Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Daily

the Brown

vol. cxxii, no. 39

Herald

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Since 1891

In digital age, libraries seek to adapt By hannah abelow Senior Staff Writer

As the University continues to embrace the digital age, libraries have undergone a dramatic transformation in order to keep up with students’ needs and preference.

“The landscape has changed,” said Edwin Quist, associate University librarian for research and outreach services. Though he said he did not think Brown students have fallen victim to a trend found in studies performed at Rochester University and universities across Illinois that show students’ research skills have declined, he noted that those skills have changed rapidly in recent years.

Two recent events held by the library staff illustrated this shift.

After hosting a Digital Literacy Contest and a “Wikipedia contest,” Quist said he was impressed that

By Alexandra Macfarlane Senior Staff Writer

competitive offers to recruit them to Brown, he said.

The University exists in a national market, both academically and privately, said Dean of the Faculty Kevin McLaughlin P’12. When academics develop skills that are transferable and applicable to a higher-paying market, they receive a salary that is competitive with those markets, he said, adding that he “suspect(s) it’s always been the case.” Competitors for these scholars could include tech-

The Brown University Community Council discussed the University’s commitment to environmentally sustainable development and the accessibility of financial aid at its monthly meeting Tuesday afternoon.

In response to a presentation from five members of the student environmental advocacy group emPOWER, BUCC unanimously endorsed the creation of a committee to draft a sustainability strategy for the University. If approved, the committee would develop plans to promote Brown’s continued commitment to sustainability under the Office of the Provost, said Matt Breuer ’14. The meeting also addressed expanding the University’s financial aid offerings. Brown for Financial Aid, a new student group, presented a proposal to extend the University’s need-blind admissions policy to international, transfer and Resumed Undergraduate Education students.

Further reductions in direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions, as well as in student and food waste, are examples of initiatives the com-

continued on page 4

continued on page 2

Corrine Szczesny / Herald

Statistics show students are increasingly using the libraries’ online resources.

Despite the 50 percent increase in applications to Brown over the past five years, the Brown Alumni Schools Committee has still been able to arrange interviews for most first-year applicants, said Todd Andrews ’83, vice president for alumni relations. The continued success has been due in part to an increase in the number of alumni volunteers and the number of applicants they each interview.

If the applicant pool continues to grow, the process will likely include more interviews not conducted in person, Andrew said.

“I think in the future you’ll see more phone interviews, more Skype interviews, but for now the alumni are answering the call.”

Both phone and Skype have been used in the past, especially when contacting an increasing international pool, he said.

BASC recruitment efforts have increased the participation of younger alums, Andrews wrote in an email to The Herald.

The number of interviewers has roughly doubled since Andrews began working at the University six years ago.

Other potential means for dealing with the rise in applications continued on page 3

Despite increases in faculty salaries across the University in recent years, there is still a salary gap between faculty in divisions such as humanities and those in other disciplines like engineering and economics, according to data from the Dean of the Faculty website.

A full professor in a humanities discipline was paid more than $30,000 less than a faculty member in the computer science, economics and

engineering departments, according to data on the median salaries for the 2010-11 year published on the Dean of the Faculty website.

It has always been the case that not all faculty members make the same salaries, said Provost Mark Schlissel P’15, adding that the distinction is based on economic forces such as the academic market in which the University competes. Some faculty members — such as those who work in higher-paid disciplines — can also find work in the private sector, meaning that the University must make

Zip zap Zop: Making suds downtown

By Talia Kagan Staff Writer

Seven stories above his small storefront on Union Street, Rick Roden makes soap.

Feature Roden is the owner of Zop, a handmade soap store just off Westminster Street — a 10-minute walk from campus — that also sells shampoos, lotions and fragrances. Zop offers the usual aromatic varieties, like lavender, jasmine and sandalwood, as well as more unusual soaps like bergamot, vetiver and seaside — a particularly exfoliating variety because it includes sand from a Newport beach.

Most unusual, perhaps, is the carbon soap, a jet-black bar that produces black suds. Customers rave about the soap, which uses carbon sourced from Malaysia, Roden said. “It works,” he added, noting that it even cured his

Warm winter Facilities and students discuss the short winter

News, 5

son of acne.

Roden uses his favorite scent, fern, for the carbon soap, which is hard to identify out of context. Roden once made a blue, lettuce-scented soap and named it “Conspiracy Soap” as a joke because it seemed exotic to customers who couldn’t identify the lettuce scent.

The name Zop came from a friend’s daughter, who was always reprimanded by her mother when she mispronounced the word soap.

Roden named his business Zop so the mother would no longer correct her.

Today, Roden is showing me how to make a lily of the valley bar soap.

Our lab, Roden’s high-ceilinged apartment, is strewn with boxes — he’s moving out soon — as well as books, records, shelves of bottles and drying racks of soap. His kitchen is divided in half, a cooking side and a soapmaking side.

In Roden’s most basic explanation, continued on page 2

Talia Kagan / Herald

Roden weighs a soap’s potential “hardness” and “conditioning” before making it.

Stealing

Schleimer ’12 berates BuDS thieves Opinions, 7

weather

By JAMES RATTNER Senior Staff Writer

inside

continued on page 5

By Adam Toobin Senior Staff Writer

Salary gap persists across divisions

As apps rise, alumni interviewers weigh options

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

“students were incredibly fast and really good at navigating the web.”

“That skill is something that wasn’t there 20 years ago,” Quist added. Though he and many of his colleagues appreciate Wikipedia, he said he worries students have the “notion that you’re finding everything when you make a quick search,” he said. “What you’re missing is what we’re good at helping you find, the stuff you’re not seeing when you make that Google search.”

“We offer a banquet,” Quist added. “With the Google box, all you get is dessert.”

Despite concerns about students’ tendencies to conduct less-than-thorough research, the number of articles retrieved from e-journals has more than doubled in the last five years, Quist wrote

BUCC endorses sustainability committee, tackles aid

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BUCC embraces sustainability committee

calendar Today

March 21

4 P.m.

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, March 21, 2012

ToMORROW

March 22

continued from page 1

5:30 p.m.

Peter Balsam, Columbia University

“Sophocles’ Choral Experiments”

Metcalf 101, Friedman Auditorium

Salomon 001

8 p.m.

7 p.m.

