12
Monday, February 7, 2011 D aily Herald THE BROWN Since 1891 vol. cxlvi, no. 9 36 / 11 TOMORROW 41 / 30 TODAY NEWS...................2-5 ARTS....................6-7 EDITORIAL.............10 OPINIONS.............11 SPORTS..................12 INSIDE OPINIONS, 11 Correct ‘sin’ tax Tobias ’12: ‘Sin’ tax a sound method of curing fiscal woes U. not likely to renew Adobe contract CAMPUS NEWS, 5 WEATHER Deal ends By CLAIRE PERACCHIO CITY & STATE EDITOR e driver who struck and killed Avi Schaefer ’13 nearly a year ago has not yet been tried for Schaefer’s death. Daniel Gilcreast, 24, hit Schae- fer and Marika Baltscheffsky ’13 in the early morning Feb. 12 as they walked in the breakdown lane at the intersection of ayer and Hope streets. Schaefer was pronounced dead aſter reaching Rhode Island Hospital, and Baltscheffsky sus- tained serious injuries as a result of the crash, according to the police report. Gilcreast’s case remains in the pretrial phase. Since October, the prosecution and defense have held five pretrial conferences, during which they have met with the court to exchange information, establish ground rules for a trial and negoti- ate possible resolutions to the case without a trial. e next pretrial conference is scheduled for Feb. 23. If the case cannot be resolved with a pretrial plea agreement, it will go to trial, beginning a process that may involve a lengthy additional wait before it is heard in court and a sentence is issued. Gilcreast was formally charged Aug. 26 on five counts — driving under the influence, death resulting; driving to endanger, death resulting; driving under the influence, serious injury resulting; driving to endanger, personal injury resulting and pos- session of marijuana, first offense. He pleaded not guilty to all counts. Gilcreast, a North Providence resident at the time of the accident, is a 2009 Boston College graduate and has no prior felony convictions in Rhode Island. He faces five to 15 years in prison if convicted on the first charge and a maximum of 10 years if convicted on the second. e University has not involved itself in the case, wrote Marisa Quinn, vice president for public affairs and University relations, in an e-mail to e Herald. Gilcreast was the first person subjected to a new state law allow- ing police to force suspected drunk drivers to take a blood alcohol test. Aſter refusing an alcohol test at the scene of the accident, he was required to submit a blood sample, which showed his blood alcohol content was above the legal limit, according to the police report. Driver still awaits trial for death of Schaefer ’13 By ASHLEY MCDONNELL SPORTS EDITOR Ice hockey, football, soccer — these are the sports that students are likely to spend their time watching on a Friday night. But some of Brown’s smallest athletic teams — particu- larly the women’s ski team, the men’s and women’s golf teams and the swimming and diving team — are proving that bigger is not always better. “We are one of the most success- ful teams on campus,” said ski team captain Krista Consiglio ’11. “I don’t think many people realize.” Last season, the ski team — which currently has nine members — came in third place in their divi- sion at nationals. But when Consi- glio tells students she is a member of the ski team, the most common response is, “Oh, I didn’t know we have a ski team,” she said. Men’s golf captain Michael Amato ’11 said many people were also unaware of his team’s existence. And divers Meghan Wenzel ’14 and Jonathan Feldman ’12 said though most students know of the swim- ming team, they are not aware of the diving component of the sport. “Most people say, ‘Oh, you swim?’ I’m like, ‘No, I dive,’” Wenzel said. “Lots of people don’t under- stand. ey’re like, ‘Oh, you jump off a board?’ I’m like, ‘No, we do flips and stuff.’” ough the divers are part of the larger men’s and women’s swimming and diving team, Wenzel and Feld- man said they oſten feel like their own team, since there are only five divers — two men and three women Under the radar, small teams find success By EMMA WOHL SENIOR STAFF WRITER Calls for peaceful cooperation be- tween Israel and Palestine received a response from Remi Kanazi at an evening of slam poetry in Salomon 001 Friday night. e performance marked the first night of Kanazi’s nation-wide tour to promote “Po- etic Injustice: Writings on Resis- tance and Palestine,” his new CD and book of poetry. Railing against ignorance and bigotry, Kazani held nothing back in his indictment of U.S. and Is- raeli policy towards Palestine, the American media’s representation of the Middle East and public percep- tion of Arab-Americans. e evening’s event, which was organized by Brown Students for Justice in Palestine, began with performances by members of Word!, Brown’s student-run spo- ken word troupe. Students wrote poems about Palestine specially for the event, said Fatimah Asghar ’11, a member of the group. Although not all of the group’s performances are so politically charged, “this is right in line with what we’re about,” she said. e students’ poems, some of them written on short notice for the event, were raw and had a sense of immediacy. Asghar’s poem was an elaborate metaphor. Connecting the story of a South African man’s desire to claim his olive trees in court to the conflict between Israelis and Pal- estinians in Jerusalem, her poem was about “the strength of people and places,” she said. Jared Paul, a slam poet and a member of AS220, a local non- profit community arts space, took the themes of the event in a dif- Political poet rallies for Palestine TWIST AND SHOUT Elizabeth Kelley / Herald The Brown Cubing Club hosted its second annual Rubik’s Cube Competition in Petteruti Lounge Saturday. See coverage on page 5. SUPER SUNDAY, SUPER FUN DAY Nick Sinnott-Armstrong / Herald Students looked on last night at a UCS-sponsored Super Bowl party in the Leung Gallery as the Green Bay Pack Packers defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-25. ARTS & CULTURE continued on page 7 continued on page 2 SPORTS FEATURE By JEFFREY HANDLER STAFF WRITER ough fewer students are living in temporary housing than did last semester, roughly 50 still remain in overflow spaces such as kitchens and converted lounges, according to Rich- ard Bova, senior associate dean of residential and dining services. More students leſt campus last fall than returned this spring, freeing up rooms across the campus, he said. “Lots of different people leave and come back for different reasons — study abroad, medical leaves, per- sonal leaves, employment leaves, suspensions, academic dismissals,” Bova said. Last semester, 195 students stud- ied abroad, while 232 students are abroad this semester, according to Kendall Brostuen, director of the in- ternational programs and associate dean of the College. Some of the 50 students currently housed in temporary living spaces said they do not want to move else- where because the remaining vacant rooms are triples, quads, half-empty doubles or in freshmen halls, Bova said. “We have folks who are living to- gether in temporary spaces that are 50 students remain in temporary housing continued on page 4 continued on page 4

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Page 1: Monday, February 7, 2011

Monday, February 7, 2011Daily Heraldthe Brown

Since 1891vol. cxlvi, no. 9

36 / 11

t o m o r r o w

41 / 30

t o d aynews...................2-5Arts....................6-7editoriAl.............10opinions.............11sports..................12insid

e

OPiniOns, 11

Correct ‘sin’ taxTobias ’12: ‘sin’ tax a sound method of curing fiscal woes

U. not likely to renew Adobe contract

CAmPUs news, 5 wea

therDeal ends

By Claire PeraCChioCity & State editor

The driver who struck and killed Avi Schaefer ’13 nearly a year ago has not yet been tried for Schaefer’s death.

Daniel Gilcreast, 24, hit Schae-fer and Marika Baltscheffsky ’13 in the early morning Feb. 12 as they walked in the breakdown lane at the intersection of Thayer and Hope streets. Schaefer was pronounced dead after reaching Rhode Island Hospital, and Baltscheffsky sus-tained serious injuries as a result of the crash, according to the police report.

Gilcreast’s case remains in the pretrial phase. Since October, the prosecution and defense have held five pretrial conferences, during which they have met with the court to exchange information, establish ground rules for a trial and negoti-ate possible resolutions to the case without a trial. The next pretrial conference is scheduled for Feb. 23.

If the case cannot be resolved with a pretrial plea agreement, it will go to trial, beginning a process that may involve a lengthy additional wait before it is heard in court and a sentence is issued.

Gilcreast was formally charged Aug. 26 on five counts — driving under the influence, death resulting; driving to endanger, death resulting; driving under the influence, serious injury resulting; driving to endanger, personal injury resulting and pos-session of marijuana, first offense. He pleaded not guilty to all counts.

Gilcreast, a North Providence resident at the time of the accident, is a 2009 Boston College graduate and has no prior felony convictions in Rhode Island. He faces five to 15 years in prison if convicted on the first charge and a maximum of 10 years if convicted on the second.

The University has not involved itself in the case, wrote Marisa Quinn, vice president for public affairs and University relations, in an e-mail to The Herald.

Gilcreast was the first person subjected to a new state law allow-ing police to force suspected drunk drivers to take a blood alcohol test. After refusing an alcohol test at the scene of the accident, he was required to submit a blood sample, which showed his blood alcohol content was above the legal limit, according to the police report.

Driver still awaits trial for death of Schaefer ’13

By ashley mCDonnellSportS editor

Ice hockey, football, soccer — these are the sports that students are likely to spend their time watching on a Friday night. But some of Brown’s smallest athletic teams — particu-larly the women’s ski team, the men’s

and women’s golf teams and the swimming and diving team — are proving that bigger is not always better.

“We are one of the most success-ful teams on campus,” said ski team captain Krista Consiglio ’11. “I don’t think many people realize.”

Last season, the ski team — which currently has nine members — came in third place in their divi-sion at nationals. But when Consi-glio tells students she is a member

of the ski team, the most common response is, “Oh, I didn’t know we have a ski team,” she said.

Men’s golf captain Michael Amato ’11 said many people were also unaware of his team’s existence. And divers Meghan Wenzel ’14 and Jonathan Feldman ’12 said though most students know of the swim-ming team, they are not aware of the diving component of the sport.

“Most people say, ‘Oh, you swim?’ I’m like, ‘No, I dive,’” Wenzel said. “Lots of people don’t under-stand. They’re like, ‘Oh, you jump off a board?’ I’m like, ‘No, we do flips and stuff.’”

Though the divers are part of the larger men’s and women’s swimming and diving team, Wenzel and Feld-man said they often feel like their own team, since there are only five divers — two men and three women

Under the radar, small teams find success

By emma wohlSenior Staff Writer

Calls for peaceful cooperation be-tween Israel and Palestine received a response from Remi Kanazi at an evening of slam poetry in Salomon 001 Friday night. The performance marked the first night of Kanazi’s nation-wide tour to promote “Po-etic Injustice: Writings on Resis-tance and Palestine,” his new CD and book of poetry.

Railing against ignorance and bigotry, Kazani held nothing back in his indictment of U.S. and Is-raeli policy towards Palestine, the American media’s representation of

the Middle East and public percep-tion of Arab-Americans.

