Wednesday, April 5, 2006

THE BROWN DAILY HERALDVolume CXLI, No. 43 An independent newspaper serving the Brown community since 1891 www.browndailyherald.com

News tips: [email protected]

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2006

wintry mix

47 / 33

cloudy/windy

51 / 37

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

TOMORROWTODAY

Editorial: 401.351.3372 Business: 401.351.3260

New Orleans: seven months laterBY ROSS FRAZIERSENIOR STAFF WRITER

NEW ORLEANS — More than 80 Brown students, traveling either in student groups or independently, joined hundreds of oth-ers here for their spring breaks, helping to rebuild a city that is still struggling to re-turn to some sense of normalcy more than seven months after Hurricane Katrina.

Residents and visitors alike here com-plain about the media’s coverage of the storm. They charge that the media exten-sively covers New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, which was the most heavily dam-aged area during the storm, but neglects other neighborhoods that, though having a greater chance of recovering, were also significantly flooded. The Lower Ninth Ward does indeed make for great TV foot-age — the area is like a ghost town. Every house is significantly damaged, many are destroyed and quite a few were washed completely off their foundations. Images of the primarily poor, black population of the Ninth Ward, contrasted with those of

the undamaged mansions of the Garden District, present a sobering picture of ra-cial and socioeconomic inequity.

But several residents were quick to point out that 80 percent of New Orleans was flooded. Large sections of the city have a “bathtub ring” that indicates how high floodwaters rose, and trash and de-bris abound. Residents said if the media showed more images of New Orleans East, a heavily damaged upper-middle class black suburb, or of the Lakeview neighbor-hood, a mixed-race, mixed-class area that was flooded when the levees broke, people would share their view that, as several res-idents and volunteers put it, Katrina was “an equal-opportunity storm.”

Kevin Lander, a Tulane University stu-dent, told an audience at a March 27 panel of students and residents affected by Ka-trina that misperceptions about New Or-leans’ condition are particularly problem-atic because of the potential electoral ef-fects. A mayoral election is scheduled for

TASTY PI

Kam Sripada / HeraldThe Department of the History of Mathematics held its annual “Cuneiform Cuisine” dinner Monday at the Annmary Brown Memorial. It featured food prepared from ancient recipe tablets.

Online ticket system spells end of Main Green campoutsBY SARA WALTERSTAFF WRITER

It is not for lack of tickets that Ray Ser-rano ’07 won’t be attending Saturday’s lecture by Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. Rather, following the implementation of a new online ticket distribution system, Serrano said he feels deprived of a “great bonding experience” — camping out on the Main Green like he did last year to see former President Bill Clinton.

“I was disappointed when I saw that it was online ticketing and not camping out again,” Serrano said. “If I thought we were going to have to wait for tickets, I probably would have done it again.”

A new online system — accessible through a ticket reservation Web site — was developed by a team including members from Computing and Infor-mation Services and the Office of Pub-lic Affairs and University Relations, said Cynthia Schwartz, director of University events.

The new method was put in place to prevent a repeat of the long lines — which included tents pitched on the Main Green — prior to the distribution of tickets to Bill Clinton’s lecture last year, said Michael Chapman, vice pres-ident for public affairs and University relations.

“Last year when President Clinton came here, we handed out tickets in sort of the old-fashioned way,” Chap-man said. “There were some frustrations about that ticket distribution system.”

Following the Bill Clinton lecture, the Office of the President asked the public affairs office to explore more efficient ways to distribute tickets to large events on campus, Chapman said. Schwartz and her staff wanted to develop a way of reserving tickets online, an idea that led them to work with members of the Office of Web Communications and CIS, Chapman added.

Courtesy of Chioke HarrisAlmost 80 percent of New Orleans suffered severe storm damage, including this car near the 17th Street Canal.

see NEW ORLEANS, page 8

The fabulous life of Brown professors?How tuition breaks, airline tickets and research money stack upBY SIMMI AUJLASENIOR STAFF WRITER

Transatlantic flights can clock in at a pric-ey $1,400 round-trip, but the University

will foot the bill the next time Professor of History Tim Harris travels to Eng-

land for academic research or a speech at the University of Cambridge.

Harris, who specializes in 16th- and 17th-century British history and has pub-lished several books on the period, said the Faculty Travel Fund provides profes-sors with one trip a year for academic or professional purposes. The Office of the

FEATURE

see PERKS, page 9

Next provost to be hired internallyDecision on bookstore will likely be made before sum-mer, Huidekoper saysBY ERIC BECKNEWS EDITOR

The University’s next provost will come from within Brown, President Ruth Sim-mons told the faculty at its monthly meeting Tuesday.

In order to provide for administra-tive continuity and ensure the Universi-ty maintains momentum, Simmons said she intends to appoint a new provost by the end of June, when Provost Rob-ert Zimmer will leave Brown to become president of the University of Chicago.

Such a quick search only allows for serious consideration of internal candi-dates. Simmons said though some pro-fessors have encouraged her to consider bringing an outsider to the University as provost, she does not intend to conduct a lengthy national search.

Simmons said she has been accepting nominations and consulting with depart-ment chairs, multidisciplinary center di-rectors, senior administrators and mem-

bers of the Brown Corporation to identify current Brown professors who are well-suited for the post.

Simmons also updated the facul-ty on the other current searches to fill senior administrative posts. Both the dean of the college and the vice presi-dent for research posts will be vacated this summer.

The dean of the college search com-mittee has been accepting nominations for a search that will be primarily internal but will also consider candidates from outside the University, Simmons said.

The search committee for a new vice president for research has completed its work and submitted its recommenda-tion, Simmons said, adding that she will act on the recommendation “in the very near future” and expects to announce the new appointment by the end of the month.

In other business, Executive Vice Pres-

see FACULTY MTG, page 6

see TICKETING, page 7

Paper course bulletin will eventually become obsolete, registrar saysBY SIMMI AUJLASENIOR STAFF WRITER

Although Course Announcement Bul-letins have been printed and were dis-tributed this week, the CAB’s days are numbered.

“Both the course announcement and the University catalog will eventually dis-appear in the present state,” said Univer-sity Registrar Michael Pesta in reference to the CAB and the University Bulletin, which provides a more extensive listing of offered courses and is printed every three years.

The implementation of Banner, a comprehensive program that will replace systems and databases used for admis-sions, financial aid and course registra-tion, will eliminate the need for both the

CAB and the Brown Online Course An-nouncement, since students will register for courses directly from Banner’s online catalog, Pesta explained.

Still, printing some form of the CAB for the next few years will help the University make a smooth transition from paper to online technology, Pesta said.

“I don’t necessarily want to make too many changes at the same time,” he said. “Even though paper technology is aging, I think there are good reasons to keep it to help support people as they become accustomed to the new system.” He sug-gested printing a shorter summary of courses once Banner is implemented.

Pesta said he hopes students will be able to register for courses online in April

see CAB, page 7

SHORT BUT SWEETThis weekend’s Ivy Film Festival show-cases several Sundance pictures and 36 student-produced shorts ARTS & CULTURE 5

UNDERGRAD UPRISINGJill McCormack ’06 calls for under-graduates to help save the Brown Bookstore from being outsourced OPINIONS 11

ALL THE NEWS U.’S SEE FIT TO PRINT ?The Supreme Court refused to hear a case concerning universities censoring school-funded student newspapers CAMPUS WATCH 3

C R O S S W O R D

THIS MORNINGTHE BROWN DAILY HERALD · WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2006 · PAGE 2

Jero Matt Vascellaro

Chocolate Covered Cotton Mark Brinker

Deo Daniel Perez

Homebodies Mirele Davis

Freeze Dried Puppies Cara Fitzgibbons

Silentpenny Soundbite Brian Elig

THE BROWN DAILY HERALDEditorial Phone: 401.351.3372

Business Phone: 401.351.3260

Robbie Corey-Boulet, President

Justin Elliott, Vice President

Ryan Shewcraft, Treasurer

David Ranken, Secretary

The Brown Daily Herald (USPS 067.740) is published Monday through Friday dur-

ing the academic year, excluding vacations, once during Commencement, once

during Orientation and once in July by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. POSTMASTER

please send corrections to P.O. Box 2538, Providence, RI 02906. Periodicals postage

paid at Providence, R.I. Offices are located at 195 Angell St., Providence, R.I. E-mail

[email protected]. World Wide Web: http://www.browndailyherald.com.

Subscription prices: $179 one year daily, $139 one semester daily. Copyright 2006 by

The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.

ACROSS1 Improvisational

tunes6 Gomer Pyle’s

org.10 Part of many a

dash14 Heep of

literature15 Friend of Piglet16 “Typee” sequel17 Ballpark

vendor’s call #120 Herbert Marx, on

stage21 Sephia

automaker22 Asian occasion23 1970 and ’72

Conn SmytheTrophy winner

25 Fictional Alley27 “Fawlty Towers”

star29 Ballpark

vendor’s call #233 Unwaveringly

true34 Atlanta network:

Abbr.35 Hit signs36 Builder’s map39 Westernmost

Aleutian island41 __ spumante44 Dessert with a

crust46 Egg holders50 Ballpark

vendor’s call #354 Megaera,

Tisiphone, andAlecto,collectively

55 “__ me with aspoon!”

