Wednesday, January 30, 2008

The Brown Daily heralDWednesday, Januar y 30, 2008Volume CXLIII, No. 6 Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

www.browndailyherald.com 195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island News tips: [email protected]

CAMPUS NEWS OPINIONSHIGHER ED

ZIPPITY DOO DABrown’s Zipcar contract may soon allow 18-year-olds to rent cars by the hour

5 11LOL! TALK 2 BROWNThe Bruin Club seeks to expand its AIM networking program for prospective students

THE WHOLE ELEPHANTNearing graduation, Chloe Lutts ‘08 argues in defense of liberal learning

3TOMORROW’S WEATHERSunny as student groups’ outlooks for their favored presidential candidates

sunny, 42 / 27

Advising at center of task force report

BY GEORGE MILLERsenior staff Writer

The Task Force on Undergraduate Education released its preliminary report today, the first comprehensive evaluation of the New Curriculum in almost twenty years. Its recom-mendations, while wide-ranging, contained few surprises.

The 48-page report, titled “The Curriculum at Forty: A Plan for Strengthening the College Experi-ence at Brown,” is not final, mem-bers of the task force emphasized. It recommends culminating “capstone” experiences for all concentrators, Meiklejohn advisers for sophomores and increased faculty advising.

“This is just a draft,” said task force member Kathleen McShar-ry, associate dean of the College for writing and issues of chemical dependency. “We need the entire community to be a part of the re-port.” The final report, due out in June, will form the backbone of the University’s self-study due this fall to its reaccreditation agency, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.

The task force, as it mentions in its report, sought feedback from students and others, including at a forum in November and through student surveys and a myCourses Web site.

“I was very impressed by the student response in November,” said Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron, who chairs the task force. “People care.”

A v o I d I N g A B I N A r y

Min Wu / Herald

Brown is considering a policy shift to allow upperclassmen to room in co-ed doubles.

See HigHer ed, page 3

UCS focuses on going greenBY MARIELLE SEGARRAstaff Writer

Now that the University has an-nounced plans to reduce its car-bon emissions, the Undergraduate Council of Students is looking for other ways to make Brown green.Along with setting greenhouse gas reduction goals to 42 percent below current levels by 2020, the Univer-sity has begun to take further steps toward environmental progress, UCS President Michael Glassman ’09 told The Herald. UCS advocated for the emissions reduction goal, Glassman added in an e-mail to The Herald.

The University will also work with UCS and other students and faculty to hold a “Brown is Green” conference in late April, said Lauren Kolodny ’08, UCS vice president. The conference aims to “start a dialogue” between campus groups working for environmental change, Kolodny said.

Co-coordinator Dan MacCombie ’08.5, said the idea for “Brown is Green” sprang from a meeting with Marisa Quinn, assistant to the presi-dent, and several faculty members and students to discuss opportuni-ties for uniting environmental activ-ist groups on campus.

The conference coordinators are hoping to enlist the help of Ira Magaziner ’69 P’06 P’07 P’10, who works as the chairman of the Clin-ton Foundation Policy Board and with the Clinton Global Initiative, “offering recommendations to gov-ernments as to how to make green changes,” Kolodny said.

Glassman said Magaziner ex-pressed interest in visiting the University during the semester to speak with students and make suggestions as to how Brown can

Student groups stump for their favorite candidatesBY NOURA CHOUDHURYstaff Writer

Though Rhode Island’s primary is still more than a month away, stu-dents are already turning out to support their favorite candidates. Political groups across campus are gearing up for Feb. 5 — Super Tuesday — when 24 states will hold primaries or caucuses.

The goal of Brown Students for Barack Obama was to “hit the ground running,” said Herald Opin-ions Columnist Max Chaiken ’09, chapter coordinator. The group held its first meeting of the semester last week with 60 students in attendance, where approximately half of the at-tendees were newcomers to the group, and it has seen an increase in its number of listserv members

since last semester. The group is part of a national organization found-ed early last year and is the most active chapter in the state, holding events almost daily since the start of the semester.

“Our focus from last semester to this semester has changed a bit,” Chaiken said. “Primarily just because of the change in what we need to be doing to get Barack elected. That’s really the primary goal.”

Though Brown Students for Barack Obama focused last se-mester on increasing its visibility on campus with events such as an open mic night at Blue State Cof-fee, the group is now focused on expanding Obama’s appeal to vot-ers. Student volunteers hold phone banks on an almost nightly basis

continued on page 6

continued on page 8

As inspections continue, so do violationsBY CAROLINE SEDANOsenior staff Writer

The Office of Residential Life has not seen much change in dorm health and safety violations, and students are still hiding things that violate its fire safety policies.

“They never do much other than walk in and then walk out,” Leiszle Ziemba ’09 said. ResLife searches every room on campus once a year by plain sight inspec-tions — meaning they don’t open drawers. “I’ve never really heard of anyone getting a big violation,

but there are the horror stories of people being fined like $500 or something.”

The only violations that war-rant a fine are candles and halogen torchiere lamps.

In January 2007, The Herald reported that nearly 20 percent of rooms had health and safety viola-tions in the 2005-06 school year, totaling about $1,800 in fines.

For the most part, however, the more common violations are wall hangings and extension cords, said Thomas Forsberg, associate direc-tor of housing and residential life. In

these cases students are informed they did not pass inspection and are re-inspected soon after, Fors-berg said.

ResLife warns students they will be inspected 24 hours before their room inspection.

“They found a power cord they didn’t like, and I put it in the closet. They came back later and that was that,” Jonathan Milestone ’11 said.

Forsberg said he is aware that students may be attempting to get

continued on page 4continued on page 6

Kim Perley / Herald

Students and College Hill residents prominently display their allegiance to presidential candidates.

Students, faculty can react at Feb. 4 forum

ToDay

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ACROSS1 Syrian president6 CBS series set in

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puzzle?60 __ monde: high

society61 Mediterranean

peak62 Pound

65 Feminine ending66 Agitate67 Strong suit68 Sputnik reporter69 Instant lawn70 Robust

DOWN1 Contribute2 Get it3 Hard to catch4 “Now I get it”5 Knucklehead6 Eponymous

salad creator7 “A Streetcar

Named Desire”role

8 Begin or Sharon9 Unwieldy ship

10 Melodic passage11 Magazine

publisher12 Knocking noise14 Youngster’s

writing challenge20 Elementary

French verb21 __ del Sol22 Staying power23 Landed28 Infant ailment29 Hold things

30 Marriott, for one35 Escape37 Evangelistic

assembly39 Cat-sized

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mother43 Ones seeking

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usually57 GPS offerings58 “National

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By Dan Naddor(c)2008 Tribune Media Services, Inc. 1/30/08

1/30/08

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Wednesday, January 30, 2008

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

[email protected]

C r o s s W o r d

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

© Puzzles by Pappocom

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LUNCH — Beef Tacos, Spanish rice, re-fried Beans, Eggplant Parmesan grinder, raspberry Squares

DINNER — Pork Medallions with Por-tobello Sauce, Quinoto, Fresh Corn on the Cob, Italian Beef Noodle Casserole, Chocolate Sundae Cake

