Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Daily

Herald

the Brown

vol. cxlvi, no. 48

Ne ws in brief Showers push Spring Weekend indoors Friday and Saturday’s Spring Weekend performances will be held in Meehan Auditorium due to forecasted rain, according to a message sent to students from the Brown Concert Agency Tuesday afternoon.

This marks the first time Spring Weekend will be held indoors since 2008, when M.I.A., Lupe Fiasco, Girl Talk, Vampire Weekend and other acts performed to a full house in Meehan.

The Roots performed Friday night in Meehan in 2007, but the Flaming Lips performed on the Main Green Saturday under a makeshift roof.

“Although Friday’s weather looks good, the forecasts unfortunately still show heavy rain, winds and cold temperatures on Saturday, particularly during the nighttime concerts,” the BCA wrote in its message.

Holding one of the concerts outdoors was “not feasible due to the money, time and manpower to take down everything and set it back up again or to build two stages simultaneously,” according to the message.

Tuesday’s announcement came a day after BCA announced on Twitter around 6 p.m. that the concerts would be indoors due to rain. The tweet was taken down shortly after it appeared and was only posted due to an “internal communication error,” said BCA Booking Chair Abby Schreiber ’11.

“We are confident in these artists. It’s going to be — rain or shine — a great Spring Weekend,” she said. “It’s not the end of the world.”

— Emma Wohl

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Since 1891

New public plaza to liven U.’s presence downtown

By Greg Jordan-Detamore Senior Staff Writer

By now it’s obvious — the University is proudly “Building Brown.”

But what is less obvious is the University’s rapid development on the other side of the river, away from the daily lives of students.

The new Medical Education Building at 222 Richmond St. will be completed in July. A month later, the University plans to wrap up its conversion of a nearby parking lot to a public plaza, featuring terraced wood flooring and red maple trees. Built with expectations of outdoor concerts, dance and yoga classes, movie screenings and farmers’ markets, it will be a “livable urban space,” said Edward Wing, dean of medicine and biological sciences. Food vendors and lunch trucks will gravitate to the space, he added.

Designs reflect the dreams of both University administrators and city planners, who consider the Jewelry District a source of hope in an economically stagnant city. Fueled by the relocation of Interstate 195, the Jewelry District — also called the “knowledge district” — is projected to be a hot spot for edu-

cational and medical institutions.

Brown’s Alpert Medical School will be a “keystone” in the area, Wing said. Administrators hope Providence will rival neighboring University- and hospital-fueled research activity in Cambridge and New York City.

Ship Street square

The new, one-third-acre square will serve more as a public gathering place than as a recreational area, said Richard Spies, executive vice president for planning and senior adviser to the president. Plazas like the one planned “are the kind of spaces that work great on college campuses,” he said, suggesting it could serve a purpose akin to that of the Main Green, “where a lot of things can happen formally or informally.”

He said he hopes the square creates “a sense of community, a sense of engagement of the neighborhood.” Construction will likely begin in May, said Michael McCormick, assistant vice president for planning, design and construction.

“Ship Street square is going to be here very quickly,” McCormick

Melk Landscape Architecture / Urban Design (top) Greg Jordan-Detamore / Herald (bottom)

continued on page 4

A number of initiatives, including the creation of a new public plaza (top) from a parking lot (bottom) are underway to transform the Jewelry District.

University debt jumped 35 percent since ’09

By Mark Raymond Senior Staff Writer

The University’s debt has risen by more than 35 percent since the 2009 financial crisis. Total debt stands at $609 million, up from $450 million in February 2009, according to Beppie Huidekoper, executive vice president for finance and administration.

Most of that increase comes from a $100 million short-term loan taken

out in August 2009 as a safeguard against future economic downturns, Huidekoper said. The rest comes from $59 million borrowed to fund infrastructure-related projects such as renovations to the Metcalf Chemistry and Research Laboratory and dormitories.

The $100 million loan differs from typical University loans in that it is short-term — 10 years — and does not serve any immediate need, Huidekoper said. The University

“hopes to never touch it,” she said, because the funds are only meant to provide security against future economic downturns.

The Metcalf renovation is the only project currently accumulating debt, said Susan Howitt, associate vice president for budget and planning. In 2009, when responding to recent economic shocks, administrators said they hoped not to borrow

events. The program schedule also includes a research panel of professors and students.

Los Angeleno Jackie Chow said she had already attended a lecture

by Michael Paradiso MS’81 PhD’84, professor of neuroscience. “One of the things I look for in schools is how interesting the lectures are,” she said, adding that Paradiso’s class had “no parallel” to her other college visits. Chow said she is also considering Harvard and Penn.

“I know no matter where I go, I’ll be happy,” Chow said. “It’s about continued on page 5

continued on page 2

inside

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

Class dialogue Workshop explores class divisions and stereotypes campus news, 3

Studio 50 Creative collaboration thrives at John St. studios campus news, 8

Mental

Keeping your sanity, and your trousers on opinions, 7

weather

Alex Bell / Herald

President Ruth Simmons addressed prefrosh on the Main Green yesterday.

On the second day of A Day on College Hill, when many prospective first-years packed their bags and headed home, 140 minority students admitted to the class of 2015 attended the Third World Welcome.

TWW, which began yesterday and continues today, is hosted by the Office of Admission as a supplement to ADOCH. At TWW, prospective students spend two days touring campus, attending lectures and taking part in a variety of social and cultural

By Rebecca Ballhaus City & State Editor

Since Rhode Island School of Design faculty voted “no confidence” in President John Maeda and Provost Jessie Shefrin by a margin of 147 to 32 last month, students and teachers have been grappling with the vote’s aftermath.