The evening’s event, which was organized by Brown Students for Justice in Palestine, began with performances by members of Word!, Brown’s student-run spo-

ken word troupe. Students wrote poems about Palestine specially for the event, said Fatimah Asghar ’11, a member of the group.

Although not all of the group’s performances are so politically charged, “this is right in line with what we’re about,” she said.

The students’ poems, some of them written on short notice for the event, were raw and had a sense of immediacy.

Asghar’s poem was an elaborate metaphor. Connecting the story of a South African man’s desire to claim his olive trees in court to the conflict between Israelis and Pal-estinians in Jerusalem, her poem was about “the strength of people and places,” she said.

Jared Paul, a slam poet and a member of AS220, a local non-profit community arts space, took the themes of the event in a dif-

Political poet rallies for Palestine

T w i s T a n d s h o u T

Elizabeth Kelley / HeraldThe Brown Cubing Club hosted its second annual Rubik’s Cube Competition in Petteruti Lounge Saturday.

See coverage on page 5.

s u p e r s u n d ay, s u p e r f u n d ay

Nick Sinnott-Armstrong / HeraldStudents looked on last night at a UCS-sponsored Super Bowl party in the Leung Gallery as the Green Bay Pack Packers defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-25.

Arts & Culture

continued on page 7

continued on page 2

sports FeAture

By Jeffrey hanDlerStaff Writer

Though fewer students are living in temporary housing than did last semester, roughly 50 still remain in overflow spaces such as kitchens and converted lounges, according to Rich-ard Bova, senior associate dean of residential and dining services.

More students left campus last fall than returned this spring, freeing up rooms across the campus, he said.

“Lots of different people leave and come back for different reasons — study abroad, medical leaves, per-sonal leaves, employment leaves, suspensions, academic dismissals,” Bova said.

Last semester, 195 students stud-ied abroad, while 232 students are abroad this semester, according to Kendall Brostuen, director of the in-ternational programs and associate dean of the College.

Some of the 50 students currently housed in temporary living spaces said they do not want to move else-where because the remaining vacant rooms are triples, quads, half-empty doubles or in freshmen halls, Bova said.

“We have folks who are living to-gether in temporary spaces that are

50 students remain in temporary housing

continued on page 4

continued on page 4

Page 2: Monday, February 7, 2011

Ben Schreckinger, PresidentSydney Ember, Vice President

Matthew Burrows, TreasurerIsha Gulati, Secretary

The Brown Daily Herald (USPS 067.740) is an independent newspaper serving the Brown University community daily since 1891. It is published Monday through Fri-day during the academic year, excluding vacations, once during Commencement, once during Orientation and once in July by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Single copy free for each member of the community. POSTMASTER please send corrections to P.O. Box 2538, Providence, RI 02906. Periodicals postage paid at Providence, R.I. Subscription prices: $280 one year daily, $140 one semester daily. Copyright 2011 by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Campus news2 the Brown Daily heraldMonday, February 7, 2011

4:30 P.m.

Effective Interviewing,

MacMillan Hall, Room 117

7:00 P.m.

“Avatar” Screening,

Salomon Center, Room 001

7:00 P.m.

Student Activities Fair,

Faunce Arch

7:30 P.m.

A Reading by Novelist John Banville,

Salomon Center, Room 001

SHARPE REFECTORY VERNEY-WOOLLEY DINING HALL

LUNCH

DINNER

Texas Style Beef Brisket, Vegan Chana Masala, Vegan Roasted

Veggie Stew, S’Mores Bars

Tuscan Pork Roast, Pesto Pasta with Sundried Tomatoes, Stir Fry Station,

S’Mores Bars

Cajun Pasta with Chicken, Vegan Chana Masala, Tortellini Provencale,

Butter Cookies

BBQ Chicken Sandwich, Baked Macaroni and Cheese, Nacho Bar,

Butter Cookies

TODAY FEbRUARY 7 TOmORROW FEbRUARY 8

C R o S S w o R d

S U d o K U

M E N U

C A L E N d A R

— and they all practice together. They also do not practice with the swimmers on the team, which they said increases the feeling of separa-tion.

But when the swimmers and div-ers do meet up, Feldman said they are supportive of each other.

“Our points count for the whole meet,” he said. “They respect that we’re just as much a part of the team as they are.”

not quite co-ed Like the divers, both the men

and women on the ski teams prac-tice together. Though men’s skiing is a club team, Consiglio said it was fun for both teams to practice to-gether.

But she did not always think that way, she said. When she first arrived at Brown, she said she could not believe the women’s varsity team would have to practice with the men’s club team.

“When I was a freshman, I was like, ‘Oh my God, is this for real?’” Consiglio said. However, now she said she realizes that “They’re all just there to have a good time.”

Alex Salter ’12, one of the seven male skiers, said the men enjoy practicing with the women’s team.

“It’s fun to practice with them — you get to see the next level up

of skiing,” he said. “They provide helpful pointers to you.”

Unlike the skiers and divers, the men’s and women’s golf teams do not practice together. But women’s golf captain Susan Restrepo ’11 said that all nine of the women are close to each other, while Amato said the same of his seven squad members.

“We’re around each other all the time,” Amato said. “You kind of have to get along just because you’re with each other all the time. We’re lucky because everyone does get along.”

in a galaxy far, far awayFor members of these smaller

teams, “home” is often far away from campus, making it difficult for stu-dents to see the teams compete.

The outdoor facility where the golfers practice is in Barrington, R.I., about twenty minutes away, while their indoor practice facil-ity — whose dome Restrepo said recently collapsed due to snow ac-cumulation — is in Warwick.

For the skiers, the closest moun-tain ranges are in New Hampshire, more than an hour from campus.

Consiglio said she hope the ski team can set up a “ski weekend” with the Bears’ student fan club, BrowNa-tion, where students could come and ski for the day and then watch the team compete.

“Sometimes we do get specta-tors,” Consiglio said. “Lots of parents

come. It would be a lot more fun if we could have a race closer and more people could actually come.”

Because the new swim facil-ity is still under construction, the divers practice at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth three days a week, spending most of their time away from the swimmers who practice in Seekonk, Mass.

“It’s horrible that the University can’t really come and support us,” Feldman said. “Part of athletics is people coming and cheering you on.”

Two faces of a teammate For each of these sports, athletes

compete against each other indi-vidually even though the team’s fi-nal score depends on the combined performances of its members.

“When you’re out there, you’re playing so your team will do well, but you are out there on your own,” Restrepo said. “The team aspect is more important off the golf course.”

The individuality of the sport also creates a certain dissonance — on one hand, team members are often close friends, but on the other, they must compete against one another for spots on the team, Restrepo said. “We compete against each other for spots to play when we travel,” she said. “At the same time, it makes us all better.”

For the skiers, the team aspect of the sport was a big change from their high school skiing days at ski academies, Consiglio said. She de-scribed high school skiing as highly individualized whereas college ski-ing is all about doing well as a team.

“If we do well individually, it’s not as satisfying as if your team does well,” she said.

Feldman said that between him and the only other male diver, Dylan Daniels ’14, there is a friendly spirit of competition.

“It’s not like other teams where if you’re tired or hurt, someone can replace you off the bench,” Feldman said. “You have to try hard, you have to be able to overcome what just happened and put it behind you.”

Smaller teams command respect

Mechanical view sheds light on malariaBy Caroline flanagan

Contributing Writer

Researchers are one step closer to a cure for malaria thanks to a study conducted by research-ers from Brown and MIT. The researchers used computer mod-eling and in-vitro experiments to study the effects of Plasmo-dium falciparum, the parasite that causes cerebral malaria, on red blood cells.

Cerebral malaria is one of the deadliest manifestations of ma-laria and mostly affects children.

George Karniadakis, profes-sor of applied mathematics, said the team tried to “dissect and un-derstand different features of the disease from a mechanical point of view.”

Karniadakis worked with Bruce Caswell, professor emeri-tus of engineering, Subra Suresh, director of the National Science

Foundation and former dean of engineering at MIT, and Dimi-try Fedosov PhD’10. Fedosov re-ceived the Metropolis Award for Computational Physics — a top honor in the field — for his work.

The team discovered that red blood cells affected by the parasite are far stiffer and more adhesive than healthy cells. They used tiny tweezers to stretch the cells and examine their elastic prop-erties, discovering that affected red blood cells are 10 to 20 times stiffer than healthy cells.

“Red blood cells have to be fast messengers,” Karniadakis said. “They cannot travel through the capillaries if they are stiff.”

The cells also become very ad-hesive. “When they get infected, the outside of the membrane de-velops knobs that interact with the walls of the arteries and get stuck there,” Karniadakis said. Addi-tionally, healthy red blood cells

travel through the center of the arteries, but infected cells travel closer to the walls.

The adhesiveness and stiff-ness of the cells cause infected red blood cells to stick in the capillaries of the brain. The cells do not reach the spleen, which is responsible for filtering parasites from the blood. Infected cells are unable to transport nutrients and oxygen to the rest of the body.

Blood flow is drastically af-fected by malaria. The viscosity of healthy blood is three times the viscosity of water, while infected blood can be five to six times the viscosity of water, said Karnia-dakis.

These discoveries may help sci-entists find ways to treat malaria. The research team will continue to examine malaria and sickle cell anemia, a genetic disease with which it shares certain charac-teristics.

continued from page 1

Page 3: Monday, February 7, 2011

Campus news 3the Brown Daily heraldMonday, February 7, 2011

By shefali luThraSenior Staff Writer

The faculty voted to amend the ten-ure review process and extend the period of time before junior faculty members are nominated for promo-tion at its Dec. 7 meeting.

While the changes themselves were approved, the faculty has yet to vote on the wording of the amend-ments. The December motions — part of a larger overhaul of the ten-ure process — were proposed by the Faculty Executive Committee.

“Basically what we were trying to do is trying to make the process more transparent, so that the struc-ture is clear,” Cynthia Garcia Coll, professor of education and chair of the FEC, said. “We changed some of the timings, so instead of being seven years and you have to come up for tenure, now you know we’ve added a year, and you can come up for tenure any time you want.”

The amendments addressed two portions of the Faculty Rules and Regulations: junior faculty contracts and the protocol behind tenure recommendations and eval-uations.

Assistant professorship contracts were extended to a maximum of eight total years before junior fac-ulty members are either promoted with tenure or dismissed. The mo-tion also changed deadlines for when candidates for tenure can submit names of potential rec-ommenders, as well as for when departments can finalize who will evaluate assistant professors.

The changes were introduced to extend the time for junior faculty to pursue research.

“It’s much harder to publish a book now than it was in the past because of publishers getting much smaller,” Garcia Coll said. She add-ed that receiving federal funding for scientific research has also become “a lot more competitive,” and said these changes should be accounted for in the tenure review process.

