on projects related to the material they covered in the book, she said. To accompany the chapter on text, for example, students worked on creating two comics telling the same story — one using text and the other using only images, Buck said.

In addition to McCloud’s book, the class is studying a variety of comics, from “Blankets,” by Craig Thompson, to Frank Miller’s “Sin City,” Gonzales said.

For the final project, which is the course’s only formal assessment, students will begin to create their own graphic novels in small groups, Benjamin said. “It’s not possible to create a complete graphic novel in a semester,” he said, but by the end of the semester students will be able to present a graphic novel in progress.

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“There were nice free dinners at the Faculty Club” — Elizabeth Adler ’11, on the International Scholars Program

Blog to promote social innovation

By Claire Peracchio Contributing Writer

The Swearer Center’s Social Innovation Initiative is creating a new blog aimed at promoting social innovation and entrepreneurship at Brown.

Although students and others have already written online material describing their individual experiences and sharing tips, the improved version will feature a new crop of student authors who research and write about salient social innovation issues in the University community and the world at large.

Charlie Harding ’09.5, whose past blogging experience informed his idea for the new blog, said students who want to become engaged should simply start writing.

“The best way to get involved is to read a lot and to write a lot,” he said. “The goals of the blog are to find a way to engage new students ... and to reach out and expand the dialogue beyond the Brown community.”

Student bloggers will be divided into groups supervised by an editor, with each team focusing on a particular issue of importance.

Topics under consideration include global health, food security and criminal justice. The blog’s found-

ers envision a streamlined format in which Internet users can click on each of these “channels” in order to explore a particular issue.

Yet the objective of the blog is not only to aggregate information, but also to educate students to become leaders in these areas.

Alan Harlam, the Swearer Center’s social entrepreneurship director, said the blog’s ultimate goal was “knowledge creation.”

“By becoming well-versed in a topic such as global health, students can become resources to other students interested in getting involved in global health — and even to global health professionals,” he said.

The blog’s founders hope to capitalize on Brown’s alumni network and faculty, and want to provide a support system for the Innovation Initiative’s current programming as well as for ventures started by Brown alums. The blog is also soliciting faculty contributions.

Ross Cheit, an associate professor of political science, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald that he has already expressed interest in sharing his insights related to criminal justice, good government and food politics on the blog.

Harding said the blog organizers were also interested in teaming

up with some of the existing environmental and social innovation groups on campus. Adam Maynard ’11, who writes his own blog about sustainability issues and will contribute to the new social innovation blog, said he was looking into integrating some of his content with an existing blog run by emPOWER, a student group that advocates for environmental awareness on campus.

Prior to its official launch, the blog will sponsor a 12-part guest blogging series on change.org, a Web site that features writing in support of progressive causes.

The blog’s leaders are also hoping to share their ideas with other universities and leaders in the social innovation field. This past weekend, Harding and Harlam traveled to a conference at Babson College sponsored by Ashoka, a leading social entrepreneurship organization.

Harding said that during his presentation about Brown’s Social Innovation Initiative at the conference, he articulated a weighty role for the blog.

“I envision a dynamic community of writers sharing with their own communities,” Harding explained.

“Hopefully this will be a way to incubate and create a measurable impact at Brown and beyond.”

UCS proposal to grant fundraising groups University recognition By suzannah weiss Senior Staf f Writer

A new categorization may soon be available to student groups whose main goal is to raise money for off-campus organizations.

If a proposal before the Undergraduate Council of Students passes, groups will be eligible for a new designation, known as Category S for “service group,” which would include all the benefits accorded to other student groups with the exception of access to student funds.

Currently, only student groups whose funds are spent on activities directly benefiting the student body can be recognized by UCS. The change would not allow service groups to access student activities money, but would give them

most other conveniences enjoyed by officially recognized groups, including an account with the Student Activities Office, the right to reserve room space through the Scheduling Office, and permission to include “Brown” in the group’s name.

The only difference, according to UCS Student Activities Chair Brady Wyrtzen ’11, is that Categor y S groups would not have the privilege of requesting a $100 subsidy twice each year.

Still, Wyrtzen said, “A lot of groups that do fund-raising also play a big role in activism and awareness” and consequently have gained approval as Category I, II or III organizations recognized by the University.

The proposal was discussed at a weekly meeting of the council last

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night, and the UCS general body will vote on the code changes at its meeting next Wednesday.

Until now, Wyrtzen said at the meeting, the SAC has denied Categor y I status to groups whose purpose is primarily to raise money because the student activities fund, which comes out of students’ pockets, “is meant to be spent for students on campus and not just to be filtered through off-campus organizations.”

Category S groups would not be eligible to gain Category II or III status, the greater designations offered by UCS, according to the proposal.

“There have been groups that came in and wanted to be categorized, and we couldn’t,” Wyrtzen said. “We want to provide support for them.”

Applications decline for summer grants continued from page 1 offer advice and support to this year’s participants.

Nesiah said she wanted to establish “some role” in this year’s program for previous participants.

But with the program still in its infancy, the expectations for peer mentors remain undefined.

“It’s pretty disorganized right now,” Adler said, while other former scholars were unaware of the existence of the peer mentoring program.

Although Brown offers several other fellowships for international work, the International Scholars Program is unusual for its emphasis on building relationships between its participants, Nesiah said, adding that the peer mentoring program is only one example of this effort. Students who receive funding are also expected to attend monthly dinner seminars focused on relevant issues.

Steven Daniels ’10, who traveled to rural Kenya to work on an engineer-

ing project, said the meetings were “really interesting.”

