Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Daily

the Brown

vol. cxlvi, no. 11

Herald

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Since 1891

Boathouse destroyed in blizzard blaze

Study: Elite firms target ‘elite’ Ivys

By Kimberly Clifton Contributing Writer

By Aparna Bansal Senior Staff Writer

A fire destroyed the Edgewood Yacht Clubhouse — home to the University’s nationally ranked co-ed sailing team — but members of the team say they do not expect the fire to adversely affect their season.

While the team lost approximately $60,000 in equipment in the Jan. 12 fire, none of the boats were damaged, said Head Coach John Mollicone. Members of the team lost personal racing equipment, new lockers, uniforms, boat supplies and coaching equipment, along with the numerous trophies and All-American plaques it had collected over decades. Losing the trophies “is pretty heart breaking.

We’ll never be able to duplicate them,” Mollicone said. “Luckily, we didn’t lose anything we need to sail our boats.”

The clubhouse, built over the Providence River in Cranston, had weathered the elements since 1908 before bursting into flames during a snowstorm. Lightning may have struck the building, Kevin Morris, Cranston’s acting fire marshal told the Providence Journal Jan. 14. Firefighters succeeded in limiting the blaze to the clubhouse, sparing the surrounding docks and all but 10 feet of the catwalk leading out to the water, according to a statement

What does a Brown degree mean in the job market today? According to Lauren Rivera, not much.

When competing for high-end positions at law firms, consulting firms and investment banks, Brown graduates fall behind students at the top-four “super-elite” universities, according to Rivera’s recent study in the journal “Research in Social Stratification and Mobility.”

Rivera, assistant professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University, examined how firms use education to recruit and evaluate job seekers.

In her study, Rivera said she conducted 120 interviews at toptier firms and acted as a participant observer at the recruitment department of one firm for a year. She asked employers about the recruitment process, what they look for in applicants and what kind of candidates they had recently interviewed, she said. She also asked them to evaluate resumes of fictional applicants.

Graduates from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania have the highest hiring rate, according to the study. Rivera said this was not necessarily due to the schools’ relative prestige, but could be due to factors such as the alumni base in the firm.

continued on page 2

Hilary Rosenthal / Herald

Dr. Ronald Ferguson spoke about civil rights and racial achievement gaps for the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Lecture.

MLK lecture tackles achievement gap

By Shanoor Seervai Contributing Writer

Ronald Ferguson, a scholar of the racial achievement gap in education, argued for a social movement to ensure educational equality yesterday. He delivered his remarks in Sayles Hall for the 14th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture.

In her introduction to the lecture, Valerie Wilson, associate provost and director of institutional diversity, said that Ferguson’s work demonstrates how the challenge of advancing civil rights remains relevant today.

Ferguson discussed the continued importance of equality in education after the civil rights move-

ment. He advocated for considering the legal changes the civil rights movement brought while closely examining how those changes manifest in educational institutions and affect the development of children.

After the lecture, President Ruth Simmons told The Herald she felt Ferguson provided critical insights into a very important topic. She said she agrees with his message that passion for change in education must be transformed into a widespread movement. “You need a massive number of people to engage and push for reform in order to have the national effect we would like to see,” she said.

Ferguson is the founder of the

Tripod Project for School Improvement, and has developed surveys that use student perception to measure the effectiveness of teaching for a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation project. His Tripod surveys identify the “Seven C’s” of teaching he considers central to a student’s classroom experience: care, control, challenge, clarify, captivate, confer and consolidate.

Ferguson said he uses this data to identify schools with the highest learning gains and determine how they achieve them. He said he has identified teacher quality as one of the most important factors in the struggle to close the achievecontinued on page 3

Employees wanted

Andrew Simmons, director of the Career Development Center, said students are still successful at finding employment at these top-tier firms. “I’ve certainly seen that a lot of employers from banking, business, technology, consulting and nonprofits recruit through our center,” Simmons said.

“My sense is that Brown gets a little bit less attention than some of the other schools from other firms — but they get a lot of attention from us,” said Chris Bierly, head of North America associate consulting recruiting at Bain and Company, which recruits from 40 colleges and universities in North America. “We think of Brown as a core school — one of the three or four best sources of talent in the Ivy League.”

Barclays, Bank of America and Merill Lynch have stepped up their recruiting efforts at Brown, while Goldman Sachs is a “regular participant,” Simmons said. “From what I hear, they like Brown students and

Alums run student trips to North Korea Few Westerners have visited North Korea in recent memory. Yet for the past two years, the Pyongyang Project has brought groups to the region both despite and because of its political significance.

FEATURE

inside

The project, founded by Matthew Reichel ’09 and Nick Young ’09 in 2009, gives participants an in-depth tour of the heavily guarded communist nation in an attempt to promote cultural understanding.

Though the program is entering its third year, watching Reichel greet friends on Thayer Street — “Brown” emblazoned on his cap — is a re-

news...................2-4 LETTERS..................5 editorial...............6 Opinions...............7

minder of just how recently the project’s co-founder was a student himself.

Reichel’s senior project for East Asian studies sparked the idea. The North Korea program is only one section of the East West Coalition, a larger non-profit organization founded by Reichel and Young.

“But North Korea is much more blatantly interesting,” Reichel said.

“We get a lot of eyebrows.”

“It was an idea we were throwing around,” Reichel said. “Could we bring students to North Korea?”

