Thursday, March 1, 2012

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vol. cxxii, no. 25

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Since 1891

LaHood steers students toward public service Athletics

By Hannah Abelow Senior Staff Writer

Tom Sullivan / Herald Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood discussed his time in Obama’s cabinet in a lecture Wednesday afternoon.

Life in public service may not always be a path to prestige, but that should not deter Brown students from pursuing it, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood told a full Salomon 101 Wednesday afternoon. As a moderate Republican serving in the Obama administration, LaHood has worked to reach across the aisle to forge compromise, said Marion Orr, professor of public policy and political science, in his introduction.

Discussing his decision to work in Obama’s cabinet, LaHood compared the president’s election to that of former President John F. Kennedy.

“In 1963, when I graduated from high school, President Kennedy inspired everyone that was collegeage and perhaps even some high

schoolers with the speeches that he gave with the call to service,” LaHood said. “I want you to know I’m a Republican — I think that’s been announced — but that call to service was not from a Democratic president. It was from a young, energetic public servant who gave his all, gave his life for his country, and I can’t overstate the power of that call. It was a summons that sparked something in everyone I knew, both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, much like the call that president Obama used on election day.”

He said his relationship with Obama when both men were members of Congress was an impetus for his decision to join the Obama’s cabinet.

“The president has given me the opportunity and the privilege of overseeing the best transportation continued on page 5

In election Smithsonian spotlights AmCiv projects year, poll reflects attitudes of RI voters

By Sheza Atiq Contributing Writer

U.S. Rep. David Cicilline ’83, DR.I., received a 14.8 percent job approval rating in a recent University poll, reflecting an almost 10 percent decline since December, when 24.3 percent of voters supported his work.

The poll, which surveyed 514 Rhode Island registered voters, was conducted Feb. 16 to 18 by the University’s Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions and the John Hazen White Public Opinion Laboratory.

The poll has a roughly 4.3 percent margin of error.

Cicilline faces increased pressure from potential election chal-

city & state lengers. Republican Brendan Doherty, the former colonel of the Rhode Island state police and superintendent of the department of public safety, has already declared his intention to challenge the incumbent in November. Doherty has focused much of his criticism of Cicilline on his record as

inside

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news....................2-5 editorial............6 Opinions............7 City & State..........8

Smulyan’s former student, and the two co-edited a book together.

As part of their final exam, students in Smulyan’s class assembled a “mini-exhibit” consisting of eight to 10 images of advertisements they felt best represented the history of American advertising, Smulyan said. Images were drawn from the Smithsonian archival collection that had been uploaded on the museum’s

By Eli Okun Senior Staff Writer

As the University prepares to enter a new phase with the impending retirements of President Ruth Simmons and Director of Athletics Michael Goldberger, the athletics department, though a top priority, remains in flux with major changes planned or already underway.

Those changes include cutting roughly 20 admission slots for recruited athletes, pumping $1.1 million into salary raises for coaches, designating about $52 million for facilities renovations and a significant enlargement of the athletics endowment, opening the new athletics facility in April and potentially ramping up a pilot program designed to encourage academic diversity among athletes. And just a year after four varsity teams faced potential elimination, all of the University’s 37 varsity teams are secure for the foreseeable future.

Fundraising

The administration is looking to increase funding significantly for a

continued on page 4

continued on page 2

Alum’s nonprofit revamps science education By emily hartman Contributing Writer

William Brucker ’04 spent the last few years perfecting a technique that relies on stories and analogies to teach young adults science.

Brucker, whose speech shows the clear influence of the technique he developed, drew comparisons to an eggplant, a ship and a French film to explain his teaching philosophy.

In July 2011, Brucker, now an MD/PhD student, took this philosophy one step further and founded the Providence Alliance of Clinical Educators with a small team of writers, artists and marketers. PACE is a nonprofit that writes and distributes short vignettes to help high school students learn concepts that can be difficult to teach, like cellular respiration.

The group’s initial goal was to produce a complete set of science vignettes in a few weeks, just in time for the school year to start,

In-state rates Bill may lower tuition for undocumented students

City & State, 8

Brucker said. PACE emailed 21 vignettes complete with illustrations to several interested high schools in late September.

Kapil Mishra ’12 and Carolina Veltri ’13 worked on marketing and expansion for PACE since its founding.

“The biggest struggle initially was outreach and marketing and how to actually get this product out there,” Mishra said.

Since then, PACE has expanded both by word-of-mouth and promotional pitches emailed directly to high school teachers across the country. Currently, PACE has distributed its products to schools in all 50 states and in Haiti. Brucker pointed to the difficulty of teaching cellular respiration as one reason for the nonprofit’s rapid growth.

“Students hate (cellular respiration), and so if we make it about murder, death and chaos, then continued on page 5

Courtesy of William Brucker

Artist Chris Boakye created this illustration to go along with vignettes about science sent to high schools by PACE..

Post-

goes local, exposes indecently Post

weather

By Adam toobin Senior Staff Writer

Nine undergraduates who took AMCV 1610A: “American Advertising: History and Consequences” last fall were selected to co-curate a portion of the upcoming American Enterprise exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. The exhibit’s website currently features a mini-exhibit of projects the students produced during the course exploring trends

in the history of advertising.

“I think we should work with Brown undergraduates all the time,” said Kathleen Franz MA’91 PhD’99, curator and senior fellow of the American Enterprise team, who helped facilitate the collaboration with the students. The theme of the course and the close relationship between Franz and Susan Smulyan, professor of American Civilization and the course instructor, led to the arrangement, Franz said. Franz is

program enters new era

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2 Campus News

Athletics to undergo $10 million renovations

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range of athletics priorities over the next several years. Among the more immediate and definite changes is a total of $1.1 million over two years to raise coaches’ salaries. The University has pledged to include the funds in its budget.