“I was exposed to a lot of different disciplines,” he said.

Adler said the seminars were not as focused as she might have liked.

“It would have been more effective to engage our individual projects a little more,” she said.

The meetings’ content for the coming year is likely to change, Nesiah said. “Nothing is set in stone.”

The program also involves faculty mentors who advise scholars on their summer plans and help students create a capstone project when they return to Brown.

The faculty mentoring program received positive reviews from the scholars.

“We have a very good relationship,” Daniels said of his mentor.

For Adler, a different element of the fellowship was what really stood out.

“There were nice free dinners at the Faculty Club,” she said.

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“Our writing is like our DNA.” — Writer Susan Cheever ’65

Cheever outlines perils, pleasure of non-fiction writing continued from page 1 in which she stood used to be a women’s gymnasium that held many unpleasant memories for her, Cheever explained the ethos of her profession.

“Writing is not what you do in your spare time,” she said. “Writing is what you do, and everything else is spare time.”

Cheever was the first lecturer in

the four-part “Great Brown Nonfiction Writers Lecture Series,” run by the Nonfiction Writing Program in the Department of English. Since 2005, the Program, previously known as the Expository Writing Program, has brought four lecturers to campus every other year to “represent all the forms” taught in the program, said Elizabeth Taylor MA’84 PhD’89, a senior lecturer in English who organized Wednesday

night’s event. Past lecturers have included writers of science narratives, political memoirs and lyric essays.

This year, Cheever kicked off the series with her lecture, “The Art of Literary Memoir and Biography.”

Cheever brought up the notion of fateful accidents again in discussing her most recent work, “American Bloomsbury.” A visit to Concord in her early teens was the first trip she remembered taking with her father, and she would later encounter the Concord group of writers again when she studied transcendental literature as an American civilization concentrator at Brown. She was told that the great work of this era was produced “in five years,” and her subsequent research revealed to her that it was also “written in three houses.”

Though much had been written about authors such as Thoreau and Emerson, she said “no one had put the women in.”

In what she considered a fateful action after a number of chance encounters, Cheever decided she “would write the gossip version of transcendentalism,” she said.

Her audience included students, faculty and members of the greater Rhode Island community, from a wide range of writing backgrounds.

Matt Weinstock ’10, a literary arts concentrator considering biography

as a career, said he “thought it was a deeply satisfying lecture.” He questioned Cheever about the “wooing process” a biographer uses to get people to let her write about them.

The question evoked stories from Cheever of biographers approaching her and her family to write about her famous father, John Cheever.

As a writer who has been on both sides of the biographer’s process, “she has a unique perspective,” Weinstock said.

The lengthy question period elicited more details about Cheever’s writing process and the surrounding ethical issues.

Asked how she decided what to include in her work, Cheever explained that in writing memoirs, she first decided on a message and then chose details “that illustrated the point.”

“What actually happens is of no importance,” she said. “It’s all an illustration for what you’re trying to get across.”

The message of her current work, a biography of Alcott, is about being “a woman in this world.”

While the message and the tone of her writing change with each piece, Cheever emphasized the “embedded” nature of one’s own writing style.

“Our writing is like our DNA,” she said. “Whether it’s good or bad, it’s ours, in a way ver y few

things are.”

Asked how liberal she has been in what she includes in her books, Cheever said, “I’ve become more reckless with my own story. … If I can’t tell these stories now, when will I be able to tell them?”

She added, “I’ve become less reckless with other people’s feelings, especially my children.”

Cheever’s comments about the ethics of the biographer and memoirist reached a climax when an audience member said one of her students wanted to publish a memoir as fiction to avoid backlash from the people about whom she wrote. When the audience member asked, “What would you say to her?”

Cheever immediately said she’d respond, “You’re crazy.”

“I feel quite strongly that fiction is not the right way to defend yourself … against the problem of hurting people’s feelings,” Cheever said, adding that she would urge the young writer to “have the courage to tell (her) story.”

This answer coincided with many of the themes of Cheever’s lecture.

She urged her audience to ignore critics’ claims that the memoirist is “self-indulgent” and society’s claim that writing is just a hobby.

“Nothing is more important than being a writer,” she said. “I think the memoir is the novel of the 21st century.”

Metro The Brown Daily Herald

metro in brief

Brown alumna tapped for U.S. Court of Appeals President Obama nominated Justice O. Rogeriee Thompson ’73 to sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit this week. The nomination is awaiting a vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee before it goes to the full Senate for confirmation.

“This is a great day for the United States justice system and a proud day for Rhode Island,” Rhode Island senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, both Democrats, said in a joint news release after the nomination. “Justice Thompson is an exceptional public servant with a profound respect for the rule of law.”

After graduating from Brown — she came to Rhode Island from South Carolina to attend Pembroke College before it merged with Brown in 1971 — Thompson attended the Boston University School of Law, where she obtained a law degree in 1976. She was the first black woman to serve on the Rhode Island Superior Court when she took the bench in 1977, and in 1988 she became the first black woman to serve on the Rhode Island District Court.

Thompson served as a trustee on the Corporation, Brown’s highest governing body, from 1999 to 2005.

If confirmed by the Senate, Thompson will be the first black judge and only the second woman to serve on the First Circuit appeals court, according to a Providence Journal article on Wednesday.

— Sydney Ember

“A strong public option is an essential component to keeping costs down.” — R.I. Rep. Patrick Kennedy on health care reform Thursday, October 8, 2009 | Page 5

State officials split on health care reform

By Anne Speyer Senior Staff Writer

The nationwide debate over health care reform is also contentious in Rhode Island, where a 12.6 percent unemployment rate and an already-strained state budget make questions over health insurance a crucial subject for many elected officials.