But orchestrating the project was not without its challenges. Young and Reichel submitted a proposal to the North Korean government in December 2008 and it was apCourtesy of Matthew Reichel

continued on page 4 Nick Young ‘09 and Matthew Reichel ‘09 bring students to Pyongyang.

Ice, Ice, Maybe

World Class

Despite heavy snow, facilities sticks to budget.

Brown’s UWC alums reminisce

News, 8

NEWS, 8

weather

By sofia castello Staff Writer

continued on page 3

t o d ay

tomorrow

28 / 14

26 / 12

2 Campus News

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, February 9, 2011

c alendar Today

february 9

7 P.m.

ToMORROW

february 10

6:30 p.m.

Wendy Schiller on Partisanship and

TED Talk: Partnering with the Poor,

Congress, Barus and Holley 168

Barus and Holley 168

9:30 p.m.

8 p.m.

CIT Movie Night: Patrick Swayze’s

East Campus Speed Dating,

Road House, CIT 477

Barbour Hall

menu SHARPE REFECTORY

VERNEy-WOOLLEY DINING HALL LUNCH Italian Sausage and Pepper Sandwich, Vegetable Strudel, Lemon Cookies

Polynesian Chicken Wings, Vegan Stir-Fry Veggies with Tofu, Grilled Key West Chicken, Lemon Cookies DINNER Sustainable Baked and Breaded Pollock, Dal Cali with Yogurt, Cheese Quesadillas, Macaroon Bars

Spicy Herb Baked Chicken, Vegan Veggie and Bean Stew, Roasted Red Potatoes, Macaroon Bars Courtesy of John Mollicone

Sudoku

The Edgewood Yacht Club, home to Brown’s sailing team, was destroyed by a fire in January. No boats were lost.

Fire destroys trophies, equipment continued from page 1

Cr ossword

released by Jeff Lamphear, Edgewood’s commodore.

The loss of the building came as a shock to members of the Edgewood Yacht Club and the Brown Sailing Team, Mollicone said. The team rented two locker rooms and a classroom at Edgewood. Everything stored and displayed there was destroyed in the fire, he said.

Half of the team’s boats were stored in the parking lot 200 feet away from the clubhouse, and the rest were flipped over on the docks, said Fred Strammer ’11, a former

Daily

the Brown

captain of the team. After the fire, team members helped Mollicone shovel snow off the docks and take the powerboats for maintenance.

Team member Colin Smith ’13 said it was “pretty sad” to see the clubhouse burned down, but added, “(The fire) shouldn’t affect us at all, really. All of our boats, our most important assets, are fine.”

Mollicone said he is working with the Edgewood Yacht Club and the Athletics Department at Brown to find a temporary shelter for the sailing team so that it can continue to sail out of Edgewood’s docks.

“Our immediate concern is to get

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Brown sailing back on the water,” said Sue Toland, vice-commodore of Edgewood.

The sailing team will move into a 24-by-36 foot heated trailer on Edgewood’s property and use it as a temporary classroom and changing area. “It’s our base for now,” Mollicone said. “It will be a minor inconvenience not having the setup we had, but we’ll get through it.” He said that the team wants to stay at Edgewood and support the yacht club.

Mollicone said he expects the team to be able to practice at Edgewood before their first race Feb. 26 and 27. He said the “overwhelming” support of parents and alumni helped ease the transition. “The school has been really great helping us get back on our feet,” Mollicone added. “I don’t think we’re going to miss a beat.”

Plans to host the Women’s Brad Dellenbaugh Trophy in April remain unaffected even though the physical trophy melted in the fire.

“We will make accommodations as best as we can,” Toland said. “We really like having Brown (at Edgewood). They are real good, good kids.”

The team has sailed out of Edgewood since 1974. “It was basically our home,” Smith said. The clubhouse was added to the National Historic Register in 1989 and was the oldest yacht clubhouse in Rhode Island.

“It was an icon for Brown sailing for a very long time,” Strammer said.

“It is devastating to see it go.”

Edgewood Yacht Club will work with the city of Cranston and the Coastal Resources Management Council to rebuild the boathouse.

Toland said the first step will be to clear the site and reconnect the catwalk to the docks. “The pilings are there, we just need to make good use of them,” she said. Their offices will relocate to a cottage the club owns on the same property.

“The building is gone, but the club is still here,” said Toland. “It’s the right group of people to steer that thing and get it done. It will take a lot of money and effort, but it will be totally worth it. We’re highly optimistic.”

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Campus News 3

Speaker addresses civil Q&A with Ronald Ferguson rights and ‘glass ceiling’ continued from page 1 ment gap.

During a question and answer session after the lecture, Ferguson addressed the issue of education perpetuating social hierarchy.

“People who already have privilege tend to award it,” he said, and the students whose parents are not as well-off most need to be advocated for.

Paul Tran ’14 asked Ferguson about the “glass ceilings” that students of color and first-generation college attendees must break through to succeed in college.

Ferguson, himself the son of a bus driver and stay-at-home mother from Cleveland, Ohio, encouraged Tran to “just keep pushing” and advocate for himself at Brown. Tran, who was raised by his mother, a Vietnamese refugee who came to the U.S. in 1989, told The Herald he is interested in the forces that prevent students of color and first-

generation students from even applying to college in the first place.

Ferguson also spoke about creating opportunities for students who do not pursue college education and instead study in vocational programs. Jonathon Acosta ’11 asked how schools could ensure that Latino and black students are not disproportionately encouraged to pursue vocational programs instead of attending college. “That’s the million dollar question,” Ferguson responded.