“Over the course of these two years, we should get close to or match the league average,” Provost Mark Schlissel P’15 said. Since the $1.1 million is part of the general budget, it “will be paid for by the regular University budget process,” he said.

To maximize fairness and efficiency, “we actually went position by position” to determine salary changes for individual coaches and athletics administrators, Goldberger said. Though the issue of gender disparities in compensation was also discussed, Goldberger said it will be addressed by human resources. He added that the University has less significant gender inequities than most schools. Schlissel said the allocated funds will address efforts to narrow the gap.

Goldberger expressed excitement over the University’s efforts to double down on fundraising for athletics. “The fact that the University has established this as a priority is a dramatic statement,” he said.

Roughly $42 million is slated for long-term athletics enhancement. The number was calculated after funding statistics for 32 teams were compared to the rest of the Ivy League, and administrators discovered that 16 of those teams received the least funds in the league, with only one matching the league average, Goldberger said. “This was maybe the biggest thing that came forward from the president’s response to the Athletics Review Committee,” he said.

The $42 million will come through a fundraising push led by the Corporation, the University’s highest governing body. In past years, a surge in donations meant the University would decrease its contributions, Goldberger said, “but now they’re growing the budget” in addition to the roughly $3.2 million already designated to athletics annually.

“It’s really pretty amazing that Brown has decided to elevate athletics to one of seven important priorities for the University, so that is kind of a game-changer for us,” said Davies Bisset III ’85 , executive director of the Brown Sports Foundation. Athletics has not always ranked among other leading priorities like

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brain sciences, dormitory renovations and engineering, he added.

“The Corporation and the president are saying, ‘Yes, you can go ahead and try to endow the athletics program, so that we never find ourselves in the position we were in last fall.’ ... It’s just something we really dreamed of,” Bisset said. “We’re just happy to be among that rarefied group of important aspects of the Brown community and the Brown experience.”

The four teams that were almost cut from the University last year — skiing, wrestling and both fencing teams — can also breathe a little easier, Goldberger said. “I think the success they’ve achieved has been remarkable,” he said.

In her recommendation not to cut the teams, Simmons included the stipulation that they cover their own operating budgets, which all four are on track to achieve, Bisset said.

Additionally, “fencing and wrestling are trying to build up their endowments,” he said. Wrestling has raised $1.5 million in pledges thus far, he said, and fencing has raised between $800,000 and $900,000. Skiing has raised less, but the exact total is “a little harder to pin down.”

Bisset attributed the fundraising successes to the networks of alumni and parents that mobilized in response to the threat of elimination.

The teams activated fundraising through a variety of means, including social media, he said.

“They’ve been very organized, and they have been the leaders,” he said. “I’ve just been overwhelmed by the outpouring of passion.”

Facilities renovations

In the more immediate future, the University is pledging $10 million for facilities renovations, many of which are badly needed, Goldberger said. The funds for these renovations will come out of the Corporation’s pledged fundraising drive.

Of those funds, $6 million will finance a variety of projects this summer, which include a new field hockey field, a conversion from grass to turf on Stevenson Field, drainage renewal to make fields more playable and renovations to the fields’ lights so they spill over less into city residents’ property, Goldberger said.

Beyond this summer, $2.5 million is scheduled to renovate the space vacated by the varsity weight room in the Pizzitola Center. The money will remedy violations of the fire marshal’s code, increase the size of the sports medicine training

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room and give teams more space in currently crowded locker rooms, Goldberger said. The timetable for these renovations will depend on how quickly sufficient funds can be raised, he added.

Finally, $1.5 million will allow athletics to move the women’s softball team to a permanent, year-round field in the northeast corner of the Aldrich-Dexter Field. Administrators also plan to take the area currently used by women’s soccer and lacrosse and create a practice grass field for men’s and women’s soccer and softball, a process Goldberger said he expects will happen in summer 2013.

Bridget McNamara ’12, a tricaptain of the field hockey team this fall, said the current field is “in disrepair” and that a new field will help the team attract fans and recruits.

She added that other teams have been unwilling to play on the field.

“It definitely affects a team mentality psychologically when you’re told that your team or your field is further down on the list,” she said.

Admissions and financial aid

Current plans call for the number of recruited athletes to fall from 225 to 205 over three years, beginning with the class of 2017, though both numbers are general benchmarks and not specific quotas, Schlissel said.

Schlissel framed the move as an unfortunate but necessary change, given the shifting dynamics of the application process and the University’s commitment to academic prowess. “As the quality and breadth of the applicant pool for Brown keeps growing and getting more competitive, President Simmons felt that this number represented too large a fraction” of admitted students, he said, but the intent was “not to adversely affect the competitiveness of our teams and not to penalize very successful teams.”

The administration’s goal is to maintain the current standard of recruiting 80 percent of the team for as many sports as possible, Schlissel said, and to keep each team within one of the average number of recruited athletes across the Ivy League.

Most affected teams are likely to lose just one slot.

Goldberger said the impact of the cuts will be dulled by spreading them across teams, and some of the best-performing teams — including women’s crew, football and men’s soccer — will likely see no reductions.

“The teams that have been strong for us — we don’t want to weaken them,” he said, while sports that have often relied on walk-ons, like the equestrian team, will continue to do so.

In her October recommendations, Simmons proposed to couple the cuts with an increase in financial aid. The current financial aid budget is more than $90 million, but the University hopes to enhance its ability to match offers from other Ivy League schools for desired athletes, Schlissel said. An Ivy League rule that prohibits differential financial treatment of athletes means this commitment to match financial aid offers will apply to a top athlete just as it will to “an academic superstar.” continued on page 5

Campus News 3

The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, March 1, 2012

Chafee ’75, Cicilline ’83 approval ratings plummet continued from page 1 Providence mayor, which has been called into question due to the city’s ongoing fiscal challenges.

The low approval rating has also made way for another potential nomination challenger.