56 “Picked”picayune point

57 Mus.reorchestration

58 Old Pontiacmuscle car

60 Calvin of design63 Ballpark

vendor’s call #468 Tear69 Land of

leprechauns70 Tryst spot71 Educ. guesses72 Line of apparel?73 Lhasa __: small

dogs

DOWN1 Hair apparent?2 Foul temper

3 Robert __,captain of theHMS Beagle onwhich Darwinsailed

4 Bonnie’sportrayer

5 Browse eBay6 Pull from the

ground7 Political payoff8 Robin Williams

role9 Best of the best

10 Rocky point11 Olympian, before

197612 Regains

consciousness13 Maker of Ding

Dongs18 Lying atop19 Oscar after-

party, e.g.23 Friend of 15-

Across24 Sigma preceder26 Cal. clock setting28 Came next30 Elk31 The works32 Cops’ gp.37 Peter and Philip38 Sn, on the

periodic table40 Blast cause41 __ d’honneur:

duel

42 Footnote data43 Violent stream45 “Which came

first?” option47 They may be

Elizabethan48 __ Friday’s:

restaurant49 Former JFK

lander51 Big name in

blocks52 Olajuwon who is

the NBA careerleader in blockedshots

53 Eye unsubtly59 Cartoon drooler61 “Family: The

Ties ThatBind...andGag!” authorBombeck

62 Short stackserver, for short

64 IRA options65 Support

provider66 Rock’s __

Speedwagon67 Raised trains

By Stella Daily & Bruce Venzke(c)2006 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

4/5/06

4/5/06

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Wednesday, April 5, 2006

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword PuzzleEdited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

[email protected]

T O D A Y ’ S E V E N T S

M E N U

SHARPE REFECTORY

LUNCH — Hot Corned Beef on Rye, Barley Pilaf, Cauliflower, Green Beans and Peppers, Red Potatoes with Shallots, Turkey, Whipped Cream Strawberry Torte, Frosted Cookie Squares

DINNER — Baked Stuffed Pollock, Red Rice, Savory Spinach, Zucchini, Carrot and Garlic Medley, Hearth Bread, Strawberry Jello, Black and White Pudding Cake

VERNEY-WOOLLEY DINING HALL

LUNCH — Vegetarian Cheese Soup,Ham and Bean Soup, Fried Fish Sandwich, Bruscetta Mozzarella, Broccoli Cuts, Frosted Cookie Squares

DINNER —Vegetarian Cheese Soup, Ham and Bean Soup, BBQ Chicken, Foot Long Hot Dogs in Beer, Tofu Pups, Steak Fries, Corn Bread, Fresh Corn on the Cob, Brussels Sprouts with Horseradish, Hearth Bread, Watermelon, Black and White Pudding Cake

”SUGGESTION REDUCES CONFLICT IN THE HUMAN BRAIN: CONVERGING NEUROIMAGING ACCOUNTS” 4 p.m. , (Hunter Lab 206)— Amir Raz of Columbia University will deliver the The Michael S. Goodman ‘74 Memorial Lecture.

READING AND BOOK SIGNING WITH MICHELLE TEA4 p.m., (Brown Bookstore) — Michelle Tea will promote her first novel, titled “Rose of No Man’s Land.”

SPRING ARTS FESTIVAL MEETING6 p.m., (Lower Blue Room) — Come join the Student Creative Arts Council to help plan the second annual Spring Arts Festival.

“WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER”8 p.m. , (Salomon 001) — Come see the screening of this popular movie starring Michael Showalter ’92 and presented by BTV and the Ivy Film Festival.

CAMPUS WATCHTHE BROWN DAILY HERALD · WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2006 · PAGE 3

BY OLIVER BOWERSSTAFF WRITER

The Supreme Court declined February 21 to hear an ap-peal by three former college journalists at Governors State University in Illinois that would have decided the legal-ity of university censorship of its student newspaper. The case hinged on whether the First and 14th Amendments were violated when a university dean imposed restraints on publication of the newspaper, the Innovator.

The case began in 2001 when three staff members at the Innovator, Margaret Hosty, Jeni Porche and Steven Barba, sued the university after Dean Patricia Carter told the newspaper’s printer to hold all future issues until she had read and approved them in advance. Carter did this after the Innovator had published articles critical of the administration. The move came despite the university’s policy that the Innovator’s staff would determine the

content of the paper “without censorship or advance approval.”

The Innovator, now named the Phoenix, receives the majority of its funding from the university. Carter threat-ened to withhold payment unless the printer complied.

The student plaintiffs filed their petition to the Su-preme Court after an 11-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Cir-cuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the university in June 2005. The court ruled that a 1988 Supreme Court de-cision in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, which says faculty may supervise and determine the content of a student newspaper in public high schools, applies to col-lege newspapers as well.

“There is no sharp difference between high school and college papers,” the court wrote in its decision. The court also cited the fact that the paper was financially backed by

Supreme Court declines to hear college censorship case

BY SARA WALTERSTAFF WRITER

Some students at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst currently living in the university’s sys-tem of “legacy floors” have voiced concerns about impending changes to the system, though univer-sity officials maintain that these changes have been misrepresented.

Though a March 12 Boston Globe article report-ed UMass-Amherst is “seeking to eliminate” legacy floors, officials from the university told The Herald they are merely adding an educational aspect to the program.

Legacy floors are designated for students wish-ing to live in programs that emphasize an explora-tion of black, Asian-American, multicultural, inter-national or Native American cultures, according to a statement from Michael Gargano, vice chancellor for student affairs and campus life, sent to The Her-ald March 20.

Instead of eliminating the floors, as the Globe re-ported, administrators “are enhancing this option by adding a learning component,” Gargano’s state-ment reads.

According to officials at the university, the article omitted key points regarding the restructuring of its legacy floors. Currently, if a student is interested in a specific culture, they indicate their interest in living on a corresponding floor, according to Patrick Cal-lahan, a spokesman for UMass-Amherst. In the fu-ture, the legacy floors will be part of a new program for freshmen.

“That program is rather similar, so all of those students will live together in residence halls and there will be, again, a sort of academic and cultural

Changes to UMass-Amherst’s ‘legacy floors’ spark student concern

see AMHERST, page 4

College RoundupVigil held for student allegedly raped by Duke lacrosse players

Students at North Carolina Central University held a vigil Monday for an N.C. Central student who was al-legedly raped by three members of the Duke University lacrosse team.

According to Associated Press reports, the student, who works as an exotic dancer, told police that she was choked, restrained and raped by three men while work-ing at a March 13 party in Durham, N.C., where both N.C. Central and Duke are located. Since the accusa-tions, Duke President Richard Brodhead has indefinitely suspended the lacrosse team from play until the school learns more about the incident.

No one has been charged in the case. A North Caro-lina crime lab is expected to complete analysis of DNA samples from 46 of the 47 players on the lacrosse team this week. The team’s only black player did not have to submit a sample because the dancer, who is black, said her assailants were white. If a case can be made, the players could face 16 to 20 years if convicted.

The allegations have rocked the Duke and N.C. Cen-

tral campuses. At Duke, which is four miles away from the historically black N.C. Central, students have rallied almost daily since the accusations became public, and the university’s student newspaper, the Chronicle, re-ported that racial tensions were high.

“This is a matter of white privilege,” Duke senior Ti-ana Mack said of the allegations in a March 28 Chroni-cle of Higher Education article. “When I read what was going on, it made me think about Jim Crow. … If these three culprits get away with it, it will prove to me that Duke does not honor the black woman’s body.”

About 250 students attended Monday’s N.C. Central rally, which was the first large public gathering at the university concerning the alleged rape.

Facebook potentially up for sale, according to rumorsFacebook.com, the popular online network for col-

lege and high school students, is reportedly on the sales block, according to a March 28 report in BusinessWeek Online.

see CENSORSHIP, page 4

see ROUNDUP, page 4

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2006

Solution, tips and computer program at www.sudoku.com.

Fill in the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 through 9.

the university.Richard Fallon, professor of

constitutional law at Harvard Law School, said the Supreme Court’s denial of a writ of certio-rari, which a losing party files to the Supreme Court after a low-er court decision, does not im-ply that the lower court decision — which affirmed the universi-ty’s right to censor student pub-lications — was correct, nor does it dictate the future of the issue raised by the case.

“(Denial of a writ of certiorari) doesn’t have any precedential ef-fect binding any other court,” Fal-lon said.

As is its usual practice, the Su-preme Court did not issue a writ-ten opinion explaining why it did not accept the case.

Attorneys for the student plaintiffs said the ruling con-flicts with decisions by other appeals courts that university officials cannot censor student newspapers, according to Re-uters reports. They also noted that it violates the historic com-mitment to free expression on college campuses.

The 7th Circuit’s decision is only binding in three states and is in direct conflict with decisions of other state and federal courts around the country.

The university declined to comment to The Herald on the case.

No censorship at Brown

Christi Laquer ’07, managing editor of the University-funded College Hill Independent, said though the paper has not “tested the limits” of what Brown would allow, the Indy has never encoun-tered problems with censorship

by University administrators.She added she disagrees with

the censorship imposed on the Innovator. “I think that our reac-tion would be as violent as theirs was” if Brown ever censored the Indy, she said.

Dorothy Tegeler ’08 and Anna Duncan ’08, editors-in-chief of Issues magazine, said they also disapprove of the actions taken by Governors State University administrators.

“I think that’s clearly a viola-tion of the freedom of the press,” Tegeler said, adding that if a cam-pus publication were censored at Brown, “the whole student body would be up in arms.”

“We’d definitely fight it (if we were censored),” Duncan said, “But I think Brown’s a much more liberal campus.”

Issues magazine, which is also funded by the University, has never had problems with censor-ship, Tegeler and Duncan said.

Censorshipcontinued from page 3

According to the online magazine, Facebook own-ers turned down a $750 mil-lion offer in hopes of fetching as much as $2 billion. But a source close to the Facebook told TheDeal.com, an online business and finance site, on March 29 that the report was untrue. The source did note that Facebook owners had been approached by prospec-tive buyers.

Last year, another social networking site, MySpace.com, was purchased for $580 million by News Corporation, a Rupert Murdoch-owned me-dia conglomerate.

Facebook officials declined to comment to various media sources on the matter.

Since its creation two years ago by a group of sophomores at Harvard University, Face-book.com has become the sev-enth-most heavily trafficked site on the Internet, accord-ing to market researcher com-Score Media Metrix.

Harvard expands financial aid program

Starting this fall, parents from families with annual in-comes of $60,000 or less will not have to contribute to the cost of their child’s education at Har-vard University.

In addition, families with incomes between $60,000 and $80,000 will have to contribute less, according to the Associat-ed Press.

“There is no more important mission for Harvard and high-er education than promoting equality of opportunity for all,” Harvard President Lawrence Summers said in a statement. “These increases … send a clear signal to middle-class families who have all too often felt that Harvard and other leading uni-versities are out of reach.”

The previous income thresh-old, set two years ago, for com-plete fee waivers at Harvard was $40,000. Two-thirds of the university’s students currently receive financial aid, and the average grant for the next aca-demic year is expected to be $33,000. It costs about $42,000 to attend Harvard for the cur-rent academic year.

—Stu Woo

Roundupcontinued from page 3

component that comes into the residence halls,” Callahan said.

Students choosing to par-ticipate in the new program will “learn about” academic and ca-reer planning, transitioning to college life, acquiring leadership skills, interacting with faculty and staff and becoming involved in the surrounding community, according to Gargano’s e-mail statement.

Following completion of their first year, students participating in the program will move into the school’s traditional housing system.

“The vice chancellor wants students to come together by in-terest groups and not by other factors,” Callahan said. The new program is focused on emphasiz-ing academic, cultural and social interest groups, he added.

Some students wary of changesBianca Wynn and Nisha Mun-

groo, a junior and sophomore, respectively, both live on UMass-Amherst’s Harambee floor, which Wynn said is considered the “mi-nority floor.” Neither student chose to live on the floor, but now both girls consider the other res-idents a permanent part of their lives.