Democrats Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Patrick Kennedy, have been vocal in their support of reform, while Governor Donald Carcieri ’65 has expressed concerns about the cost to the state.

“Each day, 50 Rhode Islanders lose their insurance,” Kennedy said in a statement to The Herald. “Without

health care reform, our broken health insurance system will cost the Rhode Island economy as much as $680 million this year alone in lost productivity.”

Whitehouse wrote an editorial in the Providence Journal in July, arguing for reform.

“Rhode Islanders have shared their stories with me about how the healthcare system has failed them,” Whitehouse wrote. “They’re going without health insurance because it costs too much, or because they have a pre-existing condition and private insurance is out of reach. They’re fighting to keep the coverage they have.”

Both Kennedy and Whitehouse emphasized the importance of a plan with a public insurance option that could

compete with private plans.

“A strong public option is an essential component to keeping costs down,” Kennedy said in his statement. “A public option will increase competition in the market place, keep insurers honest, encourage innovation and improve quality and lower costs.”

In a letter to Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and a strong supporter of health care reform, Carcieri expressed doubts about the role of the Medicaid system in the future of health care.

“Federal Medicaid rules often limit the ability of the states to adapt to fiscal continued on page 6

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

“Brown would love to see a vibrant entrepreneur community.”

— Brendan McNally, director of the Rhode Island Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Center promotes local ‘knowledge economy’ continued from page 1 U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration.

Last year, the Chamber and the City of Providence handed out $150,000 in grants for 11 projects, including $15,500 that helped launch the new Rhode Island Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which was created through the collaboration of Brown and other state partners.

The center “can be seen as a direct outgrowth of the knowledge economy initiative and what it’s trying to do,” said Brendan McNally, its director. It was created to provide more support for entrepreneurship going on at Brown and in Rhode Island, he added.

“Brown would love to see a vibrant entrepreneur community,” McNally said.

The center is meant to be a hub that supports research endeavors exploring commercial opportunities, he said.

Last year, the center used the funds it received to conduct a workshop that “engaged people in figuring out what we need in Rhode Island” in terms of support-

Thursday, October 8, 2009

ing entrepreneurship, McNally said.

“We had 80 people attend and it was, in short, an exciting stakeholder strategy session,” McNally wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.

The center plans to submit another proposal to the council this year to create a program or another event to support entrepreneurship, McNally said.

The ultimate goal of the knowledge economy initiative and of the grants being awarded by the council is to create jobs that produce income for both individuals and public entities, Spies said.

The state is “suffering from the loss of jobs and inability to create enough new ones to keep people employed,” he said.

One of the goals of the knowledge economy initiative is to increase collaboration between academic, civic and medical institutions, to which the grant funding has partly contributed, Spies said.

“We’re making progress. I think there’s a lot more we can and should do. I don’t by any means feel the job is done. There are signs of collaboration on small things. You see that in some of the

grant proposals,” he said.

Raymond said that Providence has great institutions — including colleges, universities and hospitals — and that the city needs to take advantage of their work.

For Brown, Spies said, he hopes the knowledge economy initiative and grant funding “means that we’re able to extend our reach, that faculty and students will find interesting people to collaborate with in work that is of interest to them.”

He cited cities that are further along in similar initiatives, like Boston and Pittsburgh, as an example of how a city can grow its knowledge economy. Pittsburgh, in particular, he said was able to create a “lively knowledge economy” around its universities and medical centers.

“It’s a way of sustaining a community that doesn’t exist if there isn’t any economic activity at the core,” Spies said. He added that he hopes Providence will become a locus of budding knowledge and research that the community would be able to rely on in the future.

“That’s the dream, anyway,” said Spies. “And I’m an eternal optimist.”

Gov. Carcieri ’65: Medicaid not the way to fix health care continued from page 5 realities and the complex and changing needs of beneficiaries,” he wrote.

“It is difficult to deliver vital services to the beneficiaries and be fair to all taxpayers when the federal government denies us the flexibility to effectively structure and manage a program representing such a significant financial investment.”

Carcieri also expressed doubts about the source of funding for the uninsured. While current proposed legislation provides some funding for covering the uninsured in “high need” states, including Rhode Island, Carcieri said he is concerned that full federal funding is not provided for a long enough period.

Rhode Island Health Insurance Commissioner Christopher Koller echoed Carcieri’s concerns.

“Most of the uninsured are lowincome. They can’t afford health insurance on their own and so they’re going to need help buying the policy that they have,” he said. “Although (the federal government) starts out saying that they’ll pay for it, the bill will eventually be passed onto the states through Medicaid.”

Carcieri called the Medicaid program “expensive, provider-centered, inefficient, slow to innovate and, as such, ultimately unsustainable.”

“For these reasons, the Medicaid program is hardly the best and by no means the most appropriate platform for expanding health coverage to tens of thousands of additional Rhode Islanders and millions of other Americans,” he wrote. “The House legislation imposes burdens on state budgets and working Americans that are unacceptable.”

In his statement to The Herald, Kennedy said that health care reform should actually save money for working Americans.

“Reform means lower costs for Rhode Island’s vibrant health care sector that will save jobs and help taxpayers keep more of their paychecks in their pockets,” Kennedy said in his statement. “This bill is not just about providing coverage to the nearly 50 million uninsured, or the 120,000 uninsured in RI. It’s about systematically changing the way health insurance and health care delivery operate, so that the health care we each receive is high quality, affordable, and guaranteed to be there when it is needed.”

