Monday, April 16, 2012

Daily

Herald

the Brown

vol. cxxii, no. 51

Monday, April 16, 2012

Since 1891

Fitness, aquatics center opens to public By morgan johnson Senior Staff Writer

The University’s athletics program has undergone many transitional, sometimes trying moments in recent years. Today, less than two weeks after Jack Hayes was announced as the new director of athletics, the department continues its transition to a new era with the unveiling of the long-awaited fitness and aquatics center.

see pages 6-8 for full coverage The building has three parts: the Jonathan Nelson ’77 Fitness Center, the Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatics Center and the David J. Zucconi ’55 Varsity Strength and Conditioning Center. Outside sits the new Ittleson Quadrangle, which replaces a parking lot.

Though men’s and women’s wa-

ter polo and swimming and diving teams have had access to the pool for over a week now, today marks the opening of the entire facility for the community. All this week, the physical education department will be offering visitors a series of activities, parties and giveaways to celebrate the opening and test the waters before its official Corporation dedication May 25, the Friday of commencement weekend.

“We’re trying to create excitement without an official dedication,” said Matthew Tsimikas, assistant director of athletics and physical education.

The events — in addition to serving as incentives for drawing students to the facility in its opening week — were set up to “recognize and honor” all of the effort put into the building, he said.

The fitness center will be open from 6 a.m. to midnight on week-

Emily Gilbert / Herald

continued on page 6

The new facility includes the fastest pool in the Northeast, the country’s largest solar-thermal panel installation and state-of-the-art exercise equipment.

By Margaret Nickens Senior Staff Writer

The Herald sat down with the candidates for the Undergraduate Council of Students president and vice-president and the Undergraduate Finance Board chair and vice-chair. Voting begins Tuesday at 12 p.m. and will continue through Thursday at 12 p.m. The winners will be announced at 11:59 p.m. Thursday on the steps of Faunce House.

The candidates for UCS president are Robert Bentlyewski ’13, David Rattner ’13 and Anthony White ’13.

and a Herald editorial cartoonist.

The daytime portion of the festival emanated a laid-back vibe as the ever-changing audience gathered on Lincoln Field. Shirts and shoes were gradually peeled off under the bright blue sky.

The sunshine was in stark contrast to last year’s festival, which was forced to relocate to Sayles Hall for the entire festival due to inclement weather.

“Nobody is a prima donna,” Prodi said. “We are just spending a nice part of the day.”

Adam Darlow GS also said he

Last week, the 11th annual Ivy Film Festival temporarily brought Hollywood to campus. Every year, the Ivy Film Festival features a selection of student films, advanced screenings and Q&A sessions with visiting industry professionals at various venues around Brown’s campus.

arts & Culture bands as part of Folk Musicians at Brown. Even sea-shanty folk were represented by Brown’s pirate a cappella group ARR!!!.

“We’ve tried to make the festival more and more representative of local artists,” said Loren Fulton ’12, one of the event’s organizers

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Elis outlast Bruno in quadruple overtime

M. Lacrosse

arts & culture Co-Executive Directors Travis Bogosian ’13 and Caleigh Forbes ’13 have worked since last spring with a dedicated team of students to select student films from national and international submissions and to make big names such as rising star Lena Dunham, iconic producer, director and screenwriter Barry Levinson and award-winning actress Laura Linney ’86 readily available to the student body.

By ethan mccoy Sports Editor

Family affair

Following an advanced screening of the first two episodes of her new HBO series “Girls,” writer, director and actress Dunham

inside

continued on page 4

Arts...........................2 news.........................3 fitness.................6-8 editorial.............10 Opinions..............11

Jesse Schwimmer / Herald

Sam Hurster ‘14 notched a hat trick in Bruno’s heartbreaking loss to Yale in 4 OT.

TED talks

Famous series reveals Providence locals News, 5

It took four periods of overtime for the men’s lacrosse team and Yale to settle the score at Stevenson Field Friday night. But in a game with Ivy League playoff implications, the Bulldogs’ (6-4, 3-2 Ivy League) Deron Dempster finally found a breakthrough after 14 minutes of scoreless extra time to lift Yale to the 11-10 win. Brown goalie Will Round ’14 turned in his strongest performance of the year, making 17 saves — seven of which came in the overtime periods — while a balanced offensive attack was paced by a hat trick from Sam Hurster ’14.

Skepticism

Syme GS opposes blindly following Corporation

weather

By Michael Weinstein Contributing Writer

Saturday’s fourth annual Folk Festival brought together an eclectic mix of students, faculty, families and European politicians.

“I come here to have a siesta in the sun,” said Romano Prodi, former prime minister of Italy and professor-at-large at the Watson Institute for International studies.

Sponsored by the student group Folk Musicians of Brown, this year’s event featured a variety of local and on-campus bands that played 30-minute or hour-long sets. The festival kicked off with

John Conley, who played guitars made out of suitcases.

The lineup consisted of 17 artists, ranging from rock-oriented folk to guitar folk to Appalachian folk, said Cat Wallace ’15, who was responsible for contacting

Bentlyewski

“I would like it so the average student is interested in what UCS is doing and also has confidence that UCS understands what they want,” Bentlyewski said.

Bentlyewski said he wants to bridge the gap he perceives between the council and its constituency by bringing an average student’s perspective to the table.

“I do my homework. I watch Conan. I go to sleep. I feel like I’m pretty average,” he said. “What I want to do is give (the students) a reason to take interest again” in the council’s activities. Bentlyewski hopes to accomplish this task by restructuring the council to include 12 equal members from each class.

Born in Dover, N.J., Bentlyewski said he was not prepared when he came to Brown to be an American

Big names Campus gets folksy at annual festival from big screen visit College Hill

By Phoebe Draper Senior Staff Writer

Candidates revealed: UCS hopefuls talk policies

Opinions, 11

The win for the Elis clinches them a spot in the Ivy League playoffs, while the Bears (4-7, 1-3) are now on the outside looking in. To claim the fourth and final spot in the postseason, Brown must do its part by winning its last two Ivy games against No. 5 Cornell (9-1, 4-0) and Dartmouth (2-8, 0-4), while also getting some help from Harvard (6-6, 2-2), who must lose its final two games against Princeton (8-3, 4-0) and Yale.

After the game, the Bears’ faces looked forlorn, but Head Coach Lars Tiffany ’90 said the drawn-out loss left him with a silver lining.

“These two teams — the differ-

continued on page 9

t o d ay

tomorrow

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80 / 47

2 Arts & Culture

Folk festival links community and campus

calendar Today

April 16

10 A.m.

ToMORROW

April 17

continued from page 1

12:30 p.m.

Blasted at Production Workshop

Shoes Have Soul, Gallery Talk

T. F. Green Downspace

Haffenreffer Museum

8 p.m.

4 p.m.

Beethoven Piano Recital

Andrew Dubus III Lecture

Grant Recital Hall

70 Brown Street

menu SHARPE REFECTORY

VERNEy-WOOLLEY DINING HALL LUNCH

Chicken Fingers, Italian Roasted Potatoes, Zucchini, Grilled Caribbean Jerk Chicken

Bacon Ranch Chicken Sandwich, Swiss Broccoli Pasta, Cut Green Beans

DINNER Gyro Sandwich, Vegan Roasted Vegetable Couscous, Roast Beef Au Jus, Baked Sweet Potatoes

Italian Meatballs with Sauce, Spinach Pie Casserole, Italian Couscous, Lima Beans

Sudoku

The Brown Daily Herald Monday, April 16, 2012

enjoyed the relaxed vibe of the festival. “It’s not presumptuous,” he said. “You don’t have to commit. You don’t have to dress up.”

The festival provided a great venue for community members and students to come together on the same lawn, said Becca Rast ’13.5, another organizer.

As a free event and an alcohol-free event, the folk festival functions as “common ground” between students and the community, Fulton said.

“It’s nice to have a college environment where families can come,” said TJ Ponticelli ’13.

Community member Kathy Silva said her husband attends the event because “he’s an old hippie.”

John Silva, her husband, said he found the outdoor setting “relaxing” and added that the festival made him “feel young.”

But the music appealed to diehards and folk novices alike.

“I’m not an expert,” Prodi said.

“I am not an American. But I like it — it’s just music.”

The festival began outside at noon and moved into Sayles at 6 p.m. for another six hours of music. The daytime section was more “chill” and family-oriented, while the nighttime portion was catered to students and had a more rocking atmosphere, Wallace said.

While attendance experienced several lulls throughout the night, the atmosphere remained energetic, she said.

“We had to earn the crowd,” said Naseem Khuri, lead singer of the Kingsley Flood, the secondto-last band to perform. “But we got a lot of energy out of the room.”

As bands shuffled bass drums and guitars in and out of the back door of Sayles between sets, the

building’s wooden walls shook with music and the stomping feet of dancing students.

“Everyone got up and came to the stage — it was captivating,” said Nick Dawson, a member of the Famous Winters.

Last Good Tooth, a high-energy four-man band, closed out the night for the second year in a row.

Cameron Parsons ’14 was less familiar with the band but enjoyed them nonetheless, he said. “This was the first time I ever heard folk, and I’m hooked,” he said. For Parsons, Last Good Tooth’s performance consisted of “good guitar, good mustaches, good atmosphere,” he said.

The Folk Musicians of Brown hold weekly meetings and jam sessions at which they plan the spring festival, Fulton said.

And the festival only continues to grow. “Each year is bigger and better than the last,” Fulton said.

Sedaris talks family, taxidermy

By Alexa Pugh Staff Writer

Crossword

For Valentine’s Day, David Sedaris bought his boyfriend Hugh a box of chocolates — but only because a taxidermied owl didn’t seem like enough. Sedaris’ stories of life’s small peculiarities, as well as some of its larger ones, kept audiences laughing on Saturday night at the Providence Performing Arts Center.

Sedaris, whose sardonic wit and playfully dark humor has earned him acclaim as an author and humorist, stopped in Providence on his nationwide tour to promote his latest book, “Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary,” which hit bookstores September 2010. But the majority of Saturday night’s readings were from his more recent work, including an article published in the New Yorker and some in-progress pieces.