In 2006, Roger Mandle, then RISD’s president, received a “no confidence” vote from department heads and stepped down in July 2008 after a 15-year term, though he said the decision was unrelated to the vote. Professors and students expressed doubt that Maeda would resign as a result of last month’s vote.

But “the campus is sort of operating at two levels,” said Deborah Bright, dean of fine arts. “On one level, everybody’s going about their business as usual. … Nothing has changed in terms of the everyday functioning of this school. On the other hand there’s a kind of meta-

continued on page 3

Third World Welcome greets minority students

By Caitlin Trujillo Senior Staff Writer

RISD copes with ‘no confidence’ aftermath

t o d ay

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RISD president looks to work with faculty continued from page 1 consciousness that there’s tension between the administration and a portion of the faculty.”

The tension stems from both parties “locking horns” over the question of whether decisions regarding academic reorganization fall under the jurisdiction of the administration or the faculty, Bright said.

The administration proposed merging the Division of Architecture and Design and the Division of Fine Arts into a single Division of Undergraduate Studies after the faculty had rejected a similar plan by a margin of 82 percent at a meeting Feb. 28. The proposal disregarded a clause in the full time faculty contract that outlines a faculty review process for all academic reorganization, said Mark Sherman, chair of the Faculty Steering Committee and an associate English professor.

“The real stress is coming from the desire of the administration to administer in a certain way and the sense among the faculty that this way of making administrative change actually is detrimental to the academic purposes,” said Lynnette Widder, associate professor and head of the department of architecture.

The faculty is “not averse to changing the way things are,” said Sherman. “We just want to know why and if it’s going to work.”

The vote is “very much on the mind of the faculty,” said Mairead Byrne, associate professor of poetry and poetics. “I would say also that the president and the provost are

Daily

the Brown

very conscious of it.”

Maeda, Shefrin and Merrill Sherman, chair of the board of trustees, did not respond to requests for comment. Jaime Marland, director of media relations at RISD, wrote in an email to The Herald that the board supports Maeda.

The administration organized a meeting March 24 with faculty, department heads, deans and representatives of the full- and part-time faculty unions. During the meeting, the Faculty Steering Committee proposed two steps Maeda and Shefrin could take to “prove (their) desire to repair relationships,” Sherman said — suspending the administration’s academic restructuring proposal and articulating a “definite policy” on the appointment of deans. The committee felt the administration had abandoned a previous policy on deans, Sherman said.

Following the committee’s suggestions, the administration announced it would hold off the restructuring for a year and proposed a task force of faculty, deans and members of the administration to evaluate different methods for restructuring. It also proposed a policy for the appointment of deans that the Faculty Steering Committee will review in coming weeks, Sherman said.

But Sherman expressed concern that restructuring “was presented as a foregone conclusion.” The provost’s office appended a footnote to the meeting’s minutes noting the “possibility” that academic reorganization could be abandoned if the task force came to such a conclusion, Sherman said. “But that’s not at all what they

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said in the meeting,” he added.

Maeda also instituted open office hours for faculty, staff and students following the vote. “Despite our efforts to build an inclusive and participatory strategic planning process, to maintain respectful and collegial relations with the leadership of the faculty union and our underlying desire to create space for healthy and reflective debate, recent events on campus painfully reveal that our intentions to work together fell short,” Maeda wrote in an email to the RISD community. “I am determined to improve relations between faculty and administration.”

“There are initial gestures, but there is nothing the president or the provost has done to suggest a serious alternative to the way they’ve done business,” Sherman said.

For RISD students, the vote remains “more under the radar,” said freshman Robert Verdino.

“So many people in RISD are so focused on schoolwork” that they do not have time to involve themselves in the debate, said freshman Susan Merriam.

“The faculty and administration’s attitude is that we’re not involved,” said Misha Kahn, a senior at RISD and vice president of the Student Alliance Executive Committee. To explain the situation, the committee sent emails to the student body and held a forum after the “no-confidence” vote. “That was probably one of the most attended meetings I’ve been at,” Kahn said.

But the issue has since “totally blown over” among students, Kahn added. “Everyone’s like, ‘Well, that was crazy that that happened.’” He added, “It will be interesting to see how it will pan out now that everyone’s more relaxed about it.”

Verdino said he was aware of problems arising between faculty and the administration long before the vote occurred. A professor brought up in conversation with Verdino last fall that some faculty felt “a little bitter” toward the administration’s methods. “I realized then that there were some tensions going on,” he said.

“There’s anger on both sides and it’s both justified and exaggerated on both sides,” Widder said. “I don’t know how they’re going to find their way back to each other.”

Campus News 3

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Workshops address social class identity U. took out buffer loan to institutions, class is probably the After participating in the work- guard against downturn most invisible of social identities,” shop last semester, Leong will now

By Lucy Feldman Contributing Writer

Students who enjoy casually talking about class issues with their classmates socially have an opportunity to do so formally through Social Classmates. The workshop, sponsored by Third World Center, kicked off its third semester of discussion last month.

Social Classmates seeks to increase interactions between students of different social class identities, to make social class dialogue “more comfortable to talk about” and to reach out to those not involved in the workshop, said Clay Thibodeaux ’12, the workshop’s co-founder. “We want the people who have gone through this to start dialogues with friends, with people who haven’t really thought about social class identity,” he said.

Donna Leong ’13 said she was inspired to join Social Classmates after attending a social class workshop held by the Minority Peer Counselors. “It’s a part of identity, but so not talked about at Brown. We want to see everyone as upper-middle class, but that’s so not the case,” she said.

“Having a space where you feel safe talking about it is really important.

There’s nothing wrong with being on financial aid,” she said.

