Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Daily Herald the Brown

vol. cxlv, no. 33 | Tuesday, March 16, 2010 | Serving the community daily since 1891

Faculty approves tenure for all clinical chairs

By Sarah Mancone Senior Staff Writer

At its meeting earlier this month, the faculty approved a proposal for the Alpert Medical School to establish clinical tenure for all 15 chairs of its clinical departments. The proposal — which has yet to receive the final stamp of approval from the Corporation, the University’s highest governing body — is intended to help the Med School draw higher quality candidates for clinical department chairs and bolster its attractiveness among its peer institutions.

Clinical tenure has “no guarantee of employment or salary support,” said Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Michele Cyr. Faculty in the Med School’s clinical departments are “hired by the hospital and paid by the hospital” or hired by outside practices, said Professor of Physics Chung-I Tan

R ea d ing is B ea u ti f u l

P’95 P’03, chair of the Department of Physics and chair of the Faculty Executive Committee.

Clinical tenure does not include the same guarantees as traditional tenure, Tan said. Clinical faculty members “generate their salaries through research grants and private practices,” he said.

Typically, “your appointment has to be renewed every five or six years,” said Dean of Medicine and Biological Sciences Edward Wing.

But under clinical tenure, the department chair “doesn’t need to be reappointed” as long as he or she maintains employment in his or her hospital setting, Cyr said. If hospital employment is terminated, though, so is clinical tenure, she said.

Clinical tenure provides chairs “recognition of a standing within their profession” and “signifies a certain continued on page 2

Max Monn / Herald

The East Asian Book Art Exhibit at the John Hay Library, which has been extended through March 19, includes a a book collecting all kinds of grain coupons and two badges of Chairman Mao.

Alum named State committee names finalists for child advocate job to Second Circuit seat

By Roberto Ferdman Contributing Writer

By Anna Andreeva Staf f Writer

inside

U.S. District Judge for the District of Connecticut Robert Chatigny ’73 has been nominated by President Barack Obama for a seat on the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

The nomination comes after two seats designated for judges from Connecticut opened in 2009, when Judges Barrington Parker and Guido Calabresi took on the roles of senior judges, according to the Hartford Courant. Senior judges have the same authority but handle fewer cases, the Courant reported.

If accepted to the Second Circuit Court, Chatigny’s responsibilities will include handling cases from the states of Connecticut, New York and Vermont, according to the Hartford Courant. Sonia Sotomayor joined the Supreme Court from the Second Circuit Court.

Chatigny has ser ved as a district judge since 1994 and was chief judge of the court from 2003 to 2009, according to a White House press release. He has also worked for the Washington law firm Williams and Connolly and opened his own litigation practice in 1984, according to the press release.

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The decision to pass over Jametta Alston, Rhode Island’s current child advocate, for another term has prompted allegations that Gov. Donald Carcieri ’65 is placing politics before the welfare of the state’s children.

A committee appointed to vet candidates for the position voted unanimously at the end of last month to recommend a list of four finalists, which did not include Alston, after

Carcieri announced in January his desire to replace her with a new appointee.

Carcieri’s announcement came after Alston clashed with his administration over a 2007 lawsuit in which she sued the state for alleged

METRO widespread abuse and neglect of children in its custody. The suit contended that insubstantial funding and mismanagement of the state’s child welfare system have allowed

children to be placed in abusive foster homes. According to its Web site “The mission of the Office of the Child Advocate (in Rhode Island) is to protect the legal rights of children in State care and to promote policies and practices which ensure that children are safe; that children have permanent and stable families; and that children in out of home placements have their physical, mental, medical, educational, emotional and behavioral needs met.”

State Sen. Harold Metts, DProvidence, criticized the commit-

tee’s decision, calling it “politics as usual.”

“It just doesn’t sit right,” he said.

But Amy Kempe, the governor’s spokesperson, praised the “unparalleled quality” of the four finalists.

“It’s important to bring in an outside, fresh perspective” to the position, she said.

“Five years, I think, is a good amount of time” for one person to hold the post, she said. continued on page 4

Bill would grant RISD officers power of arrest

By Rebecca Ballhaus Staf f Writer

A bill currently before the Rhode Island General Assembly would give Rhode Island School of Design police officers the power to

METRO

Max Monn / Herald

A new bill would give RISD police officers the title of “peace officers,” allowing them to make arrests.

make arrests. The bill, introduced

by State Rep. Helio Melo, D-East Providence, would give RISD police the title of “peace officers,” which carries with it the right to search, detain and arrest people suspected of committing crime.

Both Brown and the University

of Rhode Island police officers already have these powers.

