Thursday, February 3, 2011

Daily

Herald

the Brown

vol. cxlvi, no. 7

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Disability services to change name

Since 1891

Online class shopping a complex endeavor

By Joe Rosales Senior Staff Writer

The Royce fellows research and promote awareness on the importance of sports in the developing world. The goal of the program is for academics and athletics to intersect and flourish together, Heffernan said.

“Sports across borders have importance,” Heffernan said.

The fellowship was established in 2007 with support from Charles Royce ’61. It awards $4,000 to an undergraduate student for international and domestic research that examines the relationship between

With Mocha, Banner, the Critical Review and course preview pages filling laptop screens this shopping period, students continue to find themselves without a one-stop web destination when shopping classes. While administrators have expressed openness to centralizing the course selection process, there are currently no plans for creating an all-encompassing tool.

The freedom to explore a wide variety of course offerings is integral to shopping period and the New Curriculum, but many students spend a significant amount of time navigating through various websites to build potential schedules, check space availability, read up on professors and glance at syllabi.

Mocha was launched in 2006 by undergraduate students and immediately became a popular tool for planning shopping period.

Through the website, students can experiment with potential schedules in an easily viewable format and compare Brown bookstore prices to Amazon’s for a course’s required and recommended texts.

But Mocha does not allow students to see if a course has space available or give them the ability to directly register for a course.

And because neither the University nor Computing and Information Services supports the site, all of the course data must be gathered through “screen scraping,” according to Christopher Keith, director of information technology. “They use a robot to generate — or to visit — the selfservice pages to generate all the course information,” he said. This means Mocha’s information can be outdated.

Course Scheduler, a tool in Banner, was launched in March 2010 to mixed reviews from the student body. The site imitates many of Mocha’s features, but because it is run through Banner, students can check course availability and register for courses directly. But, unlike Mocha — which allows students to compare new and used prices for textbooks sold at the Brown bookstore and through Amazon — the tool only lists bookstore textbook prices, which tend to be higher than those on Amazon.

continued on page 2

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By David Chung Senior Staff Writer

continued on page 5

Courtesy of Amanda Labora

A view from the lens of Amanda Labora ’12 Before evacuating Monday, two students studying abroad in Alexandria, Egypt witnessed the beginning of a popular uprising that has threatened to topple that country’s government.

Students safely home from Egypt Labora ’12 and Dawkins ’12 recount journey

By Nicole Boucher News Editor

After an ordeal of several days, the two Brown students studying in Egypt have returned safely home.

For the people and the state of Egypt, the ordeal continues.

S n o w w h at ? O n wa r d, t o c l a ss

Amanda Labora ’12 and Michael Dawkins ’12 arrived back in the United States Tuesday after being evacuated from Alexandria, Egypt. They departed from Egypt along with the 20 other students studying abroad in Alexandria through a Middlebury College

Freddy Lu / Herald

inside

news...................2-5 editorial.............10 Opinions.............11 City & State.......12

No bullying

R.I. officials, schools combat harassment, bullying

city & state, 6

continued on page 4

Royce Fellowship aligns sports and academics

By Amy Chen Staff Writer

Classes continued to meet as snow turned to freezing rain yesterday.

program, ending more than a week of uncertainty after protests broke out Jan. 25 against President Hosni Mubarak.

“Egyptians have saved my life,” Labora said in a phone interview

Kerrissa Heffernan summed up the scope of the Royce Fellowship for Sport and Society with the story of a simple trade. Ask a former child soldier to trade his gun for a soccer ball, she said, and “the kid would say okay … It’s powerful stuff.”

Heffernan, director of the fellowship and faculty engagement for the Swearer Center for Public Service, was referring to a research project on former child combatants.

The study was conducted by former fellow volleyball player Brianna Williamson ’11.

This summer, Williamson conducted research in northern Uganda with child soldiers who had been kidnapped in the war. Through interviews with both former child combatants and children who had not fought in the war, she studied whether soccer — an integral part of adolescent Ugandan culture — helps them reintegrate into society.

Williamson is a development studies concentrator, and her thesis

focusing on sports and development is inspired by her research.

“Take what you’re passionate about and turn it in a way (that’s) usable to society,” she said.

She said she learned that sports have the potential to instigate social change. “It’s inexpensive. It’s a phenomenal way to get people together. It has a wide base of support to mobilize people,” she said.

‘Sports across borders’

postPOST- plays in the slush, follows the white rabbit Post-, Inside

weather

Disability Support Services will change its name to Student and Employee Accessibility Services at the end of the current academic year in hopes of increasing its presence on campus, according to Catherine Axe, director of the office. General misunderstanding of its services has prevented members of the Brown community from fully utilizing the office’s resources, Axe said at the Undergraduate Council of Students’ meeting last night.

The word ‘disability’ leads people to believe that only severe physical and psychological conditions merit use of the service, she said. Feedback from the community indicated that many people did not know the office welcomed individuals in less serious situations.

The name has made the office less approachable to students, she

t o d ay

tomorrow

28 / 10

33 / 22

2 Campus News calendar Today

February 3

6:00 P.m.

ToMORROW

February 4

4:00 p.m.

Arial Sabar ’93 Lecture,

Hip Hop vs. America — Unity Day,

Brown-RISD Hillel

Wilson Hall 102

7:00 p.m.

10:30 p.m.

“Got Money For Grad School?”

Funk Nite,

Smith-Buonanno 106

The Underground

menu SHARPE REFECTORY

VERNEy-WOOLLEY DINING HALL LUNCH

Hot Turkey Sandwich with Gravy, Baked Vegan Nuggets, Milk and White Chocolate Chip Cookies

Honey Mustard Chicken Sandwich, Vegetarian Pot Pie, Milk and White Chocolate Chip Cookies

DINNER Salt and Pepper Jerk Chicken, Creamy Parmesan Primavera, Pesto Pasta, Chocolate Oatmeal Squares

Pork Medallions in Portabello Sauce, Belgain Carrots, Vegan Paella, Chocolate Oatmeal Squares

Sudoku

The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, February 3, 2011

New interface may ease shopping continued from page 1 “The interface isn’t as nice as Mocha, but it has a lot of potential,” Paul Kernfeld ’12 said in a March 2010 Herald article. Because Course Scheduler has CIS support, the course data is updated regularly. Course Scheduler also allows students a more detailed look into courses, such as course restrictions. The site links to other Brown sites like the Critical Review, which features professors’ ratings, and Course Preview, where students can view syllabi that professors have uploaded.

“I think a lot of the limitations now of why there’s not one central site has to do with the fact that the data currently isn’t available to outside developers,” Keith said.

But in the future, course information may become available through an application programming interface — which could allow outside access to Banner’s data — according to both Keith and John Styer, director of enterprise application services. Through the Course Metadata Application Program Interface Project, CIS is hoping to create a tool that would make it easier for developers to use Banner information, Keith said.

CIS hopes to finish the project, which began at the end of last year, later this semester, Styer said.

The project is intended for the

Lydia Yamaguchi / Herald

Mocha is just one of the many tools students use for shopping period.

use by department pages on the Brown website, but the data could be used to consolidate course shopping websites as well, Styer added.

Jenny Tsai ’14 said she uses nearly every website available to her — including MyCourses, Amazon and Gmail — when shopping classes. Tsai said she usually has “at least 12 Critical Reviews” open.

Tsai said a consolidated tool would ease a process she often finds stressful.

“They all have avenues that lead to each other, but it’s not one linear path,” she said.

Tara Noble ’12.5, on the other hand, said she uses Mocha “almost exclusively,” a habit she said she believes most upperclassmen follow.

While she said she understands why students would appreciate a website that combines multiple tools, for now she said she plans to stick with Mocha because it is “generally more cohesive.”

The administration understands the “modern trend” of wanting to bring features to one place, said Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron. “There’s a lot of good will and interest in aligning forces.”

Fellowship joins athletics with academics Crossword ACROSS 1 “That’s ___!”

6 ‘Rents et al.