VERNEY-WOOLLEY DINING HALL

LUNCH — Beef Tacos, vegan refried Beans, Corn and Sweet Pepper Saute, Pasta Bar, Polynesian Cookies

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PAgE 2 THE BroWN dAILy HErALd WEdNESdAy, JANuAry 30, 2008

But Seriously | Charlie Custer and Stephen Barlow

Dunkel | Joe Larios

Enigma Twist | dustin Foley

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higher eDWEdNESdAy, JANuAry 30, 2008 THE BroWN dAILy HErALd PAgE 3

Zipcar to lower minimum age for campus car rentalsBY JENNA STARKsenior staff Writer

Zipcar, the nation’s largest urban car-sharing company, defines a “zipster” on its Web site as “someone who rejects the established car-owning culture” or “one who is exceptionally aware of the latest trends and tastes.” Over the past several years, Zipcar has increased the number of trendy “zipsters” on College Hill and at over 40 colleges across the country, al-lowing students to fulfill car-related needs from grocery shopping to road-tripping on a pay-by-the-hour basis. Brown has used Zipcar since Oct. 2005, and the University is now in negotiations with Zipcar to lower the University’s membership age to 18 and add two more cars to those currently on campus.

Founded in 1999, Zipcar allows its members to reserve a car online for a designated amount of time, drive the car wherever they desire and return the car without paying for gas, tolls or insurance. Zipcar charges a one-time $25 application fee, $50 annual fee and an additional $8 for every hour of driving or $60 a day. Zipcar also includes parking for the University’s three Zipcars — a Honda Civic, a Toyota Matrix and a Mazda 3.

Zipcar has established a presence at an increasing number of schools, including Yale University, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Michigan and Stanford University, to name a few. Unlike most car-rental companies, which only serve adults over the age of 21, Zipcar has ex-panded its program to those 18 and over. By targeting college students, Zipcar intends to focus on a popula-tion that would welcome the perks of driving without the hassle of owning a car on campus.

“I think that colleges and uni-versities are a good target market for them because many of us are in the situation where parking is a premium,” said Elizabeth Gentry, director of business and financial services at Brown. “Many universi-ties are in city environments or have rules where underclassmen can’t have cars. Providing another oppor-tunity for travel is a win-win.”

Zipcar is also targeting universi-ties because of the change in stu-dents’ relationship to the economy. “The students at universities are re-ally part of the self-service economy, meaning that when you rent a video you don’t go to Blockbuster, you use Netflix,” said Robert Dalton, business development manager for Zipcar on Campus, the company’s program that runs cars on college campuses. “So the self-service model that Zipcar has really fits in line with that generation, and it will also hopefully change their mindset to where car-sharing is a new alternative to car ownership.”

Brown’s Zipcar membership has steadily grown to 250 active mem-bers and 72 average users a month, Gentry said. Because the Univer-sity’s contract is a few years old, it currently includes only students over the age of 21. But once the company lowers the age to 18 — slated to hap-pen sometime this semester — the number of members should increase, Gentry added.

By lowering the age to 18, Zipcar hopes to approach its target number of members — 10 percent of the stu-dent body, Dalton said. “Right now Brown has about 250 members and that number should really exponen-

tially increase when we drop the age requirement to 18 and add vehicles on the campus for students, faculty and staff to reserve.”

Many universities have already lowered the age requirement, but younger members face more strin-gent requirements. “The driving requirement for 18-plus is a little bit stricter than that of 21-plus, so we’re able to ... check that all members under the age of 21 have had their license for two years at least and with zero incidents to be eligible for the programs,” Dalton said. This means members under 21 are not eligible if they have had accidents where they were at fault or have received speed-ing tickets.

Yale began using Zipcar in Sept. 2007, and its membership has since risen to 400 students and faculty, said Yale Director of Sustainable Trans-portation Systems Holly Parker. Yale students over 18 are allowed to drive the University’s six cars.

“Basically, we want to do every-thing we can to support people’s decision to not bring their cars to campus,” Parker said. “But we know that people need cars. (Zipcar is) a really efficient way to use a vehicle versus having people just store them on campus, which isn’t probably the best usage of the university’s real estate.”

Brown has decided to expand the Zipcar program for reasons includ-ing parking and the environment, Gentry said. The University’s Zipcar allotment will soon expand by two cars. The new vehicles will be the most environmentally friendly cars provided by Zipcar, she added.

Brown has had little trouble with accidents, but Yale recently had $7000 worth of work done on a heavily damaged car, Parker said. The student found at fault was re-sponsible for paying $500 of insur-ance deductible in addition to losing membership. Dalton said members found at fault for accidents would be responsible for the damage done to the cars.

Rachel McKenna ’09 recently be-came a member of Zipcar because she needed a vehicle to drive in the snow. “It’s a really cool service, but there’s some stuff that they need to do better like keeping the cars main-tained and being more explicit on how to get the car,” she said. “Over-all, I’m really glad that it exists. It’s going to be really handy for me.”

Students are also happy to see that Zipcar is lowering the age for participation. “I tried to use Zipcar in the beginning of the year, but they told me no,” Virginia Buckles ’11 said. “I was really disappointed, so I’m excited that they’re lowering the age.”

Brown is currently revising its transportation Web site so that more students will be aware of Zipcar. Gen-try said she hopes students will make a big “brouhaha” once the age re-quirement is changed.

Brown looks to other universities in its discussion of co-ed doubles

BY DANA TEPPERTContributing Writer

In this spring’s housing lottery, sophomores and juniors may have the option to live in a double with students of the opposite gender as part of Brown’s changing housing policy. The gender-blind housing policy under consideration, which comes as a number of other schools across the nation look into gender-neutral housing, would allow upper-class students to choose housing without regard to gender.

The Diversity Advisory Board is currently reviewing the recom-mendations of the LGBTQ Advisory Committee on gender-neutral hous-ing. If the board approves the recom-mendations of the working group at its upcoming meeting in February then greater gender-neutral hous-ing options for students, including co-ed doubles, could be offered in this year’s housing lottery, said Margaret Klawunn, associate vice president of campus life and dean for student life.

The Residential Council, an ad-visory board to the Office of Resi-dential Life, passed a resolution last spring in full support of allowing sophomores and upper-class stu-dents to pick their room regardless of gender, Klawunn said.

The recommendations that the LGBTQ Advisory Committee made to the Diversity Advisory Board are based on information gathered about gender-neutral housing policies at peer institutions, the University’s housing inventory and “what our students were asking for,” said Klawunn.

Gender-neutral housing is “a rapidly changing landscape nation-ally,” said Russell Carey ’91 MA’06,

interim vice president for campus life & student services. In 2003, Brown incorporated gender identity into its nondiscrimination statement, Carey said, adding that since then, all the Ivy League institutions have incor-porated gender identity into their nondiscrimination policies.

As awareness grows about gen-der identity, there have been recent movements at other Ivy League in-stitutions to consider changing hous-ing policies. As part of the working group’s investigations into the issue of gender-neutral housing, Kelly Gar-rett, who heads the LGBTQ Advisory Committee, said that she looked at Brown’s peer institutions and their policies.