Ferguson advocated a social movement that creates a new national identity in the arena of education, which would entail a different lifestyle and renewed commitment to helping students realize their full potential.

One of the goals of this lecture was to initiate a dialogue in the Brown community on issues of race in education, Maria Pacheco, director of equity and diversity projects, told The Herald.

Employers favor topfour schools, study says continued from page 1 their entrepreneurial spirit, ability to work independently and think critically, their analytical skills and high level communication skills.”

There is no national survey comparing job prospects after graduation across top-tier schools, he added, “But in terms of employment, I think our school does very well because of the attributes that (Brown graduates) bring to the table.”

“Whether that has to do with the Brown degree or the attributes of Brown students — I don’t know,” he said.

Student successes

Carolyn Siegel ’11, who has received a job offer from an elite financial firm upon graduation, said she has found that a Brown degree does hold value. Siegel asked that The Herald not print the name of the firm because of a confidentiality clause in her contract.

“At some of my job interviews I apologized for my lack of financial training and they all said … that they were more interested in getting smart, motivated people,” she said. “That is what is recognized in a Brown degree — there is a reason that it’s so prestigious.”

She said she does not know whether it would have been harder or easier had she been applying from another Ivy League school.

“Coming from Brown positions you well in the job market and the world,” she said. “It signals you went to an Ivy League and have a certain level of open mindedness, creativity and overall intelligence that can’t be undervalued just because you might not have picked up practical skills in classes. With a liberal education, it won’t be long before you’re up to speed with everyone else.”

“Brown teaches you a lot of skills that a lot of schools don’t necessarily teach,” said Whitney Sparks ’11, a commerce, organizations and entrepreneurship concentrator. “Having a Brown degree makes you really unique, but some people don’t give Brown as much credit as other universities.” She also said that she found the Brown network “very positive and helpful.”

Roshni Assomull ’10.5, who will start working at Citibank in London this year, said studying in the U.S. after having lived in the U.K. was an advantage because Citibank looks to “hire a diverse range of people.”

“People abroad look at Brown favorably. They know it’s an Ivy League university,” she said. Assomull added she felt the Brown degree helped her get an internship with Citibank last summer, which then helped her secure a job with the bank this year.

Sparks did note that during her internship with Goldman Sachs, there were fewer students from Brown than from universities such as Harvard, Penn and Duke.

This may be due in part to receiving fewer applications. Bierly said Bain typically receives 300 applications from Brown compared to about 600 applications from Harvard.

Although Bain receives fewer applicants from Brown than from schools like Harvard, Penn and Stanford, Bierly said the quality of students who are interested is very high and the number of offers given to Brown students each year is “right up there with the top three schools in the Ivy League.”

“Brown is a really incredible place.

You learn to think in a certain way — approach things in more of an entrepreneurial, ambitious manner,” Sparks said. “I think anyone with a Brown degree has to take advantage of it.”

Renowned scholar Ronald Ferguson gave the 14th Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture Tuesday afternoon. Before the lecture, he sat down with The Herald to talk about a social movement for equity in education.

The Herald: How did you get interested in studying issues of racial inequality?

Ferguson: I have been interested in helping the folks in my neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio, since I was eight years old. I asked people, “What can I do to make things better?” The response was city planning, so I went into Cornell as an undergraduate, planning to study engineering.

I ended up studying economics, and later got my PhD in economics at (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). I then started teaching at the Kennedy School, working on the issue of innercity economic development. In the late ’80s, I worked on how differences in test scores predict differences in earnings, and the basic finding was that reading and writing skills are fundamental for employment. I then wrote two chapters for a book on the black-white achievement gap, and since the ’90s, I have been working with public schools on the issue of educational equity and the test-score gap. I am also the director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University and the founder of the Tripod Project for School Development.

How do you think test scores reflect the achievement gap?

The economy has changed and increased the value of basic skills in the workplace. International trade makes U.S. workers compete with workers around the world, and people have realized that they can’t achieve a middle-class lifestyle without basic reading and writing skills. Even though these gaps remain large, they aren’t set in stone — when I was in college, people attributed educational differences to biology. Now, people acknowledge that the evidence for biological difference is so varied that one must proceed under the assumption that there is no biological difference.

How do you think it would be possible to achieve greater equality in education?

We need to affect the lived experiences of children.

I have a four-box model for this. The first is schools, in which teacher participation is critical.

The second is peer dynamics and how children interact. The third is parenting and their home life. The fourth is the leadership that holds these together, aligns resources and determines what children achieve in these settings. What do students need to experience in order to be good learners? We need to work on adult learning.

The teacher needs to be educated on the level of instructional leadership. The mechanisms needed to reach parents must be respectful of their world vision.

We must reach parents through every institution on the topic of effective parenting, from the workplace, to places of recreation, to beauty salons and shops. We must saturate communities with images of effective parenting so that it becomes the norm. We need to organize things to engage parents. Lots of people are now working on this issue — many organizations are conveying this message. For example, people are now talking about the nature of the “bedtime conversation.” Parents should no longer just read to their three-year-old — they should talk about what they are reading and ask questions about the book. How much freedom a two-year-old has to crawl around the house alters his visual and learning skills. With older children, studies have shown the importance of warmth and responsiveness on one hand, and structure and demandingness on the other. Not letting a kid talk back to you can be a problem — this prepares them to be subservient, while the opposite teaches kids to be entitled.