“We’re so upset that they’re trying to take the floor away,” Wynn said.

Mungroo said she was placed

on the floor arbitrarily.“Last year I was placed on

the floor because I guess there was limited housing and I was a freshman,” Mungroo said. “When I moved on the floor, I fell in love with everyone and had to live there again.”

According to Wynn, the Harambee floor provides many opportunities for interaction a-mong its members. In addition to holding ice cream and cupcake socials, residents are also con-sidering a trip to New York City to see “The Color Purple.” Mun-groo said everyone who visits the floor enjoys the atmosphere cre-ated by its residents. “Our floor is the only floor that people can come to 24/7 and just feel com-fortable,” she said.

“Other floors (have socials), but they’re not like us. You can go on any random floor and if you walk around, no one knows their next-door neighbor. But when you come to Harambee, we all hang out together. We’re together 24/7. We’re inseparable. We are family,” Wynn said.

Wynn said she does not be-lieve a learning component will contribute positively to the resi-dential experience. “Classes are a break from the floor,” she said. “Classes with friends are not good. It’s a bad combination.”

Similar options at BrownStudents on Brown’s cam-

pus are also afforded the op-portunity to live in on-campus residences that center around a shared cultural interest. These

houses are not typically occu-pied by students of a single race or ethnicity. Jorge Garcia ’07, president of Machado House, a Spanish-speaking program house, said, “Not everyone here is Hispanic. People from so many different backgrounds come together at Machado. Language is just a thing that brings people together.”

Alexander Richardson ’07, president of Buxton Interna-tional House, agrees that living in program housing creates a tightly knit community among members. Richardson grew up in Toronto, which he describes as a multiethnic city, and he said Buxton is a continuation of that diverse atmosphere.

“I realize that it’s small. We can only house 60 people and obvi-ously there are some 500 inter-national undergrads. What I like about the house is that it’s half-American. It represents a deci-sion of the students to engage in a very intimate international ex-perience,” Richardson said.

Both Garcia and Richardson see very few disadvantages to living in this sort of housing. “It would be a real misopportunity” if programs like this were ended at Brown, Richardson said.

“It brings people together and it brings up more diversity, actu-ally, because people are coming together for an interest. You’re not limiting people who are join-ing the house. You’re taking a dif-ferent perspective and it actually enriches the community,” Garcia said.

Amherstcontinued from page 3

The only Bear in the all-around competition, she finished with a 37.825. Smith felt Anderson’s contributions were particularly impressive considering that this was her rookie season.

“Brittany really did well. She hit all four events,” Smith said. “She is such a solid competitor. (First-years) are generally more hit-and-miss, but Brittany has been rock-solid. We’ve been able to count on her throughout the entire season.”

Jess Pouchet ’06 also had a strong meet, tying with Ander-son for the top Brown finish in the floor exercise. Jessica McNell ’06 and Sarah Durning ’08 each posted a 9.525 in the vault to lead Brown.

Although the Bears did not pick up much hardware at the ECAC championships, upon the conclusion of the meet numer-ous gymnasts were honored for their efforts throughout the sea-son. Hannah Goldstein ’08 was named an ECAC Scholar Athlete of the Year, and 12 of Brown’s 15 gymnasts were named ECAC Scholar Athletes.

While the ECAC champion-ships wrapped up, the team por-tion of the Bears schedule, the season is not quite over. A se-lect group of gymnasts will head to the USAG Collegiate National Championships held at Cornell on April 13-15. Six gymnasts will represent Brown at the meet, up from two last year. Smith and An-derson both qualified in the all-around. Pouchet will compete on the floor exercise, McNell and Durning will perform on the vault and Sarah Cavett ’06 will tackle

the uneven bars.According to Smith, the in-

crease in Bruno’s qualifiers for the 2006 national event and the fact that Brown missed a team berth by one spot in the sea-son rankings attests to the great progress the team has made over the past year. Baughman expressed similar sentiments in regard to the team’s general improvement over the course of the season.

“Regardless of our place at Ivies, we came so much further than last year,” Baughman said. “We challenged each other and really pushed ourselves to im-prove. That really set us up to succeed this season. Seeing our teammates motivate each other, persevere and find success has to be the best memory for Am-ber and me. It’s definitely been a privilege to be part of Brown gymnastics.”

Gymnasticscontinued from page 12

‘Wet Hot American Summer’ star Showalter ’92 to speak at Ivy Film FestivalBY ILA TYAGISTAFF WRITER

This year’s Ivy Film Festival promises to showcase some of the most impres-sive and diverse student films seen since the festival’s inception, according to the festival’s publicity coordinator, Victo-ria Hoen ’06. The festival will be held at Brown from April 5-9.

Thirty-six student films on subjects ranging from a soldier’s struggle upon re-turning home from the horrors of Iraq, to a man imprisoned within multiple lay-ers of photographic illusion to prema-

ture midlife crises will be screened at various loca-tions on or near campus. These films were culled

from a total of 150 submissions.“This is the strongest submission pool

we’ve ever had,” Hoen said. She added that the publicity coordinators made an extra effort this year to spread the word about the festival and to reach out to a large number of schools.

Fellow publicity coordinator Nicholas Axelrod ’06 echoed Hoen, saying narrow-ing down the “amazing” applicant pool was a lengthy process. He said the festi-val coordinators have tried hard to break the stereotype of the festival as being limited to Ivy League schools now that “we’ve gone national and internation-al.” The publicity coordinators were also in charge of ensuring local and national media are aware of the event.

This year’s festival will also be screen-ing seven soon-to-be released feature films, beginning Wednesday with the film “Iraq in Fragments,” which won three awards at the 2006 Sundance Film Festi-val. The film, directed by James Longley, attempts to create a picture of a country divided along religious and ethnic lines by looking in turn at the Sunnis, Shiites

and Kurds. The festival will close Saturday, April

8 with a screening of “Half Nelson,” di-rected by Ryan Fleck, which was an of-ficial selection at this year’s Sundance. The film examines the friendship be-tween an inner-city junior high school teacher with a drug habit and one of his students. Both screenings also include question-and-answer sessions with the films’ creators.

Other feature films being premiered include Indian filmmaker Deepa Mehta’s “Water,” a controversial drama set in co-lonial India. The film examines the plight of a group of destitute widows at a tem-ple in the holy city of Varanasi. Another highlight includes the 2006 Sundance

ARTS & CULTURE

msn.comThis year’s Ivy Film Festival celebrity speaker will be writer, director and actor Michael Showalter ’92.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5 , 2006 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD PAGE 5

see IVY FILM, page 6

third-fastest time in Brown’s history.Another stand out was Anna Willard

’06, who broke a school record in the 5,000-meter run, clocking in at 16:35, nine seconds better than the previ-ous mark. Willard’s performance quali-fied her for the NCAA Regional meet, an amazing feat considering it was her first time running the event in the spring season. Michol Monaghan ’07 competed in the same event, though in a different heat, and ran a 16:49, placing her third all-time in the event at Brown.

Naja Ferjan ’07 ran a personal best in 4:27.84 in the 1,500-meter run, plac-ing her third all-time at Brown, and then came back to run a 2:10.70 in the 800-meter event. Smita Gupta ’08 also ran the 1,500, clocking in at a 4:33.56, a personal best by seven seconds, while Powell ran the 800, finishing in 2:13.84.

In the field events, Sarah Groothuis ’08 threw the discus a 141-9, placing her sixth on the Brown all-time list.

The performances over the break gave Director of Track and Field Craig Lake a reason to keep pushing her team to reach for the top.

“It was our first big competition of the season, but one that we were train-ing through. The goal of the trip was to get into a big meet with top national competition,” she wrote in an e-mail. “Top schools compete out there … and a

number of professional athletes as well. Being exposed to top competition hope-fully opens our eyes that there is more to accomplish, and hopefully gets us to raise our game.”

A promising aspect to the week was that many of the standout performances came from underclassmen.

“We need everyone to step it up, and seeing a lot of freshmen and sophomores making an impact, especially Akilah, Ni-cole, Smita and Sarah, bodes well for the team,” Powell said. “Performing well at Heps needs a team effort from every class and it is amazing to see underclass-men doing their part.”

Burns, one of the top performing new-comers during the indoor season, is equal-ly excited about what the youth in the team will mean for the rest of the spring.

“I am happy to see that so many of us are stepping up to the plate early. It only means great success for the future,” Burns said.

To improve upon its third-place finish at the indoor championships earlier this year, and with just over a month until the Heptagonal Champi-onships, the team will need to build on its spring break performance in the next few weeks. Brown will bring its full squad to its next competition at the University of Connecticut this weekend.

“This break was full of great races,” Powell said. “Personal records were set by (a lot of the team), which is an awe-some start to this outdoor season. We are going to roll with this momentum and hopefully make some big noise at Heps in May.”

W. trackcontinued from page 12

www.browndailyherald.com


ident for Finance and Adminis-tration Elizabeth Huidekoper up-dated the faculty on the review of the Brown Bookstore in what she called an effort to clarify miscon-ceptions that have arisen.

Huidekoper stressed that im-portant concerns have been raised for both operating models under consideration — outsourc-ing the bookstore to an external vendor such as Barnes and Noble College Booksellers and keeping it independent under University management.

The Bookstore Review Com-mittee, which Huidekoper chairs, released a report March 3 rec-ommending that the bookstore be outsourced to an external vendor. The committee’s report sparked the creation of the Save the Bookstore Coalition, which has rallied to keep the bookstore independent.

Huidekoper said the commit-tee will host two open forums in late April to solicit more feed-back, construct a preliminary plan for the self-operation model and reconsider its findings before

making a final recommendation to the president’s cabinet. The cabinet, which comprises about a dozen top University adminis-trators, will likely make the final decision before students leave campus at the end of the aca-demic year. If administrators are not ready to act at that time, they will wait until the fall to make a decision so that a decision is not made over the summer when students are away from campus, Huidekoper said.

Peter Sprake ’07, a custom-er service clerk at the bookstore and Save the Bookstore Coali-tion member who originally en-rolled in 1966, left Brown before graduating and re-enrolled in 2001, and two other opponents of outsourcing distributed infor-mational flyers to faculty mem-bers as they entered the Salomon Center to attend the meeting.

Two professors raised con-cerns about outsourcing at the meeting. One professor stressed the high quality of service and loyalty to the institution provided by employees of the independent bookstore.

“We can’t just let these people go off into the sunset,” the pro-fessor said, referring to the cur-rent bookstore employees.

Huidekoper agreed that the bookstore’s employees are valu-able and would play a key role in the future of the bookstore under either operating scenario.

