Daily
Herald
the Brown
vol. cxlvi, no. 44
Thursday, March 7, 2011
Since 1891
BCA ticket Structure complete, fitness center to open next March process hits snags again By Greg Jordan-Detamore Senior Staff Writer
By Emma Wohl Senior Staff Writer
Malicious outside software may have interfered with the Brown Concert Agency’s ticketing website Wednesday morning. BCA made Spring Weekend concert tickets available for sale at 8 a.m., but students were unable to access the website until 8:30 a.m. “As many are likely aware, the TouchNet server that handles our online ticket sales (had) some trouble this morning,” read a notice on BCA’s website posted Wednesday morning. “As of now, all we know is that there was (an) artificially high number of requests to the TouchNet server that are likely the result of malicious software, rather than any problems stemming from BCA, (Brown Student Agencies) or TouchNet itself,” read another notice posted later in the day. One thousand tickets for each day of the event went on sale at 8 a.m. on Brown Marketplace. BCA had worked with BSA — which manages the site where tickets were sold — and TouchNet, the company that manages the server, to ensure that high activity to the site would not cause the server continued on page 2
“Let’s lift the beam!” President Ruth Simmons urged a crowd of about 150 yesterday at a “topping off ” ceremony for the new fitness and aquatics center currently under construction. Moments later, the last piece of steel for the building’s structure fell into place. “No longer will our cardio equipment be in the hallway or in the corner of the gym,” Michael Goldberger, director of athletics, told the crowd. The new building will be “a tremendous benefit for the entire Brown community.” The $48.1 million project, which is entirely donor-funded, is slated to open next March, said Project Manager John Cooke. He said the building, which will
be next to the Olney-Margolies Athletic Center, will stand out as “a classic-style brick building.” It includes a fitness center, pool, varsity training center and green space for the athletic complex. The building will provide a new permanent pool to replace the temporary aquatics bubble, which was installed January 2008 after the old Smith Swim Center was closed due to major structural problems. “We made the best of what we had,” Sam Speroni ’11, a co-captain of the men’s swimming and diving team, told the crowd. Speroni said he is happy the new pool will open next year and added it will be “one of our finest recruiting assets.” “It’s nice that we’ll finally have a
Greg Jordan-Detamore / Herald
continued on page 8
A crowd looked on as the new fitness and aquatics center’s structure was completed at a ceremony yesterday.
Simmons to UCS: no more budget cuts Housing By David Chung Senior Staff Writer
The University does not intend to make any further budget cuts in response to the economic decline of 2008 and is moving forward with a number of initiatives including expansion of the School of Engineering and improvement of student residences, President Ruth Simmons told the Undergraduate Council of Students at its general body meeting last night. Simmons responded to student questions re-
garding the University’s agenda and projects. She did not comment on the recent curricular changes for concentrations controlled by the Watson Institute of International Studies but stressed that the institute’s research focus and identity are being reexamined. The University is “legally bound” to an agreement indicating the purpose of the institute that was reached by the Watson family and Brown when the institute was established. Some individuals have raised concerns
about the institute’s current focus, and its board is currently working with the University to determine what its “specific foci” should be. Simmons said she does not expect these efforts to affect students in the immediate future. The University also intends to make strides in student housing with renovations beginning this summer. Citing the complicated process of coordinating housing placements with construction and
Ronald Ehrenberg, professor of industrial labor relations and economics at Cornell, said the popularity of college presidents can fluctuate based on a multitude of factors. He said there was no single reason to expect a president’s approval rating to fall over time. The drop in approval, instead of reflecting opposition to Simmons’ specific actions, may instead be a result of a less informed student population. This semester 25.0 percent of students said they were not familiar enough to make a judgment about Simmons, up from 20.1 percent who responded “Don’t know / No answer” last semester. This semester 8 percent responded “No opinion.” Ben Winkler ’11.5 said his opinion of Simmons was “not really based in much real fact,” but was “mostly in line with the student population’s hype, the idolization of Simmons as an icon.” “I have no idea what she’s been continued on page 2
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news...................2-8 arts.......................9 editorial.............10 Opinions.............11 city & State........12
Movin’ on up
Alpert Med School jumps to 28th in national rankings
Campus News, 7
President Ruth Simmons’ approval rating fell to 62.5 percent this semester, down from 74 percent last semester, according to last month’s Herald poll. Less than half of students had an opinion of the Corporation’s job performance. Of the 62.5 percent students who approved of Simmons, 30.3 percent strongly approved and 32.2 somewhat approved. Last semester, 34.8 percent strongly approved of Simmons and 39.2 somewhat approved. This semester, the poll offered “Not familiar enough to answer” and “No opinion” as separate responses. Past polls offered a single response of “Don’t know / No answer.” Two students cited Simmons’ service on the board of the Goldman Sachs Group as a possible reason for the slip in her approval ratings. Simmons announced in February 2010 that she would not seek reelection to the investment bank’s board.
Post-
Gets sweet and salty, defends its reality Post-, inside
weather
inside
Gili Kliger / Herald
By Jamie Brew Contributing Writer
By Kyle McNamara Contributing Writer
The first 460 housing groups arrived yesterday in Sayles Hall to select their rooms for next year during the first night of this year’s housing lottery. The lottery began a few minutes after 6 p.m., kicking off a two-night event that promised to deliver tension, panic and elation. The selections began with Anne Oram ’12, a rising fifth-year senior, who chose a single in Slater Hall with the first pick in the lottery. Melanie Berger ’13 — the leader of the fourth group — along with another sophomore, is rooming with a rising fifth-year senior and, as a result, was elevated to a high pick for a sophomore. As the first triplet group of the night, Berger said she was sure that they would get their first-choice three-person suite on Vartan Gregorian Quad. “You can see the river from the lounge and two rooms,” Berger said, explaining the reason for their highrise choice. “We have big plans for the lounge,” Berger said. She said she received emails from concerned three-person groups wanting to know her group’s planned pick so they could strategize. Group six launched a slew of “no shows” that were met with rowdy applause. But as the “no shows” became more frequent, the crowd’s cheer grew quieter. “I can’t believe how many ‘no shows’ there were,”
Simmons’ approval rating down 12 percent Do you approve or disapprove of the way Ruth Simmons is handling her job as president of the University?