The idea for Social Classmates came out of a Group Independent Study Project titled “Identity and Cross-Cultural Engagement” that took place last spring. During the GISP, Thibodeaux and co-founder Marie Ripa ’12 led a class on socioeconomic class identity. For their final project, they were asked to engage a culture different from their own. “We decided a good way to do that and make an interest we had become a reality would be to start a discussion group around social class,” Thibodeaux said.

“At Brown, like many of its peer

said Kisa Takesue ’88, the GISP’s adviser and director of the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center.

“There are a lot of groups that explore ethnic and sexual identity, but nothing besides the first generation group for social class identity,” Thibodeaux said. “Because there wasn’t really any group to address it, it seemed like a taboo thing or something people here didn’t really think about.”

Thibodeaux and Ripa modeled the group after workshops like FemSex, scheduling weekly meetings during which small groups of participants and facilitators address different topics relating to social class identity. The group is now sponsored by the Third World Center and meets in its lounges.

Each meeting has a different theme, like “classism and stereotypes” or “class in the media.” The group references articles on social class identity and watches the PBS documentary “People Like Us,” Thibodeaux said. Facilitators might bring in a sheet of paper with class distinctions and invite participants to anonymously add their impressions of what those things mean.

“If something comes up a lot, we can ask why we always think about certain types in terms of certain stereotypes and talk about why,” Thibodeaux said.

The group operates on ground rules like “trust intent” and “use ‘I’ statements over ‘you’ statements,” Thibodeaux said. “Because it’s a sensitive topic, you have the option to drop out of the group at any time,” he said. A few people have left the group in the past, probably because it was not what they expected, he said.

Many of the conversations come back to social class at Brown, Thibodeaux said.

act as a facilitator. One of her favorite discussion topics was the first-year experience. “There were a few freshmen who went through the same things (I did). They were unsure of themselves coming from high schools that didn’t have as much prep. It reassures you that you have a place at Brown, not just that you’re an anomaly,” Leong said.

“I think it allows you to be introspective and also hear other people’s stories. That’s something that’s sort of lacking. There are lots of social activist groups for the bigger picture, but it’s important to look at your life and how what’s around you affects you,” Leong said. Everyone can benefit from Social Classmates, Leong said. “You can see social class at Brown. It’s just that when you’re given a space to talk about it that it helps you understand,” she said.

The discussion topics are not set in stone. If anyone comes up with a new idea during the workshop, the group can include it in the discussion, Thibodeaux said. Facilitators do not lecture, Thibodeaux said.

“We want participation from everyone.”

At the end of the workshop, the facilitators gather reviews to help determine which topics were the most interesting to participants and which ones to pass on next time.

“We’re pretty new, so we’re still figuring stuff out,” Thibodeaux said.

continued from page 1 more toward what should be donorfunded projects, such as Metcalf ’s renovation. But current debt on the project is considered short-term, Howitt said. The University hopes to recoup the costs through donations in the near future, she said.

Other projects, such as steam pipe replacement and dormitory renovations, do not garner the level of enthusiasm from donors needed to drive funding. These projects are often too large to be accounted for in the operating budget but not monumental enough to receive donor sponsorship, Howitt said.

“Rather than Brown having to put out the money to pay for things like fixing pipes, we can borrow the money and pay for it over time,” Howitt said. “Some things like utility infrastructure are going to last 40 to 50 years, so financing it makes sense.”

The University uses a combination of donations and borrowed money to pay for long-term investments, particularly in infrastructure, said Dick Spies, executive vice president for planning and senior adviser to the president.

“The strategy is that in order to make those investments, we believe we have to use a mixture of debt and donor-raised capital,” he said. “There is no magic ratio, but you need both

in pretty significant amounts.”

“Debt is an important financial tool for an institution like Brown,” he added. The University accumulated $450 million in debt over the 20 years leading up to the financial crisis, Huidekoper told The Herald in 2009.

The $100 million loan, which accounts for much of the University’s recent debt accumulation, has still not been touched, and there are currently no plans dip into the money, Howitt said. “If there had been a second shock to the financial markets, having that money available for any purpose was cheap insurance,” she said.

The loan would have provided the University with “sufficient liquidity to ensure we could get through whatever might happen during the financial crisis,” she said.

“Lots of our peers did it as well.”

Aside from taking out the $100 million loan as a safeguard, the University did not use debt as a means of getting through the economic crisis, Howitt said. The Corporation decided at that time to renovate rather than construct new homes for the medical school and the Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences department.

“We didn’t want to borrow money as part of the financial crisis,” Howitt said. “We made changes to our capital plan instead.”

4 Campus News

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, April 13, 2011

U. looks to make Jewelry District ‘a cool place to be’ continued from page 1 said. “We want to do this now so people start thinking of the Jewelry District as a cool place to be.”

The square will sit across the street from the Medical Education Building, near several other University-owned buildings in the district, including a molecular medicine research laboratory, a future police substation and the future home of the Office of Continuing Education. The area will be linked to the East Side by a pedestrian bridge and possibly a new transit line, both in the planning stages.

‘A big, big leap forward’

Construction on the Medical Education Building is going “very well,” with a majority of the exterior work done and the focus now shifted to the interior, said Stephen Maiorisi, vice president for Facilities Management.

The 134,000 square-foot building is slated to be finished July 12, with an opening ceremony Aug. 15, the first day of classes for the Med School, Wing said.

The building includes a sunlit atrium, two 150-seat lecture halls, an “almost all digital” library, administrative offices, three “case study rooms” for demonstrations, 16 seminar rooms and an anatomy suite, Wing said. A clinical skills suite has rooms which are “exactly like doctors’ offices, so (students) can practice their skills.”

Medical students will be sorted into three academies, giving students “time to build relationships for all four years,” said Peter Holden, director of biomedical facilities

planning and operations.