Another professor, who worked at Rutgers University when that institution’s bookstore was out-sourced, said the results at Rut-gers were “disastrous,” especially in terms of academic service and personnel issues.

The only other person to speak about the bookstore at the meet-ing, University Registrar Michael Pesta, stressed that textbook sales ought to be the “central issue” in the review.

“If there is any threat to text-books” under one of the oper-ating models, “everything else must be swept off the table,” Pes-ta said.

Huidekoper agreed and point-ed out that the impact of out-sourcing on textbook sales is a key component of the commit-tee’s report.

In other business, Dean of the Faculty Rajiv Vohra P’07 told the faculty that the University has hired 30 new professors to start next semester and about 20 additional searches are still ongoing. Fifteen of the 30 new hires are women, and six of the 12 new professors in the physi-cal sciences are women, Vohra said.

Also Tuesday, Dean of the College Paul Armstrong an-nounced that Assistant Profes-sor of Comparative Literature Esther Whitfield is the recipient of the 2006-2007 Henry Mer-ritt Wriston Fellowship, which is awarded annually to junior, non-tenured members of the faculty. The fellowship recipi-ent is awarded one semester of leave, with full compensation, to pursue a research project or prepare new contributions to the College curriculum.

In addition to serving as a the-sis adviser and academic adviser for first-years and sophomores, Whitfield has developed nine new courses at Brown, primar-ily involving Caribbean and Latin American literature, Armstrong said.

Faculty Mtgcontinued from page 1

their West Coast trip, on April 1, the Bears headed to the ECAC Championships at College Park, Md., looking to improve upon their 11th place finish from last year. An 8-5 loss to Wagner knocked them from the winners’ bracket and prevented a poten-tial top-three finish.

“We had a lot of opportuni-ties to score in the Wagner game, and we made a couple of key de-fensive errors,” Gall said. “We played really well in both of the wins though, and it was good for our kids off the bench to get play-ing time.”

After the Wagner disappoint-ment, however, Brown rebound-ed with three consecutive victo-ries to capture fifth place. Bruno blasted Gannon, 11-5, and Villa-nova, 11-3, before taking care of Harvard in Sunday’s fifth-place game, 6-5. The string of wins should generate some momen-tum heading into an important home stand this weekend — fea-turing games against Harvard in addition to the University of Michigan and Hartwick College — before the Northern Champi-onships April 22 and 23.

Equestrian squad whips Connect-icut in fourth straight match

The equestrian team closed out its up-and-down season on several high notes with a third-place team finish at the March 26 Connecticut College meet. Even more impressive, the Bears sent 12 riders to the regional compe-tition, and two more advanced from the regional competition to the Zone Championships this Saturday.

At the Connecticut College meet over break, Bruno finished just four points behind first-place Johnson and Wales and one under second-place Roger Williams. The Bears edged out University of Connecticut by one point in their final faceoff of the season. Unfortunately, the Huskies still won the region by 25 team points, but Brown fared well against their main rival, Connecticut, down the stretch — Brown bested its main rival for the fourth-consecutive meet with the win in the finale.

In the novice fences division, Mallory Kass ’06 and Katie Goetz ’08 finished 1-2. Alexis Gilbard ’06, Whitney Keefe ’08 and Ja-mie Peddy ’06 secured first-place spots in the three classes of open flat, and Cody Auer ’09 placed second in that event in addition to taking third in the

second class of open fences.Marissa Geoffroy ’07 placed

third in the first class and Ped-dy took third in the fourth class. Brown’s point rider in interme-diate flat, Jade Palomino ’07, also took third. Rounding out the top-three placements on the day was Courtney Pope ’07 with a first-place finish in novice flat. Second and third-place finishes came in walk-trot-canter from Hayley Goldbach ’09 and Rosa-lind Bogan ’08 along with an-other second-place finish from Lucia Corso ’08 in walk-trot point.

Keefe was the main attraction at both the team competition and at Regionals. She clinched the high point rider award and an automatic bid for the Cac-chione Cup at Nationals in the first weekend in May, as well as a Zone bid in open fences after taking second at Regionals.

The other standout for the Bears was Gilbard, who quali-fied for Zones in open flat with Brown’s only first-place finish at Regionals. A solid core of se-niors also wrapped up their Col-lege Hill careers at Regionals, as Jenny John ’06, Mallory Kass ’06, Jamie Peddy ’06 and Rachel Roemer ’06 all failed to qualify for Zones.

—Amy Ehrhart

Briefscontinued from page 12

selection “Black Gold,” a doc-umentary about the desper-ate conditions of people, some of whom are near starvation, in regions that produce the world’s finest coffee beans. The hit British film “Kinky Boots,” a comedy about a cheeky, caba-ret-singing transvestite named Lola and a shoe-factory owner named Charlie who strike up an unlikely friendship to save Charlie’s ailing family business from financial ruin, will also be screened.

Daniel Brown ’06, the fes-tival’s executive director, at-tended this year’s Sundance Film Festival and spoke to di-rectors, expressing interest in bringing their films to campus. As a result, this year’s program includes the largest number of Sundance award-winning movies ever shown at the Ivy Film Festival.

This year’s celebrity speaker is Michael Showalter ’92. Show-alter got his start in show busi-ness by writing and perform-

ing on MTV’s mid-1990s sketch comedy show “The State.” In 2001 Showalter co-wrote and starred in the cult classic “Wet Hot American Summer,” an in-spired send-up of 1980s teen comedies. Showalter is also one-third of the comedy trio “Stella,” which airs on Comedy Central, and he wrote, directed and starred in “The Baxter,” a romantic comedy released last summer.

The festival strives to facili-tate interaction between as-piring student filmmakers and industry professionals, and with this end in mind, festival coordinators have arranged a series of panels and work-shops throughout the five-day long festival, where industry insiders will share their ad-vice and experience. Panel ti-tles this year include “Doing Business in Hollywood” and “Breaking In: An Alumni Pan-el,” in which Showalter will be participating.

Showalter is also slated to judge the student films, along with director of “Black Gold” Marc Francis, director of “Chil-dren of Chabannes” Lisa Gossels and other industry professionals.

Ivy Filmcontinued from page 5

“A lot of people really wanted (the tickets) and we just want-ed to bring our ticket distribu-tion into the 21st century for big events,” Chapman said.

The new distribution system was also designed to ensure a fair process for all members of the Brown community, Schwartz said. Last year, graduate students and medical students were not all able to acquire Bill Clinton tickets due to family obligations, jobs or hos-pital shifts during the time tickets were being distributed.

“One of the things that we were trying to do was make the ticket system fair to the entire Brown family, and that was an-other incentive for putting it on-line,” Schwartz said. “We had a very good turnout from the Graduate School and the Medi-cal School (this year).”

Administrators said they have not encountered any opposition to the changes, nor have they re-ceived any negative feedback re-garding the new ticket distribu-tion method.

“From everything we have heard, the online system worked incredibly well,” said Darrell West, professor of political sci-ence and director of the Taubman Center, one of the co-sponsors of the Hillary Clinton lecture.

At 6 a.m. on Friday, March 17, when ticket reservations could first be made, no technological troubles were experienced or re-ported.

“I don’t think people were see-ing bad performance,” said John Spadaro, director of systems and services for CIS. “We load-test-ed it to make sure that we could serve out hundreds of tickets in a small time and that’s, in fact, what happened.” He added CIS staff members were available throughout the reservation pro-cess to correct any problems that may have occurred.

Two web communications of-ficials designed the front page and frequently-asked-questions section of the ticket reservation Web site, Schwartz said.

The site was created with “a relatively small application that used a lot of infrastructure that we already have in place,” Spad-aro said. For example, he said, there are already applications created to confirm that individ-uals logging onto the system are either faculty, staff or students, and this application can differ-

entiate among the three groups to make sure the appropriate e-mails are sent out to individuals reserving tickets.

“It was pretty simple,” Spad-aro said. “We authorize to make sure that you are in a group that could get a ticket, then put you into a database so you couldn’t get two tickets and then printed a letter.”

Chapman and Schwartz said the process was tested rigorous-ly before launching, making sure that community members could choose to pick up tickets or have them sent via campus mail.

Originally, only 2,500 tick-ets were available for reserva-tion, Chapman said. However, because of the great demand to see Hillary Clinton, “we decided to reconfigure the stage set-up in Meehan (Auditorium) and that freed up an additional 1,000 tick-ets,” he added.

Out of 3,500 tickets reserved, 1,077 have been sent through campus mail, while the majority of those reserving tickets opted to pick them up at Sayles Hall.

Ticket pick-up in Sayles be-gan at 11 a.m. on Monday, April 3rd, and there had been no lines for pick-up as of Monday after-noon, Schwartz said, adding that tickets being delivered by cam-pus mail were sent out in bright yellow envelopes on Monday af-ternoon. The decision to distrib-ute the tickets via campus mail later in the day was intended to lower the chances of the tickets becoming lost, Chapman said.

Several undergraduate stu-dents voiced their support for the new ticket system. Vance Monet ’08 said he found the process for the Bill Clinton lecture last year to be very frustrating. Monet had woken up especially early to en-sure that he would receive a tick-et and was annoyed to see fellow students cutting the line after he had waited for hours.

“You get over it, obviously, but, just for that time period, it’s nothing but frustration when you see people act as if they don’t know what’s going on or they just take advantage of the fact that there is such a long line,” Monet said.

Gabe Prestol ’07 also waited for several hours for his ticket to the Bill Clinton lecture last year. Though he had fun camping out with his friends, he believes it is much more convenient to go online and decide the means of ticket delivery. “I think this is a much more effective method, definitely, of giving out tickets,” Prestol said.


Ticketingcontinued from page 1

www.browndailyherald.com

taking the win in the 10-kilome-ter and being a threat to score in the 5k at Heps,” Burke said.

Nick Neely ’07, who com-peted in a different heat of the 5,000-meter event, also set a personal best, crossing in 14:25.

“Neely is running consis-tently well,” Lake said. “Unfor-tunately, his race went out a lit-tle too fast, (and) learning pace is an important part of distance running. … I am confident be-fore the end of the year, Nick will go under 14:20.”

While the cool weather aid-ed the distance runners in their pursuit of fast times, “the rain made the throwing surfaces re-ally slippery, as David Howard (’09) actually fell on one of his warm-up attempts,” Lake said. “The throws squad got in good experience and is working on technique right now, and will be ready to go when it counts.”

