Daily
Herald
the Brown
Friday, April 8, 2011
vol. cxlvi, no. 45
Since 1891
Candidates tout outreach at UCS, UFB debate By David CHuNG Senior Staff Writer
Candidates for Undergraduate Council of Students and Undergraduate Finance Board leadership positions echoed one another as they called for increased communication, pointed to their experience and accomplishments and answered questions from the crowd at a debate in a largely empty MacMillan 117 last night. Ben Farber ’12, UCS vice president and presidential candidate, underscored his accomplishments on “little things” during his three years on the council, including implementing continental breakfast at the Verney-Woolley Dining Hall and initiating extended weekend hours at the Gate, which are scheduled to go into effect tomorrow. If elected, he said he plans
to introduce a printing cluster to Pembroke campus and focus on career advising, the student group categorization process and intramural sports. He promised to continue increasing communication between the council and the community by increasing the frequency of office hours and potentially introducing Google Chat hours, a tool currently used by the Library and the Career Development Center to reach out to students. Farber said he has developed a “strong understanding of the infrastructure of Brown” and will use his relationships with various administrators to push his agenda forward. Foreseeing on-campus housing renovations and construction as major issues the University will face in the next three years, Farber said he plans to ensure “the
Obama curtails civil liberties, says rights lawyer By Nicole Grabel Contributing Writer
made, but “the play is deliberately impossible to keep up with,” he said. This does not exactly make “Talk” sound like an enjoyable experience, but embracing the bewilderment is part of its appeal. Miraculously, the cast takes a script that consists mostly of long soliloquies and obscure references and turns it into a lively, humorous debate. “It’s a monster for actors to take on,” Rux said, adding that he wrote it for another, very specific set of
Civil liberties are “nothing more than the list of things the government is not allowed to do,” said Glenn Greenwald, a former constitutional law and civil rights lawyer, in his lecture before a full Salomon 001 last night. The best-selling author discussed the characteristics of civil liberties and argued that President Barack Obama is failing to respect them. Greenwald laid out the four qualities that make civil liberties distinct from other aspects of the U.S. political system. First, each right is absolute — there is “no compromise permitted.” Next, he said civil liberties are “by design, anti-democratic,” because even if the majority wants to infringe upon a civil right, it cannot do so. Further, Greenwald said civil liberties do not change. He said people often cite war as an excuse for the violation of civil rights, but this argument has no basis in the Constitution. Finally, he said civil liberties are “not dependent on citizenship” — the Constitution grants these rights to everyone, and the Supreme Court has ruled the “distinction is non-existent” between citizens and noncitizens in regards to civil rights. All people should care about civil liberties, Greenwald said, even if they are not directly affected by the curtailment of a specific liberty — it is “inevitable” that the abrogation
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Todd Harris / Herald
Ben Farber ’12 (left) and Ralanda Nelson ’12 (center), candidates for UCS president, debated last night in MacMillan 117.
student voice is heard.” Ralanda Nelson ’12, UCS student activities chair, also assured students she would work to bring “tangible changes” to the Brown undergraduate experience if elected UCS president. She said she plans to make the student activities endowment the priority of her
presidency and work with President Ruth Simmons and alums to attract more donors to the fund. She said the council could use “student group capital a bit more efficiently” by inviting student groups to meetings with admincontinued on page 2
S&B’s ‘Talk’ speaks to the inner academic By Emma wohl Senior Staff Writer
“Talk,” Sock & Buskin’s final production of the 2010-2011 performance season, is, as director Erik Ehn described it, “somewhere be-
ARTS & CULTURE tween a thesis panel, a ghost story and a murder mystery.” The plot follows an academic panel discussion about the life and work of author Archer Ames — a fictional figure given an elaborate backstory by playwright Carl
Hancock Rux. Ames’ only work, a single novel adapted into a silent film in the 1950s or 1960s, may have been about African-American identity, multiculturalism or surrealism. Or maybe it was about none of these themes. Maybe Ames had no part in the film adaptation of his work. Maybe he never wrote the book attributed to him. By the show’s end, the audience is not even certain that Ames ever existed. Through three acts, a group of six academics, artists and philosophers discuss the implications of
Ames’ work in the most esoteric terms. They name-drop ancient Greek philosophers, surrealists and beat poets in an attempt to give the author’s life meaning, but as a result they only alienate the audience. The listener’s inability to follow what these speakers are saying is precisely the point. The show is about “how the best of our thinking can only get us so far in terms of artistic experience,” said Ehn, a professor of theater arts and performance studies. The audience should understand that there are allusions being
BUGS plays dumb with ‘Princess Ida’ Gilbert and Sullivan, the classic duo responsible for 14 zany Victorian operettas, were never big on “coherent plot,” said Hannah Jones ’14,
ARTS & CULTURE
Freddy Lu / Herald
inside
“Princess Ida” promises musical, cross-dressing entertainment.
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director of Brown University W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s latest production “Princess Ida.” Instead, the duo gave their audiences stirring music, satirical dialogue and a general good time. “Princess Ida” continues in this grand tradition, presenting a rollicking musical journey perfect for an evening free of thought before the finals crunch. The show never takes itself too seriously, a deliberate move by the
A Fine Line No Fear
Distinguishing between irony and real prejudice
arts, 4
Nuclear energy is safer than perceived opinions, 7
production team to combat some of the more sexist aspects of the production’s subject matter, Jones said. The story focuses on Prince Hilarion (Rob Volgman ’14), a young man determined to marry the princess selected for him in infancy despite her decision to open a women’s university and forgo all men. To this end, he and two friends disguise themselves as female students — a move leading to several comical, cross-dressing scenes in which the men’s skirts do not exactly match their deep voices. They are soon caught, inciting a literal war of the sexes. The original production sought to satirize women’s education, but this creative team had no intention of doing the same. “My entire goal was to make the show fun and
D&C Mark Schlissel gets a diamond — find out why. diamonds & coal, 6
weather
By gillian michaelson Contributing Writer
as un-sexist as humanly possible aside from actually changing the script,” Jones said. “We messed with the characters a little bit, especially Hilarion, because if he is more of a vapid idiot, the show becomes more about stupid people and less about sexism.” This is an appropriate fix for the kind of work in which even the characters refer to themselves as “lacking in intelligence.” Volgman successfully portrayed the bumbling prince through three acts with overconfidence and idiocy. “I have been doing character work by watching movies such as Anchorman and Zoolander,” he said. On a musical note, the production lived up to Gilbert and Sullivan’s original lofty example. Meghan continued on page 3
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