Democrat Anthony Gemma, who lost the 2010 race for that party’s nomination to Cicilline, has expressed interest in again mounting a challenge in the upcoming election. In a statement released Tuesday, Gemma called Cicilline a liar for his mishandling of Providence’s finances as mayor and claimed that he has a greater chance of beating Doherty in November than Cicilline.

In a statement, Cicilline said he has not yet begun to focus on the November elections and that voters will understand what he has done for them over the past two years.

Support for contraceptive policy

The poll also found that a majority of surveyed voters support President Barack Obama’s revised policy that guarantees access to contraceptive services, even for

women working for religiously affiliated organizations.

According to the poll, more than 56 percent of voters approve of the policy, which requires health insurance companies to provide access to contraceptive services when a woman’s employer opposes these services. The Catholic Church, which has long been an influential presence in Rhode Island, condemns contraceptive use.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence did not respond to The Herald’s requests for comment.

Under the original policy outlined in Obama’s 2010 health care bill, hospitals, charities and universities with religious affiliations would have been required to provide coverage for contraception services themselves, though churches would still have been exempt. Rhode Island voters felt much less favorably about the original policy than they did about its revision — with 47.5 percent in favor and 47 percent against, according to the poll.

After pressure from Catholic groups, the Obama administration amended the policy. The United

States Conference of Catholic Bishops remains opposed to the new policy. In a testimony before Congress on its behalf, Reverend William Lori called the final policy an act of “conscripting unwilling religious people and groups in its effort to increase the usage of contraception nationwide.”

The Taubman Center tally of Rhode Island voters provides similar results to a New York Times/ CBS News poll, which found that 59 percent of respondents nationwide favor the new policy, while 57 percent of Catholic voters support it.

Stormy weather

The Taubman Center poll also showed serious doubts about the leadership of Gov. Lincoln Chafee ’75 P’14.

The governor’s approval rating has fallen from 27.4 percent in December to 22.1 percent. The decline comes on the heels of a number of proposed tax increases

by Chafee intended to raise revenue for the cash-strapped state.

The initiatives have not been wellreceived, according to the poll — Chafee’s proposal to raise taxes on restaurant meals and beverages by 3 percent has the support of only 18.1 percent of voters.

Another of Chafee’s proposals — to increase the registration and renewal fees for drivers’ licenses by $30 — is opposed by 67.5 percent of voters.

But the governor’s proposed 4 cent per pack tax hike on cigarettes has the support of 71 percent of voters.

Chafee wrote in a statement

that he sees the low approval numbers as only temporary. “We are beginning to see some improvements in both the national and regional economies. We are confident that Rhode Island is on its way back. I’m hopeful that the May revenue numbers allow us to minimize the need for dramatic core cuts to services and minimize the need to enhance revenues,” he wrote.

Though the governor’s approval rating has fallen, the poll showed an increase in approval for Providence Mayor Angel Taveras.

Since declaring the city’s precarious economic situation in February, the mayor’s approval rating has risen by approximately 8 percent, falling just short of 60 percent popularity, according to the latest poll.

4 Campus News

The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, March 1, 2012

Ray LaHood Q&A, cont. Students co-curate Smithsonian exhibit continued from page 8

Yeah, we went to a bridge that’s in very bad repair, and we made a commitment to the governor and the mayor and some other legislative leaders that we would help them find some resources to fix the bridge up.

Do you think there’s a role that Brown as a university can play in helping the Rhode Island community with such projects?

I think in the instances where universities can be helpful is where they have transportation research programs. And we fund transportation research programs, and that’s the way that universities have been helpful to us.

As job creation has become a major priority in the current administration, has the role of the Department of Transportation shifted?

Well, transportation and the transportation bill has always been about jobs. If the Congress passes a transportation bill, it will create jobs. It will create jobs building the roads and bridges, the runways, the transit systems. Transportation is a way to put America back

continued from page 1 to work. Passing a transportation bill would put thousands of people to work in America. That’s why the president pushed it in his state of the union, that’s why the president pushed it in the American Jobs Act, that’s why the president has pushed it in his budget, because it will put Americans to work.

As a Republican working in the cabinet of a Democrat, what has been both your greatest frustration and your greatest satisfaction from a personal standpoint?

I think it’s always frustrating trying to get big things done. We do a lot of big things at DOT, and it has nothing to do with politics or Republican or Democrat. It has more to do with trying to move government and move people in a direction to really get things done. We’ve had a lot of success with the president’s vision for high-speed rail. We’ve invested more than $10 billion. We’ve had a lot of success with the economic stimulus program where we had $48 billion and created 65,000 jobs with 15,000 projects. We did it in two years without any earmarks or any controversy, so we’ve had some success with the programs that Congress has given us.

- Hannah Abelow

Flickr account for this very purpose.

Choosing from the class’ more than 100 submissions, Smulyan, teaching assistants and members of the American Enterprise team chose the most visually appealing pieces that best captured the essence of advertising history, Smulyan said.

The enterprise exhibit, which is set to open in 2015 and explores the history of business and innovation in the United States, comes at an opportune moment in light of the recent recession. Franz said the exhibit will trace the structure of American enterprise from 1750 to 2010. While American Enterprise is broadly concerned with the dynamics of the marketplace in the United States, “Marketing Moments” focuses on advertising as an industry, Franz said. The emphasis on advertising stems from the consumerism that currently defines American culture.

“Advertising is the language we are speaking,” said Smulyan, adding that her class focused on the exploration of this language.

The students’ displays have been instrumental in helping the team make choices about which advertisements to select for the Marketing Moments section that will appear in the Smithsonian, Franz said. This section, which Franz described as the “visual tract” of the whole exhibit, will consist of a glass wall that showcases the history of ad-

vertising “at a glance.” The images selected by the undergraduates have enabled Franz and her co-workers to note which advertisements are particularly compelling and visually appealing, and allowed for a fresh perspective on the subject of advertising, she added.