Each person must be situated in a specific position in the system. The role of the teacher is to be aware that kids come in from different backgrounds. The teacher can’t fix the parents but can do a lot for the students.

How effective do you think programs such as Teach for America are in addressing the issue of equality in education?

Teach for America has attracted an army of people to care about public schools. They may or may not be more effective than other teachers, but the program is taking people out of elite universities and making them aware of the

sense of injustice in our education system. They do not accept the conditions of public, innercity education anymore. When I read admissions essays for the Graduate School of Education at Harvard, the stories that TFA graduates tell are very emotional.

They describe the sense of injustice they felt. I understand the criticism of the program, that it takes a longer time for people to learn how to be teachers, but the schools they are going to need help. And TFA is certainly not doing any harm.

Can you talk about the thesis of your book, “Toward Excellence with Equity: An emerging vision for closing the achievement gap”?

The thesis of my book is that we need a 21st Century movement built around helping students from all different backgrounds to realize their full potential. Communities that in the past were discriminated against because of white supremacy now have new opportunities. The legal changes that the civil rights movement brought are not enough. People resist the word “culture,” but a change in lifestyle is necessary.

We need to rethink what it means to be one of the most preeminent nations in the field of education and the role of the arts in our education today. The employment rate for young people between the ages of 18 to 25 is dismally low.

What are young people supposed to do when there isn’t much demand for their services? There is a need for community-level opportunities to provide service and give meaning to their lives outside the workplace. I don’t know exactly how to make that happen, but it is time for a widespread social movement. Every day, I get two to three calls from people trying to organize around the issue of equality in education.

There is a sense that the current configuration is not just.

We need to find a way to mobilize high school students and encourage them to participate.

Students from low-income Latino families tend to accept their position in the social order and don’t push back. They need to feel a sense of entitlement to upward mobility. The term I use is “the conspiracy to succeed.” We need to mobilize students to undermine issues of their own peer culture, like the pressure not to succeed.

4 Campus News

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, February 9, 2011

United World College students bring diversity continued from page 8 need-based financial aid for UWC students who qualify.

The University then awards additional aid to Davis scholars in need, Ott said. Applications from the UWC have increased in the years since the Davis program began, she said. In 2008, Brown won the Davis Cup, which is awarded to the American university with the highest number of UWC alums matriculating that year. Thirty-six UWC alums matriculated, according to Ott. Ott said she believes the UWC schools and Brown share a similar

educational philosophy.

“They have been taught to think globally, and they represent several different nationalities, some we don’t always see,” she said. “Particularly after President Simmons’ mission to diversify the school, we have looked at globalizing our student body. The UWC is not the only way, but it is one way.”

While a UWC education offers students an enriched education, it can also just be a normal high school experience. “You go expecting it to be life-changing every day,” Dette said. “Some days I wanted to live more, but you have to do your homework sometimes.”

Courtesy of Anna Litman

The Pyongyang Project, founded by two alums, has led groups of students through North Korea the past two summers.

N. Korean program enters third year continued from page 1 proved by April. The first trip took place that August.

“It’s always difficult negotiating with North Korea,” Reichel said.

“The systems are completely different.”

“In the beginning it was easy, because what we were doing was very watered-down. (The North Korean government) knew these kinds of trips, there was a precedent and they knew how to handle it,” Reichel said. “What we’re doing now is surpassing that.”

Jim McClain, professor of history and East Asian studies, helped Reichel with his senior project and also traveled with the group in 2010.

The North Korean government has given Pyongyang Project groups more freedom each year, McClain wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. In one city, program participants were give open access to a public beach, McClain wrote. “In essence, (we) were told to go and talk to whomever we wanted to. It is almost unheard of for Western visitors to be granted such an open opportunity to speak with ordinary people.”

Getting American students

into North Korea was the “biggest hurdle,” Reichel said. Previously, Americans could only enter the country during major festivals, and even then only as tourists, Reichel wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.

“I didn’t think I could go to North Korea. The opportunity opened up, so I took it,” said Anna Litman, a sophomore at Yale University who traveled with the Pyongyang Project in August 2010.

“I was in Asia at the time and it sounded cool.”

As Litman grappled for the words to describe her subsequent experience, one came up frequently — “incredible.”

“The program gave us insight into a country so fundamentally different from anywhere in the world and gave students a chance to see North Korea for themselves,” Litman said.

“We don’t push an agenda,” Reichel said. “Students can make up their own minds.”

Max McFadden ’11, who traveled with the Pyongyang Project in August 2010 after reading about it in Brown Morning Mail, did just that.

“The cult of personality of Kim Il Sung permeates everything,” he

Janus Fellows Conversation with Professor Wendy Schiller: Partisanship and Congress Wednesday, February 9th at 7:00 PM 8:00 PM in Barus and Holley 168 Come join the Janus Fellows for a conversation with Professor Wendy Schiller on partisanship in light of the new Congress. Should President Obama and the Congressional Republicans use partisanship as a strategy? What can history tell us about the next two years of divided government? Is partisanship a healthy part of our system or should we work to avoid it?

Professor Schiller will answer these questions and more in a short lecture follow by a Q & A. The conversation will be on Wednesday, February 9th at 7:00 PM in Barus and Holley 168 and as always, Nice Slice will be provided!

said, describing how heavily the country depends on an image “spoon-fed and dictated by the government.”

“You go there and surrender all electronics — no cell phones, no laptops — and they take away books or magazines that have anything to do with politics,” McFadden said.

“Just the act of going cuts you off from the real world in every single way. It’s a little unnerving.”