lottery sees tears, jeers
t o d ay
tomorrow
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56 / 37
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The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, March 7, 2011
Slow BCA ticket site frustrates buyers continued from page 1 to crash, said Abby Schreiber ’11, BCA’s booking chair. Students were frustrated by the website’s problems. “The website crashed three times in the process of putting (the tickets) in my cart,” said Ben Peipert ’13, adding that he was able to buy his tickets after 35 minutes of reloading the page. “I got on before eight and refreshed the page, but it wouldn’t load,” said Joshua Prenner ’14, who said he was unable to purchase tickets. Based on last year’s online ticket sales, students said they were not surprised by the website’s slow speed. Last year,“I waited up until 8:30
and didn’t get tickets,” Peipert said. “I kind of expected it,” Prenner added. “I heard the site crashes.” But he said he thought the sales might go smoother because tickets are being released over the span of three days. “After it happened last year, we were frustrated and upset, so we really sat down to strategize,” Schreiber said. Part of the strategy was stretching the process over three days and limiting ticket sales to one per student, she said. “Although the situation is still being fully diagnosed, it is my understanding that whatever slight delay there was today was not necessarily related to what happened last year, as extra precautions were made by Brown — BCA and BSA
— and TouchNet to address the issues from last year,” she wrote in an email to The Herald. “Anything that was in our control, we did,” Schreiber said, adding that the problems are not “an issue of human error on the part of BCA, BSA or even the company handling the sales.” BCA posted on its website this morning that the issues would be resolved for today’s and tomorrow’s sales, but an updated post later in the day did not mention how the problems would affect later sales. Schreiber said she is not worried, and students should not be either. “Take a deep breath — we have two more days of ticket sales,” she said.
Poll: students unfamiliar with Corp. continued from page 1 doing, but I’d trust her with my life,” he said. Students also tended to have fairly limited knowledge of the Corporation, the University’s highest gov-
erning body. The Corporation is responsible for choosing the president, approving the University budget and making high-level policy decisions. About 42.9 percent of student respondents this semester, including 55.9 percent of first-years, said they
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were not familiar enough with the Corporation to make a judgment. A further 15.9 percent responded that they had no opinion of the Corporation. Thirty percent of respondents approved and 11.1 percent disapproved. This represents a dramatic decline in student awareness of the body from the most recent previous poll on student approval of the Corporation, which was conducted in spring 2009 and showed only 37 percent responding “Don’t know / No answer.” Michael Becker ’13 said he strongly disapproves of many recent actions taken by the Corporation, which he said is operating with “a very strong profit motive.” Becker, who said he was attracted to Brown because of its active students and professors and Corporation members who seemed to be interested in social justice, cited the Corporation’s efforts to make tenure more selective and the administration’s handling of negotiations with Brown Dining Services workers as two reasons why he believes that appropriate concern for the employees and the community “has not been reflected in the policies of either Simmons or the Corporation.” “It’s a little unnerving — what is the Corporation?” asked Nam Pham ’13, adding that while he did not know much about its operations, he suspected that it “may not have Brown’s best interests in mind.” “I don’t really know what the Corporation does other than that they make decisions,” said Hana Ward ’11. “I don’t know who they are, if they are here on campus a lot or where they are. They’re pretty anonymous.”
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Campus News 3
The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, March 7, 2011
New methods shed light on brain science behind decisions U. child care By Sofia Castello Y Tickell Staff Writer
In a tiny beige room in Sidney Frank Hall, the doors to decisionmaking are being unlocked. Monitors hum and chairs swivel as the next study participant prepares to take her turn, leaving her backpack by the door and signing off on a consent form. A bucket of salty electrolyte solution sits on the table. What appears to be a complicated swimming cap made of white mesh and dotted with blue and red electrodes floats in the liquid. This apparatus measures neural activity for an EEG, or electroencephalogram, which enables researchers to monitor the brain’s activity during a task and record its levels in specific areas. Jim Cavanagh, a postdoctoral research assistant in the Laboratory of Neural Computation and Cognition, extracts the dripping apparatus and brings it over to rest on the participant’s head. This new kind of recorder no longer requires the use of messy conductive gel, he explains, as he massages the dots into the participant’s scalp. The device can gather readings using nothing but water, and it straps on easily, so the process of preparation is relatively short. “It takes a lot of processing to pull out exactly what we were doing, but until then, it just looks like this ocean of activity,” Cavanagh explains, pointing to a landscape of squiggly black lines etched across the screen of a large monitor.