Sedaris kicked off the evening with a reading of “If I Ruled the World,” a short, quippy piece that parodies religious fundamentalism.

He followed with a humorously irreverent tale called “Understanding Owls,” in which Sedaris used tongue-in-cheek humor to explore the limits of human sympathy and his own fascination with all things grotesque.

Daily

the Brown

In his pursuit of a stuffed owl, he recounted, an enthusiastic taxidermist proudly flaunted the skeleton of a pygmy murdered by a British colonist, a mummified arm that had been severed in a bar fight and the preserved head of a 14-year-old girl kept wrapped in a grocery bag.

“It wouldn’t have been disturbing to see the skeleton of a slain pygmy in a museum, but finding it in a shop for sale raised certain questions,” Sedaris remarked. “Uncomfortable ones, like, ‘How much is he?’”

Among other things, Sedaris said “juvenile morbidity” is something he shares with his sisters Gretchen and Amy. Several of Sedaris’ stories — though never without a mischievous humor — highlighted the role of family in shaping individual identity.

In a reading from a yet-to-betitled story about a trip to Amsterdam, Sedaris said he was told there is now a person alive who will live to be 200, a frightening idea — especially if that person turns out to be Sedaris’ father.

“When I’m 67, my father will be a mere 100 years old,” he calculated. “That would leave him a whole other century to call at odd hours and ask me if I’ve gotten a colonoscopy.”

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Sedaris’ next piece, “Dentists Without Borders,” which appeared in the New Yorker April 2, drew laughs from anyone who has ever been asked a question while choking on a mouthful of dental equipment, but it also paid a sentimental tribute to the importance of appreciating the people who take care of you.

Sedaris read a few whimsical poems, as well as excerpts from his diary, and happily shared some of the raunchier jokes he’s collected from fans while on tour.

“What’s the worst thing you can hear when you’re blowing Willie Nelson?” he asked. “I’m not Willie Nelson.”

His last reading was from nature writer Gordon Grice’s “Deadly Kingdom: The Book of Dangerous Animals.” Reciting an excerpt about monkeys in India that throw rocks at cars, cyclists and pedestrians, Sedaris could barely muffle a chuckle — for Sedaris, there is always humor in the unfortunate and absurd.

After a brief question-and-answer session, Sedaris retired to the lobby for a book signing and welcomed fans to speak with him. But attendees should be careful about what they reveal — their oddities might just be fodder for his next sarcastic glimpse at human nature.

Campus News 3

The Brown Daily Herald Monday, April 16, 2012

Candidates for campus leadership discuss ideas, experience and change continued from page 1 literature concentrator. “I didn’t know how to use a semicolon or hyphenate correctly. I started off by just writing pretty awful, immature papers,” he said. But by working persistently, he said he was able to improve his writing and become a successful student.

Bentlyewski has since been awarded an Annual Fund Scholarship and was asked to speak at the Annual Fund’s leadership conference in New York. His determination also allowed him to become starting player on the rugby team within a year of joining, despite weighing much less than the average rugby player and having no prior experience, he said.

He said such perseverance will allow him to learn the ropes quickly if elected to UCS president, despite never having been a member of the council.

“When I choose that I want to get something done, I’ll try and fail at a million different things until it gets done,” he said.

Rattner

Rattner said he wants to better incorporate “the opinions, the interests and the beliefs of Brown students” into UCS. To do so, he said he would hold receptions during the semester for leaders of other student groups who would convey the desires and needs of their group’s membership to the council. He also hopes to appoint outreach officers for each class who would be responsible for researching and reporting on the opinions of the student body.

“I see our role as a liaison between the administration and the student body at-large,” Rattner, a New York City native, said. “Where we can do better is on the student side of that.”

Rattner said he is collaborative and good at listening to others’ opinions. When addressing such issues as improving housing and dining next year, he said he would ensure that “students have a voice in what those changes are.”

As vice-president for the council this past year, Rattner has worked to pass a statement decrying the state of undergraduate housing and another statement discouraging the administration from cutting four varsity athletics programs. Rattner also helped secure free media services for all student groups.

The political science and economics double concentrator said his experience with the council and relationship with key administrators will help him be a more efficient president if elected.

“I’ll be able to hit the ground running and to continue the conversations that I’ve already been having rather than to start those conversations anew,” he said.

White

White said he never expected to run for the position of UCS president, but he realized that in order to advocate for major issues such as better financial aid, he needed a leadership position with access to key administrators, he said.

White, a political science and history concentrator, currently serves as chief of staff to the UCS president

and is the communications chair of the Brown Democrats.

As a member of the Brown Democrats, White organized an alumni dinner that raised over $1,000 for the student group and has worked to develop the group’s image within the Brown community.

If elected, White said he hopes to increase the council’s presence on campus through a liaison program, in which council members involved in other activities will voice the opinions of these groups to UCS. White also plans to encourage more people to come to the council’s community time.

“UCS, in its construction, is supposed to be a conduit between the administration and students,” he said. “Right now, it often feels like an isolated decision-making body.”

As a member of the council, White helped pass a resolution supporting Opportunity R.I. and helped develop a more efficient categorization program for student groups.

Under the new system, the student activities committee only reviews categorization and recategorization requests once each semester.

He said he has also worked to help student groups find alternative sources of funding outside of UFB. White said he is a very determined leader and is able to develop creative solutions to problems, such as having the Brown Band camp outside the provost’s office in order to voice student demands.

He added that his experience working both within UCS and with other student groups has allowed him to understand how student government works while also seeing its faults. “Just being informed in this larger sense definitely, I think, makes me stand out as a candidate,” he said.

The candidates for UCS vicepresident are Brandon Tomasso ’13 and Michael Schneider ’13.

Tomasso

Tomasso said UCS should not be considered any different from other student groups. When he heard about the council’s proposed constitutional amendment — which would have given the council the ability to allocate its own budget without the approval of UFB — he decided to run for the position of vice president, he said.

UCS has “no more right than anybody else to have that money,” he said. “That’s what bothered me so much that I said, ‘You know what?

I need to step up and make some changes here.’”

Tomasso, an anthropology and archaeology concentrator from Vineland, N.J., has served as Class Board president for the past three years and is also a member of the fencing team.

Being Class Board president “taught me how be more professional, how to work through the administration, to talk to people, how to make things happen on campus,” he said.

Tomasso was also a member of the council for two years but was unable to serve this past year due to scheduling conflicts. As a general body member, he co-sponsored a resolution supporting Opportunity R.I., a bill that would give Rhode Is-

land college graduates a monetary incentive to work in the state.

He said his year off from UCS has given him a fresh perspective on student government. He said he thinks he will be able to bring the council closer to the student body if elected president because he hasn’t “been ingrained and indoctrinated with the UCS train of thought.”

“I haven’t seen the leadership of UCS, at least in my years, really exciting the others to do things,” he said. “I would be more like a guy on the floor, talking to people like crazy and telling them they can do it and encouraging them to follow their dreams.”

Schneider

Schneider said the University needs to focus on financial aid, the student activities endowment and the undergraduate experience in general.

He said the council must work to be the student’s voice on these issues and plans to increase student involvement in UCS through more student feedback events and consistent outreach to student leaders.

This past semester, Schneider hosted an event that allowed students to taste and give the administration feedback on the food that will be offered in Poppy’s Cafe in the new athletic facility. He hopes to use similar events in the future to garner student opinions on issues facing the University.

Schneider currently serves as the chair of campus life for the council,

where he said he has learned how to be a good motivator.

“I know how to make people feel comfortable,” he said, a characteristic he considers crucial to the role of UCS vice-president.

The political science concentrator hails from Laguna Beach, California.

In his freshman year, Schneider was a member of Brown Democrats and as a member of UCS helped pass the housing statement, which outlined student concerns with the University’s housing program. The statement “was a really good example of how UCS can push the administration to do something,” Schneider said.

If elected, Schneider would like to increase student voice in professor tenure decisions and increase student presence on the Undergraduate Resource Committee. He said he hopes increased student presence on the URC will help discourage the University from further raising tuition.

“I’m approaching (the position) with an understanding of what UCS needs to improve upon,” he said. “I’ve been on e-board. I know what it takes to be UCS vice-president.”

Zak Fischer ’13 is running uncontested for chair of UFB. Fischer

Fischer plans to revamp fundraising efforts for the Student Activities endowment by taking a more mathematical approach, he said.

UFB and the council have been

working to raise $20 million for a student activities endowment that may eventually replace the student activities fee as the main source of funding for student groups.

Currently, to raise money “we go and complain and give (alums) ideas and say, ‘This is important,’” Fischer said.

Fischer said he hopes to improve fundraising efforts by organizing the data about student group budgets in order to demonstrate to possible donors the gap between available and needed funding for student activities.

Fischer, a Chicago native, has been a member of the finance board for the past two years, where he has helped to implement the use of surveys to gather student feedback about the budgeting process for student groups. These surveys have prompted Fischer’s decision to improve UFB’s website if elected to chair. Fischer plans to implement a reserve tracker to allow finance board members to see the available funds left for student groups each year.

The applied mathematics and economics concentrator has recently become a licensed actuary, an accomplishment that required passing seven tests and that has taken two and a half years to complete. Actuaries are “financial risk experts” who deal with probability, he said. The knowledge of financial math and probability he has gained from studying for these exams will allow him to be a stronger UFB chair if elected, he said.

4 Arts & Culture

The Brown Daily Herald Monday, April 16, 2012

Established, upcoming filmmakers gather at Ivy Film Festival continued from page 1 spoke to a full house in Salomon 101 about sex scenes in her show, misogyny in Hollywood and what it was like working with her family in her feature film “Tiny Furniture.”

Dunham announced at the beginning of the Q&A that her goal was to embarrass her little sister Grace Dunham ’14, who was in the audience and who starred as Dunham’s sister in “Tiny Furniture.”

Dunham, who graduated from Oberlin College in 2008, writes a lot about the difficult transitional period between college and getting a job. In fact, “Girls” opens with Hannah, played by Dunham, at a dinner with her parents, when her mom announces that she will no longer financially support her daughter. The issue was a poignant one for an auditorium full of college students.