“Even in Pyongyang, the capital city, there are no cars on the road,” McFadden said, adding that the few cars he saw appeared to be from the 1960s.

Luckily, McFadden discovered other things were not quite so foreign.

“Meeting people was not as surprising as I thought it would be,” he said. “Hearing about their dating life, what they do for fun, was pretty similar to what I do, and other people my age.”

There are different options for students wishing to travel with the project. One is a cultural and academic exchange, including discussions and site visits to companies, factories, farms and the beach. Another focuses on conflict resolution.

Participants spend a week each in North and South Korea and put together a “consensus document” at the end of the program, according to Reichel. A third option will include an intensive two-month Korean language program, conducted completely in Pyongyang with weekend opportunities to visit other places in North Korea.

This year, Reichel and Young are starting a new tuition scheme, called Scholarship for Scholarship, that would use part of participants’ tuition to create a scholarship fund for North Koreans studying abroad, Reichel said.

“I came away from the experience with renewed hope for the future. It is difficult to imagine a peaceful world without there being a stable, peaceful East Asia,” McClain wrote. “Right now, there is an awful lot of misunderstanding — on all sides.”

“When people think of North Korea, they have images of missiles and tanks and things like that,” Litman said. “Before the program, it was the same for me too. Now I think of real people, with real faces and names.”

Letters 5

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Alum questions ROTC’s academic fitness To the Editor: I have been closely reading about the Reserved Officers’ Training Corps possible return to Brown’s campus over the last couple of weeks in The Herald.

As a former member of the College Curriculum Council and Task Force on Undergraduate Education, I have seen little attention devoted to a major concern I have about ROTC — allowing an outside entity with little oversight by the college to offer courses for credit toward Brown graduation.

On the CCC, we worked to maintain the integrity of the

Brown curriculum examining its quality by course, concentration and graduation requirements. As the newly formed committee reexamines Brown’s policy toward ROTC, I hope they will decide that Brown will continue to monitor all credit-bearing courses through the same rigorous process the CCC uses. It is in our best interests to ensure that the ROTC policy which requires their courses bear credit does not cause an erosion of the quality of education at Brown and the meaning of a Brown degree.

In his opinion article (“Just say ‘no’ (to the nanny state),” Feb. 4), Hunter Fast ’12 states that the justification for sin taxes rests “on the erroneous belief that one person’s health is the concern of the whole of society.” This is wildly absurd.

One need only imagine a similar statement concerning the American judicial system, that it rests “on the erroneous beliefs that one person’s injustice is the concern of the whole society,” to see the vast faults in such logic.

Dot Comic | Eshan Mitra and Brendan Hainline

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

Jason Becker ’09 MA’10

Individuals’ health should concern society To the Editor:

comics

Indeed, the very opposite of what Fast writes is true. There is no more basic argument for the existence of the state than that it advances the welfare of its constituents — and what is welfare but health? Whether or not sin taxes are useful in this regard is a debate unto itself that I do not have space to address here. However, as anyone familiar with the basic rules of logic knows, an argument based on a flawed premise can only be flawed itself.

Kerem Trolander ’14

See INFO SESSIONS, page 6!

Cabernet Voltaire | Abe Pressman

6 Editorial & Letter Editorial

Editorial comic

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, February 9, 2011

by sam rosenfeld

Step up for equality Since its founding nearly 250 years ago, Brown has had a close relationship with Rhode Island, a unique affinity that transcends the happenstance of geography. Together, the University and the state have led the fight together for principles of universal rights and justice, often long before others caught on.

For example, Rhode Island was the first state founded on the thenrevolutionary idea of universal freedom of religion. It was one of the first to declare independence from Great Britain, one of the first to abolish slavery and one of only two states to reject Prohibition. In a similar vein, Brown was the first university in America to admit students of any religion and has led in many other areas.

Over the last several years, a new front has opened in the perennial battle to perfect our union. More and more people have come to recognize that discrimination against gays and lesbians — long accepted as a given — is unfair. Once again, Rhode Island was in the vanguard on this issue, as it was in the first wave of states to prohibit such discrimination. When Rep. David Cicilline ’83, D-R.I., was elected mayor of Providence in 2002, he was the first openly gay mayor of an American capital city.

But like many states, Rhode Island has been slow to follow through on this principle and continues to deny gays and lesbians the fundamental right to marry. Stymied for years by former governor Donald Carcieri ’65, who vehemently opposed same-sex marriage, our state has fallen far behind its New England neighbors — all of which except Maine allow the practice — despite polls indicating that Rhode Islanders are more supportive of equality than any voters outside Massachusetts.

Luckily, this year appears ripe for a breakthrough. The biggest obstacle to equalizing marriage laws in Rhode Island disappeared when Governor Lincoln Chafee ’75 P’14, who called on the legislature to enact a same-sex marriage bill in his inaugural address, replaced Carcieri. It also helps that openly gay Speaker Gordon Fox now leads the state House of Representatives.

Nevertheless, despite the unprecedented public, legislative and gubernatorial support for marriage equality, it will not be a slam dunk.

Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed opposes same-sex marriage, as does Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin, who has been vocally fighting to prevent its enactment.

Other opponents, who likely suspect that they lack the votes to stop gay marriage in the General Assembly, have begun to coalesce around the unprecedented idea of putting the issue on next year’s ballot, despite the fact that Rhode Island does not hold referenda on laws like California does. Not only is this a waste of time — a recent poll showed Rhode Islanders favoring marriage equality by a margin of 60-31 percent — but it would create the bad precedent of putting rights to a vote.