The top floor will have space for a fitness center, Holden said, and will have a rooftop terrace, which will be illuminated at night. The ground floor will have a cafe — “one of the only eatery spaces on this side of the Jewelry District” — which will be open seven days per week.

The building represents a tripling of the Med School’s usable classroom space, Wing said. It is the first specifically dedicated to the Med School, he added. It also places the school close to the hospitals, to which third- and fourthyear medical students commute “all the time.”

“It’s such a big, big leap forward for the Medical School,” he said.

The Med School — the only one in Rhode Island — will be expanding its enrollment as a result of this increase in dedicated space. There are currently 96 students per class, but the class size will increase to 108 this fall and will stabilize at 120 next year, Wing said.

All Med School classes will be moved to the Medical Education Building, Maiorisi added, which will free up some classroom space on campus for undergraduates.

Developing the district

Outside the building’s walls, the fabric of the district is changing rapidly.

The narrow sidewalk on Richmond Street between Ship and Elm streets will be widened to 13 feet from its present four to five feet to make the area more pedestrianfriendly, McCormick said. Presently, the sidewalk is “so small that

they had to put the parking meters in the middle of the sidewalk,” Spies said. The area is “just not people friendly.”

The University will plant trees along the street and install better lighting and emergency blue light phones. The trees will reduce the perceived scale of the street and “help hide the parking garage,” McCormick said.

The price tag for the public plaza and streetscape improvements is $2 million, and they will be completed in the fall, Wing said.

And the University has its eyes on further expansion in the district. It recently acquired the 41,000 square-foot building at 198 Dyer St. for about $6 million.

“At least for a period of time, it will house the Office of Continuing Education,” Spies said. The Office of Residential Life will move to the Office of Continuing Education’s current space in Graduate Center, and ResLife’s current space on the first floor of Wayland House will be converted to dorm rooms, he said.

Given the size of the building, “we may very well look for another tenant for that space,” Spies said.

The University acquired its first building in the Jewelry District at 70 Ship St., which is home to the Med School’s Laboratories for Molecular Medicine, in 2004.

The Department of Public Safety and the Providence Police Department will share a new police substation at 43 Elm St., McCormick said, which will help DPS increase its presence in the Jewelry District.

The University bought seven buildings in the Jewelry District in 2007, one being the site of the

Greg Jordan-Detamore/ Herald

Construction continues on the sun-lit atrium of the Medical Education Building.

new Medical Education Building, Spies said.

Brown will eventually occupy all of the buildings, but some are being leased out for a short-term use, Wing said.

The teardown of the old I-195 viaduct is “happening fast,” Spies said. “A couple of the roadway bridges” are still standing, but “it looks very different than it did three months ago,” he said.

Creating connections

Despite the University’s development in the Jewelry District, one hurdle remains — getting there. As the bird flies, the district lies only a half mile from the Main Green. It is easily walkable from campus, but administrators have recognized the need for further transit infrastructure. Several initiatives by both the city and state will help close the gap.

“My dream about it is that you

don’t ever take your car,” Spies said.

Perhaps the most high-profile link between the two banks of the river will be a new pedestrian bridge that will rise on the piers of the old I-195 bridge. Under the leadership of then-Mayor David Cicilline ’83, the city announced a winner of a design competition for the bridge in December 2010.

Now, Mayor Angel Taveras is reevaluating the decision between the competition’s two close finalists.

“The new mayor wants to reexamine that and make sure it’s the right decision,” McCormick said.

“You can’t make a wrong decision,” Spies said of the bridge design. The best thing to do is to make a decision soon and “get on with the fundraising.”

Details of the bridge’s funding have not yet been worked out, McCormick said.

At the western foot of the pedestrian bridge, a 4.5-acre park will be developed by the city as part of the I-195 relocation project. “It adds hugely to the attractiveness of that whole area,” Wing said.

Public transportation improvements are also being studied. The Providence Core Connector Study is currently considering options for transit, such as a streetcar line, to serve the district.

A preliminary route has been selected, traveling from Thayer Street through Kennedy Plaza and the Jewelry District to Rhode Island Hospital. Some issues, such as how to connect the route to the train station, are still being explored, McCormick said.

Officials from the study will make a public presentation April 25 and a locally preferred alternative will be selected this summer, according to the group’s website.

Meanwhile, Brown’s expansion in the Jewelry District is marching on.

“It’s a vision becoming reality, which doesn’t happen overnight and doesn’t happen with just one building,” Spies said.

“By next fall, we’ll have a whole new environment down there,” McCormick said. “This transformation of the Jewelry District we’ve been talking about for many years will be visible.”

Check out www.blogdailyherald.com for photos from The Herald’s hard hat tour of the Medical Education Building.

Campus News 5

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Minority prefrosh explore campus at TWW continued from page 1 where I’ll be happiest.”

Daniella Flores, who travelled from Miami, said she would definitely attend Brown for its international relations program. Flores said she appreciated Brown’s “open atmosphere” and diversity. In particular, she said she liked interacting with other Hispanic students and Spanish speakers and was pleasantly surprised to meet non-native speakers who also spoke the language.

“Everybody seems really happy to explore everything,” she said. “It feels free.”

President Ruth Simmons addressed prospective students attending both ADOCH and TWW on the Main Green under a tent yesterday afternoon. During her address, Simmons said she wanted to refrain from “exerting too much influence” on the decisions of pro-

spective students and instead challenged students as accomplished as the potential members of the class of 2015 to effect change and progress during their time at the University.

Simmons also gave advice to incoming first-years to actively seek out engagement in academics and ways to contribute to the community. But she stressed that the incoming class must practice “mutual tolerance” and not harass others when contributing to campus dialogue.