“Girls,” also produced by Judd Apatow and Jenni Konner, premiered on HBO Sunday night.

The returning graduate

Last Tuesday, Linney (“The Big C,” “The Truman Show”) appeared before a mostly filled Granoff Auditorium for a Q&A moderated

by Lowry Marshall, professor of theatre arts and performance studies, before answering audience questions.

A major theme of the talk was Linney’s cross-medium work. She is experienced with productions on the stage, in film and currently on television in her acclaimed Showtime series “The Big C.” Linney said her capacity to adapt to unfamiliar experiences began during her time at Brown. “My approach to things started here,” she said. “You have to allow yourself to suck so you can learn.”

Linney said she initially had no ambitions for television or film but that she strayed from theater out of curiosity. Answering questions about topics such as dealing with celebrity culture — which she said she was too old to care about — and learning as you go, her humility shone through.

“I hate watching myself,” she said. “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, which is inconvenient when you’re the producer of your own TV show.”

Linney admitted that she did not party much at Brown because the party scene scared her. But she said being back on campus was an emotional experience, and she told the audience, “You have no idea how lucky you are to be here.”

Found footage

The festival premiered an advanced screening Thursday night of Oscar-winning TV and film producer, director, screenwriter

and actor Barry Levinson’s (“Rain Man,” “Good Morning Vietnam”) new documentary-style horror movie “The Bay,” which is still in post-production.

The showing, which took place at Avon Cinema last Thursday, was a rare opportunity for about 100 students and Providence locals to view an unreleased film as an unfinished product.

Levinson even apologized at the beginning of his Q&A following the movie screening for the messy sound dynamics, a subtlety that did not detract from the film.

“The Bay,” originally conceived as an actual documentary and inspired by the statistic that 40 percent of Chesapeake Bay is a dead zone, is a found footage horror film about Isopods that literally eat the citizens of a quiet New England town from the inside out.

Levinson teamed up with some of the producers of “Paranormal Activity,” one of the films that sparked the recent popularity of the found footage genre, which is shot to appear as if the footage were captured accidentally.

Levinson said found footage allowed for more creative freedom, such as a police car camera filming several blocks of driving in one extended shot. The movie, which was captured with a miscellany of mostly consumer-grade video cameras, including iPhones, was

filmed in a mere 18 days.

The screening — the first time the film was shown publicly — gave Levinson one of his first opportunities to gauge audience reaction to help him further polish the film.

Up-and-coming

While the student film screening blocks are often severely under-attended, especially during the week, they can be the most overlooked aspect of the Ivy Film Festival, especially this year.

“Usually I’m really excited for the big-name guests, because it’s always like, ‘Oh my god, whoever is coming! Awesome!’” Bogosian said. “But this year (the student films) were amazing. At first I was concerned that they weren’t made by students because they were so good.”

Student filmmakers submitted their work to a number of categories, including comedy, animation, documentary, drama, experimental, graduate-level and international.

The festival winners were announced at an awards ceremony Saturday evening attended by staff, student filmmakers and their families. The results are now posted on the Ivy Film Festival website.

For the first time, the festival hosted two showings of each student film selection, divided into three blocks of back-toback screenings. Each block was screened once during the week and once on the weekend. Bogosian and Forbes said they hoped this would allow more students a chance to see these films.

The Programming staff, the branch of the Ivy Film Festival that screens and selects from hundreds of student films submitted, said there were three or four submissions this year that were at the same quality as last year’s winner, Bogosian said.

Last year, a few films that were first screened at the Ivy Film Fes-

tival even went on to be featured in other film festivals and venues, such as the prestigious Nantucket Film Festival.

“This is hopefully a first step for a lot of (students),” Bogosian said.

“It’s like, ‘I made a film, it’s really good. Now people can start seeing it and I can get my first award, and that first award can maybe get other people into it.’”

North by northeast

In addition to the many speakers and student films featured throughout the week, the Ivy Film Festival brought a few Sundance and South by Southwest selections to Brown for advanced screenings.

Aside from Levinson’s “The Bay,” feature film screenings included “The Invisible War,” a haunting and deeply disturbing documentary directed by Kirby Dick that investigated the discounted epidemic of sexual assault in the U.S. military. “Sound of my Voice,” a film by Zal Batmanglij, follows an investigation by a journalist and his girlfriend into a cult leader who claims to be from the future. “The Atomic States of America,” a documentary by Don Argott and Sheena Joyce about growing up in the nuclear-reactor community of Shirley, N.Y., was followed by a talk with the film’s producer, George Hornig P’13.

The last event of the film festival was Sunday’s screenplay luncheon in Faunce House with the Colin Stanfield and Bill Curran of the Nantucket Film Festival.

The winner of the Feature-Length Screenplay category was “Colors,”

by Cornell’s Wybren de Vries.

“Plop Plop Fizz Fizz,” by Armando Vazquez of Emerson College, won best Undergraduate Short Screenplay, and Christina Hunt’s “We Buried our Spirits,” also from Emerson, won the category of Graduate Short Screenplay.

The festival culminated in a party at Providence club Bravo downtown Saturday night.

www.browndailyherald.com

5

The Brown Daily Herald Monday, April 16, 2012

The Herald gets girly with Lena Dunham The Herald sat down with Lena Dunham after the Ivy Film Festival screening Saturday to discuss her unique dialogical style, success in Hollywood and how to survive after college.

The Herald: How do you balance having real, pointless, messy dialogue with the narrative arc you need for a movie or show to work?

Dunham: It’s always a challenge.

I think you’re always trying to be conscious that something feels real but moves at the appropriate speed.

You really have to kind of check yourself and go, “Is this indulgent?

Or is this a pause that makes this world feel real?” It’s a balance that you’re always checking. But I think at a certain point your instincts get good enough that you kind of know.

A lot of your focus is on confronting the real world post-college. Do you have any advice, or warning, for college students about how to deal with the phase of life directly after college?

There are two things I wish I’d done. It’s funny, because I sound contradictory, but I wish I had been both tougher on myself and kinder to myself. I feel like when I first got out, I didn’t try to force myself to be proactive. I sort of was lazy about the whole getting a job and beginning my life thing, but I was also really hard on myself and sort of speaking to myself in an unkind way, like, “You’re not smart enough,” or “You’re not productive enough,” or “You’re not pretty enough” to walk into that place and get a job. I feel like I could have been both nicer to myself and more motivated, and I think that that’s the important balance.

And I also think knowing. Hope-

fully a show like this, if it does anything, can make people know that it’s a pretty universal time to struggle.

Because I think the thing that makes periods like that hard is feeling like you’re the only one. So if you understand that this is designed to be a confusing transitional period, you’ll weather it a lot better.

In a show called “Girls,” about four girls, and you’re a girl, do you have trouble writing the male point of view?

Well, we don’t always show the male point of view. We show a lot of lady thoughts. Men are often just seen through the eyes of the female characters. That being said, I really try to be real with myself about the guys not feeling like cartoons. And it’s great because I have these great male actors and a male producer who really tell me if something’s not feeling on point to them.

Since you have your own show on HBO now, and you’re more and more in the news and Hollywood conversation, are you finding celebrity culture to be intimidating at all? Or are you still just kind of living your life?

I’m sure it would be (intimidating) if I were involved in it, but I still totally like to hang out with my family and my friends, and do the same, and go to spin class, and watch TV and do the same activities. I think it’s dangerous to start reading your own press and taking all that stuff really seriously because it can become a full-time job, and that’s not what the job is. And also, obviously we all know that it’s a complete illusion that there’s anything magical or specific about celebrities. So I think it’s really nice to get accolades for

your work, and all of the rest of it is super stupid even if occasionally you get to like wear a pretty dress, which is an exciting thing to get to do as a woman.

And I think your whole image goes along with everything you write, which is very real and relatable.

That’s my hope. I’m always trying to fight anyone who is encouraging me to wear too much hair or makeup. I still have my makeup on from a photo shoot yesterday. I literally just didn’t wash my face. I put some cream on to kind of spread it around, but I didn’t wash my face.

I actually don’t know how long is normal for a girl to keep makeup on.

I would usually wash it off at night. Every night you should wash off your makeup. You shouldn’t leave it on for multiple days. I was on an airplane overnight, I was on a redeye flight, so it felt slightly more acceptable. But like getting into bed with your makeup on? Bad. Bad for your skin. I got on an airplane, and then took a nap, and still have not washed my face. I wash my face twice a day. That’s one thing, like, I don’t have very many girly obsessions, but because I have to get so much makeup put on my face all the time for shooting, I have to wash it every day or else I get really insane pimples and red face and everything.

I wash my face every day.

Do you wash your face every day? I bet, you look like a person who washes his face every day.

— Michael Weinstein

TEDx event celebrates changemakers

By Adam Toobin Senior Staff Writer

From solutions for world problems to discussions of local issues like the responsible use of land opened up by the I-195 relocation, Sunday’s TEDx event provided intellectual stimulation for anyone willing to venture down the hill to listen to the almost 20 speakers. TED, a nonprofit organization, has become famous for hosting lecturers and sharing the videos online. It also lends its brand name and support to smaller, locally-organized events under the name TEDx. Jose Gomez-Marquez, the program director for the Innovations in International Health initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, kicked off the event with a discussion of his work creating affordable health care products.

Instead of only comparing the U.S. health care system to those of the United Kingdom or France, experts should look at the establishments in Cuba, Nicaragua or even Nigeria, Gomez-Marquez said at the beginning of his lecture.

Some of the most innovative research on affordable health care technologies is happening in the most surprising places, GomezMarquez said. Around the world,

so-called “MacGyver” doctors and nurses make due with broken and insufficient medical supplies, which forces them to find non-traditional remedies, he said. At these clinics, “you find a group of doctors and nurses who everyday are trained in health care and everyday have to hack their own instruments,” he said.

A toy gun used to help a nurse with an IV, bicycle pumps used as nebulizers for people with asthma and solar sterilizers are all examples of the “do-it-yourself” medical technologies Gomez-Marquez found in his travels. “A device you can hold in your hand is also a device you can use to heal,” he said before stepping off the stage.