Concert of Brazilian Jazz

“No Woman, No Cry” Screening

Grant Recital Hall

Wilson Hall, Room 101

menu SHARPE REFECTORY

VERNEy-WOOLLEY DINING HALL LUNCH

Buffalo Wings, Carrots and Celery with Blue Cheese Dressing, Vegan Nuggets

Shaved Steak Sandwich, Vegan Stuffed Red Pepper, Enchilada Bar, Chocolate Chip Cookies

DINNER Pasta with Eggplant and Olives, Shaved Steak with Mushrooms and Onions, Vegetarian Strudel

Turkey Pot Pie, Stir Fried Tofu, Ziti, Baked Potatoes, Greek Salad Bar, Magic Bars

Sudoku

mittee could pursue. Though the University has made tremendous strides in meeting its 2008 commitment to reduce greenhouse gases by 42 percent by 2020, a committee could recommend other areas where progress is needed, the presenters said.

They added that the committee would communicate the University’s efforts to promote sustainability to the student body. Students are often unaware of how much the University has done to make itself sustainable, they said, citing Brown Dining Services’ green initiatives and the requirement that all new buildings be LEED Silver certified as examples of effective policies.

Since issues of sustainability often require years of discussion before the University takes action, student leaders often graduate before their work is complete, resulting in further delays, the students said. This committee would build more continuity between generations of activists and provide a central forum for the discussion of sustainable practices on campus, they added.

Administration officials at the meeting offered no opposition to President Ruth Simmons’ motion to recommend the creation of the committee to the Provost.

Brown for Financial Aid then

presented a proposal to include international, transfer and Resumed Undergraduate Education students in the University’s need-blind admissions policy.

The group also recommended that the University allow all students to re-apply and appeal financial aid decisions, lower the average student loan burden to $15,000 from its current rate of over $20,000 per graduate and cut annual student-work expectations by $1,000.

These proposals, if enacted, would increase the competitiveness of the University, said Anthony White ’13. Since one-sixth of every class is accepted on a “need-aware” basis — their financial needs are taken into account when considering their application — Brown faces a disadvantage in attracting the best international and transfer students, who might prefer other universities with better financial aid packages, he said.

A move to a complete needblind admissions process would be in line with the stated commitment to diversity from both the University and Simmons, said Alex Mechanick ’15.

While many administrators at the meeting said they favored the group’s goal of need-blind admission for all applicants, the University does not currently have enough funding to make the transition. Full

need-blind admission would cost the University between $20 and $24 million more per year, said Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Beppie Huidekoper.

In response to Mechanick’s statement that the average Brown senior will graduate with around seven times as much debt as a senior at Princeton, Simmons retorted, “How much is Princeton’s endowment?”

Provost Mark Schlissel P’15 said some amount of debt indicates students’ investment in their education and is not always a bad thing.

Despite criticism of the University’s financial aid offerings, Huidekoper and Director of Financial Aid Jim Tilton said the school is making progress and is doing well compared to peer institutions.

Only Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Dartmouth are need-blind for all applicants, Tilton said.

Scholarship support has increased from $33 million to over $90 million per year over the past 10 years, an average 9.4 percent increase every year, Huidekoper said.

The University has managed to achieve this progress while maintaining an average increase of total fees of 4.3 percent over the past 10 years, about average for Ivy League schools, Huidekoper said. Yale — despite a significantly larger endowment — has a tuition comparable to Brown’s, she said.

Zop mixes acids to make unusual soaps Crossword

continued from page 1 “soap is made from mixing acids and alkalides.” The acids are oils, and the most common alkalide used for soapmaking is lye.

Certain oils go in and out of favor.

Right now, shea butter is a particularly popular ingredient, Roden said.

There are soap trends, he said, “just like anything.”

Our soap’s acids will be avocado oil and palm kernel oil, which is like a “workhorse,” he said, as it is both cheap and gets the job done.

Moving over to the computer desk in a corner of the loft, Roden fiddles with an Excel spreadsheet, entering different amounts of oil to determine the optimal combination for this particular batch. As he adjusts inputs, categories like “hardness” and “conditioning” fluctuate on a graph.

These are the considerations, Roden said — “Do you want a bar of soap that’s going to have a nice, tight lather?

Daily

the Brown

Do you want a soap that’s going to condition you?”

Roden’s customers most often ask for conditioning soaps, so he delivers. “I make indulgent bars of soap,” he said.

He has his usual recipes, but today’s mixture will produce a custom batch. “This is going to be a … very fluffy, very lathering bar of soap,” he said, adding that it will be so clean, “you could eat this stuff.”

Roden does not suggest eating soap, though some customers drop hints that they’re eating his bars, he said. “It’s a fetish.”

Once the ratios are set, we start measuring and mixing. Adding the water and lye is a bit alarming when the chemical reaction rapidly heats up, but otherwise there isn’t much we do that you couldn’t do in a regular kitchen, provided you had multiple plastic buckets and sodium hydroxide.

Still, in Roden’s own words: “Soap-

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making’s messy.”

As we wait for the mixture to cool, Roden makes the soap labels and wrapper by manipulating a simple hand-drawn doodle, mirroring and repeating the image into an abstract, colorful pattern. Neither of us knows what a lily of the valley looks like, so we google the flower to figure out a color scheme for the label. We discover that lilies of the valley are white, so we decide on a light green. After a few minutes of Photoshop magic, the large industrial printer behind us prints out our wrapper.

Less than five hours after we pour our final mixture, stirred up with a beater attached to a power drill, into long rectangular molds, Roden texts me a picture of the dried white-andgreen marbleized soap, which will be ready to cut the next day.

The soap will be ready to sell within two days.

Zop is not Roden’s first business, nor is it his only one. He also uses his industrial printer and a vintage, fixed-up stamper to make buttons and magnets for customers who order them on eBay. Before Zop, Roden owned a bookstore and a bar.

He said he taught himself how to make soap, using information from books, but mostly learning from trial and error. He’s been doing it for over seven years, though he only opened the Zop store about a year ago.

He said he’ll probably close the store soon, and is considering a move, maybe to Bristol, where he would continue selling soap only wholesale.

For years, Roden just sold soap wholesale, which he said he prefers to retail.

“I’m not a merchandiser,” he said.

“I don’t have it in me to do that.”

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Campus News 3

Watson fellow predicts eventual democracy in China By kate desimone Contributing Writer

Xu Wenli, senior fellow in international studies, said the changing economic and political atmosphere in China will gradually lead to a more democratic culture in a lecture called “China: Great Changes Ahead” Tuesday evening.

The lecture, hosted by the Asian American Students Association, was part of the University’s Year of China initiative.