The website, which features the students’ work, is “a new venture in learning in public,” Franz said.

The site was a chance to “illuminate the process that usually happens behind closed doors, and behind the walls of the Smithsonian,” said Jordan Grant, graduate fellow on the enterprise team.

While all of the selected miniexhibits documented the history of advertising, students interpreted the theme in different ways. Katrina Post ’13 focused on the changing structure of cigarette advertising and its implications for notions of masculinity. Post said the decision to focus on one particular product and its different brands arose from her interest in cigarettes as a consumer good.

“It has blown my mind that people have managed to sell cancer sticks to other people,” she said.

Bradley Burns ’13 selected pieces that explored the relationship between historical events and the changing nature of advertisement.

Burns said his work demonstrates how a need for branding arose with the advent of the railway, which expanded the market structure and

forced companies to differentiate their products on a level besides quality. Burns elected to use the Prezi software, a unique approach to presentations which allows users to zoom in on certain features of the image, he said.

The website experienced a large boost in traffic following the posting of the students’ mini-exhibits, Grant said. The historical images also seem to have struck a nostalgic chord with some viewers who have expressed their appreciation of the students’ work in their emails to the American Enterprise team, Franz said.

Smulyan said the final project was a chance for all students to familiarize themselves with the curation process. To assist them, Franz also delivered a guest lecture during the semester about museum curating, said Sarah Friedland ’14, whose work was also selected for the mini-exhibit. Though Smulyan said the course was not designed to expose students to the workings of a museum, she said she was pleased it ended up taking such a direction.

Smulyan said the chance to work directly with associates from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History highlights the AmCiv department’s focus on “publicly engaging scholarship.”

Smulyan said she plans to offer the course again in the future as a way to engage students with the world outside Brown.

Campus News 5

The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, March 1, 2012

LaHood Athletes prompted to encourages diversify course loads public service continued from page 2

continued from page 1 system in the world and fighting to put Americans back to work in a very bad economy,” LaHood said.

As the secretary of transportation, LaHood has encountered workers “back on the job” at plants operated

by General Motors and Chrysler, met with the Navy Seal team responsible for finding Osama Bin Laden and appeared on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show.

“Not everyone will hold high office,” LaHood said, though he added “everyone does have an obligation to make a contribution.”

Scientists and businesspeople also have a responsibility to be good citizens, he said.

LaHood said he values education and hard work just as his parents and grandparents did before him, adding that his time as a social studies middle school teacher inspired him to go into politics. He is proud of his 35 years in public service, he said, from his time as a congressional staffer to his work as a member of Congress and as a Cabinet member.

“You see what’s going on in Washington,” Lahood said. “America needs you.”

After the lecture, LaHood answered questions from students about his son’s detention in Egypt, the future of the Federal Highway Trust Fund, working in the Obama administration and urban mass transit in Detroit and Los Angeles.

The speech, entitled “The View from President Obama’s Cabinet,” was sponsored by the Taubman Center for Public Policy as this year’s Noah Krieger ’93 Memorial Lecture. Past Krieger lecturers have included New York Rep. Charles Rangel, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

“We haven’t set aside a specific number of dollars,” Schlissel said.

“What we’ve done is we’ve enunciated a principle.”

Though the financial aid push is not limited to athletics, Goldberger said the impact for teams would be noteworthy, especially for recruits whose family incomes are between $100,000 and $175,000, the range in which financial aid differentials between the University and other Ivy League schools can stretch to $30,000 a year. “It will give us the opportunity to go after a lot of people that we’re really not competitive for right now,” he said.

Schlissel also looked into the Academic Index of the University’s recruits last semester and over winter break. An Ivy League rule stipulates that the AI — a metric based on SAT score and GPA — of a university’s recruited athletes must be on average no less than one standard deviation below that of the school’s student body. Brown’s current average AI is 217 on a scale of 240, Schlissel said, with a floor of 203.7 for recruits — and when he looked at the most recent class’s data, he found that athletes had an average of 207.

“As long as we continue exceeding the league standard, then I’ll be satisfied,” he said.

Academic tracks

The University has also examined athletes’ academic tracks once they reach Brown. One for Me, a pilot program currently in its second year, is designed to encourage varsity athletes to vary their course loads, since

athletes often cluster in courses with their teammates, said Stephen Lassonde, deputy dean of the College.

The initiative has recruited seniors on four teams to write letters to incoming recruits that tout the benefits of academic diversity and urge them to take at least one class without teammates. The project has seen a 97 percent success rate among the recruits, Lassonde said.

The program was designed to address issues of academic diversity with which all universities struggle, Lassonde said, and it relied especially on the First-Year Seminar program.

Vice President for Campus Life and Student Services Margaret Klawunn said the reasons athletes often take classes with teammates are understandable and not always negative, including strong cohesion within teams and the campus culture of relying on other students’ recommendations.

“That may be fine, but does that mean that you’re also not hearing as much about other courses?” she said.

“That’s a strength of team culture, but we wanted to make sure that it was operating in the best possible way.”

Through the program, administrators have sought to ensure that many course options are available to athletes by making sure enough first-year seminars are offered in the mornings, which conflict less with practice schedules, Klawunn said.

She added that the administration hopes to expand the program to other teams next year. Currently, it is operating for women’s soccer, men’s lacrosse and both swimming and diving teams, said Sarah Fraser, assistant athletic director for compliance.

PACE explains science through short stories continued from page 1 we’ll have a chance of breaking into that market,” Brucker said.

“If we have one great story that’s irresistible, then it’s going to be used by every classroom.”

One of the more popular vignettes is called “Drunkorexia,” Brucker said. In the story, a young woman dies after starving herself for four days before drinking heavily in order to avoid gaining weight from high-calorie alcoholic drinks, causing her to experience alcoholinduced hyperglycemia. The story gives new meaning to abstract scientific concepts, Brucker said.