“It’s just a matter of better equipping our public safety officers to do their jobs even better,” said Jaime Marland, a spokesperson for RISD. The bill also includes a provision that would allow RISD public safety officers to train at the Rhode Island Municipal Police Training Academy — an addition Melo cited as the inspiration for the bill. Kenneth Bilodeau, directory of security at RISD, wanted to be able to send officers to the academy, Melo said, continued on page 4

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Metro, 5

Opinions, 7

Today on the blog

college counsel?

Stanford questions wether applicants should indicate outside help

SKEWED CENSUS Bill pushes for prisoners to count as residents of their own hometown in census

In god we nope?

Emily Breslin ’10 challenges Brown’s motto: “In God We Hope”

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

C ampus N EWS

Med School hopes to match peers with clinical tenure continued from page 1 level of accomplishment in their field,” Tan said.

“The title is very, very important,” Wing said, which was why he proposed the establishment of clinical tenure about a year ago, he added.

Some expressed apprehension about this proposal diluting “the prestige and importance of tenure,” Wing said. But the usual “rigorous” process for awarding tenure will be followed, he said, adding that, if anything, the move will enhance the title because of the high quality of the faculty receiving clinical tenure.

Clinical tenure could aid the Med School by being seen as an attractive bonus in the hiring process, Tan said.

“The title is important to people we’re recruiting,” Wing said.

For instance, the new Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology Joanna Cain had been given tenure at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Oregon, but could not be considered for it at Brown, Wing said.

A policy change will “allow us to recruit the best people,” Wing said, especially because the Med School is currently looking to hire permanent chairs of medicine, neurology and psychiatry.

Establishing clinical tenure also puts the Med School on the level of its peer institutions, Cyr said. In 2005, Alpert was one of only 12 medical schools — out of 125 — that did not offer a form of clinical tenure, she said, though the definition of tenure varies at different institutions.

The original version of the proposal included giving clinical tenure to faculty members who held endowed professorships, which are positions paid for by revenue from an endowment fund, according to Cyr. But the number of endowed professorships depends primarily on the decision of the donor, not the administration of the medical school, Cyr said.

As a result, the proposal that was accepted applies only to chairs of the 15 clinical departments, who are “highly regarded in the medical school,” Tan said.

There is a “natural tendency for faculty to resist” the development of non-traditional tenure, Tan said.

Tenure for Med School faculty often has “way too much liability,” Wing said, because they receive higher salaries and are not hired by the University.

One concern was making sure “the University wasn’t obligated financially,” Wing said.

Also, some had concerns that this proposal would put “a foot in the door” for eventually giving tenure to other Med School faculty — which is “not the intention at all,” Wing said.

Before it was presented to the faculty for approval, the proposal had to go through a slew of academic committees, a “lengthy process of review, revision, and approval,” Cyr said.

This serves to ensure that the proposal is “reasonable enough educationally and financially,” Tan said.

Next, the proposal must be approved by the Corporation, Wing said. “We hope that they will do that very soon.”

sudoku

higher ed news roundup warren jin contributing writer

College faculty salaries see no growth in 2009–10 Salaries fell nationwide for more than a third of college faculty members, with overall growth flat for the 2009–10 academic year, according to an annual survey released by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources.

Only the faculty of private doctoral institutions saw a raise in their paychecks, which increased by an average of 1.7 percent, according to the survey, and in past years the salaries of college faculty members has increased by an average of 4 percent annually.

At Brown, salaries of all faculty members were held steady this year due to budget cuts, The Herald reported Feb. 9.

Andy Brantley, the association’s chief executive, attributed the flat salary growth to the recent economic recession, though he expressed surprise at the widespread reductions, the Chronicle of Higher Education wrote.

“We know all these factors are happening in higher education, and we did know some faculty would have been included,” Brantley told the Chronicle. “What makes this troubling for us is that the faculty are obviously the key component to our continued success in preparing students not only in lives of leading and serving, but also ensuring the long-term economic stability of the U.S. economy.”

College counseling ad causes controversy An ad for Hernandez College Consulting in Stanford Magazine sparked debate among admissions officers and alums about whether applicants should indicate if they received outside help, the Stanford Daily reported on March 10.

“The Hernandez company, and probably other similar companies, appear to be helping college applicants, including Stanford University applicants, cheat on their applications,” Stanford alum Jonathan Eisenberg wrote in a letter to the Stanford admissions office, according to the Daily.

Run by Michele Hernandez, former assistant director of admissions at Dartmouth, Hernandez College Consulting provides clients with application strategies and feedback on essays, the Daily reported.

“We’re helping kids who could get into Stanford on their own,” Hernandez told the Daily. “We can’t invent talents, but we can show how to better represent them.”

Shawn Abbott, director of admission at Stanford, brought up the issue to Stanford’s Committee on Undergraduate Admission and Financial Aid in response to concerns about the ad, adding that the Stanford faculty has not yet decided whether another question will be added to the application, the newspaper reported.