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, and Columbia have no gender-neu-tral housing, according to Garrett. Dartmouth launched a pilot pro-gram this fall that reserves a floor in one residential hall for students who would like to discuss and learn about gender identity issues. The program floor “is the one place in a regular double where we don’t care about the gender of the occupants,” said Rachael Class-Giguere, director of housing at Dartmouth. In addition to the program floor, Dartmouth of-fers students gender-neutral housing in the form of co-ed apartments or suites but requires that they have pri-vate lockable bedrooms and single-use bathrooms, Class-Giguere said. She added that Dartmouth would like to evaluate the program for a year or two before considering offer-ing co-ed doubles to all students.

Though Cornell and Harvard have no set policies on gender-neu-tral housing, the universities are discussing adopting such options, Garrett said. Since 2004, the Uni-versity of Pennsylvania has allowed sophomores and upperclass students to live in co-ed rooms, according to a Jan. 2005 article in the Daily Pennsyl-vanian. The working group at Brown looked at Penn’s policy as a model

for gender-neutral housing, Garrett said.

Ron Ozio, director of media re-lations at Penn, said students who request gender-neutral housing may live with whomever they choose, but he noted that “very, very few stu-dents at Penn do it.” Less than one half of one percent of Penn students live in gender-neutral housing, Ozo said.

At Wesleyan University, Garrett said, mixed housing is available for all students, including incoming freshman. She added that, “no two schools are doing the same thing. We all kind of look at our own systems and see what works for the individual school.”

The term gender-neutral hous-ing can often mean very different housing arrangements in practice. At some institutions, like Dartmouth, gender-neutral housing means co-ed suites and apartments or program housing with a focus on gender iden-tity issues. At Wesleyan, it includes co-ed doubles. Until recent discus-sions at Brown, the term referred to co-ed apartments and suites. Cur-rently 20 percent of Brown’s housing inventory is gender-neutral, Rich-ard Bova, senior associate dean of residential life, told The Herald in September.

In discussions with administra-tors at many colleges, Garrett found that “no one has experienced any problems with heterosexual couples living together, breaking up and then putting a strain on the housing sys-tem,” she wrote in her report. She goes on to write that everyone she spoke with said roommate conflicts in gender-neutral housing “were no more prevalent than the conflicts that exist in gender-segregated hous-ing.”

Katie Lamb ’10, a member of the Gender-Neutral Housing Working Group, said she hopes in the future

continued on page 4

U. may offer co-ed rooms in housing lottery


Min Wu / Herald

Space heaters are among the myriad violations of housing policies that the office of residential Life’s inspectors uncover each semester.

past ResLife inspections but hopes that the notices frighten students into removing unsafe or illicit items. In the rare case that students do not pass their second inspection, it can become a disciplinary issue. Students may meet with a dean to discuss their violations if they continue to ignore notices from ResLife, but Forsberg said such extreme disregard of the inspections “hasn’t happened in years.”

“We escalate it step by step,” he said. “The point is to keep that resident and those that live around them safe.”

Forsberg says that ResLife has not noticed a significant change in the number of violations but has noticed that in the last five years, there have been fewer violations among fresh-men dorms inspected.

“The most violations used to be in freshman rooms, but as we improve our ability to put the word out as to what is OK and not OK and when in-spections are coming, violations have gone down,” he said, adding they rely heavily on contacting students through e-mail. “We are not interested in surprising people.” ResLife workers also post notices in dorms with the dates of planned inspections.

Students try to avoid dorm inspectionscontinued from page 1

Bush recalls substance abuseBY DAVID NITKIN AND NICK MADIGANbaltiMore sun

BALTIMORE — President Bush spoke bluntly of his battles with substance abuse during a visit Tuesday to a Baltimore job-place-ment program that has received the kind of federal faith-based funding he wants to boost.

“Addiction is hard to over-come,” Bush said Tuesday at the Jericho program in East Baltimore, which helps former prisoners lead productive lives. “As you might remember, I drank too much at one time in my life. I understand that sometimes you can find the inspiration from a higher power to solve an addic-tion problem.”

Bush was in Baltimore to mark the seventh anniversary of an executive order creating the Office of Faith-Based and Com-munity Initiatives. In his State of the Union address Monday, he called on Congress to enact into law provisions of the executive order that give faith-based insti-tutions an increased chance at receiving funding.

“Our government should not

fear the influence of faith in our society,” Bush said at Jericho, which receives $660,000 a year from the Department of Labor’s Prisoner Re-Entry Initiative.

Bush met for nearly an hour with several program participants, telling them about the “common-ality” they shared by turning to church-based organizations to overcome problems. Bush, who as a young man was arrested for driving under the influence, gave up alcohol at age 40 and be-came increasingly involved in his church in Texas.

In a room with 11 ex-cons, Bush struck Robert Williams Jr., 35, as someone who had come to terms with his own failings — with divine assistance.

“He mentioned that he hadn’t had any alcohol since 1986, and that if it wasn’t for the man above it wouldn’t have been possible,” said Williams, who served 18 months of a five-year prison sen-tence for drug possession.

“It was not a campaign thing or a political thing,” said Curtis Spears, 50, who most recently served six months for theft and said he has been in and out of jail since he was 11. “He shared some things with us that I would never have expected him to share. He didn’t present himself like the president or like a big guy — he was just a guy.”

that students “won’t have to worry about” gender when picking hous-ing. Lamb said she hopes that on the housing lottery form “you won’t even have to say I’m an ‘m’ and she’s an ‘f’. You’ll just have to say we want to live together.”

“The bottom line,” she said “is [to make] as many people living on campus as comfortable as possible. We’ve proposed something that doesn’t infringe on what’s already go-ing on, but allows something else.”

Garrett, Klawunn and Bova also stressed that gender-neutral hous-ing and living in co-ed doubles is optional and meant to allow students the greatest amount of choice. “Our goal is to house students in whatever configuration they can think of that best serves their comfort, safety and well-being,” Bova said.

When asked about whether in-coming first-year students would also have the option to live in a co-ed double, Carey said that it is “not actively under consideration.” The recommendation for upperclass stu-dents to live in co-ed doubles, Carey said, “is much further along than any considerations for changing first-year housing policy.” Incoming first-year students who would like to live in a co-ed double because of their gender identity will be accommodated on a “case-by-case basis as we need to,” Carey added.

Klawunn said most schools have similar policies concerning first-year students. “There are very few schools that have done anything beyond the traditional placement for incoming students,” she said.

Bova estimated that the earliest time by which incoming first-year students would be able to live in co-ed doubles would be in the fall of 2010. However, he added, “we’re a ways off.”

U. mulls gender-neutral doubles

continued from page 4

Campus newsWEdNESdAy, JANuAry 30, 2008 THE BroWN dAILy HErALd PAgE 5

Temporary pool a hit with leisurely swimmersBY JOSH GARCIAContributing Writer

The University unveiled a new tempo-rary swimming pool at the Erickson Athletic Complex Jan. 23. In addition to providing a much-needed on-cam-pus practice space for Brown’s aquat-ics teams, the new facility has also been a boon for a less visible group on campus: recreational swimmers.