Diana Siliezar-Shields, science department chair at Barrington High School in Barrington, R.I., said her students like to create skits based on the readings. “Drunkorexia” was her favorite vignette, she added.

The story deals with topics “that they deal with and they think about in one way or another,” Siliezar-Shields said, “so it generated some really good discussion from a biological perspective.”

Shauna Evans, a biology teacher at Moore High School in Moore, Okla., said her students appreciate the format and content of the stories.

“You can teach them what the cell parts are, and you can teach them what the processes are, but to actually see them in the context of a real life situation … it gives meaning to what you’re talking about,” Evans said. “It kind of gave me a break from just trying to lec-

comics Dreadful Cosmology | Oirad Macmit

ture to 14-year-olds, who don’t necessarily want to hear it.”

PACE recently began advertising to Brown students as it looks for help to sustain its rapid growth.

Brucker said he hopes PACE will soon expand into the fields of chemistry and physics and bring the vignettes to many more schools across the country and around the world.

“If (Brown students) gave us a just little help, there’s nothing to stop us from reaching every school in the English-speaking world,” Brucker said, emphasizing the “potential (PACE’s work) represents for change.”

Sera Kim ’15 recently joined PACE to help bridge the gap between scientists and the public.

She plans to write a vignette about chemical equilibria by explaining how tooth decay happens in people with bulimia.

“I definitely don’t want it to be a compromise of the concepts for it to be fun,” Kim said, adding that she wants her story to include “accurate, real, good, legit science.”

Brucker said he hopes that PACE could pave the way to “guerilla curriculum reform” to help science better engage students.

“Instead of saying that the education needs to be torn down and revamped and changed radically, we sort of take the side of the teachers,” Brucker said. “They’re on the front lines, and they’re really good. So let’s use some of the specialized knowledge we have and try to support their curriculum in tough to interest places.”

6 Editorial & Letter Editorial The persistence of prejudice

Editorial cartoon

Earlier this month, the Associated Press reported that the New York Police Department monitored Muslim college students at several universities in the Northeast, including Yale and Columbia, during a period from 2006 to 2007. The surveillance, which included both screening their Internet activity and collecting publicaly available information, was directed towards students who were members of Muslim student associations at their respective universities. Troublingly, the White House provided funding that was used to carry out these operations. We strongly condemn the actions of the federal government and the NYPD as an outrageous instance of cultural prejudice, and we call upon politicians and academics alike to protest this violation of individual rights in higher education.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s actions in response to this issue have been disheartening. He maintained his approval of the NYPD’s actions on the basis that past Muslim Student Associations members have been found to participate in radical activity.

Bloomberg declared that in the wake of 9/11, “we just cannot let our guard down again” and denied that the NYPD had participated in racial profiling, maintaining that the department was investigating “just to kind of get familiar with what’s going on.” Bloomberg added that the city does not “target individuals based on race and religion.”

These are clearly contradictory statements, given that students were monitored purely because their fellow religious adherents have committed acts of terrorism against the United States. These kinds of arguments are never an excuse for racial prejudice. Thankfully, the issue has become prominent in the upcoming mayoral elections in New York City, and some politicians have spoken out against the NYPD. We hope New York politicians will continue to reiterate that racial profiling is unacceptable and take strong action to stop it.

We are pleased that support for the Muslim students has been even more forthcoming from their school administrations. Last week, Yale President Richard Levin circulated a letter to the Yale community denouncing the investigations and said that “police surveillance based on religion, nationality or peacefully expressed political opinions is antithetical to the values of Yale, the academic community and the United States.” We commend Levin for his sentiments on behalf of his school’s Muslim Students Association, and we hope that academics at other schools where injustice occurred will take similar positions on the issue.

We acknowledge that violent acts, whether motivated by religious extremism or otherwise, pose a real threat to the United States, but invading the privacy of Muslim students in a non-terrorist organization is an inappropriate response that fundamentally violates their freedoms. Instead, it is important to educate American students — and perhaps some of our politicians — on all aspects of Muslim culture and include Muslim students in our society, rather than ostracizing them on the basis of their religion. In doing so, politicians and school administrations can work towards facilitating a much-needed process of cultural exchange.

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

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letter to the editor Column overgeneralizes female sexuality To the Editor: The message of the column written by Cara Dorris ’15 (“Whatever happened to the female orgasm?” Feb. 28), as I understood it — namely that women should exercise more agency in understanding their bodies and owning their sexual pleasure — is one with which I wholeheartedly agree. But her argument is based on quite a few sweeping generalizations and problematic assumptions. First of all, Dorris’ assumptions about the sex women have are entirely heteronormative and leave no room for female partners. Secondly, Dorris takes on a negative, almost slut-shaming tone when describing

the sex lives of the “Sex and the City” characters. Should women own their own pleasure only when in long-term, monogamous relationships? Finally, the idea that “achieving an orgasm (is) the point of having sex” simultaneously shames men who have difficulty bringing their female partners to orgasm and invalidates the sexual experiences of people — not only women — who derive other kinds of physical or emotional pleasure from sex. Good sex is enjoyable for everyone involved, but it need not be tied to the goal of orgasms for all parties. To state that it must is to limit the possible opportunities for good sex.

Kara Woo ’12

Correction A photo in Tuesday’s Herald of Richard Spies, executive vice president for planning and senior advisor to the president, was incorrectly credited as courtesy of Marisa Quinn, vice president for public affairs and University relations. In fact, the photo should have been credited to Frank Mullin, photographer for Brown Alumni Magazine. The Herald regrets the error.

quote of the day

“I’ve just been overwhelmed by the outpouring of passion.”

— Davies Bissett ‘85, executive director of the Brown Sports Foundation

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Opinions 7

The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, March 1, 2012

‘Mhm, Whatcha Say?’