Foundations for political change in China are being laid every day, he said. Xu’s own life is a testament to this statement — he has been arrested twice, and he spent a total of 16 years in prison for his involvement in pro-democracy opposition movements in China. On Christmas Eve in 2003, he was exiled to the United States and became a fellow at the Watson Institute of International Studies. He is currently chairman of the China Democracy

Party, the formation of which led to his second arrest in 1998. He is also chairman of the Caring for China Center, which raises awareness of humanitarian issues, said Larry Au ’14, Xu’s secretary, who translated Xu’s lecture for the audience members who did not understand Mandarin. Au, a BlogDailyHerald contributor, is also historian of the Asian American Students Association.

The event gathered about 40 audience members in Wilson. Xu was an expressive and dynamic speaker, often evoking laughter from the audience. He used metaphors — via his translator — to describe China’s economic and political climate. Prior to reform in 1978, Xu compared China’s economy to a race where “everyone had to walk the same pace.”

He added, “When we started allowing people to become richer, people started moving at different paces.”

Xu discussed two fundamental

principles that are necessary for establishing a democratic system.

The first is self-autonomy, which he said is beginning to take hold in China as the central government interferes less frequently in the affairs of its provinces. Xu illustrated the second principle, ownership of private property, with an example. In China, officials can simply tell propertyowners, “Get out of your home — we’re building a highway over your house,” he said, while an American homeowner in a similar situation could sue for compensation. But Xu added that property rights are becoming increasingly respected in China.

Xu stressed that the political system of any country is related to the economy, citing modernization as an underlying cause of China’s 1911 revolution. He commented on the current inequalities in trade between China and the U.S., lamenting that many highquality products made in China

are sold only in the U.S. The leaders of the country should make sure the highest quality products stay within their country, he said, adding, “I believe every person deserves the same amount of respect and human rights, and therefore we shouldn’t be treated any differently in China.”

The main obstacle to democratic progress, he said, is the need to change what Chinese people believe and value. He listed cases of fake eggs and tainted milk powder as examples of a weak respect for the rule of law, in contrast to the U.S., where the president can be impeached for lying. He emphasized that he was not criticizing students from China — rather, he said the responsibility for this problem lies with the older generation.

But he said great change is coming to China that will have a profoundly beneficial impact.

Social media is one contributor to these trends that will one day

bring about democracy. When that day comes, he said he will go back to China, no matter how old he is. “It’s a beautiful country,” he said.

Au, the translator, added that when Xu returns to China, “he hopes he can continue to be of service to his country.” Though he will be 70 years old next year, Xu still feels young — “interacting with Brown students is what makes him feel younger,” Au said.

Michelle Kwok ’15, a student in Xu’s seminar, INTL 1800D: “Survey of Chinese Democracy and Chinese Contemporary History,” attended the event and described Xu as a “really interesting and approachable” professor.

Dylan Wu ’13 also attended the lecture and said he appreciated hearing Xu’s insight. “It’s rare to have an occasion to hear from someone who has personally experienced Communist rule and has been oppressed by the government,” Wu said.

Alum interviewers meet demand of more applicants continued from page 1 would be to eliminate applicants before the interview process or to conduct mass interviews, Andrews said. In the past, this has been done in southern California and Texas, where alums are limited.

Candidates and interviewers in an area come to a school or a large space and conduct all interviews in one day.

Kalena Crafton ’15 said she was not comfortable with a phone interview last year when she applied and felt “shorthanded.” She said while it might make nervous students more relaxed, phone interviews can make it harder for applicants to present themselves fully.

Helen Lord ’14, who hails from Wellesley, Mass., said the University told her she did not need to interview since it was already familiar with her school, Phillips Academy.

Jeffrey Durso-Finley MAT’91, who worked in the Admission Office for eight years, wrote in an email to The Herald that he

does not believe organizations like BASC will be able to match an increasing applicant pool, but he added that “matching each applicant to an interviewer isn’t the overall goal.” Interviews are an important link between alums and universities and “education past and present,” he wrote.

“I think they can live without it,” said Bruce Breimer, director of college guidance at the Collegiate School in New York City from 1970 to 2007, stressing that interviews are generally far less important than teacher references.

Andrews acknowledged that at some point in the future the University may not be able to interview every applicant, in which case the committee will look to its volunteers to seek a “workable solution.”

BASC currently contacts 95 percent of the applicants for an interview each year to offer them an opportunity to speak with an alum, according to Andrews. The interview process gives the University another view of the prospective students.

Take the BDH Readership Survey: http://tinyurl.com/heraldpoll Participants can enter a raffle to win a $30 giftcard to Shanghai or Pizza Pie-er.

BASC uses roughly 10,000 alums from the classes of 1948 to 2011 to contact the 30,000 applicants each year. Ninety-two percent of applicants are eventually interviewed, Andrews said, because not all contacted applicants reply to interview offers.

The interview reports are submitted electronically and go directly into the applicants’ files, said Dean of Admission Jim Miller ’73.

The University coordinates with the interviewers through 350 area chairs, Andrews said.

“Older interviewers are often the most excited” to speak with the applicants, Durso-Finley wrote.

Miller said interviews rarely hinder a candidate’s chances, and “you can’t put a weight” on its effect on the application. Sometimes an interview can encourage admission officers to go back and do more digging.

“It certainly isn’t a defining factor,” Andrews said. “It helps complete the picture.”

“In the States, it could be really important in unearthing a diamond in the rough from Mon-

tana,” Breimer said. “I think they have more impact, geographically, in less concentrated areas.” Interviews are more important if the secondary school, whether domestic or international, is less familiar to the University. Usually, interviewers acknowledge they “have very little impact on decisions,” Breimer said. At times, positive networking by the interviewer can help applicants because of their interviews.

With a wide variety of alums voluntarily conducting interviews, Breimer emphasized there is very little quality control or uniformity in the interviewers. Interviewers are not professionals like the admission officers and should play an appropriately small role, Breimer said.

“Generally I’d say with rare exceptions, it’s a PR thing for (the colleges),” Breimer said. Passionate alums represent their schools well to applicants, he said.

Those who do not have an interview are not at a disadvantage, but rejecting interview offers does not reflect well, Miller said.

Chirona Silverstein ScB’10 ScM’11, who is an alumni interviewer, said she finds interviews to be a good time for applicants to ask questions and that she gets a good view of the applicant in that amount of time.

According to applicant Liam Trotzuk, who is from New York City, his interview with Brown was “by far the most relaxed.” In the lengthy span of time between submitting applications and receiving decisions, Trotzuk said the interview provides “a sense of security.”

There is always the chance that a very good alum can increase a student’s interest in the university, Breimer said. “(Interviews are) very helpful because they would give us insight from an objective person meeting the candidate,” said Ed Hu ’87, former associate dean of admission at the University. He added that though it is often a confirmation of the Admission Office’s previous opinions, it can make the office more comfortable with its selections.