SportsThursday The Brown Daily Herald

Thursday, October 8, 2009 | Page 7

M. tennis wins with balance leadership from juniors

By Han Cui Assistant Spor ts Editor

The men’s tennis team hosted the Bruno Classic in memory of Margaux Powers —a supporter of the program who was murdered in May of last year — for the second time this year from Oct. 2-4. Boston College, Binghamton University and Georgetown University also competed in the tournament. The Bears exhibited a strong showing across the board, with every player who participated earning at least one victory in both singles and doubles.

“We had a pretty good weekend with some good leadership from juniors Kendrick Au ’11 and Charlie Posner ’11,” Head Coach Jay Harris wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.

Co-captain Au added that “the team came out of the long weekend with a lot of positives and a lot of things to work on. We are not where we ultimately want to be yet, but by exposing our weakness now, we can maximize our improvement.”

Both Au and Posner played in singles and doubles matches.

Au split his two singles matches, falling to Sven Vlodgraven of Binghamton on the first day in three grueling sets, 6-7, 6-0, 11-9, before defeating Mike Clarke of Georgetown on Saturday in two easy sets, 6-2, 6-3. Posner won both of his singles matches in two

sets, first against Rafael Rodriguez of Binghamton, 6-0, 7-5, and then the next day against Anthony Tan of Georgetown, 6-2, 6-4. The two paired up for doubles on the first and third day and took one out of three matches. They both played doubles with other teammates on the second day.

“Charlie and I played together a fair amount last year,” Au said.

As for the changing of partners this weekend, Au explained that Harris “likes to mix it up early in the season because doubles is all about team chemistry.”

When Au first started at Brown, he was more experienced in playing singles than doubles. But the high level of doubles play at Brown has taught him a lot about the doubles game and turned him into a “hybrid player,” he said.

The younger members of the team also played well last weekend. Timothy Klanke ’13 and Andrew Yazmer ’12 lead the Bears with four wins each. Klanke competed in three singles matches and took two out of three. He also won two out of the three doubles matches he competed in, all with different partners. Yazmer won both of his doubles matches and two of his three singles matches.

His only loss came late on Sunday when he played against Alex Skinner of Boston College, and fell, 6-4, 6-1. continued on page 8

M. soccer ties BU, tops Columbia

By Katie Wood Assistant Sports Editor

The 23rd-ranked men’s soccer team (5-0-4, 1-0-0) played in its third and fourth-consecutive overtime games last week, battling No. 16 BU (7-3-2) to a 3-3 tie in double overtime, and salvaging a 2-1 overtime win over Columbia Saturday in its Ivy League opener.

The pair of weekend games came after ties against Santa Clara and San Francisco and a 5-0 win over URI on Sept. 19.

“We’ve shown ourselves that we’re able to come back while we were in California — now we’re capable of winning in OT and finishing the game strong,” said goalkeeper Paul Grandstrand ’11.

Brown 3, BU 3 (OT) Both the Terriers and the Bears began the game Wednesday night with a feverish pace, as they each tallied two goals in the game’s opening 30 minutes of play. The scoring frenzy began in the first two minutes, when Brown scored an own-goal credited to BU’s Samuel Appiah, an unfortunate way to start off the game against a top-25 opponent at home.

BU set up for a corner kick at the 19-minute mark, and played it well, as Colin Henry headed in a pass from Tom Strackhouse for his first career goal, maintaining a comfortable 2-0 lead over the Bears.

“We started off the game complacent — letting them get on top of us early,” said Nick Elenz-Martin

Jesse Morgan / Herald

The Bears maintained their lossless record over the weekend with one tie and one win against rivals BU and Columbia.

’10. “We pride our defense as tough to beat. Going down two goals is out of the ordinary for us.”

The Bears could have collapsed under a 2-0 deficit, but they fought back and scored two goals of their own in the next 10 minutes of play.

Brown rallied two minutes after BU’s second goal, as Taylor Gorman ’12 headed in a blocked shot from Sean Rosa ’12, past the outstretched arms of Hrafn Davidsson.

Rosa and Jon Okafor ’11 found a

cutting David Walls ’11, the co-captain, on the inside, who sent a ball toward the goal from 20 yards out that Davidsson misplayed. The ball trickled right through his legs to tie the game up at two a piece with 60 minutes left to play.

“On the second goal, we took our chances and moved the ball quicker — returning back to the type of soccer we’ve played all year,” Rosa said. continued on page 8

Page 8

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

S ports W eekend

M. tennis victors on the courts continued from page 7

“It’s exiting to see Andrew back on the court,” Au said of the sophomore, who missed most of last year to injury. “It’s important for him to be on the court. It’s important to the team to have him in the lineup as well because he is a great player.”

Au was also pleased with the way Klanke and the other freshmen have played so far.

“Tim is a fighter,” Au said.

“He responds to pressure well, always hitting the big shots at the right times. All of our freshmen have been adjusting well.

Each one of them adds a spin to the program and brings dynamics to the team. They are all capable of contributing.”

Personally, Au is looking forward to the next big tournament, the ITA Regional in two weeks.

“I have played every weekend this season so far,” Au said.

“I feel sharp. I am hitting the ball as good as I ever have in the past two years. I am excited about Regionals. I am looking forward to having two weeks of good practice and then go out and compete.”

Thursday, October 8, 2009

“We were goal-hungry” — Men’s soccer’s Nick Elenz-Martin ’10

Equestrian gallops to third place finish at URI

By Fred Milgrim Contributing Writer

The equestrian team started its season with a solid performance the University of Rhode Island last Sunday. The Bears finished third overall, anchored by Liz Giliberti ’10.