Katherine Lucey opened by apologizing to the audience for not being “extraordinary” but said she accepted her typical life because of “the power of the ordinary.” Her work with people who do not have access to electricity, one of the most takenfor-granted modern conveniences, has increased her appreciation of the ordinary, she said.

To highlight her point, Lucey told the story of installing a light into a woman’s home. The woman chose to put one of the three lights into her chicken pen, because she knew chickens produce more eggs and are healthier when they have access

to light — a decision her husband opposed. The light led to increased egg production, which provided her the capital to plant a garden. The garden, in turn, brought in enough money for her to buy a goat. The woman now has a separate house for the chickens and uses the vacated chicken coop to teach literacy classes to women in the village, Lucey said.

Something as run-of-the-mill as a single light bulb empowered a woman to ultimately send all of her kids — “even the girls” — to school, Lucey said.

Gomez-Marquez and Lucey’s lectures were part of the first of three portions. The first focused on “world solutions,” while the second highlighted “urban renewal” and the third examined “entrepreneurship.”

Within the urban renewal section of the event, Laura Brown-Lavoie read her poetry describing her experience as an urban gardener. Her poem anthropomorphized the land underneath a city and implored its human inhabitants to let it “speak.”

Christine West, a principal at KITE Architects, challenged Providence to honor Roger Williams’ appreciation for the physical space of the city when developing the open space freed by I-195’s relocation. She continued on page 8

baseball

Bears ‘just outplayed’ in Dartmouth series

By Lewis Pollis Sports Staff Writer

The Bears fell three games behind Dartmouth in the Red Rolfe division this weekend as Bruno (7-24, 4-8 Ivy) dropped three of four games in a home series against the Big Green (12-15, 7-5 Ivy).

“They’re better,” Head Coach Marek Drabinski said of the Big Green after Bruno lost both games of the doubleheader Sunday. “They got more guys that step up.”

The Bears started off the weekend strong, jumping to a 3-0 lead in game one via RBIs from designated hitter Mike DiBiase ’12 and third baseman Nick Fornaca ’15 RBI in the second inning and first baseman Cody Slaughter’s ’13 solo home run in the third. Starting pitcher Heath Mayo ’13 went five strong innings, holding Dartmouth to two runs and striking out six. Despite his efforts and the Bears’ early outburst, the game was deadlocked at 3-3 at the end of the regulation seven innings.

In the bottom of the eighth, the Bears rode an unusual rally to the win. With Slaughter on first and two outs, shortstop Graham Tyler ’12 reached on an error, DiBiase was hit by a pitch, and Fornaca won it with a walk-off walk — to a 4-3 extrainning victory.

The Bears looked to be in control again most of the way through game two, putting together small rallies in the third, fifth and sixth innings to take a 5-2 lead into the seventh behind a strong start by Anthony Galan ’14. But the Big Green lit up Galan and Kevin Carlow ’13 for seven runs late and Bruno fell 9-5.

Dartmouth was in command from the get-go in game three, scoring five runs (all unearned) in the top

of the first. By the time Slaughter’s third inning RBI single put the Bears on the board, the Big Green had scored 10 times. Dartmouth starter Kyle Hunter kept Bruno’s bats at bay for the rest of his complete game as the Bears fell 12-1.

The Bears appeared to be on their way to a series split in game four as they opened up a 3-1 lead in the third on designated hitter Daniel Massey’s ’14 RBI single and catcher Wes Van Boom’s ’14 two-run single. The team scored again in the fourth as center fielder Matt DeRenzi’s ’14 sacrifice fly plated right fielder Will Marcal ’15.

The Big Green rallied to take a 5-4 lead. Marcal tied the game with a solo home run in the bottom of the sixth, but Dartmouth added four more in the top of the eighth. Down to their last out, the Bears had the tying run on deck in the ninth, but could not score and fell 9-5.

“They just outplayed us,” Massey said. “We had a lot of opportunities.

We gave up a lot of leads.”

Drabinski blamed the losses on the Bears’ playing with less precision, specifically citing walks and hit by pitches — ­ Bruno pitchers walked or beaned 20 batters this weekend, compared to Dartmouth’s 10. Making mistakes against the Big Green is fatal, Drabinski said. “They’re never going to do us that favor.”

Bruno next hosts Holy Cross Wednesday for a doubleheader. Conference action continues this weekend when Bruno heads to Harvard (8-25, 4-8) for a four-game series. The Crimson are tied with the Bears for second place in the division. Bruno has eight Ivy games left to make up the three-game deficit in the division, but second baseman JJ Franco ’14 still thinks the Bears can win it. “You can’t play like there isn’t a chance,” he said.

6 Fitness Center

The Brown Daily Herald Monday, April 16, 2012

Historic Marvel Gym cupola finds new home

By Tonya Riley Staff Writer

Though the opening of the Jonathan Nelson Fitness Center ushers in a new era of Brown athletics, it carries with it a curious piece of Brunonian history and an East Side landmark ­­— the shimmering 50-foot cupola and clock tower. The cupola once topped the Marvel Gynamsium, which was built in 1927. Forgotten after the gym was demolished in 2003, the cupola has now found a new home.

Built during a “sports-crazed era,” the Marvel Gym was widely considered to be one of the best sports complexes on the east coast after its construction, said Peter Mackie ’59, Brown athletics archivist. This claim is supported by Providence Journal clippings that Mackie carefully preserves on the eighth floor of the John Hay library.

But the gym’s distance from campus proved problematic. As early as the 1940s, the University began planning a new building, Mackie said.

After Marvel’s demolition in 2003, the cupola was left out on the corner of gym’s former location. The exposure chipped the cupola’s paint and the gold leaf of its antique weather vane. The vane, worth an estimated $50,000, was left vulnerable to theft and vandalism, Mackie said.

“I was just trying to keep the issue alive with the football association, with anyone who would listen ­­— the alumni magazine, facilities,” Mackie said, with the fervor of a man who loves Brown sports so much he carried memorabilia from the old gym to the new trophy room in Pizzitola Center himself — ­­ despite having been cut from the varsity basketball team his freshman year.

The Department of Facilities Management looked at several options for saving the cupola, including making it a gazebo or a ticket booth. But as the initial modern design for the new athletic facilities evolved into something more reminiscent of the original Marvel Gym, a home for the cupola was found again.

When the University consid-

ered keeping only one of the original clocks, Mackie wrote a letter to President Ruth Simmons expressing his concerns about the plan. He credited Simmons with salvaging all four clocks, one for each side of the cupola.

“It was really (the cupola), plus the bronze Bruno statue, that were the symbols of the Brown athletic program,” Mackie said.

Mackie said the fact that Brown dedicated so much time and resources to the restoration of the

cupola ­­— including replacing the leafing with gold paint and the original copper — demonstrates the University’s increased dedication to preserving its past. But he said he believes some sort of historical exhibit is necessary for Brown students to fully appreciate the history of the University’s athletic buildings.

Henry Aldrich 1876 and his brother Charles Aldrich 1877 provided the majority of the $600,000 continued on page 8

Complex marks mil

Emily Gilbert / Herald

The cupola ties together athletic history and a new age of University fitness.

Week of activities celebrates continued from page 1

Gregory Jordan-Detamore / Herald

Poppy’s Cafe offers both food specialized for the athletic experience and fare found in other campus eateries.

New cafe offers healthy grub

By MArk Valdez Staff Writer

Inside the upscale lobby of the new fitness and aquatics center lies the newest campus eatery — Poppy’s Cafe.

A small room with light yellow walls encloses the cafe, which has a similar feel to the Friedman Cafe in the Sciences Library — all items are grab-and-go.

Administrative Dietician Gina Guiducci was part of the group that created the menu for Poppy’s, which is based on four sports-related concepts: recharge, replenish, rebuild and rejoice. Brown Dining Services met with the athletics department while creating the menu to receive input, Guiducci said.

“The menu has items based

around three times: pre-activity, during (the workout) and postworkout,” she said.

Recharge food items will be rich in carbohydrates, replenish items will mostly be fluids, rebuild foods will be rich in protein and rejoice foods are snack items, according to an online document about the menu on the Dining Services website.

“This will be something different from other units,” Guiducci said.

Healthier items include salads, oatmeal, granola, fruit and smoothies. Some items offered at Poppy’s, such as Chobani yogurts, bagels, Naked Juices and freshly baked muffins, are also found at other campus eateries.

The target customer was thought of as “a diverse population that in-

cludes athletes, gym-goers, visitors and staff who work in proximate campus locations,” wrote Ann Hoffman, director of administration for Dining Services, in an email to The Herald.

Poppy’s will be open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on the weekends. Customers will be able to pay with Flex Points, cash and Bear Bucks, and the lobby will have wifi access.

Since there is no comparable eatery on campus, it is difficult to project expected traffic, Hoffman wrote, but she expects “the Poppy’s concept to be well-received.”

“I think it’s great that they’re focusing on healthy foods,” said Elizabeth Garcia ’15. “But I think continued on page 8

days, the current hours of the OlneyMargolies Athletic Center and the three campus satellite gyms.

Visitors this week will have the chance to win several prizes including a Schwinn road bicycle, an Amazon Kindle Fire, free entry for the May 8 Brown University 12th Annual Intramural Golf Tournament, a free summer physical education pass and a free personal training voucher.

In preparation for today’s official opening at 6 a.m., athletics and facilities staff were hard at work all last week delivering the final pieces of equipment, setting up key card access and making other last-minute adjustments before the big day.

“We’ve done this before,” Tsimikas said, “but the spotlight is here.”

This week will also be an opportunity for athletics staff to collect the first wave of feedback from students and other facility users.

Tsimikas is confident that the opening will receive positive feedback. “We have the finest collection that money can buy,” he said of the machines and other recourses the new fitness center has to offer.

Diving in

Tonight, the fitness center will play host to the first event scheduled for this week. Students will have the chance to try out the brand new fitness equipment, with music played by a live DJ. The cost of all exercise equipment in the building is $1.15 million, according to Project Manager John Cooke.

