Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Daily Herald the Brown

vol. cxliv, no. 116 | Wednesday, December 2, 2009 | Serving the community daily since 1891

Simmons: ‘Painful’ cuts looming

leaning tower o f plastic

By SuzANNAH Weiss Senior Staff Writer

By Nicole Friedman Senior Staf f Writer

The University will face “very painful” budget cuts in the fiscal year beginning in July necessitated by a sharp drop in revenue, President Ruth Simmons said at a monthly faculty meeting Tuesday.

The Corporation recommended that the University decrease its payout from the endowment by 20 percent next fiscal year, Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98 said. The endowment lost $740 million in the last fiscal year and was valued at the end of June at around $2 billion.

Since the University’s three main sources of income — tuition and fees, fundraising and outside research funding — will not increase enough to make up the lost revenue from the endowment, there will be “significant reductions” in expenditures next fiscal year, Simmons said. She added that the University could not incur much more debt without putting its financial health at risk. “Simply put, our planned expenses, no matter how urgent or how worthy, cannot exceed our revenue,” she said.

Though the final budget will not be approved until the Corporation meets in February, the University Resources Committee — the group of administrators, faculty and students that reviews budget requests — will make its preliminary budget recommendations to Simmons at the end of the semester.

The University chose to cut $30 million from the annual general budget at three points — this year, next year and in the fiscal year beginning in July 2010 — rather than cut $90 million all at once, Simmons said.

Though some peer schools made huge reductions last year, preferring to have “all the pain at one time,” Brown’s slower timeline “should not be taken to mean that we do not have a severe problem,” she said.

Rather, spreading out the cuts over three years allows the University to “keep people working longer” and take more time making its decisions, she said.

Kertzer reminded the faculty that, of the $30 million to be cut from next year’s general budget — which does not include the Division of Biology and Medicine — $7 million has already been saved by reducing capital expansion plans.

The organizational review process, which is currently seeking ways to cut spending by altering administra-

inside

continued on page 2

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H1N1 vaccine debuts, student demand high

Kim Perley / Herald As part of the Beyond the Bottle campaign, a tower was constructed using a week’s worth of recycled water bottles from Keeney Quadrangle.

More than 1,600 Brown students have signed up to be immunized against H1N1 this week, now that the vaccine is available to all college students 24 and under in Rhode Island. About 350 students ventured to a makeshift clinic in Josiah’s to get the vaccine Tuesday, the first day immunizations were available on campus.

“I was amazed that it was that many,” said Director of Health Services Edward Wheeler. “That’s pretty good for the first day.”

A medical service provider, the Wellness Company, is administering vaccines on behalf of the Rhode Island Department of Health alongside nurses from Health Services, said Wheeler, who sent e-mails to undergraduates Monday and Tuesday about the online appointmentmaking system.

The health department, which decides when and how to distribute the vaccine, required that students

make appointments in order to receive the vaccine, a decision Wheeler said was a “smart move.”

The appointment-only system “works much better when you’re doing such a high number of vaccines,” he said.

“So far it has been running really smoothly,” Wheeler said.

He said he expects 350 to 400 students per day and about 4,000 to 5,000 in total to receive the vaccine before the clinic ends Dec. 18. The health department has allocated the University enough vaccine to meet that demand, he said.

Next semester, students will be able to make appointments to get vaccinated at Health Services, he said.

The health department recommends that college students get vaccinated regardless of whether or not they have recently experienced flu-like symptoms — and even if they have previously tested positive for the swine flu. continued on page 4

Jewelry District plans clear bureaucratic hurdle

By Brigitta Greene Senior Staf f Writer

The City Plan Commission unanimously approved an amendment to the University’s 2006 Institutional Master Plan Tuesday night, clearing the first of two bureaucratic hurdles before renovations can begin on a new medical school building in the Jewelr y District.

Administrators hope to begin

construction on the facility at 222 Richmond St. this spring or summer, to be completed by August 2011, said Michael McCormick, assistant vice president for planning, design and construction at Facilities Management, at the meeting.

The University must also appear before the Providence Zoning Board of Review before construction can begin, he said.

The original master plan did not include major planning for the Jewelr y District, much of which has developed over the past three years, McCormick said. The amendment detailed broad plans for the downtown area — including streetscape improvements on Richmond and Ship Streets — as well as construction specifics for the Medical Education Building.

The plan also includes a pro-

posed renovation of the Rhode Island Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, cur rently housed at One Davol Square.

Representatives of the Providence Preser vation Society, the Providence Foundation and the Jewelry District Association spoke in support of the amendment.

Though the University currentcontinued on page 5

Goodman ’10 wins Marshall Scholarship

By Max Godnick Staf f Writer

Jeremy Goodman ’10 is among 35 students nationwide who will receive the prestigious Marshall Scholarship for two years of graduate study in the United Kingdom, the University announced Tuesday.

A triple-concentrator from Bethesda, Md., Goodman is on track to graduate this May with an Sc.B. in cognitive neuroscience, an A.B. in physics and an A.M. in philosophy, according to a University press release. He is currently spending the semester abroad studying philosophy at

University College, London.

Goodman said he will use his scholarship to study philosophy at Oxford University.

“It’s ... an amazing honor and incredibly humbling to have been chosen,” Goodman said Tuesday.

Up to 40 American students are selected for the Marshall each year and are given the funding to study at the graduate level at any U.K. institution in any field of study.

The lengthy and demanding application process began this summer for Goodman, when he apcontinued on page 2

Courtesy of Jeremy Goodman

Jeremy Goodman ’10 was among 35 American students awarded a Marshall Scholarship this year. He plans to complete a program at Oxford.

Higher Ed, 3

News, 4

Opinions, 11

up, up and away University of California administrators stand firm on big fee increases

India, in theory Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri read from her work Tuesday

teaching teachers Brian Judge ’11 calls for a renewed emphasis on professors’ teaching skills

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

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Page 2

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

C ampus N EWS With three degrees in hand, senior to head to Oxford continued from page 1

plied for a nomination from Brown.

After reviewing his submission, a committee of faculty and deans endorsed his application.

After being selected for an interview in early November, Goodman conducted mock interviews with Linda Dunleavy, associate dean of the College for fellowships and pre-law.

Goodman said he found the advising process beneficial and effective.

“Dean Dunleavy was really incredibly helpful and patient throughout the whole application process in terms of looking over essays,” he said.

“We ran a couple of mock interviews, which were extremely helpful,” he said. “I think (the fellowship committee) does a really good job of helping students through the process to maximize their chances of doing well.”

Goodman’s interview was held Nov. 16 in Washington, D.C. In the interview, “We mostly talked about philosophy,” he said.

“The first question was, ‘Explain what string theory is and whether it is science,’ and I actually had an answer, so that was good.”

Goodman heard of his acceptance at 3 a.m. the next night after returning to London.

“I was jet-lagged and exhausted when I found out,” he said. “It was pretty surreal.”

Dunleavy praised Goodman as an exemplary student with a

unique intellect.

“Jeremy is remarkable because of his ability to thrive both in the world of philosophy and the hard sciences,” Dunleavy wrote in an email to The Herald. “The Marshall represents a wonderful opportunity for him.”

Goodman has been active at Brown in reviving the long-dormant Philosophy Departmental Undergraduate Group, of which he is president. He also coordinated the inaugural Brown Undergraduate Philosophy Conference, an annual event that was held for the first time this year.

While at Brown, Goodman has spent his summers working at the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke, where he conducted brain scans on epileptic patients to localize language processing areas.

Goodman said he is looking forward to the experiences that await him.

“It’s really exciting to go (to Oxford) right now,” he said. “Oxford has an incredibly strong program in philosophy, and it’s a really vibrant community right now.”

Brown faculty members with whom Goodman worked during the process “have all been extremely supportive of my application and generally have been inspiring throughout my academic career,” he said.

After completing the two-year B.Phil. program at Oxford, Goodman plans to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy.