4 Campus News

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Orphaned by tsunami, survivors tell stories of loss

By Kristina Klara Staff Writer

Ayaka Ogawa, who goes to school in Japan, presented her experience during the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami yesterday to a tearful crowd of about 35 students in Salomon 001.

The natural disaster left her without her parents, a sister, grandparents and the house she had lived in for 17 years. “I was left all alone on this planet,” she said.

The lecture, entitled “BEYOND Tomorrow: Orphaned by the Wave,” was organized by the Japanese Cultural Association and presented by BEYOND Tomorrow, an organization founded in Japan after the earthquake. The event featured five speakers, including three students orphaned by the earthquake and tsunami. The students spoke in Japanese, and their words were translated by

Executive Director of BEYOND Tomorrow Minami Tsubouchi, who also spoke about her organization.

Ogawa wondered why she was the only survivor in her family. “I felt like my heart and soul were gone,” she said. But after the disaster, she said she met others who dealt with similar tragedies. “I learned the beauty of people being connected with each other.”

Two fellow orphans presented their stories with Ogawa.

The earthquake and tsunami hit on the day of Sayaka Sugawara’s middle school graduation.

“This is it. I’m going to die. I wish I had the chance to wear my high school uniform,” she thought as she was swallowed by the black water, she said.

In the midst of the chaos, Sugawara said she found her mother bur-

ied under rubble, pierced by nails and tree limbs. She tried her best to clear the debris but was unsuccessful.

“I wanted to save my mother but I knew that staying there, I would be swept away by the tsunami,” Sugawara said. “I chose my own life.”

“It was a decision that makes me cry to this day,” she added.

Masahide Chiba also lost his mother on the tragic day. The earthquake hit while he was playing club sports at school with friends. “Secretly, we were excited that something out of the ordinary was happening,” he said. “Little did we know then how much grief was awaiting us.”

When he arrived back at his home, Chiba found his mother dead. Chiba now said he feels it is his life’s mission to join the relief efforts and to contribute something to his hometown.

“With my mother’s memory beat-

ing strongly in my heart, I want to create a world where no child has to experience the grief I have,” he said.

BEYOND Tomorrow was launched last June so that students like Chiba, Sugawara and Ogawa could take on leadership roles with compassion, Tsubouchi said.

The organization allows students to overcome the aftermath of the 2011 tragedies and become global leaders. Tsubouchi wanted to set up “a platform for dialogue and exchange” across cultures, nationalities, ethnicities, religions and values, she said.

Students in BEYOND Tomorrow will work to be ambassadors of Tohoku, the region of Japan hit hardest by the earthquake. They will lead the reconstruction efforts in Tohoku and gain exposure to different cultures and values.

“Society needs young people like

these three students here to take active leadership in addressing global issues,” Tsubouchi said.

Research Associate in Human Development Yoko Yamamoto presented on the earthquake’s effects on education in Japan. Seven months after the earthquake, 15 schools were still closed and about 160 schools were using a temporary facilities to continue instruction, she said. More than 20,000 students were forced to move to different schools.

“Imagine all of a sudden your education is disrupted, and your classmates and you are suffering from a tragic memory,” Yamamoto said.

“The effort made by BEYOND Tomorrow assures us that even though the 2011 Tohoku earthquake took many things from children, their educational opportunities and futures should not be taken away,” she added.

Humanities professors often earn smaller salaries than their peers continued from page 1 nology companies, research firms and banks.

The discrepancy does not mean that the humanities are less of a priority, Schlissel said. The University would like to pay everyone a salary “in reflection of their service to the University,” he added.

Humanities professors in the 2010-11 school year made a median

of around $129,000, and professors in the engineering, economics and computer science departments made more than $160,000, the Dean of the Faculty website reported. Faculty members in the physical science and social science departments made around $139,000, according to the same data, and professors in the life sciences departments made around $5,000 more.

Economics department faculty

members are paid higher salaries on average than other social sciences because their pay is not just measured against the salaries paid at other universities, but also against pay at business schools, Schlissel said.

Though the University does not view this discrepancy as a problem, Schlissel said “the goal overall is to increase faculty salaries across the board.” Under President Ruth Simmons, the University has made a

lot of progress in raising salaries, McLaughlin said, adding that this was an objective Simmons emphasized.

This goal was driven by external forces, since the University must always keep pace with peers, McLaughlin said, adding that before Simmons implemented the Plan for Academic Enrichment, the University was behind its peers in average faculty salaries in most departments. Now, the University is on the very high end compared to its peers, he said.

In general, faculty members make a decent salary, though working in academia limits how much money they can earn, McLaughlin said.

Choosing to work at a university is a “trade-off ” in which professors exchange a higher salary for job security and the chance to work with students, he said.

“I can’t complain,” said Lawrence

Stanley, senior lecturer in English, of his salary. “My sense is that salaries range all over the place and that Brown has to be competitive with the top schools,” he said.

Salaries at the University will be higher in places where they “interplay with industry,” and the Plan for Academic Enrichment made salaries much more competitive with the market, said Andrew Foster, professor of economics and community health. “Brown works hard to keep the best faculty,” he added.

Janet Blume, associate dean of the faculty and former associate professor of engineering, said she has not heard complaints from faculty members about their salaries.

Compensation aside, faculty members come to Brown for the high-caliber student body, she said.

“We are here for students,” she said. “They make it a pleasure.”

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Campus News 5

Facilities, students reflect on second-warmest winter By ria mirchandani Contributing Writer

Winter gave Providence a warm welcome this year, with an average winter temperature in the high 40s and only 17.8 inches of snow, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration.

Due to the lack of snowfall, the Department of Facilities Management only spent $112,000 of its allotted snow removal budget of $196,000, according to Carlos Fernandez, assistant vice president of facilities, operations and engineering.

This winter was the secondwarmest in Providence since record-keeping began over 100 years ago, according to NOAA. This stands in stark contrast to last year’s mid-30s average winter temperature and approximately 46 inches of snowfall. It was also the fourth-warmest meteorological winter on record for the United States, according to NOAA. The cause of this abnormally warm winter was the jet stream, which is the boundary that separates colder Canadian air from milder air, said Charles Tolley, a meteorologist for NOAA. This stopped the outbreak of cold Canadian air from entering southern New England and has resulted in above-average temperatures for the last 10 months. Tolley called this “unusual but not unique,” adding that “we have had mild, fairly snow-free winters in the past.”