Despite the rain, a pair of throwers hit solid marks on the first day in Palo Alto. Kent Walls ’06 threw for 174-1 in the ham-mer, and Paul Rosiak ’07 marked 184-6 in the javelin. Walls won the discus the week prior at the Dick Shea Invite, throwing for

164-6.“A lot of (the throwers) did

well considering conditions, and some like Paul Rosiak are start-ing well ahead of where they be-gan last year at this time,” Lake said. “Paul threw 20 feet farther at this time compared to last year.”

Back on the track, Jamil McClintock ’08 qualified for the elite 110-meter hurdle fi-nals with a preliminary time of 14.62. While McClintock al-ready ranks in the top 10 for Bruno, the time was a signifi-cantly faster season-opener than in 2005. At West Point, two hurdlers made season debuts in the longer hurdles event, as Christian Tabib ’07 and Will Bernitsky ’07 were timed at 55.25 and 55.78, respectively.

Mike Pruzinsky ’07 turned out a strong performance in the 200-meters in his outdoor open-er in Palo Alto, clocking 21.77 in the half-lap event. Dallas Diss-more ’06, the indoor Heptago-nal champion in the 500-me-ters, opened his final outdoor campaign by posting 48.29 in the 400-meters.

The performances of Bow-en, Achilihu, Burke, Neely, Walls, McClintock and Diss-more were Intercollegiate As-sociation of Amateur Athletes of America qualifying marks.

Back in Providence, captain Jake Golenor ’06 was recent-ly released from the hospital after battling ulcerative coli-tis and mononucleosis for the past month. Though the senior thrower has returned to class-es, the Heptagonal champion in the indoor shot put and out-door discus will not likely be able to return to competition for the Bears.

“With Jake out, the distance men hope to step it up to fill the obvious loss of points,” Burke said. “We only managed two points indoors, but look to secure a much larger number outdoors.”

With less than five weeks until the Heptagonal Champi-onships, the Bears will “con-tinue to train hard for the next three to four weeks before ta-pering,” Lake said. “We have a lot of talent and a lot of people who are willing to work hard and make the necessary sac-rifices, which are all the right ingredients for a potential Ivy League Championship team. A little luck cannot hurt either, of course.”

The Bears will field a full ros-ter for the first time this season this weekend against the Uni-versity of Connecticut at the Huskies’ Greer Field House in Storrs, Conn.

M. trackcontinued from page 12

of 2007. “But we’ve already expe-rienced setbacks,” he added. “It’s hard to anticipate the problems you could run into along the way,” he said.

In an interview with The Her-ald in March, Associate Provost Nancy Dunbar and Ellen Waite-Franzen, vice president for Com-puting and Information Servic-es, did not posit a launch date for online registration, saying the sheer magnitude of the proj-ect makes it difficult to predict when students will be able to use Banner to register for courses.

If online course registration is not available by April 2007,

the program will be used in April 2008, Pesta said. Implementing the system when students begin to register for a new school year rather than in the middle of the school year will reduce confu-sion, he added.

Pesta would not disclose how much printing the CAB costs the University each year. In a No-vember interview with The Her-ald, he said the cost of printing the CAB will not factor in the University’s decision to continue producing it.

Pesta said he does not know how students will access crucial information currently found in the front and back of the CAB, such as academic regulations and concentration require-ments, once the CAB is no longer printed. He added that it will be

the University’s responsibility to make the information easily ac-cessible online.

Students offered varying opinions on the CAB.

“I never looked at (it),” said Kevin Chang ’06. A print form of course listings should be avail-able to students, but “it’s prob-ably a waste of paper,” Chang added.

Cindy Swain ’09 said the CAB is more useful than BOCA because students can view sev-eral courses on the same page at once, instead of one course for each page of BOCA. “I’m more inclined to look at depart-ments I wouldn’t normally look at,” she said. Both said BOCA is necessary, however, because it provides the most up-to-date information.

CABcontinued from page 1


April 22, but many of the vot-ers are living away from the city and will have to vote as absen-tees. Misleading coverage, Land-er said, could cause voters to choose candidates based on in-accurate information.

Residents are also extremely angry at their government. “Ka-trina didn’t flood New Orleans — government failure did,” said John McCusker, a photographer for the New Orleans Times-Pica-yune walking along the London Avenue Canal last week.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engi-neers, which built the faulty le-vees, is a frequent target for res-idents’ irritation. Touring neigh-borhoods adjacent to the levees, it is clear that almost no houses suffered significant hurricane damage, but almost all had sig-nificant flood damage.

People here are also angry about the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s slow re-sponse to the disaster, and they remain frustrated over what they see as bureaucracy run amok. “Imagine going to the driver’s li-cense office every day,” McCusk-er said.

Residents charge that because of the media’s focus on the Lower Ninth Ward, people around the country believe the rest of the city is fine.

Clearly, it is not.The city faces a health cri-

sis, with hospitals treating huge numbers of uninsured patients, sometimes cutting into their en-dowments to do so. Charity Hos-

pital, New Orleans’ only Level 1 trauma center, is closed perma-nently, with trauma patients be-ing treated at a converted shop-ping mall.

The city faces an education cri-sis, with Dillard University operat-ing out of rented space in a down-town hotel and Tulane and Loyola universities making drastic bud-get cuts. The University of New Or-leans has some of its faculty living in a trailer park outside its Lakev-iew campus. The city’s infamously troubled public school system has been quietly replaced by a char-ter system that has enjoyed some success, but as one resident said, “Schools in Orleans Parish were so bad before, I think they only could have gotten better.”

The city also faces a housing crisis, with thousands of former residents living across Louisiana and the United States as well as in a tent city called the Emergen-cy Community, located in neigh-boring St. Bernard Parish. With so many houses being gutted, rent is skyrocketing. According to Mc-Cusker, a two-bedroom house in the city costs him nearly $1,500 per month.

And yet, for all of the Big Easy’s problems, it retains much of its unique flavor. The city’s famous French Quarter was undamaged, and people still dance in the streets to some of the world’s best jazz and blues. Po’boy sandwich-es, boiled crawfish, benets and other Crescent City fare is still available, though one must take note of operating hours — many businesses cannot stay open late because of a shortage of low-wage laborers.

“You know what I miss? Guys playing dominoes on the neu-

tral ground,” said local electri-cian Brian Deubler, referring to the city’s wide, grassy medians. “Those guys were so set-up that they had BBQ pits out there.”

Moving forward“New Orleans remains a ter-

rible knot of indecision,” Lander said, pointing out the disagree-ments over when, where, how and if to rebuild.

Besides an impending elec-tion, people are hesitant to move back into their neighborhoods because they don’t know if their community will be revitalized. Several residents said they keep in touch with neighbors, who are spread across the country, via e-mail, and most are hopeful that they can rebuild.

“It’s not any more irrational to rebuild here than to rebuild after an earthquake in San Francisco or a wildfire in California,” Mc-Cusker said.

However, in the Lower Ninth Ward, fresh signs that read “Don’t bulldoze” adorn destroyed houses as part of a campaign by the volunteer group Common Ground to help residents keep their hous-es. However, many residents and volunteers who toured the Ninth Ward, including some working for Common Ground, expressed the sentiment that houses will almost certainly have to be demolished.

In the meantime, many resi-dents have taken it upon them-selves to bring their city back. Partly out of a lasting distrust of government and a frustration at navigating bureaucracy, a culture of individualism appears to be emerging in the Big Easy.

“I think we will definitely end up with more of an entrepreneur-ial culture,” Lander said.

“When things got done, it was because of individuals,” Deubler said.

McCusker also spoke of for-saking the top-down governance to which residents might have become accustomed before Ka-trina. After the storm, physi-cians and police officers com-mandeered Wal-Mart stores and drug stores for supplies. Now, neighbors are helping to gut each other’s houses and are jumpstart-ing their children’s education by starting charter schools, he said.

The latent distrust, govern-ment indecision and emerging spirit of individualism have pro-vided an opportunity for dozens of volunteer organizations to as-sist in the city’s reconstruction.

One ubiquitous group is Com-mon Ground, which has garnered a reputation among residents as an exemplar of the rising spirit of individualism. Started by three residents with $50, this grass-roots effort was providing aid to victims in some areas days before the government did. It has start-ed clinics, opened the Emergen-cy Community and campaigned for rebuilding heavily damaged areas.

“The Emergency Commu-nity is sort of run by hippies. It happens quite a lot that hippies come and save the day,” Jay Al-cazar, a Loyola student, told the panel audience.

The group has lately become somewhat controversial for flouting local authorities’ recon-struction ideas and government disaster relief procedures, but there is little doubt that, on the whole, people here appreciate its assistance.

While he thinks Common Ground has been an extraor-dinary help in the short-term, Lander said the group will even-tually have to work alongside the government as New Orleans plans for the future.

Brown’s contributionFrom Brown, the Swearer

Center for Public Service sent 20 students to gut houses and learn about the city through various cultural and educa-tional events. The Bear Neces-sities, Brown Habitat for Hu-

manity, Hillel, College Hill for Christ and others also traveled to New Orleans for the break, some with the assistance of a $5 million donation from the late Sidney Frank ’42 for Brown’s Katrina relief efforts. Addition-ally, at least five students trav-eled independently, looking to help out where needed.

Students slept on church floors, in tents and in ware-houses. “The work was hard and fulfilling, but also very frustrat-ing because, as much as we did, there was still so much left to be done,” said Juli Thorstenn ’09, who worked with Habitat.

While an exact number of stu-dent volunteers was not avail-able, Brown students were so abundant that on at least three occasions one volunteer group reported running into another on the streets.

People here are extremely ap-preciative of the huge numbers of students in New Orleans for their spring breaks. Police offi-cers stopped a van full of Brown volunteers for running a red light, but let them off without even a warning after discovering why they were in New Orleans. One cab driver refused to be paid for his services after ferrying a group of Habitat for Humanity volunteers across the city.

As New Orleans residents slowly rebuild their city, they have adopted a dark sense of humor about their numerous plights. T-shirts that read, “Want hurricane relief? Go FEMA your-self!” and “Make levees, not war!” attempt to disguise the grow-ing concern about this year’s hurricane season, which begins June 1. As much as residents rail against their government, they also acknowledge that they need federal and state authorities to work quickly to reconstruct the levees that keep water from flooding into the Crescent City. To what extent the levees will be repaired by summer remains unclear.

Meanwhile, New Orleans res-idents are working, hoping and waiting. Deubler, the electri-cian, quietly put it best: “I used to coach sports, but now most of the ball parks are trailer parks. I’ve had to downsize my business — I’m just watching the time go by.”

New Orleanscontinued from page 1

Vice President for Research also funds travel for research, he said.

But the University’s travel fund is not as important to sciences professors, said Professor of Bi-ology Ken Miller ’70 P’02. Most professors in his department use funds from foundations such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foun-dation to cover traveling expens-es, he said.