By Helen McDonald Opinions Columnist

“We just take so much for granted,” a female student admonishes in the recent viral video, “Sh*t Brown Students Say.” The three-minute YouTube clip attempts to poke fun at Brunonians for the ridiculous, Brown-specific idioms we use from day to day. From mailroom struggles and SafeRide hunting to the perpetually inclement weather and the party scene, the video celebrates the social and cultural aspects that make the University the quirky place it is. But the student’s warning that we take so much for granted may be an accurate way to describe the perspective presented in “Sh*t Brown Students Say.” The video — though a light-hearted stab at the Brown community — fails to recognize that not everyone can say all of the statements within the piece and may point out more differences within the community than collective traits.

The Internet phenomenon began in December with the “Sh*t Girls Say” videos, and an influx of “Sh*t [insert category of people] Say” videos soon followed. I anticipated that a video would inevitably be made to describe students at the University. Our creative body of students would need to take advantage of the craze, especially to lift spirits in the dead of winter. I speculated with other students about the details the makers of a “Sh*t Brown Students Say” video would include, like “het-

eronormative” and the pretentious interpretations our classmates use to impress their professors and peers. Unfortunately, when our school joined the ranks of other Sh*t People Say videos, I was a bit disappointed.

“Well ya know, ’cause like he’s writing this thing, but at the same time he’s like writing … about his experience writing this thing,” one student terribly articulates as the video mocks the Brunonian tendency to play the meta-philosopher in the classroom. Many of us have sat in a class with that type of indi-

ceiving an education at a private high school, and such jests are reminders of those socioeconomic divisions. Furthermore, a lot of the students who have received private school educations, myself included, are not very preoccupied with who went to what secondary school anyway, unless one of our classmates is wearing a sweatshirt labeled with the name of a school we recognize. I could not tell you which classmates attended which high schools, nor would I really care to.

One of the more troubling components of

The biggest disappointment of “Sh*t Brown Students Say” is that the video is not conscious that it focuses on certain privileges and highlights racial, economic and probably many other social divisions within the Brown community. It really leads viewers to ask: Who really says these things? vidual or may be that individual, and we can chuckle at the joke.

On the contrary, there are quips to which quite a few students do not and cannot relate. “My girlfriend went to Horace Mann,” a male student tells a buddy in the first moments of the video. A mash-up of scenes follows where the characters talk about the private high schools their friends attended, such as the aforementioned Horace Mann, Fieldston and Dalton. “What’s with [the] Horace Mann/Fieldston/Dalton obsession, Brown?” one YouTube user commented, and I had to ask myself the same. Many Brown students were not financially capable of re-

the “Sh*t Brown Students Say” video is the racial implication. The highest rated comment to the video comes from an alum who apparently graduated in 2002. The YouTube user, “SinatraNight,” implied the video should be called “Sh*t White Brown Students Say,” and since the video entered the online world, I have heard many students currently at Brown make similar comments in response. “If this was really anything ‘Brown’ there’d be more racial representation,” YouTube user “againstthebrilliance” also responded. I could not agree more. One of the students in the video asks, “Is this racist?” While the video in itself does not discriminate on the basis of race, it

really does not make the effort to include different racial experiences.

The biggest disappointment of the “Sh*t Brown Students Say” is that the video is not conscious that it focuses on certain privileges and highlights racial, economic and probably many other social divisions within the Brown community. It really leads viewers to ask: Who really says these things?

Without a doubt, the video could not possibly appeal to everyone who considers themselves part of the community at the University, but it should not be alienating either. One of the most controversial “Sh*t People Say” videos, “Sh*t White Girls Say … to Black Girls,” received a lot of attention because it not only pointed out the distinctions between two different groups of women, but also because it provided a platform for these groups to converse. White women and black women were given a chance to discuss who says what kinds of things and the consequences of that language. In that vein, perhaps a video representative of Brown should have sent the message that we all come from different backgrounds, and sometimes we need to laugh at the way we talk or neglect to talk to each other. I thank the original creators behind the “Sh*t Brown Students Say” video for the initial laughs, but I also challenge the creative minds at the University to make a clip truly representative of our community — before we really get tired of these videos!

Helen McDonald ’14 is concentrating in YouTube studies and can be reached at Helen_McDonald@brown.edu.

Putting affirmative action in context

By Ethan Tobias Opinions Columnist

Affirmative action is back in the news.

The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that challenges the constitutionality of racial consideration in admissions at public universities. Because many private institutions accept government funds, any ruling that ends racial considerations in public admissions will probably also affect private colleges. The result could be a complete reshaping of admissions policies throughout higher education, including at Brown.

Affirmative action is a challenging topic because it often brings up very strong feelings related to race, racial inequality and the concept of discrimination — and its counterpart, “reverse discrimination.”

Let’s first take a step back and consider the difficulty of making admissions decisions. What should universities consider when deciding which students to admit?

Grades seem like an easy first choice, but they come tinged with complicating circumstances. Is an A at one school the same as an A at another? Is even one teacher at one school like another at that same school?

The fact remains that context clearly matters when it comes to factoring grades into admissions decisions. Intuitively it makes sense that an A in an

Advanced Placement course should be more valuable than an A in the non-AP course. It seems reasonable that an A- in the AP course is still better than an A in the non-AP course. But where is the cutoff? What about a B- in an AP course? Is it worse, the same or better than getting the A in the non-AP course?

If we accept that the difficulty of academic coursework is important contextual information, then it follows that the non-academic circumstances can also be important. The student who is getting an A but goes home and studies all after-

who has all afternoon to study.

If one accepts that in certain situations context matters, then the question becomes which considerations are acceptable. Starting with the examples above, one could easily come up with 100 other circumstances to consider when looking at the nuances that differentiate applicants.