“We are concerned about adding a question to the application that might encourage students to be less than honest if they feel their answer will influence their admission one way or the other,” Abbott told the Daily. “The bottom line is that the faculty Committee on Undergraduate Admission and Financial Aid would need to determine if they want us to consider this information in our selection process.”

Wesleyan sues former investment officer

Daily Herald the Brown

Wesleyan University is suing Thomas Kannam, its former vice president of investments and chief investment officer, and 20 others, the Wesleyan Argus reported on Jan. 4. The court could require Kannam to put $3 million aside before the trial, to be paid to Wesleyan if the university wins, the newspaper reported.

Kannam, who was dismissed on Oct. 13 following the discovery of misconduct, is accused of breach of contract, fraud, statutory forgery and unjust enrichment, among other charges, according to the Argus.

“We deny all of the allegations in the complaint,” said Stephen Fitzgerald, Kannam’s attorney. “If there’s going to be a hearing on the pending application for a pre-judgment remedy, we will at that time put on our defense.”

In its lawsuit, Wesleyan accuses Kannam of using confidential information regarding the university’s investments for the benefit of his own outside ventures, the Argus reported.

“Through my portfolio at Wesleyan, I have a window on some very interesting stock ideas,” Kannam allegedly wrote in an e-mail. “If possible I’d like to cherry-pick the best and capitalize on them.”

Kannam is also accused of serving on corporate boards without notifying Wesleyan, and attempting to conceal his conflict of interest, as well as using university funds and resources for non-university purposes — including golfing outings, travel expenses and using his staff and university offices to conduct outside business, the Argus reported.

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Tuesday, March 16, 2010

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C ampus N EWS

Page 3

“Hermano, I’m not going to fight you.”

— Carlos Andres Gomez, poet

Poet explores race, prejudice at Latino History Month’s kick-off

By Alex Bell Senior Staf f Writer

Award-winning slam poet Carlos Andres Gomez kicked off Latino History Month last night in front of a packed Salomon 001.

The theme for this year’s celebration of Latino heritage is identity, said Elizabeth Gomez ’11 and Daniel Prada ’12, the event’s organizers. The poet said much of his work has been shaped by his experiences as a social worker in Harlem and the South Bronx, and as a public school teacher in Philadelphia and Manhattan.

One of the half dozen poems he shared dated back to his days as a public high school teacher, when he brought a poet in to perform at the school under the condition that she would use no profanity. Unaccustomed to performing in such settings, the poet let two swears slip, and the principal told Gomez to shut her down, according to the poem he recited based on the incident.

Gomez recalled getting on the stage, looking out at the audience of students — some of whom were in gangs, and some of whom were pregnant 14-year-olds — and thinking about their outdated text-

books from 1952. Then, instead of telling the performer to leave, Gomez asked the students to raise their hands if they knew what the Holocaust was. Many raised their hands.

Then, Gomez asked them to raise their hands if they knew about Rwandan genocide. According to his poem, not a single high school student raised a hand, until one, named Luz, raised her hand to ask, “What is genocide?” Through this poem, Gomez challenged the audience’s conception of what true profanity is.

Many of Gomez’ poems also go to the heart of racial issues.

One moving poem Gomez energetically recited addressed the way in which “Latinos and other men of color kill each other over nothing.”

Based on a true story, Gomez’s poem starts in a club, he said, not unlike those in Providence. Gomez accidentally bumps into another Latino man in the club, who then prepares to fight him. Without thinking, Gomez steps for ward toward the man and begins to sob, but not because he is afraid.

“It hurt me that he valued his life so little that we could both die over this,” Gomez says in the poem.

Alex Bell / Herald

Carlos Andres Gomez performed a set of poems about violence, race and his Hispanic identity to kick off Latino History Month on Monday night.

Alex Bell / Herald

Poet Carlos Andres Gomez performed at the opening convocation for Latino History Month on Monday night.

Gomez said that as soon as he started crying, the man went running away, as if he had taken out a machine gun and shouted, “Say hello to my little friend.”

“Hermano, I’m not going to fight you,” Gomez said in the poem, giving words to how he felt at the time of the incident. “Hermano, we’ve lost too many already.”

For Gomez — whose father is Colombian and mother is American — race has been a major factor in defining his identity. He recalled one performance in Indiana, after which a woman came up to him to ask him if his name, Carlos Andres Gomez, was just his stage name.

She said she had never seen a Hispanic man in real life, and he did not look like one to her.

“I’ve got a question for you, princess,” Gomez recited in his poem about how he should have responded to such a question. “What exactly does a Hispanic look like to you?”