Fernandez said the savings will not have that much of an impact.

“Snow removal is only 0.3 percent of our overall budget, which is an extremely small part,” he said.

Fernandez added that Facilities already spent a significant amount of resources in the fall on Hurricane Irene, which had not been accounted for in the budget.

A total of $90,000 was spent on the trimming of trees, cleaning of drains and post-hurricane cleanup activities.

Despite minimal snowfall, Providence still experienced freezing temperatures this winter, and Facilities had to allocate resources for de-icing and salting pavements. But a snow-less winter has its advantages. With more time available, Facilities is able to reallocate resources to other projects that are normally overlooked, Fernandez said. The landscaping crew has the opportunity to care for trees that it did not have time for in the past, and several areas of campus are undergoing maintenance. Work on spring maintenance has also begun to get “a jump-start on preparations for Commencement by planting new flowers and moving leaves,” Fernandez said.

In past years, Facilities has spent significantly more on snow removal. It spent $246,000 in 2011, $289,000 in 2010 and $203,000 in 2009 due to greater amounts of snow. “It’s not so much about how many inches of snow as it is about how many snowfalls there are,” Fernandez said. “Because a greater number of snowfalls means more time and money, one can’t correlate inches to costs.”

A bigger issue that Facilities faces is utility costs. “This winter, we used 10 percent less energy on heating and saved about $20,000 but because of a warmer summer,

our cost of cooling went up by 10 percent,” Fernandez said. Any money saved is redirected toward energy conservation projects, which include the construction of solar cells on the new fitness center pool and the installation of energy efficient lighting on every building on campus.

Students are certainly not complaining about the warm winter. They have been spilling out onto the Main Green, soaking in the sunlight in shorts, slippers and aviators.

“I’m a big fan of this warm winter,” said Tellef Lundevall ’13. “I was here over winter and it made it easier to go outside.

I’ve been taking advantage of it by hanging outside with my friends a lot. It hasn’t been as miserable walking to class.”

“I’ve noticed a lot more smiling and a lot of different people interacting on the green,” said Ross Walthall ’13. “I’ve been talking to people I never really talked to and playing soccer, which I never really played before.”

But the unusually high temperatures have disconcerted the more environmentally-conscious students. “It’s so nice, but it makes me worried about climate change,” said Anna Poon ’15. “It makes me think the world is going to end soon because Providence is supposed to be cold.”

Alyssa Browning ’15, who hails from Pawtucket, called this winter “a drastic contrast compared to last year’s,” when her hometown’s schools saw roofs collapse under the weight of the snow. She added, “While I’m enjoying the early spring, I still miss the snow.”

Dan Fethke / Herald

Snow was a rare sight and did not remain on the ground for long this winter.

Herald file photo

Students take advantage of the uncharacteristically warm March weather.

E-journal use doubles, print circulation down 15 percent continued from page 1 in an email to The Herald.

In 2007, students retrieved 955,291 articles from e-journals.

Four years later, in 2011, that number was 2,039,634. The numbers may be even higher than these statistics show, as not all e-journal providers “provide user data,” Quist wrote. The library does not have usable statistics from before 2007.

Quist was quick to highlight that this shift to electronic sources does not reflect a decrease in library use — he noted that last spring, 99.3 percent of students swiped in to Rockefeller Library or the Sciences Library.

“Yes, there’s the digital piece, but the libraries are also about physical space, services and re-

sources,” Quist said. “It’s probably true that students aren’t wandering around the stacks as much as they used to.”

The number of items being borrowed from the library — excluding books on reserve — has also fallen in the last five years. In 2007, the library reported an initial circulation of 198,849, while in 2011, that circulation was just 165,723.

Meanwhile, Quist estimated that the libraries have accumulated close to one million e-books.

As the University moves into the digital age, library research and services have undergone a dramatic transformation in order to keep up with students’ needs and preferences. At least 438,636 additional e-books have been acquired and made accessible to the community since 2007, Quist wrote.

The movement into the digital age has not interfered with librarians’ commitment to teaching research skills to students, said Sarah Bordac, head of instructional design research and outreach services at the Rock. Many faculty members continue to invite librarians into their classrooms to teach students about research techniques, and librarians have incorporated digital research skills into these instruction sessions, Bordac said.

Since 2007, the number of such instruction sessions has been on the rise. In 2007, librarians presented in 253 classes, reaching a total of 4,204 students. In 2010,

librarians taught 398 classes and reached a total of 6,681 students.

These numbers dropped slightly in 2011 due to a wave of retirements on the library staff, but statistics showed that each librarian taught more classes in 2011, Bordac said.

She added that the libraries have been hiring new staff members and designating specific digital-based positions.

The biggest shift can be seen in the number of virtual reference transactions — for example, emailing a librarian — as a proportion of reference questions, Quist wrote.

The statistic leapt from 11 percent in 2007 to 45 percent by 2010, with the most significant increase oc-

curring between 2009 and 2010, when the online “ask a librarian” feature was introduced.

The library instated this service in January 2010, and librarians have conducted an average of 216 chats per month during the academic year since that time.

Bordac and Quist said they are optimistic that the library will increase its Internet and digital sophistication in the near future and they hope students will make use of added features.

“Part of it is knowing what tools to use, and part of it is using it with sophistication,” Bordac said.

“And don’t forget imagination,” Quist said.

comics Fraternity of Evil | Eshan Mitra, Brendan Hainline and Hector Ramirez

6 Editorial & Letter

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Editorial cartoon by sam rosenfeld Editorial Brown is not Goliath Last month, we wrote an editorial stating we did not support the University paying additional property taxes, or drastically increasing its voluntary payments, to Providence. In that editorial, we argued that doing so could strain financial aid, compromise Brown’s ability to hire and retain top-notch faculty and marginalize Brown’s contribution to Providence’s knowledge economy. Given the recent discussions on campus and within these pages, we feel it is necessary to once more enter this debate.

We appreciate the enthusiasm that Brown for Providence has brought to the discussions. That said, while we believe that the University should moderately increase its payments, we substantively disagree with the group’s proposal for the University, and take issue with a few specific persistent assertions.

We are particularly concerned with the argument, furthered by Tim Syme GS in an op-ed column earlier this month, that “Brown’s fundraising efforts appear to be focused on high-status building projects” as opposed to prioritizing the “regeneration of Providence.” This kind of misinformation derails nuanced debate. Many sizable donations are earmarked for specific projects, like the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, and cannot be diverted for any other use.

