Monday, September 20, 2010

Daily Herald the Brown

vol. cxlv, no. 73 | Monday, September 20, 2010 | Serving the community daily since 1891

Concertgoers ‘booty-dance’ to Big Boi’s beats Health office

By Kristina Fazzalaro Senior Staff Writer

Under the watchful gaze of Marcus Aurelius on Lincoln Field, students jumped, jived and wailed to the electric beats of Stegosaurus and the hip-hop rhythms of Big Boi at Brown Concert Agency’s Fall Concert Saturday night.

arts & culture After a day of ominous cloud cover, the skies cleared just in time for the concert to begin, giving students something to please their eyes as well as their ears. As the moon shined brightly down on concertgoers, Stegosaurus’ pulsating electrofunk beats and fast-paced dance mixes got early arrivals pumped for the rest of the show. Stegosaurus is actually the concert agency’s former booking chair, DJ James Hinton ’10.

After a quick set, Stegosaurus left

Advising Central expands

By Emma Janaskie Contributing Writer

Over the summer, Advising Central relocated and expanded from the second floor of J. Walter Wilson to the third. It opened for student use on Sept. 1, the first day of classes.

The expansion was designed to reflect the recommendations of Faculty Advising Fellows and is intended to establish a clear point of entry for all student advising needs, as well as to pool staff resources to enhance the student advising experience.

The expanded space includes an office for Disability Support Services, a center where students with disabilities can complete assignments for classes with the necessary accommodations.

The Curricular Resource Center, which previously occupied the space now used by Advising Central, has moved to the second floor of the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center.

A few temporary Swearer Center offices also had to be relocated to the second floor of J. Walter Wilson to make room for the expansion.

Although Advising Central has expanded, the number of staff working there remains the same.

inside

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News.....1–4 Arts........5–6 Sports.....8–9 Editorial....10 Opinion.....11 Today........12

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offers more doctor hours

the stage, leaving most students to mill about and enjoy the nice night.

Many retreated to the back of the green, where they could sit and relax without the pushing and shoving of the crowd below.

But when Big Boi took the stage, a flood of ticket-holders entered the venue. All at once, people gravitated toward the stage, moving as one disorganized mass to the beats Big Boi provided.

Despite missing one-half of OutKast’s dynamic duo, Big Boi got the crowd electrified and kept them there. Blending some old OutKast favorites with releases off his new album, Big Boi entertained with memorable rhymes and smooth rhythms.

Some of the most memorable performances were older singles.

Students joined in during Big Boi’s rendition of “Ms. Jackson,” echoing continued on page 5

By Lucy Feldman Contributing Writer

‘Overwhelmed’ “Is there anything about the college experience itself that can be conducive to these sorts of disorders?” asked William Simmons ’60, professor of anthropology and former vice president and provost.

His course on the American university examines college mental

University Health Ser vices has closed its overnight inpatient services and extended its hours of full-ser vice operation in order to provide more efficient service and save money.

According to Edward Wheeler, director of Health Services, nurseonly hours have been cut down, but there are more hours when doctors give X-rays, fill prescriptions and see patients. Health Ser vices — including the X-ray unit and pharmacy — is now open for full care Monday through Thursday from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

While Health Services is closed, students who call the office will be routed to a nursing service that can provide advice. Brown’s Emergency Medical Services will continue to be available at all times.

Two years ago, full-care opportunities were limited from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays, but nursing appointments were available around the clock.

Wheeler called the change a “better use of resources.” Health Services is now able to see about 100 additional patients each week with the extended appointment hours, with an average of between 80 and 100 patients total seen each day.

Graduate and medical students

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Hilary Rosenthal / Herald

Big Boi performed Saturday on Lincoln Field, singing OutKast hits as well as songs from his new album.

Mental health hits Ivies’ radars

By Sarah Forman Staff Writer

When it became clear that six Cornell students had committed suicide over the course of the 2009–10 academic year, the media erupted.

Articles on bridge barriers, anxiety and a university on edge flooded the Internet, publicizing what was meant to be a new insight to higher education: Not all college students are happy all the time.

There appeared to be a mental health crisis, and Cornell was painted a “suicide school.” But

worries about college mental health have been around for decades, and even the situation at Cornell became less jarring when approached with a wider lens. Over the last 10 years, the suicide sta-

Higher Ed tistics at Cornell matched national averages, and between 2006 and 2009 the school had no suicides.

Though the world of American education is not experiencing an acute mental health crisis, suicide and mental illness are still

significant issues, even at Brown — a university filled with what the Princeton Review deems the nation’s happiest students.

Bears score double-OT win in season opener

By Ethan Mccoy Contributing Writer

Running back Zack Tronti ’11 bounced outside and scampered into the end zone from a yard out to give the football team a seasonopening 33-30 win in double overtime over Stony Brook Saturday at Brown Stadium.

sports The Bears came away with the victory without first team All-Ivy quarterback and tri-captain Kyle Newhall-Caballero ’11, who missed the game with a hand injury.

Stepping in for Newhall-Caballero was Joe Springer ’11. In the first start of the senior’s collegiate career, Springer finished with 250

yards and a touchdown. He threw three interceptions, but made big throws in key situations and demonstrated his mobility with several nifty scrambles outside of the pocket.

The Seawolves almost won the game in regulation, but kicker Wesley Skiffington, who had missed an extra point earlier, pulled a 49-yard field goal attempt wide left with 14 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, keeping the game deadlocked at 20.

In the first overtime, Brown put pressure on the Seawolves with a Tronti touchdown run from inside the five-yard line. Stony Brook responded with a clutch fourth-down play, as running back Brock Jackolski took a direct snap up the middle continued on page 9

Jonathan Bateman / Herald

Running back Zack Tronti ’11 scored an overtime touchdown to give the football team a win in its first game of the season.

News, 3

Arts, 6

Opinions, 11

pucci on poetry Classics professor translates poetry of Latin writer Fortunatus

Project occupation Students reenact 2008 New School demonstration against administration

Times are a-changin’ William Tomasko ’13 tries to catch up

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

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Monday, September 20, 2010

“Academic stress has been around for decades.”

— David Leibow, college mental health expert

Alum recognized for Move consolidates faculty advising creative nonfiction continued from page 1

By Shefali Luthra Contributing Writer

Rachel Aviv ’04 will receive a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award for nonfiction writing on Thursday. The award was officially announced earlier this month.

The foundation, named for late novelist Rona Jaffe, recognizes six “emerging women writers” each year for excellence in fiction, creative nonfiction and poetr y, according to a foundation press release. Aviv will be honored with a $25,000 grant.

Aviv was nominated based on recommendations from writers, editors, critics and literary professionals consulted by the foundation, the press release said. The award is the only literary program in the nation aimed at supporting solely women writers.

“It’s relieved a lot of the doubts and concerns about being a freelance writer, which is particularly hard in this publishing climate,” Aviv said. “It’s been both an honor, but it also inspired me. It allows me to take risks and do the research I might not have done otherwise.”

Aviv said she will use the award money to shadow patients who are diagnosed with a 30 percent chance of developing psychosis.

She plans to use material from her research to write her first book.

Aviv has been published in periodicals including the New York Times Magazine and Harper’s.

She concentrated in literature & cultures in English at Brown, with

an emphasis in nonfiction writing.

Aviv also received her Master of Fine Arts degree in nonfiction writing from Columbia.

She has had pieces published about missionaries in public places, Braille literacy and schizophrenia. Although she has only recently begun writing about mental health, Aviv said it has interested her for a long time.

“I realized that I didn’t really know anything about schizophrenia,” Aviv said. “I guess it goes back to the idea of being drawn by topics that you didn’t really know anything about.”

Aviv cited Professor of English Elizabeth Taylor as particularly influential in her time at Brown.

Taylor taught Aviv for three years and “introduced” her to creative nonfiction, Aviv said.

“I didn’t really know it was possible to tell true stories about strangers that read like fiction,” Aviv said.

Taylor said Aviv was a “precocious” writer even in her first year.

“She really came into Brown already as an accomplished writer — very serious, very thoughtful and already thinking with the kind of complexity one sees in a junior or senior,” Taylor said. “It was clear she was meant to be a writer.”

