Monday, February 8, 2010

Daily Herald the Brown

vol. cxlv, no. 9 | Monday, February 8, 2010 | Serving the community daily since 1891

Gate to remain closed until further notice

By Alicia Chen Senior Staff Writer

A “steam leak under the floor in the servery area” was the cause of the Gate’s closure, which started Feb. 5 and will continue indefinitely, Senior Associate Dean of Residential and Dining Services Richard Bova confirmed Friday. Due to this problem, the Gate does not have any heat and will be closed until the problem is fixed, he said.

Bova estimated that the repairs will take 10 days to complete, but warned that the repair was “an extensive project” that could reveal unforeseen problems. The concrete floor will have to be ripped out in order to access the steam pipe below,

he added.

If the repairs take longer than first estimated, Dining Services “will make adjustments with other facilities,” like extending dining hours, Bova said. In the meantime, Gate workers are being redistributed to other units, he added.

The more than 100 Gate workers will have priority over openings and substitution requests at other dining areas, said Gate Unit Manager Kara Segal ’10.Though “most workers have chosen not to work rather than keep working,” Segal said, many already work at other Brown dining facilities.

“We appreciate students’ patience for their beloved Gate as we work as quickly as possible,” Bova said.

Festival presents original works-in-progress

By Sarah Mancone Senior Staff Writer

Blood and potato slide down the wall, a mother cries over her baby and the father looks triumphantly down at the vegetable’s fragments.

This scene is the final, climactic scene from the play “TOT! An Onto-

ARTS & CULTURE logical Slugfest,” written by Ian McDonald GS and directed by Christopher Windom GS, MFA students in the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies.

The play, performed Sunday in the McCormack Family Theater at

70 Brown St., is one of eight plays being shown as part of Brown’s Writing is Live Festival.

The festival consists of plays written by eight graduate students — seven from the playwriting program and one from the acting program, said Chris Tyler ’10, the festival’s associate producer.

This showcase, which started Feb. 5 and will continue next weekend, gives graduate students a chance to “work on whatever they want,” Tyler said, “and develop what they’re working on.”

This weekend, the program displayed showings of four works-in-progcontinued on page 3

Nick Sinnott-Armstrong / Herald

President Ruth Simmons greets New York Times columnist Frank Rich, who discussed theater Saturday night with legendary composer Stephen Sondheim (not pictured).

Sondheim and Rich chat on stage

By Kristina Fazzalaro Staf f Writer

Theater fans trekked through the cold to a crowded Salomon 101 Saturday evening to hear Stephen Sondheim discuss his life and creative process with New York Times columnist Frank Rich.

The pair has had these conversations for the past several years at various universities. They met over thirty years ago when Rich was still an undergraduate at Harvard, after an article he wrote for the Har vard Crimson on Sondheim’s “Follies” during its preBroadway run in Boston caught the attention of the composer and lyricist. Sondheim invited Rich out for drinks and the two had their first conversation.

Rich told The Herald the expe-

rience was “overwhelming.”

“He gave me encouragement at a young age,” Rich said. “You never expect something like that as a college student.”

Since their first meeting, Rich has ser ved as the chief drama critic for the Times and now writes one of its most popular oped columns, while Sondheim has continued to write award-winning musicals such as “Into the Woods” and “Sweeney Todd.”

Sondheim and Rich were reunited about ten years ago when Rich was asked to interview Sondheim for the New York Times Magazine in honor of the artist’s 70th birthday. Since then, the two have become friends, Rich told The Herald.

Saturday’s event, hosted by the Creative Arts Council, had the in-

timate air of eavesdropping on a friend’s conversation. Salomon 101 was transformed into a miniature living room, complete with wingback chairs and a Persian carpet spread across the stage.

Clearly comfor table, Sondheim casually related stories of his greatest flops and most amusing memories. But, as Rich was quick to point out to the audience, even if many of Sondheim’s works were not immediately successful, “they have made the classical repertoire.”

Sondheim told the audience that he per formed “Sweeney Todd” for 13 potential producers but received no financial support.

“Shock takes a while to recover continued on page 2

M. hockey ties Dartmouth after loss to Harvard

By Dan Alexander Sports Editor

With the men’s hockey team trailing Dartmouth, 4-2, and less than seven minutes left in regulation, it looked like Brown was going to go 0-2 on the weekend. But the Bears scored three goals in the next five minutes

SPORTS

Jonathan Bateman / Herald

inside

Tri-captain Aaron Volpatti ‘10 clashes with a Dartmouth player during Saturday’s game. The Bears went on to tie Dartmouth, 5-5, in overtime.

News.........1 Arts........2-3 Sports......4-5 Editorial.....6 Opinion......7 Today..........8

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before Dartmouth got another goal with just 28 seconds left, evening the score at 5-5. The game ended in a tie, making the Bears’ weekend record 0-1-1, after their 5-2 loss to Harvard on Friday.