Faculty also approved changes

to how external recommenders are selected. Departments will have to obtain eight letters of recommenda-tion for professors being considered for tenure. Candidates for tenure will give their departments lists of scholars outside the University who would be appropriate recommend-ers, as well as the names of those who would not. Departments will then decide which scholars should review tenure candidates — the list must include three members of the candidate’s list, although the names on the final list will not be disclosed to the candidates. These lists will then be submitted to the dean of the faculty, who can recommend but not add additional references. Finally, the department will contact list members to determine their in-terest in writing recommendations.

Jerome Sanes, professor of neu-roscience and chair of the Tenure, Promotions and Appointments Committee, said that although he approved of many of the changes, he wished the administration had more input on the final list of ref-erences.

“I think that — and this was my opinion — it was of some impor-tance to have the administration in-volved in the selection of the letters that are being requested,” Sanes said.

Sanes added that although his experiences on TPAC may have influenced his opinions, they do not reflect TPAC as a body.

Though the faculty approved the policy changes in December, the revised wording to the Faculty Rules and Regulations was scheduled to be voted on at the February faculty meeting. But the meeting, originally scheduled for Feb. 1, was postponed due to a snow storm. The meeting is rescheduled for Feb. 22.

She said, though, that she ex-pects the next vote to be relatively uncontested, since the wording is “very clearly tied” to what was al-ready approved.

Garcia Coll said the FEC will only have a few amendments left to introduce after the February meet-

ing. She plans to introduce them at the March faculty meeting.

Though those amendments will end revisions to the tenure process, the tenure issue as a whole will not be concluded, she said. The ten-ure rate, which is higher at Brown than at other Ivy League schools, has long been a subject of faculty discussion.

“There’s lots of different theories about, ‘Is this a problem?’ or ‘Is this a good sign that we nurture our young professors, that we attract the best because they know they can get tenure?’” Garcia Coll said. “It’s a different debate, but it’s related, so that, I think, is going to be going on for a while.”

Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98 was originally tasked with re-vising tenure review, and he formed the ad hoc committee to review ten-ure and faculty development. But Garcia Coll said the list of changes was “overwhelming” for faculty when the committee first brought its proposal, and it was withdrawn.

“You have to remember that ten-ure and promotions are basically crucial for faculty,” she said. “That’s how we promote people that we think are really doing something outstanding.”

Garcia Coll said the ongoing discussion confirms the issue’s importance.

“If nobody would care, (the revi-sions) would be passing along,” she said. “Tenure really, really defines the character of the faculty you have. If it’s somebody who thinks they’ll be here a long time, they’ll really care about this place.”

by the Numbers

682 faculty members

72 percent of all faculty members are tenured

87 percent of assistant pro-fessors who are nominated for

tenure receive it (as of 2009)

Faculty approves tenure changesFall 2009

The University undergoes a reaccreditation review by a team of administrators and faculty members from peer institutions. The review criticizes Brown for having a higher tenure rate than its peers — 87 percent of assistant professors who are nominated for promotion are granted tenured positions.

Provost david Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98 convenes an ad hoc committee to review tenure and faculty development policies, comprising nine tenured faculty members and two non-voting administrators. The committee is charged with evaluating the University’s tenure policies and recommending changes, if deemed necessary.

April 2010The ad hoc committee to review tenure and faculty development

policies releases a report stating that Brown’s unusually high proportion of tenured professors “imposes constraints on hiring and restricts opportunities, limits the ability to expand into new and important areas of scholarship (and) reduces the turnover that is vital to intellectual renewal.” The committee recommends a number of changes to the tenure process. (see “what are the proposed changes to the tenure process?”)

Members of the faculty criticize the report for granting administrators more power over the tenure process — the proposed changes would give the provost a role in determining the nominations for the Tenure, Promotions and Appointments Committee and grant the dean of the faculty final approval of and control over the list of outside reviewers for each tenure candidate. Faculty members also opposed the recommendation that tenure candidates not be able to see the list of external reviewers selected to evaluate their case.

may 2010Faculty members approve an amended motion altering the

Tenure, Promotions and Appointments Committee election procedure and stating that nominations for TPAC will be determined by the Committee on Nominations “after seeking nominations from the Faculty and advice from the Provost.” The motion passes 174-115 and is approved by the Corporation.

October 2010The ad hoc committee to review tenure and faculty development

policies presents a motion to the faculty proposing changes to the Faculty Rules and Regulations regarding the tenure process. The faculty votes 113-97-3 to debate and vote on changes to the tenure rules paragraph-by-paragraph, rather than evaluating all the proposed changes as a whole. The motion is then withdrawn, which is “most unexpected,” according to President Ruth Simmons. The faculty votes 100-28 to refer the motion to the Faculty Executive Committee — rather than the ad hoc committee that had proposed the initial recommendations — for further consideration as to how the motion could be divided and presented for separate votes at a future meeting.

December 2010The Faculty Executive Committee presents two motions to the

faculty asking for support in changing parts of the tenure review process without proposing specific alterations to the Faculty Rules and Regulations. The faculty votes to approve both motions by large majorities:• Extending the maximum period of time before junior faculty

members either receive tenure or dismissal to eight years and altering the dates of the tenure review process

• Modifying the external review process so that each tenure candidate is evaluated by eight external reviewers who are selected by the department and approved by the dean of the faculty

February 2010The Faculty Executive Committee plans to motions before

the faculty proposing specific changes to the Faculty Rules and Regulations in accordance with the general modifications to the tenure policy that the faculty approved in december’s meeting.

Tenure timeline

What are the proposed changes to the tenure process?

The ad hoc committee to review tenure and faculty development policies made its initial recommendations in April 2010. Some of these have been modified or discarded after feedback from faculty members. The following changes have been made or are under consideration:• Extending junior faculty contracts so assistant professors can work for up to eight years before receiving

either a tenured promotion or dismissal• Increasing the number of outside reviewers required for tenure evaluation• Preventing tenure candidates from seeing the final list of outside reviewers selected to evaluate them• Sending the list of outside reviewers for each tenure candidate to the dean of the faculty for approval• Allowing the provost to give input into nominations for the Tenure, Promotions and Appointments

Committee• Strengthening mentoring, support and feedback for junior faculty members by offering increased funds for

research and travel, lowering administrative duties for non-tenured professors and providing opportunities to take additional sabbaticals.

Page 4: Monday, February 7, 2011

Campus news4 the Brown Daily heraldMonday, February 7, 2011

By louisa ChafeeContributing Writer

A new material has been found to heal serious bone breaks, reduc-ing healing time, rate of infection and pain. Known as “Twin-Based Linkers” in the academic world, it is a natural alternative to titanium plates, said Associate Professor of Engineering Thomas Webster, who led the research.

Outside of the body, this bone-healing material is just a white pow-der. But once injected, it self-assem-bles into a strong sticky substance with the mechanical properties of bone, Webster said.

Normally, injectable material needs ultraviolet light to solidify, but Webster said this material uses hy-drogen bonds and needs only bodily fluids. As time passes, the material degrades, and new bone grows in its place, he said, adding that this healing process is far shorter, less risky and less painful than the current practice of inserting metal plates.

The material was created in col-laboration with Canadian chemist Hicham Fenniri. The University licensed it to the biotechnology company Audax Medical Inc. last summer in the hopes of getting it commercialized and on doctors’ shelves, Webster said.

Webster linked up with Audax Medical through Whitney Sharp ’08, MA’09, who had been involved with the start-up of the company shortly after her graduation from Brown’s

Program in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship Engineering, Webster said.

Sharp’s final project was to find something that had not been com-mercialized yet and build a company around it. She picked the bone-healing material because Brown re-searchers were really excited about its development.

It is common to license scientific discoveries out to other companies, Webster said. Brown is not set up to do the commercialization on its own. Instead, the University looks for businesses to do fundraising and help with the FDA-approval process.

“It’s a tribute to Brown that, in this economy, we’re able to license out bone-healing technology,” Webster said.

Audax is currently funding Linlin Sun GS to continue development on the project. Sun’s research focuses on whether the material could be toxic and if it could be used in patients with osteoporosis, Webster said. Brown will receive royalties if the material is commercialized.

Audax and Brown are working closely to gain FDA approval, holding weekly meetings to discuss necessary experiments, Sun said. They will be-gin animal testing in the spring, and if all goes well, follow it up with human clinical trials, she added.

Because the material uses new chemistry and will therefore require extensive testing, it might take five to 10 years for it to reach the shelves, Webster said.

New bone-healing material reduces infection rate, pain

probably living in a better situation than going into a triple or a quad with people they don’t know,” he said.

“We have such varied housing,” said Max Monn ’12, a former Herald photo editor who lived in a converted lounge last year. “You can get some-thing really awesome, or you can get something absolutely terrible.”

“Privacy wise, getting work done, it definitely wasn’t ideal,” he said of his room last year. “You get really used to headphones really fast, really used to listening to loud music to block out whatever else is going on in the room.”

“We dealt with it,” he said. “It ended up being not as bad as we thought it would be.”

Driving death case still stuck in pre-trial stageGilcreast’s prosecution is pro-

ceeding at a normal pace, according to Andrew Horwitz, director of the Clinical Programs and the Criminal Defense Clinic at Roger Williams University.

“The system is slow,” he said, adding that drunk driving cases often involve a medical examiner’s report and the collection of chemi-cal and medical evidence, which produce delays.

Because Gilcreast is not currently incarcerated, there is less of a rush to take the case to trial, Horwitz said, adding that even when the case en-ters the trial phase, it is “likely to sit on the trial calendar for some time” before being tried in court.

The attorney general’s office de-clined to comment on the specifics of the case.

“Everybody’s trying to work to-wards something that’s fair, reason-able and — to use the word — just,” said W. Kenneth O’Donnell, Gil-

creast’s attorney, of the pretrial con-ferences. While O’Donnell would not comment on the details of the case, he pointed to the six-month span between the incident and his client’s arraignment on charges — time required for investigators to compile a case and for the attorney general’s office to decide whether there was probable cause to try Gil-creast — as a reason the case has taken so long.

Josh Deshaies ’12, Schaefer’s residential counselor, said he wishes Gilcreast’s case had been resolved earlier.

“Maybe if the trial had happened shortly after or a little earlier, it would have helped to ease the pain a little bit,” he said.

Rabbi Arthur Gross-Schaefer, Schaefer’s father, said he is not fol-lowing the case closely. Instead, he said he is focused on continuing the work his son pursued during his life — advocating “peace and dia-logue about what’s happening in the Middle East.” The Schaefer family

has started The Avi Schaefer Fund, which aims to promote respectful discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on North American college campuses, according to its website.