Giliberti, who had a very strong junior season, got off on the right foot, taking first place in the Open Flat division and third in the Open

Fences. The point rider in both events, she grabbed 11 total points for Brown.

Rachel Griffith ’10 followed in the Intermediate Fences, taking fifth. In the final jumping division, Novice Fences, Allison Dungey ’13 placed second as the point rider.

In the Flats division, three different Bears took first, though only two were pointed. Giliberti started with the Open division, taking first. In the

Intermediate Flat, Dakota Gruener ’11 followed Giliberti’s performance with another blue ribbon. Rebecca McGoldrick ’12, the other pointed rider, took first in the Novice division, scoring the full seven points for the Bears. Lindsay Wong ’13 also turned in a solid ride in the Intermediate Flats, though the judges seemed to be looking elsewhere, and she did not place.

“Sometimes (the judges) miss a

good ride,” McGoldrick said.

Brown ended the afternoon with two more first-place rides. Kona Shen ’10 took first in Beginner Walk-TrotCanter and Kelsey MacMillan ’12 won in the Walk-Trot division.

The Bears ended with a tally of 34 points, five behind first-place host URI and two points shy of the University of Connecticut. The Bears will host the next competition on Sunday.

M. soccer tames Lions in fourth-straight overtime game continued from page 7 “Once we got our heads back in it, we started to play well.”

The Terriers scored to lead the game once more in the 54th minute, but the Bears answered right back as Rosa rifled a hard shot from 25 yards out to the right corner, tying the game 3-3. Elenz-Martin was credited with the assist.

Evan Coleman ’12 helped out on the defensive side as he cleared the ball several times and came away with some decisive steals, halting the Terriers’ offensive drives in the second half.

“We played better in the second half,” Rosa said. “Our focus needs to be on starting the halves better and playing a complete game.”

They battled until the end of regulation, and then the game went

into overtime. The Bears had an excellent look in the first few minutes of the first overtime when Coleman scored off of a corner kick, but the goal was wiped off the board when the referees called Okafor for a foul in the box. Both teams created several scoring chances in overtime, but neither could muster up one more goal for the win, and the game ended in a 3-3 tie.

The Bears walked off Stevenson Field Wednesday night with 330 minutes of play under their belts in the last week of play and three ties added to their overall record.

“We mainly worked on our attacking strategy and playing to their weaknesses after going down 2-0,” Elenz-Martin said. “We attacked their three-player back line in order to get back in the game.”

Gorman led the Bears with two

shots on goal, converting one of the chances, and Okafor led the team with five total shots. Rosa tallied his second goal of the season to go along with two assists on the day.

Brown 2, Columbia 1 (OT) The Bears then headed to New York to take on Columbia in their opening Ivy match. The game started off evenly until the 24th minute, when a Columbia player received a red card, forcing the Lions to play a man down for the rest of the game.

Brown capitalized on the situation with less than five minutes left in the first half when Okafor crossed a ball to TJ Thompson ’10, who converted the chance from five yards out to take a 1-0 lead into halftime, the first Brown lead since the 5-0 win over URI. “We were able to set the pace of the game since we were in the lead,” Rosa said. “It’s great to not have the feeling that you’re trailing and are forced to play catch-up.”

In the 51st minute, Columbia scored on a throw-in deep in Bears territory. Bayo Adafin split two defenders and fired a shot to the far post and in past Grandstrand.

Each team tallied six shots apiece in the second half, but only Columbia

could put together a scoring drive to knot the game at 1-1 at the end of regulation.

The Bears were headed into their fourth consecutive overtime game and wanted to translate their hard work on the field into a win. It did not take Brown long to end the game, as Thomas McNamara ’13 sent a ball to the far post off of a corner kick in the 93rd minute. After several chances from a number of Brown players, the rebound ended up in Elenz-Martin’s possession, as he put the ball away to close out the win for the Bears.

“We tried to rally ourselves and get a goal early in overtime,” ElenzMartin said. “A number of us made some great shots on goal. We were goal hungry — that’s what helped us eventually score.”

Brown outshot Columbia, 14-8, and held a 5-0 corner kick advantage.

The Bears return home on Saturday to take on Princeton (4-4-0, 0-1-0) at 7 p.m. in their second Ivy League game of the year. Princeton started off the season on a high note with four consecutive wins before faltering of late with four straight losses.

They will also host Rutgers (4-5-0) on Tuesday at 7 p.m. in their penultimate non-conference game of the year.

Editorial & Letters The Brown Daily Herald

Page 10 | Thursday, October 8, 2009

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

Eating vegetarian and making a difference To the Editor:

Animals do have the ability to suffer and feel pain just as we do, so why do we continue to exploit them?

There are many great reasons to be vegetarian, including health, religion, the environment and — of course — the moral aspect. Although some of these may not be in an effort to better the world, any individual vegetarian is still making a difference in the lives of animals and the health of our environment. Michael Fitzpatrick ’11 (“The vegetarian delusion,” Oct. 6) states in his column that “eating is a natural process” and compares our consumption of flesh to a lion eating an antelope. This is a gross assumption. There is nothing natural about the way meat, dairy and eggs get to our plates today.

The general public is completely disconnected from food production and takes no responsibility for the harm caused in the process. Ethical vegetarianism could simply be about not killing any being in order to please our taste buds, but there’s a much larger problem at hand: the horrifying, filthy conditions that animals in factory farms are forced to endure.

What we’re consuming supports cruelty to animals.