9 Gypsy punk band “___ Bordello” 14 Photo tone 15 Force to imbibe a certain Smirnoff beverage 16 “Take ___!” (“Scram!”)

17 Clingy, in a way?

19 Jordan’s neighbor 20 Tupac, e.g., most would agree 21 Transformers trilogy director 22 Ancient lover of Paris 23 How things were then, some say 25 Turn ___ ear 27 No longer hot?

31 Big name in baseball cards 34 Cause of modern wars, according to some 35 College sr.’s test 36 Prefix with cycle 37 One who might like things that are 17-, 27-, 46-, or 61-Across 41 They can be used to teach a Pokémon new moves 42 Not the sharpest 43 “Dame ___ gasolina!” (Daddy Yankee lyric) 44 Arcade Fire, for one 46 Avant-garde 51 Set consisting of every integer doubled 52 Freestyle ski jumping event 56 Broke off 58 It merged with the WB 59 Certain swab 60 Crowded Chicken Finger Friday times 61 Not generally liked 63 Water park slide 64 Dessert often eaten on 3/14 65 Country singer Carter 66 Mucho

continued from page 1

You’ve Probably never Heard of it by Jonah Kagan ‘13

67 Unwanted one-night stand souvenir: Abbr.

68 Analyze, as ore DOWN 1 Helpers: Abbr.

2 “8 Mile” actor Phifer 3 Drug some are afraid they will test positive for after eating certain bagels 4 Finger-lickin’ candy?

5 Nom 6 Cliché opera word 7 Adjective for a heart in a song 8 Came together 9 Deep cuts 10 Song in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” or its only lyrics 11 Common “Jersey Shore” incident 12 Depression-era migrant 13 Emulate a cholo, say 18 “Yeah, right” 24 Bud pounder, perhaps

25 Throw ___ (lose it) 26 Chip’s pal 28 “All That Jazz” director 29 “It’s either you ___” 30 Sticks around to shelter a bird?

31 Sass 32 Snake-like Rock Type Pokémon 33 Like a ride one might exhibit, after having seen Xzibit 38 “My decision is to join you” 39 Jim’s wife on “The Office” and others 40 Scar sound?

45 Units of division in high school 47 Happenings 48 Setting for the climax of an attempted escape from the tyranny of an Egyptian dictator 49 Crashed between classes, say

50 “A _____’ clock scholar” 53 Bearer of the heavens, in myth 54 Tropical vine 55 Result of an overdramatic wound, perhaps 56 Abbr. on a business letter 57 It’s west of New York’s East Village 58 Meters per second per second, e.g.

61 FedEx rival 62 Frenching among friends, say

Solutions and archive online at acrosstobear. wordpress.com Email: brownpuzzles @gmail.com

sports and issues such as healthcare and education in the developing world. According to Heffernan, varsity, club and intramural athletes are eligible for the fellowship.

The fellowship was proposed by Heffernan and Eli Wolff ’00, who is a visiting fellow in international studies and co-director of the fellowship. Wolff assists in designing the curriculum, planning seminars, advising and placing students in organizations and agencies. He also runs the Sport and Development Initiative at the Watson Institute for International Studies, which examines the intersection of sports, development and human rights in global, domestic and local contexts.

“Sport and development recognize that sports is not just physical activity or games,” he said. “It can be used to engage a community to help

Daily

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with education, look at issues of equity and (address) issues of justice and respect.”

After returning from their summer research, fellows attend seminars every other week and take part in conversations on related topics.

The fellows also take part in forums with speakers and presentations during the semester.

Students were often surprised by what they learned from the fellowship, said Heffernan. “They would say, ‘I never knew I could do this.

This is a whole new intellectual pursuit. I can actually make a living out of this!’” she said.

Bridging the gap

The coordinators and students agreed that bridging the separation between athletics and academics is a challenge.

Former fellow Matt Doyle ’10 GS founded the Brown chapter

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of Right to Play, an international organization which brings games and sports to developing countries.

Doyle conducted his project with Right to Play in New York City.

In his research, he assessed how high school and college students have used sports as a “platform for social change,” and suggested strategies on how to better involve students around projects in the sport-for-development movement, he wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.

“School administrations and teachers are failing to see the multiple benefits that go along with sport and play, simply classifying this activity as recreation and not as a means of substantive education,” Doyle wrote.

To remedy this issue, attitudes need to change so that parents, educators and students can see “sport as a catalyst for development,” he wrote.

Williamson also said that sport is more meaningful and powerful than is often acknowledged. “In academia, there is often a separate world from sports. Sports is a leisure … but it should be taken more seriously,” she said. As a result, she said she believes that this fellowship will help to educate and bring awareness to people about the power of sports to make positive changes to society.

At the core, Heffernan said she believes that the community needs to have conversations about the role of athletics in academics.

“There is a real misconception about athletics,” she said. “It is more than to represent the furry bear.”

The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, February 3, 2011

Campus News 3

Despite enforcement, copyright violations steady in recent years

By Katherine Long Contributing Writer

Despite increased University efforts to combat electronic piracy over the past decade, the number of student violations has not changed significantly. The University’s copyright infringement policy — enacted in July 2003 — has not led to decreased incidence of copyright violation, according to officials at Computing and Information Services and the Office of Student Life.

In the 2009-10 school year, there were 790 reported violations, 95 percent of which were perpetrated by students. Those figures have been more or less constant over the past several years, according to David Sherry, chief information security officer, and Michael Pickett, vice president for computing and information services and chief information officer.

Sherry receives notifications of copyright violation from organizations that represent copyright holders — for example, the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America — containing the Internet protocol address of the computer that committed the violation. CIS then locates the user of the Internet Protocol address and blocks Internet access to that computer until the offending material has been

removed.

But more notifications do not necessarily mean more violations, Sherry said. One reason for the lack of correlation is that organizations like the RIAA seem to step up efforts to curb piracy at certain universities selected randomly, leading to years of a single university receiving “thousands or tens of thousands” of notifications, Sherry said.

In a 2007 Herald article, an RIAA spokesperson stated that the group did not have a policy of targeting specific universities.

Organizations like the RIAA find copyright violators by using decoy sites called “honeypots” — which lure in people who intend to distribute copyright-violating material — and decoy IP addresses on established file-sharing sites.

“They also scour the Internet for open sources and file sharing,” Sherry said. “It’s not that hard to do.”

Sherry estimated that onethird of the notices he receives are from the RIAA, 20 percent are from the MPAA and 15 percent are from Peer Media Technologies, which represents software companies.

First-time copyright violators receive a warning from the Office of Student Life. Second-time offenders must attend a hearing by the Peer Community Standards Board and usually have Internet

priviledges restricted for four weeks. Students who violate copyright policies more than twice can have their Internet access banned for up to a semester and may face further disciplinary action, according to the University’s policy.

“It’s a huge hassle to have to go to the libraries or the CIT so often, but I’m getting around it,” said one student violator whose Internet access has been disabled since the start of the semester. The student, a junior, did not want to use his name when talking about copyright violations.

But his offense is not rare.

“We don’t usually get these type of notices just for people who are downloading songs. We get them for people who are serving up material,” Pickett said. Pickett estimated that roughly two-thirds of the notifications his department receives are for students who distribute copyrighted material.

In 2008, the federal government amended the Higher Education Opportunity Act to require universities to have comprehensive programs to combat copyright infringement. To comply with the new laws, Brown upgraded its program of technological deterrents, education and institutional policies. CIS now uses bandwidth shaping — the delaying of certain types of data packets, such as those that would be used to illegally download ma-

Study: Quit smoking, be happy

By Julian Ezenwa Contributing Writer

Quitting smoking helps reduce symptoms of depression, according to a study by Christopher Kahler, professor of community health.

The six-month study examined a group of people seeking treatment to help them quit smoking and was designed to assess how quitting affected their mood.

In follow-up appointments after quitting, participants showed fewer signs of depression than they did at the beginning of the study when they were smoking, Kahler said. “The most successful people who quit and stayed quit throughout came in with very low depression symptoms,” he said. “If they went back to smoking, their depression symptoms went back up to where they were when they came in.”

The markers for depression in the study included mood and the presence of somatic symptoms,

Kahler wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.

Geraud Bablon ’14 said he started smoking when he moved to Paris in high school. He said the study sounded logical and very reasonable, but said smokers feel pleasure when smoking and a sense of community with others who smoke.

