Thursday, April 12, 2012

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vol. cxxii, no. 49

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Since 1891

‘Harold and Kumar’ star goes to the White House Brown

Conversation examines U.’s identity

Indian-American actor talks diversity, politics

By Shefali Luthra News Editor

Corinne Szczesny / Herald

Actor and former White House employee Kal Penn spoke in Salomon last night.

Actor Kal Penn has two words of advice for Brown students — be crazy.

“I’m so glad that I’m constantly meeting people who are making crazy decisions and crazy choices,” said Penn, actor and former White House Associate Director of Public Engagement, who addressed a packed Salomon 101 last night.

Penn said he has frequently been called “crazy” for decisions he had made — in particular, leaving his role on the television show “House” for a two-year stint in the White House.

Penn’s talk occurred during the

first night of the housing lottery, a conflict for which he apologized.

“I almost feel obligated to find you housing now that you’re here,” he said.

The talk encompassed both humorous and serious topics, touching upon Penn’s experiences as an Indian-American actor and his work in the Obama administration. He frequently elicited cheers and applause, especially when he discussed his childhood in New Jersey, a background he said “is like an ethnicity” in the way it bonds people.

The subject of diversity often “just comes up organically” when

“They didn’t list the square footage of the rooms, so we’re not sure what we got ourselves into,” said Luisa Garcia ’13 after her group leader selected a room in the building. “But we really like that part of campus, and the access to Thayer (St.) is great.”

Tensions started to rise as the prime rooms were swept up, and the room started to fill with both people and noise. At this point,

Through a fall Group Independent Study Project, Saturday night dinners and a series of other initiatives and projects, a new student group is looking to reignite discussions about the University originally inspired by the New Curriculum.

Born over a dinner between two upperclassmen, Brown Conversation aims to continue the dialogue about Brown, its educational philosophy and its place in higher education.

The group emerged from dinner conversations last semester between Evan Schwartz ’13, an independent concentrator in community development and education, and Anish Sarma ’12, an electrical engineering concentrator. Promoted solely via word of mouth, the group’s listserv now boasts 142 members, and 20 to 35 people show up at any given meeting. Around 100 individuals in total have attended meetings at some point, Schwartz said.

With the administrative turnover taking place, now could be a particularly opportune time for students to consider the identity of the University, Sarma said, but he added that timing is “coincidental

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Housing changes cause tension on first night of lottery

By Caroline Flanagan Senior Staff Writer

Mohammed Ghazi Atallah ’13 started off this year’s housing lottery by choosing Minden Hall 807. The first 460 housing groups selected rooms at Sayles Hall last night, and the rest will choose tomorrow night.

Members of Residential Council, dressed in bright T-shirts and funny hats, stood beneath a large screen displaying available rooms

and the

Elections Board present the

UCS/UFB Candidate Debate

inside

Today, 8-10 p.m. in Metcalf Auditorium

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

receive the typical applause from the crowd.

“It’s just chill,” said Freddy Navarro ’13, whose group, number 69, was hoping to get a suite in Vartan Gregorian Quad with his group.

The majority of the early groups sought singles. Singles in Minden, the Pembroke dorms and rooms in the newly renovated 315 Thayer St. were some of the most popular choices, though some groups who chose 315 Thayer St. said they were a little unsure of what to expect.

Romney seeks GOP support in R.I. before primary

By Adam toobin Senior Staff Writer

Republican presidential hopeful and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney lambasted President Barack Obama’s economic policies in front of hundreds of supporters at a town hall campaign stop in Warwick last night. Romney came to Rhode Island in preparation for the state’s Republican primary April 24, a competition he is widely expected to win.

city & state Noticeably absent from Romney’s address was any mention of former Senator Rick Santorum, who suspended his campaign Tuesday, virtually assuring Romney the Republican Party’s nomination. Romney instead focused his criticism on Obama — his potential November opponent — in what was perhaps an indication the general

Tiger fight

Former Chilean president talks about new book news, 4

election campaign has begun.

Romney opened by countering the notion that the Republican Party is waging “a war on women,” which has recently received media attention because of controversy surrounding the party’s stance on birth control. “The real war on women has been waged by this president’s economic policy, because they have failed American women,” Romney said. He said that of the more than 800,000 jobs lost over the course of Obama’s presidency, 92 percent were held by women. PolitiFact, a nonpartisan organization that rates the accuracy of political statements, classified the statistic as “mostly false.”

John Robitaille, the 2010 Republican candidate for Rhode Island Governor, spoke to the crowd before Romney took the stage. Robitaille highlighted the difficult economic times and the high uncontinued on page 2

Tom Sullivan / Herald Mitt Romney slammed Democrats’ policies at a campaign stop in Warwick.

Posttakes week off, makes a magazine.

Spring Weekend guide comes out next Wednesday.

weather

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at the front of the auditorium. A line of representatives for the upcoming six groups formed along a side of the room. The rest of the participants waited nervously in their seats, at first only filling the front rows. In the middle of the night, when the event was most heated, the auditorium was packed with rowdy and anxious students.

For around the first 20 minutes, the lottery went smoothly as members of the first 100 groups slowly filed in. No shows did not even

By Claire Schlessinger Staff Writer

t o d ay

tomorrow

54 / 39

61 / 43

2 Campus News

Supporters find Romney’s speech ‘inspiring’

calendar Today

April 12

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Twelfth Night Auditions,

A Perfect Wedding,

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Spoken Word Showcase,

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VERNEy-WOOLLEY DINING HALL LUNCH Ginger Pasta Chicken, Eggplant Parmesan Grinder, Vegan Dal Cali, Vegan Oatmeal Cranberry Cookie

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Sudoku

RELEASE DATE– Thursday, April 12, 2012

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Crossword

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 Loathe 6 Poke into 11 “Blue Hawaii” prop 14 Rear 15 Houston hockey team 16 Frat letters 17 *Place for afterdinner courses 19 Banned pesticide 20 Magic show reaction 21 Lots 22 “Omertà” author 23 Mystery writer John Dickson __ 25 *Repress 27 Double-__: puzzle type 30 German pronoun 31 When many Lyon Lions are born 32 Brownish purple 35 Certain commuter’s aid 39 Utter 40 See 33-Down, and word that can precede the end of the answers to starred clues 42 Grinder 43 Uncredited actor 45 Yani Tseng’s org.