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Wednesday, December 2, 2009

“It just wasn’t good P.R. for the medical school.”

— Philip Gruppuso, associate dean of medicine, on a rule allowing medical students to graduate without passing the USMLE Step 1 exam.

Med School mulls new requirement

By Bradley Silverman Contributing Writer

Last week the Alpert Medical School floated a proposal that would require medical students to pass Step 1 of the United States Medical Licensing Examination in order to graduate.

On Nov. 24, the Faculty Executive Committee met with Associate Dean of Medicine Philip Gruppuso about the proposed change to the medical school’s graduation requirements. Currently, students at Brown’s medical school are required to take the USMLE Step 1, but do not need to pass it, Gruppuso said.

The new requirement would take effect beginning with the entering class of 2014, according to Gruppuso.

The USMLE Step 1 is the exam’s first part and is normally taken at the end of the second year of medical school. It is the first licensing test that medical students take, and at many schools a passing score is required to continue to the third year, Gruppuso said.

Step 2 is usually taken during the final year of medical school, and students at Alpert are not required to take this exam, Gruppuso said. The final requirement, Step 3, is usually

taken during a student’s internship, the first year of residency, according to the USMLE Web site.

The primary purpose of Step 1 is to assess a student’s ability to apply scientific concepts that are essential to the practice of medicine, including fields such as anatomy, genetics and physiology, according to the USMLE Web site. It is taken during a single session over the course of eight hours and consists of seven sections of 48 questions each, for a total of 336 questions.

It is difficult to obtain a good residency without scoring well on the USMLE Step 1, Gruppuso said.

Because of this, most medical students strive to pass the exam anyway, making the proposal largely symbolic. Furthermore, it is not possible to practice medicine without passing the USMLE Step 1, he added.

Students who do not intend to practice medicine will be able to receive waivers exempting them from the requirement, he said.

The funding guidelines of many of the federal loan programs that the medical school depends on now stipulate that medical students pass the USMLE Step 1, Gruppuso said.

The change is also partially a matter of reputation. Because Alpert

is one of a very small number of medical schools that do not require students to pass the USMLE Step 1, Gruppuso said, there is a perception that its curriculum is not as rigorous as those at comparable schools.

“It just wasn’t good P.R. for the medical school,” he said. While he does not believe that the perception is fair, he admits that it is real nonetheless.

The proposal was first brought to the attention of the Medical Curriculum Committee, where it was approved, before being sent to the Biomedical Faculty Council, Gruppuso said. From there, it went to the Medical Faculty Executive Committee and then finally to the University’s FEC. FEC Chair Chung-I Tan, a professor of physics and chair of the department, said while the proposal is largely an internal matter for the medical school, all graduation requirement changes must go through the University FEC. Tan said he anticipates that once it has been thoroughly vetted, it will be approved by the FEC within two or three months.

“We would like to do it early second semester,” he said, to have the new policy in place before the next academic year.

Faculty hears about budget pressures continued from page 1 tive structures and processes, is projected to save another $14 million, he said.

Finding areas to cut the final $9 million is difficult because of pressure to remain competitive, along with “particularly painful” increases in utility costs and debt service, he said. “If you do absolutely nothing new, there are all sorts of inflationary pressures that lead to added costs,” he said.

On top of that, the University needs to keep up with its peers in compensation and graduate student stipends — both of which were fro-

zen for the current fiscal year — and financial aid offerings.

BioMed, which has already made a necessary $10 million in cuts, is dependent on the University endowment only to support financial aid for medical students, Kertzer said. It will be challenged to find new funding for financial aid next year, which Kertzer called both a competitive and “humanitarian” issue.

Simmons also announced at the meeting that the University will officially be re-accredited for 10 years by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.

The faculty also unanimously approved four motions on its agenda,

including officially establishing a doctoral program in Africana Studies.

Three of these motions — the doctoral program, changing the name of the Program in Ancient Studies to the Program in Early Cultures and creating a master’s program in Behavioral and Social Science Intervention — will now go to the president and Corporation for review.

The fourth motion immediately changed the Faculty Rules and Regulations to reflect an updated procedure for appealing actions taken in response to sexual harassment charges.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

C ampus N EWS higher ed news roundup nandini jayakrishna, scott lowenstein and rachel z. arndt

UC administrators standing firm on tuition hike despite protests The University of California system is moving ahead with a proposed 32 percent tuition hike despite a series of student protests. UC President Mark Yudof said the system — which serves 190,000 students on 10 campuses — has “no choice” but to raise tuition, despite the opposition from students and university employees that has resulted in a bevy of legal complications and media coverage, according to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education last week.

The most public student-administrator clash occurred Nov. 20 at UC-Berkeley, where a dramatic confrontation between students who locked themselves in a classroom and a police team led to the arrest of 41 students for trespassing, according to Inside Higher Ed. Mostly peaceful protests were held throughout last week on other UC campuses.

These events, combined with the perceived remoteness of some UC administrators and a September New York Times interview, in which Yudof joked about his more than $560,000 compensation package, have fed the protest movement, Inside Higher Ed reported.

The protests are a result of the UC Board of Regents’ decision to increase student tuition from $7,788 to $10,000 and cut employee pay to help close the system’s deficit of at least $753 million, according to the Chronicle. The shortfall has largely arisen from cuts in funding from the state of California, which faces massive budget deficits of its own.

Nonprofit that donated to Harvard, Columbia charged with aiding Iran A nonprofit organization that has donated money to several American universities, including Columbia and Harvard, to promote knowledge of Islamic and Iranian cultures was accused by federal prosecutors this month of “illegally providing money and services to Iran,” the New York Times reported last week.

The Alavi Foundation, which donated $100,000 to Columbia months before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at the school in the fall of 2007, has denied the allegations, according to the Times.

Over the past 25 years, the foundation donated about $332,000 to Columbia for classes in Farsi and Persian culture, Columbia spokesman David Stone told the Times.

“We were as surprised as every other university and nonprofit group that may have received such donations about the recent news reports regarding this foundation,” Stone told the Times.

The foundation’s donation and the university’s invitation to Ahmadinejad were not related and assuming a connection between the two incidents “does not stand up to rational scrutiny,” Stone told the Times.

The foundation owns several properties in Queens and other parts of the country. The government is in the process of seizing some of these properties, many of which have mosques built on them — a move that the foundation has resisted, according to the Times.

Northeastern axes football program The football program at Northeastern University has been cancelled in order to concentrate funding in the school’s strongest sports programs.

Athletics Director Peter Roby sent an open letter to the Northeastern community announcing the end of the school’s intercollegiate football program Nov. 23, after informing the team and coaches the night before.

“The past several years have been disappointing for our football program despite the best efforts of our staff and players,” he wrote. Tight finances, combined with the team’s lackluster performances in recent years, led to the decision made by the Board of Trustees, the university’s administration and president.

“Elevating and sustaining a competitive Division I football program would require additional multimillion investments on an ongoing basis,” Roby wrote.

According to Roby’s letter, the crunch for funding since the recession has forced the university to adjust its funding of school programs. The result has been “strategic investments in areas of strength,” according to a Northeastern press release. Current players’ athletic scholarships will continue until graduation, according to the release.

Page 3

“All we’re asking is for people to put a draft of the syllabus up there.”

— Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron

Provost asks profs to put syllabi online

By Thomas Jarus Contributing Writer

Shopping period might be a little bit easier for students in 2010.

Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98 has asked faculty to upload their course syllabi to the University’s old and infrequently used course-preview site by the spring semester. The preview page director y, courses.brown.edu, combines descriptions from Banner with additional information from professors.

The decision to ask professors to submit their syllabi came as a result of longstanding efforts by the Undergraduate Council of Students to improve shopping period, according to Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron.

To facilitate uploading course information, Computing and Information Ser vices developed the Academic Services Gateway, which offers “centralized access” to online teaching tools.

In an e-mail sent to faculty Nov. 11, Kertzer announced the creation of the Gateway and its related tools.