“I think that the general assumption from smokers is that they might be using their smoking to help them deal with stress and negative moods, but research that other people have done — and that this study shows — suggests that it’s not an effective way to deal with stress and depression,” Kahler said. He also said people tend to be more psychologically healthy when they quit smoking and are more successful. He said he hopes this finding will help people to quit by giving them hope that their mental health will improve.

“It gets better, and down the road, people tend to feel better

mentally and emotionally than they did when they started,” Kahler said.

Kahler said the results from the study match his findings from similar studies meant to measure depression even though the participants had different backgrounds. In the current study, all participants were heavy drinkers but were not dependent on alcohol, Kahler said.

“We’ve done another study where we followed people for a year, and we saw very similar results for people who were successful at quitting smoking, showing lower depression symptoms over time compared to the people that were not successful,” Kahler said.

“I’m sure there are many things that are happy about quitting, like not having to pay $7 a pack and not sitting out in the cold,” said Theresa Williams GS, who said she has been smoking for about 14 years. “I’ve been a smoker too long to pay attention to people’s studies.”

terial — peer-to-peer protocols and firewall rules to block known websites that are used to download unauthorized copyrighted material.

Besides the increase in technological and institutional deterrents to copyright infringement, the University continues to focus its efforts on educating students about the potential consequences.

CIS sent a campus-wide e-mail in September detailing the penalties for copyright infringement — which can include fines of up to $750 per illegally downloaded song in addition to campus punishments. The e-mail suggested alternatives to illegal downloads, such as Hulu or Netflix.

The Office of Student Life also covers copyright infringement policies during orientation.

In a 2007 Herald article, Connie Sadler, then chief information security officer, emphasized outreach over punitive measures.

“We really don’t have a sense about how much of this activity is common to students or whether there are some students who really do think that anything they pull down from the Internet is fair game,” she said.

Sherry said CIS continues to grapple with that question. He noted that while the efficacy of the outreach measures was difficult to gauge, the number of violations has not increased.

But some means of possible copyright infringement are still gray areas — even for CIS officials. Many students use Mojo, a free application that shares iTunes libraries with friends over the Internet.

“There’s no clean read on whether it’s legal or not,” Pickett said. He pointed out that while the application allows users to download songs that they have not purchased, iTunes includes a similar library-sharing feature.

Meanwhile, students continue to find ways to flout the copyright policy. Samantha ’12, who received a warning her freshman year after she was caught downloading a Rihanna song on LimeWire, said she still downloads music illegally. Samantha did not want her last name to appear in connection with the copyright violations.

“Any song that you want to download, you can search for it on Google with the word ‘download,’” she said. “It’s just as easy as downloading course content off (Online Course Reserves Access).”

Samantha said that she has tried Mojo but that “it’s not the most efficient way to get music.”

“It’s kind of like a virus. The more you try to cure it, the more it evolves and becomes part of the cure,” she said. “As long as there’s music available online, people will try to download it.”

4 Campus News

The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, February 3, 2011

After flight from Egypt, students return home via Prague continued from page 1 from her home in Miami. “They are in their streets, in their neighborhoods, defending the block.”

Labora said the situation is still very grave for the Egyptians. “Nobody knew how serious this was,” Labora said. “If this had been antiAmerican, we would be dead.”

The protests against Mubarak’s regime were largely organized

by Egyptian youth, even though government-controlled media in Egypt tried to pin the protests on the actions of the main opposition party, the Muslim Brotherhood, Labora said.

The uprising is a protest of the Egyptian people against Mubarak’s regime and the police state, with ordinary citizens coming together despite factors such as religious tension between Christians and Muslims, Labora said.

While demonstrations began Jan. 25, the largest protests came three days later.

“I just remember everyone praying on the streets,” she said.

To pray, Muslims must take off their shoes. She said police were attempting to steal people’s shoes in order to hold off the protests.

Christian women began to come forward and block the police from taking the shoes, she said.

“It was everyone taking care of each other,” Labora said. “People came together in extraordinary ways.”

She said that much of the protesting was peaceful and that “police unleashed incredible displays of violence.”

At the onset of the protests, an evacuation of the students was not even discussed, Labora said, mainly because the program directors initially believed the protests would be crushed due to the authoritarian nature of the Egyptian government.

Students were told not to travel

to Cairo following the beginning of the protests. Then classes were cancelled with the possibility of resumption the following week. The decision to evacuate came after the violence in Alexandria continued to spread, Labora said.

The police were targeting citizens who were not even involved in the protest, Labora said.

“An Egyptian woman in my dorm had been tear-gassed,” she said. “A girl on her way to an exam was clubbed.”

“The police in Egypt are absolutely horrible,” Dawkins said in a phone interview from New York City.

Preparing to evacuate

When the decision to evacuate came Saturday, all of the women in the program were brought to the large dorm where Labora lived, which security had left unguarded, Dawkins said.

Dawkins was at the market stocking up on food in preparation for a recently imposed government curfew when he got a call saying that the dorm where the men were staying was no longer considered safe. He was told all the American men in the program would be relocated to a program apartment until they could be evacuated Sunday.

“At night is when things got really volatile,” he said. Police stations had been firebombed, and the police had largely retreated.

Prisoners had escaped, stealing weapons from the stations.

“All night, you could hear machine guns and screams,” he said.

The Egyptians set up a neighborhood watch using implements such as bricks for weapons. “They protected us,” he said.

Labora said she would never forget the conversation she and the other female American students had with a professor when they were being readied to evacuate.

Courtesy of Amanda Labora

Political demonstrations spread to the streets of Egypt shortly after the government of Tunisia was overthrown by popular unrest last month.

The professor usually addressed the students in Modern Standard Arabic, a more academic form of Arabic not spoken on the streets.

But when Labora asked him how he was doing, he responded in English. “Me? I don’t know. I’ve lost everything,” the professor said.

Delays and complications

To get to the airport Sunday morning, the Middlebury program intended to take an armored car provided by HTH Worldwide, an insurance organization that Dawkins said is designed to provide evacuations in the event of an emergency exactly like this — in which the police system is essentially dissolved. The drivers told the program coordinators they

Courtesy of Amanda Labora

Amanda Labora ‘12 credited ordinary Egyptians, who set up roadblocks throughout Alexandria, with ensuring her safety.

were coming that morning, but the transportation did not show up. The service still reported to Nehad Heliel, director of the program, that the students had been retrieved.

The organization had been “extremely reliable in the past, finding medication for our students in some strange corners of the world and organizing some very tough medevac scenarios for us, including one from Alexandria, some time ago,” wrote Michael Geisler, vice president for language schools, schools abroad and graduate programs at Middlebury, in an e-mail to The Herald.

Dawkins said he does not know whether the service lied or picked up another group. Two program coordinators — Elizabeth Huntley, a Middlebury alum who works for the study abroad program, and Shurouq Swaitti , who organizes schedules for the program’s participants — were able to track down and pay for a tour bus to bring the group to Borg el Arab airport, where they had been told an HTH-provided flight would evacuate them from the country to Athens Sunday afternoon.

But once there, the flight kept being postponed, and HTH went to Cairo first to pick up another group. Though the students realized they would not get a flight out of the airport Sunday night, Heliel told the students not to return to Alexandria, saying that the airport was likely the safest place to be at that point, Labora said. Dawkins said he found out eventually that the flight had gone back to Athens without ever going to Alexandria.

“We were starting to get really terrified that no one was going to get us,” Labora said. The students and coordinators were in contact with the U.S. State Department, but they were told they would need to go to Cairo to get a flight — even though there were looters attacking cars at that point, and curfew was approaching, Dawkins said. “I just

don’t have words to explain how that feels,” Labora said.

Labora said she noticed a large difference in the way the U.S. State Department dealt with the issue compared to other countries’ departments. For example, a Mexican student in the program got in touch with Mexico’s consulate, and they were arranging a private car to transport her to Cairo should the group not be able to fly out together, Labora said.

The evacuation

Middlebury began to consider other options, including “a possible evacuation by sea,” Geisler wrote. But they received word from Boston-based carrier Global Rescue — run by a Middlebury alum — offering help.