Located behind the Olney-Margo-lies Athletic Center, the $3.8 million temporary pool consists of an above-ground eight-lane pool enclosed in a white, pressurized dome. Despite its simplicity, both students and faculty who have attended the pool’s open swimming hours praised the facil-

ity’s design.After structural problems with

the Smith Swim Center permanently closed that facility last spring, stu-dents and staff members expressed frustration with the lack of a func-tional pool on campus. But response to the temporary pool this semes-ter has been positive. The pool will serve Brown’s swimmers for at least three years, while officials proceed with planning and construction for a new, $25-million aquatics facility.

The pool is open for recreational swimming Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Despite the short hours, “the pool has seen consis-tent use by both students and staff members even within the first few

days of operation,” said swimming attendant Amy Chang ’08.

Football player Mark Callahan ’10 said the pool provided good con-ditioning during the offseason, add-ing that he likes having the option to swim in his workout regimen.

The only criticism came from Trevan Samp ’10. “They don’t let you use the diving board,” he said. “That’s a bummer.”

Although the Smith Center was previously open to a limited num-ber of non-University-affiliated local residents, the temporary pool will be limited to Brown students, staff and faculty only. No physical education classes are currently offered in the temporary facility.

RISD’s Chace Center and an alum’s major glass exhibit to open in fallBY CAMERON LEEstaff Writer

Rhode Island School of Design of-ficials recently announced that the school’s planned Chace Center, to open in September, will be home to an installation featuring one of the school’s most famous alums, glass sculptor Dale Chihuly.

The Chace Center, a multi-pur-pose building that will be located on North Main Street, is intended to provide more accessibility to RISD from downtown Providence, The Herald reported in October 2005. Locating the Chihuly installation on the third floor was necessary in order to connect it with the existing RISD Museum on Benefit Street, which is built “on the side of a cliff,” said Hope Alswang, the museum’s director.

The building will officially open on Sept. 27, said RISD Museum Director of Communications Matt

Montgomery. The first two floors of the building, which will contain student spaces, will be open to RISD students when classes start in the fall. The new installation, “Chihuly at RISD,” will be housed in a 6,000-square-foot gallery, Mont-gomery said. The installation will be comprised of 22,000 pieces of glass, though Chihuly has not revealed his exact plans for the space, Mont-gomery said.

“I’m hoping it will be an Aladdin’s cave of splendor and that it will bring together the color and form he’s famous for,” Alswang said. “Dale Chihuly is a RISD graduate, and we were looking for a strong RISD story and somebody who would bring a real excitement to the opening. You want to open with somebody who is very exciting and very accessible to the general public.”

Chihuly has created pieces for the lobby of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas and the Clinton Library

in Little Rock, Ark., according to Morgan.

Montgomery said that RISD of-ficials also chose a glass sculptor instead of an artist who worked with paintings or prints to create the inaugural exhibition because the conditions in a new building are not always conducive to paintings or prints.

Visiting Professor of History of Art and Architecture William Morgan, who teaches HIAA2870D: “Architecture of the Contemporary Art Museum” this semester, said that even though he is not a fan of Chihuly’s work, he can see why it would be appropriate for the Chace Center. “It’s a perfect thing for them. Chihuly is a real crowd-pleaser and it will be a real draw,” he said.

Morgan also compared Chihuly to a rock star. “He got everybody interested in glass again,” Morgan said. “He took glass from being a craft into being a major museum

art.”“You can always spot the Chi-

huly. He does these large wall installations. It’s technically very proficient,” he said. “They’re kind of way over the top.”

In addition to being a RISD alum, Chihuly founded RISD’s Glass de-partment and taught there for over ten years, Montgomery said. He now works at a studio in Seattle. Morgan said he was not sure wheth-er Chihuly himself actually blows glass anymore, as he has a team of workers in his studio.

Alswang said it was RISD Presi-dent Roger Mandle’s idea to have Chihuly create an installation for the Chace Center. “Chihuly was honor-ary chair of the capital campaign for the new building. It made a strong opportunity for the new building since he had been involved in the campaign and had a strong com-mitment to RISD,” Alswang said. “I think that’s why Roger felt it would

be so effective.”In addition to the “Chihuly at

RISD” installation, the Chace Cen-ter will feature a smaller exhibition highlighting students who studied with Chihuly at RISD or at Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle, Montgom-ery said.

RISD also plans to open a cafe, a shop and an auditorium for the build-ing, Montgomery said. Construc-tion is expected to be completed in June.

n e W s i n b r i e f

Kathleen Zafra ’08 is tired of the menu at Josiah’s. Now a senior, she has been on the full meal plan for four years and has grown bored with the same old food.

Luckily for Zafra, Jo’s introduced a new menu item Tuesday eve-ning: fish and chips.

Zafra was happy with the new choice. “I always get either chicken or beef, so I’m excited to have another option,” she said.

The new dish, which costs $4.80 and is served at the grill station, consists of two filets, fries, cole slaw and tartar sauce. Because the fish is fried to order, it takes longer to prepare than the other items in the grill line. The added prep time caused a small delay for the first customers ordering the dish.

The addition of fish and chips comes as part of a series of changes to the late-night eatery. A pasta bar was recently added, and a salad bar will be installed in about two weeks, said Sean debobes, a super-visor at Jo’s.

Mathew Coughlin ’10 was among the first students to try the fish and chips. “I really enjoyed them,” he said. “For what it was and what it cost, I thought it was really filling.” He added that his friends are often reluctant to come to Jo’s because of its limited selection, and that the fish and chips will add variety.

Cashiers yi-Fen Li ’08 and Nureen ghuznavi ’08 said initial sales seemed strong. ghuznavi called sales “a lot better than expected,” while Li described them as “pretty good,” noting that the night was still young.

— Chaz Kelsh

fish and chips add to Jo’s variety

Bruin Club logging on to reach applicants BY CHRISTIAN MARTELLstaf f Writer

To some, AOL Instant Messenger is a way of staying in touch with friends. To others, it may be the perfect procrastination tool. For Ashley Greene ’09, it’s an inno-vative way of reaching out to the thousands of prospective students who consider Brown each year to give them a sense of life on Col-lege Hill.

“Not all of those students can visit Brown, so this is a way for prospective students to get an-swers from the comfort of their own home,” said Greene, head of the high school networking branch of the Bruin Club.

The AIM networking program is set up to provide high school students a way of messaging cur-rent undergraduates with any ques-tions they have about Brown. The Bruin Club asks volunteers to log on to AIM with an assigned Bruin Club screen name for two hours per business week.

“The benefit of the AIM Pro-gram is that it allows high school students the chance to chat with actual Brown students in real time and to ask questions that might otherwise go unanswered,” said Elisha Anderson ’98, associate di-rector of the Office of Admission and the liaison between the Bruin Club and admission office.

“The program is under-utilized

at the moment,” Anderson said. “I think the larger world is unaware that we have an AIM networking program available.”