In his column, Fitzpatrick suggests that vegetarians grow their own food because of the millions of rodents killed each year from harvesting grains. This criticism is rather

backwards: 80 percent of the farmed land in the U.S. is used to support the animal by-product industries. Sixteen pounds of grain goes into producing only one pound of meat. By not eating meat, I’m not only boycotting the slaughter of 27 billion animals each year for food, but I’m also massively cutting back on the animals that get run over by tractors in the fields.

We all can live as compassionately as possible, within our own capabilities. If that means eating vegetarian a couple times a week, checking for the “not tested on animals” label or choosing pleather (which is often cheaper) over dead skin, it’s making a difference.

I commend Fitzpatrick for reminding us that ethical vegetarianism is not an end all to the abuses of animals.

We have never implied that vegetarianism is a panacea, and our audience understands that abstaining from meat doesn’t stop seal-clubbing.

Animal abuse is pervasive, but each step towards a more compassionate lifestyle is worthwhile.

While I choose to be vegan in all aspects of my life, I know not everyone will. All I hope is that people will take time to consider the suffering of animals and live as kindly as possible.

Claire Miller ’11 President, Brown Animal Rights Club Oct. 6

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

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editorial Arts & Culture Editor Ben Hyman Rosalind Schonwald Arts & Culture Editor Features Editor Sophia Li Metro Editor George Miller Metro Editor Joanna Wohlmuth News Editor Seth Motel News Editor Jenna Stark Sports Editor Andrew Braca Asst. Sports Editor Han Cui Asst. Sports Editor Alex Mazerov Asst. Sports Editor Katie Wood Graphics & Photos Chris Jesu Lee Graphics Editor Stephen Lichenstein Graphics Editor Photo Editor Eunice Hong Kim Perley Photo Editor Jesse Morgan Sports Photo Editor production Ayelet Brinn Copy Desk Chief Rachel Isaacs Copy Desk Chief Marlee Bruning Design Editor Jessica Calihan Design Editor Asst. Design Editor Anna Migliaccio Asst. Design Editor MrWel Eight Neal Poole Web Editor Post- magazine Arthur Matuszewski Editor-in-Chief Kelly McKowen Editor-in-Chief

Senior Editors Rachel Arndt Isabel Gottlieb Scott Lowenstein

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Editorial Page Board James Shapiro Editorial Page Editor Matt Aks Board member Nick Bakshi Board member Zack Beauchamp Board member Debbie Lehmann Board member William Martin Board member

E rik stayton and chris donohue

e d i to r i a l

Reviving study abroad This fall the number of Brown students studying abroad sunk to 199, down from 220 last fall.

The University reported a more pronounced decrease in study abroad figures for the spring — 268 students went abroad last semester compared with 366 in the spring of 2008. In light of the downward trend, the University should take measures to encourage student enrollment in study abroad programs. In particular, the University should reverse its policy of charging students full tuition to receive credit for study at considerably less expensive universities abroad.

We’ve criticized the University’s study abroad fees before. Tuition at host universities is often a small fraction of tuition at Brown, and the University collects the difference. The dwindling number of students studying abroad underscores the importance of a change in policy.

In an inter view with The Herald, Kendall Brostuen, director of the Office of International Programs, dismissed concerns that the University’s fee structure caused the drop in enrollment.

Brostuen offered two other explanations. Neither was persuasive. Brostuen cited the economic downturn as a culprit, but a recent sur vey by the Forum on Education Abroad found that just as many private colleges reported an increase in enrollment as reported a decrease.

Brostuen also defended the fee structure by noting that enrollment in study abroad programs administered by Brown (which have always charged full tuition) has decreased along with enrollment in approved programs (which used to cost a lot less). The fact that enrollment decreased in both areas doesn’t prove much.

Under the old policy, enrollment in approved programs might have increased dramatically in

a recession.

The flat rates are supposedly meant to discourage students from letting economic considerations affect their academic decisions. If studying abroad and studying at Brown cost the same, academic criteria alone will guide students’ choices about where to study. We’re more inclined to believe that the University has let an economic consideration — namely, the opportunity to reap thousands of dollars from students — cloud its better judgment. The University should address concerns that its study abroad fees are profitdriven by using the proceeds to endow more undergraduate scholarships.

Whatever the University’s true motives are, we strongly disagree with its stated rationale. We believe that students should be able to consider the costs of alternative courses of study, particularly during the worst recession since the Great Depression. College students who graduate in a recession have substantially lower lifetime earnings and worse employment prospects than those who graduate in rosier times. An extra $15,000 in loans is an especially pressing concern for this year’s upperclassmen.

If the University truly believes that a Brown education is worth the price, it should be able to compete with cheaper colleges in other countries.

The University should view the elimination of study abroad fees as a boon to its internationalization efforts and a vote of confidence that the value of a semester on campus justifies the expense.

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

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Opinions The Brown Daily Herald

Thursday, October 8, 2009 | Page 11

Fall Weekend, reimagined

BY ETHAN TOBIAS Opinions Columnist With shopping period firmly in the rear-view mirror and tons of exams to study for and papers to write, the relief that is “Fall Weekend” could not come sooner. Yet “Fall Weekend” has been plagued by heaps of controversy surrounding the naming and meaning of this one day off from classes.

Last year the University decided to rename Columbus Day “Fall Weekend.” This symbolic first step was an attempt by the University to appease Native American rights activists and was largely approved by the students. By changing the name of the holiday but not its date observed, the University has put the day’s status in limbo.