This is where Brown comes in. We are all residents of this state. We should ensure that our voices and those of our likeminded neighbors are heard throughout the legislative process. That process begins this evening, when the House Judiciary Committee considers the marriage bill and the referendum bill. The hearing will begin shortly after the House, which convenes at 4 p.m., finishes its business for the day. Brown students have a long history of involvement in their community. We hope that commitment continues with this important issue.

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

t h e b r ow n da i ly h e r a l d Editors-in-Chief

Deputy Managing Editors

Senior Editors

Sydney Ember Ben Schreckinger

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quote of the day

“It was like a commune.”

— Sarah Yu ’11, on United World College

Correction An article in Monday’s Herald (“U. Set to pull free Adobe programs offerings for students,” Feb. 4) incorrectly stated that starting April 30, students will no longer have the ability to download Abobe programs onto personal computers. In fact, on that date the University’s contract with Adobe will expire. Beginning Feb. 25, Computing and Information Services will stop providing downloads of Adobe programs onto personal computers. The Herald regrets the error.

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Opinions 7

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Walk a mile in my waterproof boots

BY MIKE JOHNSON Opinions Columnist It starts with a sinking feeling in your chest that moves all the way up to your throat.

You’re not sure whether to cry out in despair or to stoically weather the embarrassment. After a few seconds, a chilling throb of pain seizes your foot, making it seem to weigh six tons. What is drowned beneath the inevitable string of unspeakable words that flow from your pursed lips and clenched teeth is the stunning reality that you have just stepped in the deepest sidewalk puddle imaginable.

It’s winter in Providence, which brings with it the entire gamut of precipitation from snow to pouring rain. The temperature hovers just over freezing, ensuring a mysterious wintry mix blankets our fair city in inches of sloppy goo. And despite the weather patterns being fairly fixed since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago, Brown and the City of Providence seem powerless to prevent pedestrian puddle production.

Granted, Brown hasn’t been around since the last ice age. The University only has had about 240 years of evidence that proximity to the ocean leads to as much sleet or rain as it does snow. It is understandable, then, that the sidewalks around campus are continually covered in slush that at night re-freezes into that slippery

substance we call ice. Perhaps it is not until a hapless student slips on the ice and breaks an arm or leg that an adequate snow-removal policy will be enacted.

Still worse, students attempting to avoid the inconvenience of soggy shoes and frozen metatarsals take to walking directly down the street, because that is where one can actually see the asphalt rather than the translucent culprit of the concrete. Drivers that are already upset by the snownarrowed streets must now slalom their way around bustling students, all the while watching for black ice.

wandering piece of equipment, we should buy one. Should storm drains be cleared and sidewalks plowed of any residual slush, the sidewalks would be dry, safe and filled with happy pedestrians. Traffic would flow smoothly, unburdened by the stressful and hazardous crossings near the J. Walter Wilson and Barus and Holley buildings.

As I prepared for the storm that crushed the Midwest Feb. 1 and made its way toward Providence, I noticed that the temperatures would be above freezing. As such, I unpacked my umbrella and prepared for the coming rain. But it seems that such log-

Perhaps it is not until a hapless student slips on the ice and breaks an arm or leg that adequate snow removal policy can be enacted.

At the risk of sounding patronizing, the solution to all these winter woes is simple.

The storm drains are clogged with snow.

Rather than funnel the snowmelt and rainwater down the gutters of the streets to the bay to our south, they are rendered powerless by hastily plowed snow. The prowling backhoe that I have seen around campus would perform marvelously in this task, lifting snow off the storm drain and piling it onto the snow bank. If we do not own that

ic was lost on the University, as the sidewalks remained slushy as Tuesday turned into Wednesday. The lower layers froze, the upper layers melted, and as the rain continued to pour down on our hapless heads, students skidded and sloshed their way to class, lucky to have all their bones in proper order.

It is true that the rain portion of the storm did not receive as much air time in the press as the blizzard conditions that

marched from Kansas to Michigan and up into northern New England. It makes sense: “Big Rainstorm Hits Providence — Again” is not as flashy as “Blizzard Strikes Snow-Weary Northeast.” But this is no excuse for ignoring the thermodynamics of water and the physics of spatial relation. Instead, the University cursorily plowed and dumped piles of sand everywhere. If there is anything worse than slush, it is mud.

Frigid water is just as good as snow at causing frostbite. Steps can become slick inside of buildings as well as outside when students must wade through two inches of standing water to cross the street. While I count the University fortunate that a leaky roof in the Ratty was the only indication of an ice storm that knocked out power to thousands, the University should count itself fortunate that no one was seriously hurt.

Every student pays exorbitant tuition to come to this school. We do so in the understanding that we will be protected while in attendance. The shoddy display of road and sidewalk clearance Feb. 1 and 2 makes me wonder where the money is going at a college in a historically snowy environment.

The weather is nothing new, and sadly, the University’s inability to cope with it is just as old. I just hope that it does not take a lawsuit or potentially grievous injury in order to see tangible change.

Mike Johnson ’11 is sick of stepping in cold puddles.

No discipline of the body: OMAC schedule fails recreational users

BY CELSO VILLEGAS Guest Columnist I would like to express my displeasure towards how the Olney-Margolies Athletic Center’s schedule is relayed to recreational users. The OMAC administration must make a publicly accessible and regularly updated schedule for the Brown community at large.