Greene said AIM is only a “small portion” of the program right now, but after a Web page redesign next week, the addition of a direct link on the admission office’s Web site “will hopefully increase traffic this year.”

One of the Bruin Club’s high school networking efforts is the high school and Talent Quest am-bassador programs, which sends current students to high schools near their hometowns.

Other programs include Ask A Brown Student, which connects prospective and current students by e-mail, and the soon-to-be-re-vived Providence High Schools Outreach program, which brings high schoolers to campus to teach them about the college application process, in addition to the AIM networking program.

Rachel Kerber ’10 — or Bruin-Club06, as she is known online — said she spoke to a dozen students this past semester, an increase from the three or four she spoke with all of last year.

“The students that message me always seem to have very specific questions … about rooms, the open curriculum, parties, Providence. Once they get comfortable, some have asked me about financial aid and work study,” she said.

Kerber said her conversations have ranged from five to 90 min-utes. She has spoken to nearby students as well as some from Cali-fornia and one who only described his home as a “tiny town in the middle of Texas.”

Kerber said she worried that the sense of invisibility provided by the Internet might lead prospec-tive students to ask “crazy” ques-tions, but she hasn’t received any yet. She has, however, had several high school students contact her multiple times.

The most common question asked? “What are admissions of-ficers looking for in an application,” she said. “They ask me about SAT scores a lot too, but I tell them (as a Bruin Club rule) I can’t answer that.”

The Bruin Club hopes to build on the AIM networking concept to cater to international students, Greene said.

The project may expand to in-clude MSN Messenger and Yahoo users, and Greene said she hopes to partner with the International Mentoring Program as well.

“The Bruin Club stays in close contact with the admission office, who tries to play out a lot of Boldly Brown,” Greene said.

The Campaign for Academic Enrichment, publicized under the tagline Boldly Brown, is placing an emphasis on increasing the enroll-ment of international students.

Min Wu / Herald

Jo’s servers no longer have only Carberries to dish out, as above. Fish and chips was introduced to the menu Tuesday evening.


to identify supporters and garner interest in Obama’s campaign. Chaiken estimates that the group has identified approximately 50 supporters through phone calls, which are made from a list com-piled by Obama’s national office. Last semester, the group often re-ceived direct initiatives from the national office, such as being asked to identify all “early state” voters on campus — students whose home states hold primaries early in the season. The organization has re-ceived fewer direct requests this semester but continues to use the national office to obtain phone lists and establish contacts.

The group has also been can-vassing in Massachusetts and New

Hampshire on weekends and after-noons. Massachusetts voters will head to the polls next Tuesday, while New Hampshire held its pri-mary on Jan. 8. Once the Feb. 5 primaries have ended, the group will turn directly to preparing for the Rhode Island primary in March and will most likely collaborate with other Rhode Island campuses in support of Obama.

“We have such an important ability to be an influence in this election,” Chaiken said.

Herald Web Developer Sean Mo-nahan ’11 said he considers himself a Democrat, but he registered Re-publican in order to vote for Ron Paul. “Ron Paul has great online recruiting and good word-of-mouth campaigning,” Monahan said. He added he believes Paul’s non-tradi-

tional Republican campaign appeals to youth supporters because of its emphasis on online sources, such as YouTube.

Craig Auster ’08 is one of the leaders of the Students for Hillary organization on campus. Students for Hillary held its first meeting last night in preparation for Super Tuesday and will be canvassing in southeastern Massachusetts this Saturday. Though the group has fewer activities planned, it had sev-eral members in New Hampshire over winter break in preparation for the primaries season. The organiza-tion hopes to “get as many Brown students involved in the campaign directly as possible,” Auster said.

Students for Hillary tends to work closely with the local offices to plan where to canvass and to re-ceive phone databases and contacts. The group has connections with the national campaign through Rachel Sobelson ’07.5, who was the intern coordinator for the Clinton cam-paign for the state of Nevada over the summer.

Unlike the Obama group, the Clinton students have yet to witness a noticeable increase in participa-tion.

“Throughout last semester ... there’s been like a group of people who have been really involved and stayed involved,” Auster said. “I think this campus is not very pro-Hillary, and I think that overall the dynamics haven’t changed so much.”

Auster also noted the difficulties University groups have on campus because of the strict rules set by the Student Activities Office. Student groups are not permitted to advo-cate a specific candidate or pass out campaign literature on University grounds. Groups may only table-slip and advertise for meetings and events.

Harrison Kreisberg ’10, national communications assistant for the national Students for Barack Obama organization, noted that other cam-puses are often more lenient in their regulations and can place greater focus on increasing voter awareness of candidates. Kreisberg is involved with outreach to Students for Ba-

rack Obama chapters and works with individual chapters to advertise and campaign. He pointed out that most other campuses participate in the same grassroots activities such as canvassing and phone banks as the University chapter but few cam-puses have daily phone banks or have as great a following as does the Brown chapter.

“It really depends on the flavor of the local chapter,” Kreisberg said.

Kreisberg said that Brown’s chapter is limited in its influence because Rhode Island does not hold early primaries and traditionally leans democratic. He added that Brown’s chapter was influential in placing Obama on the state ballot for the March primary, where candi-dates must obtain 1,000 signatures to earn a place on the ballot.

Groups will inevitably face dif-ficulties in coming months when the Democratic field is narrowed to one candidate. Once a candidate is finally chosen, the role of the Brown Democrats increases as they work to unite supporters of individual coalitions, said Gabe Kussin ’09, one of the student leaders of the Obama group.

The Brown Republicans could not be reached for comment.

During the primary season, Brown Democrats focus their ac-tivities on voter registration, which ends for the Rhode Island primary this Saturday at 12 p.m. All students can register to vote in Rhode Island with proof of their residence hall address, Kussin said.

Kussin expects that participa-tion in the Brown Democrats will increase greatly once a candidate is chosen, although currently its numbers are fairly stagnant. The main task the Democrats will face is uniting supporters of the losing primary candidates and making sure they stay active in the general election, although Kussin recog-nizes it will have to largely be on an individual basis.

“There are still these core ideals that ring true in all these people,” Kussin said. “My hope is that people will see those core values first and see them within a candidate.”

Primary season charges up political student groupscontinued from page 1

help fight climate change and cre-ate more green initiatives.

Along with keynote speakers in areas such as architecture and politics, the conference coordina-tors hope to bring in researchers and activists from around Provi-dence, Glassman said. There will also be panels and more “interac-tive” events run by students from a wide range of concentrations, Kolodny said.

The green issue is “really good for fostering community,” Kolodny said. “A lot of people can get be-hind it.”

Organizers are “hoping to gen-erate awareness and enthusiasm, not only at Brown but with local policymakers,” Kolodny added.

UCS is also working with Com-munity Carbon Use Reduction at Brown, a pilot program funded by a $150,000 allocation from the president’s office and a $200,000 donation from the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, Glassman said. The program seeks to make Brown carbon-neutral by allowing the University to pay and receive car-bon offset credit for projects that would reduce carbon emissions in Providence, he said.