To say that the University has chosen luxurious expansion over supporting a struggling city ignores this reality. Between the money earmarked by donors for specific functions, restrictions on spending funds from the endowment and strong dedication to financial aid and faculty salaries, the University has far less financial flexibility than some assert. Furthermore, it is particularly problematic that The Herald would allow an opinions column to perpetuate and legitimize this fallacy.

In the Janus Forum debate on this issue, Brown for Providence member Ben Wofford ’14.5 stated that the University’s $2 million increase in payments to the city was “pixie dust,” and that Brown plays “Goliath” in its relationship to Providence, labeled by Wofford “David with two broken ankles.” Syme, Wofford and others from Brown for Providence have inappropriately oversimplified the issue, pitting the struggling city against an unfeeling, callous University. But to cast Brown as Goliath — when our community is filled with students and families struggling to fund Brown educations and staff relying on the University for their livelihoods — is completely disingenuous.

Brown needs to continue to thrive and attract top-notch faculty and students, in order to drive the knowledge economy so crucial to this city’s economic success. If the University takes a considerable financial hit, Providence will suffer for it in the long run. It is short-sighted economic thinking to ignore the fact that Brown is the second-largest employer in Providence and is a key figure in the long-term success of this city and state. While extracting money from Brown might seem extremely attractive in terms of temporary relief, it is an unsustainable and dangerous long-term plan.

We agree with Syme and Brown for Providence that University administrators should take pay cuts and return much of that money to Providence. Yet we cannot support a plan that would put even more demands on middle- and working-class families at Brown and limit the University’s ability to help the city of Providence in more systemic, sustainable ways. We hope that as the campus dialogue about these issues continues, it avoids the oversimplifications and fallacies that have plagued it to date.

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

letter to the editor University offers support too freely To the Editor: Marisa Quinn, vice president for public affairs and University relations, troubles me in her quote in Monday’s Herald about Gilbane Development Corporation’s proposal for luxury apartments on Thayer Street (“New student apartments proposed for Thayer,” March 19). She implies that Brown is okay with this kind of development. The Gilbane family is a good family that has supported Brown going way back. I laud their continued investment

in the community. But in my opinion, the current plan sucks. It simply reinforces the chasm between the haves and the have nots that harken back to early days of the Gilbanes’ presence on the campus.

Unwittingly, the plan reinforces the argument presented in the Occupy movement against the disparity of income distribution in this country. Ms. Quinn, please dig a little deeper before you respond to the Gilbane plan.

Tom Bale ’63

quote of the day

“We offer a banquet. With the Google t h e b r ow n da i ly h e r a l d box all you get is dessert.”

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Correction An article in Tuesday’s Herald (“Proposed R.I. bill intended to combat racial profiling,” March 20) incorrectly attributed a series of quotes about racial profiling to Major Charles Swenson, deputy chief of police for the East Providence Police Department. In fact, those quotes should have been attributed to Chief of Police for the East Providence Police Department Joseph Tavares. The Herald regrets the error.

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Opinions 7

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Thoughts on stealing from a (former) BuDS Cashier

By Lauren Schleimer Opinions Columnist If you’ve been to Josiah’s on a Friday night, you know theft is rampant in on-campus eateries. You’ve seen — or been — that student slipping Odwalla bars into a pocket or scooting past the register with a cup of soda claiming, “It’s just water.”

Stealing food is so ingrained in campus culture that Brown Dining Services has given up fighting it. In the past, unit managers would routinely write up students and send them to meet with Ann Hoffman, director of administration for Dining Services. These students honestly didn’t realize what they were doing was stealing, and she said, “Nine times out of ten, they were mortified … they’d say ‘I’d never do this normally. I don’t know why it’s okay, but everyone does it.’”

Eventually, the unit managers were so overwhelmed that they simply stopped writing people up. “It’s not their job,” said Gretchen Willis, director of Dining Services. “They can’t spend their whole shift being the food cops. … It’s disheartening.”

Many students rationalize taking food without paying because they already paid for a meal plan. But this self-righteous sense of entitlement does not change the fact that breaking the rules for personal gain is a serious lapse in moral judgment. Brown students display a remarkable degree of ethically minded decision-making when it comes

to food: Buying organic and local, or going vegetarian. So why is it that when it comes to stealing from Dining Services, morality doesn’t apply?

During the 1960s, psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg followed a group of boys in suburban Chicago from elementary school through college and tracked their moral development.

Kohlberg proposed that individuals develop their capacity for moral reasoning by learning to de-center their worldview to take into account the perspectives of others.

abiding mentality to truly autonomous morality, individuals must enter a sort of moral limbo. Conventional rules are rejected, but those genuine moral principles don’t kick in right away.

In Kohlberg’s study, some of the most morally developed boys achieved high stages of moral reasoning only to regress in the early years of college to ego-centric and hedonistic relativism. While they were entirely aware that people in general value rules and reciprocity, they opted not to apply those moral

After doing the right thing for years, only to realize that stealing won’t get you punished, many students are rebelling against conventional morality. They steal because — in the words of one anonymous senior — they “just don’t give a f**k.”

When confronted by a moral conflict between obeying the rules and serving human welfare, more developed individuals consider the interests of everyone involved and apply the Golden Rule: Treat others how you would want to be treated. When this consideration is extended to the good of society as a whole, there comes a sense of obligation to obey the law to maintain the moral order.

According to Kohlberg, the majority of adults stop here at the letter of the law. The minority — and Brown students in general constitute a minority — move beyond the conventions of society to develop independent moral principles to distinguish right from wrong. But to transition from a law-

constraints to their own decision-making.

Whether our sense of guilt came from parents or teachers, most of us followed the rules in high school to make it to the Ivy League. For many, college life is a rude awakening that doing the right thing is not always rewarded. People lie, cheat, steal and in general do not get punished for bad behavior.

Like the boys in Kohlberg’s study, many students are reacting against the sense of guilt instilled by a lifetime of ‘good’ parenting and beginning to “test out their capacity to be guilt-free.” After doing the right thing for years, only to realize that stealing food will not get you punished, they are rebelling against conventional morality. They steal be-

cause — in the words of one anonymous senior — they “just don’t give a f**k.”

Luckily, for the boys in Kohlberg’s study, moral regression was like a teenager trying out the punk look: In the end, it was just a phase. By age 25, their post-conventional morality was revived on stronger, more principled ground and, as Rosen says, they began “doing the right thing for the right reason.”

We are insulated from the real world here on College Hill. As an auxiliary department of the University, Dining Services runs on a break-even budget. Their mission is to provide students with good food in an environment that fosters intellectual and personal growth. Much like the way Department of Public Safety officers will not arrest students for underage drinking in the dorms, Dining Services is not out to get you for stealing a little food.