While at Brown, Aviv also wrote for the Arts & Culture section of The Herald.

This is the 16th year the award has been given. Jaffe wrote 16 novels in her lifetime and died in 2005, the press release said.

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With the expansion, students now have a centralized space dedicated to advising and no longer need to wait in the hallways to see an adviser, as they did last year, said Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron.

“Advising Central was conceived as a place for students, and it’s evolved every year,” she said.

“Students can go to J. Walter Wilson and find Faculty Advising Fellows, Randall Advisers and peer advising all in one location.”

Bergeron said that Brown can

expect a further expansion of advising, as well as the development of faculty expertise to comprehensively address students’ questions.

Vice President for Campus Life and Student Ser vices Margaret Klawunn said that Advising Central was conceived as a way to “encourage interaction with faculty and students” and that the expansion worked to “evaluate and build on programs that brought together faculty and students.”

“Advising Central is now involving faculty in the lives of students directly,” she said.

Bergeron said Advising Central addresses students’ need for “justin-time advising” when they have urgent questions and provides students with the opportunity to expand their network and interact with more faculty for a diversity of perspectives.

Students have the option to head to Advising Central and chat with an adviser about their favorite course over a cup of coffee or make a formal appointment to discuss more serious academic goals, Klawunn said.

“Advising will be made available in the way students want it,” Bergeron said.

Brown adapts to psych. challenges continued from page 1 health care, and he said his research has found that many college students find the intensity, pressure and high expectations of undergraduate life leave them feeling anxious and overwhelmed.

“There’s a lot of pressure,” he said, and students constantly ask themselves, “How can I possibly compete with all of these geniuses that are in my class?”

David Leibow, a psychiatrist on the faculty of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, recently published a book on college mental health. He also attributed student depression and anxiety to “academic pressure and psychosocial adjustment.”

Although “academic stress has been around for decades,” changes to college admissions processes have created meritocratic universities with much higher expectations, Leibow said. The presence of highperforming students from diverse backgrounds at schools like Brown, Cornell and Columbia — which used to be populated exclusively by the elite — have left many students unable to keep up.

Over the last year, almost 85 percent of college students felt “overwhelmed” by everything they had to do, according to a 2009 survey by the American College Health Association. Over the same time period, about 30 percent of students felt “so depressed that it was difficult to function.”

Anxiety and depression are the most common issues plaguing the 18 percent of Brown students who visit Psychological Services each year, said Belinda Johnson, the office’s director.

‘They can get help’ Yet while admissions standards at Brown have skyrocketed over the last 10 years, mental health figures

have remained constant, Johnson said.

There was a 35 percent increase in the number of students seeking psychological help between 1990 and 2000, but, she said, even that increase might be related to more acceptance of the usefulness of professional treatment and not only to changes in the mental health of the student body.

“In general, our society became more aware that some problems that people have are mental health problems, and that they can get help for them,” she explained. Issues like anxiety and depression were relabeled as mental health concerns, rather than just sadness or nerves, but the underlying problems had always been on campus.

Universities like Brown also saw a small uptick in the number of students with more serious mental health issues, Johnson said, because improvements in psychiatric treatment and medication helped some students make it to college when their illnesses would have kept them from school in the past. Again though, there were not actually more young people overall with mental illnesses.

‘A supportive environment’ Brown has worked for years to build “a supportive environment for seeking help,” said Margaret Klawunn, vice president for campus life and student services. Psych Services has been organized for decades under a refer-out model that minimizes waiting lists for students seeking first-time help, she said. Policies for students with psychological issues serious enough to merit a medical leave of absence have also been largely unchanged.

At Cornell, most mental health initiatives and suicide prevention efforts are also decades-old, said Gregory Eels, director of the school’s counseling and psychologi-

cal services program and a former president of the Association for University College Counseling Center Directors.

About 10 years ago, Cornell adopted a “much more public health approach” when it adopted a campuswide suicide prevention program informed by the U.S. Air Force Academy, he said. Faculty and staff started watching videos seven years ago that help them to recognize signs of students in distress, he said, and a “Let’s Talk” program puts counselors all over campus to directly reach some underserved members of the community.

Though Cornell had some immediate, short-term responses to last year’s six suicides — most notably erecting bridge barriers on its campus’s infamous gorges — the general commitment to mental health was long-term.

An old problem Mental illness is old news on college campuses.

In the 1600s, Har vard “was constantly having problems” with drunken students who would vandalize property and get in fights, said Simmons, the anthropology professor. Though no one would use terms like “binge drinking” or “substance abuse” to describe those students’ behavior, or suggest that it might be caused by deeper emotional problems, it was not all that different from many issues on campus today.

“We’re dealing with a modern version of something that’s always existed,” Simmons said.

Fortunately though, Brown’s campus has also had an age-old commitment to watching out for other members of the community.

About 30 percent of the students at Psychological Services get referrals from friends, Johnson said.

“This concept of a caring community has always existed at Brown,” Johnson said.

Monday, September 20, 2010

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“I didn’t want to end college without taking a class from him.”

— Allison Kemmerle ’11, head of Classics DUG

Classics professor finds niche with obscure poet Fortunatus

By Emma Wohl Contributing Writer

Evan Thomas / Herald

Professor Joseph Pucci has just released the first English translation of poetry by a little-known — and sometimes erotic — poet.

Associate Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature Joseph Pucci remembers a grad school professor joking, “If anyone wants to make a name for him or herself” in the field of classics, “Fortunatus is the poet you want to study.” Years later, Pucci is now offering what he believes is the only class in the world focusing exclusively on Fortunatus, a medieval Latin poet.

This is Pucci’s third semester offering the class, which he also taught in 2005 and 2008. He hopes to make it a regular part of Brown’s classics curriculum.

“I will offer it regularly as an advanced Latin class,” he said, adding that he now has 28 students enrolled, which is “exciting.”

Fortunatus, a sixth-century poet who lived in Italy and Gaul, is, according to Pucci, “not a canonical author.

He’s not on the radar screen” of many people who study Latin authors.

But Allison Kemmerle ’11, a student in Pucci’s course, described it as a very important class to take “if you want to experience Latin as literature.”

Kemmerle, who is also co-president of the Classics Departmental Undergraduate Group, said that she had studied Fortunatus before as part of a survey of Latin literature. “As a Latin student, you get the history,” she said.

For her, though, the major draw of the class was the professor. “For a lot of people who came to Brown for classics, Professor Pucci was the first person we met,” Kemmerle said.

“I didn’t want to end college without taking a class from him.”

Pucci recently published the first English translation of Fortunatus’ poems, 120 poems written for the poet’s friends that “make the everyday seem more than common,” according to Pucci. He described one poem in which Fortunatus recalls “waking up, walking into the kitchen and seeing, in the cream on top of the milk, the

fingerprints of a good friend.”

Though some of the poems explore the erotic, Pucci said the majority of Fortunatus’ poems were “just focused on how it feels to be alive.”

According to Kemmerle, the simplicity of Fortunatus’ themes makes for a different kind of discussion. “You miss the point of literature if you’re beating it to death and trying to pick apart grammar,” she said.

Pucci’s class looks instead at the big picture and “treats the materials as works of art.” This is easier, she said, because of Fortunatus’ focus on “simple daily life.”

But students ready to jump out of their seats and register for Pucci’s class will just have to wait. Pucci said he will not offer the class again until the year after next.

Instead, said Pucci, he will “probably offer a class on another obscure poet” — Alcuin, a Latin poet of the 8th century — thereby securing his own “monopoly on obscure late Latin authors.”

Grant funds research Org. offers alternative winter break on college readiness

By Zach Rufa Contributing Writer

By Jamie Brew Contributing Writer

Brown’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform will use a $3 million grant to help school districts gauge their students’ preparedness for college.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave the grant to the institute in August after the two organizations worked together earlier in the year to plan the grant’s use.

“It’s a significant grant in dollar terms and in terms of the issues it addresses,” said Marla UcelliKashyap, director of district redesign and leadership at the institute.