“Among these tools is an easy way for you to upload your course

syllabus so that students can access it at the beginning of the semester when choosing their courses,” he wrote.

Bergeron said the technology has created an easy way to make syllabi available to the student body.

Teachers “don’t need to have a MyCourses site,” she said. Instead, they can enter their syllabi into a database that includes all of the courses offered during a given semester.

Though some professors may not have the final versions of their syllabi ready for shopping period, Bergeron said provisional versions will suffice.

“All we’re asking is for people to put a draft of the syllabus up there,” she added.

The availability of syllabi will allow students to move “past Banner,” said Robert Taj Moore ’11, chair of academic and administrative affairs for UCS. Students will also be able to “see what professors are teaching, if the course will be a better fit” than other courses, he said.

Moore said the University had to wait for the technology to catch up with the demand for more

course information. “For a long time, a system didn’t actually exist for professors to upload their syllabi easily,” he said. “Now, that system does exist.”

Online syllabi will prove helpful when students consider classes meeting at the same time, Bergeron said.

Since this decision comes long before the start of the second semester, both Bergeron and Moore said they plan to remind faculty to upload their syllabi as the spring semester approaches.

Moore said UCS is in the process of contacting depar tment chairs and “re-emphasizing” the positive effect this could have on shopping period.

Bergeron credited UCS members with spearheading the project.

“These conversations started with members of UCS, who were tr ying to get more info out there for students in advance of shopping period,” she said.

Bergeron said she will remind faculty members to upload the syllabi, but once they do, the onus is on the students to properly use the information. “It’s just as important for students now to build that piece into their searches,” she said.

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

C ampus N EWS

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

“I was a lost soul before I became a writer.”

— Jhumpa Lahiri

Reading, discussion kick off two-day festival

By Ellen Cushing Senior Staf f Writer

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri kicked off a two-day festival of Indian literature Tuesday afternoon with a reading and discussion of her work in a jam-packed Salomon 001.

The festival, which also features events with authors Rana Dasgupta and Suketu Mehta, is presented by the Literar y Arts program and the International Writers Project. It is part of the University’s yearlong “Year of India” initiative.

Lahiri began by reading a selection from her latest book, “Unaccustomed Earth,” a collection of short stories released last year.

The second half of the event consisted of a question-and-answer session, during which audience members asked the author questions about her writing process and the way identity informs her work.

One audience member asked Lahiri about the extent to which her Indian identity plays a role in her stories and whether a nonIndian writer could have written about the same themes.

Lahiri responded by acknowledging that her own experiences

and those of her family influence her work. But she hopes someone of another background could also tell her stories, she said.

“This is what writers do: They imagine their way into alternate realities, alternate states of being, and tr y to bring those to life,” she said. “Writing is a way for human beings to transcend their own realities ... and to understand the realities and to embody them.”

“Some might say that’s naive, or perhaps optimistic, but that’s what I want to believe literature is about,” she added.

Lahiri also discussed the value of creative writing classes, which she took during the nine months she spent earning an MFA at Boston University.

“For me, it was really crucial, really critical,” she said, adding that, while she does not think formal training is necessar y to become a good writer, her studies forced her to prioritize writing and identify as a fiction writer.

“I was a lost soul before I became a writer,” she said. “I was wandering around the world, and not happily.”

The festival, called “New Indian Writing: The Rising Generation,” focuses on an emerging crop of

Quinn Savit / Herald

Jhumpa Lahiri, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, read from her work Tuesday as part of an Indian Literature festival.

Indian-American writers, said Meera Viswanathan, a professor of comparative literature and one of the event’s organizers, in introductor y remarks.

Lahiri — who was born in London to Bengali parents but raised in Kingston, R.I. — embodies this “rising generation,” Viswanathan said after the event.

Lahiri’s work, which often focuses on first- and second-generation Indian immigrants and addresses themes of immigration and crosscultural identity, dovetails with the larger goals of the Year of India, Viswanathan added.

“The focus of the Year of India is not the static India of the past, but on that which overlaps and crosses

and transgresses with the rest of the world, and those are some of the themes she is interested in,” she said.

Brian Evenson, director of the literar y arts program, said Lahiri was asked to the festival because “she’s someone who talks a great deal about people who exist across cultures and between cultures.”

Students flock to Jo’s for H1N1 vaccines continued from page 1 “It’s possible to have a false positive,” Wheeler said.

About 750 Brown students have reported flu-like illness since Sept.

1, according to Wheeler. Of those, 37 have been tested for the H1N1 virus. Eighteen of those tests came out positive.

Despite some rumors floating around to the contrary, Wheeler said, the risk of an allergic reaction to the H1N1 vaccine is no higher than it is for any other immunization. Still, students are required to stay at Jo’s for 15 minutes following the vaccination in case a reaction

occurs.

The H1N1 vaccine comes in the form of a “painless” nasal spray, Wheeler said, although a limited number of injections are available for those with certain medical conditions.

Health Services is giving students the opportunity to schedule appointments one week at a time.

As of Tuesday evening, most of the appointments for this week were filled, Wheeler said.

“If people have trouble getting an appointment, they should keep trying, because we will be getting more vaccine as the weeks go on,” he said.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Page 5

C ampus N EWS

Profs debut data trove about U.S. nursing homes

By Anna Andreeva Contributing Writer

The University’s Center for Gerontology and Healthcare Research launched a Web site last month aimed at providing researchers and policymakers with data on the quality of nursing home care in the United States.

The Web site is the first of its kind to “provide a massive amount of data all in one site that has never been brought together before,” said Denise Tyler, project manager of the Center’s project Shaping LongTerm Care in America. The site is also innovative for its conversion of patient-level data into broader-scale information about whole nursing homes, she said.

The site, ltcfocus.org, was created by a team of about 10 faculty researchers led by Vincent Mor, professor of community health and chair of the department, and was assisted by half a dozen Web design specialists, Tyler said. A number of graduate and post-doctoral students were involved in testing the site.

The Web site allows users to create and compare data sets or maps by state, number of beds, demographics and Medicaid policies, among other variables. Users can also register to receive updates and downloads of the data.

While data is currently only available for the years between 2000 to 2007, the Center hopes to soon acquire and post information through 2009.

“The next set of variables will be ‘quality measures’ variables related to nursing-home care,” Tyler said.

“We’d like to add information on other forms of nursing care, such as assisted living facilities and home health care.”

The site primarily targets lawmakers and researchers of long-term care, and Tyler said the project is designed to be “user-friendly for policymakers, state legislature people and their aides,” Tyler said. Although the site is not designed for consumers, Tyler said the resource “could be used by people who are researching nursing homes for a loved one.”

A symposium about the Web site

N o T ime to rela x

Kim Perley / Herald Members of the men’s lacrosse team organized a 36-hour run to raise money for the Wounded Warriors Project.

was held at the annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America in Atlanta, Ga. last month. Members of the research team gave four presentations regarding the site, touch-

ing on data sources, site navigation and the reliability of the data, Tyler said.

“We’ve had a lot of positive feedback so far,” she said.

Institutional master plan gets approval from city board continued from page 1 ly pays taxes on the 222 Richmond property, administrators hope to shift the proper ty to the “payment in lieu of taxes” or “PILOT” agreement with the city, gradually decreasing its payments for the facility over the next 15 years, McCormick said.

McCormick also presented changes to the original plan for properties on College Hill that have arisen from financial constraints.

The proposed separate fitness and aquatics center has been combined into one facility, and plans for the Creative Arts Center were slightly scaled down.

“We have been affected by the economy just like the rest of the world,” he said.

He also presented a “progress repor t” of ongoing University initiatives.

The University has continued

to gradually increase its presence within a facility at 121 South Main St., now occupying more than 60 percent of the building’s of fice space. The building houses the Program in Public Health. The University is also looking to sell its Tockwotton Street Warehouse — previously under use as a creative arts studio — and a facility at 1128 North Main St., he said.