These imaging methods, along with behavioral analysis, can validate researchers’ hypotheses about which regions of the brain are involved in cognitive processes, adds Anne Collins, the postdoc who developed the task, from her perch on a black chair. The researchers tap some secret commands onto a keyboard, and off the participant goes. She is presented with a series of simple exercises. Shapes and colors flash before her eyes, but as fingers try to move quickly, her eyelids become heavy. Meanwhile, the cap on her head takes careful measurements of her neural activity, tracking valuable data that will help to untangle the complicated processes behind decision-making. It is so accurate that it is possible to discern the blink of an eye in the resulting graph. In this experiment, the cap specifically measures interactions between the prefrontal cortex and the basal ganglia, two sections of the brain involved in decisionmaking. “It’s like a game of telephone,” explains Christina Figueroa, a lab manager. “While your prefrontal cortex is telling a different part of your brain to do something or perform a certain action, that other area will loop back around and tell the prefrontal cortex to do something or not do something.” Figueroa goes on to describe the basal ganglia as a “dam,” with lots of different paths and options coming in from other parts of the brain. She says it acts as a
“gatekeeper,” driven by certain neurotransmitters to select what behaviors are ultimately executed. Figueroa’s research team looks to combine the two aspects of cognition that tend to be studied separately — the learning and the structural — in order to gain a fuller picture of the system. Much of the lab’s work centers on using computational models to predict human behavior. “A Parkinson’s patient versus a healthy senior can perform differently on a task, and that can tell us something about how the brain works and build a computational model to perform the same way,” Collins says. The lab can have 10 to 12 projects running at once, all of which investigate the learning and decision-making process. “When you actually break it down to your daily activities, you make decisions every moment of every day, whether it’s to get up in the morning, where you’re going to go,” Figueroa says. “You can see how vital that process is to understanding ourselves.” The decision-making process can be influenced by everything from environment to genetics, and experiments require careful tinkering to tease apart the influence of different factors and hone in on fundamental processes. “In order to tap into those, we need to create tasks simple enough to be able to pinpoint certain functions,” Figueroa says. “It can’t be a videogame.” Figueroa admits that psychological testing is “somewhat
notorious” for its uneventful experiments — the research team has had participants fall asleep at the monitor, or click the same button disinterestedly throughout the session. “We can’t use that data, because it’s not measuring the learning and decision making process,” Figueroa says. “It’s not giving us a good baseline or a good understanding. … It’s not comparable to any other participants.” It can be difficult to understand the significance of an experiment as a participant. Access to information on a study is limited prior to the experiment because this knowledge can affect the way participants perform on a task. “Only afterwards can you find out how cool our research really is,” Figueroa says, adding that she enjoys the debriefing process because it gives subjects an idea of the importance of what they are doing beyond the compensation they receive. “Imagine if you were really, really curious about evolution and you had no Darwin and you had no book,” Figueroa says. “Without participants, it’s like having no books in the library, nowhere to go to get that information.”
service gains popularity By Sarah Mancone Staff Writer
Now in its second year, the University’s subsidized care program for family of faculty and staff members has received overwhelmingly positive feedback, according to Drew Murphy, director of benefits for human resources. About 340 — or 7.5 percent — of employees are registered for the program. Between 18 and 20 employees used subsidized care each month in 2010, purchasing 4,850 total hours of care, including 400 elder care hours, Murphy said. The program is advertised as backup care, to be used in emergencies or while employees are traveling. The co-pay for backup care is $2 per hour for in-center care and $4 per hour for home care for up to three children, Murphy said. Work Options Group provided child care when the program began September 2008, but the company continued on page 4
4 Campus News
The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, March 7, 2011
Employee participation in backup child care program increases continued from page 3 was taken over by Bright Horizons Family Solutions January 2009,
Murphy said. The number of faculty and staff members using the program has continued to grow. “I think more
and more as the program is used and people hear from their colleagues that it has worked out well, the utilization is growing,” Murphy said. Faculty and staff used backup care during the winter to deal with snow and school cancellations, and usage was “almost 30 percent up in December,” he said. The number of backup-care hours used in December increased from 364 hours in 2008 to 473 this year. Parents are always reluctant to let a stranger care for their children. But, Murphy said,“Bright Horizons has a pretty rigorous screening process.” Erika Edwards, assistant professor of biology, who has used the program multiple times, said many of the providers are registered nurses. “Bright Horizons is basically vouching the caregivers for me,” she said. “You’re getting a professional. You’re not just getting a babysitter — these are backup care providers,” Murphy said. “I guess I look at it as somebody comes up to your house and watches your children for $4 an hour. That’s a good deal.” The program saves Edwards “a lot of money,” she said. The program also allows faculty and staff members to come to work when they may not have previously been able to do so, Murphy said. It can be used anywhere in the country.
While traveling, Edwards was able to work in one room and have her son in the next room with a caregiver. She could go back and forth between the rooms to nurse. “That is the ultimate in accommodating a mother’s needs,” she added. But “Brown could benefit from a more centralized and heavily subsidized daycare for infants,” Edwards said. The Brown/Fox Point Early Childhood Education Center reserves over half of its spots for children of faculty, staff and students, while infants are cared for at the
Taft Avenue Daycare Center. “Taft Avenue is not really up to par, and it’s not really convenient,” Edwards said. “It’s very, very small, so it certainly can’t accommodate the needs of the entire university and young kids,” said Vazira Zamindar, associate professor of history. “More child care and affordable child care would be a really good development for Brown,” Zamindar said. — With additional reporting by Shefali Luthra
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6 Campus News
The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, March 7, 2011
Cries of chagrin shake housing lottery Simmons addresses ROTC, continued from page 1 said Eric Stix ’12. “It’s ridiculous.” The cheers were quickly counteracted by boos prior to group 30 as more rooms in New Dorm were selected. As the night progressed, cheers and jeers gained new life and the audience returned to its familiar energetic roars. Technical difficulties during the lottery — including brief “site error” screens — did not appear to affect people’s ability to select rooms. While early groups were more likely to receive their first picks, groups at the end of the double digits knew they needed to strategize. “We would prefer two suites on the same floor in (Young Orchard Apartments),” Stix said. The remaining three members in Stix’s
group of 12 said they were trying to get a triple or three singles in the dorm. By the time the group was called, all Young Orchard singles and triples were taken, so the group opted to take the two suites on the fourth floor as planned, and put the group of three in a suite on the third floor. “It worked out really nice,” Stix said. “We have a notecard of rooms in Young O,” said Andrew Leber ’12, one of the seven members of group 104. He said his group was looking for apartment style dorms to house a group of three and a group of four. “We want a kitchen, singles and a bathroom in each,” Leber said about their ideal apartments. A little while later, Leber sealed his group’s fate. “We got both first
picks,” Leber said. “We looked at rooms in the past, and it looked like we were going to get both of these,” he added. Group 118 was a little less sure they would get their first picks. The group of seven was looking for singles, with six hoping to be on one floor in Andrews Hall. As rooms in Andrews were claimed, the group grew worried. “I refuse to do physical exercise. So if I’m all the way in Pembroke, I better have a nice room,” said group member Christen Dillard ’12. The group was able to get six singles in East Andrews on two consecutive floors. “I’m happy,” Dillard said. “I have an okay room, so I’m okay with walking. The sinks make up for the distance, and I’m with my friends.” Cries emerged as the last singles in New Dorm were taken by group 123. There were similar reactions when group 162 took the last Andrews singles. The crowd booed in the early 300s as the last genderneutral triples in Pembroke were snatched. Group 326 wanted Hegeman, a prime choice for many rising juniors, “because of its prime locale and its classy fire escapes,” said group member Joanna Zhang ’13. The group got its dorm of choice. “We just made the cut. Bitches were sniping that shit up,” Zhang said. “We didn’t get the primest of the prime, but we are still living there.”