46 Home of Miami University 47 Neighbor of Leb. 49 Neverending 51 *Skating exhibitions 56 Fertile Crescent land 57 Musty 58 Butter sources 60 American rival: Abbr.

63 “__ Fine Day”: 1963 hit 64 *Delta’s aptly named monthly 66 Fly the coop 67 Stud 68 Assays 69 Like some looks 70 Put up 71 Sorority letters DOWN 1 River of Tuscany

2 “Joanie Loves Chachi” co-star 3 Hearer of final appeals 4 __Kosh B’Gosh 5 Comeback 6 Go to and fro 7 Post-op program 8 Maine campus town 9 Promotes 10 Immigrant’s subj.

11 Excessive 12 Invasive Japanese vine 13 Prevent legally 18 What ad libbers ignore 22 Overabundance 24 Star 26 “My country, __ ...”

27 Horn, for one 28 Gravy thickener 29 Ringlet 33 With “and” and 40-Across, emissionsreducing method whose first word (this answer) can follow the start of the answers to starred clues

The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, April 12, 2012

34 Sidle 36 Burger follower 37 “Nessun dorma,” e.g.

38 Combine, as assets 41 Using (up) 44 Fireplace powder 48 Chair on a porch 50 Fake 51 Fan club focuses 52 Towpath locale

53 She’s not for you 54 “What did I do to deserve this?”

55 “Poison” plant 59 Harangue 61 Architectural pier 62 More, to a minimalist 64 Elle, across the Atlantic 65 Bit of a snore?

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

xwordeditor@aol.com

04/12/12

continued from page 1 employment rate, which he attributed to Democratic policy. “I think we ought to send him a pink slip.

I think we ought to send President Obama back to Chicago,” he said.

Romney spent most of his speech addressing Obama’s “failed economic policies.” He listed the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — known colloquially as the stimulus bill — as well as health care and Wall Street reform legislation as examples of the administration’s failed attempts to shore up the economy.

He proposed instead reducing the federal bureaucracy by 10 percent, lowering tax rates and cutting ineffective government programs.

National, state and local governments currently control 38 percent of the economy, Romney said, and if Obama’s health care bill remains in place, the government would control 50 percent of the economy. “At what point do you stop being a free economy, by the way? And a free nation?” he asked.

Government “running the economy, telling us how to live our lives, telling us what kind of health care we can have, what kind of treatment we can receive — that’s where we’re headed,” Romney said.

“That’s the course to become more like Europe. Europe doesn’t work in Europe. I don’t want it here, all right?” he added.

Romney also said Obama’s decision to cut defense spending has harmed America’s security. “We need to have a military so strong that no one in the world would ever think of testing it,” he said. “If I were president, I would take our shipbuilding not down but from nine to 35 (ships) per year. I’d purchase more F-35s. I would add about 100,000 troops to our active duty personnel, and I’d make sure our veterans get the care they deserve,” he added.

After speaking, Romney took questions from the audience. State Rep. Doreen Costa, R-Exeter and North Kingstown, asked Romney for advice on addressing illegal immigration policy, like a recent law passed in Rhode Island that gives illegal immigrants in-state tuition at state colleges and universities. Calling the Republican Party “the party of immigration,” Romney vowed to stop illegal immigration in order to allow the country to bring in more legal immigrants, who have the education and language skills to help America’s economy, he said.

Romney’s remarks were generally well-received, but some Republicans refused to concede that the primary race is over. Michael Gardiner, a candidate for Congress in Rhode Island’s second district and the lead delegate for the Newt Gingrich campaign on the ballot in Rhode Island, said he is willing to support Romney in the general

Singles go quickly in first night of lottery continued from page 1 no-shows were met with cheers and applause from the audience, and certain room choices were met with boos and groans.

Singles went quickly in a year when, due to upcoming renovations, Keeney Quadrangle, Andrews Hall, Miller Hall, Wayland House and Metcalf Hall were not included in the lottery. To replace some of the missing singles, Graduate Center D was converted entirely into singles.

ResCouncil wants to emphasize creating a community for sophomores, housing them largely in doubles on main campus, said Andy Chang ’13, housing lottery committee chair for ResCouncil.

“We’re trying to have sophomores live in doubles and juniors and seniors live in singles,” he said.

Daily

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“People overemphasize singles sometimes, but we want to try and keep the community intact.”

ResCouncil’s plan is for sophomores to live in Littlefield Hall and Hope College, which were made sophomore-only for next year, joining Caswell Hall and Hegeman Hall. Juniors will live in the Grad Center and New Dorm areas, and seniors will live off-campus and in the Barbour Hall and Young Orchard apartments.

But rising seniors did not always fulfill those expectations, usually targeting the dwindling singles.

By number 198, the last single on Pembroke was taken, prompting loud groans, and the last of the Wriston Quadrangle singles soon followed. Many students ended up dropping down to form larger groups as others started to dip into

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election, but he will vote for Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, in the primaries. Gingrich is “a conservative, who balanced four budgets consecutively,” Gardiner said. “He passed the first balanced budget in 25 years (as Speaker of the House). He co-authored the Contract with America. … His credentials are unbelievable,” he added.

But Heather Swagart, a Connecticut native, said Romney was “very inspiring.”

“He answered a lot of my questions, and I think more of the United States needs to listen to what he has to say,” she added.

“I definitely think it was an inspiring speech,” said Allan Fung, mayor of Cranston. “He hits a lot of points, particularly with respect to the economic needs of our city and our state and our country,” he added.

“We need to go back to the capitalist experience,” Fung said. “There have been a lot of failed promises by the president.”

Many Brown students attended the event in support of Romney.

Alex Drechsler ’15, Stephanie Hennings ’15 and Colin Smith ’13 said they thought the governor did a “great job.”

“I thought he said a lot of things that were really well thought out and not just political jargon,” Drechsler said. “I really think he would be able to help our economy and help our country.”

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the Grad Center singles.