Students, faculty and staff have increasingly taken advantage of public and alternative transportation, he said. More than 3,000 Brown community members took advantage of the subsidized public transit fares in the fiscal year ending in June, representing a 40-percent increase from the previous year. The number of Zipcars on campus has increased from two to 11 since 2005, he said.

McCormick also addressed parking concerns in and around the College Hill campus, especially

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surrounding proposals for the new athletic complex. The majority of the current parking lot outside the Olney-Margolies Athletic Center will be converted to green space under current plans for the area.

Though he said this would only present a potential parking shortage during large athletic events — which occur on roughly 15 weekends each year — residents in attendance said it would still result in a noticeable increase in congestion on surrounding streets,

especially at certain times of the year.

“Brown has an obligation to minimize its ef fect on the surrounding community,” said William Touret, a former president of the College Hill Neighborhood Association.

Though he said that parking concerns do not directly relate to the amendment to Brown’s master plan, “the City Plan Commission still has the responsibility to deal with them,” he said.

SportsWednesday The Brown Daily Herald

One victory, two losses for w. basketball team The women’s basketball team had a mixed week, beating in-state rival Bryant, 79-72, in overtime on Nov. 24 before dropping two games over the weekend at the Long Island University Turkey Classic to move to 2-4 on the season.

On Tuesday, the Bears traveled to Smithfield to face the Bulldogs.

Trailing 19-16 with 6:37 left in the first half, Brown racked up 14 straight points to cruise into halftime with an 11-point lead.

A trey by Lindsay Nickel ’13 gave the Bears a 52-41 lead with 9:12 left, but the Bulldogs clawed back to tie the game at 60, and after the teams traded final-minute three-pointers, the game went into overtime. Hannah Passafuime ’12 opened the extra session with a jumper, and Brown never gave up the lead, beating Bryant, 79-72.

Nickel led all scorers with 19 points, Passafuime added 11 points and led Bruno with eight rebounds and Christina Johnson ’10 chipped in 10 points.

On Friday, the Bears traveled to Brooklyn, N.Y., to face host LIU in the opening game of the Turkey Classic. The Blackbirds scored the first nine points of the game and never trailed en route a 68-55 victory. Natalie Bonds ’10 and Johnson paced Brown with 10 points apiece.

Bruno squared off against Seton Hall the following day in the tournament consolation game, taking its Big East opponent to the wire. After ending the first half tied at 31, the Pirates came out of the locker room on a 13-3 run. The Bears, trailing 58-50 with 3:01 left, scored the final seven points of the game to fall one point short.

Nickel and Johnson each scored 14 points, while Aileen Daniels ’12 added 12.

The Bears will return to action today when Boston University invades the Pizzitola Center at 4 p.m.

— Sports Staff Reports

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 | Page 6

Jesse Morgan / Herald

The women’s basketball team, shown above in last week’s win against Central Connecticut, lost twice over the holiday weekend.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Page 7

S ports W ednesday

Wrestling posts a solid start at Keystone Classic

By Han Cui Assistant Spor ts Editor

In their second tournament of the season, Brown wrestlers finished sixth out of nine teams at the Keystone Classic, hosted by Penn on Nov. 22.

Six wrestlers placed individually, led by Bran Crudden ’10, who finished second at the 184-pound weight class. Br yan Tracy ’10 placed third at 157, followed by Greg Einfrank ’10, Cortland Choate ’13 and Larry Otsuka ’10, who each took fourth place in their respective weight classes. Caleb Blaney ’13 rounded out the tournament by finishing sixth in the heavyweight class.

After the opening tournament, Head Coach David Amato said he wanted to see how the team, especially the freshmen, would respond in the Keystone Classic. He was pleased by what he saw at Penn.

“This tournament was not as difficult as Binghamton, but I did see improvement, especially from the freshmen,” Amato said.

The two freshmen who placed individually, Choate and Blaney,

are good examples. Choate upset the third seed, Thomas Williams of American, 11-6, in the quarterfinals at 133. After losing the semifinal match, 6-0, Choate came back in the consolation bracket to advance to the third-place match, where he eventually lost 15-2 to claim fourth place.

Blaney lost his opening match by fall, but he stormed back in the consolation bracket by winning two consecutive matches to advance to the fifth-place match. Although he lost his last match, Blaney, like Choate, enjoyed his first individual placement at the collegiate level by claiming sixth place.

Amato said the sixth-place team finish “isn’t great,” but added that the Bears were competing without some wrestlers due to injuries and with some wrestlers who just returned to competition from injuries. “If we have those guys back, we would have been in the top four,” Amato said.

Just as in the first tournament, the seniors performed well again.

Crudden, the sixth seed at 185, upset the third seed, Dylan Temple of Appalachian State, 4-2, in

his quest into the finals. He then handily defeated Kurt Brendel of Princeton, who upset the second seed earlier, by fall just 55 seconds into the match. Crudden eventually lost to the first seed, Mike Cannon of American, in the finals to claim second place.

At 157, Tracy posted the second-best finish for the Bears by taking third place. After winning his match against Jake Hunter of Penn, Tracy dropped the semifinal match to the third seed, Shawn Smith of Liberty, 7-3. In the consolation bracket, Tracy wrestled his way back by first defeating Danny Scotton of Princeton, 12-10, and then besting Ben Mandelbrant of Boston University, 9-6, to claim third place.

The Bears will head to Las Vegas today for the two-day Las Vegas Cliff Keen Invitational this weekend. It will be the last tournament for the team before winter recess begins.

“In tournaments like Vegas, I am looking for more quality wins and individual placements,” Amato said of his expectation for the upcoming tournament.

Clemente stymies Crimson yet again

By Dan Alexander Senior Staff Writer

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Mike Clemente ’12 hasn’t been a cordial guest in his three visits to Harvard.

The Brown goalie, who gave Harvard its first back-to-back shutout losses in 111 years at the end of last season, nearly gave the Crimson another in the Bears’ 4-1 victory last night.

“The goaltender has been sensational,” said Harvard Head Coach Ted Donato. “I think he made three saves in the first period that were almost sure goals.”

Clemente, who had 41 saves on the night, said he loves to play at Harvard.

“I mean, you come to Brown and the first thing you hear about is how much everyone hates Harvard and how much they hate you,” he said.

“You just want to pump them every time you play.”

For the third time in a row, the Bears (2-7-1, 1-4-1 ECAC) beat the

Crimson, getting their first conference win. Harvard (1-7-2, 1-5-2) extended its winless streak to nine games.

“We’re missing confidence,” Donato said. “What sometimes happens when a goalie is playing that well is you start looking for the perfect shot, and you can frustrate yourself that way. So, I think we did that.”

Harvard outshot Brown 43-33 on the night.

“Unfortunately we didn’t get rewarded with our hard work,” said Harvard captain Alex Biega. “It’s just — it’s beyond frustrating at this point.”

The Bears got on the scoreboard with less than two minutes left in the first period when tri-captain Jordan Pietrus ’10 ripped a shot from the left faceoff circle. Forward Jarred Smith ’12, standing at the edge of the crease, tipped it past Harvard goalie Kyle Richter for his second goal of the season.

Two minutes and 15 seconds into continued on page 9

Herald Mail: All the mail you need in the morning. browndailyherald.com/register

World & Nation The Brown Daily Herald

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 | Page 8

Obama lays out troop-surge strategy for Afghan war

By Scott Wilson The Washington Post

President Obama announced Tuesday that he will send 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan by next summer and begin withdrawing forces in July 2011 after nearly a decade of battle.

Addressing the nation from the U.S. Militar y Academy at West Point, Obama drew on the weight of war he has felt as commander in chief and on the national security interests at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan to explain his decision to escalate the eight-year-old conflict and to begin leaving it before his term ends. He warned bluntly that “huge challenges remain.”

“Afghanistan is not lost, but for several years it has moved backwards,” he said. “In short, the status quo is not sustainable.”