response to economic crisis continued from page 1 the impracticality of renovating an entire dorm at once, Simmons said the administration is working to gradually improve on-campus housing and hopes students will benefit from the changes within the next few years. The University is currently investigating the possibility of hiring an outside firm that could bring changes quickly and efficiently to campus, she said. In response to ongoing campus discussion about the possibility of bringing the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps back to Brown, Simmons said she is “not at all sure” what might happen. Because Brown is not a “follower,” she said she does not believe the decisions of other universities, including Harvard and Columbia, to lift their bans on the ROTC program will affect the University. “Brown always goes its own way,” but the community should consider the idea, debate and ask questions, she said. Simmons also reviewed the University’s response to the economic downturn. At the onset of the crisis, the University faced pressure to immediately cut up to $100 million from its budget, Simmons said. She said she found the proposed cut “very unappealing” and recommended a three-step cut, spread
over a three-year period. She said she believed the University could make the necessary adjustments and recover from the crisis with time. Following $30 million cuts from the budgets in fiscal years 2010 and 2011, Simmons said she does not anticipate additional cuts. “Brown has been very lucky,” she added. The University modified projects that were in progress at the time of the economic crisis to reduce costs. Plans for a new building for the Alpert Medical School were suspended, and the University changed course to renovate the school’s existing building. The administration also decided to renovate the Metcalf Research Laboratory instead of constructing a building for the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences. The University consolidated administrative services but decided to “insulate certain segments of the campus,” Simmons said, including students and academic programs. At the meeting, Simmons also advised the council to focus on communication efforts to elicit donations to the student activities endowment. Stephen Robert ’62 P’91 promised a contribution of $1 million to the fund March 10. Simmons recommended UCS develop a marketing strategy to target and persuade potential donors.
Campus News 7
The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, March 7, 2011
Med School’s jumps in rankings By Jeffrey Handler Staff Writer
After an aberration last year, the Alpert Medical School jumped 21 spots to 28th in the U.S. News and World Report primary care rankings. Except for last year, when it ranked 49th, the Med School’s primary care ranking has hovered in the 20s for the past several years. It also jumped three spots in the research ranking this year, from 32nd to 29th. The research ranking depends in part on funding from the National Institutes of Health, said Edward Wing, dean of
medicine and biological sciences. The increase in the research ranking over recent years “represents what Brown has done, which is to improve its reputation steadily in research,” he said. The Med School ranks 28th in primary care, a category determined by academic reputation. Factors in the rankings include grade point average, MCAT scores, faculty-to-student ratio and percentage of graduating students entering careers in primary care. “Brown has always ranked very high in that,” Wing said. From 2007 to 2011, the Med
School ranked between 23rd and 29th in primary care every year except for 2010, when its ranking dropped to 49th. “The only thing we can think of is it must have been some mistake. It’s not consistent with the previous four or five years,” Wing said. “Nothing happened here in terms of something unusual in primary care.” In an email to The Herald, Robert Morse, director of data research for U.S. News and World Report attributed the dramatic swing in Alpert’s primary care rankings to a change in the way the Med School reports the percentage of students entering primary care residencies. Wing did not respond to a follow-up request for comment on Morse’s explanation. Wing is pleased with both of the Medical School’s rankings, he said. “In both of the categories we’re in the top quarter of medical schools in the country. … Our students are terrific, and we keep getting better each year.” “Unlike some other very established schools which don’t change very much, we’re a dynamic school, which is on the move,” he said.
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8 Campus News
The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, March 7, 2011
New athletic center to include varsity team space, ‘green’ features continued from page 1 home,” said Michael McVicker ’13, a member of the swimming team.