“People will give it a look and probably be really impressed,” said Tom Bold, associate athletic director for facilities, of the new fitness loft.

“I think people are excited to work out in a place that actually has windows,” said Jocelyn West ’13. The OMAC has no windows in its main exercise area.

West said she is also excited for the building’s grab-and-go eatery, Poppy’s, part of the lobby located on the first floor. “It’s going to be really nice to have a campus eatery on that end of campus,” she said.

Tuesday night, students will have a chance to take a swim in the new million-gallon pool with a “Dive In” movie screening. Students who do not swim can watch the movie from bleachers that seat around 400 people. The pool will be able to accommodate approximately 25–50 people depending on the availability of lifeguards, Tsimikas said, and priority will

Fitness Center 7

The Brown Daily Herald Monday, April 16, 2012

Solar-thermal panel installation largest in country

By Laura McLellan Contributing Writer

Brown is now home to the largest installation of hybrid solar-thermal panels in the country.

The 168 panels, which cover half the roof of the Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatics Center, will provide around 10 percent of the building’s energy needs — equivalent to the number of panels it would take to power 10 homes, said Kai Morrell ’11, energy and environmental outreach coordinator for the De-

partment of Facilities Management.

The $800,000 panels combine photovoltaic technology with solarthermal technology, meaning they both heat water and create electricity. That combination was a perfect fit for the new aquatics center, which requires large amounts of hot water to maintain its Olympic-sized swimming pool and showers, said Chris Powell, director of sustainable energy and environmental initiatives at Facilities Management. “It was a bit of a no-brainer,” he said.

The Energy and Environmental

Advisory Committee, which Powell chairs, had originally planned a solar installation for the roof of the GeoChem Building. That project fell through because of GeoChem’s incompatible roof design, said Kurt Teichert, lecturer in environmental studies and manager of environmental stewardship initiatives.”

Robert A.M. Stern Architects, the firm that designed the aquatics center, needed to “go back to the

drawing board and incorporate (the panels) into their design,” Powell said.

“It’s outstanding that we’re doing a solar-thermal system, because it’s too often overlooked,” Teichert said.

The efficiency of a solar-thermal system is superior to that of a system that uses only photovoltaic or only thermal technology, he said.

“It’s just that all the incentives and buy-downs tend to be oriented to-

lestone for athletics

Emily Gilbert / Herald The 168 solar panels adorning the aquatics center provide 10 percent of its energy.

wards photovoltaic, and not solarthermal.”

The hybrid panels at the aquatics center “barely eke out a return on investment,” with a payback time of about 15–20 years, Powell said.

“We realized that renewables weren’t the best economic choices,” but their educational value makes them worth the cost, he said.

The panels have already been used as an educational tool in two classes. Students in ENVS 0410: “Environmental Stewardship” viewed the installation in progress from the roof of the Olney-Margolies Athletic Center with a representative from SunDrum, the company that designed the hybrid technology.

“I think students were surprised by the energy intensity of that building,” Morrell said. “It takes a ton of energy to heat a pool and dehumidify that space and run all the showers and locker rooms. The fact that we have that many panels, and it only covers 10 percent of the building’s energy — I think that really blew students’ minds.”

Three additional panels were donated to the School of Engineering, where they are being used in ENGN 1930U: “Renewable Energy Technologies.”

Ka Ling Wu ’14, a student in the class, was impressed by how much voltage could be created from one continued on page 8

Courtesy of Robert A. M. Stern Architects

s long-awaited fitness facility be given to graduating students during the event.

“The idea is to reward the seniors — get them in the water,” he said, adding that students in the class of 2012 have awaited the pool’s opening the longest and will have the least amount of time to use the facility.

Seniors will also receive first priority to register for Professional Association of Diving Instructors open water SCUBA certification classes to be taught in the new pool later this spring — an activity the temporary aquatics bubble, officially decommissioned Friday, could not accommodate. The course will be offered for a fee of $300 and will conclude with an open water dive at Fort Wetherill State Park in Jamestown, R.I., he said.

Hannah Duncan ’15 said she currently swims recreationally and is looking forward to the new pool, predicting she might use it once a week.

A ‘fusion of fitness’

The temporary aquatics bubble will be removed this summer to make space for a new parking lot.

The pool deconstruction will be accompanied by a host of other athletic facility renovations, including the replacement of both the tennis courts on

the roof of the Pizzitola Center and the indoor track in the OMAC. “Track replacement is long overdue,” Bold said.

The new track will remain the same size, but the floor will be refurbished with state-of-the-art Mondo track surface, Tsimikas said. The current cardio equipment around the perimeter of the track will be redistributed to campus satellite gyms to make way for additional storage space and sports medicine rehabilitation equipment.

Before the end of the semester, the aquatics center will also host the Collegiate Water Polo Association’s women’s Eastern Championships April 27–29, the building’s inaugural varsity competition event.

“This certainly will be a leader within the (Ivy) League,” Tsimikas said of the facility, adding that it will serve as a great new destination for visiting athletic recruits.

But Tsimikas stressed that above all else, the building’s primary purpose is to serve the entire community, not just varsity athletes.

“It’s a perfect fusion of fitness,” he said of the fitness center, pool and strength and conditioning center as a collective unit. “We have everything in here to excel, to take care of body and mind.”

Greg Jordan-Detamore / Herald

The new pool is 56 meters long and nine meters deep, and it holds one million gallons of water.

Pool features ‘fast’ technology By madeleine Wenstrup Sports Staff Writer

The Katherine Moran Coleman Center opens to the public today, but the water sports teams have already made a splash in what is now the fastest aquatic center in the Ivy League and in the Northeast.

Since the beginning of April, the men and women’s water polo, swimming and diving teams have tested the waters in the state-of-theart million-gallon, 56-meter long and nine-meter deep pool.

But what makes a pool fast?

Men’s and women’s swimming head coach Peter Brown said a number of factors in the pool’s design influence the flow of water and waves and contribute to swimmers’ abilities to reach maximum speeds.

“Fast pools have specific characteristics, and if you don’t have those, you’re going to have a slow pool,” Peter Brown said.

The first quality is the pool’s depth. In general, “the deeper the water, the better,” Peter Brown said.

Men’s swimming captain James Hunter ’12 said the nine feet of depth reduce swimmers’ waves from bouncing off the bottom of the pool, which reduces turbulence in the water.

Peter Brown said the way in which water flows into the pool is crucial for swimmers. In the new pool, the water will enter the pool in a way that does not create resistance that slows down athletes.

“You don’t want (water) coming into the sides of the pool — you want it coming in from the bot-

tom,” Peter Brown said. “If it comes in from the sides, it creates jets, it creates streams, it creates currents you don’t want to have.”

The pool also has a special gutter system in place that allows water to flow over the edge of the pool, instead of bouncing back off the wall and creating waves and currents.

“How the water meets the edge of the pool is very important,” Peter Brown said. “When water comes to the edge of the pool, it just washes over the side and it doesn’t bounce back into the pool.”

The pool’s two moveable bulkheads mean that during collegiate races, competitors will not be swimming from “concrete to concrete,” Peter Brown said. By swimming continued on page 8

8 Fitness Center

The Brown Daily Herald Monday, April 16, 2012

New fitness center ties Fast pool gives edge to U. water sports ‘the past to the present’ continued from page 7

continued from page 6 ­­ price tag — a staggering amount at the time — ­­ for the Marvel Gym, which was located across from the current Brown Stadium, Mackie said. The limestone and brick building reflected classic Brown architecture, Mackie said. Though uncertain of the origin of the idea for the letters spelling out the words ‘Aldrich Field’ in place of numbers on the clock, Mackie said it was an intentional dedication to the two influential brothers.

“Everything was personal back then. Very personal,” Mackie said.

The football boom of the 1920s solidified Marvel’s importance, he added. In fact, in addition to a “seatbuying” campaign to raise money from alums for Marvel, men from other schools, such as Harvard, donated money so that their teams could actually play at Brown, where facilities had been inadequate for play.

The cupola withstood the hurricane of 1938 and once had a trapdoor where you could sneak inside, Mackie said.­­ “It’s a sentimental image — ­­ particularly for football,” Mackie said.

“You saw the shimmering gold leaf on top of the cupola sitting in the home stands ... I think, on some level, a lot of people really associate with that.”

Mackie remains skeptical that the new facilities will reinvigorate student love for Bruno sports, he said, citing the changes since the glory days of the varsity football squad, which was once the social center of a smaller, more homogenous school.

Hype for the Nelson Fitness Center, though, seems just as high as it was for Marvel almost a century ago.

“It’s going to be the best athletic facility on the east coast,” said David Longo, coordinator of facilities and operations for athletics. “I’m really happy they were able to tie the past to the present.”

Solar-thermal panels part of broader U. green efforts continued from page 7 panel. “I had never heard of the hybrid (technology) before,” she said. “Whenever I’m talking to my friends, I feel like I’m a cool kid, because I get to work with these panels.

People are impressed.”

The installation is part of a larger effort to reduce the University’s greenhouse gas emissions. New buildings must meet Brown’s 2008 Greenhouse Gas Goals, which require buildings to be designed to meet a minimum Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating of Silver and consume 25 to 50 percent less energy than the standard required by state code. Often,

new buildings achieve a LEED Gold rating, partially due to the additional 25 to 50 percent reduction requirement, Teichert said.

Brown decided to use LEED certification as a measure of sustainability in part “as a tool to explain to the larger community what our commitment is,” he said. “Saying LEED Silver resonates more clearly than ‘25 to 50 percent better than the prevailing code,’” he said.

The aquatics center has been designed to LEED Silver standards, though it will not receive the certification until it has demonstrated certain performance standards, a process that can sometimes take years.

The ‘Finest Money Can Buy’

Gregory Jordan-Detamore / Herald

The state-of-the-art equipment in the new athletic center will help to make it a “leader in the (Ivy) League,” Assistant Director of Athletics Matthew Tsimkas said.

between the two bulkheads, the currents created by swimming in both directions will not be as harsh when swimmers make their turns.