Obama concluded a threemonth review of war strategy by placing extraordinar y confidence in a strained U.S. militar y and applying fresh pressure on the uncertain government of President Hamid Karzai to reform itself in months rather than years.

The 30,000 additional U.S. troops amount to most of what Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, requested at the end of August. But by setting a date for when he will begin removing U.S. forces, scheduled to number about 100,000 by next summer, Obama is effectively holding McChrystal to the urgent timeline he laid out in his bleak assessment of the situation.

Obama’s escalation of the war effort and presentation of an exit strategy reflects the divisions that emerged within his administration during the strategy review and the difficult politics he faces in selling his plan at home and abroad.

Foreshadowing the debate over his strategy, Obama said: “Years of debate over Iraq and terrorism have left our unity on national security issues in tatters, and created a highly polarized and partisan backdrop for this effort.”

As details of his plan emerged Tuesday, some Republicans accused Obama of aiding the Taliban insurgency by setting a date to begin a withdrawal, even though administration officials said the pace will be determined by the country’s security and political stability. Democrats criticized Obama for an expensive, if time-limited, expansion of an unpopular conflict at a time of economic hardship at home.

The president spoke for about 40 minutes to an audience of cadets gathered at Eisenhower Hall on this historic campus on the banks of the Hudson River. Many of those in attendance will deploy to Afghanistan as part of Obama’s escalation, and they received his speech with a mix of solemn silence and polite applause. Seventy-three West Point graduates have died in battle since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Obama’s audience extended beyond the hall to include a skeptical American public, reluctant allies abroad, a weak government in Pakistan, and an Afghan population waiting to see whether international forces or the Taliban will win the war.

Only a minority of Americans believes the eight-year-old battle remains worth fighting, according to recent opinion polls, and Obama’s decision to rapidly deploy tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops and his appeal to NATO allies for more will sharply intensify the conflict in the coming months.

More than 920 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion that toppled the

Taliban, and the pace of combat deaths has accelerated this year with Obama’s earlier decision to send an additional 22,000 forces, along with 11,000 that administration officials say were authorized

by Obama’s predecessor. So far this year, 298 U.S. soldiers have died in Afghanistan, surpassing the 155 killed there last year.

In his assessment of the conflict, McChr ystal wrote that the war probably would be won or lost in the next 18 months. Senior administration officials emphasized that July 2011 — about 18 months from when the first batch of additional U.S. troops will arrive in Afghanistan — will mark the start of the U.S. withdrawal.

Administration officials have said that, while the Taliban cannot be eliminated as a militar y and political force, the goal is to weaken the movement to the extent that it cannot threaten the central government or provide sanctuar y for al-Qaida.

Obama is essentially gambling that Karzai, who was reelected last month by default, will feel more pressure to reform the nation and that the Taliban will not simply wait out the U.S. militar y presence.

“Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground,” Obama said. “But it will be clear to the Afghan government — and, more importantly, to the Afghan people — that they will ultimately be responsible for their own countr y.”

Many of Obama’s political advisers, including Vice President Joe Biden, argued for a more narrowly focused counterterrorism policy that would accelerate Afghan troop training, step up aerial drone strikes against al-Qaida operatives in the borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and help shore up

the nuclear-armed government of Pakistan against a Taliban insurgency inside its borders.

Karl Eikenberr y, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, also opposed sending additional troops, arguing that doing so would increase Karzai’s dependence on the U.S. military and prolong the country’s involvement in the war.

Although Obama decided to send more troops than Biden and Eikenberr y had wanted, the specific timeline he set for the start of the withdrawal was a nod to their concerns, administration officials said.

“The people of Afghanistan have endured violence for decades,” Obama said. “They have been confronted with occupation — by the Soviet Union, and then by foreign al-Qaida fighters who used Afghan land for their own purposes. So tonight, I want the Afghan people to understand — America seeks an end to this era of war and suffering.

We have no interest in occupying your countr y.”

In his speech, Obama appealed to NATO allies, which under his strategy will be asked to contribute at least 5,000 additional troops to the war. In many European countries, the conflict is even less popular than it is in the United States.

“We must come together to end this war successfully,” he said. “For what’s at stake is not simply a test of NATO’s credibility — what’s at stake is the security of our allies, and the common security of the world.”

Obama reaffirmed that destroying al-Qaida is the chief objective of his strategy and emphasized that turning over government and security responsibilities to Afghans as quickly as possible is essential to the mission.

He called the region “the epicenter of the violent extremism

practiced by al-Qaida,” and warned that “this danger will only grow if the region slides backwards, and al-Qaida can operate with impunity.”

Of the 30,000 additional U.S. troops that Obama plans to deploy, 5,000 will be dedicated to training Afghan security forces. A senior administration official said the goal for the Afghan army, for example, is to increase its ranks from 90,000 to 134,000 by the end of 2010.

All the troops are due to arrive by the end of May, moving up by about six months the expected deployment schedule. Most of the combat troops will be used in the south and east, where the Taliban is strongest.

During the review, Obama asked for province-by-province assessments of the Taliban’s strength, the effectiveness of provincial Afghan leaders and the overall security outlook to determine how quickly U.S. forces could leave cer tain regions.

Those calculations, likely to evolve as the conflict intensifies in the months ahead, will help determine the shape and timing of the eventual U.S. withdrawal.

At the same time, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is concerned that an abrupt U.S. departure will leave it vulnerable to the Taliban, which the Pakistani army is now fighting in the tribal areas.

But many Pakistanis believe the U.S. role in the region is inflaming the war and weakening the government, something Obama sought to address in his speech “In the past, we too often defined our relationship with Pakistan narrowly,” he said. “Those days are over. Moving for ward, we are committed to a partnership with Pakistan that is built on a foundation of mutual interests, mutual respect, and mutual trust.”

Manufacturing, real estate data paint muddled picture

By Dina ElBoghdady The Washington Post

The uneven nature of the economic recover y was on display again Tuesday with the release of mixed data on pending home sales, manufacturing and construction spending.

The residential real estate markets showed signs of gaining momentum, in the new data while manufacturing appeared to lose steam after a growth spurt over the summer. More troubling, the commercial real estate sector seemed to be in “free-fall,” as one analyst put it.

All told, the data did little to help economists assess how fast the economy is growing and whether that growth will be strong enough to generate jobs.

The brightest note came from the National Association of Realtors, which reported a strong gain in the number of pending home

sales in October — the ninth straight month it recorded an increase.

The group’s index, which tracks the number of contracts to buy previously owned homes, rose 3.7 percent from September to October.

The reading was up 31.8 percent from last October — the biggest annual gain since the index was created in 2001.

The group attributed the rise to the $8,000 tax credit for firsttime buyers. That program was to expire Nov. 30. But it was recently extended to Apr. 30 and expanded to include people who now own homes. In October, when its fate was in flux, people rushed to get in under the deadline, the group said.

Analysts view the data as a leading indicator of future sales because it charts contracts, not actual completed transactions.

But serious doubts linger about whether these kinds of gains can

be maintained, especially if unemployment keeps rising and government inter vention in the housing market is curtailed. The economic recover y, many analysts agree, is a fragile one.

Its volatility is reflected in the manufacturing and construction numbers, also released Tuesday.

The Institute of Supply Management, which sur veys large manufacturing businesses and compiles an index based on the results, found that manufacturing continued to expand in November, albeit more slowly.

The index’s reading was 53.6, marking the fourth straight month of expansion. A reading under 50 would signal contraction. But the November results fell below October’s 55.7 reading, evidence that manufacturing activity may be tapering off.

Paul Dales, an economist at Capital Economics, said last month’s results were “not a disaster.” In

a note to clients, Dale said, “The index is still consistent with fairly decent GDP growth of around 3.5 percent per year.”

In a note to their clients, economists at Goldman Sachs said the details of the index were “better than the disappointing headline.”

For instance, even though there was a larger-than-expected twopoint decline, the new-orders component of the index rose 1.8 points, to 60.3, and the gap between orders and inventories improved.