The institute, which was founded in 1993 as a national organization dedicated to non-partisan, nonideological education policy development and research, relies on grants for much of its funding, she said.

The grant will fund research on college readiness indicator systems, methods of data collection and analysis that would allow school districts to identify and assist students who are ill-prepared for college, Ucelli-Kashyap said.

Many districts already employ similar systems directed toward students who are at risk of failing to graduate, looking at how students’ grades, attendance patterns and survey responses predict their likelihood of graduation, she said.

But graduating from high school does not necessarily imply being ready for college.

“It’s not the same,” said UcelliKashyap, who hopes to shift the focus of indicator systems research “from being ready to get out of

high school to being ready to do something after high school.”

The research funded by the grant will focus not only on collecting more data, but also on finding previously overlooked connections among existing data and investigating how they affect students’ college performance and retention rates, Ucelli-Kashyap said.

Rhode Island’s Central Falls School District asks students as early as elementary school to write about their attitudes toward college. But Superintendent Frances Gallo said she would like to develop a more robust indicator system.

“In the past we haven’t used indicator systems enough,” she said, “We only have anecdotal evidence.”

The Annenberg Institute will choose approximately six school districts to take part in the program funded by the grant. The institute is looking for districts that already have some elements of an indicator system in place, Ucelli-Kashyap said.

Once the six are selected, they will be coordinated as “a network with the opportunity to learn from each other and from experts in the field,” she said.

Central Falls, a district with which the Annenberg Institute has worked in the past — notably in the wake of this February’s controversy over the mass firing of teachers at Central Falls High School — recognizes the importance of monitoring warning signs and hopes to be chosen as one of the participants, Gallo said.

“The red flags start early,” she said, “The more we know about our children, the more we can help them.”

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Students interested in doing more than relaxing at home over winter break will be pleased to know that another option is available.

In a collaborative effort between the University and Limitless Horizons Ixil, a nonprofit organization which focuses on improving the lives of a group of indigenous Guatemalans, up to 18 Brown students will travel to Chajul, Guatemala, for 12 days in January.

Chajul is hardly a typical tourist destination, a county high in the mountains of Guatemala where most adults earn between $1 and $3 a day, previous participants said at an information session Thursday. LHI works closely with the people of the area, many of whom speak the indigenous language of Ixil rather than Spanish.

The organization is still relatively young — it formed in 2004 — but it is growing quickly.

The organization awarded 76 scholarships to students from the area to attend school, up from 10 in 2004. And due to the group’s efforts, this year saw a 500 percent increase in the number of students attending high school in the region, students said at the info session.

The upcoming trip is not the first time Brown has worked with the non-

profit organization. At information sessions last week, students who traveled to Chajul last year spoke and shared their experiences. Leonard Chen ’13 called the trip “engaging” and “rewarding” and said he was pleased to have learned so much on the trip.

Alysha Naik ’11 has remained active with LHI since she traveled to Chajul and is helping to organize this year’s trip.

“It’s an experience you can’t get through a travel agent,” she said, calling her work in Chajul “one of the best things I’ve ever done.”

Groups work directly with the native people of the area, helping out wherever they are needed. Last year’s group installed cement floors in the school, painted the village library, helped to build a community garden and more.

Past participants said that, in addition to the work, they spent their time learning. Naik “realized all the things I take for granted,” she told The Herald.

She said her perspective on life changed when she met the people of Chajul, who see virtually no tourists or travelers due to the area’s isolation. Despite their poverty, she said she had “never seen people so happy.

They don’t care that nine of them are crammed into one bed.”

Those in attendance at the information session considering working with

LHI were excited about the opportunity, but expressed some concern over the price of the trip, which totals about $1,700 in addition to airfare.

Grey Joyner ’13 said the 12 days would be a “great trip,” but “money would be an issue.”

Lauren Urban ’12 echoed that sentiment, saying she was interested in the trip but that it was too pricey.

But Naik explained that there are ways to offset the cost of the trip. She encouraged students to “apply for the trip first,” and said that if a student wants to work with the organization, something can often be done to ensure they are able to make the trip without breaking the bank.

Past participants have fundraised as a group, contacted friends and family to ask for small donations, been sponsored by employers and were even granted outside scholarships, as was Chen’s case. He said the trip was expensive but explained that all money is used to fund the projects in the area. Because of that fact, “it’s your project,” he said.

Despite the costs, past participants said the trip was worth the money and was “really rewarding.”

“The most rewarding part was the time spent with the people of Chajul,” Chen said. “Their kindness makes the trip worth it.”

The group is accepting applications until Sept. 24.

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

C ampus N EWS

“Now when we’re open, we’re open for everything.”

New health hours closer to peers’

— Edward Wheeler, director of Health Services

Changes to make dent in remaining deficit

By Sarah Mancone Senior Staff Writer

continued from page 1 had trouble getting in during the previous hours and will benefit from the change, said Margaret Klawunn, vice president for campus life and student services.

Students can now get all of their needs — medical examinations, X-rays, lab work and prescriptions — taken care of in one visit, Wheeler said. “Before, we’d see patients at six, and we couldn’t do an X-ray. We’d have to have them come back the next day. Now we don’t have to do that,” he said.

“Now when we’re open, we’re open for everything.”

Wheeler said another benefit is that fewer students end up in the hospital. “Nurses were sending more patients to the hospital between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. (on weekdays) and on weekends, but now we’re able to do a better job of evaluating them and taking care of them while they’re here,” Wheeler said.

The Organizational Review Committee, a group that worked to find opportunities for budget reduction across campus last spring, recommended replacing inpatient services with other services such

Monday, September 20, 2010

Sushant Wagley / Herald file photo

Doctors will now be available at Health Services for more hours each day, though the building will close overnight.

as expanded evening and weekend hours and an overnight nursing triage service. Wheeler explained that the inpatient unit was not used very often and was expensive to maintain. Some of Brown’s peer institutions, including Cornell, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, have also eliminated their infirmaries. But Health Services will still have four beds available for day use, Wheeler said.

“We decided it was a good decision at this moment to close it,” Klawunn said. She declined to specify the amount the University will save by making this change, but said it was “significant.”

The new hours were decided by administrative staff at Health

Ser vices and Klawunn, with the help of a consultant, Wheeler said.

“As we were considering closing the inpatient unit, we were trying to figure out what would also be helpful,” Klawunn said.

Wheeler said many students had sought help between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. on weekdays and before 4 p.m. on the weekends but could not receive the services they needed. As a result, he said, Health Services adjusted their hours to fit the needs of those students.

Klawunn emphasized her confidence in the changes. “There was much discussion, and we looked at it very carefully. We’re making a decision that we think is the right decision,” she said.

The University has begun implementing changes to support administrative and academic departments as recommended during the summer by the Organizational Review Committee. Chief among those alterations are extending grant management resources, creating an administrative ser vice center and expanding desktop support services.

These changes are a part of an overall effort to compensate for the economic downturn’s effect on the endowment, said Karen Davis, vice president for human resources.

Over the course of several fiscal years following the economic downturn, the University has decided to cut $95 million from the budget. The ORC and the University Resources Committee “worked long and hard last year to identify additional savings,” Davis said. During the first phases of the budget alternation, the University trimmed the deficit by $65 million.

This was done by eliminating 139 staff positions that had been vacated by staff members who chose to take advantage of the offered retirement incentive program, Davis said, as well as by implementing a general hiring freeze.

The committee also worked to eliminate operating costs and use that money to directly support academic programs, Davis added.

For the last $30 million, Davis said, the University will alter current programs and create new ones instead of making more cuts.

One of these programs consists of shared grants and resources for contracts in the humanities. The Depar tment of Applied Mathematics has a grant management resource that it is making available to some humanities departments, Davis said.

With grants, there are “additional things you have to do to manage that money,” she said, and “that’s been an area of need around the campus.”

Another program that has been developed is the administrative service center. This ser ves to bring people who work for the administrative units across campus together physically or virtually in order to become more efficient, Davis said.

Through the ser vice center, one or two people can do the work for multiple units, which include tasks like paying employees, buying supplies and scheduling travel for faculty, Davis said, adding that this gives people in those departments the capacity to do other things.