One building, three names
The new athletic building has three sections, each with its own name — the Nelson Fitness Cen-
ter, the Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatics Center and the David Zucconi ’55 Varsity Strength and Conditioning Center. The fitness center will include a roughly 10,000-square-foot workout space with large windows overlooking Hope Street and three dance studios, said Tom Bold, associate athletic director for facilities. The central section of the building is the aquatics center, which will feature a 56-meter pool with seating for spectators and will host the water polo and swimming and diving teams. The temporary aquatics bubble cannot be used for competition, so the teams currently have to travel elsewhere for meets. The varsity strength and conditioning center, which will be three times larger than the current space, will be on the rear end of the building facing the athletic fields, said Stephen Maiorisi, vice president for Facilities Management. But it will not have a public connection to the rest of the building, he said, because its users will be limited to varsity athletes. The top of the building will feature a clock tower with the original cupola from Marvel Gymnasium, which was demolished in summer 2002, according to a University statement. The new center will also include
environmentally friendly features, including solar panels — which will both supply electricity and provide hot water — and energyefficient lighting and insulation, Cooke said. The project is currently on schedule, and work on the building has been going well despite the tough winter, he said, adding that the first floor’s concrete slab has been poured, and the others will be soon, after which walls can be put up. The pool is almost fully excavated, and much of the plumbing and drainage is in place, he said. A ‘front yard’ for athletics
“We’ve been talking about the need for a fitness space for athletics since at least the late ’90s,” Bold said. The squeeze for athletic space was relieved partially by the creation of three satellite gyms. But those are only “Band-aids,” Bold said. There is still a shortage of athletic space, he said, citing how busy the OMAC is in the afternoons. The new athletic facility “certainly will address that need,” he said. Original visions of a new athletic center were larger, but they were not financially feasible, Bold said. Through the planning process, “we got to a point where the size could meet the budget.” The new facility will help ease
some of the burden on the OMAC, though the OMAC “will still be a busy place” because of the indoor track and basketball courts, Bold said. Some fitness equipment will stay in the OMAC, and the satellite gyms will remain open. The fourth part of the project is the Ittleson Quadrangle, a new green space outside the building on what is currently a parking lot, which will create a “front yard” for the athletic complex, Maiorisi said. It will be a location for students to meet, gather and hang out, he added. Construction on the football field-sized quad will begin soon and will likely be completed around October, before the building itself opens, Cooke said. “I think the campus can always use more green space,” Bold said, though he added that some people are worried about the loss of parking. There will still be a small parking area that will be used for handicapped parking for major events, and for drop-off and pick-up only, Maiorisi said. To compensate, the land currently home to the temporary aquatics bubble will be developed into a parking lot when the bubble comes down, he said. But “the bubble will not be taken down until we’re in the new facility,” Bold said. “That’s going to be a little bit of a squeeze for a while,” Cooke said.
Arts & Culture 9
The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, March 7, 2011
Noser commits murder in first-ever theatrical performance By kristina Fazzalaro Arts & Culture Editor
Every murder mystery has its key components — an eccentric detective generally prone to monologues, a suspicious butler, a weapon and a thunderclap or two. A barrel of laughs, though, might not make the shortlist for integral ingredients — unless the writers behind the whodunit are the Brown Noser’s dynamic writing duo Jamie Brew ’12 and Hallie Cantor ’11. “The Storm of Mystery” — the Noser’s first-ever theatrical performance, to be staged tonight in Andrews Dining Hall — promises audiences a plot full of twists and turns imbued with the clever comedy already appreciated by
the Noser’s readers. It combines sharp one-liners with deliciously entertaining back-and-forth commentary to provide something for everyone. The production opens at the country house of Samuel Marlowe (David Brescia-Weiller ’14). An aspiring detective novelist, Marlowe has decided to crack the psychology of the human heart by staging a murder at his house with the perfect cast of characters, including an eccentric older woman, a wealthy business man, two beautiful young women and a butler-in-chief. The butler, Horace (David Jacobs ’14), steps up to the plate to listen to Marlowe’s expository monologues as he delineates the plot of his novel. The interactions between all of the cast members
are well-done, but Brescia-Weiller and Jacobs are especially hilarious. They deliver their banter rapidly, keeping the audience on its toes throughout the night. Brew, a Herald contributing writer, said the idea to write a murder mystery first came to him and Cantor before winter break. They finished the script upon their arrival to campus in January, and from there, the production took off. Though written by editors of the Noser, casting was open to all students. The assembled cast knows how to deliver a laugh, jibing with the Noser’s characteristic facetious tone. Cast members simultaneously provide depth to their characters that could have easily been written off as rote
personalities from past murder mysteries. The key to the play’s success is due to both the work of the actors and the attention to detail the writers paid when creating their characters. Brew and Cantor have successfully breathed new life into an old genre, oftentimes by doing what they do best — making fun of it. For example, Brescia-Weiller’s detective is more a caricature of Poirot, Poe and Holmes all rolled into one super-eccentric sleuth. The setting of the production — Andrews Dining Hall — adds to the play’s overall ambiance. The carpeted floor and wall of windows successfully transport the audience to Marlowe’s country house. To play upon the production’s setting, generally associated with dining,
the Noser provides dinner for some members of the audience. Unfortunately, the 100 audience members who purchased additional tickets made available due to high demand, will go hungry tonight — they will just have to fill up on laughter. But they will certainly leave stuffed to the brim. The production is witty and chock-full of laughs while keeping the audience in suspense as scripted fantasy becomes real in Marlowe’s house.
A clever original script, not short on monologues, promises danger and laughter lurking behind every corner.