Last week, I read over the only document listing the reserved times for the month of February at the OMAC front desk. This document is not posted in public view and is marked “Do Not Remove.”

With spring sports starting up, it is no surprise that the document shows the athletic center to be very busy. But reservations are listed in the schedule in a exceedingly confusing manner. For example, there are different entries for “Varsity Track” and “Track practice,” which one might assume are the same thing. There is an ambiguous listing for “IM/Rec.” These and other inconsistencies make other reservation listings untrustworthy. For example, teams like softball and baseball reserve all four courts and the track on most days, then are not listed as reserving all facilities on others. Compare, for instance, baseball’s Feb. 16 and 21 reservations. These may be idiosyncrasies, but for a recreational user planning their visits ahead of time, reading the document is an exercise in interpreting the OMAC’s unique form of bureaucratic lan-

guage.

I spent nearly an hour writing down unreserved times, which I assume to be times when recreational users can use the track or the basketball courts. While some general patterns emerge — for example, the track and basketball courts are mostly free from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Monday through Thursday — it is clear that this schedule, the only “detailed” schedule available, is an internal document for OMAC staff to keep

been updated for at least two years, I feel the OMAC administration is doing a disservice to the community at large by not producing a comprehensible, publicly available and readily accessible schedule. It would be a great boon to the recreational community if the OMAC administration developed a schedule with recreational users in mind.

Such a schedule would have at least two characteristics. First, it would be updated

The OMAC administration is doing a disservice to the community at large by not producing a comprehensible, publicly available and readily accessible schedule.

track of team reservations, and probably only so that the teams themselves do not impinge on each other’s practice time. It makes me wonder if this is how the OMAC staff sees its job more generally.

This document fails as a recreational schedule because it only lists reserved times; it does not explicitly state when athletic center facilities are available for open use. An internal document like the one at the front desk may make sense to OMAC staff, but a casual gym-goer has to do some mental gymnastics if he or she wants to know when the track or courts are available. Compounded by the fact that the OMAC’s weekly web schedules have not

weekly and available on the web. The only available web schedule outlines reserved times, but in broad strokes. Three or four years ago, specific reservation schedules for the upcoming week were available in a downloadable format. There is enough variation in the month of February alone to warrant a different weekly schedule being posted online. While calling the front desk each time we wish to use the facilities is an option — albeit a procrustean option — it makes far more sense for recreational users who wish to plan their exercise schedules in advance to have a document readily accessible for this purpose.

Second, a recreational schedule would

explicitly state when facilities are “open.”

Only listing when the courts and track are reserved is not helpful. And it is irrelevant to a recreational user if lacrosse or softball has Court 2 reserved from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. I personally do not care if baseball or basketweaving is using the courts from 10 p.m. to 11:59 p.m. — I only want to know when I can use them. A good model is the University of Rhode Island’s weekly open recreation schedule. It clearly states when certain facilities are “open” and when they are “closed.” A similar schedule for the OMAC would be ideal.

This is not the first time students have called for athletic center schedule reforms.

Roughly one year ago, a friend of mine contacted Matthew Tsimikas, assistant athletic director of physical education, intramurals and club sports, with a similar complaint. Within a week, Tsimikas wrote back stating he agreed with my friend’s complaints about the OMAC schedule and would bring them up at the next staff meeting. Needless to say, no new schedule was developed.

In short, I ask the OMAC administration to develop a schedule oriented towards recreational users. And I ask all you other recreational users to inspect the front desk document for yourselves, ask for your own copy and continue to petition for a real schedule.

Celso Villegas is a graduate student in sociology. Please don’t ask him about his dissertation.

Daily Herald Campus News the Brown

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

From across the globe, 120 UWC alums unite

By Anne artley Staff Writer

Working on an emergency lifeboat crew is not a typical high school extracurricular activity. But Henry Peck ’11 did not attend a typical high school.

Peck is one of about 120 alums of the United World College who currently attend Brown. UWC is a group of 13 schools located on five continents. Most UWC schools

FEATURE offer two-year programs for high school juniors and seniors that offer the International Baccalaureate, a two-year pre-university diploma. Three of the schools also accept students at a younger age. High school sophomores are placed in one of three requested locations including New Mexico and Costa Rica.

Applicants are not required to speak English fluently even though 11 of the 13 schools use English as the language of instruction, according to the UWC website.

Non-native English speakers quickly improved their fluency just from spending time with other students, said Peck, who is from England and attended UWC Atlantic College in Wales. “In three months, they were as loud as the rest of us,” he said.

For Mike Ewart ’11, UWC of the Adriatic in Italy presented an opportunity to experience life outside the small Canadian town where he grew up. Students did not have a curfew and did some of their own cooking, he said, comparing it to university life.

Peck said the school gave him “a tremendous amount of responsibility.”

Students live on campus and are paired with students not from

their home country, said Rahel Dette ’13, who also attended the UWC Atlantic College. Community service and extracurricular activities are valued highly at the UWC schools, Dette said. Students are required to either develop a community service project in lieu of spring break or partake in a weekly service activity, she added.

The schools also emphasize a close-knit environment among their students. “It was like a commune,” said Sarah Yu ’11, who studied in Hong Kong. “We addressed our teachers by their first names. We were seen on an equal level as the faculty.”

The schools were founded during the Cold War to bring students together from across the globe, Peck said.

Peck trained for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution as his service commitment. He learned chart reading and navigation, and built training boats by hand. “You have to become incredibly close to the rest of the crew to communicate in that high-stress situation,” he said.