“The quote that Avi loved was ‘Everyone dies, but not everyone lives,’” Gross-Schaefer said. “What we’re doing is we’re trying to focus on how he lived.”

continued from page 1

Nick Sinnott-Armstrong / HeraldThe intersection of Thayer and Hope streets, where Avi Schaefer ’13 was struck by a vehicle driven by daniel Gilcreast.

Students opt for temporary housing

continued from page 1

Got something to say? Leave a comment online!Visit www.browndailyherald.com to comment on opinion and editorial content.

Page 5: Monday, February 7, 2011

Campus news 5the Brown Daily heraldMonday, February 7, 2011

By KaTrina PhilliPsContributing Writer

The Cogut Center for the Human-ities will use a nearly $500,000 grant awarded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation last December to fund an international humani-ties program.

The “Brown in the World/The World at Brown” program that the grant will fund involves two main divisions. For “The World at Brown” half of the program, the Cogut Center will host nine inter-national scholars. These scholars will be selected by the governing board of the Cogut Center, ac-cording to Michael Steinberg, di-rector of the center. The seminars they lead will be both at the grad-uate and undergraduate levels, so all students can benefit from the program, Steinberg added.

Under the “Brown in the World” portion of the program, select graduate students and post-doctoral fellows will be award-ed stipends to spend semesters abroad, benefiting these students individually while also helping

develop “partnerships with inter-national institutions,” Steinberg said.

The goal of the program — which will focus on graduate students but have an “indirect benefit” to undergraduates — will be to address internationaliza-tion and “educate in the global context,” Steinberg said. The Uni-versity as a whole has emphasized these issues in recent years, and “the Mellon Foundation is also interested in the same questions,” Steinberg continued.

The program should be in ef-fect by next fall, Steinberg said.

According to Steinberg, the “jewel in the crown” of this pro-gram will be its work with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a youth orchestra composed of mostly Israeli and Arab musicians based in Seville, Spain. Brown will help the orchestra build a year-round academic institute in Berlin by forming a humanities program for the institute, Steinberg said. The space for this institute is cur-rently being renovated.

“In a way, the most original

program — because we’re really inventing it — involves the pro-gram in Berlin,” Steinberg said.

The grant is the latest of several that Brown has received from the Mellon Foundation, though it is the first of its kind. The Mellon Foundation has a “principle focus on the humanities” and has previ-ously provided grants for gradu-ate fellowships and workshops at Brown, Steinberg said.

“They have been increasing, I’m glad to say, over the last few years,” he said.

The $497,990 grant comes shortly after the October an-nouncement of the $3 million Humanities Initiative — funded by an anonymous gift — to further Brown’s international perspective on humanities. Steinberg said the programs reflect Brown’s com-mitment at a time when “most U.S. universities are slashing the humanities.”

It is still unclear how this new program and the initiative will connect, but “the general purpose is exactly the same in both cases,” Steinberg said.

Grant funds humanities initiative

By elizaBeTh KelleyContributing Writer

Middle schooler Andrew Ricci can solve a standard 3-by-3 Rubik’s Cube in 8.25 seconds. Ricci — along with 31 other competitors — displayed his talent at the Brown Cubing Club’s second annual Rubik’s Cube com-petition Feb. 5. Competitors rang-ing from middle school students to Brown students gathered in Petteruti Lounge for an all-day competition, which featured events such as solving a cube blindfolded or one-handed.

The cubing club is “a pretty small and loose-knit group of about five or six who are interested in solving Ru-bik’s Cube and other twisty puzzles,” said Arthur Adams ’12, the club’s founder and event organizer.

Thirty-two competitors, only two of which were Brown students, showed up Saturday to twist cubes, Adams said. “The age demographic is fairly young, so much so that I feel old compared to most people enter-ing competitions today,” Adams said.

A group of eighth grade boys from Benjamin Franklin Classical Charter Public School in Franklin, Mass., were among the competitors. Ricci, who competed in the 3-by-3 event, got his classmates Devin Burns and Avi Gumbimeda hooked on solv-ing the puzzles when he created a club at his school.

“I had a Rubik’s Cube in my room for a while. One day I decided to look up a tutorial on how to solve it,” Ricci said.“I don’t have a trick. It’s a method where you build layers on the cube.”

Ricci then proceeded to pull out his Rubik’s Cube and swiftly solved it.

“First you make a cross, then build the first two layers, and you make the last layer in two steps,” he said.

The Brown Cubing Club does not compete at other venues, though Ad-ams said he is working on compet-ing more with the club. Enthusiasts across the nation can go to the World Cube Association website to find a list of competitions, he said.

“I found out about the Brown competition when I logged onto the

WCA website and looked up a list of all competitions in the area,” Ricci said, adding that he has already com-peted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology twice.

Rowe Hessler — a St. Joseph’s Col-lege student who has set four world records and 20 North American re-cords — won the competition last year.

“I think one of the most interest-ing things is that since this kind of competition is relatively so young, records are still being broken pretty frequently,” Adams said. “We sort of know how fast people could poten-tially get at solving things,” he said, comparing it to Olympic sports. But unlike the Olympic games, he said, “We haven’t quite reached the pla-teau yet.”

Normally, winners are awarded certificates with their names and events on them. “This year I made some magnetic dice 2-by-2-by-2 cubes for the winners of each event, which I hoped would be a nice added touch,” Adams said.

Cubers twist it up in puzzling competition

By alexanDra maCfarlaneContributing Writer

When the University’s contract ex-pires with Adobe April 30, students will no longer be able to run Adobe programs downloaded from Brown’s software distribution page on their personal computers.

Geoffrey Greene, director of IT support services for Comput-ing and Information Services, said he did not think the University would provide Adobe programs, such as Photoshop, in the future because the new contract would likely stipulate a higher cost for the Adobe suite.

“As Brown looks to renew its contract with Adobe, they are over-hauling how the licensing works and significantly increasing the costs,” Greene wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. “In order to include student coverage in a new contract,

Adobe is asking for funds that will far exceed our existing budgetary resources.”

Greene would not say how much Adobe is asking for.

Christopher Grossi ’92, assis-tant director of desktop support services for CIS, said that as he and his department were exploring op-tions for new agreements and price quotes, they discovered that the preliminary quotes for continuing the service for students’ personal machines “were just too expensive.”

Grossi said Brown has signed a contract with Adobe to make copies of the software that do not require access to Brown’s network avail-able to students from the Brown Bookstore “for far cheaper than the list prices.”

“We are doing everything we can to comply with Adobe’s rules,” Greene said.

While this change in licensing

directly affects students who use personal computers, computers owned and operated by the Uni-versity will be virtually unaffected, Grossi said. Computers in labs and clusters of buildings and libraries throughout campus will still have Adobe programs.

Because the change affects most-ly students, Grossi said he is work-ing with departments to make sure they are aware of students’ limited ability to use the software.

Adobe offers several types of software. PDF files will still be viewable through Adobe Reader, which can be downloaded and used anywhere for free. Greene said the most significant change for students will be losing access to Photoshop.

Greene’s department has re-ceived very few inquiries or com-plaints regarding the change, but added that he expects more noise as the semester progresses.

U. set to pull free Adobe programs offering for students

Alex dePaoli / HeraldStudents will no longer be able to download Adobe software to their personal computers from the University’s website.

Page 6: Monday, February 7, 2011

Arts & Culture6 the Brown Daily heraldMonday, February 7, 2011

By fei CaiStaff Writer

LONDON — On any given day, Danny Bressler ’12 can be found studying in the library, going to class, practicing rugby or playing the trumpet — a seemingly normal, though perhaps busy, day for a Brown student.

The only difference is that Bressler is more than 3,000 miles away from Providence. Like many juniors, Bressler is studying abroad, and he is spending this semester at Mansfield College in the University of Oxford.

Each year, students all over the country study abroad in Britain. Though some believe that studying in a country with the same language requires little adjustment, the Office of International Programs warns stu-dents against this kind of thinking.

“Although the U.S. and U.K. share a common language, an American student will need to adjust to a very different university system, as well as to many aspects of day-to-day living in Britain,” according to the OIP’s website.

Barring some obvious linguis-tic differences and the need to look right instead of left when crossing the street, students shared some interest-ing dissimilarities between American and British universities.

“Pudding means dessert,” Hector Ramirez ’12 said, laughing, baffled upon finding Belgian waffles under pudding on a menu.

in the classroomMost universities in the U.K.

function on a trimester system.Many universities — including

Oxford and Cambridge — have a tutorial system in which one or two students meet weekly with a supervi-sor on a yearlong course of interest. Lectures and seminars outside of the tutorial system require little work from the students.

“I definitely love the teaching here,” said Sabrina Papazian, a ju-nior from Cornell studying at St. Anne’s College in Oxford. “It’s such a different way of learning. Sitting in a tutorial with just you and the tutor is incredible. My tutors are so educated, but they give me time once a week to talk.”

Other colleges function more like American universities, with most courses taught by professors in lec-ture halls.

Katie Grandle, a sophomore at Cornell studying at Durham Uni-versity, reported having “issues with differences in protocol for essays and bibliographies.”

“I think the biggest difference is that they academically specialize so early, and you only study things within your subject,” said Caitlin Naureckas ’12, who is studying at King’s College in London. “My flat-mates still haven’t wrapped their heads around the fact that I’m taking a history course even though I’m a medical student, because they don’t have that option at all here.”

Students at Cambridge also tend to work during the day, Ramirez said.

“I tend to work best at night and so during the weekdays, a lot of my time will be spent working in the wee hours. But over here, they seem to go to the pub every night,” he added.

Party beats and student eatsOutside the classroom, Ameri-

can students also have to adjust to university student life.

“The social scene is totally dif-ferent from Cornell,” Papazian said. “Cornell’s social life is dominated by Greek life. Whereas here, it’s very much based on going to the clubs.”

Bressler said that the lower drink-ing age changes the social dynamic. “Each college has its own bar, and that is usually where the students in college start their night out.”

The night also tends to begin quite early, said Naureckas. “There’s a school-owned pub that all of the sports teams go to on Wednesdays, and if you want to get in, you abso-lutely have to be there by nine, or the queue is too long for you to have any chance.”

Ramirez also observed that the music played in U.K. clubs is very different from the music in the U.S. party scene. “The party scene in the U.S. is dominated by hip-hop, re-mixes, electronica. Over here, rock n’ roll and indie rock have a bigger part in the nightlife.”

“At least at Oxford, Brits are really obsessed with a few songs from the mid-90s that I had not heard before,” Bressler said.