Because University officials “can only reduce Brown’s carbon emission to a certain point,” Glass-man said, they came up with a solu-tion that would develop Providence-based green activist projects run by students and faculty.

For instance, the plan would have Brown students distribute and install compact phosphorescent light bulbs to low-income house-holds in Providence, Glassman said. The bulbs, which cost almost 10 times as much as regular bulbs, would reduce carbon emissions and cut household electricity bills by $100 to $300 a year, he said.

Though local residents would keep the money they saved on electricity, Brown would “keep the credit” for the carbon emission re-ductions, he said.

UCS, along with the other stu-dent activists, has been working with President Ruth Simmons’ of-fice on the environmental initia-tives, Glassman said. “They’ve been terrific,” he said of the president’s staff. “They’re really supportive.”

As the University and UCS move toward establishing more environ-mentally friendly policies, MacCom-bie, a student organizer, said he can sense the change.

“It kind of feels at Brown right now like we’re on the verge of consciousness about this issue,” MacCombie said. “We’re college students, so we often operate on the assumption that we have to wait un-til we graduate (to start working on these issues). While we’re here, we have such a great opportunity.”

UCS to hold conference in late April


recycle? yes, please.

worlD & naTionWEdNESdAy, JANuAry 30, 2008 THE BroWN dAILy HErALd PAgE 7

McCain wins in Florida as Giuliani considers quittingBY MICHAEL fINNEGAN AND MICHAEL MUSKALlos angeles tiMes

MIAMI — Arizona Sen. John McCain won a fiercely fought Republican presidential primary here Tuesday night, defeating former Massachu-setts Gov. Mitt Romney in a race that narrowed the field for the rest of the presidential sweepstakes.

With 77 percent of the 6,913 pre-cincts reporting, McCain stood at 36 percent and Romney at 31 percent. McCain’s opponents conceded de-feat in a series of televised speeches that stressed the political and eco-nomic challenges facing the next president.

On the Democratic side, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was running far ahead and was expected to finish first in a race in which the candidates agreed not to campaign.

McCain’s victory gives him all of Florida’s 57 delegates and the title of front-runner as the GOP heads to Feb. 5 — “Super Tuesday” — when 1,023 delegates will be chosen in 21 contests. It allows him to build on the momentum he earned when he won the New Hampshire primary Jan. 8 and the South Carolina primary Jan. 19.

Romney, who has run strongly in Western caucuses and captured the primary in his native Michigan on Jan. 15, said he will stay in the race. But the Florida results likely are the death knell for former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who put his presidential hopes on the line here. He avoided the early primaries to concentrate his money and campaigning on Florida, whose sun attracts transplanted New York-ers.

In his concession speech, Giu-liani, looking relaxed and bantering with supporters, said the GOP was “stronger as a result of the competi-tion we are going through. Leaders dream of a better future and help bring it into reality.”

The former mayor steered clear of endorsing anyone, but his advisers were in discussion with the McCain camp for an endorsement, perhaps as soon as Wednesday in California.

Giuliani, once the leader here, watched in recent weeks as his popu-larity disappeared. He was running a distant third, with about 15 percent of the vote.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who won the Iowa cau-cuses Jan. 3, was running fourth at 13 percent. Huckabee conceded shortly before 9 p.m. and pledged to stay in the race.

According to exit polls, Florida’s concerns seemed to be in line with those of voters in other states; the economy was the biggest issue for Republican voters. Terrorism, the war in Iraq and immigration followed in importance.

The poll was conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky Inter-national for the Associated Press and the television networks.

Exit polling showed that Romney was winning the most conservative Republicans, while McCain was preferred by Republicans who said their politics were moderate or even liberal. McCain was running strongly among Hispanics, about 11 percent of the GOP vote.

No delegates are at stake on the Democratic side, because the na-

tional party stripped Florida of its delegates after state officials moved the primary to a date earlier than Feb. 5.

That has created the unusual situation in which more Democrats have voted in Florida than in all of the previous primaries and caucuses -- even though Tuesday’s result is not binding. It is similar to the Demo-cratic side of the Michigan primary, which was won by Clinton in an un-contested race.

With 77 percent of the vote count-ed, Clinton had 50 percent, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama had 33 percent and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards had 14 percent.

Even though it had no meaning, Clinton insisted her showing was important. In a celebration that was a victory party in all but name, she said she was thrilled by the outcome.

“I am convinced that with this re-sounding vote, with the millions of Americans who will vote next Tues-day, we will send a clear message that America is back and we will take charge of our destiny once again,” she said to a boisterous crowd.

On the Republican side, McCain has built his campaign by appeal-ing to the elderly and stressing his national security credentials. About 17 percent of the population is older than 65, according to 2006 census data, and more than 44 percent of the group voted in the 2000 Republican primary.

Exit polls show that more than a third of Tuesday’s vote was cast by someone older than 65.

McCain noted the exchange of attacks with Romney, saying he was “astonished” that Romney called him “a liberal” Monday. “That was par-ticularly entertaining,” McCain said in St. Petersburg.

“Look, he can run on his record as a governor of Massachusetts,” he continued, criticizing Romney’s economic record. “The real key, I think, here in Florida is who can keep America safe.”

Finnegan reported from Miami and Muskal from Los Angeles. Staff writers Mark Z. Barabak, Seema Mehta, Maeve Reston and Louise Roug contributed from the campaign trail in Florida.

MP’s murder fuels Kenyan violenceBY STEPHANIE MCCRUMMENWashington Post

NAIROBI, Kenya — Just hours after an opposition lawmaker was gunned down in his driveway here, the fury that has swept over this country since last month’s disputed presidential election arrived in his middle-class neighborhood.

The repercussions from the kill-ing Tuesday morning of Mugabe Were, cast by opposition supporters as the first political assassination of Kenya’s month-old post-election cri-sis, began in front of his house on a street of squared hedges and high gates. Mourners gathered there by the hundreds until police ar-rived and fired tear gas. The scene turned into an angry, tire-burning demonstration.

The anger spread quickly to a vast slum a few blocks away, where Evans Silingi, a shop owner from the Luo tribe of opposition leader Raila Odinga, soon picked up a heavy gray rock. “They have just killed the MP of Embakasi!” he shouted, referring to the district that elected Were last month. In the near distance stood several hundred machete-waving young men from President Mwai Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe.

News of Were’s death spread by radio, TV and text message, fan-ning rage across the western towns of Naivasha and Eldoret. And in Kisumu, farther west, thousands of opposition supporters barricaded roads with bonfires, stopped buses and stoned a man to death.

“You started by killing us and now you’re killing our leaders!” many demonstrators chanted in their mother tongue, according to a local reporter.

After weeks of violence by groups of angry young men, Were’s murder underscored how volative this once-stable East African nation has become since the Dec. 27 elec-tion. The opposition has accused Kibaki, the incumbent, of stealing the election. International observ-ers found serious flaws in the vote tally.

Now Kenya’s decades-old strug-gles over land, economic resources and political power are playing out as the election crisis appears to be worsening by the day. Kenya is a

nation of 37 million people that, since its independence from Brit-ish colonial rule in 1963, has had ethnic clashes before. But these are among the most severe.