The water washes out through the bulkheads instead of entering back into the racecourse, Peter Brown said.

While the speed of the pool has swimmers excited, this quality has less of an impact on the game for water polo. While in swimming the competitors are racing the clock, all players in a water polo game compete on a level playing field.

“There’s no timing in our game,” men’s and women’s water polo Head Coach Felix Mercado said. “So there’s no influence at all.”

Men’s water polo captain Toby Espinosa ’12 said for water polo, the quality and convenience of the new facility, not the pool’s speed, will give Brown teams a competitive edge.

By the numbers 1 million gallons of water in the pool

168 solar panels on roof 400 seats overlooking pool 20 televisions in building 185 exercise machines $1.15 million spent on exercise equipment

$52 million spent on entire project

“How much faster it is — it’s not as big of a deal,” he said. “It’s that now every single guy wants to go to the pool, get in the facility and practice. Because we finally have locker rooms. We have our own shower area. It’s a whole new atmosphere that I’ve never had at Brown before.”

The pool’s Olympic size will also benefit the squads in both practices and meets. Three teams will be able to use the facility simultaneously, relieving the coaches of scheduling nightmares often encountered in the temporary Aquatics Bubble.

The bulkheads allow for configuration of any course — for 25-meter lanes, 50-meter lanes or a water polo field­— and will also allow for water polo games and swimming lanes to be positioned in the middle of the pool. The center positioning, combined with the ample first and second floor viewing galleries, will create an excellent spectator experience.

Espinosa said the pool’s spec-

tator-friendliness has the teams excited for their competitions to again become fun social events for the University community.

“Water polo games used to be the craziest games on Brown’s campus,” Espinosa said. “They were the most fun — people would come and watch and get rowdy. With this new facility, it’s really going to pick up.”

But for Peter Brown, the pool’s speed is one of the most exciting qualities of the new facility — not just because of the performance of the swimmers, but because of its potential to put Brown on the map.

“If people know you have a fast pool, they want to swim in it,” he said. “It gives you a nice reputation. If you go across the country, you know where the fast pools are.

You can have a beautiful pool, but if you have a fast one, it makes it extra special.”

— With additional reporting by Ethan McCoy and Sam Rubinroit

Fitness center features new campus eatery continued from page 6 that it will only be helpful to those who want to be healthy, since there are still unhealthy foods at Jo’s and the Gate.”

While Dining Services did not turn to student responses when creating the menu concepts, they were informed of student opinions through an event organized by the Undergraduate Council of Students.

During UCS Week, Campus Life Chair Michael Schneider ’13 organized an event where students were offered samples of items being considered for Poppy’s and “were asked to take a survey and tell us what they thought were their most

favorite and least favorite foods,” he said.

The event had a large turnout, and UCS found that the most popular item was aloe vera juice, which will be served at Poppy’s. UCS then gave Dining Services the results of the survey.

“It’s nice to know that Dining Services has concrete evidence of what students like and don’t like,” Schneider said.

Poppy’s will be staffed full-time

by Antonia Monteiro, a 10-year employee of Dining Services, who will be leaving her semester-long post at the Blue Room. BuDS student workers will serve as the other staff, Hoffman wrote.

Speaker discusses city plan continued from page 5 explained her interest in architecture, quoting the critic Alexandra Lange: “Architecture is the art you cannot avoid.”

West explained her architectural philosophy by positing a series of apparently contrasting concepts. In particular, she disputed the idea that modernism and traditionalism cannot coexist. “Think of the city as a dinner party,” West said. “Buildings need to be polite but have to have personality as well.”

“The best buildings are those that respect their surroundings but aren’t afraid to live,” she added.

The speakers in the final portion emphasized the power of entrepreneurship to affect Providence’s future. Jack Templin — founder and partner of Betaspring, a local startup accelerator, and a member of the board of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation — delivered his three recommendations for making Providence a hub of entrepreneurship. “We’re not proposing Providence rival Silicon

Valley — we’re proposing something much more exciting,” Templin said.

Providence has the potential to be a supportive, civic-minded center for entrepreneurship between New York and Boston, he said.

To become the kind of hub he imagines, Templin said the city needs to “capture the most creative and most resourceful students, shrink the distance to New York and Boston and keep Providence on.”

Attracting the best students will require Providence to develop a way “to get them made, paid and laid,” Templin said. The city will have to support entrepreneurial endeavors, provide funding and support for the ventures and make the city socially attractive to young people. Templin criticized the 2 a.m. curfew as hurting the city’s allure.

Templin also stressed that Providence needs to keep what makes it unique, while at the same time connecting with nearby cities. New York and Boston are number two and number three in terms of venture capitalism dollars available, he said, and business leaders in Providence

need to do a better job reminding executives in those cities that “we’re right between them,” he said.

Providence has always been “that universal haven of the odd, the free and the dissenting,” Templin said, quoting author and Providence native H.P. Lovecraft. The city needs to hold onto its essence of “going against the grain, taking big risks and embracing failure” if it wants to carve out a niche, he added.

Kipp Bradford shed light on society’s “subtle racism” in shunning black people from careers in engineering. He said he was the only black person in his class to graduate with a degree in engineering, a fact representative of the institutionalized racism that surrounds the sciences.

When Bradford was in fourth grade, he wrote a story about his desire to go to Mars, but the teacher told him, “black people don’t do science and math.” Experiences like his, he said, contribute to blacks’ underrepresentation in engineering.

Though 13 percent of the population is black, just over three percent of engineers identify as black, he said.

Arts & Culture 9

The Brown Daily Herald Monday, April 16, 2012

‘Blasted’ recounts violent Bears fall in ‘devastating’ 4OT loss disintegration into chaos continued from page 1

By caroline saine Staff Writer

The director’s note for Blasted reads, “Please do not look away from me. Please take me with you when you go.” These are words of warning, as the violent, visceral intensity of Blasted tempts the audience to shut their eyes — anything to be spared the emotional assault. Blasted, by playwright Sarah Kane, runs April 13-16 at Production Workshop.

At first glance, Blasted tells a story of combat and sexual violence in war-torn England, though more contentious themes run underneath. The play forces the audience to confront the truth about “what it takes to love and accept human life, given what we try to deny about it,” said director Sam Barasch ’12.

At the start of the play, Cate (Audrey Ellis Fox ’12, Valerie Hsiung ’12 and Lizzie Stanton ’13) is seemingly alone in a hotel room. Littered throughout the hotel room are items familiar to the audience — newspapers, cigarettes, flowers and alcohol on the table. But these are only scattered remnants of known society, because the world she inhabits is far darker than the audience may have first believed.

Cate and Ian (Audrey Ellis Fox ’12, Valerie Hsiung ’12, Lizzie Stanton ’13, David Lee Dallas ’13 and the voice of Conor Kane ’14) are at odds, and the audience quickly senses the nature of their relationship. Ian’s first lines are read out over a loudspeaker, and Ian is seen as both a literal and metaphorical figure of power as the play begins.

The audience senses the constant force of the destruction of

the outside world in the characters’ lives. This permeation becomes literal in the second scene, when a soldier (David Lee Dallas ’13) enters the hotel room.

Owing to the masterful staging, the audience becomes immediately involved in the world of the play. White scaffolding, shaped into a pair of lungs, engulfs the entire stage. When the play begins, the skeletal enclosure inspires and expires, contracting and expanding, as the characters clutch the lungs from the inside.

Despite the violence of the war-ravaged country, the action of the play takes place in this isolated setting. Interplay between three central characters — Cate, Ian and the soldier — escalates to rape and other violence within the hotel room as the battle rages outside. The cleverness of the staging is such that the increasingly violent interactions between characters reflects the growing disease of the lungs onstage.

In a particularly disturbing scene, the soldier, reeling from the murder of his girlfriend, rapes Ian before sucking out his eyes.

“It’s nothing,” the soldier says.

Nothing, perhaps, compared to the brutality of war he witnessed — stories of rape, cannibalism and child abandonment plague the soldier as the recounts the scenes of war outside.

Barasch made “a very non-traditional casting choice,” he said, in casting three actresses in the role of Cate and choosing not to cast an actor for the role of Ian. His casting choice is particularly effective because the interweaving of roles symbolizes the commonality of pain and suffering. “Everyone in town is crying,” Cate says when she returns from outside.

ences are miniscule,” Tiffany said.

“It’s a balance of certainly being disappointed … but my main objective as Brown head lacrosse coach is to build difference makers and leaders, and that’s happening.”

“We have gotten so much better as a lacrosse team this year,” he went on. “I’ve seen such great progress that despite the fact that the four overtime loss is emotionally devastating, there’s a lot of pride.”

Though staunch defensive efforts from both squads in sudden-death overtime prolonged the thrilling game, both offenses clicked early.

The Bulldogs jumped out to a hot start with a pair of quick goals from Matt Gibson, who scored a gamehigh five goals. The Bears answered with a goal from attackman George Sherman ’13, but Dempster’s first of the game made it 3-1 Yale only six minutes into the game.

Hurster cut the lead to 3-2 with an unassisted goal after fighting through traffic in front of net, but on the Bears’ next possession, what looked to be Hurster’s second was waved off for a crease violation.

Yale built a 6-2 lead by capitalizing on several Brown mistakes on defense. Conrad Oberbeck had an easy finish from close range after Brown defenseman Phil Pierce ’14 turned the ball over under pressure behind the net. Less than a minute later, Gibson completed his first-half hat trick after scooping up a ground ball in front of net and dumping it in goal.

Early in the second quarter, a Roger Ferguson ’13 turnover in the Bears’ own half led to another Gibson goal. But down by four, the defense settled down and the offense kicked into gear. Ivy League Co-Rookie of the Week Nick Piroli ’15 answered Gibson 14 seconds later off a nice find from Hurster.