Around the same time, rising juniors started to make their selections, many of them disappointed by the dearth of remaining singles.

“I just wanted anything on Pembroke — Grad Center was probably the last place I wanted,” said Alexandra Salinas ’14, who, with number 299, was left with no other choice.

Other juniors who hoped to get singles had even worse luck — ­ the last single was claimed at number 375. Some juniors said they expected better luck based on the previous years’ results.

“All the past years, there were some left at this point,” said Flora Jin ’14, who had hoped for a single but ended up in a Minden double with a friend.

Hegeman and Young Orchard also disappeared earlier than in previous years with the last rooms being chosen in the mid-300s. In previous years, rooms were available well into the 400s.

At the end of the night, the first of the members of the class of 2014.5 began to select rooms. Several rooms in Hope were claimed immediately, and around 9:30 p.m., the stressed masses exited Sayles for the evening.

“I think it went well,” said Chang, who had previously expressed concern that it had not been advertised sufficiently in years past. “There weren’t as many no shows compared to last year, so I think we managed to get the word out.”

Campus News 3

The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, April 12, 2012

Started over dinner, group prompts dialogue Simmons discusses the conversation. have expressed intent to enroll, was financial aid, city relations continued from page 1 sustaining Many of the current members designed to “contextualiz(e) the

By Margaret Nickens Senior Staff Writer

President Ruth Simmons visited the general body meeting of the Undergraduate Council of Students Wednesday night to discuss the council’s work this past year and to answer questions about tuition increases, the relationship between Brown and Providence and the University’s priorities. UCS also discussed a possible code change regarding the relationship between the council and the Undergraduate Finance Board.

Simmons said she expects the number of students applying to the University to continue to decline in the future.

“I think that the landscape is changing because the public is very aware of the challenges of meeting the cost of higher education,” Simmons said, adding that she does not think this will affect the quality of applications. Simmons also said it was infeasible for the University to go universally need-blind given its current budget.

Simmons later answered questions about the University’s reputation nationally and globally, increasing the diversity of the faculty and the University’s relationship with Providence.

“Universities have become, in many ways, the most successful sector in society,” Simmons said, adding that because many other institutions are failing financially, she believes it will become more common for cities to ask colleges and universities for assistance in the future.

But she said, “I don’t think it’s reasonable for the city, having made mistakes and having become insolvent because of those mistakes, to turn to institutions that are successful and to demand that they pay for those mistakes.”

UCS also recommended changes to the relationship between the council and UFB and the way in which the council is funded. A fivemember committee was formed last month to review ways to improve the communication between the two bodies after the council proposed an amendment that would give the council more control over its funding.

The committee was a “way for UCS and UFB to hammer out what

each group has for responsibilities and rights and also to put forward different and clear rules about how UCS was funded,” said Holly Hunt ’13, one of the council members who served on the UCS-UFB committee. “Before, it was actually really ambiguous.”

Under the proposed changes, the council will still submit a budget to UFB each spring, and UFB will remain a subsidiary of the council.

But UCS would automatically receive $1,200 each semester to use for projects on behalf of students. At least one-third of all proposed “capital improvements” will be funded by the board, and the council will receive a certain amount of funding for decorations, publicity and “mission-relevant conferences.”

Currently, UCS members are all required to attend one UFB meeting, and, under the proposed changes, UFB members will also be required to attend one council meeting because they “didn’t really have a clear sense of what we do here, and why we need money,” Hunt said.

The finance board will also be allowed to submit a list of groups they would recommend for categorization or re-categorization to the Student Activities Committee. This list will only be a recommendation, and the committee will not be required to adhere to UFB’s suggestions, Hunt said.

The council will vote on these and other suggested changes next meeting in the form of a proposed code change.

The council also approved a code change to implement rules for write-in candidates in UCS-UFB elections. Because Chris Catoya ’13 did not receive the required number of signatures to officially run for UFB vice chair, people will be allowed to write in candidates for the position during the election. But the current code does not specify rules for determining the victor should more than one write-in candidate receive votes during the election.

For this reason, the council approved a code change specifying that if only one write-in candidate enters the election, the candidate could win with five percent of the votes. If multiple write-in candidates enter, one candidate must receive a majority of the votes in order to win.

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to the fact. … It’s sort of fundamental to what Brown is that students engage with these questions.”

“Part of being educated is knowing why you have the education that you have,” Sarma said.

The New Curriculum, born from the efforts of a GISP led

by Ira Magaziner ’69 P’06, P’07, P’10 and Elliot Maxwell ’68, was implemented in 1969. The new guidelines did away with distribution requirements and added the Satisfactory/No Credit option in place today.

Schwartz said the original effort to revamp the University’s curriculum was not meant to be a “one-off thing,” but rather a spark to get students to constantly reflect on their education and how to improve it. He said there have been different “pockets of conversation” since then, and Brown Conversation aspires to unite those “different voices” in a collaborative setting.

The group’s purpose is intentionally imprecise. Some people come with concrete goals for structural reform at the University level, whereas others simply want to talk about their own education. Schwartz said upperclassmen might be drawn by controversial issues related to the University, such as those explored in The Herald’s “Mission Drift?” series last semester, but first years seem to want to explore their education personally first. “You can’t have a sense that Brown has changed … if you just got here,” Sarma said.

Some projects that group meetings have precipitated are the Outgoing Senior Interview Project and a GISP for next semester. While the group itself may avoid taking stances on particular issues, it hopes to bring people of similar goals together “to catalyze projects that they care about,” Sarma said.

Schwartz emphasized the diversity of group members and a desire for fresh faces, adding that the breakdown by class years is almost even. The group is especially interested in recruiting first-years so they can start thinking about their education to shape their four years purposefully.

“It seems like this sort of discussion often happens largely among seniors,” Schwartz said. But Nikhil Kalyanpur ’13, a Herald opinions columnist, said it seems like underclassmen are more represented at the meetings than seniors are — something he called crucial for

are involved in student groups or committees that pertain to Brown Conversation’s mission. Several members of the Undergraduate Council of Students, including Anthony White ’13 and David Rattner ’13, have attended meetings.