But the temporary liberation from letter-of-the-law enforcement has put us into a moral limbo. Without conventional guidance to define right from wrong, many students fall back on the hedonistic, ego-centric tendency to prioritize their own interests and disregard the rest.

It seems like everyone has accepted stealing food as a fact of college life. Maybe it is.

But as members of the Brown community we still have a responsibility to respect each other and the University. Your actions may go unpunished, but that doesn’t mean your decisions don’t count.

Lauren Schleimer ’12 has cashiered all over campus, and she wants you to know that you are not as subtle as you think you are.

Why I hate the Internet

By Ben Stephenson Guest Columnist In a Monday opinion column (“Why I hate smartphones,” March 19), Lucas Husted ’13 explained his hatred for smartphones.

He points out that, aside from being expensive and distracting, the smartphone is “a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none.”

I personally only communicate long distances via the postal service, but I can only imagine that the modern smartphone must be inferior in texting and calling ability than its dumber predecessors. Furthermore, Husted points out that people become dependent on their smartphones for pretty much everything — directions, restaurant recommendations and mindless time-wasting with Angry Birds.

He is totally right, but I would argue that he doesn’t go far enough. It’s time someone stood up against the Internet. In today’s world we all just seem to mindlessly accept that the Internet is a “good” thing.

As someone who chooses never to use the Internet, I face constant punishment from peers and professors alike. I’m constantly pressured to log on to MyCourses or use Facebook. It is even commonplace in most job applications nowadays to assume applicants have email addresses. Seriously?

What is wrong with us?

Think about all of the ways the Internet and smartphones are similar. People waste lots of time on them. They both “help” people make decisions and access infor-

mation. I hate them both. The list goes on.

Husted wrote in his column about how people with smartphones got especially annoyed over the summer when a massive email chain erupted from a Brown notification sent out to all students and faculty concerning a change with Google apps.

Rather than join Husted in blaming smartphones for people being annoyed, I blame the Internet. When our parents were our age, notifications would be delivered on paper or by telephone. Back then, to “reply all” would cost a pretty penny down at the

patterns of moss on trees, but I digress.

The point is that the Internet, like smartphones, makes it easier for us to do things like find directions. Since it’s easier to do stuff the new way, we forget how to do stuff the old way, and therefore we end up worse off than before.

I want to make it clear that I, like Husted, am not against progress. But sometimes things are just good enough the way they are, and you shouldn’t try to make them any better — the plow is a good example. As Husted pointed out, “the devel-

Now when someone wants directions, they don’t pull out a map. They go to the Google to tell them which way to go. Thanks for making humanity stupid, Al Gore. post office as well as require you to spend all day at the typewriter making hundreds of copies of your message.

The Internet allows people to instantly connect all across the world like never before — but at what cost? What about the millions of hours people waste watching videos of David after the dentist and looking at pictures of cats? Now when someone wants directions, they don’t pull out a map. They go to Google, which tells them which way to go. Thanks for making humanity stupid, Al Gore. I should point out that I personally think that maps make people stupid as well. They are a poor substitute for judging directions using growth

opment of the plow ended well before it started telling us what restaurant to eat at.”

If only more things could be like the plow — knowing when to stop before going too far. I wish Charmander never evolved into Charmeleon. I’m still upset about the mass firing of scribes after the invention of the printing press. What was so wrong with the Ford Model T that now everyone is whizzing around in vans and sedans?

Recently, Internet communication aided civil uprisings all across the Arab world.

Protesters gained international support as videos of government oppression were uploaded to YouTube and shared with everyone on the Internet bandwagon. Many

of these videos were even recorded using smartphones’ video recording capabilities!

Unfortunately, Encylopedia Britannica stopped printing editions of their encyclopedias before Arab Spring’s conclusion so I’m not completely sure how things ended up, but I assume it wasn’t good.

I’ll conclude with some sincerity.

A pattern of history seems to be people becoming more and more connected all the time. Humans have developed spoken language, written word, postal services, printing presses, telephones, radios, televisions, cell phones, the Internet and smartphones. Each innovation allows us to connect with people and access information quicker and easier than before. Many of these innovations also present the opportunity for distraction, dependence and time-wasting. These are all very legitimate concerns, but the solution is not to blame technology.

People should themselves determine the limits they place on their level of engagement with their cell phones (as well as the Internet, TV, video games and so on).

Husted has decided he doesn’t want to “see what Lil’ Wayne is tweeting while (he’s) on the toilet.” That’s his choice, and it’s a fine one. To everyone who accepts the conveniences and distractions of the “gamingcamera-Internet-music-calling thing” we call a smartphone, that’s a fine choice, too.

Ben Stephenson ’13 can be reached at ben_stephenson@brown.edu. If you email him, his phone will probably buzz in his pocket, and he’ll read it really fast.

Daily Herald Science & Feature the Brown

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Vernal Equinox illuminates Sci Li courtyards

By Emily Hartman Contributing Writer

As midday approached yesterday, the white marble slabs in the four Friedman Study Center courtyards were flooded with light in a peculiar symmetry. In each atrium, areas covered with white marble slabs were completely illuminated with sunlight, while mulched areas remained in the shadows. The illumination marked the vernal equinox when the length of night and day are nearly equal. The equinox occurs every March 20 or 21 and signals the official start of spring.

Not many people know that these marble patterns actually have a deeper meaning, said Steven Lavallee, head of the Friedman Study Center. When the center was renovated in 2006, the architects at the Architecture

Research Office marked areas illuminated by sunlight at midday on the vernal equinox with white marble stones. The marble forms different shapes in each atrium to reflect the varying patterns of sun and shade.

“They really were more scholarly than the average architects,” Lavallee said. “There was some intention to reflect that Brown is a very different place.”

The marble areas in all four atria were fully illuminated Tuesday from 12:45 to 12:55 p.m. The moment passed quickly and was unnoticed by most students in the center. Lisa Khanna ’12 said she did not know about the significance of the courtyard designs but thought it was “kind of cool.”

“It (is) a little, kind of fun fact that was on its way to being totally forgotten by everyone,” Lavallee said.

Corrine Szczesny / Herald

Marble stones in the Friedman Study Center courtyards are designed to catch sunlight, marking the onset of spring.

Civil Rights activist returns to teach course on ’60s By phoebe draper Senior Staff Writer

Charles Cobb Jr., visiting professor of Africana studies, teaches the civil rights movement of the 1960s from an informed perspective — he was there. As field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Cobb participated in the movement first-hand.