Part of the process of finding their places in the Brown community involves learning how to criticize each other and take criticism well, she said.

Simmons concluded her remarks with a final incentive to draw students to Brown. “I promise you that if you show up here in the fall,” she said, “I’m going to give you one big hug.”

comics Dr. Bear | Mat Becker

Dot Comic | Eshan Mitra and Brendan Hainline

Gelotology | Guillaume Riesen

6 Editorial & Letter Editorial Iway or the highway Over the last several weeks, a significant amount of downtown land in Providence was freed up when the state began the final stages of removing the ancient vestiges of Interstate 195’s former path through the city. This is the culmination of a 10-year construction project, known as the Iway, whose astronomical cost has only increased over the last 20 years of planning and implementation.

Though the Rhode Island Department of Transportation originally estimated the final cost of the Iway at $299 million, the Providence Journal reported last year that the actual number was more than twice that much — $623 million. Once the costs associated with borrowing that money are taken into account, the final sum rises to $758 million. That’s significantly more than Providence’s annual budget, and over twice Rhode Island’s current budget deficit.

Meanwhile, the Journal reported two weeks ago on a study that deemed 21.6 percent of the state’s bridges “structurally deficient,” the fourth-highest percentage in the nation. Unsurprisingly, a spokesman said the Department of Transportation was aware of this harrowing statistic, but lamented, “We simply don’t have enough funds to take care of everything.” Why could that be?

We do not mean to suggest the Iway is not a worthwhile project.

Route 195’s former path consumed a lot of valuable land, and the structures were eyesores in need of repair. Also, the project began before the worldwide economic catastrophe that strained budgets and highlighted the need for fiscal restraint.

On the other hand, we wonder why this project took precedence over other, perhaps more necessary improvements. Interstate 95’s bridge over the Pawtucket River is in need of repair, and Barrington’s central bridge cannot bear the weight of its heaviest fire truck. These repairs would cost a fraction of the Iway’s cost, yet our state must now forego such overhauls.

To be fair, since the federal government paid approximately 80 percent of the cost of the Iway, not all of the money used for it could necessarily have gone to other Rhode Island projects. But Uncle Sam is even more indebted than Rhode Island and surely could have provided more targeted help.

Adding to the Iway’s folly is the surprising fact that there are no concrete plans for the land’s use. Bills have been proposed to the General Assembly to allocate the newly available land, and Gov. Lincoln Chafee ’75 P’14 hopes to use the land to revitalize the city’s innovation and knowledge economy, though he will have to debate with Mayor Angel Taveras and members of the General Assembly.

But why wasn’t this settled long ago? We are astonished that such an intricate and expensive plan was begun — and finished — without determining what to do with the land, particularly considering that freeing up land was one of the primary justifications for the project in the first place. This, of course, puts aside the thornier question of whether the state should be spending so many of its tax dollars on a project whose primary beneficiaries will likely be private businesses and universities.

Ultimately, the Iway will be beneficial to the city and state. We are not sure whether the project will be worth its cost, but what’s done is done. It should serve as an object lesson. In the future, projects such as this should be undertaken only with great care and planning — it should be clear that the benefits outweigh the costs, and that other, more pressing needs are not being neglected.

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

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Editorial comic

by sam rosenfeld

le tter to the editor Time for the University to step up its game To the Editor: From the formal beginning of the Ivy League in 1954, Brown has been the little engine that could, valiantly trying to compete in a league against institutions with far deeper pockets, richer athletic histories and vastly superior facilities. Like Sisyphus, we have been condemned to push the boulder up Mount Ivy, where Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the rest of the Ivies sent it back down. It took seven long years for Bruno to win its first Ivy title. The dismal 1960’s prompted ongoing discussion about whether Brown even belonged in the league. Fast forward more than half a century, and relatively speaking, little has changed. Money talks more loudly than ever, and the Ivy League is becoming even more lopsided. Example — no titles yet this year for Bruno — though hopefully the women’s tennis team will win out — while Princeton took seven in the winter season alone.

The current 1.6 percent slice of Brown’s total budget devoted to athletics is clearly inadequate and reflects a long history of, at best,the University’s ambivalence

about the value of education through the physical.

Brown President Alexis Caswell expressed it well in 1870, when, in his annual report he voiced concern that “the college is … losing scholarship by the very great interest … in boating and baseball.” The natural tension between the academic mission of the University and athletics is always present.

Let us not forget, however, that membership in the prestigious Ivy League gives Brown tremendous clout in a world impressed with brand names. The value of the Ivy brand is incalculable, and athletics carry the banner in the public eye.

Let us hope that this discussion of athletics, whatever the immediate result, signals a sea change for Brown and its scholar athletes. It is past time that we face up to the issues, which are mostly financially based. Let us decide to finally join the Ivy League as a full partner, with all the implications such a bold move entails.

Peter Mackie ’59 Sports Archivist

quote of the day

“It’s not the end of the world.”

— Abby Schreiber ’11, on the Spring Weekend rain call See showers on page 1.

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Opinions 7

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Trousers and traumas

By Stephen wicken Opinions Columnist This week, dear reader, I want to talk to you about something uncharacteristically serious. And not in the fun way, where I pretend I’m going to talk about something weighty, feint in a semi-grown-up direction and then make a joke about trousers.

Reader — dear, gentle, perhaps slightly adrift reader — I want to talk about mental health. It’s monstrously, sometimes scarily, important. In the long run, it might seem that the tribulations of young personhood constitute a roller coaster one has to ride to reach the distant, stable side of life’s fairground. So often for young people — and, despite what you might have read from my own fingers, I include myself in this category — mental health problems, from the diagnosable to the draining, are seen almost to be part and parcel of the university experience.