“At this point, I had a hunch, based on the scarcity of information I was able to receive about how Plan A was proceeding, that maybe Plan A might not succeed,” he wrote. Through Global Rescue, Middlebury arranged a flight to Prague for Monday. Within three hours, security agents had arrived at the airport for the students’ protection.

Once they arrived in Prague, the students were met by a U.S. embassy official, and plans for their arrival home were solidified.

Labora is currently home in Miami with her family. Dawkins is in New York City staying with a friend and hoping to return to Brown within the next few days to begin taking classes here this semester.

Dawkins said the situation is still very volatile in Egypt, but that in his appraisal, the Egyptians are persistent and will not settle for the current regime. “God bless them,” he said. “I support them completely in their goal.”

Labora also expressed support for the protests. “The U.S. government cannot waffle on this,” Labora said. “This is going to change the face of the Middle East.”

Campus News 5

The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, February 3, 2011

UCS to remind students to use bike racks, not handrails continued from page 1 said, and faculty members are reluctant to suggest these services to students who may need them.

The office hopes to emphasize through the change that it also serves University employees, she said. Because the office is located within the Office of Student Life, many faculty and staff have misunderstood the office’s role, believing that it only assists students. Employee services have been offered for almost seven years, but Axe said she hopes the new name will make it “more inclusive for them.”

The office has been considering a name change for two years, looking toward other institutions for ideas. The word “accessibility” is commonly used at other campuses, Axe said, and she hopes this broader label will encourage members of the Brown community to use its services.

The name change will come into

effect at the end of the semester, Axe said. The office will run for a year with a statement — “formerly Disability Support Services” — and the word “disability” will still be used on the website, directories and brochures to allow people searching for those services to be directed to the office. “It doesn’t hurt to exist in a couple of realms,” she said.

At the meeting, Axe also raised concerns over students who lock their bicycles to handrails. A blind student was recently injured outside J. Walter Wilson due to a bike locked to the railing. Sayles Hall, the Olney-Margolies Athletic Center and the Office of Student Life are often affected by this issue as well, she said.

Ralanda Nelson ’12, chair of the student activities committee, said that students often place convenience ahead of other concerns.

UCS plans to remind students to use bicycle racks.

Sophia Rabb / Herald

The Undergraduate Council of Students discussed bike parking at its meeting yesterday.

Ratty or V-Dub? We decide so you don’t have to. blogdailyherald.com

6 City & State

The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, February 3, 2011

City schools shift R.I. to combat cyberbullying attack on bullying

By CHIP LEBOVITZ Staff Writer

By Elizabeth Carr Staff Writer

In an effort to cope with a number of recent incidents, the Providence Public School District is reevaluating its bullying and harassment policy.

A revised policy encourages schools to investigate bullying cases more thoroughly, said Christina O’Reilly, facilitator of communications and media relations for the school district.

“What we’re trying to avoid is really bumping students around without getting to the root of the problem,” O’Reilly said, referring to the district’s original policy to transfer misbehaving students to different schools.

“Maybe the child doing the bullying is being picked on by another student,” she said.

The new policy also addresses the relatively new issue of cyberbullying. “When the policy was written five years ago, that was not a problem,” Randy Ross, equity and diversity specialist at Brown’s Education Alliance said.

Ross added that cyberbullying can be difficult to handle because “a lot of it starts outside of school.”

The revision allows schools to intervene in cyberbullying cases if there is any “substantial disruption” in a student’s life at school — for example, O’Reilly said, “if he or she feels intimidated, or stops attending a class.”

Another major change, O’Reilly said, is that the policy now targets harassment as well as bullying.

“It’s a bit of a legal distinction, but it’s an important one,” Ross said. “Harassment is bullying behavior that is motivated by prejudice or bias against what are called protected classes.”

The Education Alliance has been working with the revising committee to create as comprehensive a policy as possible. “They needed help in developing a policy that would put more teeth into the district,” Ross said. “They were finding from their own data — their own information — that incidents of bullying were escalating to violence because they were not being handled at a lower level.”

The new policy — which O’Reilly said was created with feedback from teachers and administrators — is expected to eliminate discrepancies in the way different schools react to infractions.

“We found that what was punishable at one school was just being counseled at another school,” O’Reilly said. The new system is flexible, she said, but it provides “a lot more guidance as to how you should proceed with a case.”

“The policy is a fantastic guidepost,” she said, “and now the procedural work is being done on how to actually implement the policy.”

Cyberbullying prevention advocates are pressing forward with an attempt to present legislation in the Rhode Island General Assembly.

Members of the Special Senate Commission on Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats are leading a series of town hall-style meetings with students and administrators before crafting the bill.

Sen. John Tassoni Jr., D-Smithfield and North Smithfield, chairs the commission, which was created as a part of General Assembly legislation last year.

“The goal of the committee is to find a way to stop bullying in Rhode Island,” Tassoni said. “That being said, we know as a committee that we won’t be able to stop it wholeheartedly, but I know in my heart that we are going to put a dent in it.”

Other members of the committee include Sen. Beatrice Lanzi, D-Cranston, Rhode Island State Police Superintendent Brendan Doherty, Rep. Deborah Ruggiero, D-Jamestown and Middletown, the chief judge of the Rhode Island Family Court and local high school principals and superintendents.

“I want to give the law enforcement and administration the tools they need to combat cyberbullying,” Tassoni said. The current committee plans to enact legislation to curb the rise of cyberbullying, but specific details of the legislation are currently undecided,

Tassoni said.

Tassoni has been working on the issue of cyberbullying since 2005, when he passed the “first piece of legislation in the country” on cyberbullying. A bill he sponsored in July 2008 defined cyberbullying as “textual, verbal or graphic harassment transmitted by computer, cell phone, telephone or other electronic device.”

Cyberbullying has remained prevalent since Tassoni’s first piece of legislation. According to a 2008 survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 50 percent of children between the ages of 10 and 17 have been exposed to cyberbullying.

The committee’s work has coincided with a recent development in a local cyberbullying case. A Smithfield High School sophomore was charged with cyberstalking after creating a Facebook profile under the name of a freshman girl and is set to appear before the Rhode Island Family Court. The profile featured the name “Halfafoot,” a reference to the freshman’s deformed foot. The accused student’s actions would fall under the proposed new legislation, which, according to Tassoni, would not be age-specific.

Tassoni met with the state attorney general, the education commissioner and the state police to start ironing out details for the planned legislation on Jan. 31. The committee plans to file a final report to accompany the legislation this spring.

Lawrence Filippelli, assistant

Read Post- magazine Thursdays in The Herald

superintendent of Scituate Public Schools and a member of the committee, said he hopes the planned legislation will be a “balanced, comprehensive policy.”

“I hope the policy is able to have real consequences without criminalizing the issue for kids,” Filippelli said.

Filippelli’s first interaction with cyberbullying occurred six years ago when he was principal of Scituate Middle School. “I started seeing objectionable behavior in seventh and eighth graders on MySpace,” Filippelli said, “Parents had no clue what was going on.”

Filippelli joined the committee because he felt that the “time had come to address the problem all around,” adding that he wanted to be a voice of moderation. “I don’t want (the legislation) to be too burdensome,” he said. “Schools need to be able to review things on a case-by-case basis.”

Pilar Garcia-Brown ’11 said she would approve of efforts to target cyberbullying, which she called “downright cruel.”

Andrew Betzo ’11 said he was unimpressed by the legislation’s focus on the electronic aspect of bullying. Cyberbullying is just “the same old bullying,” he said. “Blaming the technology is just similar to blaming video games for violence.”

The commission is organizing meetings in the community to gain information and student and school administrator input, Tassoni said. Meetings have already been held in Warwick, North Providence and Smithfield.

The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, February 3, 2011

World & Nation 7

Arctic winter storm puts Midwest in deep freeze

By Richard Simon, Geraldine Baum and Abigail Sewell Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — Drifting snow and icy winds brought even the hardiest Midwesterners in Chicago and Kansas City to their knees Wednesday as two-thirds of the nation reeled from a winter storm of “historic proportions.”