Hurster’s second of the game clanged in off the post, and cocaptain Parker Brown ’12 scored two minutes later thanks to a hidden ball trick play. Midfielder Dan Mellynchuck ’14 feigned a flip to a passing teammate, and as he delayed,

the defense followed the man who they mistakenly believed had the ball. Mellynchuck then dumped the ball off to Piroli, who found Parker Brown for an easy finish on the doorstep. With 13 seconds left in the half, John DePeters ’13 cut the lead to 7-6 after he scooped up his initial shot that had been blocked and beat Yale goalie Jack Meyer on his second attempt.

“The offense made so many plays for us,” Tiffany said. “We were down 7-3, and the offense just didn’t stop.

They just kept peppering the goalie with shots on the cage.”

In the third quarter, Bruno tied it up on Parker Brown’s second goal of the game. The senior scooped up a deflected shot right in front of the net and finished unbeknownst to Meyer, who failed to locate the ball. But Yale snapped the four-goal Brown run, retaking the lead 8-7 with 7:11 to play in the quarter. Hurster quickly tied the game again with his third goal, and the Bears took their first lead of the game with 2:23 left in the period on a pinpoint strike from distance from co-captain Rob Schlesinger ’12.

Yale looked to kill the Brown momentum when it tied the game 9-9 with only 12 seconds left in the third.

But after scooping up a ground ball, Schlesinger’s last-second heave from nearly midfield somehow made its way through traffic in front of net and past Meyer to give the Bears a 10-9 lead headed into the final quarter of play.

“I told the team that’s proof why you never give up, no matter what the situation is,” Tiffany said. “Faceoff with 11 seconds left — that groundball might not be that meaningful.

Well, that’s why every second you’re on that field, you make every play you can.”

But that goal would be the final one for the Bears. In the fourth quarter, both defenses tightened up and neither goalie refused to give any ground. But with just over four minutes remaining, Oberbeck found the equalizer for Yale on a pinpoint finish from a tight angle.

In the final minutes of regulation, Yale had one shot clang off the crossbar, and Round made a great save on

another attempt to deny the Elis the game-winner in the final minute.

Yale got one more possession after Ferguson turned the ball over with 24 seconds left. The Bulldogs called a timeout, but Ferguson atoned for his mistake, breaking up the play and not allowing Yale to get off a final shot.

In the first sudden death overtime, Round made three saves. The Bears had the best chance of the period, but the shot from close range was kicked away by Meyer. In the second overtime, Round made the save of the game, stopping an uncontested Yale shot from the doorstep.

“When he made that save, I’ll admit, I had a sensation that we were going to win,” Tiffany said. “Obviously, that wasn’t the end result, but I love Will Round for playing his biggest game in the biggest moment in the overtime periods.”

The Bulldogs came close again, as a shot this time beat Round but could not beat the post. The Bears had two chances at the end of the period, but Meyer made a big save with 20 seconds left. In the final seconds, Brown had a breakaway chance, but Piroli could not get a shot off before the clock expired.

In overtime number three, Yale won the faceoff and skimmed the crossbar with a long-distance shot.

Round and Meyer then traded saves, as neither was ready to leave the field just yet.

But in the fourth overtime, something finally gave. With 1:43 left in the period, Dempster’s shot finally cracked Round’s code and sent Yale to the 11-10 win after nearly 75 minutes of lacrosse.

“I told the team that on this planet, you don’t deserve anything — you earn it,” Tiffany said. “But we came as close to deserving a win as I’ve been when it didn’t happen, because of four quarters and four overtimes of just absolute all-out commitment.”

The Bears will travel to Ithaca Saturday to take on perennial powerhouse and reigning Ivy champion Cornell. But before resuming Ivy action, Bruno must turn its focus to an inter-city bout against Providence (1-10) Tuesday night with the Ocean State Cup at stake.

comics Chester Crabson | Tess Carroll

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

10 Editorial Editorial

A critical review of course evaluations

The Brown Daily Herald Monday, April 16, 2012

Editorial cartoon

by r ac h e l h a b e r s t r o h

With pre-registration coming up this week, students are honing in on classes for next semester. Everyone wants to know the good professors, which classes should be left to concentrators and whether or not the assigned reading will leave you time to hit the Whiskey Republic on Wednesdays. This is the kind of information that should theoretically be available through the student-run Critical Review course evaluations website. Unfortunately, Critical Review evaluations are rarely returned, a pattern made worse by their competition with the recently digitized official administration course evaluations. We believe this database of student knowledge is extremely important in making sure students get the most out of their courses, and we advocate a bigger role for the administration in ensuring the University-wide implementation of Critical Review surveys.

The Critical Review provides information and advice to students that University evaluations do not. For one thing, the Critical Review publishes its results on an easily accessible website that is open to students, while administration-issued evaluations are for official use only. Furthermore, the Critical Review publicizes the answers to questions students constantly wonder about prospective courses — such as lecture quality, amount of work and annoying professor habits — while University evaluations focus more on whether expected course material was learned.

Critical Review surveys are also not returned at a high-enough rate to be effective. According to Dingyi Sun ’12, a Critical Review editor-inchief, less than 40 percent of course evaluations are returned, due to “a mix of either the department secretaries not distributing the packets to the professors or the professor elect(ing) to not distribute the (evaluations) to their class.” Because the Critical Review staff lacks the power to make sure their blank forms are distributed and their completed forms returned, its website is sadly lacking in both completeness and variety.

The difference in content and diagnostics between the surveys, as well as logistical “red tape” involved, makes it difficult for the University to incorporate the Critical Review into its own evaluations, Sun said.

However, the administration needs to make the universal submission of the Critical Review evaluations a higher priority. We advocate the institution of a mandatory procedure for every department to distribute the forms to its students. The Critical Review may be a student venture, but it is invaluable to the student course experience, and we believe it is the administration’s responsibility to facilitate its successful and widespread implementation.

For students to get the most value out of their Brown education, they need to make informed course decisions based on comprehensive information. We believe this is an extremely important point, and we advocate a concrete policy change. We would even advise making it obligatory for students to fill out the Critical Review in order to receive their grades — the same policy that produces an 89 percent return rate for official course evaluations, according to a recent Herald article. The administration needs to take notice and “critically review” its current policy.

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

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Opinions 11

The Brown Daily Herald Monday, April 16, 2012

Defending the right to disagree By camille spencer-salmon Opinions Columnist A few weeks ago I strolled out of the venerable Sharpe Refectory and was enthusiastically greeted by free hot chocolate being offered by a group of out-of-state students. As I delightedly helped myself to the aforementioned beverage, they asked me if I wanted to know anything more about the Bible.

I’m sure my smile slipped a bit. I explained that I did not share this interest and that I felt uncomfortable taking their hot chocolate as a result. They very kindly explained that it was fine — they were just “feeling out” the atmosphere at Brown regarding religion. They told me that so far, they’d felt pretty welcome.

This was encouraging, and I told them so, but as I said goodbye I couldn’t help but think with some discomfort of the anti-gay marriage protest last year. For those who missed it, a Catholic group called the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property held a rally on Brown’s campus last March championing banners bearing slogans like “God’s Marriage = 1 Man & 1 Woman.” Adorned with bagpipes and kilts, they distributed flyers that outlined God’s disapproval of homosexuality.

Needless to say, the student popu-

lation was not enamored. In fact, we quickly mobilized a counter-rally to defend and proclaim our LGBTQ-friendly beliefs, which I happen to share wholeheartedly.

But a number of us vandalized the group’s signs, verbally abused their members and generally fulfilled the stereotypes you’d associate with an angry mob.

Moreover, judging from memory and the approving language of The Herald coverage (“Students rally against anti-

have a lot of wonderful, open-thinking happening on this campus. I’m proud of our frequent sex-positive events and LGBTQ-friendly atmosphere, for instance.

But alarmingly often, both on the wide scale and in personal interactions, we exhibit the same intolerance as the oppressive groups we oppose, effectively defeating the purpose of calling ourselves progressive thinkers. I once made the mistake of joking about praying on the Lord’s Day to a new group of Brown ac-

I challenge my fellow students — and myself — as incredibly fortunate human beings, to avoid fighting intolerance with more intolerance. We cannot congratulate ourselves on taking the moral high ground if this is not actually the case.

gay marriage demonstrators,” March 24, 2011), most of us shared the opinion that the demonstrators did not deserve to be heard on account of the hatefulness of their message. Tragically, this intolerant attitude — ignorant of the fact that the group probably chose our campus precisely because of our predictable outrage — is as oppressive as any hate-peddling group out there.

This happened a year ago, and yes, we

quaintances. The whole group proceeded to look at once outraged and disgusted.

Alarmed, I hurriedly assured them of my nonchalant collegiate agnosticism, which so many of us seem to ascribe to, thus righting the delicate order of the universe — or at least one casual hangout situation.

These are anecdotes, but I’ve experienced these situations enough to consider this type of “progressive” intolerance

to be a real phenomenon on this campus. Admittedly, in the case of religion, I am not well-informed about most belief systems. Most of my friends aren’t either, and that may be part of the problem, but there are plenty of reasons to be wary of the effects religion — especially in its extreme manifestations — can have on society.

But that’s not the point. The point is that if we’re really to be open and accepting of everyone, we’ve kind of got to be accepting of everyone across religions or lack thereof — races, classes, genders, insert demographic of your choosing and so on. Looking around at the student body, certain stereotypes about our liberal ideologies might appear to be the whole truth, but it’s still a campus, and a world, which hosts all kinds of people. It’s not really tolerance if we all agree, is it?

I challenge my fellow students — and myself — as incredibly fortunate human beings, to avoid fighting intolerance with more intolerance. We cannot congratulate ourselves on taking the moral high ground if this is not actually the case. If we believe ourselves to be right about, say, equal rights, then the force of our correct opinion — and our excellent elaboration of it — should be a forceful enough way of driving home the point and overcoming the things we’d rather not see in the world.

Camille Spencer-Salmon ’14 enjoys being disagreeable almost as much as being agreeable.

The hand that feeds us

By Timothy Syme Guest Columnist

In its editorial column (“Brown is not Goliath,” March 21), The Herald’s editorial page board argued that Brown should not significantly increase its payments to Providence because this would threaten Brown’s valuable educational mission, specifically by leading to tuition increases or cuts in financial aid. The column exemplified a worryingly dominant strain of thought in the Brown community which shies away from asking critical questions about the governance of this University. This goes far beyond the specifics of Brown’s payments to the city. It is far too rarely acknowledged by many on this campus that the priorities and motives of Brown’s governing authorities need not be aligned with those of any other members of the Brown community or wider society.