You might be away from home and responsible for yourself for the first extended period of time. This might be your first experience of being completely in charge of your schedule and your ability to keep up with that schedule, even if you occasionally forget to wear trousers on a Tuesday. Fret not. We’ve all done it, some of us more than once, and some of us with a faint but very real sense of delight. Often it’s just a pain to feed yourself semi-sensibly, day after day,

bowl of cereal after bowl of cereal.

You may, lovely reader, have seen the film “Igby Goes Down,” starring Claire “My So-Called Talent” Danes, Jeff “Sardonic Quips About Dinosaurs” Goldblum and Kieran “My Brother’s Drug Mule” Culkin.

It’s a charming and enjoyable movie about love and cynicism on the Upper West Side, doing its best to tackle the deficit of whitewine-and-quippery resulting from Woody Allen’s decisions first to stop making watchable cinema, then to film in countries where

humor, but less funny!). Even so, the midcollege implosion is a solid enough trope to allow even Dimply Danes a crack at the joke. I’m sure anyone whose partner has forced them to watch “The Family Stone” will see where I’m going.

What I want to say to you, dear reader, in the most avuncular tone I can muster, is this — a good number of the trials forced upon you today won’t matter in the long run. Twenty-eight years isn’t a tremendous amount of time in which to acquire a sense

You might be away from home and responsible for yourself for the first extended period of time. This might be your first experience of being completely in charge of your schedule and your ability to keep up with that schedule, even if you occasionally forget to wear trousers on a Tuesday. his dialogue makes less than no sense, and finally to cast Scarlet Johannsen in roles that require more of her than possession of a formidable bosom.

In any case, there’s a revealing scene in the film in which Culkin’s smart-arsed prep-schooler quizzes Danes’ character, a catering waitress on leave from Bennington College, about what compelled her to take time off. Danes replies, “Entenmann’s cookies, beer, diet pills, tension — life.”

They’re talking about Bennington, a college so full of hippies it makes Brown look like Dartmouth (Ivy League humor! It’s like

of perspective, and I’ll be the first to admit that the fortunes of the England rugby team have a far greater effect upon my well-being than ordinarily I would allow to a group of men in short shorts.

Even so, I think back to the traumas of my undergraduate days with a wry smile.

To be honest, it’s probably more of a dirty smirk. The system in which I did my undergrad studies was very different from the one you navigate, dear reader, but it was similarly stressful. Every five days, an essay was required about a particular pile of reading. As a result, three of every five days was

spent in paroxysms of terror, wondering how I would be able to convince Professor Sir Eminently Crusty, who had been teaching the class since 1945, that I had something interesting and original to say about Nietzsche.

Here’s the rub — don’t worry, my hands are clean. I can barely remember those days.

I can barely remember Professor Crusty, and I sure as sherbet can’t remember any of those essays. I can’t remember the tiffs I had with friends and neighbors. I can, however, remember the times when it seemed like the pub was the only place in which I could escape the feeling that everything was piling on top of me — which is why the pub is the greatest invention in the history of humankind. There were other things — things that are still with me — that have exercised me inordinately in the years since then.

Those things I have sought help for. The others have just tended to float on past like the latest Lindsay Lohan scandal.

Whatever it takes, poor beleaguered reader, take care of yourself. Exercise. Get away for a while. Have your friends tickle you. I once wore a full mascot-style tiger costume to a cricket club dinner, and that helped. If you need to, go to Psychological Services and talk to some of the wonderful people there. And if you do nothing else, when Tuesday comes, try to put something on your bottom half, for all our sakes.

Stephen Wicken GS is a fifth-year doctoral candidate in history with a conveniently selective memory.

Students can change the military — by keeping ROTC out By julian park Opinions Columnist The only way the United States and its military are going to cease conducting themselves as they have is through symbolic and physical pressure consistently applied in opposition to their conduct. The Brown community has a unique opportunity to apply such opposition by refusing to reinstate the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps on our campus.

While I realize there may not be a consensus that this conduct is objectionable — despite the fact that the majority of Americans oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and are not clear about our goals in Libya — I’ll assume that we can agree that our military’s current conduct is concerning. It is irrelevant whether you are worried about the exclusion of transgender people, the documented climate of sexual violence and racial discrimination, the wars themselves or the culture of heartless violence — not to mention attempts to cover up this violence — demonstrated by war crimes, like those committed in Iraq at Abu Ghraib or in Afghanistan by the aptly named “Kill Team,” a cadre of soldiers that bragged to their battalion about killing civilians. The military will not change just by throwing in more Brown students, and it has not earned the right to our endorsement.

This is not now, nor has it ever been, a question of bringing diversity to our campus. No student is excluded from ROTC, though they must travel off-campus to participate. While ROTC scholarships could

benefit some, these would not be the lower income students we lack, who are excluded not by the University’s financial aid, but rather by admissions policies which demand high scores on tests proven to be biased against the economically disadvantaged.

Students committed to service have the opportunity to enlist or apply for officer training after graduation, when the rest of us embark on our chosen paths.

It is not only baseless to claim that an Ivy League education best equips people to transform the military, it is elitist and incorrect. Neither Former President George

present day to no apparent effect.

The CIA — which traditionally recruits from the Ivies — has a long history of questionable practices, interventions and violations of international law. This includes everything from the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, purposeless human drug experimentation, political assassinations, torture and the outsourcing thereof and the deployment of drones in countries where we are not at war, like Pakistan, killing approximately 10 civilians for every successfully suppressed target.

We have all seen the CIA at the career fair — Brown’s recruits have done nothing.

Demanding that the military shape up would send a clear signal — that would be Brown’s only chance to exert the influence wielded by its much-touted progressive reputation. And maybe being progressive at Brown could mean something for once.