People I have spoken to often use the two names interchangeably. Even Brown’s Web site uses both names. The Medical School’s Web site specifically mentions that there is no class on Columbus Day. The reason students and faculty keep calling the holiday Columbus Day is perhaps just the result of habit, in much the same way that upperclassmen drop the last zero from the end of course numbers. More likely, it marks the fact that nothing really has changed. If the University really wanted to stop celebrating Columbus Day, it could have given a day off on a different date altogether.

Complete indifference would make Columbus Day a day like any other. This is not a unique idea. At Penn, for example, students will have a day off the following weekend.

Yet a policy of indifference does little justice to Native American groups. Even now, with Columbus Day nominally altered, Native Americans have lost a cause of protest in which to express their deserved anguish with the system of genocide and imperialism carried out by Columbus and subsequent European explorers. As long as Columbus Day was an issue on campus, Native American advocates had a forum of discussion through which to express their perspective.

sity could reignite the public discussion over the meaning of Columbus Day. Let’s face it: As is, no one is happy. ItalianAmericans and their sympathizers will take issue with the name “Fall Weekend” even if Columbus Day is still a day off from classes. Meanwhile, while those who believe that Columbus Day is a misnomer (how can you discover a land where millions already live?) may be placated, the distinction between Columbus Day and Fall Weekend is only nomi-

If the University really wanted to stop celebrating Columbus Day, it could have given a day off on a completely different date altogether.

Now that the discussion is over, there has been little to no debate on the wider issues of discrimination or remembrance of past European misdeeds.

In the University’s defense, they did establish the ambiguously named “Roots Week,” which I am assured has something to do with America’s colonial legacy. It sounds like a good first step, and I encourage the University to expand on the concept.

However, if the University truly wanted to support Native Americans, it should do so overtly and with pride. The city of Berkeley, Calif., displayed their displeasure with Columbus by renaming the second Monday in October “Indigenous People’s Day.” By turning Columbus Day on its head, the Univer-

nal at best.

Therefore, if the University is to continue with the name “Fall Weekend,” it should specifically not be observed on Columbus Day. This way, students will constantly be reminded of the change every time they glance at a calendar. Even more acutely, the physical act of attending class on the second Monday in October would become an act of protest against colonialism and imperialism. Having class on Columbus Day presents an opportunity for professors and students to talk about the issues in a classroom setting — a much more fitting way to observe the day than going home for the weekend.

The only reasonable issue with changing the weekend altogether is that it would

be an inconvenience for professors whose children have the day off . Since Providence public schools and many others in the surrounding area are closed in observance of Columbus Day, this is a fair point. However, local public schools are also closed on Veterans Day, which is currently not observed by the University. Given the choice between these two national holidays, I would rather recognize the contributions of our fighting men and women than of the instigators of colonization.

Additionally, since many high schools have off, think how many prospective students and friends would visit if Columbus Day were a normal day of classes. With application deadlines fast approaching, this could be one of the last opportunities to showcase Brown. Changing the date of Fall Weekend is an opportunity with many rewards for students, here and from afar.

The thought behind calling Columbus Day “Fall Weekend” was a small step forward in correcting past oppression, though it was superficial at best. Right now, the important discussions over the history and meaning of Columbus’s so-called discovery have been lost while the holiday remains mostly unchanged. However, we can correct the record by changing the date of “Fall Weekend” entirely. Doing so will make an important political statement and improve campus life.

We would still have a day off, just a different one.

Ethan Tobias ’12 plans to go to Boston for “Indigenous People’s Day.” He can be reached at Ethan_Tobias@brown.edu

Stupid decisions have serious consequences — sometimes

BY KATE FRITZSCHE Opinions Columnist How many times have you seen your friends or other students use a fake ID to drink on campus? And how many of those times was your friend punished for his or her decision?

My guess would be that your friends have never been penalized. This is typical around campus, perhaps with good reason.

However, in comparison with adults in the rest of the country and especially recent immigrants, college students have it easy. Perhaps, then, it is time to consider why the harsher penalties exist, whether they should and whether we should face the same consequences as everybody else.

When a college student gets a fake ID in order to get into Fish Co. or to buy alcohol illegally, most of us don’t bat an eye. The most severe penalty I’ve heard for being caught using a fake ID was that the ID was confiscated, and then the student just paid someone $20 for a new way to get into bars. But when someone uses false documents in order to get a job in this country, he or she can be fined, detained or even deported.

This dichotomy is obviously problematic.

First, the illegal immigrant who needs a job to support his or her family has a more sympathetic purpose for his or her false documents than a college student who just wants

to get drunk. A 19-year-old student will be able to drink legally in two years and can easily find parties on campus that don’t card in the meantime. A poor immigrant who desperately needs the money to find shelter and buy food cannot wait the way that we can.

One might contest that the disparity in punishments is not discrimination against immigrants, or even poor people who weren’t born in hospitals and, as a result, were never

how students are penalized — or rather, are not penalized — on campus for using or possessing drugs. If a college student smoked marijuana outside of a college campus or was caught driving with it in her car, she could be charged like any other adult for drug possession and might face fines, a night in jail or a note on a permanent record. However, if she smoked in her dorm room or even on the Main Green, it’s unlikely that she would

If it’s not so bad for your friend to get a fake ID, maybe you should think twice about the motivation for an immigrant to use false documents to work in this country. given birth certificates. And indeed, the intended purpose of the document is a serious consideration.

But we should acknowledge that issues of necessity and prejudice complicate the question. Poverty and race are factors that often lead to unequal treatment, and the idea that illegal immigrants and poor people should not be allowed to work because of their disadvantaged status is different from the belief that no one should be allowed to use false identification.

A second double standard can be seen in

face any consequences.