Harvard 5, Brown 2 Blood spilled onto the ice, the officials ejected three players and the penalty box got 24 visits. It sure looked like a rivalry game when Harvard came to town on Friday night.

“Those are games you definitely circle before the season on your calendar,” Harvard captain Alex Biega said of his team’s match-ups against Yale and Brown this past weekend.

Friday’s game was the only time Harvard had beaten Brown in the last six times the teams have played.

Defenseman Jeff Buvinow ’12 continued on page 5

Arts, 2

Sports, 5

Opinions, 7

The blog today

winning tale Alum wins nonfiction prize for Darwin children’s book

Broken record Despite losses, men’s basketball makes it to the record books

high rank William Tomasko ’13 challenges the need for college ranking at Brown

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Arts & Culture The Brown Daily Herald

Monday, February 8, 2010 | Page 2

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Nick Sinnott-Armstrong / Herald

Frank Rich (right) interviews Stephen Sondheim on his illustrious theater career Saturday night in Salomon 101.

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Two longtime friends talk theater continued from page 1 from,” Sondheim said. “Any work of art … has to find its level,” he added.

If Sondheim had listened to the critics, some of today’s most beloved musicals would not have ever been made, Rich told The Herald.

Rich recalled his first time seeing “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” saying there were 15 people in a 1,800 person theater because the critics had given it such horrible reviews.

“He’s an example of somebody who sticks to his guns even in the

could have read the audience the phone book after those eight minutes and they would have loved it.”

Sondheim underscored the importance of taking risks as an artist.

“Big failures are dignified. Little failures are shameful,” he said.

Sondheim discussed the people who have inspired him to push his own boundaries, including Tim Burton and Leonard Bernstein.

“Lenny taught me to be a little less square. I’m pretty square by nature,” Sondheim said. “He was never afraid to fall off a ladder.”

Alum wins nonfiction book award

by Corina Chase Contributing Writer

Daily Herald the Brown

Editorial Phone: 401.351.3372 | Business Phone: 401.351.3260 George Miller, President Claire Kiely, Vice President

face of enormous criticism,” Rich said.

Sondheim said he never lost his passion for music and urged audience members to “write for love and for no other reason.”

Sondheim said that it was producer Hal Prince’s determination that pushed production of “A Funny Thing” forward despite the negative reviews. It was also Prince’s encouragement that helped Sondheim write the musical’s memorable opening number, “Comedy Tonight,” he said.

“Yeah, that was (written) over a weekend,” Sondheim said. “You

Katie Koh, Treasurer Chaz Kelsh, Secretary

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Deborah Heiligman ’80, a prizewinning children’s author, received the 2010 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award, which honors one young adult nonfiction book each year. Heiligman’s book, “Charles and Emma: The Dar wins’ Leap of Faith,” was picked from a list of five finalists.

Heiligman’s book follows the stor y of Charles Dar win and his wife, Emma, and focuses on how Dar win’s marriage af fected his approach to his work. Heiligman said she wondered how the two managed to maintain a “close and loving relationship” in the face of rising barriers between them. Specifically, the two remained devoted to each other as Charles prepared to challenge the church in front of his deeply religious wife.

Though Heiligman had the idea for “Charles and Emma” for a long time, she researched and wrote the book in about a year and a half — allowing it to be published in 2009, the year of the 200th anniversar y of Dar win’s birth and the 150th anniversar y of

the publication of “On the Origin of Species.”

“Charles and Emma” is also a Michael L. Printz Honor book and a National Book Award finalist.

Heiligman said she did not set out to be an award-winning author. She graduated from Brown with a degree in religious studies not knowing exactly what she wanted to do. Writing was not something she studied in depth at Brown, though the essays she wrote for religious studies courses developed her interest and skill in nonfiction, she said.

Her favorite class was a required introductor y course for religious studies concentrators, taught by Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies John Reeder, which she said opened up her world “in a huge way.”

After graduating from Brown, Heiligman went on to work for the independent Jewish magazine Moment. From there, she got a job working for Scholastic, where she spent most of her days writing magazine articles for children and young adults. She truly learned to write for children while working at Scholastic, Heiligman said. She

eventually left that job to become a freelance writer.

Though Heiligman said she always wanted to be a writer, she initially did not know where to begin.

“I didn’t think real people could be authors,” she said. Yet, after a day of reading children’s books to her first son, she woke up from a nap with “words in (her) head” — words that then became her first book. She went on to write several other children’s books, including the 10 books in her “Holidays Around the World” series, before writing “Charles and Emma.”

At the moment, Heiligman has a new nonfiction picture book, titled “The Boy Who Loved Math,” and a new young adult novel in the works.

Though Heiligman said she “happened into writing for children,” she quickly fell in love with it.

Heiligman said she felt she could make more of a difference by writing books for children than by writing for adults. “Books matter to kids in a way they don’t matter to adults,” she said.