Although employees are reim-bursed for costs incurred travel-ing on University business, Pro-fessor of History Gordon Wood said he did not take advantage of that benefit when he drove to Boston last month to speak at the regional launch of the Campaign for Academic Enrichment.

“However expensive gas is, it’s not that bad that I need to ask the University to pay,” Wood said.

Although travel compensation is a useful benefit for professors, some value the tuition benefits provided even more.

Tenured and non-tenured full-time faculty who have worked at Brown for four years receive $10,000 off each child’s undergraduate tuition each year, regardless of where they go to school, said Michael Chapman, vice president for public affairs and University relations. While many institutions provide incen-tives for faculty to send children to their universities, Brown does not, according to both Miller and Harris.

Before 1979, the University gave faculty an amount equiva-lent to Brown’s tuition to use for their child’s tuition at any uni-versity, said Professor Emeritus of Engineering Barrett Hazeltine. Since Brown’s tuition was higher than most schools, children of tenured faculty usually went to college for free.

Hazeltine, who has been teaching at the University since 1959, used the old tuition benefit to send his three children to the Stevens Institute of Technology, Tufts University and Swarthmore College. Not paying any tuition was the best perk he received in his 47 years as a professor, he said.

Harris, who came to Brown in 1988 and missed out on the old benefit, said the new one is mediocre.

“A lot of peer institutions will give more,” he said, but he add-ed that other Ivy League schools, such as Yale University, provide the same financial support that Brown does. Harris said the low tuition benefit was a factor when his children decided where they would attend college. His son is currently enrolled at McGill University in Montreal, which

has lower tuition than American schools of similar quality, Harris said.

Miller came to Brown in 1980 and also received the newer tu-ition benefit for his daughters. His younger daughter graduat-ed from Brown in 2002, and stu-dents assumed Miller did not pay any tuition, though he paid the majority, he said.

“Compared to our peer insti-tutions, it’s not a generous ben-efit,” he added.

While Harris said the tuition benefit falls short, Miller said Brown’s contribution to faculty pension funds is “substantial.” Rather than taking the retire-ment money out of professors’ salaries, the University places an additional amount of roughly 7 to 10 percent of a professor’s sal-ary in a TIAA-CREF pension fund, he said. The University also offers faculty the option of transferring money from their paychecks to the fund, Miller said.

The University also provides support for faculty research both monetarily and in the form of sabbaticals. Still, in his 17 years at Brown, Harris said he has tak-en only two and a half years off from teaching, adding that he spent his time off on campus.

Beyond their own retirement and their children’s education, faculty members’ academic live-lihoods benefit from the Uni-versity’s support for their own research, Harris said. Although not completely satisfied with re-search support and leave-taking policies, Harris said the Univer-sity has improved these efforts in the past few years.

Unlike many other universi-ties, Miller said Brown does not

give professors grant money for research. Instead, Miller said he and his colleagues apply for grants from the NIH and the NSF. Before faculty begin working at Brown, they determine with the University how much they will receive in start-up research mon-ey, a figure that usually falls be-tween $50,000 and $300,000, he said. Highly competitive grants of $15,000 to $20,000 are also awarded to new faculty mem-bers, he added.

“Once you get started, you’re expected to generate your own funds,” Miller said.

Vice President for Research Andries van Dam said Brown is not the only institution that ex-pects its faculty to be “self-sup-porting.” The University does help underwrite the costs of re-search by giving professors lab space and partially funding ex-pensive equipment. The con-struction of the Life Sciences Building, van Dam said, reflects the University’s increasing sup-port for researchers.

Undergraduate Teaching and Research Assistantships also pro-vide faculty with research as-sistance while giving students an opportunity to gain practical academic experience, van Dam said.

Van Dam said his office makes sure professors in the humanities are not forgotten. Humanities re-searchers have fewer sources of funding for travel, and the Uni-versity’s aid is often a great help. “A small amount of money makes a big difference for a lot of (hu-manities professors),” he said.

Although faculty in the scienc-es always wish for more funding, van Dam said he believes most

researchers are not “wildly dis-satisfied.” Those faculty who be-lieve they might get a better aid package at another university may choose to leave Brown, he said. Such situations arise at ev-ery university, he added.

“Naturally, most faculty would like to see their benefits increase,” Miller said.

Despite his comments on the shortcomings of some benefits, Harris said he profits from his role as a Faculty Fellow and con-tact with students in the class-room. Intangible benefits far outweigh any possible financial perks, he said.

The Faculty Fellows program fosters interaction between stu-dents and faculty by placing fac-ulty in houses near residential halls.

Five Faculty Fellows live in University-owned houses rent-free, Harris said. Two non-resi-dential fellows receive a stipend as compensation for their work with students. While Harris said he enjoys living on campus, he said the real benefit comes from building relationships with students outside the aca-demic arena.

“We have the privilege of mix-ing with the brightest people of the next generation — I think that’s exhilarating,” he said.

At the same time, Harris said, “one can never leave the job.” Juggling his role as a Faculty Fel-low with his duties as a professor and his research can be difficult, he said, “but I enjoy doing it.”

“I could have gone elsewhere for more money and better ben-efits and I chose to stay here be-cause I felt Brown was a better place,” Harris said.


Perkscontinued from page 1

dres and Millar takes up space for the Orioles. From the per-spective of Theo Epstein, I can understand the rationale be-hind this. All three players did what they had to do to contrib-ute to Boston’s success, and once they had served their pur-pose it was time to say goodbye to them. But the team feels just a little emptier without them.

The list of memorable guys from that team doesn’t end with those three. Derek Lowe, Pedro Martinez, Johnny Da-mon, Gabe Kapler, Doug Mi-rabelli, Orlando Cabrera and Doug Mientkiewicz all cap-tured my admiration, and all have said goodbye to the Ole Town Team. The majority of the key cogs from that champion-ship squad make their address-es elsewhere nowadays, and it’s less than two years later. Of course we still have holdovers like Schill, Ortiz, Varitek, Man-ny Ramirez and Tim Wakefield serving as daily reminders for those glory days, but they seem to be all who remain.

Epstein went out and got some very respectable players to fill the gaps, but the chang-es have come so suddenly that I’ve been caught off-guard. Part of me still wants to see Muel-ler holding down the sixth spot in the lineup with his awkward inside-out swing, hear Millar chime in with his idiotic com-ments on a daily basis, watch Mirabelli behind the plate try-ing to corral a Tim Wakefield knuckleball and make unend-ing comments concerning Da-mon’s hirsute appearance. Un-fortunately the only way I can do that is by watching “Faith Rewarded” for the 20th time.

As the season progresses it won’t matter to me who’s play-ing for the Red Sox, just as long as those players help the team win 95-100 games and reach the postseason just as I’ve come to expect since 2003.

I’m already a fan of Coco Crisp for his name and his jaw-dropping ability in the field, and something tells me new faces like Mike Lowell, Mark Loretta and Josh Beckett will have no trouble winning me over. The mantra of any general manager this day and age is that change is necessary even for a winning ball club. What the GMs never mention — although it is surely implied — is that it’s never easy, espe-cially for the fans.

Due to his Asian bloodlines, Chris Mahr ’07 can never make unending comments about his own hirsute appearance.

Mahrcontinued from page 12

Allison Kwong, Night Editor

Chessy Brady, Taryn Martinez, Copy Editors

Senior Staff Writers Simmi Aujla, Stephanie Bernhard, Melanie Duch, Ross Frazier, Jonathan Herman, Rebecca Jacobson, Chloe Lutts, Caroline SilvermanStaff Writers Justin Amoah, Zach Barter, Allison Erich Bernstein, Brenna Carmody, Alissa Cerny, Ashley Chung, Stewart Dearing, Hannah Levintova, Hannah Miller, Aidan Levy, Taryn Martinez, Kyle McGourty, Ari Rockland-Miller, Chelsea Rudman, Kam Sripada, Robin Steele, Spencer Trice, Ila Tyagi, Sara WalterSports Staff Writers Sarah Demers, Amy Ehrhart, Erin Frauenhofer, Kate Klonick, Madeleine Marecki, George Mesthos, Hugh Murphy, Eric Perlmutter, Marco Santini, Bart Stein, Tom Trudeau, Steele WestAccount Administrators Alexandra Annuziato, Emilie Aries, Steven Butschi, Dee Gill, Rahul Keerthi, Kate Love, Ally Ouh, Nilay Patel, Ashfia Rahman, Rukesh Samarasekera, Jen Solin, Bonnie WongDesign Staff Adam Kroll, Andrew Kuo, Jason Lee, Gabriela ScarrittPhoto Staff CJ Adams, Chris Bennett, Meg Boudreau, Tobias Cohen, Lindsay Harrison, Matthew Lent, Dan Petrie, Christopher Schmitt, Oliver Schulze, Juliana Wu, Min Wu,Copy Editors Chessy Brady, Amy Ehrhart, Natalia Fisher, Jacob Frank, Christopher Gang, Yi-Fen Li, Taryn Martinez, Katie McComas, Sara Molinaro, Heather Peterson, Lela Spielberg

S T A F F E D I T O R I A L

D A N I E L L A W L O R

C O R R E C T I O N S P O L I C YThe Brown Daily Herald is committed to providing the Brown University community with the most accurate information possible.

Corrections may be submitted up to seven calendar days after publication.

C O M M E N TA R Y P O L I C YThe staff editorial is the majority opinion of the editorial board of The Brown Daily Herald. The editorial viewpoint does not necessarily

reflect the views of The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Columns, letters and comics reflect the opinions of their authors only.

L E T T E R S T O T H E E D I T O R P O L I C YSend letters to [email protected]. Include a telephone number with all letters. The Herald reserves the right to edit all letters

for length and cannot assure the publication of any letter. Please limit letters to 250 words. Under special circumstances writers may request

anonymity, but no letter will be printed if the author’s identity is unknown to the editors. Announcements of events will not be printed.

A D V E R T I S I N G P O L I C YThe Brown Daily Herald, Inc. reserves the right to accept or decline any advertisement at its discretion.