Gomez asks the woman if by a Hispanic, she means a “low-priced gardening tool,” an “invisible harvesting instrument” or a “stand-in parent” who raises kids and does chores around the house. The poet’s confrontations of common stereotypes brought a roomful of snaps from audience members.

In the poem, Gomez described the different ways that Hispanic people look, speak and cook, and said one would be naive to judge a person’s ethnicity from such superficial aspects.

“Cut open my chest and stare at that proud glow, and then ask me if I look Latino,” Gomez said.

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Alex Bell / Herald

Tim Natividad ’12 and Kai Huang ’11 performed a short skit about stereotypes of Asian men.

Metro The Brown Daily Herald

“I don’t always feel that RISD police officers have the students’ best interests at heart.” — Calvin Dunwoody, junior at RISD Tuesday, March 16, 2010 | Page 4

Child advocate denied second term Through bill, RISD looks to increase safety continued from page 1

But some legislators, including Metts, said that Alston’s commitment to doing her job well may have wrongly cost her the position.

Alston, whose five-year term as the state’s child advocate expires this month, “rightly put her commitment to the children before her job,” Metts said.

Alston said she was pleasantly surprised by the extent of support she has received and said she did feel slighted by the process. “It was the first time I have gone into an interview knowing that I was the best choice,” she said of her appearance before the committee.

Kempe said the governor’s office believes Alston’s lawsuit was without merit. In a 2007 press release, Carcieri said some of the information in the lawsuit may have been outdated.

But Alston holds that the problems that prompted the suit remain prevalent today. “I filed the suit because of the poor conditions that existed, conditions that still do exist,” she said.

Kempe dismissed the suggestion that Alston’s lawsuit may have

Courtesy of the Office of the Child Advocate

Jametta Alston will not continue as R.I. child advocate.

played into the committee’s decision as “shameful” and “a disservice to the individuals serving on the search committee.”

“Our approach,” Kempe said, “is to have the very best qualified individuals.”

The four candidates the committee recommended to the governor are Michael Coleman, who served as Rhode Island’s first child advocate in the 1980s; Patricia Byrnes, who has served as an assistant public defender and as legal counsel in the child advocate’s office; Regina Gibb, a supervisor for the

state Department of Children, Youth and Families who has been a social worker; and Cindy Soccio, a special assistant attorney general for Washington County.

Kempe said the governor is currently interviewing each of the four candidates and will make a decision in the near future.

Addressing the current dispute, Francine Sherman, clinical professor at Boston College Law School and expert in juvenile law, said that “childcare services around the country tend to be very controversial.”

Alston is “in a difficult role,” Sherman said. Despite any political pressure, “ultimately her responsibility is to look out for the welfare of the children, to be an independent watchdog for the children of her state,” she said.

Though Metts issued a press release earlier this month stating that he and State Rep. Joseph Almeida, D-Providence, “cannot support any nominee from Gov. Donald Carcieri for the position of State Child Advocate,” he told The Herald Friday that now his opposition will not necessarily be towards the person selected, but towards the system and the process.

continued from page 1 “and the only way to do that is if you’re listed as a peace officer.”

Melo said the bill was in no way connected to an incident last October in which a trespassing suspect being restrained by RISD public safety officers was allegedly beaten by a Providence Police detective.

He pointed to a bill introduced last year ­— before the incident — by State Rep. Timothy Williamson, D-West Warwick, that would have granted RISD officers the same powers.

Williamson’s bill was “introduced late into the season and just ran out of time, and we have the intention of continuing that particular bill,” Melo said.

“It’s not in response to any increase or decrease in crime,” Marland added. “It’s just a matter of being able to be better equipped to deal with basic quality of life issues, like trespassing, vandalism, larceny, that Brown and URI are able to handle themselves.”

Suzannah Hallagan, a junior at RISD, expressed concern about giving RISD of ficers the power to arrest. RISD’s policies are “already quite stringent, far more than Brown’s,” she said. She said she attended a party where she had not been drinking but was “caught” there and ended up having to serve more volunteer hours than the party’s hosts. “I think that’s pretty indicative of a kind of poor policy to start with,” she said.

Calvin Dunwoody, another junior at RISD, said he “tentatively” agreed with the bill. “RISD is a

legitimate school — two other legitimate schools in Providence have this ability, so then why not?

It’s only logical.”

Dunwoody said that last year a friend of his was beaten up right outside the public safety department, and said the bill would make students more safe. But he voiced the same concerns as Hallagan about RISD’s strict policies. “I can’t really think of a very good circumstance where I think it would be acceptable for a RISD police officer to arrest a student,” he said.

He added, “I don’t always feel that RISD police officers have the students’ best interests at heart.”