Peck and Ewart agreed that it was an easy transition from the UWC to Brown but noted that there is no campus group exclusively for UWC alums.

Such a group would be “against the UWC mission in a sense because it’s almost exclusive,” said Dette. “The point isn’t to re-create the UWC experience.”

All UWC schools are part of the Davis United World College Scholars Program, a scholarship foundation meant to help bring international students to American universities, said Panetha Ott, director of international relations. The program, founded in 2000, grants up to $20,000 in continued on page 4

Freddy Lu / Herald

The costs of snow cleanup have not exceeded Facilities Management’s budget despite high snowfall this winter.

Snow removal costs within budget By inni youh Contributing Writer

Since the start of the academic year, the Department of Facilities Management has spent $167,000 on snow removal. The department typically allocates $160,000 to $200,000 for snow cleanup within its $53 million annual budget that it receives to operate and maintain the entire campus.

Facilities Management spent $202,000 during the previous academic year, when 51 inches of snow fell in Providence. Stephen Maiorisi, vice president for Facilities Management, said he expects costs to fall in the same range this year, though 46 inches of snow have already fallen in Providence.

If more snow falls, the department will have less money to spend on spring maintenance costs. But snow removal costs are only a small percentage of the bud-

get. “If we were to go over by a few thousand dollars or even as much as $10,000 or $20,000, we would be able to absorb that in our overall budget of $53 million,” Maiorisi wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.

Facilities Management accomplishes snow removal through a collaborative effort between custodians and staff workers. When snow falls during regular operating hours, 139 custodians are charged with removing the snow from the stairs in front of buildings, Maiorisi said, adding that members of the grounds department clean the sidewalks and the parking lot. In the case of heavy snowfall over night, staff members are called in the early morning to clean up snow before classes start and are paid overtime.

Part of the snow removal services are also contracted out to private companies outside of the University, Maiorisi said. Once

a contract is set for a period of time, outside vendors come in every snowfall to clean up contracted areas regardless of the number of snowfalls, he added. “They are doing a lot more removal than they would normally do for the same cost,” he said.

Snow removal is difficult in areas that are not part of University property, Maiorisi said. Although Providence law requires owners to clean up sidewalks in front of their buildings, some sidewalks often frequented by students are not cleared promptly. Last weekend, as snow turned into ice, Maiorisi said Facilities Management began to clean the sidewalks in front of private properties near the University. Some other private or publicly owned areas are left untouched because the city has contracts with private companies, and the University is not allowed to take on city work.

Med school, URI to offer five-year medical physics degree

By Max Ernst Contributing Writer

Alpert Medical School professors working at Rhode Island Hospital will play a major role in the development of a new University of Rhode Island five-year degree program combining a bachelor’s in physics with a master’s in medical physics, the first of its kind in New England. The instructors will be teaching six courses for URI graduate students at the hospital when the program begins in September.

“We enjoy creating educational opportunities for students,” said Edward Sternick, professor and vice chair of radiation oncology at the Med School and Rhode Island Hospital. “The physics department (at URI) is outstanding in their foresightedness and this program will be excellent for the medical school and the hospital.”

The integrated degree program will begin with undergraduate physics courses taught at URI, while the more specialized courses for students in their fourth and fifth years of study will be taught

by Brown professors at Rhode Island Hospital, said Yana Reshetnyak, associate professor of physics at URI. Because the number of cancer patients requiring radiation treatment each year is increasing, the demand for expertise in medical physics will multiply in coming years, making the degree program an essential educational asset.

Sternick said this opportunity will create excellent job prospects for graduates of the medical physics degree program.

“This is a fresh and new direction for our department,” Reshetnyak said. “There is a deficit of people with master’s degrees in medical physics, so this program

could attract new students to our school.”

The idea for the medical physics program began nearly two years ago as the result of discussions between URI physics professors and Alpert Medical School professors about the future need for interdisciplinary graduate programs, according to Reshetnyak.

“When people from the hospital introduced medical physics to us, everyone in our department got very excited,” she said.

The medical physics program is just starting to advertise for its first class of students. Although the URI Department of Physics had expected to get approval from the Rhode Island Board of Governors for Higher Education in September or October, the medical physics program was only approved in December, according to Reshetnyak.

“We are a little behind schedule, but we expect to have a fall class in 2011. To have five or six students would be very good, but maybe we’ll start with three to five,” Reshetnyak said. “A few of our physics students may also switch to medical physics.”

This specialty program will be training students “to be good clinical physicists,” according to Sternick. Coursework will provide instruction in the planning and delivery of radiation to cancer patients, utilizing computer-based technology. Medical physics students will learn how to electronically program the precise treatment ordered by a doctor while avoiding harm to surrounding healthy tissue, he said.

“Medical physicists are responsible for the quality aspects of the delivery of radiation,” he added.

Although URI has decided to only offer a master’s degree in medical physics at this time, the long-term goal is to expand the program, Sternick said. Once interest in the specialty physics program is gauged, the possibility of offering doctoral studies may be explored.

“Right now, the reason we are not offering doctoral studies is related to the size of our department,” said Reshetnyak. “In order to teach that program, we would need to have more faculty and specialized courses.”

According to Sternick, the evolving degree program will be an integral part of the larger statewide effort to build the biomedical sector of the economy.

“By building up medical training, it will create job opportunities for residents and bring new money into the state to help the economy,” Sternick said.