As a UCS member, White said he brings certain insights to the group about administration, adding that he is also interested in the group as a student who wants to make the concentration declaration process more meaningful.

Rattner said he has been working with a committee within Brown Conversation to circulate information about the New Curriculum to incoming students.

Kalyanpur and Schwartz are independent concentrators, and Schwartz works at the Curricular Resource Center. Peggy Chang ’91, director of the CRC, said Brown Conversation shares similarities with the center’s mission in that they both are peer advising resources that “help any student who seeks advice to make the most of his or her time at Brown.”

The GISP for next semester, for which about a dozen students

Brown Conversation,” Schwartz said. Pedagogically, it will “analyze different philosophies of education … and then through them analyze Brown’s philosophy historically as well as what it is now,” Kalyanpur said.

He added that one goal will be to “cement our own practical philosophy” that will inform Brown Conversation’s future projects and direction.

Last week’s discussion topic was about whether Brown should have requirements. After asking what departments people had deliberately avoided, the group realized that for every department someone had ignored, there was another person who was concentrating in that or a similar discipline. Members then pitched their concentrations to get people to “reconsider departments that they’d written off,” Schwartz said.

One potential project the group is planning is a Curiosity Fair, inspired by the discussion about requirements, where students would talk to people in departments they had avoided to be convinced to explore different areas.

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The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, April 12, 2012

Novelist connects China, India in lecture

By Aparna Bansal Features Editor

When Amitav Ghosh is not writing best-selling novels, he might be riding across Java on a motorcycle or trekking through the mangrove forests in the Sundarbans. “(The Sundarbans) is the poorest part of India. The people who live there lead lives of unimaginable poverty … and yet, when you’re with them, they live and laugh more than people in Providence,” he said during a discussion yesterday. “The critical paradox of life is most of us don’t really know how miserable we are.”

Ghosh, who is on campus for two days as part of the Year of China, kicked off his visit with a presentation on Guangzhou, historically known as the port city of Canton. He then participated in a conversation on the relationship between India and China with Christopher Lydon, visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies, and Professor of Anthropology Lina Fruzzetti yesterday evening in Petteruti Lounge.

“The Year of China has explored a number of different themes across disciplines,” said Shana Weinberg, coordinator of Year of China. Ghosh’s visit fits in with the program’s aim of conducting a comparative study of China with other countries, she said.

Ghosh, who has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and was awarded the prestigious

Padma Shri by the President of India, said his interest in China was sparked by research he conducted for his novels. While reading about Indians who left their homeland in the 19th century, he realized the close historical links between China and India.

“It was completely an accidental discovery,” Ghosh said.

Ghosh traced the history of the opium trade, explaining that the British East India Company funded their consumption of Chinese exports such as tea and porcelain by selling opium from India to China. He incorporated historical paintings and photographs into his lecture and focused on Canton’s export-oriented economy, describing it as the “world’s great emporium.”

“It’s very strange when we talk about China adopting some kind of western model,” he said, referring to the country’s capitalist economy. “In fact, it’s a very old model, and it’s completely Chinese.”

He also spoke about some of the cultural similarities he’s observed between India and China.

“Space is treated in the same way,” he said. “There’s the same sacredness of objects.”

But India’s inward-looking mind-set has prevented the country from creating closer ties with its neighbor and exploring these commonalities further, he said.

“This has been one of the great historical disasters of Indian civilization,” he said.

In his conversation with Lydon, Ghosh spoke more broadly about his writing experiences and

views on international relations.

He recounted an article he wrote for the New Yorker 10 days before the Iraq War, which the editors of the magazine insisted on partially rewriting as a way to “disown the burden of the piece.”

“There are wheels within wheels,” he said. “The plurality of voices which America rejoices — in these moments of crisis, the plurality completely disappears.”

Ghosh compared the United States with the British Empire, arguing that the U.S. Constitution is treated as scripture here, and this “sets in place a system that increasingly seems unworkable.” He also explored America’s interest in the fantasy of empire.

“For him, India is an example of successful empire,” he said. “In the minds of many Americans, India has become a kind of coda to the imperial project.”

Ghosh said he does not want his books to be read purely for their political messages. “We lose something in life when we only look at the big picture,” he said.

The author, who has received a PhD in social anthropology, also stressed the importance of seeing places for oneself rather than readily accepting knowledge. He recounted a visit to Yunnan province with his son, during which he said he realized there is more flexibility within the Chinese system than he would have imagined.

He found that China was extremely user-friendly for visitors and poked fun at his own native India.

In China, “they don’t try to cheat you as they would in India,” he said. “But India is wonderful in its own way — India is India, China is China.”

Ghosh will be speaking about his writing at a lunch event titled “The Fiction of Borders: The Borders of Fiction” today, and he will conclude his visit with a lecture about the Chinese influences on Indian culture.

See The Herald’s in-depth Q&A with Ghosh at BrownDailyHerald.com.

Thanks for reading!

Campus News 5

The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, April 12, 2012

Former Chilean president discusses new book Penn made jump from Lagos described his book as global trade was key to promoting Hollywood to Washington the history of two transitions in equity and Chile’s future, Snyder continued from page 1 he discusses his experiences, he said. He added that he is not sure he has his own thoughts about diversity — everyone should “just bone diversely” to keep them from looking or sounding the same.

Penn’s status as an IndianAmerican marked much of his own early experiences in Hollywood, he said. He spent several years “eating beans out of a can” while searching for jobs, when finally his agent called him with a potential supporting role in “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder.” When he asked her what information she was withholding, she confessed: The character was named Taj Mahal.

Though he was initially turned off, Penn looked at the script. There were about “30 things wrong” with its character portrayal, he said. But fundamentally, Taj Mahal was just an 18-year-old college student who “wants to get laid” — someone he said everybody could relate to.

Penn was nervous when he went to the audition. But then he saw the other finalist for the role: a “white dude named Nick with brownface on.”

“I was like, ‘No way,’” Penn said.

Though he spoke briefly with Nick, Penn said he knew then that he had to get the part.

Penn’s role in the film helped him land a leading role in “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle,” a movie he said purposefully sought to prominently feature AsianAmericans. The studio had asked its writers why the characters had to be Asian and Indian — why they could not instead be black and Jewish.