comics BB & Z | Cole Pruitt, Andrew Seiden, Valerie Hsiung and Dan Ricker
Cloud Buddies! | David Emanuel
Dot Comic | Eshan Mitra and Brendan Hainline
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10 Editorial Editorial
The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, March 7, 2011
Editorial comic b y e r i k s tay to n
Elephant in the room Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visited the University of New Hampshire Monday, the same day President Obama officially announced his campaign for re-election. But this visit was no campaign rally. Instead, Biden and Duncan kicked off an effort to remind public schools and colleges of their responsibility under federal law to deal with sexual violence. The U.S. Department of Education reports that “nearly 20 percent of college women will be victims of attempted or actual sexual assault, as will about 6 percent of undergraduate men.” Not here, we might respond, but as Duncan pointed out, “Every school would like to believe it is immune from sexual violence, but the facts suggest otherwise.” Indeed, Trish BakaitisGlover, sexual assault response and prevention program coordinator with Health Services, told The Herald last year that she has no reason to believe that the statistics would be different at Brown. Federal law mandates that colleges receiving federal money devise “comprehensive guidelines for filing complaints, helping victims, disciplining perpetrators and monitoring campus climates” in response to sexual violence. Brown administrators are surely well-intentioned, but regulatory pressure to improve the University’s response to sexual violence is welcome nonetheless. We hope the renewed emphasis on these regulations is lasting, not merely a temporary reminder. Because few things can damage a campus’s reputation like rape and sexual assault, administrators have strong incentives to keep the details of sexual violence as quiet as possible. Furthermore, it is all too easy to lose sight of a response plan’s importance until tragedy strikes. Events that took place last semester at University of Notre Dame underscore these points. Elizabeth Seeberg, a freshman at a nearby college, reported Sept. 1 that a Notre Dame football player sexually assaulted her the previous night. Campus police did not even interview the accused until 14 days after the report, and a few days after Seeberg committed suicide. While the accused continued to play in football games, the university did all it could to keep the story quiet. A few days after Seeberg’s report, another freshman told campus police she was sexually assaulted. Again, police did not interview the accused until 11 days later. Brown has its own history of questionable responses to sexual violence. In 1997, the University settled a suit brought by Adam Lack, who was suspended for sexual misconduct before later being exonerated, and the University is a defendant in an ongoing case brought by William McCormick, who was compelled to leave after being accused of rape. Both cases raise questions about due process afforded to students accused of sexual violence. And, following a 1996 University Disciplinary Committee decision not to hear a student’s sexual assault allegations, Brown was briefly investigated by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. While Brown maintains many laudable programs aimed at stemming sexual violence, these tribulations underscore the difficulty of handling accusations. We hope increased federal attention will ensure administrators stay focused on improving our policies, but students play perhaps an even greater role in combating sexual violence. Yale is currently under investigation by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights for failing to eliminate a “hostile sexual environment” after several high-profile incidents. Brown students have not made headlines in similar fashion, but we know such behavior occurs here. Even the most effective administrative response cannot change campus culture — only students can. We must strive to make Brown a place where sexual violence is completely unacceptable and where victims receive proper attention without stigma. Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.
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quote of the day
“Bitches were sniping that shit up.”
— Joanna Zhang ’13, on suites in Hegeman Hall See lottery on page 1.
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Opinions 11
The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, March 7, 2011
Compromising University values By Hector Najera Opinions Columnist Recently, the Graduate School published a new policy for sixth-year funding. In short, it asks graduate students to compete and be ranked against each other for a limited pool of money that would go toward their sixth year of doctoral study. Although it is characterized by the Grad School as increasing clarity and efficiency, it strikes me as antithetical to the University’s stated values. Marc Howard Ross, a professor of political science at Bryn Mawr College, defines policy as the distribution of tangible and symbolic benefits. In other words, all policies increase or decrease particular benefits or, more clearly, resources. What is more, policies reflect a community’s values. As Cris Shore and Susan Wright argue, policies are anthropological artifacts. Although these authors write about policies in terms of government, their insight can be extrapolated to policies at any level. In this way, we can think of the new policy for sixth-year funding both as distributing symbolic and tangible benefits as well as a statement on our values as a University. Here is a University statement that reflects on graduate students relating to
the Plan for Academic Enrichment: “Today’s graduate students take courses, create knowledge, support faculty research and contribute to the teaching and mentoring of our undergraduates. Directing PAE resources to support the Graduate School has yielded significant results, as evidenced by the record numbers of applicants, improved selectivity and our competitiveness with the very best of our peers.”
then, does it mean for this culture when doctoral students shift their energies toward being ranked at the top? Speaking in March, Peter Weber, dean of the Grad School, clarified that most students who request sixth-year funding are candidates in the social sciences and humanities — and that external funding for them is quite limited. It is simply the case that it usually takes around seven years for such candidates to complete
Yes, we should demand the very best from every single one of our graduate students — but as a University we should be ready to match that commitment. Let’s not be sidetracked by policies that compromise our investment and our values as a community of scholars. The statement recognizes the symbolic and tangible effects of quality graduate students — they play a central role not only in the production of knowledge in their own disciplines but also in guiding undergraduate students. In addition, the plan comments on a particular culture that is cultivated for undergraduate, graduate and medical students alike — independence, energy, maturity, responsibility and self-directedness. Inevitably, monetary commitments are made to ensure the very best graduate students are attracted and supported while at Brown. What,
their dissertation work. This group will therefore be disproportionately affected by the new policy. Also aggravating is the fact that the amount of money they need to compete for remains unclear, and the criteria by which they will be ranked remains similarly vague. As it stands, the statements and guidelines define five years as the standard — the time by which graduate students should be done with their dissertation work. Because five years is characterized as normal, failure to stick to this deadline calls for a loss of funding. But those who
know of the process say that five years is unrealistic — especially for students in the social sciences and humanities. As I think about this, I am not clear what problem this policy seeks to address. Are we simply out of money? Are new buildings needed? Are we trying to teach doctoral candidates to compete for funding so they are ready in the future? I am not sure. But this policy strikes me as having a negative effect on collegiality among the doctorate cohorts. Sure, competition can be healthy. In fact, all Brown students had to compete against peers to make it here. But how does one regulate such competition within a close community like ours? It seems unnecessary. The Grad School does much to support students. Their current support of graduate students should not be overlooked. But if we offer so many tangible and symbolic benefits to recruit the very best graduate students, we should also commit to their success while at Brown for as long as possible. Yes, we should demand the very best from every single one of our graduate students — but as a University, we should be ready to match that commitment. Let’s not be sidetracked by policies that compromise our investment and our values as a community of scholars.
Hector Najera is a graduate student focusing in education.