This makes it easier for administrative departments to track

money, people and financial transactions as well as to generally “get smarter about doing some of the basic transactions,” she said. Many universities have already created such centers, she added.

Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98 appointed Sara Walsh as director of the center, which is now located in University Hall.

The University has also increased desktop support services, which came as a recommendation from the ORC during the Corporation meeting in Februar y, said Chris Grossi ’92, assistant director of desktop support services.

Prior to this development, Davis said, there was one position within the administration that provided troubleshooting.

This person would cover desktop support primarily for those in Human Resources because there are “a lot of feeds that are going to and from the main human resources system,” Davis said.

“It wasn’t a very efficient use,” she said, because if that one person was out sick, there would be no one to help maintain the personal computers of people in Human Resources.

This new system, which is overseen by Computing and Information Services, will “make computing support in academic and administrative departments more consistent across the University,” Grossi said.

CIS is now providing this support to “even more departments across the University,” Grossi said.

There were as many as 20 departments that did not have this resource built in, Davis said, which left them mostly on their own.

The program’s expansion does not extend across the entire University but focuses on the majority of the humanities and a mix of administrative departments, said Scott Martin, manager of IT support consultants.

Giving CIS this responsibility “improves computer infrastructure” and makes it easier to “manage the volume of students and faculty,” Martin said.

Davis said CIS offers a bigger, more expansive team than the University had before.

“When I call my IT suppor t person in CIS, they know my computer,” Davis said. “They can walk me through it” by knowing how the computer is configured and literally seeing the desktop, she said.

There is always someone who can take care of a problem, she added, and it does not require physically bringing a computer to the Help Desk.

They are “already seeing the advantages,” Davis said.

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Arts & Culture The Brown Daily Herald

Monday, September 20, 2010 | Page 5

Ugandan exile Seremba shares story of survival, triumph

By Anita Badejo Staff Writer

Imagine surviving your own execution. Now imagine surviving it 326 times.

George Seremba has been performing his autobiographical oneman play “Come Good Rain: An Extraordinary Story of Personal Survival” throughout the world since 1992. The Ugandan exile, actor and current International Writers Project visiting playwright at Brown narrated his account of life at the hands of brutal Ugandan dictators Apolo Milton Obote and Idi Amin Dada for the 326th time on Friday.

“We knew that, as a longtime exile, he was in need, and we could be of temporary if modest help,” wrote Visiting Professor of Literary Arts Robert Coover, who is in charge of the International Writers Project — which provides Seremba with a living stipend, an office, “a refuge and a bit of quiet writing time” — in an e-mail to The Herald.

The play opened the 40th season of the Department of Africana Studies’ Rites and Reason Theatre.

Seremba left approximately 150 audience members spellbound as they squeezed into extra space on

risers and the floor.

The production opened with drumming by Malian master percussionist Sidy Maiga, who provided seamless musical transitions from scene to scene throughout the play.

Seremba begins the play by recounting an old Ugandan folk tale of a girl who is left in a forest to die at the hands of an evil stepmother.

As Seremba’s own story unfolds, the parallels between the young girl’s narrative and his own become clear, and her tale serves as a thread that weaves the play’s scenes together.

The tale was also Seremba’s favorite as a child, he told The Herald.

Incorporating the art of folk narration into the play was “in a sense universalizing, but in the particular and the local,” he said. The play resonates not only with audience members’ humanity but also with their heritage, he added. “Where you have that girl, other people have Cinderella.”

Seremba’s own tale takes the audience from his childhood to his eventual escape and exile from Uganda in 1980. The play comes to a gripping climax when President Obote, reclaiming power for a second time from Idi Amin, sentences Seremba to death at the hands of his military intelligence. The scene unfolds in

terror as Seremba is marched into the forest and shot repeatedly.

During this episode in his life, Seremba felt like the girl in the folk tale, he told The Herald. “I felt like she was hovering over my back like what the Christians call a guardian angel.” Seremba added that he was convinced he was dying until he “woke up or came back to life.”

Yet, he miraculously crawls his way to safety, is found by a nearby village boy, receives medical attention and manages to flee to Kenya with the help of his uncle before ultimately breaking out of Africa altogether to Canada.

The dialogue is masterfully written, and Seremba captures the horrors of his experiences in strikingly poignant language. Embodying the rage of Ugandan civilians, he cries, “They can’t go on killing us yesterday and mounting our daughters tomorrow.” To President Obote’s military intelligence, he is “a doormat to their thick boots,” while “sometimes the back of their guns would have a little talk with (his) ribs.”

But it is the playwright and actor himself who carries the play from beginning to conclusion, and it is hard to imagine understanding Seremba’s story without having him there to

tell it. The play is driven completely by his exceptional ability to relay his emotions to the audience. It is in the gleam and softness in his eyes during the beginning of the first act that one sees young George. In the pure, raw anguish and pain in his twinges and jerks as he is shot repeatedly, one sees the man who survived his ordeal. At one point, he lifts his right shirtsleeve to expose an approximately six- to eight-inch scar left on his arm from one of the gunshot wounds he suffered.

Seremba told The Herald that “pretty much every minute” of his performance is as emotional as the corresponding real events. “That signifies success, probably.”

Dul Johnson, an International Writers Project visiting fellow and scholar at the Watson Institute for International Studies, “was quite amazed that he could relive it without actually breaking down,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.

“It’s definitely a cathartic experience,” Seremba said, adding that he is motivated to speak for fellow Ugandans who never lived to tell their tale.

“It becomes an easier thing to do, since I’m alive and well and those people aren’t,” he said. “I testify for them as well as myself.”

Margaret Namulyanga GS, an MFA student in playwriting and a Ugandan, was anxious to see the play performed by the playwright, having seen it performed once by a student at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.

Namulyanga saw a “stark difference” between the two shows.

“There was fervency from the actor while he narrated the story,” she wrote of Seremba’s performance in an e-mail to The Herald. “I think it comes from the writer/actor’s knowledge of his story; the pain that was inflicted on him, and all the low moments.”

Seremba hopes that, by giving his own testimony, he educates audience members on the trials of those “who come from places that are teeming with inhumanity,” he said. “Once they know, then it’s up to them because you never know where the next fire is going to be.”

During a post-performance discussion, a man who identified himself as Gambian said he was troubled by the state of many African nations such as his own and skeptical of any potential for hope or change on the continent. Seremba’s response was simple: “The alternative is bleaker because pessimism never wins.”

Big Boi entertains with OutKast tributes and new album continued from page 1

Hilary Rosenthal / Herald

Big Boi performed a one-hour set on Lincoln Field Saturday, then left the stage without offering an encore.

the well-known chorus back to the rapper in synchronized mimicry.

“The Way You Move” was another crowd favorite that had people rushing toward the stage. Though Andre 3000 wasn’t present, Big Boi’s style and tempo still thrilled the audience.

His Southern hip-hop roots came alive on stage as he incorporated heavy bass tracks with a bounce that had students bobbing their heads to the beat.

“He played all the songs I wanted to hear, so I’m pleased,” said Ella Evans ’11.

Other students were not quite as satisfied. “I really like it when he does the OutKast stuff,” said Stephen Larrick ’11. “But it still feels like something is missing.”

Big Boi may have paid tribute to his roots, but this concert was ultimately about his new album, “Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty.”

“Are you ready for some new s—?” Big Boi bellowed. Brown certainly was. “ ‘Shutterbug’ was really good,” said Danny Sugar ’11 of the new album’s hit single.

“I’ve never booty-danced on Lin-

coln Field before,” said one Brunonian before disappearing back into the crowd. Other students had the opportunity to “booty-dance” on stage with the artist himself during the middle of his set.

Big Boi also had a projector that showcased his music videos throughout the concert. “His movies are pretty good,” Sugar said. “It’s impressive that he has one for each song.”

But after his one-hour set, Big Boi left the stage and did not return for an encore, leaving most students curious as to whether the concert was over at just 8:30.

“Unfortunately with hip-hop artists, they can be a bit unpredictable,” said Abigail Schreiber ’11, the concert agency’s booking chair. “I was told by his agency that his set would be about an hour, but I was surprised he didn’t come out for an encore.”