History courses tend to portray the civil rights movement of the 1960s as a set of disjointed events led by a few iconic figures, Cobb said. He seeks to dispel this misconception of the movement in his spring seminar AFRI 1260: “The Organizing Tradition of the Southern Civil Rights Movement.”

“The real way to understand the southern movement is as a movement of grassroots community organizing in the rural black belt — which is quiet, almost invisible work,” Cobb said. “That’s where all the forces that led to substantial changes really took root.”

Field work

Cobb’s perspective is shaped by his experience as field secretary for SNCC from 1962-67. The committee focused its attention on mobilizing communities to demand change, he said. Treading through the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta region, Cobb said he spent his time as field secretary “talking to people, day after day after day.”

Working in “plantation country,” Cobb encouraged residents to register to vote at county courthouses.

His first assignment was in Sunflower County, Miss., where only 100 of 20,000 blacks of voting age were registered to vote.

Cobb’s work was especially difficult because of the poverty in the region, where residents had an average income of $3 per day. Violence and economic reprisal kept blacks from voting in a society dominated by a “feudal” sharecropping system, Cobb said.

“As an organizer, part of it was

breaking through the mental habits of oppression,” Cobb said, “and part of it was convincing people to try to register to vote” despite the potential backlash they might face.

Cobb and other SNCC organizers encouraged people to make demands for the kind of society they wanted.

“We weren’t in the business of telling people what to do,” Cobb said. “We were in the business of trying to end this paralysis that we found in these communities where nobody felt completely comfortable in making a demand on a larger scale.”

Civil rights course

Cobb uses his field experience as a starting point to explore the grassroots efforts in the civil rights movement. Three points will frame his class’ discussion, Cobb said.

First, Cobb urges his students to recognize that southern black populations began to speak for themselves. “Sharecroppers, day workers, maids, cooks” all began to gain a voice in the South in the 1960s, he said.

Second, Cobb highlights the internal challenges within the Southern black community.

“Although it’s true that the movement challenged racial segregation and white supremacy,” perhaps even more important were the “challenges black people made to one another within the black community,” Cobb said. As an example, he cited Martin Luther King Jr., who emerged as a leader in response to a challenge from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People leader Edgar Nixon. Nixon accused ministers at a meeting in King’s church of being “cowards,” Cobb said.

Third, Cobb explores the convergence of activists of all ages during the movement. As a 19-year-old working for SNCC, Cobb found himself coordinating with much older activists — many of whom were local NAACP leaders — who

shared their experiences and gave him access to valuable networks of grassroots mobilization.

Lesser known-figures who “never made it into the historical canon” are brought to the forefront in Cobb’s course. “They need to be brought forward, and I can do that, because I was there,” he said.

Cobb also makes distinctions within the movement, exploring organization in different states and contrasting urban and rural movements.

“That’s a lot to try to do in Brown’s 13-week semester,” he said, smiling.

Exploring the tradition

“When you learn about the civil rights movement in high school, you learn the ‘big men’ approach,” said Bradley Silverman ’13, an opinions writer for The Herald, who took Cobb’s course in spring 2011.

“But you don’t learn much about the ordinary people who were involved in it — how they sacrificed and why it worked.”

Many students come into Cobb’s course with specific interest but limited knowledge, Cobb said.

Michael Stewart ’13 enrolled in the course last year after a friend told him Cobb “had the best stories ever.”

“It was fairly amazing to be in a class with a professor who was so involved with what he was talking about,” Stewart said.

Silverman also noted that Cobb’s personal experiences added to his teaching in the classroom.

“He didn’t speak to us as an academic,” Silverman said. “He spoke to us as a man with really fascinating experiences, sharing his perspective on a very unique period in American history, for which he not only had a front row seat, but was a very active participant.”

Cobb emphasizes the intricate planning behind every action in the movement, he said.

“There was a constant exchange of ideas and thought,” he

said. “People — whether they had a sixth grade education or a master’s degree — were thinking.”

This intellectual activity is “left out of the scholarship,” and events are portrayed as if they happened “spontaneously,” Cobb added.

Cobb urges students to explore the thought process behind voter registration, sit-ins and desegregation. He said he wants them to “literally think about the thinking.”

Stewart said the class “definitely changed his views about the movement.” He enjoyed learning about the “character flaws” of the prominent figures and said he gained an understanding of the tension between the younger and older generations of activists.

“The class really made me think about (the movement) in a more complex way, a more nuanced way,” said Jesse McGleughlin ’14.

“I gained an understanding of the power of coalition building, the power of grassroots organizing.”

From journalist to professor

The class reading list consists of “books of ideas,” Cobb said. The list includes “On the Road to Freedom” written by Cobb himself. This book is one installment in Cobb’s lifelong career of reporting and writing.

He has worked as a foreign affairs reporter with National Public Radio, as a staff writer at “National Geographic” for 12 years and as a writer and reporter on multiple films with Public Broadcasting Service’s “Frontline.”

“I went everywhere from Utah to the eastern frontier of Russia,” Cobb said with a laugh.

Cobb also helped found allafrica. com, which has become the largest online news provider of information about African affairs.

His career has shifted from daily reporting to feature reporting and book writing. While his former focus was foreign correspondence, the bulk of his current work revolves around the Southern civil rights movement.

Most of the year, Cobb spends his time writing in Jacksonville, Fla., but he makes an annual trip to Providence to teach his course as a visiting professor.

For Cobb, teaching the course complements his writing.

“Teaching is helping me find a language that effectively tells this story,” he said.

Modern applications

The organizing tradition of the Southern civil rights movement holds many lessons for modern activist movements, Cobb said.

Though racism and discrimination are not the forefront of today’s major social movements, “the lessons of the black struggle, of what ordinary people can do to effect social change, are applicable,” he said.

The Occupy Wall Street movement raises important issues about wealth disparities in America, Cobb said. So far, the movement has consisted largely of downtown encampments without becoming a community-wide effort, he added.

“It’s one thing for a group to talk” among its members, Cobb said. “It’s another thing when you have to figure out how to take your political ideas into a community, a community that may be hostile or afraid of those ideas.”

Silverman expressed the need for social movements to engage in “meticulous organizing” — activities such as mass letter writing initiatives, door-to-door campaigns and fielding candidates in primary elections. “It’s not just about sloganeering and holding rallies and getting attention,” he said.

Cobb said grassroots organizing efforts are the crucial component in creating lasting social transformation, though protesting may still play an important role.

“If you look at the organizing tradition you see what ordinary people can do,” Cobb said. “You don’t have to be Martin Luther King (Jr.) to be an important factor for change.”