As for dining, Olivia Harding ’12, who is studying at Pembroke College in Cambridge, said, “Formal hall has been one of the greatest experiences here.”

Formal hall, according to Hard-ing, is an event where students don semi-formal dress and black, uni-versity gowns. Reminiscent of the dining hall in Harry Potter novels, the Pembroke College formal hall consists of long tables, four-course meals and Latin prayers.

Students stand upon entrance and exit of the university fellows and the college master, who sit above the students at the High Table.

“It’s very traditional,” Ramirez said. “But as soon as the fellows leave, the students get a bit rowdier. It’s a lot of fun, and a lot of pennying happens.”

Pennying, for those uncultured

in British drinking games, involves dropping a penny into someone’s glass when he or she is not touching the cup. The pennied person must then drink the contents of the cup to save the Queen from drowning.

“The food is not as bad as people say,” Grandle said, about dining in the U.K.

u.K. chic While at Durham, Grandle also

noticed a difference in clothing choices between British and Ameri-can students.

“There are higher dressing stan-dards that are lower at the same time,” she observed. “Girls are sup-posed to be dressed fashionably at all times, but the choice of clothing tends to be much less conservative than is acceptable in America.”

She added, “Skirt length is the main shocker for me — can’t believe the lack of material used to make the skirts worn by ‘posh’ girls here.”

“I would describe the fashion here as ‘boho, raggy chic,’” Papazian said, half-jokingly.

“On a different note,” Grandle said, “the U.K. loves American brands. Nike, Abercrombie, Hollister, Ralph Lauren are all really popular.”

adapting to the cultureDespite the cultural differences,

most American students studying abroad seem to be adapting well to their change in location.

“Although there are differences, Brits are really not all that different from Americans from my point of view,” Bressler said. “I have not been to a lot of other countries, so I do not know if Brits are more similar to Americans than other foreigners.”

“I try to get involved, try to spend time with people,” Brandon Kauff-man ’12 said. “You have to immerse yourself in the new culture.”

Papazian compared her experi-ence to her freshman year. “I was treated like a freshman, and I knew how to handle it,” she said. “I forced myself to jump right in. It’s hard to steer yourself away from other American students, but I definitely gained a lot of British friends.”

A culture shock across the pond

By KaT ThornTonSenior Staff Writer

“The Colors of Love,” featuring lo-cal artists and celebrating six years in Bristol, R.I., opened at the Hope Gallery Saturday. Despite economic pressure, the show attracted long-time visitors and passers-by alike.

A commercial gallery, the space retains artists on contract but does not charge them for wall space, said Anita Trezvant, the gallery’s director.

The quaint gallery was crowded with community members, artists and the artists’ friends. Alayne White, a gallery frequenter, said she likes Hope Gallery because of its intimacy and local focus.

Gallery artist Sue Butler said she primarily paints her family, home and women.

“All comes from what I am and where I’ve been,” she said.

Scottish artist Irene Graham-Steinberg was also at the event. She lives in North Providence, and her paintings depicting “ephemeral”

landscapes with a heavy influence from her time spent in Scotland have been featured in the gallery for a few months, she said.

Trezvant said though the area is very popular during the summer, she does not normally hold openings in the winter because the weather deters people from coming.

She plans to put on an “art stroll” May 15 that will continue through the summer. Last month, Trezvant introduced a weekly art lesson taught by one of the gallery’s featured artists. She also offers an internship program for local undergraduates interested in art and gallery ownership.

“Running a gallery is hard work,” Trezvant said, especially in the cur-rent economic climate. She cited the fact that a few galleries have closed in the area.

Butler said she has seen a decrease in her sales this year, but sales at the Hope Gallery have “been pretty steady.” The economy has affected the art world “to a certain degree, like everyone,” she said.

Bristol’s Hope Gallery celebrates local artists

Courtesy of Fei CaiThe library at Pembroke College, part of the University of Cambridge, is a study space for British and American students alike.

Page 7: Monday, February 7, 2011

Arts & Culture 7the Brown Daily heraldMonday, February 7, 2011

By luisa roBleDoartS & Culture editor

As Monique Baston ’13 browsed through the mall in her hometown of Nashville, Tenn., she decided to take fashion into her own hands. Unsatisfied with the clothes stores offered her, Baston said to herself, “You know what? I’m just going to make my own clothes.”

What started out as a small project to overcome her “not lik-ing anything at the mall,” led Baston to become one of the 10 finalists in Boston Symphony Orchestra’s third annual fashion competition, Project Beethoven. Each contestant created a garment inspired by the composer’s music and submitted a sketch. Those that truly reflected Beethoven’s es-sence, were visually appealing and had potential marketability were chosen for what Sarah Manoog, the orchestra’s director of marketing, calls a “very exciting, very festive, real fashion show.”

The fifth symphony After spotting the competition’s

flyer in an elevator at the Rhode Is-land School of Design, where Baston has taken several courses, she sat down and listened to Beethoven’s celebrated Fifth Symphony.

“I must have listened to it over a hundred times,” she said. “I wanted to use the Fifth without it being a cliche.”

“There are four notes that ev-erybody knows – the da da da da,” she continued, mimicking the epic sounds of the G-G-G-E musical notes that drive the symphony.

To highlight the piece’s four notes and the fact that it is also divided into four parts, she used four gold balls

that run down the dress’s sleeves and around the waist.

Baston was inspired by the fact that Beethoven was going deaf as he composed. “He couldn’t hear it,” she said, “but he could still see it somehow. There had to be a way to see symphony without the music.”

Baston, a composer herself, chose to use a computer program that turns music notes into waveforms. Hand-stitched all over the ethereal gown, the waveforms show the ac-tual sounds of Beethoven’s master-piece in a subtle, yet intellectually driven, way. “I didn’t want it to be so obvious,” she said.

Project Beethoven In an effort to “enhance the over-

all concert experience,” Manoog and her team spearheaded the market-ing strategy called “Symphony+.” By offering outside events — fashion shows and receptions — in conjunc-tion with the orchestra’s concerts, Manoog aimed to “increase the en-joyment of (their) patrons.”

Project Beethoven “is one way that classical music can inspire peo-ple,” Manoog, a fashion lover and Project Runway fan, said.

After a performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 played by soloist Radu Lupu, one-fourth of the patrons moved on to watch the fashion show and selected a fan-favorite winner.

With a panel of celebrity judges that included two renowned de-signers, Michael DePaulo and Sara Campbell, fashion-blogger Liana Krupp, Lifestyle Editor of Boston Magazine Alexandra Hall and Bos-ton Symphany Orchestra cellist Owen Young, Project Beethoven is a “great opportunity” for new de-

signers, Manoog said.“It’s a great thing to have on your

resume,” she said. “It really makes you stand out.”

The grand finaleOn the night of Feb. 3, a cream

and ivory gown draped gracefully over Baston’s model, Analise Roland ’13. A white top, which contrasts the creamier tones of the dress, resem-bled conductors’ button-down shirts and succeeded in making Baston’s gown a cohesive piece.

Roland — who had not seen the dress until the eve of the competition — wrote in an e-mail to The Herald that she had “total faith” in Baston. With understated yet sophisticated makeup, Roland strutted down the runway in a room filled with over 400 people.

But Baston did not win. The prizes, which included a one-page spread in Boston Magazine and a window display at L’Elite store on Newbury St., went to RISD student Maria Canada. The audience picked Ashley Boiardi of Framingham State University as its favorite.

“I was extremely grateful to have the opportunity though,” Baston wrote in and e-mail to The Herald. “And I look forward to participating in future competitions and learn-ing as much as I can about apparel construction.”

Through Project Beethoven, Bas-ton learned the difficulties of making clothes and executing her own ideas, but she is far from being discour-aged, she said.

“It truly is an art that I will hope-fully one day master,” she wrote. “But for now, I plan to keep taking classes and making clothes and hopefully start my own line.”

Fashioning the Fifth Symphony

By suzannah weissartS & Culture ColumniSt

The Rhode Island School of Design’s theater group, the Exhibitionists, played the avant-garde card last weekend, holding their production of “The Shape of Things” — a Neil LaBute play about art, relationships and relationships as art — in no place other than an art museum. Director Alex Lee ’14, a Brown-RISD dual degree student, staged the show in the quirky RISD museum Friday and the dignified Fleet Library Sat-urday. Fitting locations, along with a script that starts off hackneyed but grows witty and original as it progresses, provided promising raw material.

But a formless sculpture made of crystals is not a masterpiece. While the subject matter — philosophy of art, morality, our society’s obses-sion with physical perfection — was highly relevant, the acting did not do justice to these lofty topics.

In the play, Adam (Nick Truss) meets an art student named Evelyn (Kathleen Ottinger) — the religious allegory becomes more blatant when Adam periodically explains away a nose job by saying he “fell” on his face — in a museum where he works. After seducing him, Evelyn turns Adam into a project of sorts. She convinces him to diet, exercise, purchase contact lenses, get cosmet-ic surgery and abandon his only two friends, yet she retains his undying affections all the while.

The stage expands into the au-dience for Evelyn’s presentation of her final art project — then comes the twist: Adam is her project, a sculpture of “the human flesh and the human will.” Rather than forc-ing him to do anything against his will, she did, in fact, sculpt it. He wanted, albeit on her suggestion, to improve his appearance and life-style. Still, before Evelyn entered the scene, he was happy the way he was. Like her biblical counterpart, Evelyn curses Adam with an inescapable self-consciousness that both mo-tivates and constrains. So were the self-improvements resulting from Adam’s awareness — or illusion — of his flaws truly of his own volition?

The implications of this philo-

sophical dilemma are grave, and once drawn into the play, audience members can’t help but question to what extent they are sculptures of their own culture and its trends. Evelyn defends her deception by pointing out that Adam has become what the mainstream media would consider “more interesting, more desirable, more normal.”

Evelyn assumes the position of Dr. Frankenstein — crossing moral boundaries with art as Frankenstein does with science — provoking the question of whether art must be moral to be good. Except, rather than patching together bits of dead bodies, she must persuade a live person to undergo the transforma-tions she has in mind. To accomplish this feat, one must be charismatic, though perhaps as cold-hearted as Frankenstein’s monster. But Ot-tinger’s Evelyn seemed too brash, too neurotic, too controlling to win over the love — let alone the obedi-ence — of her creation, rendering her success in doing so unconvinc-ing.

Perhaps her strident perfor-mance, partially accounted for by her character’s attributes, was also a result of the Fleet Library’s acoustics: Most of every character’s lines were either shouted or inaudible. The in-teractions between Adam and Ev-elyn felt forced, partly because it was impossible to understand what he saw in her, and partly because they were thinking about, rather than as, their characters. Their movements read as stage directions, rather than as organically generated expressions of internal states.