Although the law would only expand the officers’ powers on RISD’s campus, Brown students also expressed some apprehensions as to the bill’s effect. Maura Eggink ’13 acknowledged the general leniency of Brown’s safety officers. “Sometimes they’ll give you a warning but they’re not scary at all,” she said.

Given RISD’s stricter policies, she said the bill “might change the way Brown students act” near and on RISD’s campus.

“This bill is more to protect the interests of all students,” Marland said. “We’re not looking to go out and make a bunch of arrests or crack down on anything. … It’s about allowing our public safety officers to do a better job in terms of taking care of everyone.”

The bill was heard in the House Committee on Judiciary early last week, and the committee will hear testimony from Bilodeau this week before making a decision, according to Melo.

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Page 5

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

M etro

Bill aims to better represent prisoners

By Nicole Friedman News Editor

Herald File Photo

The Iway project rerouted the I-195 highway in downtown Providence, leaving new real estate in the Jewelry District in its wake.

Jewelry District’s new road design includes Med School

By Leonardo Moauro Staff Writer

The Rhode Island Department of Transportation’s project to reshape the road skeleton of the Jewelry District is at the end of its planning phase, said Lambri Zerva, design project manager for the Iway relocation project at the RIDOT. The plans are concordant with the University’s vision for the area, which includes the future site of Brown’s new Medical Education Building.

But the plans do not specifically lay foundation for the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority’s proposed streetcar lines.

The schematic design for the Medical Education Building was approved in October and has not been significantly altered since then, wrote Michael McCormick, assistant vice president of facilities management for planning, design and construction, in an e-mail to The Herald.

Construction on the building will begin next month, and RIDOT only plans to restructure the streets north of where the edifice will stand, Zerva said. “We’re not really building that many streets, actually. We’re just connecting existing streets,” he said.

RIDOT planners aim to begin restitching the ground infrastructure by the summer of 2011, as soon as the old I-195 highway is completely torn down, Zerva said. They predict the work on the area’s streets should be complete by the end of 2012. “We will ensure that we will not be precluding better access to the area, but building better access to the area,” he said.

What will take longer to complete is the streetcar system envisioned for the neighborhood. While RIDOT plans to complete the streets before the installment of streetcar lines, “we most likely will not preclude the use of streetcars on what we build,” Zerva said. The layout of the tracks depends on the planned path of the streetcars, which hasn’t been determined yet, he added.

What is more, the streetcar will

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

most likely not pass through Richmond Street — site of the future Med School building, Zerva said.

Amy Pettine, special projects manager in RIPTA’s planning department, agreed with this analysis, explaining that as of now the planned route for the streetcars is merely “conceptual,” and predicting that the “final design (of the route) could take anywhere from one to two years, depending if funding is in place.” She added that the timeline for the completion of the system is still long. “We’ve been talking about 2015 being a goal for us,” she said.

“Even the most optimistic schedule for a streetcar is several years beyond the completion of the Medical School, and there are still many hurdles to cross before it will be realized,” McCormick wrote, echoing Pettine’s words.

RIPTA “certainly won’t be digging up streets (RIDOT) will complete in two years,” Pettine said. She explained that any overlap between the reconstructed streets and the streetcar lines will not be problematic, since tracks for streetcars don’t require delving as deep into the asphalt as other, heavier rails.

RIDOT’s plans for the area also include the construction of two new parks located along the river and a pedestrian bridge, Zerva said. “Once we take down the old highway we can build the city streets, and in that time frame we will build the parks — one on the east side and one on the west side” of the river, he added.

The University has been working with RIDOT on these additions, along with new pedestrian crossings at Ship Street and Dyer Street, McCormick wrote. “Plans for each of these continue to evolve, and we are pleased with the results so far,” he added.

RIDOT’s blueprints for the modifications have not otherwise encountered much opposition from local residents. “There was a little bit of resistance to our initial plans, but that’s all part of our public process,” Zerva said.

Pending bills in the Rhode Island General Assembly would require the state to count prisoners as residents of their hometowns — not the town the prison is in — when determining state and county legislative districts.

While Rhode Island currently uses federal census data to draw district lines, the census lists prisoners as residents of their prison, even though prisoners cannot vote in most states, including Rhode Island.

As a result, Cranston, the location of the Adult Correctional Institutions prison and roughly 3,000 prisoners, gets “propped up” — receiving representation based on inflated numbers — said Bruce Reilly, a committee organizer for Direct Action for Rights and Equality, a prisoners’ rights group.

“A voting district that is filled with empty voters, so to speak, is not on par with a voting district that’s filled with actual voters,” Reilly said. By revising census data to locate prisoners in their hometowns, more state aid money could be directed toward the places that prisoners came from and will most likely return to, he

added.