W. Bush nor President Obama figured out how to change the military or stop sending its troops to war, despite respective degrees from Yale and Columbia. Though Obama has repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” pending military review, there is no guarantee that this will come off successfully, given what Newsweek recently called the military’s “Secret Shame” — the prevalent sexual assault of men by men — and the already described climate of violence against women. Donald Rumsfeld, a graduate of Princeton ROTC, apparently learned little but how to get us stuck in quagmires. Meanwhile, Cornell, Dartmouth, Penn and Princeton have all had ROTC on their campus up through the

Organizational theory and military culture demonstrate why it is so difficult to create change from the inside. The combination of a regimented hierarchy with devotion to mission objectives and following orders provides little wiggle room for troops and officers to produce positive change within a military environment. Those who seek change, like Ehren Watada or Bradley Manning, are court-martialed.

Military leadership necessarily consists of people who have most efficiently socialized to military culture. In the Air Force’s own report on “Resistance to Organizational Cultural Change in the Military,” the obstacle is stated simply — institutions would rath-

er maintain “consistency and stability” than change, regardless of whether this stability is producing consistent harm. As the report notes, senior officers must realize most changes will not be well received. Claims that Brown ROTC officers would be uniquely better at overcoming these obstacles seem difficult to support. What is most concerning is that the military is overtly seeking the sort of “critical thinking” they believe that “elite” schools have to offer. If current military leadership desires assistance, this is so that established practices and objectives can be more efficiently carried out, rather than so these practices and objectives can be questioned.

If we are concerned with the military, we would be best served by calling on our University to maintain its current stance by rejecting the reinstatement of ROTC. This is not some elitist liberal logic, but the logic of a former community organizer who is now our president. To paraphrase, change does not come from the military — change comes to the military. This does not happen by following the lead of our peers, but by demanding something better. As Frederick Douglass wrote, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Demanding that the military shape up would send a clear signal — that would be the University’s only chance to exert the influence wielded by its much-touted progressive reputation. And maybe being progressive at Brown could mean something for once.

Julian Park ’12 is a member of the Coalition Against Special Privileges for ROTC. For more information, contact julianfrancispark@gmail.com.

Daily Herald Campus News the Brown

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Nearly half of students approve lifting campus ROTC ban

By Margaret Yi Staff Writer

Nearly half of students approve of lifting the campus ban on the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, according to last month’s Herald poll. Around 43 percent of students strongly or somewhat approve lifting the ban, about 24 percent strongly or somewhat disapprove, and the remaining 33 percent answered “no opinion” or indicated they did not know enough about the issue.

the herald poll “I think it serves to sort of disprove the idea that a lot of Brown students are against (ROTC),” said Andrew Sia ’12, a member of Students for ROTC. The Brown Committee on ROTC should “look at the numbers and realize that while there are a lot of vocalists against ROTC, that it’s just a minority of students,” Sia said.

Kevin Casto ’13, a member of the Coalition Against Special Privileges for ROTC, questioned whether the findings actually reflect student opinion. “There isn’t a ‘ban’ on ROTC actually. Students are allowed to participate in ROTC. Brown just doesn’t provide institutional support,” he said, adding that the word “ban” has strong negative connotations.

Students noted the lack of majority consensus on the issue as an indication that the debate may drag on.

“I can’t imagine that if any deci-

Would you approve of lifting the ban on ROTC? 13.0%

Strongly disapprove

No opinion

9.7%

16.9% Strongly approve

14.0%

25.9%

Somewhat disapprove

20.5%

Somewhat approve

Not familar enough to answer

Katie Wilson / Herald

sion is made any time soon that the opposition would give up a fight,” Scott Friedlander ’12 said. “There’s still a big minority that won’t get their way.”

Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron, chair of the committee on ROTC, said she is concerned that 33 percent of students either had no opinion or were not familiar enough to answer on the issue.

Bergeron said she plans to work with the Undergraduate Council of Students to “present some of the basic facts in a quick, digestible form,” and may post questions on the committee’s website or send an explanatory email to undergraduates.

The committee will work with UCS to gather more student feedback in the next couple of weeks be-

fore making its decision, she added.

Students also voiced concern over the number of people who did not take a decisive stance on the issue.

Casto said his job on the coalition is to better inform the student population, particularly first-years, who were most likely to answer “no opinion” or “not familiar enough to answer”, according to the poll.

Amanda Kozar ’12 said it made sense that many people may not be informed about ROTC because the program has not been a presence on the University’s campus since 1969. She also said the University should provide more information on the issue, especially the fact that transgender discrimination still exists in the military despite the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Kelly Garrett, director of the LGBTQ Resource Center, said it is important for students to consider all the factors affecting the ROTC issue.

“Some students are speaking out against it because of discrimination against transgender people, which I think is a valid point, and I just think it’s a valid point among many that need to be debated,” Garrett said.

Other universities have used student surveys as a guide in making decisions about the future of ROTC on their campuses. At Columbia, a student survey heavily influenced the Columbia University Senate’s decision to repeal the ban, according to James Applegate, professor of astronomy at Columbia and a member of its Taskforce on Military Engagement. More than 60 percent of respondents at Columbia supported bringing ROTC back.

Stanford University and Yale have also created committees to re-examine their policies on ROTC. Yale conducted a survey before “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed in which 68 percent of students supported bringing back ROTC, with 38 percent supporting it regardless of whether “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” remained law.

Bergeron said she is also looking to conduct more comprehensive and detailed surveys to guide the committee’s decision.

Casto said he hopes more students weigh in on the issue. “Whether they support (ROTC) or not, it’s better to have them express their opinion than not say anything,” he

said. “We really need to have students democratically participating in this.”