Still, the minimalist set under the RISD library’s giant hanging clock, and the melding of the real and play worlds as the audience witnesses Evelyn’s presentation as both viewers and characters, held my attention long enough to make me examine the play’s thematic content. I would advise anyone who didn’t get around to seeing the play to read it — espe-cially if you have ever wondered to what extent we act on our culture and to what extent it acts on us.

Production ‘shapes’ allegorical tale of art

ferent direction by talking about his own experience as an activist within the U.S. He started off in plain prose, but switched to more poetic speech when he focused on specific moments and emotions.

When Kanazi took to the stage, he immediately asked for the lights to be turned up. Then he talked about himself — about his up-bringing in western Massachusetts, his struggles to find his identity as a Palestinian-American and his late exposure to “lefty politics” after his brother went away to college.

Interspersing short, punchy po-ems with funny, caustic, often self-

depricating commentary, Kanazi kept the audience laughing and applauding for over an hour.

Onstage his goal was to provoke as well as to blow off steam. As he noted, “you get so angry because you feel like there’s never a sense of change.”

It’s hard to imagine another American audience that would have cheered so loudly at lines such as this, directed at the Israeli government — “Better is not ra-cial, ethnic or religious but situ-ational, and in that sense, we are better than you.”

Though harsh, at least onstage, in his censure of U.S. and Israeli policy and dismissive of “people

who say Palestinians need to be more like Gandhi” and wait pa-tiently for their own state, Kanazi also encouraged cooperation throughout the Middle East.

“What (the recent protests in) Egypt opened the door for was this reemerging view that what we need is unity,” he said. “When enough voices come together, change can happen.”

Poetry event personal, provokingcontinued from page 1

Letters, [email protected]

Page 8: Monday, February 7, 2011

world & nation8 the Brown Daily heraldMonday, February 7, 2011

By Jeff mClanethe philadelphia inquirer

ARLINGTON, Tex. — Someday they’ll be comparing the next Pack-ers quarterback to Aaron Rodgers.

Whoever it is, he’ll have big shoes to fill.

Rodgers now can cement his name alongside the game’s other great quarterbacks — especially Brett Favre — after he and the Green Bay Packers put a bow on a stunning postseason with a 31-25 victory over the Steelers in Super Bowl XLV Sunday night at Cowboys Stadium.

The event had been labeled the Disaster Super Bowl for a series of weeklong blunders by host North Texas, Dallas owner Jerry Jones and the NFL. But Rodgers put out a number of fires — dropped passes, a leaky defense and injuries — and won the game’s most valuable player award.

He completed 24 of 39 passes for 304 yards and three touchdowns and did not toss an interception. His counterpart Ben Roethlisberger, however, threw two interceptions and the two-time Super Bowl cham-pion lost for the first time in the title game.

Green Bay’s improbable run be-gan with two regular-season-ending wins to get it into the postseason. The Packers then won three straight playoff games on the road — against the Eagles, Falcons and Bears — to get here. The Eagles, 21-16 losers to Green Bay, can at least lay claim to that dubious honor.

With the Super Bowl win, the Packers become the first NFC sixth seed to win a championship. They matched the 2005 Steelers as the only sixth seeds to win a title since the NFL moved to a 12-team playoff format in 1990.

It was their fourth Super Bowl and first since Favre claimed a Lom-bardi Trophy following the 1996 season. Rodgers, who sat behind Favre for three seasons and had to deal with the future Hall of Famer’s will-he-or-won’t-he retire act, is now also a Super Bowl champion.

It did not come easily.The Steelers refused to die af-

ter Green Bay went ahead, 28-17. Pittsburgh trimmed the lead down to three with a touchdown and

two-point conversion. The Pack-ers struck back with an efficient 10-play drive that advanced them to the Steelers’ 5 and drained the clock down to 2 minutes, 7 seconds.

But they couldn’t put the game away with a touchdown and had to settle for a 23-yard Mason Crosby field goal and a 31-25 advantage.

The fourth quarter opened with all the momentum on the Steelers’ side, but they still trailed, 21-17. They had possession on the Green Bay 33 and were only yards away on second down from picking up another set of downs.

But Rashard Mendenhall, who had been so tough to drag down, fumbled the football when he was sandwiched by Packers linebacker Clay Matthews and lineman Ryan Pickettt. Green Bay linebacker Des-mond Bishop pounced on the loose ball and the Steelers had their third turnover of the game.

The Packers had none at that point.

It was a devastating blow because Green Bay would turn the giveaway into seven points, as it did on the previous two turnovers. Despite a dropped pass by Jordy Nelson, Rodgers went back to the receiver on a key third down and the result was a 38-yard completion down to the Pittsburgh 2.

Two plays later, Rodgers and Greg Jennings hooked up for their second touchdown when the re-ceiver tiptoed in the corner of the end zone for an 8-yard score and a 28-17 cushion.

Undaunted, the Steelers re-bounded. As well as both defenses played all season, they were exploit-able in the Super Bowl. And Roeth-lisberger and his offense continued to press the Packers in the second half.

The quarterback needed only seven plays and 4:23 to move Pitts-burgh 66 yards. And he narrowed the lead down to five when he hit receiver Mike Wallace for a 25-yard touchdown pass on a fade pattern. The Steelers then elected to go for two and drew up a nifty play that had Roethlisberger on the option pitch to Antwaan Randle-El for the conversion.

The Packers led 28-25 with 7:34 to go, and it would be the closest the Steelers would ever get to them.

The first five minutes of the sec-ond half couldn’t have gone any bet-ter for the Steelers.

It could have been a different story if James Jones held onto a Rodgers pass that had six points written all over it. But the Packers receiver flat-out dropped the slant pass and Green Bay was forced to punt.

Using a rejuvenated running game, the Steelers took the ensu-ing possession and needed only five plays to score. They ran four times,

with Roethlisberger scrambling once. Mendenhall clipped off runs of 17 and 8 yards — the final one across the goal line as Pittsburgh whittled Green Bay’s lead to 21-17.

After forcing another three-and-out, the Steelers advanced to the Packers’ 29 once again on the strength of their ground game. But they went back to the pass and lost yards on two of the next three plays and were moved back to the 35.

Rather than attempt a pooch-punt, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin

elected to have Shaun Suisham attempt a 52-yard field goal. The kicker was wide left, though, and the margin was still four points.

The Packers had chances to gain back some of the momentum, but dropped passes continued to plague them. Just before the end of the third quarter, Green Bay receiver Brett Swain appeared to pull in a Rodgers pass on third down. But the play was ruled an incomplete on the field and a review confirmed the ruling.

Rodgers and Packers reign in Super Bowl XLV

Mark Cornelison / Lexington Herald-LeaderGreen Bay Packers wide receiver Greg Jennings (85) celebrates after catching a touchdown pass in the second half in Super Bowl XLV where the Green Bay Packers beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-25 at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Tex. Sunday.

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Page 9: Monday, February 7, 2011

the third period tied at one. Union then seized the lead

early in the third period, as Jean-nie Sabourin took advantage of a power play and found the back of the net less than 90 seconds into the frame. With six minutes left in the game, Union scored again. The Dutchwomen made the most of a five-on-three, with Ashley Johnston tallying her first goal of the season to put Union up 3-1. Brown pulled its goalie with over three minutes left, and this time the move paid off — Polenska scored for the second-straight night to bring Brown within one. But the equalizing goal ultimately proved elusive.

“In both games, we were strong

in the first period,” Dancewicz said. “We need to keep up that energy through the whole game. We had a lot of confidence go-ing into these games and scoring those early goals built on that. But we have to keep our focus through all three periods — particularly the third.”

The Bears have gone 18 straight games without a victory and are currently in the midst of a ten-game losing streak. But Dancewicz said the team is still optimistic about the remaining five games in the season.

“We’re really hungry for a win,” she said. “We’re looking to stay positive and keep working hard. We want to end the season on a good note, and we’re going to keep our heads up.”

crowd at Meehan Auditorium sat in silence when Brown forward Bobby Farnham ’12 crashed face-first into the boards after a hit from behind by Dartmouth defender Evan Stephens. Farnham lay on the ice for several minutes after the hit, but was able to skate off under his own power, and, to the crowd’s applause, soon re-turned to the ice. Stephens re-ceived a five-minute major and a game misconduct for the hit.

Dartmouth was able to kill the five-minute penalty, and at the end of the first period, held on to its 1-0 advantage.

Six minutes into the second period, Brown looked poised to strike on a power play, but the stout Dartmouth penalty kill de-nied Bruno again. Mello made several masterful saves, including one from point-blank range in the power play’s waning seconds to keep Brown scoreless.

Just after the kill, it was the Big Green’s turn to go a man up — but unlike Brown, they were able to capitalize. A minute into the power play, Dartmouth center

Matt Lindblad was able to finish from close range along the right side of the goal, doubling his side’s lead. As the teams headed into the locker room after two periods, the Bears held a 25-14 shot advan-tage over the Big Green, but found themselves trailing 2-0.

After both sides traded shots in the third, Brown went on the power play after a high-sticking call on Dartmouth’s Eric Robinson with fifteen minutes left to play in the game. Yet again, the Big Green killed the penalty, turning away every scoring opportunity Brown created. Mello continued his stel-lar play in goal, denying Brown forward David Brownschidle ’11 from point-blank range with a spectacular save.

Again and again in the third, Brown was unable to convert. On several occasions, the puck kicked around in front of the Dartmouth goal, but not once could a Bear corral and bury it.

Dartmouth put the game away with only two minutes remaining. On a two-on-two play, Big Green center Doug Jones kept the puck himself, weaving his way in front of the net and beating Clemente,

glove-side, for his team’s third tally of the night.

Soon after, the buzzer sounded and Mello skated off with the sec-ond shutout of his career.

“We had some Grade-A chanc-es,” Whittet said. “The kid made ridiculous stops, so give him credit.”

Whittet also said his team has faced a string of stellar goalie play in recent games.

“It’s a really frustrating time, because I don’t think we can work much harder,” he said. “The goaltenders are playing very well against us.”

The loss is Brown’s fourth in a row. The Bears have failed to string together a consistent stream of wins after their Jan. 16 upset of then-No. 1 ranked Yale.

Whittet said he was disap-pointed with the team’s recent re-sults, but admitted that the losses are a part of the team’s growing process.

“This is a big undertaking,” he said. “This is a process for us to try to rebuild this program. It’s not going to happen overnight, so there are going to be some ups and downs.”