The writers had a “diverse group of friends,” Penn said, and found it “weird” when Asian and Indian characters were shifted to the side in films and television. Ultimately, they did not want to make “David and Jason go to McDonald’s” — they wanted it to be “Harold and Kumar,” he said.

And in turn, Penn’s role in “Harold and Kumar” led him to star in Mira Nair’s 2006 film “The Namesake.”

“So I was really glad I played Taj Mahal,” he said.

Some of Penn’s own friends took a less traditional path to success. When a group of his friends could not find acting jobs, they bought a video camera and created their own short films for the internet, he said. Eventually, they found success — under the name “The Lonely Island.”

That ingenuity reflects a creativity prominent in the younger generation, Penn said.

Older executives at NBC “still didn’t know how the changing face of technology would affect their companies,” he said.

The small number of major media companies influences what people see, he said. For instance, “ER,” which was broadcast on NBC, only featured medical equipment by General Electric — a logical choice, he said, since NBC is owned by GE. The product place-

ment stunned him, though, and he said he wondered whether people actually watched “ER” to choose their medical products.

“I asked doctor cousins of mine — there are lots of doctors in the family,” he said, a comment that was met with laughter. His cousins confirmed what he had suspected: Doctors did not in fact watch “ER” to figure out which medical products to buy.

In the fall of 2007, Penn went to an event that altered the course of his career — a campaign rally for then-Senator Barack Obama.

Penn, a lifelong independent, said he was struck by what he saw — someone who was not particularly liked by either the Democratic or Republican establishments, but who was “the real deal.” Penn put his own life on hold to work on the campaign, following Obama to Iowa and joining his youth outreach team.

After the election, Penn applied for and received a job in the White House, where he worked principally on Asian-American and Pacific Islander outreach, youth outreach and arts outreach.

In his second day on the job, Penn was placed on the phone to determine whether an agency should be included in an executive order. Though the White House had already decided not to include the agency, when it came time to officially pronounce the decision, Penn fell silent.

“I thought to myself, surely there’s an adult on the phone,” he said.

Youth interests are particularly underrepresented in media coverage of politics, he said. For instance, when he spoke with young liberals and conservatives, both groups identified jobs, poverty, climate change, education and Darfur as their top five political concerns.

Both said they viewed the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” as a civil rights issue.

But from watching news coverage, he would never have guessed it, he said. In particular, Penn attributed the discrepancy in coverage to the amount of money older interest groups have to influence politics — the American Association of Retired Persons, for instance, has a budget in the billions, while youth interest groups only have a few million each.

Penn said he has often been asked about the transition between life in Hollywood and life in Washington D.C. But he said for him, the two lifestyles are not mutually exclusive.

Media has played a role “in socializing in how we look at our political system,” he said. And going to D.C. reminded him that “being crazy is probably a little bit good.”

“Regardless of your major or what your interests are or who you bone — hopefully diversely,” this is the most innovative generation the world has seen, he said.

The event, sponsored by the Brown Lecture Board, was followed by a brief question and answer session.

By Dana Reilly Contributing Writer

It certainly is “a wonderful life after the presidency” for former Chilean President and Professorat-Large Ricardo Lagos, as his good friend and former Colombian President Belisario Betancur used to tell him. Lagos spoke at the Watson Institute for International Studies last night about his latest book entitled, “The Southern Tiger: Chile’s Fight for a Democratic and Prosperous Future.” This is the third book Lagos published this year, which is “pretty admirable, as any professor will tell you,” quipped Richard Snyder, director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and professor of political science, in his introductory remarks.

Lagos was good-humored as he addressed the audience of about 25 people. “I discovered that in this country the real dictators are the publishers,” Lagos joked when discussing his difficulty influencing the title of his book.

Chile — the transition from dictatorship to democracy and the “transition from a rather backward to a more modern country,” Lagos said. “The second transition is much more difficult to achieve.”

Lagos was a leader in the resistance movement against Augusto Pinochet in the 1980s and played a crucial role in restoring democracy to Chile. He is famous for denouncing the dictator on national television, pointing his finger at the camera lens and addressing Pinochet directly, a historic event dubbed “Lagos’ finger.” Snyder described Lagos as a “pragmatic socialist.” As minister of education and minister of public works, Lagos expanded social services for the poor and improved highway infrastructure with private tolls. Lagos served as president of Chile from 2000-06, during which time he pursued various free trade agreements with the United States. Lagos understood

said.

He ended the talk by applauding the student protesters who are now demanding better access to quality education. “A political era came to an end with the demonstrations in Santiago,” Lagos said.

Matthew Gutmann P’14, vice president for international affairs, said the book will be available at the Brown Bookstore. “I think this is an opportunity for students to hear from an important world leader,” he said.

Lagos will visit Snyder’s POLS 1240: “Politics, Markets and States in Developing Countries” course this afternoon. Lagos will also attend the upcoming events at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, including a two-day conference, “New Approaches to Poverty and Inequality Reduction in the Global South,” with former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi and policymakers from Brazil, India, Mexico and Turkey.

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6 Editorial Editorial

Pushing academic boundaries Last month, we expressed disappointment that the University was planning to institute the Professional Executive Master’s Program for fall 2013, a program we believe is motivated by short-term economic concerns that neglect Brown’s long-term mission. That said, we are extremely pleased with the announcement of the debut of the Graduate School’s Open Graduate Programs.

The program offers an innovative and interdisciplinary approach to graduate studies. Students will be able to combine a doctoral study with a master’s degree in another sub-field. A University faculty committee has accepted nine students for the first installment of the program.

The University is reportedly receiving extremely positive feedback on the program, and we would like to echo this sentiment. The program fits in perfectly with incoming President Christina Paxson’s background in and emphasis on interdisciplinary work. Paxson expressed an interest in “develop(ing) links between the sciences and social sciences and humanities,” and this program seems to us like a strong move in that direction.