Another selfish war By Nida Abdulla Guest Columnist I understand that a massacre of people by the Libyan government would have been a tragedy — one that U.S. fighter planes helped to avert. But lives are lives, and I don’t believe Americans care as much as we say we do about the Libyan people. Is a good deed still good if the intentions aren’t right? Are lives lost on the opposing side any less precious? I don’t believe that Americans are innocent — maybe confused, but innocent, never. When the U.S. government wages selfish wars, the American people feign innocence. But all the while we know in our hearts that we have no reason — no earthly reason — to trust our government, or President Barack Obama for that matter. If our governing officials had the moral rectitude they claim to have — to which all the stupid adults who support this war also lay claim — then there wouldn’t be men and women eating out of trash cans. Can you imagine, in our own country, real human beings eating out of the trash? And the White House officials have the nerve to say that the United States of America is the keeper of moral uprightness in the world? Some say we are there because Qaddafi is killing his own civilians. If this is true, what about the genocide in Darfur — why didn’t the U.S. conduct air raids then? How about the repression that has been happening in Bahrain for the past year? What
hypocrisy! Morally speaking, they should have ousted a significant number of dictators long ago, such as Arab monarchs who don’t allow their people to criticize government policy or to protest, as we have seen. Even in the U.A.E., one of the countries in the Middle East most friendly to the West, there is no democratic outlet for the people. The attitude of the government is this: If you don’t like it, leave. The American
are concerned, the American government doesn’t give a damn. To it, my brothers and sisters are just casualties. To get sidetracked a bit, people talk — and talk and talk — about improving the relationship between the Muslim community and the wider American community. Well, here’s an a solution: Tell the U.S. government to stop killing my brothers and sisters, get out of their land and stop pretending to be
Perhaps this is irrelevant in this day and age, when governments act independently of their people’s will, but I don’t remember Obama or any of his officials ever asking if we, the American people, wanted to go to war in Libya.
government knows this, but I wonder, will they say anything? This hypocrisy is so clear, and yet CNN, MSNBC and all the other liberal news networks act like chickens without heads, leaping on the bandwagon with the wave of Obama’s hand. Why are the smartest talking heads in the American media suddenly silent? Why? Furthermore, America clearly does not respect Muslim lives in general. American Muslim lives perhaps, but as far as the rest of them — my brothers and sisters —
morally superior by ousting a dictator with whom it was friendly only a couple years ago —read: Qaddafi. Why do Americans have to pretend to be the heroes — the world has changed, and people no longer see America in that kind of light. We’ve shown our true colors more than once — Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam — all examples of Americans shamelessly killing other countries’ citizens. One need only listen to the way Obama talks about Libyans — as helpless people, so thankful to great, big, strong America for
coming in and saving them from the nasty villain. It’s a set up. Some are thankful, but others aren’t — are we going to hear their story? Or are we just going to get the standard, frustrating nonsense that America is once again standing up for the little guy — never mind that the little guy is standing on huge oil wells. Perhaps this is irrelevant in this day and age, when governments act independently of their people’s will, but I don’t remember Obama or any of his officials ever asking if we, the American people, wanted to go to war in Libya. I may have voted, but that doesn’t mean I authorize more wars. There are American fighter jets in Libya that indict me with every bomb they drop, and I wonder why I was not even asked whether I thought this was a good idea. One minute all the talking heads are babbling about the madman Qaddafi, and the next we are dropping bombs on his forces. Do they take me for a fool? Doesn’t this sound like a set up? If we had had some balanced reporting on Qaddafi, with some historical perspective on past relations between Libya and the U.S., then wouldn’t all the Obama administration’s grand visions of portraying themselves as the moral paragon for the world have been dashed by the people’s insistence that it fix the problems in this country? There President Obama stands, lying to the American public, just as President George W. Bush did. It’s Deja vu. Nida Abdulla ’11.5 is an English concentrator from New Jersey. She can be contacted at nida_abdulla@brown.edu.
Daily Herald City & State the Brown
Thursday, March 7, 2011
ProJo sees print circulation drop, considers online pay wall By Morgan Johnson Staff Writer
Facing declining advertising revenue and circulation, national newspapers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are erecting pay walls to stay afloat. The Providence Journal could be next. The ProJo, the state’s largest newspaper, first announced its intention to limit online content to paying subscribers and update its website in November 2009, though it has not yet told the public or its reporting staff when the pay wall will go into effect. Last month, the paper’s management promoted then-vice president of
business and interactive development Deborah Tomilson to oversee its online strategy. The paper has lost 10 percent of its print circulation in the last year — double the nationwide average decline. The number of visitors to the ProJo’s website fell last year from 1.26 to 1.19 million. The ProJo’s parent company, A. H. Belo, has also suffered significant revenue losses — $124.2 million last year — according to its latest financial filings. “The Journal’s had a lot of cutbacks in the last few years,” WRNI political analyst Scott MacKay told The Herald. Flagging advertising revenue is a big reason for the upcoming pay wall, MacKay said.
9 9 P u r p l e B a l lo o n s
Advertising revenue depended on companies in industries that fared poorly during the recent economic downturn, said Journal reporter John Hill. “Everyone in the business has been thinking about it,” he said of pay walls. “Regardless of whether it works or not, I think it’s important that they’re trying it.” The newspaper has outlined the planned format for its new website. It would feature short summaries of articles for free and limit access to full articles to subscribers, Hill said. Many newspapers across the country are turning to pay walls, but other methods have proven successful, MacKay said. Other publications have made their ar-
Lydia Yamaguchi / Herald
Mayor and city labor union strike pay deal By Kat Thornton Senior Staff Writer
Providence Mayor Angel Taveras signed an agreement Wednesday morning with the city’s largest labor union that will affect nearly 900 workers and save more than $26 million over the next four years. The city faces a $180 million two-year budget deficit. The deal, approved unanimously by members of Local 1033 of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, will affect city department workers — excluding police officers, firefighters, teachers and city management. The contract must also be approved by the Providence City Council. Local 1033 agreed to a 1 percent pay cut effective July 1, a raise in health care co-payments, a wage freeze until January 2012 and a 15 percent reduction in starting salaries for new employees. The union also gave up the 1 percent cost-of-living adjustment that workers received in their previ-
ous contract. In exchange, the city promised there would be no layoffs for union workers. “If we all join in sacrifice together, we will get our financial house in order,” Taveras said. Donald Iannazzi, business manager of the Local 1033, agreed that the city’s financial problems required concessions from the union. “We had a desire to cause our city to survive in the crazy fiscal turmoil we find ourselves in,” Iannazzi said. “It is certainly going to put a strain on our working families,” Iannazzi said, adding that the average union employee now earns $31,000 annually. But he said the alternative would be a “lose-lose situation” because it would hurt both the workers and the city in the long term. “We would rather all make concessions than have one member of our family unable to put food on their table,” he said.