Due to requests from campus neighbors, the concert agency had to ensure the concert was over by nine, Schreiber said.

“I think they should have started later,” Sugar said.

BCA invited Hinton to come back on for a quick set after Big Boi, and the dance party that commenced was energetic but short-lived as se-

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curity guards began shooing people from the green within 10 minutes.

Concert-goers expressed concern over the lack of people at the performance. “I’m surprised there aren’t more people,” Larrick said.

“I mean, it’s Big Boi. He’s a bigger name than they get for most fall concerts.”

Compared to the Main Green, many preferred Lincoln Field’s more intimate stage. Several remarked that they enjoyed the more enclosed atmosphere.

“You do get an intimacy that you don’t get on the Main Green,” Schreiber said. “The vast majority of the tickets were sold to Brown students, so it really felt like a private concert.”

“BCA couldn’t be happier,” Schreiber added.

Fall Concert is usually much smaller than its spring counterpart.

According to Schreiber, many people told her they hadn’t even known Fall Concert existed. This was one of the reasons the concert agency was excited to book Big Boi, she said.

“We certainly wanted to expand the Fall Concert from years past,” Schreiber said. “Mission accomplished: We were able to put it on more people’s radars.”

Monday, September 20, 2010

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

A rts &C ulture

Page 6

“They decided to take their own initiative and abandon the script.”

— Ariel Hudes ’11, organizer of “Re: Occupation”

Student occupation pushes performance-reality boundaries

By Fei Cai Senior Staff Writer

On Dec. 17, 2008, over 100 students barricaded themselves in a New School cafeteria in protest. Their goals: the resignation of unpopular President Bob Kerrey and other head administrators, more student participation in university decisions and more student space, among other reforms.

Following the New School example, student occupations spread to California, the United Kingdom and even Greece, wrote Mark Tribe, assistant professor of modern culture and media, in an e-mail to The Herald.

On Saturday at 5 p.m., students from Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design, along with alums and graduate students, stormed into Faunce House in the fashion of New School students two years ago.

These students were participants in a performance piece by Tribe, who is also an artist and curator, and Ariel Hudes ’11, a performance studies concentrator. The two decided to reenact the occupation this weekend in the Kasper Multipurpose Room in the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center.

The project, titled “Re: Occupation,” is a two-part piece that includes a participatory performance event and a video installation based on the New School occupation, according to Tribe.

The performance will be recorded and presented as a multi-screen video at

the Aronson Gallery across from the New School in New York City this fall. The video will also be shown at the MK Gallery in Zagreb, Croatia, next summer.

Tribe created the piece for the Aronson Gallery, which commissioned him to contribute to the “Shape of Change” exhibition Oct. 30–Nov. 9, Hudes said.

Hudes proposed the idea of reenactment after she watched unreleased video footage Tribe found of the event. She wrote in an e-mail to The Herald that she “honed in on the idea of ‘performance of protest’ ” and became interested in “separating the words/people/space of the original occupation.”

Tribe was more interested in thinking about the occupation as an instance of radicalization and even a performance, he wrote. “To some extent, occupations are performances; reenacting an occupation has the potential to make that performativity explicit, to open it up to a different kind of exploration.”

Tribe and Hudes decided to reenact the occupation at Brown because of the University’s long history of student activism, according to Tribe.

“The eruptions of 1968 culminated in Brown’s adoption of a progressive new curriculum drafted by students and, in 1985, students erected shanties and staged hunger strikes to protest the University’s investments in companies

doing business in South Africa,” he wrote.

Tribe has worked on a number of performance-video projects and has staged a series of six public reenactments of historical protest speeches from the Vietnam War era’s New Left movements.

This reenactment consisted of a group of actors who played activists from the original occupation and many extras to flesh out the project. Hudes created the scenario based on the unreleased footage and ethnography written by some of the occupiers.

“We hope to complicate the boundaries between art and politics, artifice and everyday life, mediated representation and immediate experience,” Tribe wrote. “I see this reenactment as a way (to) raise questions about occupation both as a political tactic that is aimed at getting demands met, and as a utopian strategy for creating spaces of temporary freedom.”

Only part of the performance was scripted. The rest of the 21 hours were supposed to be filled with improvisation “shaped by the performers,” exploring “how they discuss (or don’t discuss) the subject matter of the scripted scenes, how they live in the space, to what level they’re willing to conflate their ‘roles’ and their ‘selves,’” Hudes wrote.

But during Sunday’s early hours, the occupants decided to move from the multipurpose room, a space re-

Emma Wohl / Herald

After a long night, the student re-enactors regrouped to discuss the goals of their authentic occupation of Petteruti Lounge.

served for the performance, to Petteruti Lounge, where they stayed for the rest of the 21-hour reenactment.

“The occupiers had been in discussion from 11:30 to 3:30,” said Hudes, who, with Tribe, had left the room at the time. “They decided to take their own initiative and abandon the script.”

“Following the script for the first couple of hours seemed kind of fake, to be honest,” said Julian Park ’12, a participant in the performance. “Part of it had to do with the fact that this was a place that had been requested for us.”

To truly understand the original

occupation, the performers decided to move into a space that had not been reserved.

“Between the 20 or so of us, we really created a community out of this event,” Park said. “It really was an amazing thing.”

Hudes expressed her approval of the deviation from the script. She said, “The event was very successful in ways Mark and I had hoped. Everyone walked out of the occupation at 2 p.m. today feeling like they had either learned something or had an experience that would stick with them in an impactful way for a long time to come.”

SportsWeekend The Brown Daily Herald

Monday, September 20, 2010 | Page 8

SCOREBOARD

M. Water POLo

M. Water POLO

W. Soccer

Cross country

Field hockey

Brown 16 Washington and Jefferson 6

Brown 11 Bucknell 7

Sacred Heart 0 Brown 0 (2OT)

Iona College Meet of Champions

Columbia 5 Brown 4

St. Francis 13 Brown 9 (ECAC Championship game)

W. Golf

Men – fourth place

Bryant 2 Brown 6

Brown 10 Johns Hopkins 9 (OT)

Dartmouth Invite – fifth place

Women – second place

M. SOCCER

Squad remains undefeated after weekend victories

By Zach Bahr Sports Editor

BOSTON — This weekend was a true early-season test for the men’s soccer team (4-0-2). The Bears welcomed a nationally ranked opponent to Stevenson Field on Friday and then went on the road to face a squad looking for an upset. But Brown preserved its unbeaten record after securing wins against both No. 24 Indiana (3-3) and Boston University (3-3-1).

Brown 2, No. 24 Indiana 1 Bruno was up against a perennial national powerhouse on Friday night. The Hoosiers have appeared in 34 national tournaments all-time and have been crowned national champions seven times. But Brown handed the Hoosiers a 2-1 defeat after a late goal by for ward Sean Rosa ’12.5.

“I think it’s a great feeling. They are as good a team as we’ve seen in a long time,” said defender David Walls ’11. “It’s the first time we’ve been behind this year.”

A wet field proved problematic for both teams early on, with many players falling. But Indiana’s Andy Adlard scored midway through the first half. The goal was the first allowed by Paul Grandstrand ’11 this season.

The Bears would settle into their game during the second half. Just five minutes in, midfielder Thomas McNamara ’13 hammered a shot into the back of the net from 15 yards out.

With less than 10 minutes remaining, it looked like the game was going to end in a draw. But the Bears were able to connect, as a pass to Rosa found the back of an empty Indiana net. Hoosier goalie Luis Soffner was still on the ground after diving for an attempted shot

by Brown.

“It feels amazing,” Rosa said about his game-winning goal.

“Especially after the first (half), where the keeper got my first one,

I just knew one more was going to come.”

The intensity was high throughout the matchup. Several hard slide tackles were made by both teams, but no cards were shown by the referee. After some exchanging of words between both squads, a member of the Indiana team attempted to tackle the ball out of midfielder John Okafor’s ’11 hands.

After the game, the head coaches reflected on the close contest.

“Players executed the plays ver y well,” said Head Coach Pat Laughlin. “There was never a moment where we weren’t playing well. Total team effort.”