The Herald reported that one enrolled student plans to devote a chapter of her engineering PhD dissertation to archaeology, the field in which she is pursuing a master’s degree. We anticipate that this type of creative and multidisciplinary study will enhance the University’s academic culture. At Brown, we like to distinguish ourselves as inventive students who cannot be neatly placed into a single discipline or interest. We are glad that this new program challenges the notion that doctoral students in particular need to keep their focuses narrowly defined. The program will enable graduate students not only to push the bounds of their academic research, but also the boundaries and limitations of the disciplines themselves.

Furthermore, we feel that this program is especially promising for fields in the humanities. Given the themes of The Herald’s “Mission Drift?” series last semester and having spoken with humanities professors and students on campus, we know that many feel the University is trending towards an emphasis on physical and life science research in a detrimental way. We can’t help but agree with this criticism. As such, the Open Graduate Programs can serve as the best of both worlds, as a way for doctoral students focusing on the sciences to incorporate master’s work in the humanities into their primary field. While we would certainly like to see the University make a stronger effort to combat this shift away from humanities, this should be a small step in the right direction.

As with any pilot program, it will be necessary to scrupulously evaluate the program in its first years and examine how it is implemented. Some have expressed minor reservations that the additional master’s study might detract from the heavy workload endemic to doctoral studies, something administrators should undoubtedly monitor. To be honest, however, we see very little reason not to embrace this program. We are confident and excited in the program’s ability to attract the type of intellectually curious and dynamic students on which Brown prides itself.

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

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Sun rises, sun sets Herald inbox waits for you Your letters, your love letters@browndailyherald.com Correction An article in Friday’s Herald (“Petition calls for financial aid reform,” April 6) stated that Amit Jain ‘12 and Tim Natividad ‘12, co-founders of Brown for Financial Aid, were roommates as first-years. In fact, Jain and Natividad lived on the same hall, but were not roommates. The Herald regrets the error.

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The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, April 12, 2012

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Opinions 7

The Brown Daily Herald Thursday, April 12, 2012

Who cares about Trayvon Martin?

By helen mcdonald Opinions Columnist

Nearly two months ago, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was killed in Sanford, FL when self-appointed neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman shot the youth — who was black and wearing a hoodie the night he was killed — for looking suspicious in a gated community. This incident has opened the door to conversations about racial violence in the United States, and several rallies have been held across the nation to call for the arrest of Zimmerman, who is currently in hiding. Interestingly enough, Brown has not held any rallies, demonstrations or even any meetings in the months since Martin was shot.

Well, the explanation for the lack of meetings is really quite simple: Trayvon Martin was a young black man. The colleges that would organize the most to rally for justice would be historically black colleges and universities like Howard University and Clark Atlanta University, right? While Howard and Clark did have rallies in March, other colleges like Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Texas, the College of Charleston, Western Michigan University and many others held protests as well. Students have collectively flooded the Internet with support for the Martin family through YouTube videos, Twitter trending topics and

Tumblr posts. So, I suppose the Trayvon Martin shooting is not just a black college priority.

The important thing to note about all of the aforementioned colleges and universities is that they are not in Rhode Island. We’re so far away from Florida, and New England is quite progressive relative to other states, so racial violence isn’t a reality for us, right? Surely, it’s a regional thing. Perhaps that argument would make sense if at least two rallies had not taken place in Providence at the end of March.

for an hour and a half. A discussion and film screening followed the march. Community members met April 8 to continue conversations about the slaughtered youth, with an open invitation to students at Rhode Island College and Brown.

I have run out of excuses for the University’s lack of response to Trayvon Martin’s death. We can have protests about the University financially supporting Providence, and about sweatshop workers and the bookstore’s clothes, but we don’t want to talk about the very real issue of racial

I have run out of excuses for the University’s lack of response to Trayvon Martin’s death. We can have protests about the University financially supporting Providence, and about the Bookstore’s product policies ... but we don’t want to talk about racial violence.

The city’s “Justice for Trayvon Martin” rally took place March 27 at Father Lennon Park. Later that week, about 50 to 70 people gathered March 30 at Central High School for a march in honor of Trayvon Martin. Supporters, many of them men, congregated in black attire, with their hoods up and mouths covered in black bandanas, to form a cohesive group standing up for Trayvon Martin. Carrying signs with proclamations like “RACISM KILLS,” “R.I.P. TRAYVON MARTIN” and “NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE,” protestors marched around downtown Providence

violence. It is hard to wonder if the University as a whole — not just the administration but also the student body — cares about “black people problems.” We did not talk enough about the execution of Troy Davis in September, and we have barely discussed the Kony 2012 campaign, among other issues.

Why don’t we march, protest and organize in the face of Trayvon Martin’s death?

This question is not my attempt to rally because the lack of a specific protest is not our problem. And, I use “our” as an inclusive pronoun because this problem does

not belong exclusively to the black community. We as a student community, regardless but not unaware of race, need to think about why we are not enraged about Trayvon Martin’s death. We are black, or people of color or friends with people of color who could have been Trayvon Martin. We are citizens of or residents in a country where people are still murdered for the color of their skin. We all are currently living in a state that is struggling to pass a bill to prevent racial profiling by police officers, in an attempt to decrease incidents of racial violence. Why don’t we care?

It is fairly simple to read a book about racial violence or racial justice and decide that you are angry. It is also fairly simple to close that book and return to the “Brown bubble” where everyone — presumably — has equal rights. As a black student, I ask myself quite often if the University cares about my experience as a person of color. Furthermore, I am saddened when I hear people of color decidedly announce that the University doesn’t care about [insert racial group]. If you have reached the end of this column and you still don’t find the University’s silence a problem, I think you can safely say you don’t care about any of the Trayvon Martins who live in your country, work in businesses with you or your family and sit in your classes.

Helen McDonald ’14 is ready to talk about Trayvon Martin and can be reached at Helen_McDonald@brown.edu.

Why it’s ethical to eat meat

By Lauren Schleimer Opinions Columnist

In March, the New York Times’ Ethicist column in asked: Is it ethical for humans to eat meat? As omnivores, human beings have always relied on meat as a significant source of nutrition. Evidence of specialized hunting techniques dates back 50,000 years to the origins of human culture. But just because humans have always eaten meat does not mean we ought to continue doing so. Similarly, just because most of the meat consumed today comes from animals whose living conditions are, well, unlivable does not mean that raising livestock and killing them for meat is inherently unethical.