The plutocratic financiers and assorted high-flyers of the Corporation utilize a professionalized corporate administration to govern this University without a shred of genuine accountability. The Undergraduate Council Students, Graduate Student Council and faculty governance are politically irrelevant, and the minutes of Corporation meetings are kept secret for 25 years.

This University provides us all with a fantastic education and a supremely comfortable environment in which to work, learn and live. We should get everything out of this place that we reasonably can, but we should

never buy into the administration’s manipulative branding. We should never forget that, as an institution, Brown plays an important role in perpetuating the social, economic and political inequalities that have structured American society for centuries. It does not deserve unquestioning loyalty from any of us. Its rulers, like anyone in a position of unaccountable power, should be treated with a strong measure of critical suspicion.

We should not let any potential discomfort about our own complicity in injustice prevent us from interrogating the practices of an institution like Brown. These practic-

istic institution. These institutions systematically isolate them from the community around them and seek to inculcate an insular sense of communal identity. This structure may benefit some, but it should not be blithely embraced without reflection on how it ever came to be seen as an ideal.

Brown is deeply enmeshed with the financial, industrial and political elites currently doing such a sterling job of running the world — a glance at the corporate employers Brown trumpets on its own admissions website comprises one obvious piece of evidence. Indeed, there would be little point

It is far too rarely acknowledged by many on this campus that the priorities and motives of Brown’s governing authorities need not be aligned with those of any other members of the Brown community or wider society. es may be “normal” here, but they embody a form of education very rare elsewhere in the world. While it has long been the custom to use education to cloister the children of the elite away from wider society and groom them for power, America is very unusual in continuing this ancient custom in such concrete form. It is a strange and disturbing feature of American life that many of its best and brightest young people spend four years of putative freedom before entering work living in a physical, social and educational environment where almost every aspect of life is designed and structured by a single paternal-

in coming here were this not the case — your tuition buys access to power as much as it does a fantastic education. Despite all the advantages of attending Brown, however, the editorial page board was right to point out that many students struggle to pay for a Brown education and should be protected.

This is obviously true. It is heinously unfair that only the stunningly wealthy truly enjoy the freedom and opportunity that a Brown education is supposed to give because only they are unconstrained by huge personal debt when they graduate. It is the Corporation, of course, that decides — in secret —

how much to charge you.

This article may anger many but it is not my intention to castigate anyone. Each of us can only do so much to counter the impact of the powerful institutions that surround us and must very often simply try to navigate and use them as best we can. Notice, however, that the undergraduates are the most powerful group at this University other than the Corporation and its administration.

Brown is financially dependent on them — you! — for tuition money and brand image while the rest of us — some star faculty excepted — are dependent on its largesse. This gives the undergraduates significant power should they ever choose to challenge Corporation policy. The disturbing riot-proof architecture of Graduate Center is testament to the fact that the Corporation is well-aware of this, though they now secure docility largely by other means.

Perhaps it is not yet time to take to the streets, though many of our fellow students across America and the world certainly believe that it is. It is long past overdue, though, for the Brown student body and its newspaper to stop uncritically swallowing the Corporation line. The Corporation may govern this place, but the real value of the University lies not in its endowment, its history or its expansive ambitions, but in its students, teachers, workers and the community around it.

We should all remember that what’s good for the Corporation may not be good for the rest of us.

Tim Syme GS can be reached at timothy_syme@Brown.edu.

Daily Herald Fitness Center the Brown

Monday, April 16, 2012

Aquatics teams move beyond the bubble

By Sam Rubinroit Assistant Sports Editor

For the swimming and diving and water polo teams, the benefits of the new swimming facility go far beyond the water. The opening of the Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatics Center ushers in a new era for Brown athletics, offering stability to aquatic teams that have endured four years of uncertainty. Though it finally provides the teams with a permanent facility to train, host home meets and entice recruits, its unveiling comes too late for many of the outgoing athletes to experience.

Farewell to the ‘toxic waste dump’

When the Smith Swim Center was demolished to make room for the Aquatics Center, Brown was faced with a choice — put its aquatics programs on hiatus until the pool’s completion, or invest a significant amount of money to erect a temporary pool. The University chose the latter, and for the last four years, Brown’s water sports have practiced and trained in a $3.8 million temporary aquatics bubble located behind the Olney-Margolies Athletic Center.

“Not a lot of schools would do what Brown did,” said Peter Brown, head coach of the men’s and women’s swimming teams. “Five years ago, we were at a teetering point where we didn’t know what they would do with the program. It was a huge financial commitment on President Simmons’s part to keep our program alive.”

Despite the University’s wellintentioned efforts, the temporary bubble failed to gain popularity among athletes.

“No one liked the bubble,” said diver Jon Feldman ’12. “By the end of its stint on Brown’s campus, it was a toxic waste dump. I’m excited it’s going away so no one ever has to

deal with it again.”

The athletes claim the bubble lacked a number of elements to be considered an adequate facility — proper circulation, locker rooms, diving equipment and sufficient space.

“The bubble is terrible trainingwise,” said James McNamara ’14 of men’s water polo. “It was so small we couldn’t have two practices going on at the same time.”

Getting out of the bubble to train will literally be a breath of fresh air for the Bears. All three teams were suffering from the health effects of the poor air circulation in the bubble, said former women’s swimming captain Allyson Schumacher ’12.

“The air quality was really bad,” she said. “There were times when it was hard to train for two hours.”

But the new facility has a stateof-the-art air circulation system and an atmosphere that men’s water polo captain Toby Espinosa ’12 said “makes you feel like you are swimming outside.”

From ‘renting’ to owning

For the athletes who will spend countless hours practicing and lifting weights in the Aquatics Center, it will soon become somewhat of a second home. But for the four years during which the pool was under construction, none of the teams were able to host home meets or matches in the temporary bubble due to space confines and limited spectator accommodations. As a result, every match-up meant going on the road.

“We were traveling every single weekend during season,” McNamara said. “It makes it really hard for academics and to stay in the student life at Brown.”

Due to the temporary bubble’s lack of adequate equipment, the diving team was forced to bus 45

minutes to University of Massachusetts Dartmouth on a daily basis to take advantage of the school’s diving boards.

“We’ve been renting for four years, but now we have a home,” Brown said. “When we were in the temporary facility, we lost a part of our identity and what we’re about.”

“When you’re a football team without a football field, it’s hard to get motivated,” Feldman said. “Having this wonderful facility helps boost your morale, and you remember that you’re swimming for something important.”

The pool’s opening comes after the conclusion of the swimming and diving season, but in the coming weeks the water polo program will host the Collegiate Water Polo Association’s Eastern Championships and its Senior Games in the new facility.

“Home court advantage is huge for water polo,” McNamara said. “A pool is very engrossing, so when a visiting team is in your locker room and your pool, it’s a completely different ball game.”

‘Upswing’ in recruiting

With one of the finest pools in the Northeast located on campus, the process of wooing top recruits to campus has become a much easier task.

“We’ve had a huge upswing,” McNamara said. “We’re getting recruits we’ve never gotten before coming just to check out the pool.”

In prior years, with the Aquatics Center still under construction and the teams relegated to the temporary bubble, it was difficult to sell recruits on simply the promise of a new facility.

“There was no pool to show them, which is the centerpiece of a swimming and diving program,” Feldman said.

Emily Gilbert / Herald

The new pool and fitness center will benefit teams in future seasons.

“Being told you have to swim in a temporary pool for two years is likely going to decrease your interest,” said swimmer Tommy Glenn ’14, an AllAmerica honorable mention this past season. “But if you know you have a pool that is going to produce faster times in practice and in meets, that’s something else.”

Moving forward, water polo Head Coach Felix Mercado expressed concerns about potential recruits simply being attracted to the new facility instead of the other benefits Brown has to offer.

“How can you not be impressed by the scoreboard, the spectator seating or our impressive locker rooms?”

Mercado asked. “It’s a good added bonus, but I hope it doesn’t become the deciding factor. It’s important for me to remind these recruits that Brown is a very special place, and they need to be sure that they are choosing the school for the right reasons.”

‘Bittersweet’ emotions

For the outgoing seniors on the aquatic teams, the opening of the new facility comes after or at the tail end

of their Brown careers. The swimming and diving teams, as well as the men’s water polo squad, have both concluded their seasons, so the outgoing seniors will never have the opportunity to experience a home meet on campus. The women’s water polo team (19-14) will have the chance to have its annual senior game in the new pool April 22 against Hartwick, something captain Samantha Ryu ’12 said has made her feel “disbelief that it’s actually happening.”

“I think the first thing that comes to mind is that I’m very fortunate,” Ryu said. “It’s been a long time coming and getting the chance to play in front of your friends and at a home pool is exciting.”

Many of the swimming and diving seniors were recruited to Brown believing that the pool would be completed prior to their final year, only to see the date of the project’s opening pushed back due to economic and construction-related concerns.

“The expectation was obviously that it would be open by junior or senior year,” Feldman said. “That was the most disappointing part. It wasn’t that they were lying — it was just that they had no idea what the economic future would be like any more than we did.”

As the end of their careers drew closer, the seniors on the swimming and diving teams came to terms with the fact that they would never experience a home meet.

“We are going to be the generation of swimmers and divers shaped by having a temporary facility,” Feldman said. “No one else at Brown can say that they lived through the bubble like we did for four years. It shaped the athletes that we became. We knew a lot more about overcoming adverse conditions than other teams did, and I think that made us better varsity athletes in the end.”

Though the younger athletes understand the emotions of their outgoing teammates, they also know that the new Aquatics Center is going to benefit the programs for years to come.

“Bittersweet is definitely the main descriptor,” Glenn said. “Bitter because (the seniors) only get in after the season, but sweet because they can see that our program is on the upswing and things are getting better.”

— With additional reporting by Madeleine Wenstrup