Things were not as bright on Indiana’s sideline.

“You know, tonight we obviously didn’t play our best game,” said Indiana Head Coach Todd Yeagley.

“Brown was able to capitalize on our mistakes.”

Brown 2, Boston University 0 Sunday evening’s matchup at Nickerson Field was an ugly one for both teams. Ultimately, under the lights in Boston, the Bears were able to overcome first-half difficulties to secure the victory.

“It was a tough game.” Laughlin said. “We knew that coming off of the Indiana game and the amount of energy needed, it was going to be tough.”

The story of the night was the depth of the Brown bench. Nineteen Bears saw action on the night, with both goals being scored by reserve players.

Forward T.J. Popolizio ’12 fired in the first goal after a long pass from Grandstrand, and midfielder Bobby Belair ’13 knocked in a header from midfielder Jay Hayward ’12 to give the Bears a two-goal advantage, which stood until the final whistle.

Bruno had trouble passing in the first half, and the Terriers were able to control the ball for a majority of the opening 45 minutes. BU had several shots on goal, testing

Emily Gilbert / Herald

This controversial no-goal in the first half of the game against Indiana would have evened the score at 1–1.

the abilities of Grandstrand. But a BU penalty kick missed high, and a shot on goal ricocheted off the crossbar, keeping the Terriers off the scoreboard.

Laughlin noted his team’s early struggles.

“We only had one practice on the turf field, and I think it showed,” Laughlin said. “But once we settled down, these guys were able to get it done.”

Brown’s shutout effort was led by defender Ryan McDuff ’13, who cleared several attempts by the opposing team in frenetic stretches near the Bears’ goal.

“It’s humbling,” McDuff said of being such a young leader for the team. “Week in and week out, we young guys have to bring the energy and maturity. We have to learn how to practice so that we get the most out of it.”

The matchup between Brown and BU is a familiar one for both programs. The series originally started in 1969 and occurred annually until 1997. The rivalry was renewed in 2003, and the teams have battled every year since.

Jonathan Bateman / Herald

Midfielder Thomas McNamara ’13 celebrates after scoring the equalizing goal against No. 24 Indiana. The team went on to win 2-1.

Check out Herald sports online browndailyherald.com/sports

Page 9

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

S ports W eekend

“It was heartbreaking.”

— Volleyball Coach Diane Short, on losing to her alma mater

VOLLEYBALL

Team wins two of four during weekend of Brown Invitational

By Ashley McDonnell Assistant Sports Editor

In preparation for conference play, the volleyball team (5-6) hosted the Brown Invitational this weekend, managing to win two of its four games.

The Bears suffered a tough 3-2 loss to the University of Rhode Island (9-3) in the first matchup but then managed to turn right around and dominate Holy Cross (5-11) with a 3-0 victor y. On Saturday, Brown repeated the previous night’s performance, starting with a sweep of Central Connecticut State (2-7), but then ended up on the other side of the spectrum, losing in straight sets against Boston College (8-5).

“All the teams in this tournament were even, and I knew it would be a really good experience,” said Head Coach Diane Short. “We’re trying to prepare for Ivy League play.”

URI 3, Brown 2 Brown star ted of f the game strong, crushing URI 25-15 in the first set. But the Rams rebounded in the second set and won by a slim margin, 25-22. The momentum shifted back in the Bears’ favor in the third set, which they dominated with a 25-16 victory.

URI never allowed Brown to take the lead again — the Rams won the fourth set 25-16 and forced

a decisive fifth set, which they won 15-10.

“They’re a good team,” said setter Alexandra Rieckhoff ’14, who had 42 assists. “We should have beat them in four, but we played well.”

The matchup had a particular importance for Short.

“It was heartbreaking” to lose to “my alma mater,” Short said. She said she believes that the team “ran into some problems” at the end of the game.

“There were some momentum changes that worked against us,” Short said. “And we kept serving to their best passer. But there were lots of digs, and it could have gone either way.”

Brown 3, Holy Cross 0 Less than an hour later, the Bears battled Holy Cross and managed to put the recent past behind them. Brown won both the first and second set by the score of 25-19.

In the third frame, the Crusaders came their closest to edging past the Bears, but Brown won 25-21, sweeping Holy Cross.

“It was one of our better-serving games,” Short said. “The confidence level was high throughout the match.”

Defensive specialist Annika Gliottone ’12 led the squad with three service aces.

Brown 3, Central Conn. 0 The Bears’ momentum carried over to the next day against Central Connecticut State. In the first set, Brown managed to hold Central Connecticut State to 13 points.

Though the Blue Devils nipped at Bruno’s heels in the next two sets, the Bears managed to hold on to their lead, winning by identical 2523 scores.

“We should have beat them, so it was good to win,” Rieckhoff said.

The stars of the game were outside hitter Katrina Post ’13, with 14 kills and 13 digs, and outside hitter Emma Pastore ’14 with 11 kills.

BC 3, Brown 0 In their fourth and final match of the tournament and their second game of the day, the Bears could not keep their winning streak going. BC shut down Brown’s offense and defense in the first set, earning the easy 25-16 win. The Bears battled in the second set, but could not pull it out in the end, losing 2523. The Eagles took the third and final set 25-20.

“We weren’t ser ving well enough,” Short said. “We couldn’t pass well enough to run offense.”

But Shor t said she was not disappointed in her team’s performance against BC. “BC is in a tougher conference,” she said, and recruits many players on scholarship, while Brown “players play for

Jesse Morgan / Herald

Defensive specialist Annika Gliottone ’12 bumps back, as outside hitter Katrina Post ’13 looks on.

the love of the game.”

Despite being swept by BC in the last game, defensive specialist Carly Cotton ‘13 said the tournament was an overall positive experience for the team.

“We made improvements on things we’ve been doing in prac-

tice,” Cotton said. “We just need to iron out some of the little things.”

Bruno’s next game is Saturday at 1 p.m. at Stony Brook, and the squad kicks off conference play against Yale on Oct. 1 at 7 p.m.

“We’re excited for Yale,” Cotton said. “We’ll be ready by then.”

Bears claim victory in 2-OT thriller continued from page 1 and into the end zone. In double overtime, Stony Brook’s offense faltered, and the team was forced to settle for a field goal, leaving the door open for Brown to capitalize.

After two crucial defensive penalties by Stony Brook — a roughingthe-passer violation and a pass interference — Tronti took the ball in on 2nd and goal from the one-yard line, prompting the Bears’ sideline to erupt and storm the field in celebration.

The Bears might not have had a chance without an electrifying kickreturn touchdown by Mark Kachmer ’13 with 6:03 remaining in the third quarter. Stony Brook had just capitalized with a touchdown off a Brown turnover to pull ahead 20-10, but the return pulled Bruno back into the game. On the ensuing kickoff, Kachmer took the ball along the left hash mark, broke free from a tackle at his own 30-yard line and sprinted 91 yards for a touchdown, shifting the momentum back to the Bears at an important juncture early in the second half.

The comeback Less than three minutes into the game, Stony Brook struck first on a 67-yard pass on its first offensive play.

But the Bears clawed back.

After a 30-yard field goal by Alex Norocea ’14 put the Bears on the board, Brown scored its first touch-

End of regulation: Brown 20, Stony Brook 20 First overtime: Touchdown Stony Brook, touchdown Brown

Brown 27, Stony Brook 27

Second overtime: Field goal Stony Brook, touchdown Brown

Brown 33, Stony Brook 30 (FINAL)

down of the season. On third and goal from the 16, Springer connected with receiver Jimmy Saros ’12 in the back corner of the end zone to take a 10-7 lead with 11:53 remaining in the half.

Springer put the ball where only his man could pull it in, and Saros obliged with an athletic leaping catch for the score with a defender on his back.

The Seawolves answered right back with another long scoring play as Jackolski took the ball 47 yards up the middle to take back the lead, 14-10, going into halftime.