Human beings are animals, despite our delusions to the contrary. We occupy a large niche in the global ecosystem and the top spot on most food chains. We also possess two formidable skills: the power to alter the natural order and a capacity for moral reasoning that created the ethical dilemma over our meat-based diet in the first place.

Rather than rely on hunting, scavenging and gathering like other omnivores, ancient humans transformed the environment to better serve their own interests. We planted crops and domesticated animals, providing the necessary ingredients for long-term human settlements to flourish into civilizations. With science and technology, our

power over the environment has grown to the extent that we can alter ecosystems at will. We exert our authority over the rest of the food chain by raising livestock for meat, protecting endangered species and hunting those that flourish in the wild.

Transforming the environment to increase human welfare is not without cost or unintended consequences. We have significantly altered the natural order by creating genetically modified organisms, clearing large swaths of land for monoculture and raising animals in unnaturally concentrated feedlots. Such change in itself is neither

conditions.

Many vegetarians satisfy their hunger and assuage their guilt by passing on the chicken and opting for tofu or seitan instead. It’s an idealized way to live life, but the rationale for individual abstinence is more sentimental than ethical. Advocating a murder-free diet is tempting for its lack of moral ambiguity, but it doesn’t solve the problem at hand. Rather than clinging to our principles in the face of a very practical problem, we need to be realistic about the repercussions of choosing whether or not to eat meat.

We owe non-human animals a certain consideration of interests because they are also sentient beings, but we cannot simply care for them out of the kindness of our hearts. One can only keep so many pets.

a good, or bad thing, but human beings, as distinctly moral animals, make value judgments about the way things are and ought to be.

The most compelling argument for why eating meat is unethical stems from the total disregard for animal welfare in the industrial food system. As Peter Singer argues, we must grant non-human animals equal consideration of interests because they are also sentient beings. Their suffering outweighs the purely economic benefits derived from raising livestock in inhumane

Consider, for a moment, what would happen if we all call it quits because enslaving and killing other animals doesn’t sit well on our collective conscience. What exactly is going to happen to the billions of cows, pigs and chickens we are currently raising for food? Domesticated animals depend wholly on humans to provide for their needs, and the new species of livestock we’ve created wouldn’t last a generation in the wild.

What’s more, animals are necessary for even a meat-free food system. Our ability

to increase productivity and decrease the consumer costs of certain foods — whether they are endless supplies of chicken breasts or enough soybeans to meet vegetarians’ protein needs with tofu — have blinded us to the negative externalities that result from artificially isolating the cultivation of crops from the life cycle of animals. In nature, everything is interconnected. The most sustainable forms of food production mimic natural ecosystems and incorporate both plants and animals.

For better or worse, we’ve assumed responsibility for the fate of the animals we’ve domesticated. Rather than acting selfishly as natural selection intended and continuing on our path of exploitation, we can use our moral judgment to devise a more ethical order and our technology to make it reality.

In this more ethical order, humans would still eat meat. We owe non-human animals a certain consideration of interests because they are also sentient beings, but we cannot simply care for them out of the kindness of our hearts. One can only keep so many pets. The most ethical approach to the animals we’ve domesticated employs the logic of utilitarianism. Raise them in a way that maximizes total welfare and minimizes suffering. Guarantee that — in the words of Temple Grandin — they live a decent life and die a painless death. And then enjoy the nutritional benefits of eating a nice piece of meat.

Lauren Schleimer ’12 would rather hunt and gather, but the pickings are slim these days on College Hill.

Daily Herald Campus News the Brown

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Presidential election reform reintroduced

By Sona Mkrttchian Senior Staff Writer

Courtesy of Xephyr Inkpen

Nearly 4,000 historic items from the John Carter Brown Library collection can now be accessed online.

JCB puts historic documents online

By Benjamin Wolkon Contributing Writer

The John Carter Brown Library is home to more than 50,000 rare books and 16,000 reference books and secondary sources. But due to the changing nature of students’ study habits and library restrictions to protect its books, most of these resources remain vastly underused.

In an effort to make its collections more widely available, the library is working with the company Internet Archive to digitize its book collections and make them available online for anybody to see.

“It’s a radical new universe that we’re operating in, and we may seem like a rare books library that is old-fashioned on the surface, and we are — we have old books here in a building that’s more than 100 years old,” said Edward Widmer, the JCB’s director and librarian.

“But these extraordinary powerful tools of learning are really exciting and are changing everything we can do.”

The digitized collection allows people to download the historical collections on their computers and Kindles, and it also lets readers search for words, copy and paste items into their projects and share the documents with groups through special reading lists.

The project, now in its second year, is set to continue through at least spring 2013 and longer if it receives more funding. Costing $46,000 per year, it is being sponsored by map collector and Cartography Associates President David Rumsey.

“I see Brown students walking around all the time receiving information through an iPhone, laptop or tablet,” Widmer said. “That’s how young people are processing information — including historic information about distant centuries.”

“So I thought we needed to be abreast of this change and not only to begin to capture historic information with these new systems, but even better to send it out into the world,” he continued.

Thanks to this project, readers will be able to “cut and paste sec-

tions of an old book and email it to someone,” Widmer said. “You can search an old book even if it has no index because now, when it is scanned, it becomes wordsearchable.”

Language will be no longer be a barrier, either. “With a book in Spanish — a lot of our books are in Spanish or French — Google Translate will instantly tell you what that book is about,” he added.

The project started with the JCB’s Haiti collection, which includes rare books, maps and newspapers that tell the story of the founding of the French colony of Saint-Domingue and its evolution from the richest colony in the Americas to the only colony that fell to a slave revolution. The revolution resulted in the founding of Haiti.

Collections from Argentina, indigenous America, Peru, Portugal and Brazil combine with the Haiti collection to make up roughly 4,000 JCB items currently available online. The collections contain firsthand accounts of colonies, laws, revolutions, wars and countless other historical events.