Dubbed the “Blizzard of Oz” in Kansas, the storm coursed its way through the Midwest and Plains states — collapsing roofs, forcing highway and school closures, leaving tens of thousands without power and breaking snowfall and low-temperature records.

Airlines canceled about 6,300 flights Wednesday, according to the flight tracking service FlightAware.com. About one-third of the canceled flights were out of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, one of the nation’s busiest hubs. Eighty-four flights were canceled at Los Angeles International Airport.

At least two deaths were blamed on the weather. On Long Island a homeless man set himself on fire trying to stay warm and in Oklahoma a 20-year-old woman was killed while being pulled on a sled by a pick-up truck that crashed into metal poll.

By late Wednesday the blizzard — that pummeled Chicago with lightening, thunder and white-out conditions — had narrowed its path along northern New England and Upstate New York.

At its height, the storm had a following that more than rivaled Oprah’s on Twitter: the National Weather Service website that normally gets 70 million hits a day was drawing up to 20 million an hour Wednesday.

At one point the weather service issued blizzard warnings for an area stretching from Oklahoma City to Detroit and windchill warnings from the Dakotas

Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune

A person using snow shoes walks down W. Grand Avenue in Chicago as Edward Lawrence, center, and Catherine Longmire wait for a bus or taxi to arrive, Wednesday in Chicago, Ill.

to Texas, said Laura Furgione, the service’s deputy director. She compared the “massive storm” to the one that paralyzed Chicago in 1979 for more than a week.

Not only did 20.2 inches of snow and near-hurricane winds shutter Chicago schools and banks, it turned Lake Shore Drive into a snow-packed parking lot and kept people from so much as buying groceries or fixing an achy tooth. Denise Daly spent Wednesday morning canceling appointments at her dental office, explaining, “Someone with a toothache can deal with it for a day as long as they have something for the pain.”

Although the snowfall had all but stopped Wednesday evening, it went down as the third worst storm in Chicago and set a record for cold at minus-40 degrees in parts of Montana. Oklahoma City’s 11.8 inches of snow set a new February one-day record.

President Barack Obama re-

ceived a telephone briefing on the federal response to the storm from Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano and FEMA administrator Craig Fugate. FEMA had prepositioned power generators, blankets, cots, water, meals and other emergency supplies in places that were likely to suffer the most.

“It’s been a very snowy winter in general,” Forgone said. “It’s not over yet. We’re still expecting this cold air to remain over the central United States and even the Eastern seaboard. We are expecting more below normal temperatures at least through the next two weeks.”

For worried Super Bowl fans, predictions called for warmer temperatures by Sunday in Dallas, where an unusually severe ice storm had driven the mercury below zero and prompted utility companies to orchestrate rolling blackouts across the city with the exception of Cowboy Stadium.

“It won’t be anywhere near as cold Sunday in Dallas as it is today

Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune

A woman crosses W. Grand Ave. at N. Milwaukee in Chicago, Ill. as snow plows wait for the streets light to change, Wednesday. There were 20.2 inches of snow at both O’Hare International and Midway airports Wednesday morning, making the Groundhog Day storm the third-largest in Chicago history, according to the weather service.

Orlando Sentinel

Maps of North America compare a normal winter weather pattern to the this year’s, which has been colder and wetter than normal.

down there,” said Bruce Sullivan, a NWS meteorologist.

In New York City, the locals called it the “Groundhog Day Storm” as they gingerly negotiated icy sidewalks and Mayor Michael Bloomberg had an uplifting encounter with the city’s most famous groundhog, “Staten Island Chuck,” who, however improbably, predicted an early spring.

In Kansas City, Mo., Danny Rotert, an aide to Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., was hunkered down in his home, responding to questions via e-mail.

“The city is shut down and has declared an emergency,” he wrote. “...Even if I could shovel the driveway to get out, my street would be impassable.”

Some motorists were stuck for hours in their vehicles on snowclogged highways.

On Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive, nearly 1,000 cars were stranded overnight. Just before dawn Wednesday, firefighters walked down the line of snow-caked cars, shining flashlights inside to check on any motorists.

Joanna Moore, 24, and her boyfriend were returning home from the Downstream Casino Resort in Quapaw, Okla. when they got caught in a white out on Will Rogers Turnpike. They had two cups of hot chocolate and a muffin to tide them over between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m., when the National Guard found them.

They were among 16 people waiting out the storm at a Red Cross shelter set up in a local church. It was unclear when the

couple would be able to retrieve their car and get home. Moore said she was crossing her fingers that they would be there in time for her 3-year-old daughter’s birthday on Friday.

Meanwhile, officials began to prepare for an onslaught of insurance claims resulting from damaged properties like the Hard Rock Casino Hotel & Casino near Tulsa, Okla., where part of the roof caved in.

Wet snow and heavy ice caused roofs to cave in and buildings to collapse in several states. A gas station canopy plummeted in Long Island, an airplane hanger in Boston, and an entire brick building in northwest Connecticut.

Even sunny Arizona didn’t escape freezing temperatures, prompting a warning from the National Weather Service for Phoenix residents to keep their plants and pets warm.

In Milan, N.H., Brad Ray, 72, who used to rescue people from avalanches for the park service in Mount Washington, wondered what all the fuss was about.

Yes, the snow was coming down there, he said, and they’d already had 12 inches of the white stuff.

No, Ray wasn’t rushing to plow his 1,325-foot driveway. “My plow truck is a pretty good size,” he said.

“I have a lot of weight and chains on it. I don’t worry about pushing the snow.”

But even with all his equipment and know-how he still advised: “Listen to the professionals and don’t go out unless you really have to.”

8 World & Nation

The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, February 3, 2011

Protesters back UC Irvine students against grand jury probe

By Nicole Santa Cruz Los Angeles Times

IRVINE, Calif. — More than 50 protesters — some with masking tape plastered over their mouths — rallied in front of the Orange County district attorney’s office Tuesday, objecting to subpoenas and a grand jury investigation that could lead to criminal charges against 11 University of California at Irvine students who disrupted a speech by the Israeli ambassador last year.

The Muslim Student Union, which denied planning to obstruct the speech, was suspended by the university for one year. It was one of the first instances in recent memory where the school

recommended the ban of a student group for an action other than hazing or alcohol abuse.

Some have criticized the students’ method of protest, but the “Irvine 11” have gained widespread support from students, civil libertarians and religious leaders. A top UC Irvine administrator said that university sanctions were sufficient and that the district attorney should stay out of the case.

The district attorney’s office declined to comment. The office has one year after the event to file charges.

“These students aren’t criminals, they shouldn’t have their lives ruined by criminal charges at this point,” said Carol Sobel, an attorney who has worked with those named in the grand jury investigation and represents the other six students who were subpoenaed. “And we should all move forward.”

The Feb. 8, 2010, incident sparked a debate about free speech at the campus after a group of students disrupted a speech by Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Oren was shouted down repeatedly and supporters cheered as students were escorted away by police.

Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean

Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

College students protest on Tuesday in front of the offices of the Orange County District Attorney in Santa Ana, Calif., against possible charges being brought against 11 students who interrupted a speech by Israeli ambassador Michael Oren at the University of California at Irvine last year.

of UC Irvine’s law school, said the issue is not about free speech or expression but about appropriate punishment.

“I favor them being punished by the university because what

they did was wrong,” he said, adding that “university discipline is sufficient.” He said there is no First Amendment right to go into an event and keep it from happening.

Reem Salahi, an attorney who has represented the 11 students, said a handful of students have asked her about the implications of protesting.

“It’s very terrifying that students feel that they can’t even protest,” she said. “That goes against the very grain of democracy.”

At the protest Tuesday in Santa Ana, people held signs that read, “Don’t criminalize my classmates.”

Hamza Siddiqui, a UC Irvine senior and an organizer of the protest, worries about the longterm effect of criminal charges on the students, many of whom he considers close friends. Some are graduate students and potential medical students.

“These students are super bright kids and this has the possibility of really messing up their futures,” he said.

Criminalizing protests like the one at UC Irvine could have a chilling effect on freedom of expression and make such dissent unacceptable, Siddiqui said.

Sobel said the nation has a history of heckling. Members of Congress stand up when the president is speaking, and in many of these instances, people are escorted away without criminal charges.