In response to this inequity of penalty, one could argue that college students should face the same charges from DPS that any other person would if caught by the local police. Alternatively, one could suggest that the penalties for drug possession are too harsh in the real world, and that they should meet campus non-penalties somewhere in the middle.

Maybe it’s good for college students to be excused from severe penalties because many try new things once or twice and don’t

make it a habit. However, it’s important to find a way to make students who regularly engage in illegal activity aware of the seriousness of their decisions. It’s a slippery slope toward bigger problems once a student starts using, so we should try to help our friends avoid getting trapped in a situation they can’t handle.

Ultimately, we should consider ourselves lucky to get away with mistakes that would have serious consequences outside of our Brown bubble. However, we should also consider why the penalties are what they are and whether they are fair. If it’s not so bad for your friend to get a fake ID to drink, maybe you should think twice about the motivation for an immigrant to use false documents to work in this country.

If you believe minor drug charges should result in only moderate penalties and help with finding a way to lessen the addiction, maybe you shouldn’t condemn someone who is struggling with addiction and facing serious charges — maybe he deserves help more than anything else. So let’s concern ourselves primarily with how to stop our stupid decisions from becoming more serious life choices, and let’s keep discussing what the fair penalties outside of Brown should be.

Kate Fritzsche’s ’10 Maine driver’s license looks fake, but she swears it’s real.

She can be reached at Katherine_Fritzsche@brown.edu.

Beg to differ? Leave a comment online!

Visit www.browndailyherald.com to comment on opinion and editorial content.

Today The Brown Daily Herald

5

Obama taps alum for judgeship

7

to day

to m o r r o w

68 / 48

67 / 55

M. soccer ties BU, beats Columbia

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Page 12

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

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magazine

Brown University l October 8, 2009 l Volume 10 l Issue 16

1 c a l e n da r Today, October 8

Friday, October 9

4 PM — Doing Good or Doing Well: Responsibility in the Pharmaceutical Industry, Salomon 001

11 AM — Seasonal Flu Clinic, Josiah’s 12 Pm — Mesa de Conversacion, Ratty Dining Room 6

Sharpe Refectory

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

Lunch — Eggplant Parmesan, Beef Tacos, Mashed Potatoes

Lunch — Ginger Chicken Pasta, Eggplant Parmesan Grinder, Zucchini and Summer Squash Dinner — Mexican Cornbread CasDinner — Meatloaf with Mushroom serole, Savory Rice Pilaf, Tequila Lime Sauce, Artichoke and Red Pepper Chicken Frittata, Mashed Red Potatoes with Garlic RELEASE DATE– Thursday, October 8, 2009

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle crossword Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis ACROSS 1 Athenian with harsh laws 6 “Star Wars” princess 10 Hip-hop mogul who married Beyoncé 14 Grapevine traveler 15 Srs.’ lobbying gp.

16 “Dies __”: hymn 17 Get hitched quick 18 Jam on the brakes 20 Stick-on design 21 Go astray 22 Press conf. format 23 Soft court stroke 25 Wallowing place 26 Pasture 27 Colorfully patterned fabric 31 Songstress Adams 34 RCA Victor pooch 37 Altar consent 38 Small family businesses 41 Driver’s lic. et al.

42 Lend a hand 43 Fast time 44 Gander 46 Embarrassed 48 World Series mo.

49 Stir-fried dish 54 Legend automaker 57 Cross shape 58 Yellowish earth tone 59 Hush-hush activities, briefly, and a hint to the hidden theme in 18-, 23-, 38- and 49-Across 61 Magician Henning et al.

62 Region 63 Shoshoneans 64 __ the side of caution 65 College official 66 Like slasher movies 67 1954-1977 defense gp.

DOWN 1 “Judge __”: Stallone film

2 School tool 3 Big name in gas 4 Admit one’s guilt to serve less time 5 Threat-ending words 6 Rodeo rope 7 Weird Al Yankovic parody of a Michael Jackson hit 8 It’s pumped in gyms 9 PC program 10 Holy wars 11 Elvis __ Presley 12 Swing set site 13 Epsilon follower 19 Water gun stream 24 Desk phone unit 25 Orchestra leader 27 Third afterthought, in a ltr.

28 Old Italian money 29 Paradise 30 Eddie of the ’40s’50s Senators 31 German artist Nolde 32 Dimwit 33 “__ Excited”: Pointer Sisters hit

35 __ dixit: assertion without proof 36 Luau fare 39 Sprint Cup org.

40 It may take years to settle one 45 Seoul man 47 Lyric poems 49 Playful prank 50 Brazen minx 51 “Star Trek” communications officer

52 Grain disease 53 Like some simple questions 54 West Point, e.g.: Abbr.

55 Apple center 56 Eye part containing the iris 57 He bit Miss Gulch in a 1939 film 60 Pull hard

five

weekend

menu

exploring the lives of brown’s disabled students

1

tHe laramie ProJect leeds theatre ● mon. 8 pm

PoSt-

6 PM — An Evening with Jeffrey Toobin, Salomon 101

More Than Able

4

2

Bume PreSentS “and” PW upspace ● Wed. 9 pm - 24 hours

HiPS don’t lie iii Waterplace restaurant ● thurs. 10 pm

comics

Cabernet Voltaire | Abe Pressman

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Hippomaniac | Mat Becker

xwordeditor@aol.com

10/08/09

Dot Comic | Eshan Mitra and Brendan Hainline

By Donna S. Levin (c)2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

10/08/09

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atHenS BoYS cHoir Wilson 301 ● thurs. 6:30 pm - 11:55 pm

Bca liVe nigHt auditionS tF green ● 12 pm