Bills were introduced to the state House of Representatives and state Senate last month to alter how prisoners’ residences are determined. Both bills would require all institutions that incarcerate people for crimes, including mental health or private facilities, to provide the last known addresses for ever y prisoner in their charge. This information would then be used to adjust federal census data for drawing legislative districts.

State Rep. Joseph Almeida, DProvidence, the sponsor of the House bill, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald that the adjustment would lead to a “great financial increase for South Providence and (the) Washington Park” area of his district. Proposing the legislation “was a matter of financial fairness,” he wrote.

Because state law specifies that prisoners are still residents of their homes, the current system is illegal in Rhode Island and must be changed, said Peter Wagner, executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative. Though it is traditional for states to use federal census data to determine legislative districts, they do not have to do so and some states already alter data to account for soldiers

and students, he added.

The bill in the House could progress to a floor vote “in a month or so” and the Senate will hold a hearing on the bill in the next few weeks, Reilly said.

“We have leadership support,” he said. While Cranston stands to lose the most from the change, house majority leader State Rep. Nicholas Mattiello, D-Cranston, told the Providence Journal March 14 that he supports the bill.

All legislators have an interest in passing the bill because it will remove Cranston residents’ inflated voting power, Wagner said. “Prisoners are being used as pawns, but the aggrieved party is everybody who is in a district (that) doesn’t have a prison in it.”

Though it’s too late for the federal census to change its system of counting prisoners for the upcoming census, the Census Bureau will now include in its data the locations of prisons, Reilly said.

National advocates hope the next census will count prisoners differently, but until then, activists are trying to institute reform on a state-by-state basis. Six states besides Rhode Island are considering similar legislation, and others plan to introduce such bills in the near future, Wagner said.

Editorial & Letters The Brown Daily Herald

Page 6 | Tuesday, March 16, 2010

corrections A caption accompanying a story in Monday’s Herald (“Fitness, aquatics center to open in Jan. 2012,” March 15) incorrectly credited the image of the planned center. The image was courtesy of Robert A.M. Stern Architects.

A caption accompanying a story in Monday’s Herald (“Sex week kicks off with ‘Kink’ documentary,” March 15) misidentified the event pictured. In fact, the photo was of a screening of the documentary “Kink.”

Due to an editing error, an article in Monday’s Herald (“Bruno shuts down St. Joe’s despite weather,” March 15) incorrectly stated that men’s lacrosse player Parker Brown ’12 scored three goals in Saturday’s game. In fact, Brown scored two goals.

A caption accompanying an article in Monday’s Herald (“Students whip up tastes of the world,” March 15) incorrectly implied that a photo depicted a cake by Stephanie Le ’10. In fact, the photo was of a trifle by Kelsey Peterson ’10. The Herald regrets the errors.

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e d i to r i a l

The great race The Rhode Island General Assembly is weighing a considerable gamble, but the odds are in the state’s favor. Today, legislators will vote on several bills dealing with public charter schools. The key proposals include increasing the cap on the number of charters from 20 to 35 and allowing Education Commissioner Deborah Gist to dissolve those that do not show appreciable progress for three years in a row.

The benefits of charters themselves are debatable, but there is a more concrete bonus at stake.

The legislation would bring state policy more closely in line with the terms of a federal competition for educational funding known as the Race to the Top. President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill set aside $4 billion for Education Secretary Arne Duncan to apportion to state systems at his discretion. Duncan and his staff have developed a complex and extensive set of criteria that in part favor states that do not place a cap on the number of charter schools.

Rhode Island was among 16 finalists in the Race, and under the established terms of the contest it stands to rake in between $20 million and $75 million when the winners are announced on April 1 — though Duncan has reserved the option of readjusting the prize structure. Gist will travel to Washington, D.C. tomorrow, to present Rhode Island’s case.

Gist and Duncan have respectable reasons for pushing charters, which do not have to comply with some of the regulations that standardize the schedules and curricula of other public schools. This leaves charters free to specialize and experiment: One currently under development in Rhode Island focuses on performing arts; another is environmentally themed.

Educators can apply the lessons of these ventures to more conventionally structured school settings.

Ironically, it turns out that public education policy

is one of the areas where people most routinely forget that correlation does not equal causation. Teachers’ unions and others wary of the expansion of charters are fond of pointing out that students at traditional public schools tend to perform worse overall when charters open nearby; they blame the disrupting effects of changes to the established system. Meanwhile, charter advocates point to examples such as two Providence schools with rigorous curricula and predominantly low-income students who graduated their entire senior classes last year.

However, both sides frequently overlook one critical factor. Charter schools are widely believed to be a superior option to their traditional public counterparts. And parents with the drive, knowledge and connections to secure a spot at a charter for their child are more likely to actively assist in that child’s education. This lurking variable may account for much of the success of charter schools and the relative decline of some surrounding districts.