It is very difficult for many to accept that race should be considered. Far too often, racial considerations have erected barriers and prevented those who were otherwise entirely qualified from being

Let’s first take a step back and consider the difficulty of making admissions decisions. What should universities consider when deciding which students to admit?

noon certainly has an unfair advantage over the student who is also getting an A while playing varsity sports all afternoon.

But what if the varsity athlete is getting an A-? Would she be getting an A if it were not for the sports?

Playing sports may be optional, but for teenagers from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, working a part-time job after school may not be. For these students, who often have fewer resources, that A- might be worth a lot more than the A is worth for the wealthy student

considered for a job or entry to a selective university. The history of racial discrimination in this country is sadly a long one.

But the Supreme Court should not mandate which contextual factors universities should be allowed to consider when it comes to making admissions decisions. Saying that race is off-limits will lead to a slippery slope that allows the court to strike down policies that take into account any context. If race is offlimits, where do you draw the line, if in theory any factors could be tossed out?

The result is a legal precedent that will reward students who purposefully do not take more challenging courses or participate in extracurricular activities.

For those students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds — either because English is not their first language, or they were poor, or they faced prejudice — such a decision by the court would be devastating.

At the end of the day, universities should get to accept the class they want based on a set of factors they decide to be important. There is a lot more to an academic experience than the professors a university hires. Peers play a huge role in the academic experience through group projects, study groups, class discussion and more. If a university values diversity in education, then an admissions officer will think that sitting in a classroom with an athlete, a musician, someone from a foreign country or even someone with a different ethnic background adds to the academic experience.

The only question a university’s admissions committee should be required to answer is whether the applicant in question has the ability to complete the work at that school. As long as someone can do the work, when it comes to making an admissions decision, admissions officers should be allowed to consider whichever factors they deem significant.

Ethan Tobias ’12 managed to write this despite being a thesis-writing, job-applying senior. He can be reached at ethan_tobias@brown.edu.

Daily Herald City & State the Brown

Students elected to new UCS-UFB committee

By Margaret Nickens Senior Staff Writer

The Undergraduate Council of Students selected Nick Tsapakos ’13 and Holly Hunt ’13 to serve on a recently announced committee that will address issues raised by the proposed UCS constitutional amendment in its general body meeting Wednesday night. Two members of the Undergraduate Finance Board and an unspecified number of community members will also serve on the committee, said David Rattner ’13, vice president of UCS. The committee will explore funding concerns and the relationship between the council and the Undergraduate Finance Board.

The executive board chose Hunt prior to the general body meeting to serve as the council’s senior member on the committee. The general body then elected Tsapakos to serve as the council’s junior member of the committee over Giuliano Marostica ’15, Alex Kaplan ’14, Alex Sherry ’15 and Charlene Flores ’15.

During community time, Matt Breuer ’14 and Jenny Li ’14 asked the council to consider endorsing a sustainability plan that would quantify the University’s environmental goals.

Breuer said they are also speaking with administrators and student groups such as emPower and the

Brown Outing Club.

They hope to present a report to the Brown University Community Council March 20 proposing the creation of a committee to look into defining specific goals and increasing communication between environmentally-minded groups and activists on campus, Breuer said.

The council is looking for a location on Pembroke campus where the University could install a printer that would be available to all students at all times, said Michael Lin ’14, chair of the academic and administrative affairs committee. He also discussed phasing out the laundry stripe on student IDs,w since students will be able to use Bear Bucks to do laundry beginning next semester.

UCS is also looking to expand free media services to non-Category III groups, said Daniel Pipkin ’14, the UCS-UFB liaison. Currently, Category III student groups do not have to pay for the use of media equipment, and the council hopes to extend this service to other UCSrecognized groups, he said.

Rattner said the council is working with the Registrar’s Office to make waiting lists and official transcripts available online. He also said UCS week will be pushed back a week due to a request from the Office of the President and will now begin March 12.

Q&A with Ray LaHood Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood spoke about his 35 years in public service and his time in Obama’s cabinet in Salomon 101 yesterday. After the talk, he sat down with The Herald.

The Herald: You’ve been instrumental in airline travel and passenger rights. Is that a typical way that you see yourself and future transportation secretaries spending their time?

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood: As a secretary, we set priorities. One of our priorities is to make sure that when people pay a lot of money for an airline ticket that they get the services that they believe that they’re entitled to, which means they get from one place to another safely, that they’re treated with respect and that there’s good service. The reason that we came out with our so-called Passenger Bill of Rights is because people were sitting on tarmacs for too long, without water, without food, with broken restrooms, and they ... were in enclosed airplanes with no opportunity to really get off these planes. It happened more often than not, and we thought we really needed to address it. We felt we really needed to make sure that we said to passengers, ‘We know you paid hard-earned money. We want to make sure you get to where you’re going safely, but we also

want to make sure you’re treated with respect.’ That’s what those rules were about.

Today and on other occasions you have called the House’s transportation bill the worst bill you have ever seen in 35 years. Considering that feeling you have expressed about the bill, the stalemate that occurred with the House bill and even the difficulties with the Senate bill, how do you see yourself and the administration getting a transportation bill passed during Obama’s presidency?

Look, we have to work with Congress. Congress passes the bills. I’ve also said that the bill that was put together in the Senate is a very good bipartisan bill.

It’s a bill that was put together in a way that reflects good transportation values, a way to put people to work, a way to get transportation projects funded, so we have our fingers crossed that the Senate will do well by their bill and that the House will take another look and put together a more comprehensive approach to transportation.

I understand that you were able to see some transportation and infrastructure initiatives in Rhode Island earlier today. continued on page 4

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Bill would let undocumented students pay in-state tuition By kris kelkar Contributing Writer

Legislation that would allow undocumented students to pay instate tuition rates was introduced last month in the Rhode Island General Assembly. The Tuition Equity Bill, sponsored by state Rep. Grace Diaz, D-Providence, and state Sen. Juan Pichardo, DProvidence, would uphold a decision made last fall by the Rhode Island Board of Governors for Higher Education to legalize the change.