“Some documents still have thumb- and handprints all over from being read in the field by people preaching to slaves about how they shouldn’t revolt,” said Xephyr Inkpen, a Rhode Island School of Design graduate who works for Internet Archive. Inkpen has been copying thousands of pages from centuries-old books and using a custom-built scanner, one of only 70 in the world, for digitization.

Thanks to the digitization project, students can read firsthand accounts that would otherwise be more difficult to view, since the JCB does not allow its documents to be removed from the building.

Readers are required to present two forms of currently valid identification — including a passport if the person is not a citizen of the United States or Canada — as well as a permanent address and in many cases a letter of recommendation from “an established college or university professor” just to look at books, according to the JCB website. The

library also prohibits the photocopying of rare books.

Due to these obstacles, Inkpen sees the contributions of Internet Archive as valuable to students looking for easier ways to access JCB documents. “The library’s motto is ‘speak to the past, and it shall teach thee,’ so digitizing books is a cool way for them to leave the library and reach a broader audience,” she said.

Students have offered positive feedback on the project. “When more people have access to significant documents, it promotes a greater environment for learning,” said Sam Paci ’14.5.

“The JCB is something that a lot of people don’t use,” said Chris Anderson ’14. “This will make research more convenient.”

The digitization also immortalizes books that are beginning to corrode after hundreds of years.

Lead crystals from the ink in handwritten books can eat through pages, and the caustic dye on covers can change the color of the whole book after a few hundred years in print, Inkpen said. Nothing can be done to stop this process, but the digitization will leave images of the documents online forever in an accessible manner.

“It’s preserving a moment in time for that book,” Inkpen said.

“These books have lived longer than any of us. Some of them are 500 years old — that’s longer than America has been around.”

“Students and faculty really love what we’re doing, but the group I’m getting the most feedback from is the citizens of foreign countries whose history lives in this library,” Widmer said. “They have a lot of trouble getting access to their own history because of libraries that are off-limits, or in some cases libraries that were looted or had earthquakes or hurricanes happen. …

They’re so grateful to us that we’re putting their history up online for free.”

“People from Haiti have called saying, ‘I don’t have the funds to travel to Providence, but I was able to find my ancestor in one of these publications,’” Inkpen said.

The National Popular Vote Bill — a product of the national movement aiming to reform the presidential election process by modifying the Electoral College — has returned to the forefront of state politics. The legislation was introduced in the state House of Representatives in February, marking the fifth time the bill will be heard in the Rhode Island General Assembly. Representatives will vote May 1 on the measure, which currently has 45 sponsors in the House.

city & state Under the bill’s provisions, the candidate who receives the most votes nationally will be elected president. This system stands in contrast to the current method of the Electoral College, in which 48 of 50 states follow a “winner-take-all” method, meaning that the candidate who receives the highest percentage of votes in the state could be awarded all of the state’s electors.

Nebraska and Maine are the current outliers in this system — they appropriate their electoral votes in proportion to voter opinion. Currently, the candidate who receives the majority of electoral votes across the nation is named president.

If Rhode Island passes the legislation, it will enter into an agreement with nine other states that have already approved the measure.

In order for the changes outlined in the agreement to go into effect, 270 electoral votes are needed nationwide. The nine states that have already ratified the agreement constitute 132 votes.

Under the current presidential election system, four candidates in the nation’s history have won a presidential election without winning the popular vote, said Ryan O’Donnell, a lobbyist with National Popular Vote.

The “winner-take-all” rule is also a major problem with the current system, O’Donnell said.

“The country is carved into two kinds of states — states that matter and states that don’t,” he said. “Candidates are not going to campaign anywhere where they are comfortably ahead or behind.”

This means “two-thirds of our states are ignored time and time again,” he said.

As a “consistently blue state,” Rhode Island is almost always passed over when presidential candidates are campaigning, said Christina Morra, a lobbyist for Fair Vote Rhode Island. Morra said the last time a presidential candidate visited the state after primary season was in 1960, when Richard Nixon was fulfilling his campaign promise to visit each and every one of the nation’s states before the election.

On campus, both the Brown Democrats and Democracy Matters have previously voiced support for the national popular vote.

Alex Mechanick ’15, a member of Democracy Matters, said voter turnout could increase as a result of this legislation.

“Greater public engagement is a healthy thing for elections,” Mechanick said. “We like to think the president is elected by the people, and if that doesn’t happen then you have issues.”

He added that this phenomenon could also increase participation in local elections because national and local races are often listed on the same ballot. By getting more voters to come out on Election Day to choose a president, “you get a lot more involvement with the entire ballot,” Mechanick said.

Opponents to the national reform have argued that states with large populations will be overly represented within the aggregate national vote, meaning that voters in California may have a greater say in choosing the president than voters in New Hampshire, for instance.

But so far, states of all sizes have passed the bill into law, O’Donnell said.

The Rhode Island Tea Party has come out in adamant opposition, suggesting that the Electoral College actually highlights “concerns within all states, rural, suburban and urban” through a system of checks and balances, Tea Party leaders wrote in a press release.

“Our Founding Fathers designed a political structure for the United States to protect the rights of the individual by preventing the central government from becoming tyrannical and oppressive,” they wrote.

Gov. Lincoln Chafee ’75 P’14 has promised to sign the legislation into law if it passes in both chambers this year. Chafee’s predecessor, Donald Carcieri ’65, vetoed the bill in 2008 despite overwhelming support in the General Assembly.

“This is a great year for it to go all the way but it’s going to be a close vote,” said Rob Richie, executive director of Fair Vote. Richie added that there is overwhelming support for this type of reform due to recent events, including the 2000 presidential election, in which George W. Bush won the election without winning the popular vote.

“The 2000 election hasn’t left people’s minds, and if we’re unfortunate enough to have one of those close elections, I can see it gaining more steam,” said Shawn Patterson ’12, president of the Brown Democrats.

Both O’Donnell and Richie said they are optimistic that the legislation will go into effect before the 2016 presidential election.

O’Donnell added that Rhode Island voters are more likely to support this legislation now because they are seeing firsthand how their state is being ignored by the major candidates. “(The legislation) is getting people to realize that change is possible,” Richie said. “When they realize that change is possible, they’re pretty pleased.”