Sports recap 9the Brown Daily heraldMonday, February 7, 2011

bb & Z | Cole Pruitt, Andrew Seiden, Valerie Hsiung and dan Ricker

Cabernet Voltaire | Abe Pressman

Dot Comic | Eshan Mitra and Brendan Hainline

Co M I C S

continued from page 12

W. icers score goals, lose weekend games

was just thinking it doesn’t matter how many points I’m scoring or it doesn’t matter who’s scoring, as long as we are keeping our lead, playing defense and winning the game.”

Cornell 91, Brown 79Bruno was unable to carry the

momentum from Friday’s win into the following evening’s matchup against Cornell (5-15, 1-5 Ivy). They fell, 91-79, as Cornell grabbed its first conference victory of the year. The Big Red did all they could to silence McGonagill, holding the weary freshman to 11 points on four-of-16 shooting.

“Every time he came around a ball screen, they doubled him and they made him give it up,” Agel said. “He still got a lot of opportunities. He just looked like his legs were a little tired. He played almost every second over the weekend, and he did a great job, but we can’t expect him to carry us.”

With McGonagill relegated to

distributing the ball — he finished with seven assists — Tucker Halp-ern ’13 became the fifth Bear to lead the team in scoring in five games, registering 26 points to go along with nine rebounds and five assists.

The Big Red displayed a bal-anced attack, finishing with six players in double figures. They shot 16 of 34 from beyond the arc, with more than half of their points com-ing from three-point range.

From his position on the bench, Sullivan saw a change in his team from the night before.

“I don’t think we had as much energy,” he said. “Last night, we were really eager to get the win. We were winless in the league, and we were being real competitive. To-night, they scored 91 points — just way too many points. You’ve got to give Cornell a lot of credit. They hit a ton of threes, they played really well and they hit tough shots.”

The Bears hit the road again this weekend, seeking to improve upon their Ivy League record. They travel to Dartmouth on Friday and will face Harvard the following night.

continued from page 12

Bears unable to hold back Big Red offense

Bears lose fourth straight to Dartmouth

Jonathan Bateman / HeraldSophomore Alena Polenska tallied her fifth goal of the year as women’s Hockey dropped a tough one to Rensselaer.

continued from page 12

Page 10: Monday, February 7, 2011

editorial & Letter10 the Brown Daily heraldMonday, February 7, 2011

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Study Away in the U.S. A-OKTo the Editor:

I was very excited to read The Herald’s article on Study Away options in the United States. As a senior who spent a semester in New York through Brown’s Urban Education Semester program, I know how valu-able it can be to live and work in another part of the country, an experience that has been glossed over as more and more students choose to spend time abroad. However, I was surprised that the article neglected to mention that Brown has several partnerships and pro-grams for students to study at other U.S. institutions. Among these are the Urban Education Semester, where

students take graduate classes at Bank Street College of Education while working in schools or policy set-tings, and the Brown-Tougaloo exchange, which was started in the midst of the Civil Rights movement and continues to offer Brown students the opportunity to study at Tougaloo, a historically black college in Jack-son, Miss. I work at the Curricular Resource Center in Faunce as the study away coordinator, and just wanted to put it out there that there are many ways to spend time away, and that Brown has programs in place to support students who choose to do so.

Amina Sheikh ’11

E d I To R I A L Co M I C b y J u l i a s t r e u l i

“Skirt length is the main shocker for me — can’t believe the lack of material used to make the skirts worn by ‘posh’ girls here.”

— Katie Grandle, a Cornell junior

E d I To R I A L

Shopping period, which ends tomorrow, brings with it a flurry of unique challenges. During the first two weeks of each semester, students can be seen all over campus browsing courses online. They strategize how to shop more than one course in the same time slot and plan what to take if no room frees up in that seminar capped at 20 spots.

And by now, no student on campus has ever known paper regis-tration at Brown. Despite the long and stubborn opposition to the University’s move to its online system, students have learned to live with Banner and its idiosyncrasies.

We applaud Brown’s attempt to make it easier to shop courses online. In the past year, the University has created a new Course Scheduler and begun encouraging professors to put course syllabi online before the start of classes. The Course Scheduler incorporates many of the features that made — and continue to make — Mocha so popular. For example, students can save courses in a weekly schedule and export them to the calendar program of their choice and look up courses in multiple departments simultaneously. The new tool even includes features that Mocha never had, such as a function that saves, e-mails and loads different lists of courses. And because the Course Scheduler, unlike Mocha, is run through Banner, it stays up-to-date, displays how many spots are left in a course and lets students register directly for classes.

But never fear, nitpickers. There’s still cause for complaint. The Course Scheduler does nothing to allay a central complaint about Banner: It’s about as aesthetically pleasing as Providence in February. Its color scheme is even a wintry mix of white, gray and brown. Un-like Mocha, it does not display textbook prices from Amazon. And while Banner’s course catalog and Mocha indicate non-departmental courses that may be of interest to concentrators, the University-run shopping cart system has no such feature. Students can add courses through the new Course Scheduler, but they cannot drop them or remove registered courses from their shopping carts.

The University’s decision to create an additional tool rather than building on what already exists seems like reinventing the wheel, and a choice to sidestep student-driven innovation rather than support it. What’s more, as The Herald reported last week, students find the process of looking up courses online a complicated endeavor. Course reviews, meeting times, syllabi and textbook information are all avail-able somewhere on the World Wide Web — an abundance of useful information that is relevant to shopping. But somehow, none of it is in one place. We encourage the University to continue improving our online shopping experience — and to remember while doing so that simpler is often better.

editorials are written by The herald’s editorial page board. Send comments to [email protected].

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opinions 11the Brown Daily heraldMonday, February 7, 2011

Rhode Island, like much of the nation, is facing a major fiscal crisis. The state has a projected 2012 deficit of $295 million due mostly to rising costs, declining revenue and the loss of federal stimulus money. In his recent opinions column, Hunter Fast ’12 (“Just say ‘no’ (to the nanny state),” Feb. 4) would rule out “sin” taxes as a possible solution. I must disagree.

The term “sin” tax is a strange misno-mer. All goods and services are not — and have never been — taxed equally, from the first tariffs which disproportionately affect-ed imports, until today.

For example, groceries from the super-market often have no sales tax, but go and order carrot sticks at your local restaurant and you’ll be slapped with an extra 7 per-cent sales tax. Such is the nature of taxa-tion, even when you are not aware of it. Be-cause corn is highly subsidized at the feder-al level to the tune of $3 billion a year, that high-fructose corn syrup rich soda has an inherent advantage on its sugared brethren down the aisle. Unequal taxation of goods is everywhere.

However, the idea of “sin” taxes arises when certain goods and services that are unsafe, unhealthy or have negative exter-nalities are taxed disproportionately. In

reality, all taxes are a form of “sin” tax. All taxes are applied disproportionately, though it seems Fast singles out the heavy taxation of cigarettes as more reprehensible than, say, taxing restaurant food while leav-ing grocery store veggies untaxed.

It is true that Rhode Island does have one of the highest cigarette taxes in the country at $3.46 per pack, yet by most met-rics, this tax is still way too small. In a study published last year, researchers at Penn State found the true cost of a pack of ciga-

rettes in Rhode Island, when medical costs and loss of productivity are factored in, to be $31.20.

The problem is that the costs of smoking are borne by the whole society and not just those individuals who are making a per-sonal choice. There are the obvious dangers of secondhand smoke, which affects every-one in the vicinity of a smoker — often the children of smokers, who have no choice of parents.

Additionally, there are some pretty sig-nificant negative externalities. Smokers who aren’t covered by health insurance, or

who rely upon Medicaid or Medicare, cost taxpayers millions of dollars each year.

Hospitals cannot refuse to provide med-ical services to an uninsured smoker dying of lung cancer or heart disease. They are forced to absorb these costs and pass them on by making treatment costs even more expensive for those who can afford to pay.

And smoking is bad for the economy too. Poor health means missed days of work, and early death means reduced tax revenue. A healthy workforce is a more

productive work force, which means more money for the state and less taxes on oth-er goods. Taxing cigarettes is a win for the economy as a whole in the long run.

However, Fast does rightly point out that high taxes, especially those with great disparity across state lines, will foster black markets and hurt businesses near the bor-der. This is especially problematic for a state like Rhode Island, where its tiny size makes it easy for would-be smugglers to take that short drive into Massachusetts.

However, instead of decrying the high taxation in Rhode Island, we should be

wondering, “Why aren’t the taxes in other states just as high?” It isn’t like fiscal crisis and smoking’s public health implications are issues that are bound by the Ocean State’s borders.

The real issue with Fast’s decision to rule out so-called “sin” taxes — and especially smoking — is that he offers no alternative solution to solving Rhode Island’s deficit. The money has to come from somewhere. Is Fast suggesting that smokers should get a break while teachers are laid off? Or, per-haps in a spirit of solidarity, he is offering to send Governor Lincoln Chafee ’75 P’14 a check to replace the lost revenues from a cigarette tax.

Goods and services have never been taxed equally. A complex array of taxes and subsidies, tax credits and deductions exists to help certain sectors of the economy and protect consumers from unhealthy or de-structive behaviors.

Taxing cigarettes at higher rates than other goods is smart policy because it does not just bring in revenue for the state, but also leads to the decreased health care costs and increased revenues from greater pro-ductivity that are the direct benefits of a healthier and longer-lived workforce. The money has to come from somewhere — better from deadly cigarettes than my car-rot sticks.

Ethan Tobias ’12 is a biology concentra-tor from New york. He can be reached at

[email protected].

Solving a “sinning” state’s budget

Over this past winter break, I realized, with some surprise, that my Chinese-speaking, Chinese literature-teaching parents who re-side in China are not, in fact, Chinese par-ents. How did I come to this somewhat ran-dom and seemingly illogical realization? I used my extraordinary skills to reflect on cur-rent events and social attitudes with my per-sonal life experiences and was enlightened by a leading academic at the Yale Law School, by way of the Wall Street Journal.

The Journal article, “Why Chinese moth-ers are superior,” contained an excerpt from Yale law professor Amy Chua’s book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” a memoir of her experience raising two daughters in the strict, “Chinese” manner. Chua claims that raising children in this way leads to academic and professional superiority, as opposed to West-ern parents who “seem perfectly content to let their children turn out badly”.

Chua, however, is hardly the traditional Chinese she wants the world to think she is. A second-generation immigrant from the Phil-ippines, she does not speak Chinese, nor has she ever lived in China.