With 5:33 remaining in the 2020 ballgame, the Seawolves looked poised to seize the victory, as they efficiently moved the ball to the Brown 11-yard line. But inside linebacker and tri-captain Andrew Serrano ’11 jumped a route and picked off a Coulter pass near the goal line. Serrano was the defensive star of the game, finishing with 12 tackles and a sack in addition to the interception.

One of the biggest questions entering the season was answered on the first play from scrimmage, when Springer hit Alex Tounkara ’11 for a 35-yard gain on a crisp fly pattern down the sideline. Much has been

made of the loss of All-Ivy receivers Buddy Farnham ’10 and Bobby Sewall ’10, but the void was filled by an outstanding effort from Tounkara in his first collegiate start. Springer looked for Tounkara all game, citing his terrific “combination of size and speed,” and the 6-foot-4-inch receiver was a constant threat as he pulled in a staggering 12 catches for 160 yards.

“Our offense puts receivers in the greatest position,” Tounkara said.

“Any one of us could have had a great game today. … I was just lucky it was me.”

After the game, Head Coach Phil Estes was quick to commend Springer for his strong effort at quarterback. “I thought he was as poised as could be and made plays for us when he had to.”

With a win under their belts, the 1-0 Bears now look ahead to the much-anticipated game under the lights this Saturday against Harvard.

Newhall-Caballero is expected back healthy for the Ivy League opener.

“We feel good, but we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us,” Estes said.

“Harvard’s always a tough, physical football game.”

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Editorial & Letters The Brown Daily Herald

Page 10 | Monday, September 20, 2010

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

Prop 8 decision about justice, not popularity To the Editor: In his column “What Brown can learn from Prop 8” (Sept. 10), Terrence George ’13 argues that California’s vote on Prop 8 was “democracy in action” and should have been upheld. George is right that Prop 8 won the popular vote, but that is not sufficient for democracy. Less than half of California’s population cast a vote on that proposition, and those that did were subject to million-dollar campaigns on either side. Religious groups rallied around the country to make sure Californians didn’t make what they considered the wrong decision. Is this “democracy in action”?

Separate branches of government are part of ensuring that de-

mocracy works. American history is filled with examples of laws based on popular but wrong beliefs that have changed with time. This is precisely why the courts exist. As for Prop 8, I believe California’s laws should not restrict the freedoms of citizens in favor of defending a tradition. The Constitution serves primarily the citizens and not the institutions that others hope to maintain, even if the others are a majority. We risk a dangerous precedent otherwise.

Brown is a bubble, but a liberal education teaches us to see beyond it, including the difference between popularity and justice.

Steven Gomez GS Sept. 10 julia streuli

e d i to r i a l

How we learned to stop worrying and love Banner

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

Managing Editor Chaz Kelsh

George Miller

Deputy Managing Editors Emmy Liss Joanna Wohlmuth

editorial Anne Speyer Suzannah Weiss Sara Luxenberg Brian Mastroianni Brigitta Greene Ben Schreckinger Sydney Ember Zack Bahr Tony Bakshi Ashley McDonnell Erika Mueller

Arts & Culture Editor Arts & Culture Editor Features Editor Features Editor Metro Editor Metro Editor News Editor Sports Editor Sports Editor Asst. Sports Editor Asst. Sports Editor

Graphics & Photos Graphics Editor Stephen Lichenstein Graphics Editor Alex Yuly Photo Editor Stephanie London Photo Editor Max Monn Photo Editor Hilary Rosenthal Sports Photo Editor Jonathan Bateman Asst. Sports Photo Editor Jesse Morgan Production Copy Desk Chief Kelly Mallahan Design Editor Julien Ouellet Asst. Design Editor Gili Kliger Asst. Design Editor Katie Wilson Web Editor Neal Poole Post- magazine Editor-in-Chief Sam Carter Editor-in-Chief Kate Doyle Editor-in-Chief Marshall Katheder

Senior Editors Ben Hyman Seth Motel

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 Local Sales Isha Gulati Local Sales Arjun Vaidya National Sales Rajiv Iyengar University Sales Aditi Bhatia University Sales Jared Davis Recruiter Sales Trenten Nelson-Rivers Maximilian Barrows Business Operations Business Analytics Jilyn Chao Credit and Collections Danielle Marshak Special Projects Alexander Carrere Staff Kathy Bui Opinions Opinions Editor Michael Fitzpatrick Opinions Editor Alyssa Ratledge Editorial Page Board Matt Aks Editorial Page Editor Anita Mathews Board member Tyler Rosenbaum Board member Melissa Shube Board member Gaurie Tilak Board member

With the departure of the class of 2010, an era has passed.

They were the last to register for classes using the University’s Stone Age pre-Banner system, under which even the smallest changes required trekking to University Hall.

For some classes that filled on a first-come, first-served basis, students needed to get in line as early as 5 a.m. to guarantee a spot.

To hear our predecessors tell the tale, this burdensome system was a cherished rite of passage. Though most other schools had transitioned to electronic registration nearly a decade earlier, many feared that our unique culture of permissiveness might be undermined if the University had the ability to strictly enforce course caps and prerequisites. And as The Herald reminded us in an article last week, the Undergraduate Council of Students in 2007 condemned online registration as a serious threat to the New Curriculum.

In hindsight, the introduction of Banner more resembled the Y2K scare than the apocalyptic end of academic freedom at Brown. We don’t quite understand why older classes failed to see Banner as an unequivocal improvement. Still, it’s humbling to recall that students just like us can get it wrong sometimes.

The online system would be more concerning if professors were hesitant to give overrides. But in our experience, overrides are frequently granted, and the new system is working out pretty well. Banner has no doubt improved the broader shopping and course selection experience.

Yet, as we saw again in these past two weeks, some additional tweaking could go a long way toward improving shopping period.

First, class syllabi should be available online prior to registration. The University has made major strides in towards this goal in recent years, but we eventually hope to see all courses post syllabi before the semester begins.

As it is, the short blurbs available on Mocha or Banner

leave critical questions unanswered: Will this class require me to read a book every week? What subjects, exactly, will we be discussing, and when? Even an old version of the syllabus would be tremendously helpful for students considering shopping a class.

The University should also facilitate shopping by making it easier for students to shop classes that meet at the same time. This is generally not a problem for classes that take place on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Given these classes’ frequent meetings, it is usually possible to attend several before having to make a decision.

For once-a-week seminars and Tuesday-Thursday classes, though, the problem is much more serious. For example, by the time a student can visit a Tuesday seminar, shopping period is already half over. Because of Labor Day, students felt this problem acutely this semester when Monday seminars did not meet until the day before shopping period ended.

We are particularly glad that the University eased the burden for those interested in Monday seminars by extending registration period for those classes until today. In the future, the larger problem could be avoided by splitting the first meetings of seminars and Tuesday-Thursday classes in half. Professors could then hold two back-to-back introductory sessions during the usual meeting time, allowing students to attend two different classes in one time slot.

Brown’s move to online registration was long overdue.

We should of course continue to monitor and improve Banner and our registration practices to ensure they continue to be consistent with the New Curriculum. But, especially come January, we think all will once again acknowledge that being able to register from our beds is a welcome improvement.

Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board.

Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.

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correction An article in Friday’s Herald (“Old QB, new wideouts look to improve on record year,” Sept. 17) gave the incorrect name for Bobby Sewall ’10. The Herald regrets the error.

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Opinions The Brown Daily Herald

Monday, september 20, 2010 | Page 11

Ch-ch-ch-changing the campus and the college

BY WILLIAM TOMASKO Opinions Columnist When I started my sophomore year of high school, I felt like a freshman again. That was because my school had substantially renovated its campus, meaning that more than half of the building was brand new when school started in September.

Our faculty advisers led their advisee groups in tours around the new facilities, but it took me much more than that one introduction to feel like I knew my way around the school. I routinely got lost. I could count on walking out of the new stairwell and entering the wrong floor. This shouldn’t be happening anymore, I would grumble. Since I’d advanced to sophomore year, I didn’t think I still deserved to feel disoriented at school.

Now, having started my second year at Brown, those bewildered feelings came stampeding back when I encountered the new campus center in Faunce House. For example, when I try to leave the building, I almost always go out the wrong door and end up on Waterman Street when I’m aiming for the Main Green, or vice versa. I’ve found it’s nearly impossible to gracefully recover by pretending I’d intended to stand outside the door for a few seconds, stare at my surroundings in confusion and then go back inside.