EDITORIALRobbie Corey-Boulet, Editor-in-ChiefJustin Elliott, Executive EditorBen Miller, Executive EditorStephanie Clark, Senior EditorKatie Lamm, Senior EditorJonathan Sidhu, Arts & Culture EditorJane Tanimura, Arts & Culture EditorStu Woo, Campus Watch EditorMary-Catherine Lader, Features EditorBen Leubsdorf, Metro EditorAnne Wootton, Metro EditorEric Beck, News EditorPatrick Harrison, Opinions EditorNicholas Swisher, Opinions EditorStephen Colelli, Sports EditorChristopher Hatfield, Sports EditorJustin Goldman, Asst. Sports EditorJilane Rodgers, Asst. Sports EditorCharlie Vallely, Asst. Sports Editor

PRODUCTIONAllison Kwong, Design EditorTaryn Martinez, Copy Desk ChiefLela Spielberg, Copy Desk ChiefMark Brinker, Graphics EditorJoe Nagle, Graphics Editor

PHOTOJean Yves Chainon, Photo EditorJacob Melrose, Photo EditorAshley Hess, Sports Photo EditorKori Schulman, Sports Photo Editor

BUSINESSRyan Shewcraft, General ManagerLisa Poon, Executive ManagerDavid Ranken, Executive ManagerMitch Schwartz, Executive ManagerLaurie-Ann Paliotti, Sr. Advertising ManagerSusan Dansereau, Office Manager

POST- MAGAZINESonia Saraiya, Editor-in-ChiefTaryn Martinez, Associate EditorBen Bernstein, Features EditorMatt Prewitt, Features EditorElissa Barba, Design EditorLindsay Harrison, Graphics EditorConstantine Haghighi, Film EditorPaul Levande, Film EditorJesse Adams, Music EditorKatherine Chan, Music EditorHillary Dixler, Off-the-Hill EditorAbigail Newman, Theater Editor

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

EDITORIAL/LETTERSTHE BROWN DAILY HERALD · WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2006 · PAGE 10

L E T T E R S

Though students like Ray Serrano ’07 may reflect fondly on the ticket distribution method employed by the University for last year’s lecture by former President Bill Clinton — in which students pitched tents and camped out overnight on the Main Green — many in the Brown community viewed the ordeal as more of an inconvenience than a “great bonding experience.” Moreover, the process was hardly fair, as many graduate and medical students were unable to sacrifice an entire evening just to get tickets to hear a big-name speaker.

The process for obtaining tickets to Saturday’s lecture by Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., in which members of the Brown community reserved their tickets online and could obtain them later, is much more accommodating. Though perhaps less memorable, the process ensures that all members of the community have the opportunity to attend the lecture and dis-plays the University’s intelligent use of technological resources to improve services. The system has seemingly gone off with-out a hitch.

Other University services could stand to be modernized as well. Brown remains the only Ivy League school without on-line course registration, and there is no concrete timetable for when Banner — a comprehensive program that will replace current registration mechanisms along with other University databases — will be operational.

When Banner is finally put in place, it will seemingly elimi-nate the need for some tools used by students to survey the University’s course offerings, including the Brown Online Course Announcement and the Course Announcement Bul-letin. Before doing away with these, however, the University should consider whether community members view them as anachronistic nuisances or valuable assets.

Having a printed form of course offerings encourages stu-dents to consider departments they might not otherwise. In addition, students rely on the CAB for other pieces of critical information, such as concentration requirements and aca-demic regulations. Though the University could always make this information available online, as well, we agree with Kevin Chang ’06, who told The Herald he believes some printed ver-sion of this information should be available, even if a copy is not distributed to every single student.

University Registrar Michael Pesta told The Herald in No-vember that the cost of producing the CAB will not factor in the University’s decision to continue making it available, indi-cating that it is not particularly prohibitive. If that’s the case, then it seems the University could easily continue to produce at least some copies of the CAB, and we believe many students would appreciate having this tool at their disposal.

No, Mr. Friedman, for the last time, you cannot write for us. Please go home.

Apply to be a [email protected]

Send a guest [email protected]

Send a [email protected]

The Brown Daily Herald Opinions Page is looking for columnists. Apply now!

Exploding the modern

OPINIONS THE BROWN DAILY HERALD · WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2006 · PAGE 11

BY JILL MCCORMACKGUEST COLUMNIST

The Brown Bookstore has been a part of this University and Thayer Street for 36 years. As a transfer student from Tufts University, I have had the experience of working at a Barnes and Noble College Booksellers, Inc., store for thee years at my previous school. As a current student employee at the Brown Bookstore, I have an inside perspective on just how much we would be sacrificing if our administra-tion chooses to outsource.

The decision to outsource would great-ly impact the lives of both faculty and stu-dents. It will be more difficult for faculty to select hard-to-get titles because Barnes and Noble is more restrictive than the current textbook department in its order-ing policies. Furthermore, not only does Barnes and Noble mark up its textbook prices by a higher percentage than does the Brown Bookstore, but the return poli-cies of Barnes and Noble are much more severe than those to which Brown stu-dents are accustomed. At the Tufts Book-store, textbooks are no longer returnable after one week of classes, regardless of when they were purchased. Presently, the Brown Bookstore accepts returns up to 10 days after the date of purchase, even after shopping period has ended.

The future of our bookstore doesn’t just concern faculty and students. Our bookstore’s employees consider them-selves part of the Brown family and take

great pride in that distinction. They have served students, faculty, staff and local residents eagerly and effectively for some time, and they now stand to lose their connection to this university and, what’s worse, their livelihood. In addition, the city of Providence stands to loose a land-mark which has helped the local econo-

my by choosing to buy from local vendors in addition to the more common national vendors who are approved by Barnes and Noble.

I have read the Bookstore Review Committee’s report, and I am unsure how committee members have come to the conclusion that outsourcing is the best avenue for improving the bookstore. The benefits which the committee antic-ipates from Barnes and Noble can also be achieved by an independent book-seller, and there are additional benefits which our bookstore already provides. As The Herald reported, used book sales account for a larger percentage of the Brown Bookstore’s total sales than those

of any other Ivy League bookstore (“High textbook prices spark debate as students seek out alternatives,” Feb. 3). The book-store holds annual sales each September, December and April. Most important-ly, bookstore operations such as order-ing, accounting, merchandizing, etc. take place right here on the Brown campus,

not in an office building in New Jersey. The committee champions a “firm that specializes only in college and university bookstores” but forgets that our current bookstore has specialized in serving the Brown community for 36 years.

In fact, it appears that outsourcing the bookstore is taking the easy way out. We don’t have to spend money to reno-vate the structure; Barnes and Noble will spend its own. We no longer have to pay salaries and benefits to Brown employees; Barnes and Noble can release them in one year. We don’t have to expend the time and the resources to improve the book-store; Barnes and Noble will make those decisions for us. Yes, improvements can

be made to the bookstore, but with the proper resources, they can be carried out under the current system. Is Barnes and Noble’s willingness to finance a renova-tion more important to us than maintain-ing a bookstore which has served the en-tire community effectively while remain-ing independent?

As undergraduates, we are extremely busy; nonetheless, it is vital that we be well-informed about any decisions that will have an effect on the Brown com-munity. Are we really willing to allow the administration to make such an im-portant decision before we investigate for ourselves how it will affect our lives as students and members of the Brown community? Are we so desensitized to big business that we automatical-ly assume that corporate America does things better, more efficiently and in our best interest?

I think it’s time for the undergraduates to get more involved, to question what lies ahead of us. Don’t we want people at Brown deciding what happens in the Brown Bookstore? Regardless of what other schools have done with their stores in the past, we need to determine what’s best for us. We are not Harvard Univer-sity. We are not Boston University. We are Brown University, and we should take pride in those aspects of our community that make us unique and independent.

Jill McCormack ’06 hugs books, not trees.

Where are all the undergraduates?

The Internet’s bum rap

Brown undergrads must step up and oppose the outsourcing of the Brown Bookstore

The consequences of the Internet blurring the line between the public and private

BY MAHA ATALOPINIONS COLUMNIST

At 9 a.m. on a Thursday morning, I sat in a stuffy lecture hall and stared bleary-eyed at the first question on my American his-tory midterm: “‘The Federalists have been given a bum rap by historians; they were all good republicans.’ Comment.” Instead of thinking about my essay, I found myself considering the essay prompt’s col-loquial tone.

Perhaps the teaching assistant who wrote the question assumed he’d be endearing himself personally to his young, hip student audience. But by appealing to students as a pri-vate individual rather than as a pro-fessional and an academic, wasn’t he crossing a public-personal divide? Or has that line been so effaced that it’s no longer discernable?

In the era of the Federalists, politi-cal discourse belonged to the social elite that was educated enough to access the printed media where political dialogue occurred. When leaders wrote on pub-lic matters, they made it clear that their leadership came from their position out-side and above the masses, a status that al-lowed them to confront, critique and lead.

In a recent column, Michal Zapen-dowski ’07 argued that the malaise of our political and artistic world is an inability to confront audiences directly (“This is not a colum,” March 22). He noted that muse-ums are now filled with objects that might be trash if found on the street. He called today’s political activism “fake confronta-tion” because it fails to directly engage the groups whose opinions it seeks to change. Students lying on the Main Green to pro-test deaths in Iraq, he argued, were having

a discourse amongst themselves instead of engaging the public.

Perhaps the trends Zapendowski iden-tifies have less to do with a refusal of ac-tivists to engage the establishment direct-ly and more to do with the age they live in. To stand outside the political estab-lishment or the artistic world and open-ly, actively engage with it as an individual seems impossible when private and the

public are intertwined.Remember during the Clinton-Lewin-

sky scandal when apologists for the pres-ident protested that he could not be held publicly and professionally accountable for his private life? The argument had a hard time hitting home, mostly because the notion of separating a single individual into private and public seemed out of sync with a world in which private lives are pub-lic information and participation in pub-lic discourse is increasingly personalized. Political commentators routinely cite the emphasis placed on personal qualities of political leaders in determining electoral success.

While this intertwining is a long histori-cal process, the last two decades have seen its rapid acceleration. With the Internet, pri-vate information can be publicly accessed, often in dangerous ways. Private communi-

cation takes place in a language even more informal than our everyday speech, where spelling becomes phonetic shorthand and phrases are replaced by acronyms.

The printed word, formerly consid-ered distinctive for its public nature, is also accessible over the Internet — what newspaper does not post its stories on-line? In fact, the Internet is rapidly be-coming the only place we turn for writ-

ten words, and on the Internet we can personalize even the news of the external world to suit our private interests. We can access and come to know as true a per-sonally crafted reality.

The metaphor of a “web” is often used to describe the Internet technology upon which our new public discourse is based. Rather than inhabiting a world of private individu-als for whom the public reality is something external that can be examined,and “con-fronted” directly, our public reality is itself the intertwining of individuals.

Artists or political activists thus justify confrontation only amongst themselves as public action because they are touch-ing some point on the web of our cyber-reality. If public and private discourses are disseminated through identical means, how can we distinguish between them? And if we can’t distinguish between public

and private discourses, how can we make distinctions between the personal and the social in politics or art?