To wit, the reforms before the General Assembly today are not an absolutely sure bet. But the proposal has teacher union support, and with 3,600 Rhode Island students currently on waiting lists for charter schools, legislators should not hesitate to vote yes.

Indeed, the overall package is highly enticing: It entails the opportunity for more specialized and efficient education; the safeguard of the commissioner’s power to abrogate underperforming charters; and the chance for much-needed Beltway largesse. Legislators, administrators and union officials deserve credit for the hard work and difficult compromises that produced today’s proposals.

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Opinions The Brown Daily Herald

Tuesday, March 16, 2010 | Page 7

No radicalization without representation Andrea Matthews Opinions Columnist Consider this an open letter to the New York Times.

For better or worse, I have grown used to both liberal and conservative political commentators making inflammatory and unsubstantiated statements and calling them “news.”

Though it seems that not enough people are able to make a distinction between reporting and punditry, one would hope that one of the largest newspapers in this country would successfully avoid the overly-editorial, representatively voiced, agenda driven “reporting” conducted by television pundits who shall remain nameless.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. A March 1 article in the New York Times claimed that when news broke that President Ruth Simmons was leaving her position on Goldman Sachs’ board, “the Bears — the ones at Brown, not on Wall Street — roared.” The article went on to quote (but not cite) “an e-mail message sent among a group of alumni,” asking the rather bland question of “Who knew Brown had so much power?”

But the most fearful roaring cited in the article came from my fellow opinions columnist Simon Liebling ’12, gleaned from an interview conducted on campus. Liebling’s statements to the New York Times were the article’s strongest evidence that students and alumni were “buzzing,” “roaring” or whatever other aggressive and animalistic reaction the

article sought to employ. Liebling was quoted as stating, “Most people agreed with my basic point that this brought shame on the University … It has been taken by most people to be outrageous.”

Wait a moment. I do not remember being asked for my opinion. Was there some straw poll on the Main Green that I missed?

A campus-wide e-mail survey that I carelessly deleted? Who granted any one undergraduate the ability to make statements about the thoughts and feelings of the Brown community at large?

The decision to quote Liebling as an au-

The articulation of those examples may seem absurd in print, but ever y time the “token black/Latino/female/insert minority descriptor here” commentator is toted in the news as an authoritative voice for his or her group, the media propagates the idea that individuals who can be categorized by certain traits must think and feel the same way.

The Brown undergraduate population is not a homogenous group unified under a single political, social or ideological agenda. This will disappoint pundits on the left and the right who would seek to stereotype Brown students as a hippie-dominated, granola munching,

Brown University is a place where, as President Ruth Simmons has stated, “We encourage ideas and opinions to collide in the service of learning.”

thoritative voice on Brown students’ feelings toward Goldman Sachs and Simmons was deeply irresponsible. This problem of representative interviewing is hardly new. It is not uncommon for reporters and journalists to seek out “representative” voices for groups.

They expect individual observations and opinions to be able to account for the aggregate experiences of entire groups, whether as small as Brown’s undergraduate population or as significant as, for example, all black citizens in the United States.

uber-liberal flock. But Brown University is a place where, as Simmons has stated, “We encourage ideas and opinions to collide in the service of learning.”

In fact, the students to whom I have spoken about Simmons’ affiliation with Goldman have been ambivalent or mildly approving. Does this give me a legitimate claim to knowledge about the feelings of the entire Brown community?

Absolutely not.

In referencing these contrary opinions, I am not making a statement as to how the majority

of Brown students perceive Simmons’ former position on the board of Goldman Sachs. I could not make any credible declaration if I tried. This is because one cannot reach empirical conclusions without verifiable data. To claim that I know what a majority of Brown students think or feel would be an illegitimate thing for me to do without a defensible survey of the undergraduate population. Yet this is exactly what Liebling — prompted and primped by the New York Times — did.

Given that the Times article was published on March 1, all of this discussion seems rather irrelevant by now. But that article, and its uninformed and single-sided portrayal of Brown students, has continued to circulate in the blogosphere for weeks. Like it or not, people are talking about it, and as they do, they’re popularizing an overly simplified and unsubstantiated portrayal of the views of students at this University.

I do not write this column to make a substantive assertion about Brown students’ opinions. What I do assert is that anyone who makes such claims should think twice before making any statement that presupposes representative legitimacy, and give full credit to the diversity of thought that exists on this campus.

Andrea Matthews ’11 does, however, compliment reporter Graham Bowley on his very punny usage of the word “bears” in his otherwise irresponsible article.