I write this column not as a child embit-tered by a history of strict parenting, or as a human rights advocate incensed by Chua’s not allowing her daughter toilet breaks. I do not wish to make any critical assessments of Chua’s parenting style. It matters very little whether or not Chua really adheres to the

radical measures she describes — growing up in working-class immigrant Australia, simi-larly sensationalist discussions about strict parenting were characteristic of my peers’ parents. Instead, my perspective is that of an ethnically Chinese immigrant in a Western country who is offended by Chua’s market-ing scheme.

Though Chua explains her use of the term “Chinese parent” not based on pure ethnic identity, and admits that there are many par-ents who identify as Chinese but do not sub-scribe to her philosophies, she seems to be seriously devoted to her precious identity as

being Chinese. That is to say, even as she ac-knowledges that parents from other cultures and ethnicities can go to extreme measures to compel their children to achieve, she ac-cords her appropriation of a strict parenting lifestyle entirely to her ethnic identification.

If Chua’s parenting philosophy is not en-tirely derived from Chinese culture, nor does she have direct, immediate ties with that huge country to the east, why do we make such a huge fuss about Chua as a representative of

the Chinese way of life, rather than just one, rather odd, individual? The answer to this question is brutal and heartbreaking: to make tons of money.

Chua’s insistence on characterizing herself as Chinese cleverly capitalizes on the ageless East-West dichotomy — the shallow, per-ceived culture war that inspires some of the bestselling writing and film in this country.

The ugliest consequence of our high-tech, consumerist culture is that conflict sells. In-ternational relations-savvy Chua knows this perfectly well — for what could represent a more pressing conflict than the underlying

fear in American foreign relations that China will very soon become the world’s new big-gest superpower?

If Chua had titled her book “Strict Parent-ing is Good: How a law professor raised two great daughters” — instead of attempting to pen the argument that Chinese mothers are superior — the racist overtones plaguing opinions columns and user-generated dis-cussions over cyberspace would lessen con-siderably.

It concerns me that Chua’s daughters have been dragged into this artificial struggle be-fore they have had the chance even to attend college. Being half-Chinese, raised Jewish and remarkably brilliant, they will no doubt have enough questions about their own cul-tural identity without being used in a com-mercial ploy.

To someone the West has treated so well — giving her education, employment and a husband — Chua certainly neglects to admit that she has a lot to owe to Western society, just as much as her daughters “must spend their lives repaying (her) by obeying.” Chua promulgates and exacerbates an imagined conflict that she’s not really qualified to take sides in, and reaps the commercial benefits. Her huge promotional tours are hardly char-acteristic of Confucian humility.

If the elitist Chua really wants to raise some traditional Chinese allusions to her self-perceived dedication to Chinese-ness, she should have named herself “Dragon Lady,” a term commonly used to refer to the infamous Dowager Empress Cixi, who imprisoned her nephew, bankrupted the imperial Chinese economy on luxury and was the ultimate ex-emplar of a woman who always gets her way.

In an attempt to rid China of Western in-fluences, Cixi backed the xenophobic, radical Boxer Rebellion. Like Cixi over a century ear-lier, Amy Chua is supporting something dan-gerous and radical in a misguided attempt to pass herself off as someone deeply devoted to Chinese tradition.

Sarah yu ’11 also has several bones to pick with “The Joy Luck Club.” She can be

contacted at [email protected].

Tiger mother? Dragon lady

To someone the west has treated so well — giving her education, employment and a husband — Chua certainly neglects to admit that she

has a lot to owe to western society.

The costs of smoking are born by the whole society and not just those individuals who

are making a personal choice.

ETHAN ToBIASopinions Columnist

SARAH yUopinions Columnist

Page 12: Monday, February 7, 2011

Daily Heraldthe Brown

Sports MondayMonday, February 7, 2011

By eThan mCCoyaSSiStant SportS editor

In a homecoming trip to Provi-dence, Dartmouth goalie — and Rehoboth, Mass. native — James Mello turned in a spectacular per-formance Friday night, making 39 saves to power the Big Green to a 3-0 victory over the men’s hockey team. The win is the 200th of Dartmouth Head Coach Bob Gaudet’s career, making him the second-winningest coach in Big Green hockey history.

“James was just great,” Gaudet said. “He played a great game. I thought Brown played a really solid game, and he was obviously a difference for us.”

“I played just down the road for La Salle (Academy) for three years and my whole family’s from here,” Mello said. “To come in and get two points from a good Brown team is awesome — especially not giving up a goal is just the icing on the cake.”

It took less than a minute for Dartmouth (13-7-3, 9-5-2 ECAC) to find the back of the net, quiet-ing the sizeable Brown (7-11-4, 5-9-1) student section that came out for the “Winter White Out Game.” With only 35 seconds off the clock, left-winger Nick Walsh beat Bears goalie Mike Clemente ’12 from close range, putting the

Big Green up 1-0.“It’s awful,” said Brown Head

Coach Brendan Whittet ’94. “We step out, we’re ready to go and within seconds, we’re down 1-0. And it’s a faceoff goal. It’s the stuff we talk about all the time.”

After giving up the quick goal, the Bears worked hard to create numerous chances, but were de-nied 12 times by Mello in the first period. In one of the squad’s best opportunities, Brown for-ward Jake Goldberg ’14 controlled

the puck with only Mello to beat, but his wrist shot from the faceoff circle was eaten up by the Dart-mouth netminder.

At 10:25 in the first frame, the

No. 17 Dartmouth shuts out Bruno 3-0

By suDarshan sriramanSportS Staff Writer

The women’s hockey team (2-19-3, 1-13-3 ECAC) had a vastly improved offensive showing in its away games against Rensse-laer (10-12-7, 8-8-2) and Union (2-25-3, 1-15-2) this weekend. They held leads through signifi-cant portions of both games, but defensive lapses resulted in two missed opportunities to register a win and break their 10-game losing streak.

rPi 4, Brown 2Brown capitalized on an ear-

ly power play at Houston Field House when forward Alena Po-lenska ’13 scored three minutes into the first period. Though the Bears conceded two power plays, their penalty kill put some nervous minutes to rest, killing nearly 90 seconds of a two-man advantage for the Engineers.

Erica Kromm ’11 then doubled Brown’s lead midway through the second period, finding the back of the net with a wrap-around goal.

Though Brown matched RPI shot-for-shot in the first two pe-riods, the Engineers ratcheted up the offensive pressure in the third.

Goaltender Katie Jamieson ’13 proved up to the task until the puck found the back of her net with less than 12 minutes to go in the game. The referees ruled that the puck was kicked in and disal-lowed the goal. Perhaps spurred on by the call, the Engineers surged. Forward Jordan Smelker got on the board first, scoring with nine minutes remaining.

After Kristen Jakubowski tied the game on a power-play goal, Taylor Horton slapped a shot past Jamieson just 39 seconds later — suddenly, the Bears were trailing.

Brown, desperate for an equal-izer after conceding three goals in three minutes, pulled Jamieson in the last minute. But RPI took advantage of the empty net and managed to score with 16 seconds left, sealing a dispiriting defeat for Brown in a game they had con-trolled for all but nine minutes.

“We had RPI on their heels for a long time,” said tri-captain Jenna Dancewicz ’11. “A couple of minutes where we lost focus a little bit cost us the game.”

union 3, Brown 2Brown drew first blood on Sat-

urday, as defender Victoria Smith ’13 found the back of the net after a pass from defender Jennifer Ne-dow ’14 five minutes into the sec-ond period. But the steady Union offense tied the game twelve min-utes later, and the teams went into

Improved offense not enough for a win

By sam ruBinroiTSportS Staff Writer

The men’s basketball team had an up-and-down homestand this weekend, defeating Columbia, 87-79, on Friday before falling to Cornell, 91-79, the following night.

Brown 87, Columbia 79Fate appeared to be doing every-

thing within its power to deter the Bears as the team headed into its Friday night game. It was dealing with the loss of co-captain Peter Sullivan ’11 — the leading scorer and rebounder this season — who had been injured the week before. In practice Wednesday, rising point guard Sean McGonagill ’14 had to be rushed to the hospital after smashing his face while grappling for a loose ball with Dockery Walk-er ’14 and Josh Biber ’14. He earned 20 stitches, and a plastic surgeon was brought in due to the extent of the injury.

With McGonagill’s status for the game against the Lions (12-8, 4-2 Ivy) uncertain, the Bears (8-12, 1-5) seemed destined to remain winless in the conference. But McGonagill returned in glorious fashion — protective facemask and all — and scored 39 points. His to-tal tied the record for most points scored in the Pizzitola Center and is tied for sixth highest in Brown history. Though McGonagill’s role throughout the season has been to handle the ball and distribute, his

teammates were not shocked by his scoring outburst.

“I’m actually not too surprised because he does it in practice all of the time,” said co-captain Adrian Williams ’11. “I’m really glad he’s breaking out of his shell. He was wearing the mask tonight, and I was joking, calling him ‘The Mask’ like the Jim Carrey movie, but he just had an incredible performance. He’s a phenomenal player and I’m

glad he carried us tonight.”Head Coach Jesse Agel also had

high praise for McGonagill’s game. “It was an epic performance that

he and everyone else who was lucky enough to be here and witness will remember for the rest of their life,” Agel said. “Wednesday night, that kid took a tremendous shot to the face, and he spent a long time in the hospital … I didn’t want him to play unless he was 100 percent

okay, but he’s just so tough. … Boy, did he play, and he played and he played. Brought tears to my eyes.”

McGonagill seemed to be com-peting on a different level against the Lions. His 15-of-19 shooting from the field tied for seventh on Brown’s list for field goals in a game and broke the Pizzitola Center re-cord of 12 field goals in one game, set in 2002. He was nearly unstop-pable from every spot on the court, sinking three of four from beyond the arc and six of eight free throws. Two days removed from a hospital bed, McGonagill played all 40 min-utes and added six assists and four rebounds to his 39 points.

But Brown needed outstand-ing performances from other key players to win its league game, es-pecially in Sullivan’s absence. Wil-liams, a player McGonagill refers to as a “big brother,” had an impres-sive showing, scoring 20 points on seven-of-11 shooting in 32 minutes off the bench. Dockery Walker ’14 provided a much-needed inside presence. He has embraced his new role since joining the starting lineup a week earlier against Princ-eton. He finished the game against the Lions with a double-double, scoring 13 points and grabbing 12 rebounds.

“My teammates really helped me out a lot,” McGonagill said. “May-be it’s the face mask, but I just felt real confident playing basketball. I

McGonagill ’14 carries Bruno to first Ivy win

Sam Rubinroit / Heralddockery walker ’14 slammed home emphatically as the Bears ran past Columbia on Friday.

Jonathan Bateman / HeraldTry as they might, Chris Zaires ‘13 and men’s hockey couldn’t beat No. 17 dartmouth’s James Mello.

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