By the logic of our new undivided dis-course, their arguments appear valid, but they are troubling for those, like myself, who value a more active and responsi-ble kind of interaction among individu-als. Must the effacement of the divide be-tween public and private necessarily con-

done the kind of “fake confrontation” or “trash-as-art” which Zapendowski rightly identifies as serious challeng-es that contemporary politics and art must overcome?

Though I am an optimistic fan of the Internet and its ability to disseminate information to involve more people in political or artistic debate, I cannot accept political bloggers who include what they ate for breakfast or their per-sonal photos in a post. I side with the

many professors from colleges across America who told the Chronicle of High-er Education earlier this year that e-mail inspires students to share personal details with professors that should be left out of public, academic life.

Our new modes of communication and information, if wielded responsibly, have the power to elevate our discourse above the need for such a divide. In-stead of allowing public discourse to be-come a dumping ground for every private thought, is it possible that we as individ-uals in an age without privacy can learn to think and speak in a manner worthy of the publicity we now have access to? If we don’t, the Internet, and the public cul-ture of our time, may earn their own “bum raps” in the history books.

Maha Atal ’08 is wary of Web cams.

If we can’t distinguish between public

and private discourses, how can we make

distinctions between the personal and

the social in politics or art?

Yes, improvements can be made to

the bookstore, but with the proper

resources, they can be carried out

under the current system.

BY SARAH DEMERSSPORTS STAFF WRITER

Spring break meant a lot of trav-eling for a lot of students, but few had an experience like that of the women’s track team. Par-tial squads began the spring sea-son for the Bears by competing in two meets, one in West Point, N.Y., at the Dick Shea Invita-tional on March 25, and another across the country in Palo Alto, Calif., at the Stanford Relays on March 31 and April 1. The races proved to be a shining start to what should be a stellar outdoor season for the track team.

At West Point, a limited squad kicked off the outdoor season by displaying a range of top perfor-mances. Nicole Burns ’09 won

the 400-meter dash with a time of 56.50 seconds in her first outdoor meet for the Bears. Akilah King ’08 blazed to a second-place fin-ish in the 200-meters in a time of 24.92, and Kat D’Auria ’09 sprint-ed to a fourth-place finish in the 800-meter event.

In the field, the Bears received a pair of fifth-place finishes from first-years. Samatha Kuo ’09 threw the shot put 39 feet, 8 3/4 inches, and Daniela Ponte ’09 cleared 10-4 in the pole vault.

A week later and across the country, another limited squad laced it up at Stanford, hoping for some beautiful California sun and some strong performances. Though Brown only saw one of its wishes realized, it was easily the more important one.

“Our goal was to get the season started in the right direction with some ECAC and Regional quali-fiers. We were hoping for good weather conditions and a chance to compete with some of the best track and field teams in the coun-try. Although the weather was not in our favor, we did have some amazing performances,” said co-captain Kelly Powell ’06.

The Bears were forced to battle rainy weather and strong winds in northern California, which affect-ed the competitors, but they re-fused to let the elements dampen their performances.

Highlights from the Stanford meet included Burns besting her impressive mark in the 400 from the West Point competition a few days earlier. She ran a 54.88, the

Spring break was hardly a break for the women of the water polo team. Brown played eight games in an eight-day span and emerged with a 4-4 record, moving to 9-13 overall.

After a rough start in which the Bears dropped two games to the University of California, Davis, 9-3, and the University of California, Berkeley, 18-8, Bruno rebounded for 9-7 and 10-4 wins against Sonoma State University and University of the Pacific, respectively. The West Coast road trip ended with a close 5-2 loss to Santa Clara University.

“We got to regroup (after the Berkeley game) and practice and watch some video. We’ve been trying to get more con-fident with ourselves in scor-ing and we needed to focus on improving our (defense),” said Head Coach Jason Gall.

Paige Lansing ’07 led the team in the first weekend of

the break with six goals in four games, adding to her team-leading total of 33 goals on the season. In the pivotal third quarter of the Sonoma State game, she scored two goals in a row, giving Bruno the lead for good.

“It was really frustrating (trailing by three in the first quarter) because (Sonoma) was a team we knew we could beat,” Lansing said. “It was so sloppy in the first quarter, and I just got really mad and decided to start shooting more.”

Lansing then teamed up with Liz Balassone ’07, and the two combined for three more goals in closing out Brown’s scoring.

“Paige is our best perim-eter shooter. … She has a very strong understanding of the game,” Gall said.

Soon after returning from

For those of you that either know me or have read Mahrtian Encoun-ters before, you know that I follow the Red Sox to an unhealthy de-gree. So yesterday being Opening

Day, I natu-rally wore my Jason Va-ritek jersey and listened to Joe Cas-tiglione and Jerry Trupi-ano call the Sox’s 7-3 win over the Tex-as Rangers.

It was an ideal start to the season af-ter a rocky spring training, with great pitching from Curt Schilling and the offense I’ve come to ex-pect from David Ortiz and Vari-tek. Nonetheless, something still nagged me to no end: how much this team has changed from that magical band of idiots of 2004.

That year will be forever re-membered as the year when the Sox won the World Series and ex-orcised an 86-year old curse, but some of the moments from that season were so sublime they’re best remembered on their own.

Take the ninth inning of Game 4 of the American League Cham-pionship Series against the Yan-kees. Bill Mueller drove a single up the middle to score Dave Rob-erts, who had stolen second af-ter pinch-running for Kevin Mil-lar, who had drawn a walk against Mariano Rivera moments earlier.

It was one of the more memo-rable sequences in Red Sox his-tory. But there’s something funny when I reminisce about it: none of those three players are in Boston to start this season. Mueller now plays third for the Dodgers, Rob-erts patrols center field for the Pa-

BY JILANE RODGERSASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR

The men’s track and field team kicked off its outdoor season with two meets over spring break. On March 25, a limited squad traveled to West Point, N.Y., to com-pete at the Dick Shea Invite. This past weekend, the Bears took another partial roster to compete at the highly com-petitive Stanford Invitation-al in Palo Alto, Calif. While team scores were not tallied at either competition, Bruno posted top marks around the field and on the track, and multiple men qualified for the IC4A Championships in May.

“Obviously the goal of the trip was to get some great competition and great condi-tions so we could have great performances,” said Director of Track and Field Craig Lake.

The Stanford Invite took entries not just from the top of the NCAA, but also from elite post-collegiate competitors. The extraordinary quality of the attending athletes led to fast times and personal bests for many of the Bears, despite the unseasonably chilly and wet West Coast weather.

On the infield, Grant Bow-

en ’07 cleared a personal best 15 feet, 7 inches in the pole vault, moving the jumper to third all-time for Brown. An-other jumper, Ikenna Achil-ihu ’08, found early-season success in his forte, the triple jump, hitting 48 - 2-1/2.

Despite racing at almost 11 p.m. West Coast time, distance runner Chris Burke ’07 contin-ued his year of breakthrough performances, posting a time of 14:14 in the 5,000-meter run, good for second in his heat and seventh all-time for Bruno.

“The meet went really well,” Burke said. “By and large it was a success, making the long trip worth it.”

The mark was a personal best by 18 seconds and a mere four seconds off an NCAA Re-gional qualifying mark. “Chris has a lot of potential and can run even faster,” Lake said. “He is truly talented and is putting in solid training, so I expect he can continue to run faster in the upcoming weeks.”

Burke’s time moves the har-rier into solid position to once again score at the Heptagonal Championships.

“I know with a time like that I need to look at potentially

SPORTS WEDNESDAYTHE BROWN DAILY HERALD · APRIL 5, 2006 · PAGE 12

BY MADELEINE MARECKISPORTS STAFF WRITER

In its last team competition of the season, the gymnastics squad turned in a disappointing eighth place finish at the ECAC Championships, held at the University of Rhode Island on March 25. The tumblers posted 186.050 points, just half a point behind seventh-place finisher Temple University. Towson Uni-versity won the nine-team meet with 191.275 points.

According to co-captain Mandi Baughman ’06, the real frustration for the gymnasts came not from the final team standings, but rather from fail-ing to fulfill two goals set by the team before the meet.

“Our goals going into ECACs were to hit all the routines and to get some sort of redemption from Ivies,” where they finished last, she said. “The (ECAC) meet was a little disappointing.”

The Bears’ performances were marred by small mistakes, according to co-captain Amber Smith ’06. These errors added up to major deductions from the team’s final scores in each event. Brown trailed its League rivals significantly. The Univer-sity of Pennsylvania took third with 189.050 points, while Ivy Classic winner Cornell tied for

fourth with Yale, both finish-ing with 188.800 points. Both Smith and Baughman were un-sure why the team performed poorly.

“We had a lot of mistakes on every event,” Smith said. “It was very uncharacteristic of us. I don’t know what really hap-pened. … We came into the meet pretty prepared and the warm-up was going well. We weren’t nervous. I guess when we weren’t hitting (the routines), it kind of stopped us from gain-ing a positive momentum.”

Despite the mediocre team finish, the Bears had some strong individual performanc-es. Brittany Anderson ’09 led the way for Brown by breaking into the top three in the balance beam.

She posted a 9.575, tying with three other gymnasts for third place. Her finish earned her First-Team All-ECAC hon-ors.

“Brittany told me her biggest goal was to hit her beam rou-tine, and she ended up placing in the event,” Baughman said.

Anderson was Bruno’s top finisher in both the floor exer-cise and the uneven bars, scor-ing 9.575 and 9.4, respectively.

PR’s fall for w. track despite rain on spring break trip

Dan Grossman ’71

Over break, Michol Monaghan ’07 finished the 5,000-meter event in a career best time of 16:49.

Sox missing the pieces that made ’04 magic

CHRIS MAHRMAHRTIAN

ENCOUNTERS

Gymnasts struggle in finale, but garner individual honors

Strong spring break propels w. water polo to fifth at ECACs

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5 BASEBALL: vs. Rhode Island, 2 p.m., Aldrich Dexter Field

BROWN SPORTS SCHEDULE

Ashley Hess / Herald

Anne Deggelman ’08 made 19 saves over the Bears’ final three games in helping Brown to a fifth-place finish at ECACs.

see GYMNASTICS, page 4

see W.TRACK, page 5

see MAHR, page 9

SPORTS BRIEFS

Dan Grossman ’71

Grant Bowen ’07 cleared a personal best 15 feet, 7 inches in the pole vault at the Stanford Invite over spring break.

Short squad hangs tough out west for m. track

see M.TRACK, page 7

see BRIEFS, page 6

Wednesday, April 5, 2006

Documents

Transcript of Wednesday, April 5, 2006