Page 3

A Rts

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

&

C ulture

Students experiment on thesis productions continued from page 1 ress. These plays are not complete in the traditional sense, but give playwrights an opportunity to “see what happens,” view their work on stage and gauge the audience’s reactions, Tyler said. It also allows the writers, audiences, actors, crew and faculty to experience “performance as a kind of dialogue,” he added.

The showcase, formerly called the New Plays Festival, was renamed “Writing is Live” to emphasize that writing is a “dynamic entity” that continues to change and is “always evolving,” Tyler said. Erik Ehn, the new head of the playwriting program, changed the name of the festival in order to put a greater focus on “writing as an organism itself,” Tyler added.

Ehn’s “philosophy of playwriting is open to experimentation and risk,” said Tyler. “The sky’s sort of the limit.”

This process of “constant revising and rewriting,” he said, is “meant to be wild and unhinged.”

“TOT! An Ontological Slugfest” certainly had its “wild and unhinged”

moments.

In it, a mother looks down and sees her little baby girl, and a father looks and sees nothing but a potato. The play follows the mother, played by Amanda Weir, and the father, played by Robert Haflinger, as their different perceptions of their child tear the family apart.

The script leads the audience to side with the father when the blanket is pulled aside and in the mother’s arms only a potato is seen. The goal was to have the audience committed to the idea that it was a potato, said McDonald, to give the audience only one perception.

The ending throws all preconceived notions aside, though, when the father throws the potato against the wall, and on the wall is not only potato, but also blood.

The play was meant to end with “a question mark,” McDonald said. Its goal was to have “the audience thinking one thing” until the end and then changing it, he added.

Inspiration for the play came from a friend’s relationship that ended be-

cause of fundamentally different views on life, as well McDonald’s strong interest in moral relativism and the idea of two alternate realities existing at once, he said.

Overall, the play was an intellectually challenging experience for the audience. Combining comedy, drama, action and vegetable cruelty would be a challenge for any writer, but McDonald was able to put it all together seamlessly.

The plays to be shown this Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Pell Chafee Performance Center at 87 Empire St. are workshop thesis productions, “full productions in the more conventional sense,” Tyler said. The thesis productions are more complete and refined and fulfill the more traditional idea of the medium, he said.

Tickets are free and available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Despite the second weekend’s more traditional atmosphere, “there’s no way to expect what you’re going to see,” Tyler said.

Monday, February 8, 2010

“The sky’s sort of the limit.”

— Erik Ehn, head of the playwriting program

crooners for haiti

Nick Sinnott-Armstrong / Herald

Lee Saper ’12, the Brown Derbies and 10 other a cappella groups performed Friday to a packed Salomon to raise money for Partners in Health in Haiti.

A diamond to you for reading.

DiamondsAndCoal.com

SportsMonday The Brown Daily Herald

ScoreS

W. HOCKEY

W. WATER POLO

M. TENNIS

W. TENNIS

Friday, Feb. 5 Harvard 4 Brown 1 Saturday, Feb. 6 Dartmouth 4 Brown 2

Brown 14 Siena 4

Brown 5 Colgate 0

Brown 7 URI 0

Brown 12 Villanova 4

Brown 4 Lehigh 1

Brown 5 PC 0

Monday, February 8, 2010 | Page 4

W. Swimming & Diving Cornell 160 Brown 135

M. Swimming & Diving Cornell 166 Brown 134

WRESTLING

After promising start, weekend disappoints Bears had a freshman. But I’m pleased with most of our guys. We tried to pick up the pace, be aggressive, look for the pin and wrestle hard for seven minutes.”

By Han Cui Assistant Sports Editor

The wrestling team hosted four dual meets last weekend at the Pizzitola Center. After winning the first dual meet against Boston University, 2812, the Bears dropped the second to Drexel, 27-9. The next day, they faced off against Penn and Princeton and lost both duals, 6-35 and 15-21, respectively, which puts their record at 0-2 in the Ivy League.

“It was a disappointing weekend for us,” said Head Coach Dave Amato.

Brown 28, BU 12 The weekend started out on a high note for the Bears in their first dual against Boston University. After taking the first two weight classes by decisions, the Bears led 6-0. The Terriers stormed back in the next three matches, but Ziad Kharbush ’12 turned the momentum once again in favor of Brown with his 10-2 victory.

The rest of the dual went the Bears’ way, including a win by fall with five seconds left in regulation time in the heavyweight bout by Tyler Cowman ’13, which sealed the Bears’ first home victory 28-12.

Jonathan Bateman/ Herald

The wrestlers hosted four dual meets in a busy weekend, winning one meet and losing three. The team’s Ivy League record now sits at 0-2.

Drexel 27, Brown 9 The Bears did not put on the same performance against Drexel. After losing the first three matches, the Dragons established a comfortable 13-0 lead and never looked back as they took the dual, 27-9.

Penn 35, Brown 6 The next day, Brown kicked off

its Ivy League season with a morning dual against Penn, followed by an afternoon dual against Princeton.