“It happens at City Council meetings all the time,” she said.

The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, February 3, 2011

World & Nation 9

Polar bear’s trip sheds light on ice melt

By Kim Murphy Los Angeles Times

In one of the most dramatic signs ever documented of how shrinking Arctic sea ice impacts polar bears, researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey in Alaska have tracked a female bear that swam nine days across the deep, frigid Beaufort Sea before reaching an ice floe 426 miles offshore.

The marathon swim came at a cost: With little food likely available once she arrived, the bear lost 22 percent of her body weight and her year-old female cub, who set off on the journey but did not survive, the researchers said.

“Our activity data suggests that she swam constantly for nine days, without any rest. Which is pretty incredible,” said George Durner, a USGS zoologist and a lead author of the study published in December in the journal Polar Biology.

“We have observed other longdistance swimming events. I don’t believe any of them have been as long in time and distance as what we observed with her,” he said. “How often does this happen? We’re trying to get a handle on that.”

Polar bears spend much of their waking lives on the shifting Arctic sea ice floes. They survive mainly on the ringed seals that are also dependent on sea ice and swim in abundance in the relatively shallow coastal waters of the continental shelf.

But sea ice has been melting dramatically in recent years, forcing polar bears during the fall open-water periods to either forage from shore or swim longer distances in search of sea ice.

Bears that retreat to land usually find little or no food there, and “typically … spend the duration fasting while they await the re-formation of ice needed to access and hunt seals,” according to a 2008 government study.

Conservation groups, the state of Alaska, the Alaska Oil and Gas Association and several other groups are locked in litigation in Washington, D.C., over polar bear protections and how much needs to be done to slow the pace of climate change to prevent further shrinking of their habitat.

In November, the Obama administration designated more than 187,000 square miles along the north coast of Alaska as “critical habitat” for the polar bear, but since the federal government considers the bears threatened, not endangered, there are no provisions to take dramatic steps to halt further deaths in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.

But U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled that the federal government erred in its presumptive standard that bears must be in “imminent” danger of extinction before being considered endangered. The parties are due back in court Feb. 23.

The difference between “threatened” and the more serious “endangered” status is crucial in this case.

Attorneys for the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council argue that an endangered finding will require the government to impose new controls on greenhouse

EPA moves to control perchlorate

By Neela Banerjee Tribune Washington Bureau

Los Angeles Times / MCT

Map of the Arctic Ocean in northern Alaska locating the trek of a polar bear that took several months to swim through the melted ice.

gases across the country to protect the bears.

In any case, they say, the bears are imperiled.

“They’re drowning and starving now, and all the scientific studies show an incredibly high likelihood of extinction of two-thirds of the world’s polar bears in the next 40 years … and that includes all the bears in Alaska,” said Kassie Siegel, who is arguing the case for the Center for Biological Diversity.

But Republican Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell, who is leading the charge against the Endangered Species Act protections, has said the critical-habitat designation will cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in lost economic development and tax revenue.

Plans to develop major stockpiles of offshore oil and gas resources in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas are potentially threatened by the polar bear protection zones. Additional litigation is likely on the question of how much protection must be assured for polar bears before major new drilling can proceed.

Durner said it’s clear that polar bears are spending more time in open water, and possibly on land, looking for food. Researchers conducting aerial surveys of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas for the Minerals Management Service in 2005 found 10 polar bears swimming in open Arctic water, along with four bear carcasses floating in open water, apparently drowned.

“We speculate that mortalities due to offshore swimming during late-ice or mild-ice years may be an important and unaccounted source of natural mortality, given energetic demands placed on individual bears engaged in long-distance swimming,” that study said. “We further suggest that drowning-related deaths of polar bears may increase in the future if the observed trend of regression of pack ice and/or longer open-water periods continues.”

In the case of the marathon bear, whose swim began Aug. 26, 2008,

several miles east of Barrow, Alaska, researchers had captured the bear and fitted her with a GPS-equipped radio collar, along with body temperature monitoring equipment and motion sensors. She was recaptured on shore near the Canadian border Oct. 26.

“What we have for this bear is actually a very beautiful profile of data that is very rare for any sort of wildlife, including polar bears,” Durner said. “And it allowed us to tell a story about this animal, and what she did, and what sort of conditions she may have experienced.”

She appears to have swum in an arc north and then northeast from the Beaufort Sea coast for nine days before reaching an ice floe. “She was able to get on the surface of the sea ice for a couple of days and then she went swimming again for another day. So really, she swam for 10 days, but nine days of it was sequentially,” Durner said.

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency took steps Wednesday to control toxins in drinking water, including perchlorate, a chemical thought to threaten the human thyroid that has contaminated hundreds of public water wells, mostly in California.

The agency also moved to set standards for 16 other toxic substances that can invade water supplies and impair human health.

Perchlorate, a remnant of California’s manufacturing, aerospace and military bases, can inhibit thyroid hormone production, especially in fetuses and infants. That can lead to lower IQs and developmental delays, studies have shown.

Research by the Food and Drug Administration, among others, found perchlorate contamination in food and water in 45 states, and a small study in the Boston area found perchlorate in the breast milk of nursing mothers.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., hailed the EPA’s action, saying it was about time the government moved “to protect our families from perchlorate.”

“Exposure to perchlorate in drinking water is dangerous, especially for pregnant women, infants and children,” said Boxer, chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

But Republicans on the committee disputed the threat.

“EPA is has changed its position,” one senior Republican Senate staffer said. “That’s not good policy. Nothing new is being presented as far as the science goes.”

The George W. Bush-era EPA refused to regulate perchlorate, which occurs in nature but is also manmade.

In the past, industrial users of perchlorate commonly dumped it into unlined pits, from which it

leached into groundwater, scientists say. The most heavily affected areas have been California’s Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange and Sacramento counties.

California law requires that perchlorate levels be below 6 parts per billion. It was unclear what the federal limit would be.

Late last year, a contaminated well in Barstow, Calif., had a level of 100 parts per billion.

After taking public comment, the EPA will issue a formal rule on perchlorate levels. The process could take two years, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said.

Meanwhile, late Wednesday, congressional Republicans prepared to introduce legislation to prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say contribute to global warming.

Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, issued a draft of a measure that would strip the EPA of its ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act and to conduct research into climate change.

The draft measure adds to a growing pile of bills by Republicans and some Democrats to hamstring the EPA on climate change.

Jackson said the cascade of proposed legislation has not persuaded the administration to change course. “The president’s advisers would advise him to veto any legislation that…would take away EPA’s greenhouse gas authority,” she said after testifying before the Senate environment committee Wednesday.

“Nothing has changed.”

The Obama administration, unable to get Congress to act on a climate bill, has been pushing the EPA to regulate emissions using its authority under a 2007 Supreme Court decision.

comics BB & Z | Cole Pruitt, Andrew Seiden, Valerie Hsiung and Dan Ricker

Dot Comic | Eshan Mitra and Brendan Hainline

10 Editorial & Letter Editorial Reconsidering ROTC Following the passage last year of legislation beginning the process of ending the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, many universities are now reconsidering their stance on the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama said, “I call on all our college campuses to open their doors to our military recruiters and ROTC.” Now, a committee chaired by Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron will study the possibility of bringing ROTC back to Brown.

Brown originally stripped ROTC of its academic status — effectively removing it from campus — due to anti-Vietnam War sentiment. Over the years, opposition to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” replaced Vietnam as the justification for keeping ROTC away. Yet the University scarcely revisited its policy despite this inconsistency. The past few senior classes have gone in and out of the Van Wickle Gates without having seen a formal reevaluation of Brown’s stance on ROTC, while our military continues to fight in two wars overseas. We are pleased that the University will finally tackle this issue.

The committee should examine ROTC’s compatibility with Brown’s mission and sovereignty. While Vietnam was the driving force behind ROTC’s removal, issues such as “granting faculty status to military officers” also played into the decision. Provost David Kertzer, in an e-mail to the editorial page board, further noted that “in the past, the faculty have voiced concerns” about the military’s requirements, like the one requiring the University to grant academic credit for ROTC classes.