This confusion might help explain why, at a meeting for a student group where we

went around in a circle and introduced ourselves, I accidentally said I was a freshman.

Maybe it helps explain why I did the same thing at a discussion section, too.

Still, while the new construction might be disorienting at first, I know it’s an improvement. I enjoy having the campus center as an appealing option for studying and socializing, and so do many other students. Moreover, the new Blue Room is vastly more convenient now, thanks to its expanded hours and the fact that we can sometimes pay with meal credits.

boast, “You asked. We listened,” when they list the improvements to the Blue Room, demonstrating that the administration is pleased with its responsiveness to community demand.

Personally, I don’t remember being invited to participate in any of those “community forums” — but then again, they might have taken place before my freshman year, or maybe I just don’t read Brown Morning Mail announcements carefully enough. Still, the University’s apparent use of community engagement as a step in setting its priorities

While change can be jarring, its arrival can be made easier when the people it affects can clearly see the reasons behind it and feel as if their input has been considered in the process.

Another encouraging aspect of the construction is process-related. According to a Herald article describing the new facility (“Coffee and couches: New campus center debuts,” Sept. 1), “five main priorities” for the space “came out of the discussions during community forums and planning committee meetings.” Students and staff had opportunities to suggest the need for longer Blue Room hours and a community space for casual gatherings.

On Brown Dining Services’ website, they

is reassuring.

A similar example of a transparent, inclusive process is the creation of Brown’s new website. The Herald recently reported that, during the two-year development process, “designers and administrators distributed online surveys and publicized decisions on a redesign blog” (“After years, U. website gets facelift,” Sept. 8). The new design reflects the input of more than 1,800 online survey participants.

Changes such as the revamped website,

the new Blue Room and a campus center certainly can be great improvements. In general, while change can be jarring, its arrival can be made easier when the people it affects can clearly see the reasons behind it and feel as if their input has been considered in the process.

Allowing for generous amounts of public input also helps foster trust between the administration and the rest of the community. Recent opinions columns in The Herald have sparred over the intentions of President Ruth Simmons and the Corporation (“Brown, Inc.,” Sept. 10 and “In defense of Brown, Inc.,” Sept. 13).

According to columnist Simon Liebling ’12, the new construction projects are “evidence of an administrative addiction out of control” — he says that the University is “callous” to pursue renovation while laying off workers and increasing tuition.

Whether or not Liebling’s impression is accurate, the fact that he, and presumably others, feel so alienated by the administration means that the University ought to make its intentions clearer and somehow let students and staff feel more invested in changes around campus.

For me at least, I know that I can feel like less of a newcomer or outsider when I know that I have and that I can play a part in developing my community.

William Tomasko ’13 (not ’14) is from Washington, D.C. He can be reached at william_tomasko@brown.edu.

Care for those around you

by Yue Wang Opinions Columnist The result of a recent nationwide survey in Japan shocked the nation’s psyche and put a dent in its pride for its people’s renowned longevity: in the country with one of the world’s largest populations over the age of one hundred, 234,000 Japanese centenarians listed in government records are now reported missing and may have died long ago. Some walked away from home and their children didn’t bother to report their disappearance, some died alone at home and went undiscovered by neighbors and some deaths were deliberately concealed so that surviving relatives could continue to collect the deceased’s pension or social security checks. Despite long-time advocacy among many in the west of Japanese-style healthy diets and robust health care system, their old people’s salubrious lifestyle and the excellent health services the public offers them by no means justify the neglect and poor care the elderly are supposed to get from the people closest to them — families and neighbors.

My thoughts could not help but fly to my fellow Brown students, as absurd as it may sound.

Brown students were ranked as the happiest in the United States in 2009 by the Princeton Review, and being a Brunonian almost certainly means being positive and self-fulfilled.

Yet beneath that invincibility of youth that sets Brown campus far apart from a nation full of centenarians, there is an underreported mental

health issue among our students. Discussions concerning the mental health of Brown students are rare on this campus. Although I am not questioning that Brown students are given the opportunities to lead a happier life than other college students, the mirth and felicity we associate with youth and Ivy League life should not be taken for granted.

Recalling my two years of life at Brown, I have been surprised and always distressed by the high number of friends and classmates taking leaves due to mental health issues, and in most cases, it usually took me a long time to figure out that some friends are no longer around until the truth was quietly and

times to seven times per year. It also means a much shortened wait for a counseling session. I praise the University’s awareness of the importance of student mental health and its willingness to better staff the psych service.

But I doubt that the mere increase of a psychotherapist solves all our problems.

First of all, it doesn’t address the psych services’ lack of resources. If the psychotherapy session is the only professional, confidential and intimate way to tackle students’ mental health issues, the one-to-one session appears to be inefficient and insufficient in dealing with a large number of students in need and sometimes seems too formal to those with less

Although I am not questioning that Brown students are given the opportunities to lead a happier life than other college students, the mirth and felicity we associate with youth and Ivy League life should not be taken for granted. discreetly whispered during a dinner chat with their closest friends. However partial my experience may be, the existing problems with mental health of the student body deserve our attention.

The good news is that Brown psychological services recently hired a new psychotherapist after a report showed that its resources were lower than peer colleges, which means that from now on, students’ limited free psychotherapy sessions are increased from five

concrete and acute issues. So in addition to increasing the availability of psychotherapists as a way to maintain students’ mental health, another step that could be taken by the University is to expand the education of mental health for students. For example, lectures or panels could be run by experts on topics such as stress management and relationship building, etc., so that a large group of students could be exposed to knowledge of how to manage a stressful academic and personal life and be

aware of self-help tools, even prior to the stage of crisis where private counseling becomes urgently necessary.

More importantly, however, the school isn’t the first or the best place we should look to if we are to tackle the problem. Back to the story of the Japanese centenarians: it is true that no matter how comprehensive and excellent the system designed by government is in providing care to the elderly, social networks, by which I mean families and friends, are always the most trustworthy and intimate for an individual to rely on. And when networks that are supposed to work and assist individuals fail, even the most superior public services cannot help. The same goes for Brown students. We don’t have to doubt the commitment by the University or the dedication and professionalism of the fantastic and helpful people at psych services, but we know earlier and better about our fellow students than University officials. There is some guilt on all of us when we fail to reach out to our friends, detect their problems, and help them at their time of need.

As a past wall post in a Rock restroom says: I wish people really meant it when they ask “How are you?” So call up a friend of whom you seem to have lost track, including on Facebook, ask them how they are doing and really mean it. Because that is what a friend is supposed to do.

Yue Wang ’12 is a political science and German studies concentrator from Shanghai. She can be contacted at yue_wang@brown.edu.

Today The Brown Daily Herald

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Spending winter break in Guatemala

A Ugandan playwright in exile

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comics Bat & Gaz | Sofia Ortiz

Cabernet Voltaire | Abe Pressman

c a l e n da r Today, September 20

tomorrow, September 21

1:30 P.M. — Law School Admissions Dean Panel, CDC Library

1 P.M. — What You Need to Know about Federal Student Programs, CDC Library

6:30 P.m. — Killer Interviews with Fred and Barbara Ball, Salomon 101

7 P.M. — Internships in Journalism with Tracy Breton

menu Sharpe Refectory

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

Lunch — Gnocchi alla Sorrentina, Beef Enchilada, Chicken, Artichoke and Pasta Medley

Lunch — Pepperoni French Bread Pizza, Vegan Stuffed Peppers, Mediterranean Bar

Dinner — Braised Beef Tips, Vegetable Strudel with Cream Sauce, Broccoli Rabe

Dinner — Country Style Baked Ham, Gnocchi a la Sorrentina, Spicy Cuban Stir Fry

to m o r r o w

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70 / 58

Monday, september 20, 2010

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

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to day

Dr. Bear | Mat Becker

crossword Dot Comic | Eshan Mitra and Brendan Hainline

Fruitopia | Andy Kim

The Adventures of Team Vag | Wendy Kwartin

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