From the start of the first meet, the Quakers dominated the Bears. They won the first seven matches and extended their lead to 32-0.

Bran Crudden ’10 finally broke the losing streak for the Bears at 184 lbs with a 6-1 victory. Following Crudden, another senior, Branden Stearns

’10, took down his opponent, 7-4.

“Stearns had a really good weekend, going 4-0,” Amato said. “Crudden too, going 3-1.”

Penn Head Coach Rob Eiter said his team started out very strong, but he wished it could have finished well, too.

“It’s a tough sport,” he said. The match at “197 was a key bout, they had a very good kid, a senior, and we

Princeton 21, Brown 15 The final dual of the weekend against Princeton “was a heartbreaker,” Amato said.

The Tigers led, 12-3, halfway into the dual. The Bears won their next match by fall, and were one win away from a comeback. Kharbush nearly had that win, and was leading his match, 5-1, when his opponent pinned him 4:49 into the match. With the win, the Tigers gained six team points and shattered the Bears’ hope of a team victory.

“They did a great job,” said Princeton Head Coach Chris Ayres of his wrestlers. “We had some things go our way. Brown wrestled great, too.

It was just a darn good dual.”

“It wasn’t a lack of effort,” Amato said of his team. “We didn’t wrestle smart. We missed a few close calls from the ref. Br yan Tracy (’10) and T.J. Popolizio (’12) were both wrestling with injuries. I hope the guys can move forward from this weekend.”

W. BASKETBALL

Brown stays even in conference games

By Zack Bahr Contributing Writer

This weekend’s contests for the women’s basketball team looked oddly similar to last weekend’s. Columbia, which is 13-7, and Cornell, which has yet to win an Ivy League game, resembled last weekend’s league-leading Princeton and 1-18 Penn. But team records weren’t the only similarities between the two weekends, as Brown went 1-1 for the second week in a row.

Columbia 65, Brown 60 Friday night’s game in the Pizzitola Center was a thriller, with 11 lead changes and seven ties. For much of the game, it looked as though the Bears would pull off the upset against the Lions.

“We are tr ying to ruin other team’s seasons and make a run for the championship,” said co-captain Natalie Bonds ’10.

During the first half, Brown had a nine-point lead before Columbia gained a one-point advantage heading into the locker room.

The Bears only led twice in the second half and shot just 16 percent from three-point range. Lindsay Nickel ’13 and Christina Johnson ’10 led the Bears with a combined 32 points and 11 rebounds.

Bruno took it down to the wire, trailing by one with just a minute left in the game.

However, four free-throws by the Big Red sealed the deal for Cornell.

“We should have came out 2-0 this weekend, but you can’t cry over spilled milk,” Bonds said. “I think this weekend gave the Ivy League a wake-up call about Brown. We can compete with the best.”

Cornell 54, Brown 61 With a bitter taste in their mouths, the Bears got a chance at redemption at Saturday’s home matchup against Cornell. Nine players on the Bears’ roster played doubledigit minutes. Hannah Passafuime ’12 was the story of the night. She played all but two minutes and put up 22 points, sinking nine of 11 from the free-throw line and 60 percent

Olivia Means / Herald

Hannah Passafuime ’12 and the Bears lost to Columbia despite a nine-point lead in the first half of the game.

The guard had 10 points and five rebounds.

from beyond the arc.

With Cornell up one at the half, the Bears attacked in the second half and outscored their opponent, 38-30, with smart shots and hard defense. The Bears forced the Big Red into 19 turnovers — an effort led by Bonds, who had 12 rebounds

and five steals.

Bruno held a 10-point lead, its largest of the night, with 11 seconds left, before a Cornell three made the final score a seven-point victory. The Bears ended the night shooting 33 percent from the floor, had just 12 turnovers and out-rebounded Cor-

nell, 45-37. The win made Brown even in conference games, with a 3-3 record.

The ladies travel to Hanover, N.H., on Friday to take on Dartmouth at 7 p.m. and then to Harvard for a 6 p.m. tipoff the following evening.

Page 5

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

S ports M onday

Monday, February 8, 2010

“He’s the type of kid who can make a living playing hockey.”

— Coach Brendan Whittet ’94, on Aaron Volpatti ’10

M. BASKETBALL

Team drops two in Ivies

By Tony Bakshi Spor ts Staf f Writer

Matt Muller y ’10 made the Brown basketball record books Saturday night, but the Big Red ultimately spoiled the party. As Muller y became the 23rd player in Bears’ histor y to score 1,000 career points, No. 25 Cornell (20-3, 6-0 Ivy) pulled away from a feisty Brown (7-16, 1-5 Ivy) squad late in the second half for a 74-60 victor y.

On Friday night, Bruno fell to the Columbia Lions in an away game at Levien Gymnasium, 6554.

Cornell 74, Brown 60 The Bears entered Cornell’s Newman Arena on a four-game losing streak after opening their Ivy campaign with an away victor y at Yale. But Brown showed no signs of a lack of confidence while storming out of the gate against Cornell, a team that almost pulled off a monumental upset on the home court of the No. 1 Kansas Jayhawks earlier this season.