Furthermore, the military continues to deny transgendered people the chance to serve, which would keep ROTC at odds with Brown’s non-discrimination policy even after “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ends.

We should consider potential benefits of having ROTC on campus as well. Attracting aspiring officers would bring an added dimension of diversity to campus. And bringing ROTC to Brown could help diversify the program’s ranks, where the Northeast is underrepresented.

But it is unlikely that ROTC will return to Brown soon, no matter what the committee recommends. Diane Mazur, author of “A More Perfect Military” and law professor at the University of Florida, told the editorial page board that the military might not invest in a new ROTC program at a school like Brown. “If ROTC is going to increase its footprint at more expensive private universities,” Mazur said, “its tuition scholarships are going to be more expensive. And that doesn’t count the general overhead expense of establishing what is essentially a new academic department.”

Furthermore, the military would only establish ROTC at Brown if it saw sufficient student interest in the program. With so few Brunonians participating in ROTC at Providence College in recent years, it is doubtful we would make an appealing location for a new detachment.

Whether or not the committee recommends allowing ROTC back on campus, we hope they insist the University take more seriously its accessibility to students who want to pursue a military career. We are heartened that Bergeron suggested “more convenient transportation to PC and the possibility for academic credit for ROTC courses” in an interview with The Herald last year. But as it stands, Brown-caliber students who hope to go into the armed forces have many more attractive options, like the military academies or schools where they can participate in ROTC without having to travel off campus.

This process will affect perceptions of Brown, regardless of what the final decision is. We hope all students will study the issue and join the debate over this important choice.

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

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The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, February 3, 2011

Editorial comic

by franny choi

letter to the editor Alum supports continuing donut run To the Editor: It is with great pleasure that I read the article “DPS: No plans to halt Naked Donut Run.” As a three-year participant and one of the primary organizers during my time at Brown, I found the Naked Donut Run to be a truly fantastic “event.” I am proud to say that I participated and that the true spirit of the run — namely, to diffuse the stress, tension and craziness that comes along with finals — lives on!

During my runs, we often had contact with the Department of Public Safety, and the officers were never anything other than friendly and appreciative of the chance to choose the donut of their choice. In fact, at one time several DPS officers protected us from some librarians, who wanted us out.

It surprises me to find such a strange altercation took place last semester. However, I applaud the University for upholding such a fun and long-lived tradition; one that is much more fun, in my opinion, than the “SciLi Challenge,” which does have its merits.

To current Brunonians — take advantage of opportunities such as the Naked Donut Run, because once you move on from the hallowed halls, these opportunities are few. And to those Brunonians now organizing and participating in the Naked Donut Run, don’t forget to properly thank the DPS officers and University staff with a delicious glazed donut the next time you run.

Lillian Ostrach ’07 MS’08

Correction An article in Tuesday’s Herald (“Watson panel addresses Middle East protests,” Feb. 1) incorrectly attributed to panelist Melani Cammett, associate professor of political science and director of the Middle East studies program, the assertions that poverty catalyzed the protests in Egypt and Tunisia and that poverty in Tunisia is worse than in Egypt. Cammett believes that poverty is a “backdrop” for the Egyptian protests, she wrote in a follow-up e-mail to The Herald. Egypt is more impoverished than Tunisia. The Herald regrets the errors.

quote of the day

“All night, you could hear machine guns

”

and screams.

— Michael Dawkins ’12 C O R R E C T I O N S P olicy The Brown Daily Herald is committed to providing the Brown University community with the most accurate information possible. Corrections may be submitted up to seven calendar days after publication.

C ommentary P O L I C Y The editorial is the majority opinion of the editorial page board of The Brown Daily Herald. The editorial viewpoint does not necessarily reflect the views of The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Columns, letters and comics reflect the opinions of their authors only.

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Opinions 11

The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, February 3, 2011

A skimpy little thing about a problem I’ve been having Anthony Badami Opinions Columnist What comes to mind when you read my byline? What can you infer? If you’re an amateur etymologist, you might think me Italian or Persian or South Asian. My name is alphabetically superior, so perhaps you could deduce that I’ve lived a life of primacy — in fact, I was first in line for every foray outside my kindergarten classroom. But if you’ve ventured to read my past columns — or know me personally — reading “Anthony Badami” would undoubtedly summon something else, a pastiche of images, a persona perhaps. On this very subject, the exalted Joyce Carol Oates once wrote that her “job at the university (was) to impersonate ‘Joyce Carol Oates’ ... this quasipublic self.”

I’m certainly not equating my meager output with Oates’s massive body of work, but I am trying to remark on a shared dilemma we both endure. Whether I like it or not, every single word I’ve ever written for The Herald will be archived digitally until the end of the Internet. This means that each new column I produce can be weighed against the others. It means that I have a line of succession to worry about, and it means that I have to concern myself with the maintenance of a coherent and continuous quasi-public self that avoids tergiversating.

Most undergraduates experience a simi-

lar predicament. Whether it’s a lengthy thesis or a short response paper, your identity, to some extent, is contained in and expressed by your academic writing. We may not like to admit it, but a professor’s evaluation of our academic work has some bearing on how we see ourselves as individuals, how we measure up to our own expectations and the expectations of others.

But a lot of this stuff is largely self-imposed. Most of my readership doesn’t check previous columns, and it would be unfair of

ple that comes to mind, though President Obama, too, has endured his fair share of accusations of waffling. Indeed, the binary of American politics makes it difficult for one to have nuance at all, leaving ample space for demagogues and talking heads to speechify simple but resonant viewpoints.

Academia is not so different. When I think about great writers and professors, I see them as monolithic entities — huge, towering brains who transmit deep and enduring truths, and whose bodies of work

Whether it’s a lengthy thesis or a short response paper, your identity, to some extent, is contained in and expressed by your academic writing. me to expect them to do so. Still, it gives me the fantods to read arguments I no longer hold, and I cringe every time I come across a clunky phrase or bloviated language. I’m deeply afraid that someone will dig up an old column, read it and write me off. Think about a previously graded paper you find discarded at the bottom of some junk box.

Don’t you recoil slightly while reading it?

A part of me thinks it’s a symptom of American political culture. If a politician renounces a previously held view, he or she is pejoratively referred to as a “flipflopper” — hence the schizophrenic backtracking we often see from cornered officeseekers. The 2004 election is the first exam-

are undeviating and sacrosanct. I forget that they are mammals, capable of mistake and regret and readjustment, just like me.

But somewhere along the line, amid the professionalization which most undergraduates are forced to encounter, we lose this sense of humility and equivocation. It is definitely the job of the writer to anticipate the emotional and moral response of the reader, but it becomes highly problematic when this crafted persona starts to shape or overtake the real person. Something is lost in transmission, and the authentic voice slowly becomes a caricature, a grotesque shadow of its former self.

You do not need to read in between

these lines to discover how I think this applies to me. When I read my previous production, I detect a person who really wants to impress the person on the receiving end.

He can be dogmatic, preachy, dense, abstruse and pontifical. But he can also be empathic and passionate, and, on rare occasion, even eloquent.

When all is said and done, and the dust begins to clear, a writer, whether political or poetic, desires fundamentally to be heard. She feels she has something to say, something with meaning, something with real value. But this message is obscured by insecurity and self-doubt. Instead of having faith in the substance of an idea, the writer relies on rhetorical flourish and intellectual rococo.

Even as I write these words, I somersault in my mind, thinking about your perception and your opinion of me. And the more I think about that — trapped in a kind of meta-textual bind — the less I think about being true to the beating heart of what I’d actually like to say.

And this is the essence of the problem.

Thus, I ask the reader, like the writer, to have a little bit more patience and understanding when examining and criticizing the views of her peers. These precious years are a time for growth and for error-making.

Let’s not taint them with illusions of grandeur or image.

Anthony Badami ’11 is a political theory concentrator from Kansas City, Mo. He can be reached at anthony_badami@brown.edu.

Study abroad drop: It’s not the recession

By Michelle Uhrick Opinions Columnist When I first arrived at University College Dublin, the economic crisis had just put the Irish economy into a tailspin. The radio projected that half of all construction workers would be laid off, the newspaper proclaimed financial Armageddon and the bars seemed filled with workers returning to their traditional comforts of alcohol and caustic humor. The university itself, however, was gearing up for a storm. Even as a study abroad student, I received protest leaflets handed out in corridors and scattered around classrooms. I heard the rumors of class being cancelled because of the student protests.