will be critical to the pay wall’s success, since the current website is less user-friendly than those of other news organizations, MacKay said. “They should update their website if they’re going to charge money for it,” he said. The New York Times introduced its own pay wall March 28. Currently, Brown’s dining halls provide 170 copies of the Times and 120 copies of the ProJo on weekdays, according to Residential Dining Director Claire Sidla. Pay walls are a good idea, said Julia Dahlin ’12. “I think that free news is an unsustainable model that leads to really bad journalism,” she said. “We need to be paying for content.”
R.I. workers may face immigration checks By Claire Schlessinger Contributing Writer
Purple balloons adorned the Main Green yesterday to publicize Relay for Life.
ticles available on devices such as the iPad and Kindle. “I think some of the other papers are ahead of the ProJo in getting in that line,” MacKay said. Tomilson will also be tasked with boosting “the newspaper’s presence on emerging digital platforms and devices,” according to a March 20 ProJo article. A pay wall might prove more successful for the ProJo than for papers like A.H. Belo’s Dallas Morning News, which faces more regional competition. “The other guy might try to undercut you and go free,” Hill said. The ProJo’s dominance in Rhode Island allows more latitude for a paywall, he said. Improving the paper’s website
The Rhode Island Senate Judiciary Committee heard a bill March 22 that would require all non-governmental employers with more than three employees to check the immigration status of job applicants in E-Verify, a federal employment verification database. The committee recommended the bill be held for further study. But state Sen. Marc Cote, DWoonsocket and North Smithfield, who proposed the bill in February, said he is hopeful the bill — with 20 co-sponsors and several other senators supporting it — will pass. E-Verify is currently voluntary for employers in Rhode Island. About 2,800 employers in the state use E-Verify, according to Cote. Under the proposed bill, 18,000 companies would use it. Cote said over 95 percent of employers who currently use E-Verify are satisfied with the system because it is free, web-based and easy to use. The only current procedure for checking the legality of job applicants is the I-9, a federal job registration form filed with the Department of Labor, but there is no mechanism to verify if the information provided is true. Job applicants can participate in fraudulent document trafficking to acquire counterfeit forms of identification and work authorization documents, Cote said. Such an operation was discovered in Pawtucket in February, he added. There are an estimated 20,000 illegal immigrants in R.I., according to the Pew Hispanic Center, Cote said. In light of the state’s struggling economy and doubledigit unemployment rate, the bill is designed to take care of Rhode Islanders, Cote said. Colleen Conley, president and founder of the Rhode Island Tea Party, echoed this viewpoint. She said the Tea Party sees undocumented workers not as a social issue but as a fiscal one. The Tea
Party supports the bill because it sends the message that the state is serious about making sure citizens receive “whatever few jobs” are available, she said. The bill would show Rhode Island is not putting out a “welcome mat” for illegal immigrants thinking of coming to the state to look for a job, she said. She said that illegal immigration also puts a financial burden on taxpayers because they receive free healthcare, public education and English as a Second Language programs. But Juan Garcia, president of Immigrants in Action, said Rhode Island’s Hispanic community brings “more economic power to the state.” Rhode Island benefits on many levels if more people are working, regardless of their citizenship status, he said. Cindy Butler, legislative director for the Rhode Island State Council of the Society for Human Resource Management, wrote in her testimony to the Senate committee that although the council is “committed to hiring only workauthorized individuals,” E-Verify is the “wrong choice” for Rhode Island. She cited problems of “erroneous tentative non-confirmations,” a mistake that arises from the system failing to understand hyphenated, abbreviated or multiple surnames. These types of names, more common among employees of Hispanic and Arab descent, can lead to a disproportionate number of hiring denials among these ethnic groups and can be considered discrimination, she said. But Terry Gorman, executive director of Rhode Islanders for Immigration Law Enforcement, said E-Verify is 99.6 percent accurate. If an employer checks an applicant’s status in E-Verify and discovers a problem with immigration status, the applicant has eight days to contact the U.S. Social Security Administration to clear up the problem. This time frame can be extended if Social
Security officials believe there is potential for an administrative error, such as an overlooked name change. But Alexandra Filindra, a Brown postdoctoral research associate in public policy specializing in American immigrations, said the process to correct this is “complicated and onerous,” so immigrants could be penalized because of errors in the database. “E-Verify continues to remain vulnerable to identity theft,” Butler said, because “unauthorized workers (can) use stolen or borrowed Social Security numbers” and other fake identification. E-Verify only addresses a minor part of the complicated issue of immigration, Filindra said. For example, though it checks the status of employees, there is no mechanism to ensure that employers will not hire the illegal applicants anyway and “abuse undocumented labor,” she said. She added that the private labor market is where many abuses occur, and since many illegal immigrants are hired by families to be babysitters, house cleaners or landscapers — which “falls out of the scope of E-Verify” — the bill would do nothing to address the social costs or labor abuses associated with illegal immigration. The E-Verify bill is an “insufficient and erroneous way to go about solving the problem” of undocumented immigration, Filindra said. She said the bill would not deter illegal immigrants from coming to Rhode Island and would do nothing to address the “presence of 10 million undocumented people (in the United States) who are not likely to go away.” Under former governor Donald Carcieri ’65, the state used E-Verify to check the status of all state job applicants. Gov. Lincoln Chafee ’75 P’14 ended the practice when he took office in January. Mike Trainor, spokesman for Chafee, said the governor’s position remains unchanged and called E-Verify a “divisive tool.”
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