If passed, Rhode Island residents who have attended a public high school in the state for at least three years could pay in-state tuition rates, regardless of their citizenship status. Such candidates would be required to apply for citizenship as soon as possible.

“Education is a human right,” Diaz said of her reason for sponsoring the bill.

It is important to institute legislation that upholds the precedent set by the board, said Marta Martinez, co-founder of the Coalition of Advocates for Students, a group that supports the bill. The legislation would give undocumented students legal support in confronting discrimination.

But the board decision has met opposition. Undocumented students “shouldn’t even be here in the first place,” said Terry Gorman, executive director of Rhode Islanders for Immigration Law Enforcement, who called the board’s decision illegal. He said his group has contacted the Rhode Island Attorney General regarding the legitimacy of the board’s decision.

The subsidies are pointless because once they graduate, undocumented residents “wouldn’t be able to even get a job at Dunkin’ Donuts or Burger King with that college education,” Gorman said.

State Sen. Nicholas Kettle, RCoventry, Foster and Scituate, said the board’s decision represents a breach of the balance of powers in the state. “It is not fair and equitable to the citizens of the state and country,” Kettle said. Measures expanding in-state tuition to undocumented students would condone the presence of undocumented families in Rhode Island, he added.

State Rep. Daniel Reilly, RMiddletown, Newport and Portsmouth, proposed a bill to repeal the board’s decision in January.

The bill is currently awaiting consideration by the House Finance

Committee.

A poll commissioned by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a nonprofit that works to achieve immigration reform, revealed another roadblock to passage of the Tuition Equity Bill. Ira Melhman, national media director and spokesperson for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said the organization has opposed granting in-state rates to undocumented students because “it’s not fair to middle-class citizens” who do not qualify for financial aid as tuition rates escalate.

Seventy-four percent of 500 Rhode Islanders polled reported that illegal immigration has a detrimental effect on the state, and 71 percent responded that the state should not provide subsidies to undocumented college students.

But Martinez said the organization is “known to be an antiimmigrant group” and added that she does not consider the poll legitimate. Still, she said she is worried by the survey because the organization has significant influence. Her own organization’s campaign focuses on “providing correct information” about the effects of immigration in Rhode Island.

Legislation would allow doctors to apologize By kate nussenbaum Senior Staff Writer

Actor James Woods spoke in favor of a proposed bill that would allow doctors to apologize to their patients without legal repercussions at a House Committee on Judiciary hearing last night. The “benevolent gestures” bill was introduced by Rep. Joseph McNamara, D-Warwick and Cranston. Similar legislation has been proposed seven times without passing.

Woods — a Warwick native who voiced the character Hades in the Disney film “Hercules” — lost his brother due to a malpractice incident at Kent Hospital in Warwick in 2006.

He said the subsequent apology he received from Sandra Coletta, who is now the hospital’s president, made him recognize the power of a sincere apology. He had been prepared to wage “thermonuclear war” against the hospital, Woods said, but once he heard how genuinely sorry Coletta was on behalf of the hospital, they were able to move forward and collaboratively reach a settlement.

But by apologizing, Coletta put herself in a vulnerable position. Currently, when doctors express sympathy for a procedure gone awry or a corrective course of action, their words are admissible in court as evidence against them if a patient were to sue for malpractice. The “benevolent gestures” bill would change that, McNamara said.

Thirty-six other states have al-

ready enacted some version of “I’m sorry” legislation, and the numbers of medical malpractice suits in those states have decreased, Woods said.

Hearing a genuine apology from a medical worker after an unexpected and undesired outcome “adds therapeutic closure,” Woods said. It also “allows patients and doctors to work together and achieve the best possible medical outcomes.”

After McNamara, Woods and Coletta introduced the bill, many medical workers testified in favor of it.

Michael Migliori ’79 MD’82 P’11 P’12 P’14, chief of ophthalmology and reconstructive surgery at Rhode Island Hospital, clarified that the bill does not protect doctors from “bad behavior.” The drop in malpractice suits many states saw after enacting similar legislation was because patients felt like they no longer needed to sue, not because they felt like they no longer could, he said.

Faith Birnbaum ’10 MD’15 attended the hearing to support her classmate, Peter Kaminski MD’15, who also provided testimony in favor of the bill. “It makes the whole idea of health care so much harder if you can’t admit your mistakes,” she told The Herald.

But others said the bill would give doctors unfair protection at the expense of patient rights. “Under current licensing regulations, hospitals and doctors are already required to inform patients of unexpected outcomes. They could likewise express

sympathy,” said Miriam Weizenbaum, a Providence lawyer. “If the House were to pass this legislation, evidence would be excluded that belongs in a civil lawsuit, only to the detriment of patients.”

Donald Migliori ’88, also spoke against the bill, countering his brother Michael’s position. “‘I’m sorry’ is important, compassion is important,” he said. “Compassion is not what this bill addresses — it goes far beyond that.”

If implemented, the bill would strip the judiciary of its ability to decide what evidence belongs in the courtroom and, in doing so, provide doctors with unfair legal protection, Migliori said. If a carpenter built a house using the wrong type of nails, and the house fell down and crushed its inhabitants, the carpenter’s apology would be considered admissible evidence, he said. “The bill says for only doctors, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking’ should be protected as if the relationship between a doctor and a patient is somehow different from any other type of relationship.” The 36 other states with “I’m sorry” legislation enacted very different bills that do not penalize patients, Migliori told The Herald. “Not one state has this bill,” he said.

If the bill passes the House Committee on Judiciary and the Senate Committee on Judiciary, it will move to the General Assembly for a floor vote. Migliori said the process will likely take months.