But it was the Bears playing the role of underdog on Saturday. A three-point play by Peter Sullivan ’11 with 16:03 remaining in the

first half gave Brown a 12-9 lead and Cornell its first deficit since its game against South Dakota almost a month ago.

With 12:58 remaining, Muller y reached his milestone, notching his 1,000th point on a lay-up to give his team an 18-16 lead. Brown extended that advantage to eight points, 24-16, halfway through the first half on a lay-up by Tucker Halpern ’13, who scored 14 points in a strong performance.

But the Big Red showed their team poise in closing out the first half. Instead of getting rattled by the tenacious Bears, Cornell rallied to grab a 39-36 lead going into halftime, helped by center Jeff Foote’s 11 first-half points.

Bruno hung tough in the second half. A three-pointer by Muller y — en route to a game-high 21 points — pulled the Bears back to a 39-39 tie, and a driving score by Matt Sullivan ’13 gave the Bears a one-point cushion, 45-44, just under four minutes into the second half.

But that would be the last time the Bears held the lead, as Cornell began to pull away. Brown got no closer than two points for the remainder of the game, and the Big

Red grabbed their first double-digit lead with 3:51 remaining, 69-58.

In the end, the box score showed a seemingly comfortable 14-point victor y for the Big Red. But on a night with nine tied scores and eight lead changes, the game tape told a different stor y.

Columbia 65, Brown 54 The Bears looked to be in prime position to notch their second inconference victory against Columbia (8-12, 2-4 Ivy) as they jumped out to an 11-0 lead after just two minutes of play. Bruno started the game with three consecutive field goals from beyond the arc, two

by Peter Sullivan ’11 and one by Mullery. A lay-up by Mullery completed the Bears’ scoring run.

Brown continued their hot shooting throughout the first twenty minutes, hitting 57 percent of their field goals. They jogged into the locker room up 36-27.

The second half was a different stor y, as the Bears lost their shooting touch. After Muller y extended the lead to ten points, 43-33, three minutes into the half, the Bears converted only two more field goals during the remainder of the game. Overall, they shot just

Jonathan Bateman / Herald

Although the Bears lost two games this weekend, center Matt Mullery ’10 reached a milestone, scoring 1,000 career points.

20 percent from the field, 5-20, in the second half.

Guard Noruwa Agho and forward Asenso Ampim led the Lions’ comeback efforts. Agho scored a game-high 18 points to go along with his 10 rebounds. Ampim

scored 11 of his 17 points in the second half, including a lay-up with 4:48 left to give the Lions their first lead of the game, 50-49. The Lions did not relinquish that lead in the final minutes, giving the Bears another conference loss.

M. HOCKEY

Back-to-back goals tie Dartmouth continued from page 1

said the defeat was especially hard for Brown’s sophomores because they had never lost to Harvard before.

Goalie Michael Clemente ’12 was the biggest reason the Bears had been 3-0-0 in their last three Harvard games heading into the weekend, according to both teams’ coaches. In those three games, Clemente had let in just one goal on 129 shots.

“Certainly coming into the game, we were having some nightmares of his performances past,” Harvard Head Coach Ted Donato said of Clemente. “We got to him a little early tonight, and we were able to get some deflections on some plays that he really didn’t have much of a chance on.”

The Crimson scored two goals in the first period and added another just 2:33 into the second. With his team trailing 3-1, Head Coach Brendan Whittet ’94 pulled Clemente in favor of Anthony Borelli ’13.

Borelli didn’t let in another goal until the third period, but the Bears couldn’t come any closer than one goal away. They eventually fell by three after Harvard scored an

empty-net goal with 18 seconds remaining.

Brown 5, Dartmouth 5 (OT) Despite their two-goal deficit, the Bears felt confident heading into the third period against Dartmouth on Saturday afternoon, according to Tri-captain Aaron Volpatti ’10.

“We were calm, but you could just sense that we had confidence — it’s just a feeling,” Volpatti said.

“You knew that we were going to come back.”

It was 13:41 into the third period before the comeback began, but Volpatti — who had two goals and two assists in the game — scored on a power play, cutting Dartmouth’s lead to 4-3.

“Volpatti was great,” Whittet said. “He’s the type of kid that can make a living playing hockey — and I don’t mean in some lower minors — I mean in the National Hockey League. He’s just such a determined kid, and he plays so hard.”

As the announcer called out Volpatti’s goal on the loudspeakers, Chris Zaires ’13 scored another one — just 20 seconds after Volpatti’s — evening the score at 4-4 with 5:59 remaining.

As time ticked away, the crowd of 2,382 — the largest home crowd of the season — got increasingly rowdy. With three minutes left, the raucous student section — largely made up of Brown football players — decided the game was too exciting for them to wear shirts.