With a cycle of revenge killings, the death toll has surpassed 850. More than 250,000 people have fled ethnically mixed areas in the west, turning Kenya into what in-creasingly appears to be a tribally segregated nation.

Even with former U.N. secre-tary general Kofi Annan in town to mediate between Kibaki and Odinga, many Kenyans say their country is just a spark away from blazing out of control.

For a while Tuesday, it appeared that the killing of Were, a 38-year-old lawmaker from Odinga’s Or-ange Democratic Movement, might provide it.

Were was shot once in the head and once in the chest as he was pull-ing into his driveway, his security guard said. Police are investigating whether it was a robbery, but his supporters immediately called his death a political assassination.

Were was a hero in his district, a mostly poor neighborhood of dirt paths and corrugated-metal homes where he funded an orphan-age and paid children’s school fees. As a successful candidate for par-liament, Were also embodied the hopes Odinga’s followers had to win political power.

A Nairobi councilman for years, Were became the first non-Kikuyu elected to parliament from his dis-trict. His backers said he stood up to local corruption. And with a Kikuyu wife and parents of mixed ethnicity, he did not tolerate the tribalism now poisoning Kenyan society, they said.

“It’s painful,” said Odongo Ochieng, who was outside Were’s home with dozens of others. “This is the method of killing democracy in Kenya.”

From the perspective of many Odinga supporters, the post-colo-

nial history of Kenyan politics is one of domination by the Kikuyu and the marginalization of would-be leaders from the Luo and the dozens of other ethnic groups in the country.

Ochieng and other opposition supporters instantly added Were’s name to the list of Luo politicians slain in recent decades, most no-tably Tom Mboya. Luos blame his killing in 1969 on the Kikuyu government of Kenya’s first presi-dent.

Outside Were’s house, mourn-ers was waved his photo, celebrat-ing him as a national martyr. In the opposition stronghold of Kisumu, where Were was born, they yelled his name like a rallying cry.

“There were text messages go-ing around that he had been slain and it was just spontaneous — people came out and the crowds grew bigger and bigger,” said Alan Okomba, a journalist in Kisumu, about 200 miles west of Nairobi. “They were counting their lead-ers who’d been slain — like Tom Mboya, and they were counting Were too.”

By early afternoon, the scene in one of Nairobi’s most volatile slums resembled a battleground. Odinga supporters massed in one area with machetes, iron bars and rocks, and across an invisible divide, Kibaki’s Kikuyu supporters provided a mir-ror image.

“If they kill one of ours,” vowed Evans Silingi, the shopkeeper, “four Kikuyus will die.”

A few moments later, police po-sitioned on the Kikuyu side fired several shots into the air, sending Silingi and other opposition demon-strators running through the maze of dirt paths.

Tensions relaxed later in the day, as people who had earlier run for their lives, hurled rocks and hidden in houses huddled around radios and TVs to hear if Annan’s mediation had produced any re-sults.


Focus groups were one of the most successful data-gathering methods the task force used, said Fiona Heckscher ’09, one of its four student members. About five ses-sions were held with small groups of students, she said, giving the student members of the task force a chance to gauge student reactions to what the task force was discussing.

Solutions for advisingThe report devotes particular at-

tention to the contentious issue of advising, addressing its most am-bitious proposals to a system that students as well as faculty and ad-ministration officials have expressed dissatisfaction with.

“Students want more direction; faculty and peer advisers want more information; deans and directors of programs want more coordination,” the report says. In particular, it adds, sophomores, transfers and interna-tional students need more support. It also recommends adding person-nel for concentrations with known advising shortages. Some academic departments have done a “less-than-distinguished job” of advising, Sheila Blumstein, professor of cognitive and linguistic sciences and task force member, told The Herald.

Data from the Consortium on Fi-nancing Higher Education, a group of about 30 schools that share data and surveys, shows that Brown per-forms worse than its peers in terms of student satisfaction with concen-tration advising, Bergeron said.

The report recommends more support for students and advisers in the form of easily available print re-sources and an expanded orientation for transfer and international stu-dents. It recommends expanding the Meiklejohn Peer Advising program, pairing sophomores with juniors and seniors and offering more training in the form of a for-credit, semester-long course for Meiklejohns.

The report also suggests the creation of Faculty Advising Fel-lows, who would provide broader

academic support for sophomores, among other duties, and receive re-search stipends for the extra work. It also recommends setting resources aside for a group of “advising coor-dinators” who would act as liaisons between faculty and students. One concern of the task force, Heckscher said, was that students have become too isolated from professors.

“Students want faculty to have a better understanding of their life outside the classroom,” McSharry said. A survey of the Class of 2006, she said, showed that students were unhappy with their ability to access faculty.

“Faculty are feeling constrained by the changing nature of the professoriate,” McSharry said, ex-plaining that professors’ lives are more complicated than they were in 1969, when the New Curriculum was born.

According to the faculty rules, advising is primarily the responsibil-ity of the faculty. The report states that about 70 percent of faculty cur-rently fulfill their duties as advisers. Keeping in mind that 20 percent of the faculty is on leave at any given time, Bergeron said, increasing that figure to 80 percent would result in a “more robust” advising system.

“It’s not a hugely difficult job (to advise),” Bergeron said, adding that if the burden were shared among the faculty the system would work better.

Assessing assessment“We don’t currently have suf-

ficient evidence that students are learning what we say they’re learn-ing,” McSharry said. Though the report makes a number of recom-mendations concerning student assessment, the task force never discussed grading, she said. Accord-ing to the report, NEASC will require a “clear answer” to the question of evaluating student learning for its reaccreditation process.

Departments should develop their own plans for assessing student success, the report says. Likewise, it recommends the creation of an

online course evaluation system.The task force also concluded in

its report that online portfolios, con-taining papers written for courses, concentration declaration forms and other documents, would encourage students “to take a longer view” of their educations.

The report recommends that each concentrator be required to complete a culminating “capstone” project, be it a senior thesis, an Un-dergraduate Teaching and Research Award research project with a fac-ulty member or some other in-depth project.

“We’ve always been very creative at Brown,” Blumstein said. “We can provide something that will both enrich and deepen students’ un-derstanding of their concentration program.”

Though the report mentions some misgivings among task force members about the term “capstone,” members of the group seemed to support the recommendation.

“There was a lot of positive feel-ing about the importance of this rec-ommendation,” Bergeron said.

Rethinking liberal educationThe report’s first recommenda-

tion is its broadest. The task force asks the Dean of the College and the College Curriculum Council to craft a new statement about liberal education.

The task force agreed with the current guidelines — drawn up in the last review of the New Curricu-lum, written by then-Dean of the College Blumstein in 1990 — but thought they could be clarified, Mc-Sharry said.

“Any school would endorse them as they’re currently written,” she said, explaining that the statement should reflect Brown’s singular cur-riculum. “Students are using the Open Curriculum in ways that the founders of the Open Curriculum re-ally didn’t anticipate.” The task force emphatically recommended that the new statement include recognition of the role of the “extracurriculum” in a liberal education.