Methodology

Written questionnaires were administered to 972 undergraduates March 14–16 in the lobby of J. Walter Wilson and the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center during the day and the Sciences Library at night. The poll has a 2.9 percent margin of error with 95 percent confidence. The margin of error is 4.4 percent for the subset of males, 3.8 percent for females, 12.9 percent for transfer students, 3.0 percent for non-transfers, 6.1 percent for seniors, 3.4 percent for non-seniors, 5.6 percent for firstyear students and 3.4 percent for non-first-years.

The sample polled was demographically similar to the Brown undergraduate population as a whole.

The sample was 44.3 percent male and 55.7 percent female. First-years made up 26.6 percent of the sample, 26.2 percent were sophomores, 24.1 percent were juniors and 23.1 percent were seniors. Of those polled, 5.2 percent of respondents identified themselves as being transfer students. Statistical significance was established at the 0.05 level.

Senior Editor Julien Ouellet ’12, News Editors Alex Bell ’13 and Nicole Boucher ’13 and Senior Staff Writers Greg Jordan-Detamore ’14 and Lindor Qunaj ’13 coordinated the poll. Herald section editors, senior staff writers and other staff members conducted the poll.

Studio space places no limits on creativity

By Alexandra macfarlane Staff Writer

Hidden away on Brook Street, far from the campus’s more trafficked performance spaces, is the design studio at 50 John St., a building that has played host to many parts of the Brown and Providence communities. It is a place with both a colored interior and a colorful history.

FEATURE Today, the studio houses an integral part of the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, said Michael McGarty, lecturer and scenic designer. The space is currently used as a design studio, where many theater design and architecture classes are held and where the costumes, sets, lighting and design for many of the major shows on campus are brought to life. Brown University Gilbert and Sullivan, Brown Opera Productions, Production Workshop and other groups use the space to design and build their shows, McGarty said.

In addition to being a major stop for the imagination and design of these productions, the studio is also a space for local artists. A graduate student from the Multimedia and Electronic Music Experiments program uses the space, and many parts of the scenery for the Trinity Repertory Company are designed and assembled here, McGarty said.

The goal of this space — whose

doors are unlocked throughout the day — is to “encourage people from other departments and from all over to collaborate with one another,” McGarty explained. “There are no rules.” For him, this studio fits right into Brown’s “interdisciplinary, collaborative spirit.”

The studio appears to fit this spirit. The hallways and staircases have no scheme and spill into and over one another with ease. One hallway leads to nothing, and two pathways lead from the same room and into the same room. Offices, classrooms, desks and studios are seamlessly connected with no doors or walls to hinder the creative energy that charges the air.

A long table seems to be the only place where conventional learning could take place. Yet by its side runs a wall of hooks from which chairs hang, suggesting that nothing is impossible even within the structure of a classroom. A green gnome stands in the rafters of one corner of the building, illuminated with light at night, beckoning students and artists alike toward their long hours of work.

Because the studio houses many different projects and interests, it is also an important studying and learning place for many students.

For Fahmina Ahmed ’13, who is an architectural studies and visual arts concentrator, 50 John St. is a place where it is not hard to work for hours at a time. “It is easy to lose track of time and the campus itself,” she said.

Ahmed worked in the studios at Rhode Island School of Design before she studied at the John Street studio and prefers her current workspace, she said. The RISD studios “were like the (Sciences Library), but artsy, with grids and harsh lighting,” Ahmed said. “This is more inviting.”

She works in the space as part of a class, a design Group Independent Study Project, she said. She comes to 50 John St. about two to three times a week and is hard at work on a hypothetical plan for her own house at a real location in Fox Point, she said.

Amber Lee ’12, a civil engineering and visual arts concentrator, uses the space for projects for her architecture classes. “I also work independently on larger scale art projects for my other (visual arts) classes there sometimes,” she wrote in an email to The Herald.

This is Lee’s first semester studying in the John Street studio, and she wrote that the space, where she spends up to 12 hours a week, is beautiful as a physical building.

Lee also cites the collaborative and interdisciplinary feature of the studio as an advantage of the space. “I love the people within the space. Every time I walk in, there is a new person working on various pieces, from fine art to theater work to architectural work,” she wrote.

In addition to its colorful cast of current inhabitants, the design studio at 50 John St. boasts a vibrant past. The building started its life as the Bonde Bakery, and was bought

Stephanie London / Herald

The studio space at 50 John St. encourages artistic collaboration.

by the University in the 1950s or 1960s, McGarty said. It was used for many purposes, including a drop-in center for inner-city children and a facilities building, before becoming vacant and falling into some disrepair, he said. “Out of the blue, one day, they handed the building over to us,” McGarty said, “‘Have a studio,’ they said.” And the 50 John St. design studio was born.

Though the studio was a generous gift, it came into the hands of designers like McGarty in 2005 in very different shape than it is today, he said. “When we moved in, it was a shithole,” he said. “All the windows were cinder-blocked in, and we had very little light.”

Little by little, doors and windows were installed, the space was painted, power was installed in many of the rooms, the floors were redone and all the tools, tables and costume areas were added, McGarty said. Many students were involved in this reno-

vation, a project that has yet to be finished and still requires constant collaboration.

Today, he said, the studio does not have any disadvantages. “I have never worked in a space like this,” he said, “It is the best design studio in the United States.”

“It is night and day from what it was,” McGarty said. He and his fellow artists have never had this much space, and they have not divided it up into different disciplines or work spaces, true to its nature as a collaborative environment. To the untrained eye, 50 John St. may seem like the remains of a former factory or warehouse, but to the many artists and projects who call it home, the studio is much more.

And posted discretely at the top of the stairs is the official goal of the studio: “The John Street Studio is a home for artists and crafts people to engage one another in their common pursuit of creativity.”