Buvinow sent fans, shirt-wearing and shirtless alike, into hysterics when he scored the go-ahead goal for Brown with 1:35 left in the game.

“I was ecstatic, but I knew we still had a job to do with a minute and a half left,” Buvinow said.

Dartmouth pulled its goalie in favor of an extra attacker with 45 seconds remaining. The strategy worked, and Adam Estoclet scored his second of the night with just 28 seconds on the clock to even the score, 5-5. No one scored in overtime and the game ended as a tie.

Whittet, who played for Dartmouth Head Coach Bob Gaudet at Brown before becoming his assistant at Brown and Dartmouth — where Whittet was last season — said the tie was a healthy outcome.

“It was good to tie because it was fitting,” he said. “And everyone goes home fairly happy with a point.”

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Editorial & Letters The Brown Daily Herald

Page 6 | Monday, February 8, 2010

Sun rises, sun sets, Herald inbox waits for you — Your letters, your love.

letters@browndailyherald.com

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e d i to r i a l

Making us sick

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

Managing Editor Chaz Kelsh

Deputy Managing Editors Sophia Li Emmy Liss

editorial Arts & Culture Editor Anne Speyer Suzannah Weiss Arts & Culture Editor Features Editor Brian Mastroianni Features Editor Hannah Moser Metro Editor Brigitta Greene Metro Editor Ben Schreckinger News Editor Sydney Ember News Editor Nicole Friedman Sports Editor Dan Alexander Asst. Sports Editor Andrew Braca Asst. Sports Editor Han Cui Graphics & Photos Graphics Editor Stephen Lichenstein Alex Yuly Graphics Editor Nick Sinnott-Armstrong Photo Editor Max Monn Asst. Photo Editor Jonathan Bateman Sports Photo Editor production Kelly Mallahan Copy Desk Chief Asst. Copy Desk Chief Jordan Mainzer Marlee Bruning Design Editor Anna Migliaccio Asst. Design Editor Julien Ouellet Asst. Design Editor Web Editor Neal Poole Post- magazine Editor-in-Chief Marshall Katheder

Senior Editors Ellen Cushing Seth Motel Joanna Wohlmuth

Business General Managers Office Manager Shawn Reilly Claire Kiely Katie Koh Directors Sales Kelly Wess Finance Matthew Burrows Client Relations Margaret Watson Alumni Relations Christiana Stephenson Managers Arjun Vaidya Marco deLeon Aditi Bhatia Jared Davis Trenten Nelson-Rivers Alexander Carrere Kathy Bui

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Opinions Opinions Editor Michael Fitzpatrick Opinions Editor Alyssa Ratledge Editorial Page Board Matt Aks Editorial Page Editor Debbie Lehmann Board member William Martin Board member Melissa Shube Board member Gaurie Tilak Board member Jonathan Topaz Board member

Last Friday, we presented one of our many grievances against the U.S. Senate. By stalling on an important student loan reform bill already passed by the House of Representatives, the Senate is standing in the way of major steps to reduce the extraordinary cost of higher education in America. This alone would be enough to make us doubt that the Senate cares genuinely about the interests of America’s students. But to our great dismay, the Senate seems to be making a habit out of unfriendliness to higher education. Indeed, a little-known technicality in the Senate’s health care reform bill threatens the ability of colleges and universities to provide low-cost health insurance plans to students.

Low-cost health insurance plans are crucial to students who must purchase health insurance on top of the already heavy burden of tuition. In a recent memo to congressional leadership, the American Council on Higher Education noted that 3 million students nationwide currently purchase health insurance through their schools. The Herald reported in 2007 that 3,200 Brown students participate in the University’s health insurance program.

Unfortunately, H.R. 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed by the Senate in December, may undermine the way colleges and universities offer health insurance to students. In the bill, existing health insurance plans are classified as individual or group plans and regulated accordingly.

The federal government and states currently treat student health insurance plans as group plans.

However, the Senate’s bill allows student health insurance plans to be defined as individual rather than group plans, and in turn may subject these plans to several new and unnecessary regulations. For instance, universities offering insurance to students

could be required to sell their plans in the individual market to any person, irrespective of university affiliation. If individuals less healthy than average college students are introduced into the risk pool, students’ costs will rise.

Additionally, student health insurance plans may no longer be able to calculate premiums based on the practice of “group rating,” which has historically allowed for affordable plans. The group rating process accounts for the fact that the pool of insured college students will, on average, tend to be healthier than other segments of the population. Either of these regulatory adjustments would increase costs for students and could force campus health services providers and administrators to rethink a system that seems to be working well already.

Fortunately, the health care reform bill passed by the House of Representatives does not contain this misclassification. Given new political circumstances, Congress will have another opportunity in the coming weeks to revisit health care reform and tweak pending legislation. We hope that legislators will fix this aspect of the Senate’s bill and protect the interests of American students.