Meanwhile, the closely watched employment component of the index continued to grow, but at a slower pace. The reading was 50.8 in November, down 2.3 points from October.

The results were equally mixed for construction spending.

The Commerce Depar tment reported that month-over-month construction spending was essentially flat in October, at $910.8 billion, suggesting that construction

spending has stabilized after dropping for five months in a row.

But the repor t also included some disappointing results. It showed a sharp downward revision of previous months’ spending. Most notably, it revealed that spending in September dropped 1.6 percent, to $910.4 billion, instead of rising 0.8 percent as had been previously estimated.

Meanwhile, spending on home construction rose 4.4 percent in October from September. But spending on commercial projects dropped 2.5 percent.

Given the dramatic revisions of past month, the newly released data may be just “nonsense,” Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a note to clients. “All we can say with confidence is that the trend in private (non-residential) construction is now clearly in freefall,” Shepherdson said.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Page 9

W orld &N ation M. icers continue streak with win against Crimson continued from page 7 the middle period, the Bears extended their lead on defenseman Jeff Buvinow’s ’12 first goal of the season.

With a cluster of players fighting for possession in the corner, the puck spit out to the point. Buvinow stopped it with his skate, wound back and fired a slap shot into the top right corner of the net.

“I had a lot of time and I just ripped it on net,” Buvinow said.

“Guys went in front — good screen. And it just went in. Puck had eyes.”

It wasn’t until Harvard’s 29th shot on goal that the Crimson finally beat Clemente.

Trailing 2-0 midway through the second period, Harvard’s Conor Morrison received the puck just feet away from the crease. After stopping 114 shots over two-and-a-half games, Clemente finally let in his first goal against Harvard.

He didn’t allow another.

With 56 seconds left in the second period, Harvard’s Alex Fallstrom was called for a five-minute major penalty and game misconduct for hitting from behind. Brown couldn’t score on the power play, which carried over into the third period, but the penalty kept the puck in Harvard’s zone for nearly five minutes.

“We shot ourselves in the foot maybe with a couple of penalties,” Donato said. “Certainly, the five-

minute one, I think kind of took a chance for momentum.”

But Harvard got one last opportunity with 1:11 left in the game, when Sean McMonagle ’10 was whistled for interference, giving the Crimson a power play for the rest of the game. And with one minute remaining Donato pulled his goalie for an extra attacker, giving Harvard a six-on-four advantage.

“It’s exciting,” Clemente said of the last-minute pressure. “It’s the best part of the game.”

Just five seconds after the Harvard goalie left the net, tri-captain Aaron Volpatti ’10 forced a turnover and scored a shorthanded, emptynet goal.

Seventeen seconds after Volpatti’s strike, Jack Maclellan ’12 added another, extending Brown’s lead to 4-1 with only 20 seconds remaining.

Clemente got one last save with four seconds left. When the final buzzer sounded, he gave a double fist-pump as his teammates rushed to congratulate him.

Clemente said his teammates told him, “You did it again. Let’s keep it going.”

The Bears came into last night’s game after winning their first game of the year, an 8-1 rout of UConn on Saturday. The Bears will get a chance to extend the two-game winning streak against Princeton on home ice at 7 p.m. on Friday.

Single-sex campus aims to divide and conquer

By Amina Khan Los Angeles T imes

Eleven weeks after opening, Los Angeles Unified’s newest middle school still gleams. Science classrooms sport chemical eyewashes and emergency showers. Teachers deliver lessons in surround-sound with hands-free microphones. Kids play basketball on rooftop courts.

Yet what stands out most about Young Oak Kim Academy is that it is the district’s only single-sex middle school. Classes are either all male or all female.

During “biology Jeopardy,” the girls stood on tiptoe, quivering hands stretched to the ceiling, as science teacher Amber Green called out categories — organelles for 200, types of cells for 500. For their four-person “edible cell” group projects, students pulled out their building materials — licorice, jelly beans and other candies — and after a brief buzz of consultation, each member heads to a computer or the supply closet to complete her assigned task.

In the next class, Green had the boys display their answers on whiteboards, but the noise level crescendoed, punctuated by students yelling “Shut up!” One boy danced down the aisle. When directed to start on their cell projects, some groups argued over their tasks, unaware the roles had been assigned.

Many had not brought materials for the project.

“Boys are impulsive,” science teacher Shambo Lerer said. “Their hands go straight up. They ask questions like, ‘What happens if a planet explodes?’ “ Girls thrive in the collaborative atmosphere, Green said, while “the boys require a lot of classroom management.”

“It’s a learning curve, for us as well as them,” she said.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act in 2002 affirmed the legality of single-sex instruction, said Leonard Sax of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. Since then, the number of public schools with single-sex classrooms has shot up from 11 to 540.

“I love it,” said Annie Clarke, who enrolled her son and daughter at Kim Academy. “The education is great; they pay attention to the kids here.”

Seventh-grader Eric Alejo expressed irritation with the noise level in his classes.

“We don’t have a lot of time to finish our stuff,” he said.

Aside from the dress code — no skinny jeans, no colored undershirts — sixth-grader Zaira Lemoli had no complaints.

“It’s cool,” she said, “because you can pay attention more to the teachers without boys.”

Loneliness is contagious, researchers say

By Rob Stein The Washington Post

Loneliness is like a disease — and what’s worse, it’s contagious.

Although it may sound counterintuitive, loneliness can spread from one person to another, according to research being released Tuesday that underscores the power of one person’s emotions to affect friends, family and neighbors.

The federally funded analysis of data collected from more than 4,000 people over 10 years found that lonely people increase the chances that someone they know will star t to feel alone, and that the solitar y feeling can spread one more degree of separation, causing a friend of a friend or even the sibling of a friend to feel desolate.

“Loneliness can be transmitted,” said John Cacioppo, a University of Chicago psychologist who led the study being published in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. “Loneliness is not just the property of an individual. It can be transmitted across people — even people you don’t have direct contact with.”

Moreover, people who become lonely eventually move to the peripher y of their social networks, becoming increasingly isolated, which can exacerbate their loneliness and affect social connectedness, the researchers found.

“No man is an island,” said Nicholas Christakis, a professor of medicine and medical sociology at Har vard Medical School who helped conduct the research.

“Something so personal as a person’s emotions can have a collective existence and affect the vast fabric of humanity.”

The seemingly paradoxical finding is far more than a psychological curiosity. Loneliness has been linked to a variety of medical problems, including depression, sleep problems and generally poorer physical health. Identifying some of the causes could help reduce the emotion and improve health, experts said.

“Loneliness is more than just feeling bad,” said Chris Segrin, a professor of communication

and health at the University of Arizona, who was not involved in the research. “It really does have consequences.”

But some researchers expressed skepticism about the findings, saying the study had the same shortcomings as earlier, comparable work and could not necessarily rule out other explanations for the apparent association.

“It is unclear whether their statistical model will ‘find’ social contagion in ever y outcome they examine because of the limitations,” Jason Fletcher of Yale University wrote in an e-mail. He and a colleague conducted a similar analysis using data from a large federal survey to show that acne, headaches and even height could appear to be spread through social networks if not analyzed properly.

Christakis and Cacioppo defended their work, saying their statistical methods accounted for other explanations. And others hailed the work.

“I think it’s an incredible piece of research,” said Mark Lear y, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. “I don’t think we anticipated that something like loneliness would cluster like this in a population.

It’s surprising.”

Although the study did not examine how loneliness spreads, Cacioppo said other research has provided clues. People who feel lonely tend to act in negative ways toward those they do have contact with, perpetuating the behavior and the emotion, he said.

“Let’s say for whatever reason — the loss of a spouse, a divorce — you get lonely. You then interact with other people in a more negative fashion. That puts them in a negative mood and makes them more likely to interact with other people in a negative fashion and they minimize their social ties and become lonely,” Cacioppo said.