What was the big issue? War? The corporations that had just bankrupted the Irish economy? No. The government was considering raising the college registration fee by a whopping 600 euros, which comes to around $1,000. Per year. For a three-year bachelor’s program. Note the careful use of the phrase “registration fee.” There’s no use of the taboo word tuition here. After all, allegations that the fees were tuition in disguise were part of what prompted thousands of students to take to the streets in protest.

It’s hard to describe how comical it is to be an American student talking with European protesters about rioting over a $1,000 fee hike. Most striking of all is the sincerity of it. The rioters are not taking to the streets just because they think the govern-

ment will bend and save them a couple thousand dollars if they put enough pressure on it. They make signs that say, “Because my daddy can’t pay” and “H.E. — Not just for the rich” and chant about how they refuse to have their education stolen, and they mean it. They sincerely believe that the principles of higher education are at stake. To an American student, they might as well be explaining the greater intricacies of making a cup of tea — something is lost in translation.

Ireland is not alone in the protesting.

Austerity measures brought on by the financial crisis have dragged the issue of stu-

where between $30,000 and “astronomical,” and that this is not being properly maximized by foreign universities. For example, the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, a part of Brown’s ever-popular Barcelona program, charges around 1,000 euros a year.

Of course, they could get a lot more money out of American college students, and they know it. For international students, the rates soar to a mind-boggling 3,420 euros a year. You foreigners! Paying that much for college classes. Suckers, all of you.

It’s pretty much the same sad story all across Europe. Universities triple or quadruple their domestic prices for non-EU

It’s pretty much the same sad story all across Europe: Universities triple or quadruple their domestic prices for non-EU students, and American students drool over the low prices.

dent fees into the streets across Europe — protests occurred in Germany in 2009, and, just this December, over 50,000 British students rioted in London and even attacked a car carrying Prince Charles in their frustration. If anything, it’s the U.S. that is alone in its tuition prices, not the Irish protestors.

This makes the money-grubbing practices of American universities all the more painful to watch. They realize that American parents’ willingness to pay for their children’s educations is generally some-

students, and American students drool over the low prices. Given the recent policy changes, however, this story apparently should have included American college administrators sniffling over their lost revenue. After all, while they’re abroad, students are generally living in the dorms of their host university, eating food from local groceries and paying that hiked-up tuition for the college classes their local university is providing. There’s not really any opportunity for the home university to charge

their students, since they’re not really providing anything aside from the occasional follow-up.

However, as Ethan Tobias ’12 points out (“Piracy abroad,” Jan. 26), Brown has become the latest in a line of universities to decide that this lack of opportunity is a non-issue. The University is now charging you the normal Brown tuition when you study abroad for follow-up calls and simplicity. Now students won’t be confused by fee bills that are suddenly thousands of dollars less than before. It’s also easier than ever to decide between study abroad programs, because now, they will all require you to take out that second mortgage on your house.

The money-grubbing is embarrassing enough in its own right, but there’s evidence that it’s legitimately hurting students.

The de facto increase in price was immediately followed by a plunge in the number of undergraduates studying abroad to the lowest level ever recorded. The Office of International Programs likes to blame this on the recession, despite the fact that the number of students studying abroad fell by nearly 20 percent precisely in the semester that they implemented the policy and has since shown little sign of recovery. If the numbers are due to the policy change, the University’s greed is truly robbing its students of — as I can say from personal experience — the opportunity of a lifetime.

Michelle Uhrick ’11 hates telling student protestors what college in the U.S. costs.

She can be reached at michelle_uhrick@brown.edu.

Daily Herald City & State the Brown

Thursday, February 3, 2011

State considers date U. bucks unemployment trend change for Halloween

By Alejandro Dauguet Contributing Writer

Watch out Wriston Rising — Halloween could fall on Brown’s Halloweekend every year. That is, if a new bill permanently rescheduling Halloween to the last Saturday of October passes the state legislature.

Legislation recently introduced

by State Rep. Donald Lally Jr., DNarragansett, North Kingstown and South Kingstown, would make Halloween the last Saturday of the month, regardless of whether that day is Oct. 31.

According to a Jan. 29 Providence Journal article, Lally introduced the bill after a constituent approached him about its potential impact on the state’s economy. He told the Journal he has not decided to support the proposal but wants it to be considered during the current session of the General Assembly.

The bill is the first in Rhode Island history to propose changing the date of Halloween, according to State Rep. Edith Ajello, D-Providence.

“To the best of my knowledge, it’s brand new,” Ajello said.

When asked about how the bill fits into the General Assembly’s priorities, Ajello said it is simply one of the issues the state legislature considers.

“The Assembly ought to be able to chew gum and walk at the same time,” she said. “We are able to deal with a variety of issues. While some believe that this bill is not of the

highest priority, it still deserves to be addressed.”

Students expressed mixed opinions on the bill.

“I can see how the bill would benefit businesses and families,” Brisa Pena ’13 said.

Scheduling Halloween on Saturdays would also impact students’ Halloween revelry. Since Halloween will be on a Monday in 2011, the legislation could affect celebrations this year.

“Friday and Saturday nights are when Brown students go out,” Frank Muci ’14 said. “With Halloween on a weekend, there won’t be that extra night to party.”

Rachel Connor ’14 said she is unconvinced that devoting valuable time to this issue would outweigh the intended benefits.

“I think that (the General Assembly) should spend more of their time and resources on other things than the date of Halloween,” she said.

While people might question the bill’s importance, the reason for introducing it is obvious, Ajello said.

“It would be better for schoolchildren to be out on weekends rather than school nights,” she said.

“The streets would be safer, and so would commuting. It could also start earlier since most people are home on the weekends.”

A hearing on the bill has yet to be scheduled, but will be posted two days in advance on the General Assembly website, Ajello said.

s lu s h l i f e

Stephanie London / Herald Black ice and slush make for slippery treks on Wriston Quadrangle.

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By KAT THORNTON Senior Staff Writer

Although Rhode Island’s unemployment rate of 11.5 percent has remained the fifth highest in the country for the past 22 months, Brown has been able to keep its employment rate relatively stable.

Brown, one of the state’s top 10 largest employers, is a “significant economic engine,” said Marisa Quinn, vice president of public affairs and university relations.

Last year, Brown had to cut a total of 200 positions using early retirement options, layoffs and job reconfiguration.

But Quinn said Brown has been able to keep employees on the payroll because of careful project reviews. For example, the University had initially considered constructing a new medical education building but instead decided to renovate existing facilities, cutting the expected cost in half.

Quinn said Brown has been working in collaboration with Building Futures — a program that helps train economically disadvantaged adults in Providence in the construction trade — on its building projects. “We understand and appreciate the role we play in overall employment,” Quinn said.

Dining Services has also adjusted in response to the economic downturn, wrote Ann Hoffman, director of administration for Dining Services, in an e-mail to The Herald. According to Hoffman, the job losses from last year had a “small impact” on the number of Dining Services employees.

But Hoffman said the division

Freddy Lu / Herald

Dining services has adjusted eatery hours to cut costs and minimize layoffs.

has implemented various changes as a preventative measure. Last summer, Dining Services reduced the number of open hours at the Gate and transferred the Gate union employees to other eateries — notably Josiah’s, where they replaced a number of Johnson and Wales University student staff.

“We’ve completed that transition now,” Hoffman added.

Student employment in University-posted positions has “remained steady,” Quinn said, though she added that applications for many jobs have increased. Quinn said this increase offers an insight into the economic situation of students.

Despite the high unemployment rate in the state, Thayer Street shops have not reported any significant downturn in student purchases. A salesperson at Berk’s Shoes and Clothing Store said its business remained “even with last year,” but that she had noticed more students using parents’ money instead of their own.

A salesperson at Details also said she had not noticed fewer student appearances at the store.

The economic downturn is “hurting everyone in some way or another,” she said, but added that the unemployment rate has not affected too many people’s shopping habits.