If you’re among the thousands — yes, literally thousands — of Brown students who might be affected by this potential change, call your Senators and ask them do something about it. More generally, find out what your senators have done recently to help students and universities. With midterm elections upcoming, we have an opportunity to send a message that we don’t appreciate how the Senate has treated us lately.

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

Monday, February 8, 2010 | Page 7

State of the state Tyler Rosenbaum Opinions Columnist Late last month, Gov. Donald Carcieri ’65 gave his final State of the State address. For me — and I venture to suppose for the majority of The Herald’s readers as well — the governor’s imminent departure from Smith Hill is a rare ray of sunlight in what will undoubtedly otherwise be a cloudy political year.

As is expected during such events, the governor defended his past accomplishments and advanced an agenda for the coming year.

Giving credit where credit is due, I should note that the governor has done and advocated for some laudable things.

In other words, his whole administration was thankfully not characterized by the cruelty and political tone-deafness of, for example, his since-overridden veto of the bill authorizing individuals in same-sex couples to dispose of their deceased partners’ remains.

For instance, the governor’s efforts to preserve the state’s environment are certainly nothing to dismiss. In addition to appointing members of the state’s Coastal Resources Management Council who actually seem committed to protecting the state’s beaches and waterways, the governor set aside 12,000 acres of farms and forests — nearly two percent of Rhode Island’s land area — for preservation.

Carcieri also has been working to consolidate Rhode Island’s police, fire and school

districts. Each town and city (all 39 of them) is responsible on its own for providing these services. In most states, these are provided on a county level, and as Carcieri remarked, Rhode Island is smaller than many counties.

(My own, King County in Washington, has almost twice Rhode Island’s population and land area.) It hardly makes sense to perpetuate the unnecessary duplication and waste that accompanies such diseconomies of scale.

Perhaps most notably, the governor brought Rhode Island into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a compact between

stincts, though, results like these are the least you would expect of a governor whose party is outnumbered nine-to-one in the General Assembly. Even the most determined opposition on the part of Rhode Island Republicans to a particular proposal could be easily ignored by Democrats in the General Assembly, who need only muster around two-thirds of the members of their caucus to override a veto.

But despite these positive actions, the rest of the governor’s State of the State address only served to reinforce the impression that he is particularly out of touch with the state

Rhode Island’s taxes and expenditures are too high, but the time to rectify the situation is not during a full blown economic recession.

northeastern states creating a regional capand-trade program to reduce emissions, despite former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s decision to withdraw his state from that agreement.

Additionally, we should commend Carcieri’s investment in the state’s institutions of higher education. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of education, both to Rhode Island’s citizens and to its economy. One can only hope that the state’s impending budgetary axing does not significantly undermine this investment.

However conservative Carcieri’s base in-

and its citizens.

As any politician these days should, the governor focused his address on the state’s economic woes. But instead of articulating how the state’s government could help its citizens weather this economic catastrophe, Carcieri insisted that the proper course would be for the state to drastically cut expenditures and even to cut taxes.

Now, as I’ve said before, I believe that as a general rule Rhode Island’s taxes and expenditures are too high. But the time to rectify the situation is not during a full blown economic recession, when the government’s

countercyclical economic stimulus is needed to turn things around. Rather, it is after things have recovered and the private sector can step in to fill the hole left by a scaled-back state government.

Indeed, Carcieri’s professed solicitude for the well-being of the average middle-class Rhode Islander fell particularly flat when he crowed about cutting 2,000 jobs from the state payroll over the course of his administration.

Perhaps it did not occur to him, but that makes him personally responsible for a respectable portion of the state’s around 70,000 unemployed.

Carcieri’s solution to the state’s financial predicament involves making more than $100 million in cuts to state and municipal governments, which will surely result in thousands more layoffs, and in cutting corporate taxes to attract businesses. But the jobs that lower taxes would theoretically create would undoubtedly be more than offset by the jobs that smaller government would by definition entail.

Ultimately, the drafting and enactment of the state’s budget are up to the often-maligned General Assembly, whose members — unlike lame-duck Carcieri — are frequently and directly accountable to the citizens whose lives their decisions impact. For this, we should be grateful.

Tyler Rosenbaum ’11 is an international relations and public policy concentrator from Seattle. He can be reached at tyler@brown.edu

Rankings schmankings William Tomasko Opinions Columnist CollegeConfidential.com is a pretty frightening place.

The site features a message board in which posters discuss issues such as finding and choosing a college, preparing for the SAT and ACT and improving one’s application and essays. Nervous high school students — and many of their parents — can find a sympathetic digital community and receive the advice and affirmation they crave during a stressful process.

However, the forums also reflect unpleasant, unsettling realities of college admissions: its acutely competitive nature and the desperation it incites among applicants.

For example, one popular board with nearly 400,000 posts is called “What Are My Chances?” As its title suggests, students post their GPAs, standardized test scores, extracurricular activities and other information they consider pertinent, and ask other College Confidential members to tell them what their chances of getting into particular schools might be.