For the study, Cacioppo teamed up with Christakis and James Fowler, an associate professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego, who have published a series of papers and the book “Connected,” based on data originally collected by the Framingham Heart Study, a longrunning government-funded project

that has explored a host of health issues.

The researchers used information gathered from the participants over decades, including their friendships, identities of their neighbors, co-workers and family members, and information about their emotional state. Previous studies by Christakis and Fowler concluded that obesity, the likelihood of quitting smoking, and even happiness could spread from one person to another.

Similarly, the new analysis, involving 4,793 people who were interviewed every two years between 1991 and 2001, showed that having a social connection to a lonely person increased the chances of developing feelings of loneliness. A friend of a lonely person was 52 percent more likely to develop feelings of loneliness by the time of the next inter view, the analysis showed. A friend of that person was 25 percent more likely, and a friend of a friend of a friend was 15 percent more likely.

The effect was most powerful for a friend, followed by a neighbor, and was much weaker on spouses and siblings, the researchers found. Loneliness spread more easily among women than men, perhaps because women were more likely to articulate emotions, Cacioppo said.

The researchers said the effect could not be the result of lonely people being more likely to associate with other lonely people because they showed the effect over time.

“It’s not a birds-of-a-feather-flocktogether effect,” Christakis said.

The findings underscore the importance of social networks, several experts said.

“For years, physicians and researchers thought about individuals as isolated creatures,” said Stanley Wasserman, who studies social networks at Indiana University.

“We now know that the people you surround yourself with can have a tremendous impact on your well-being, whether it’s physical or psychological.”

The findings suggest that if you help “the people on the margins of the network, you help not only them but help stabilize the whole network,” Christakis said.

Editorial & Letters The Brown Daily Herald

Page 10 | Wednesday, December 2, 2009

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

The hidden costs of inaction To the Editor: Regarding Monday’s editorial (“The price of tuition,” Nov. 30): Granted, parallels exist between the situation at Brown and the one Californian students are dealing with.

That these should be understood by a comparison between what the editorial page board termed Rhode Island’s “attempt to grab money from private colleges” — the bill considered taxing schools $150 per student — and the 32 percent fee increase at UC schools, $2,500 more per student — well, that’s questionable.

There are similarities, and the editors take notice, worth considering: “Many students,” here and in California, “object to reductions in staff benefits and jobs while opposing tuition hikes.” According to them, “students overlook a glaring contradiction” with these objections­ — one cannot simultaneously save staff and lower tuition; one pays for the other. This isn’t the case.

In California, as we learn from the blog Occupy California, “the University of California does not use tuition money or student fees to fund research and education. ... They place 100 percent of this money into an account with the Bank of New York Mellon Trust in order to protect their borrowing power in credit markets. They hold our tuition as collateral in order to finance the largest and most speculative construction projects in the state.” At

Brown, when we discover a $2 million tuition surplus it goes neither to staff benefits nor salary (in the case of our dining workers, Brown sought, and more or less failed, to cut back, thanks to worker-student organizing), nor to financial aid. It goes to fast-tracking the renovation of Faunce.

Both the UC schools and Brown are sitting on fat accumulated investments (forgive me if ours is a few billion short of the Ivy standard), which, thinking like the Once-ler, we keep biggering and biggering, because money, after all, is something that everyone needs. Of course the purpose of this money is not first to reduce tuition or provide worker’s benefits, but to be invested — and in what (the occupation of Palestine? hotel chains with horrendous labor practices?) they’ll never tell.

What we find is the same nothingelse-matters approach to profit that brought the system to crisis in the first place: construct marketable facades and cut the substance, pitting workers against students the whole way. The one that says our economy is recovering while unemployment is rising.

Perhaps the biggest break in parallelism is the actions we take.

In California, thousands of students and workers strike, occupy, barricade and blockade. At Brown we choose to complain.

Julian Park ’12 Nov. 30

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

Deputy Managing Editors Nandini Jayakrishna Franklin Kanin Michael Skocpol

editorial Arts & Culture Editor Ben Hyman 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 Kim Perley Max Monn Asst. 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 Julien Ouellet Neal Poole Web Editor Post- magazine Arthur Matuszewski Editor-in-Chief Kelly McKowen Editor-in-Chief

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ale x yuly

e d i to r i a l

Give us a break Ordinarily, we would never recommend that Brown try to be more like Yale or Wesleyan. But in one regard, these schools set an example that we believe Brown should consider following. At both colleges, students trade a shorter winter break for a two-week spring break. By contrast, Brown’s schedule strikes us as imbalanced — we get at least five weeks of winter break but only one week to relax in the spring.

We believe Brown students would gladly give up a week of winter break if it meant lengthening spring break by a week. By the last week of winter break, most students have had more than enough time to rest and to visit with family and friends, and are eager to return to school and begin the new semester.

After spring break, however, we think that students are still a little weary and not quite ready to tackle another month of classes plus final exams. In terms of students’ overall well-being, the marginal benefit of a second week of spring break greatly outweighs the marginal benefit of a fifth week of winter break.

Because of Brown’s long winter break, our spring break occurs later than spring break at other schools (this year, Mar. 27-Apr. 4). Our time off will not overlap with spring break weeks at Harvard, Penn, Columbia, Princeton, Cornell, Berkeley, Yale and Wesleyan. If Brown gave students an additional week off, they would have more time to catch up with friends at these and other schools. A second week would also allow students to better balance time spent with

family and friends.

Some have speculated that there is an economic rationale for the longer winter break. By keeping the dorms closed until the very end of January, the school saves money on a week’s worth of heating costs. While we don’t have any hard data on how much money the current schedule saves relative to our proposed alternative schedule, we are optimistic that the benefit of the longer break to students justifies the cost. At worst, we understand if the University chooses to delay a scheduling change until economic conditions improve.

The other significant drawback to shortening winter break is premised on hopes that the January@ Brown pilot program might develop into a for-credit winter term. However, due to low enrollment, the program’s funding was not renewed last year, and for the time being, it is unlikely to return.

Our suggestion would not require any other changes to Brown’s academic calendar. Students returning to campus in mid-January might momentarily lament an extra week in Providence’s harsh winter climate, but we’re fairly certain they will not regret the trade in late March or early April.

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

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Opinions The Brown Daily Herald

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 | Page 11

Tobin plays hardball WILL WRAY Opinions Columnist Rhode Island’s own Bishop Thomas Tobin went head-to-head with Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball last Wednesday. While it is uncertain who won the confrontation, it is quite clear that Matthews was wrong. Whatever Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy is, he is not a good Catholic. Bishop Tobin is free to tell him as much without exposing himself to accusations of “transgressing into the law.”

The casus belli was Kennedy’s public announcement that he was asked to refrain from taking communion by Bishop Tobin in February 2007. The Bishop told Rep. Kennedy that certain positions he took as a legislator disqualified him from participating in the Catholic ritual. Kennedy’s announcement has been widely publicized, not least because the positions in question concerned abortion.

Abortion legislation was certainly the cornerstone of Matthews’ argument. In a flurry of questions that put the Bishop at a marked disadvantage, Matthews pointed out that any law criminalizing abortion would be impractical. The Bishop repeatedly insisted that his job was not to craft legislation, but to ensure that “Catholics who are in political office are faithful ... to the dictates of their conscience.”

Much of the criticism directed towards Matthews alleges that he was blustery and discourteous. This point is indisputable. Matthews frequently interrupted the

Bishop, forced him to answer leading questions (questions which are by their very nature slanted or testimonial, e.g. “Have you stopped beating your wife?”), and used the ecclesiastical title ‘Your Excellency’ in a manner that suggested Bishop Tobin was anything but. Matthews’ stridency smacked of a guilty Roman Catholic conscience desperate for vindication. Whether his confrontational style was effective or unappealing is a question which only Hardball’s ratings will answer.

While many ethical vegetarians acknowledge that animal protein is necessary for the developing world, or that it would be oppressive to make eating meat illegal, active affirmation of mass animal slaughter contradicts the principles of ethical vegetarianism.