Not content to hope in God EMILY BRESLIN Opinions Columnist I find Brown’s motto confounding. In my experience, theists describe their “belief,” “faith” or “trust” in God (or gods) rather than their “hope.” “Hope” indicates a degree of uncertainty, as in, “I hope that God is coming, but I’m not convinced.” Non-theists do not hope in God either; it makes no sense to have any desires about a non-existent thing. So is “In Deo Speramus” supposed to represent Brown as full of longing agnostics or believers going through a time of spiritual darkness?

Hope is very important. We all hope for things despite the odds against them — for cures for diseases, for comprehensive solutions to climate change and resource distribution problems and for peace and agreement between warring factions despite years of animosity. I hate getting all sentimental, but honestly, if we don’t hope for these things, we can’t feel like we are even able to “discharge the offices of life with usefulness and reputation” — and there’s not much point in getting out of bed in the morning, is there?

For the non-theist, hope for things despite all odds requires personal hope and hope in humanity. I do not want to take the space to defend non-theists against charges that our

lack of religious beliefs leads us into nihilism.

Rather, I merely wish to observe that it would be ridiculous to say that non-theists do not hope or have faith; we obviously have enough to go about our daily lives.

I have no problem with hoping, but the word itself does not quite capture how it is that we can act to make some difference when faced with the realization that we need to hope.

We are not going to be able to single-handedly change the world. I worry that “In Deo Speramus” calls for us to wait for a literal deus ex

be either.

As mottos go, I suppose we could have it worse, like Princeton does. “Under the protection of God she flourishes”? Talk about vanity.

Still, “In Deo Speramus” implies that we are resigned to be helpless when faced with our own future. Additionally, although I think there might sometimes be room in a secular society for references to God out of respect for tradition, this particular reference has the potential to render the motto completely irrelevant for some of the Brown population.

The motto encourages complacency and apathy by telling us that it is fine to sit around and hope that God exists and will take care of things for us.

machina to solve our problems. Our motto encourages complacency and apathy by telling us that it is fine to sit around and hope that God exists and will take care of things for us.

Even if someone believes that everything is presently going according to God’s plan, our actions must be part of that plan and we still ought to take responsibility for them. I am not content to hope in God in a passive way, and I do not think agnostics or theists should

“In Deo Speramus” is splashed on library books, buildings and everything in the Brown Bookstore, but does its pervasiveness make it invisible? To go further, if we did not see it all over the place, would it lose any semblance of importance?

Probably. A motto is not like a mantra for a university. It is supposed to state a guiding principle, to be sure, but it does not contribute any practical motivation. Institutional trappings

like school songs that carry so much weight at other schools do not seem to matter as much at Brown. Maybe the meaning contained in a motto is either too obvious or too elusive to be worth stating. Maybe we should do away with ours entirely.

I like the idea of some statement of universal intention, even if it is fairly trite, so I would suggest changing the motto instead. This would not be unprecedented, as “In Deo Speramus” is actually Brown’s third motto. From its inception to the Revolutionary War, our motto was “Amor et deliciae humani generis,” (Love and delight of the human race). After the war, the motto was changed to “Virtus magis colenda” (Virtue is more to be cultivated). In 1833, the seal was belatedly altered to reflect the institution’s name change from “Rhode Island College” to “Brown University,” and the motto became “In Deo Speramus.”

Brown has undergone many changes since 1833, including the incorporation of Pembroke College, and it might be time for a revision of the motto. To keep the focus on hope and agency, I would suggest, “Despite the odds, we hope and we act.”

Emily Breslin ’10 is a philosophy concentrator from Harvard, Massachusetts. She can be reached at emily_breslin@brown. edu.

Today The Brown Daily Herald

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College salaries see no growth this year

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comics

Dot Comic | Eshan Mitra and Brendan Hainline

c a l e n da r tomorrow, march 17

4 p.m. — The Queer Community and Religious Discussion Group, J. Walter Wilson 411

5:30 P.M. — Rosa Clemente: Politics, Race and Gender, Salomon 101

8 p.m. — Brown University Jazz Combos concert, Grant Recital Hall

7 p.m. — Seeing Red: The Sickle Cycle, Andrews Dining Hall

menu Sharpe Refectory

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

Lunch — Cheese Quesadillas, Linguica Sandwich, BBQ Chicken Pizza, Vegan Tofu Pups

Lunch — BBQ Chicken Sandwich, Noodles Alfredo, Grilled Montreal Chicken

Dinner — Orange Turkey, Au Gratin Potatoes, Chocolate Marshmallow Cake Roll

Dinner — Beef Lo Mein, Egg Foo Young, Curry Chicken Saute, Sticky Rice

crossword

48 / 34

56 / 38

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Cabernet Voltaire | Abe Pressman

Today, March 16

to m o r r o w

Slam poet on Latino Heritage Month

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

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to day

Excelsior | Kevin Grubb

Fruitopia | Andy Kim

Hippomaniac | Mat Becker

STW | Jintao Hung

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