Also, last month, a “Senior Advisor” on the site named Sally Rubenstone created a discussion topic asking College Confidential members for stories about pursuing an extracurricular activity only because they thought “it would impress admission committees.” Students responded that they had joined groups such as the Model United Nations, honors societies and community ser-

vice programs only for that purpose.

One poster, andre10, was particularly honest about his academic motives: “I did the IB program at my school PURELY for the hopes of it boosting my admission chances. I will consider it to be a failure if I get into less than 3 of my top 5 choices.”

Clearly, it is not ideal for students to be joining clubs and taking on demanding workloads simply to impress admissions officers.

It’s counterproductive for students to be so paranoid about their “chances” that they rely on generally uniformed input from strangers

liberal arts colleges in America. For 2010, Harvard and Princeton tied for the number one spot, and Brown was in 16th place, making Brunonians the lowest-ranked members of the Ivy League.

U.S. News assigns schools scores out of 100 based on 15 indicators, including selectivity, per-student spending, the rate of alumni giving and “peer assessment.” They calculate “peer assessment” by surveying college presidents, deans of admission and provosts on how those people perceive rival institutions.

Some people applying to college may feel so pressured because they are following their dream schools’ lead — colleges themselves can seem obsessed with accumulating prestige and edging out competition. on the Internet.

I’m optimistic that most high school students have far healthier attitudes about college admissions than some of the posters on College Confidential. Still, the extreme anxiety of the minority is unsettling.

Some people applying to college may feel so pressured because they are following their dream schools’ lead — colleges themselves can seem obsessed with accumulating prestige and edging out competition. A key example of this preening behavior is the U.S. News and World Report college rankings.

Every year, U.S. News publishes ordered lists of the “best” national universities and

If College Confidential’s message boards demonstrate how crazed college applicants can be, colleges’ pursuits of high U.S. News rankings also make it clear that these institutions are not above ambition for ambition’s sake. Colleges have grown adept at manipulating their rankings through maneuvers such as encouraging their alumni to give smaller donations at a higher rate, inviting applications from those they do not plan to admit to boost their selectivity and giving rankings rivals low “peer assessments.”

Some schools, including Reed College, have rebelled against participating in the U.S. News rankings. If Brown wants to al-

leviate the sense that colleges are overly concerned with prestige, the administration should promptly follow these schools’ lead.

Boycotting the rankings would call national attention to their flaws, including how U.S. News’ methodology focuses heavily on evaluating incoming students, rather than measuring how effectively a college educates them.

Boycotting the rankings would attract the right kind of attention to Brown. Rather than appeal to the type of applicant interested only in Brown’s high rank in U.S. News’ “first tier” of national universities, the move could make us appeal to the type of students who would appreciate what makes us unique, such as our open curriculum and its celebration of intellectualism. The administration should feel confident that Brown’s strong record could speak for itself without relying on a ranking.

Boycotting the rankings would make a valuable statement about what matters in finding and choosing a college. It would demonstrate that a school’s qualities and character, which are necessarily subjective and not quantifiable, are what individual applicants need to evaluate on their own terms.

And, maybe, officially abandoning the rankings game can encourage stressed high school students to worry less about the college process. By abstaining from a system in which one college must go down for another to go up, Brown can emulate a healthier, less-competitive perspective on higher education.

William Tomasko ’13 is an undecided concentrator from Washington, DC. He can be reached at william_tomasko@ brown.edu.

Today The Brown Daily Herald

2

Alum wins nonfiction book prize

4

comics

1 Dot Comic | Eshan Mitra and Brendan Hainline

c a l e n da r

all day — MF Hussain Early Masterpieces Exhibit, Pembroke Hall

12:00 p.m. — “Queering the Family: Some Reflections on Making a ‘Gayby,’” LGBTQ Resource Center 5:00 p.m. — “The Money Rhetoric in America: A Brazilian Perspective,” McKinney Conference Room

5:00 p.m. — Veritas Forum: “Forgiveness and Faith in a World of Rejection and Rights,” Salomon 101

menu Sharpe Refectory

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

Lunch — Gnocchi alla Sorrentina, Veggie Patties, Spicy Fries, Pesto Pizza

Lunch — Shaved Steak, Artichoke & Red Pepper Frittata, Italian Marinated Chicken, Rice Krispie Treats

Dinner — Brown Rice Garden Casserole, Grilled Cheese, Vegan Moroccan Beans, Roast Pork Loin Calypso

Fruitopia | Andy Kim

Dinner — Chicken Milanese, Butternut Apple Bake, Spicy Cuban Stir Fry, Ambrosia Cake

crossword

35 / 18

37 / 22

Monday, February 8, 2010

Cabernet Voltaire | Abe Pressman

tomorrow, february 9

to m o r r o w

Wrestling faced disappointing weekend

t h e n e w s i n i m ag e s

Today, February 8

to day

Excelsior | Kevin Grubb

Hippomaniac | Mat Becker

Bonus Hippomaniac | Mat Becker

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