As Bishop Tobin pointed out, it is not his job to write the laws. It is not even his job to be “politically active.” The Bishop privately counsels individuals — individuals who have freely approached the Church — as to how their actions conform with Catholic norms.

Even if the wisest public policy is to keep abortion legal, Kennedy identifying himself as a good Catholic while supporting pro-choice legislation is akin to an individual identifying himself as a hard-line ethical vegetarian while working at a factory farm.

What is certain is that Matthews was wrong, deeply wrong. Matthews failed to see the difference between actively trying to impose a particular religion’s moral dictates as law on one hand, and simply holding public office while remaining true to one’s moral code. Bishop Tobin never advocated the former, and Kennedy failed in the latter.

Even if the wisest public policy is to keep abortion legal, Kennedy identifying himself as a good Catholic while supporting pro-choice legislation is akin to an individual identifying himself as a hard-line ethical vegetarian while working at a factory farm.

Bishop Tobin’s choice not to be a legislator was in part based upon his personal decision not to pick a profession where the necessities of the job contradicted his faith. If Kennedy felt strongly about his Catholic beliefs, he would have done the same.

Kennedy would like this incident to establish him as a martyr for the cause of keeping church and state separate. But he has no compunctions about blurring the line when it seems politically advantageous. In an Oct. 22 interview, Kennedy accused the Catholic church of fanning “the flames of dissent and discord (because) ... if the church is pro-life,

then they ought to be for health care reform because it’s going to provide health care that are going to keep people alive.”

This statement is flawed in almost too many ways to count. It assumes that government-initiated healthcare reform will help, not hurt, it exhibits some regrettable grammar and it blatantly overlooks the fact that the church opposed a specific bill because it provided state-subsidized abortions.

Most importantly, it demonstrates that Patrick Kennedy, who came to Brown to declare that we need the public option because “all of us are children of God,” is inconsistent in his reasoning. If religious mores have no place in the public sphere, then Kennedy should delineate precisely why he supports legislation in a secular fashion.

Without vague references to natural law or appeals to an undefined, universalist God, what doctrine guides Kennedy when he determines which goods or services should be provided to our citizens and how these should be prioritized? Is he a utilitarian, because he cares about the aggregate health and happiness of Americans? Is he a national socialist, because he directs the wealth generated by American citizens to provide for American well-being? Is he a technocrat, because he supports having governmentappointed “experts” regulate how a given industry will be operated?

There is, of course, an ideology which encompasses all of the above and explains Kennedy’s stances. He is a populist: He allocates taxpayers’ money wherever it will get him elected.

Will Wray ’10 is late for a vote.

Teach teachers how to teach Brian Judge Opinions Columnist Publish or perish. This is the mantra of the aspiring professor in the American university system. If the only purpose of universities was research, this wouldn’t be a problem.

“Publish or perish” is merely a narrower version of the more comprehensive mantra of the American economy: do your job, or get fired.

But universities also exist to teach undergraduates. So the professors at Brown University, and most other universities, are asked to do two radically different things: teach and research. This doesn’t make any sense. To get a job teaching at Brown, you have to establish yourself as an up-and-coming researcher (or scholar, if you like) in your particular field by publishing some articles, presenting papers at conference and the like. Professors are not hired based on their ability to teach.

Most of my teachers in high school went to school to learn how to teach. But looking through the catalog of graduate courses at Brown, there aren’t any classes called “Teaching Linear Algebra” or “How to Teach Shakespeare.” If I wanted to teach high school biology, I would have to know how to teach high school biology as well as how do high school biology. If I wanted to teach college biology, I only have to know how to do it.

In higher education, professors are gen-

erally evaluated for five to 10 years on the basis of their research output. If they produce enough, they get tenure. Then they don’t get evaluated at all. This is insane.

Not that it would be worth the administration’s while to assess teaching ability, since for most professors, there’s nothing it can do about it. In high school, every month or so, a stern-looking administrator would sit in the back of the classroom and assess

quires being in ideological step with one’s colleagues. Thus the departments themselves have the ability to enforce an ideological agenda. Whether or not you’ve published dozens of obscure papers on trade theory, it doesn’t bear on your ability to teach ECON 0110: Principles of Economics.

A more rational approach would be to split departments into research and teaching, and hire professors and admit graduate

In higher education, professors are evaluated for five to 10 years on the basis of their research output. If they produce enough, they get tenure.

Then they don’t get evaluated at all. This is insane. how well the teacher was doing his or her job. In order to get tenure, the teacher had to prove himself or herself to be reasonably competent at teaching. To my knowledge, aspiring professors at Brown face no such evaluation.

Tenure was established to protect professors from financial pressure exerted by donors and administrators with ideological agendas. While I would guess that this still happens to some degree, it is not nearly the same as it was when universities were denominational and could discriminate on a whim. Since tenure committees are made up of other professors, getting tenure re-

students to one or the other. As an undergraduate, I want to take classes from professors who have proven themselves to be good teachers. If I were a research-oriented graduate student, I would want to do research alongside professors who have proven themselves to be good researchers.

Short of this, there are some very minor things that would go a long way towards improving teaching quality: have each department add a course about teaching that discipline and have graduate TA’s have a senior faculty mentor to critique their classroom performance.

If someone is being paid to teach under-

graduates and is bad at it, then they should be fired. If someone is being paid to do research and is bad at it, then they should be fired. Hiring people to do both, but only evaluating them on one (the one that isn’t relevant for the bulk of the people shelling out $50,000 to take classes from them) for a short period of time doesn’t make sense to me.

The best teacher I’ve ever had is someone who didn’t have a Ph.D and isn’t published. The worst teacher I’ve ever had was someone who has published a handful of books and dozens of articles. This is no accident. The former was focused on being a good teacher; the latter was focused on being a good researcher. There aren’t many great teachers or researchers out there, and there certainly aren’t enough of both to fill Brown’s payroll. Just as the quality of research has no bearing whatsoever on ability to teach, the ability to teach has no bearing on the quality of research. And a great teacher can produce a great researcher, but someone studying under a great researcher might not acquire the skills required in order to be a great teacher.

Great teachers aren’t born, they aren’t being formally trained and, as a result, they aren’t being hired. Brown as a pioneer in higher education can set a trend away from the yoke of the status quo, and towards substantial reforms for the undergraduate classroom experience. After all, that’s what we’re paying for.

Brian Judge ’11 just wants things to make sense. He can be reached at brian_judge@brown.edu.

Today The Brown Daily Herald

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Professors to put syllabi online

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M. hockey gets 4-1 victory

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Wednesday, December 2, 2009

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ru n n i n g , ru n n i n g , r a n

Kim Perley / Herald

The men’s lacrosse team is running a 36-hour relay around the Main Green to raise money for the Wounded Warrior Project, which supports injured members of the armed services.

c a l e n da r Today, december 2

thursday, december 3

7 pm — “Staying Human in Medicine: From The House of God to The Spirit of Place,” Salomon 101

10 AM — Sustainable Gift Fair, Sayles Hall

7 pm — “Capitalism Hits the Fan” with Richard Wolff, List 120

8 pm — “Doris to Darlene,” Leeds Theatre

comics Hippomaniac | Mat Becker

menu Sharpe Refectory

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

Lunch — Polynesian Chicken Wings, Vegan Stir Fry Vegetables with Tofu, Stir Fried Rice

Lunch — Italian Sausage and Peppers Sandwich, Vegetable Strudel, Peas

Dinner — Sweet ‘n’ Sour Shrimp, Cheese Quesadillas with Sour Cream and Salsa, Saffron Rice Pilaf

Dinner — Spicy Herb Baked Chicken, Vegan Veggie and Bean Stew, Oven Browned Potatoes

Cabernet Voltaire | Abe Pressman

crossword

Dot Comic | Eshan Mitra and Brendan Hainline

Fruitopia | Andy Kim

Never miss a day. comics.browndailyherald.com