“The remarkable scope and vigor of student-initiated activities on this campus serve both to complement and to complete the kind of learning that takes place in the classroom,” the report says.

Reactions“We’re not advocating that any-

thing really be changed about the Open Curriculum,” McSharry said. Rather, she said, the recommenda-tions are designed to strengthen the curriculum and support students and faculty.

Rakim Brooks ’09, a member of the task force, agreed. The recom-mendations were meant to provide more structure, not to introduce requirements for students, he said. The “capstone” project recommen-dation was meant to require that concentrations provide culminat-ing experiences for concentrators who wanted them, not to require all students to complete a project, he added. The language in the report suggests the latter, but Brooks said he thought the task force’s conversa-tion concluded otherwise.

Sophomore advising has been a problem, said Pete Gilligan ’09, a Meiklejohn adviser. Since there is not an easy way to find upperclass-men Meiklejohns, the task force’s recommendation that sophomores be paired with junior and senior advisers is well-founded, he said. A general leadership course, similar to one suggested in the report as additional training, would be useful for Meiklejohns as well as others, he said.

“I’d definitely shop it,” he said.The student representatives on

the task force generally agreed that the group, though mostly composed of faculty and deans, was interested in student input. Though the report is “more or less an accurate reflec-tion” of the conversations the task force had, Brooks said, the student body may be frustrated by some things that have been left out. Rec-ommendations generally required a consensus to be included in the report, he said.

“There may be concern about, ‘What does this really mean?’ ” and “vacuous” recommendations, Brooks said, but “the report was sup-posed to be a conversation-starter.” The final version will be formed with student and faculty input later this semester.

Brooks and task force member Jason Becker ’09 expressed some concern about how the report was written. The report was compiled from reports of each of the four sub-committees, Heckscher explained, and those four documents included many more recommendations than was practical to include.

“The report is very much a distil-lation,” she said.

Bergeron and McSharry wrote the report based on those docu-ments. Becker and Brooks said they didn’t always agree with what the report emphasized. Brooks told The Herald he thought certain aspects of the report were over- or underem-phasized compared to how the task force as a whole felt about them.

“You can tell who wrote it,” Beck-er said, but the report still reflects the task force’s work accurately. Though the report was written by members of the administration, it was completed with lots of input from the rest of the task force, he said. Hopefully, he added, once students have the report in front of them they’ll be more inclined to participate in the discussion.

Heckscher called the decision to have only two people write the re-port “pragmatic.” She said she would like to see comments from students included in an appendix to the final report, as well as incorporated into the body of the text.

“I hope they read it,” Heckscher said, adding that she hopes the re-port is coming out late enough in the shopping period to give students time to respond.

The next stepsThe final version of the report is

due out in June, by which time some of the vague points will have been “strengthened and refined” and the University may have already begun to implement some recommenda-tions, Bergeron said.

Between that time and now, the Brown community will have a chance to comment on the prelimi-nary version. An open forum will be held Monday, Feb. 4 at 5:30 p.m. in Salomon 101, followed by a faculty forum Feb. 19.

The task force did not discuss everything it would have liked; for example, the issue of writing profi-ciency, McSharry said. Bergeron and McSharry said it is possible those undiscussed issues could be addressed before June.

The Corporation, Brown’s high-est governing body, and the Aca-demic Priorities Committee will also review the report. The Corporation may have to endorse allocating new money for an expansion of advising, Bergeron said.

“It’s never a sure bet that re-sources will be forthcoming,” she said. “But for things that are very important we should find a way.”

The final report will then form the basis for the University’s reac-creditation self-study, due this fall. NEASC will require more specific proposals than the recommenda-tions in today’s report, Bergeron said, when it sends reviewers to campus in spring 2009 — 40 years after the beginning of the New Cur-riculum.

“What the accrediting agency will want to know is, ‘Yep, these are great ideals ... What is your plan?’” she said.

Some student task force members question report’s emphasis, goals

www.browndailyherald.com


WEdNESdAy, JANuAry 30, 2008 THE BroWN dAILy HErALd PAgE 9

touchdown passes, passing yards and total offensive yards (when the Big East was still a real conference). He was drafted as the second overall pick in the 1999 NFL Draft by the Eagles, whose fans set an ugly prec-edent by booing McNabb as he was selected, mainly because they wanted Texas running back Ricky Williams instead.

In his first full year as a starter, McNabb helped the to Eagles to im-prove their 5-11 record the previous year to 11-5, and finished second in the NFL MVP voting. Since his tenure began in 1999, the Eagles have made the playoffs six of the eight years, won five division titles, made the NFC championship game four times and reached the Super Bowl in the 2004-2005 season. McNabb individual-

ly has amassed 171 touchdown passes and 25,404 passing yards, has been selected to five Pro Bowls and was named the 2004 NFC Offensive Player of the Year. This past season, despite suffering from several injuries and rehabilitating a torn ACL, McNabb posted a 61.5 completion percentage, threw for over 3,300 yards and had a 19-7 touchdown to interception ratio. While these are not incredible statis-tics, players rarely perform at peak levels when coming back from such a serious injury, especially one that can take up to a year to fully recover from. Towards the end of the season, even as once-loyal fans consistently booed him, McNabb looked like his old, dominant self. The Eagles won their final three games, including an upset victory over the then 12-1 Cow-boys. The Birds finished 8-8, with six of those losses coming by five points

or less. With a healthy McNabb the Eagles are primed for a playoff surge next year.

In addition to his numerous on-field accomplishments, and more to the point, McNabb has always been the model of class in a city full of class-less people. He handled his draft-day experience in stride and has dealt with the extreme pressures of being a star athlete in the country’s toughest town incredibly well, including the added pressure of being an African-American playing a historically white position.

In 2003, Rush Limbaugh said on Sunday NFL Countdown, “The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn’t deserve.” When these much publicized com-

ments aired, McNabb handled the media storm with grace; not lashing back, but simply calling the incident “unfortunate.”

Similarly, when star wide-out Ter-rell Owens, often considered arrogant, selfish and a poor teammate, came to town, McNabb welcomed him with open arms, training together with Ow-ens before the 2004 season. Even after Owens started acting out by publicly insulting McNabb, holding out during training camp and getting suspended from the team, McNabb remained the consummate professional, always willing to put personal issues aside to better the team. This is something Owens will never understand.

A word to the wise: let Allen Iver-son’s story serve as a cautionary tale. Iverson, despite clearly serving as the heart-and-soul of the 76ers for a de-cade, was run out of town and traded

to Denver. The Sixers, who finished 35-47 last year without Iverson, have suffered ever since, while Iverson has just made his eighth All-Star team.

While this analogy is not complete, as the Eagles would be far from des-titute without him, forcing McNabb to leave Philly would be a severe mis-take, and regrettable on many levels. We cannot afford to see another of our heroes disappear. McNabb is still an elite quarterback, as he proved at the end of this season, and can still lead the Eagles to the Promised Land. No other quarterback on the team can handle McNabb’s job for an en-tire season, athletically or mentally. Moreover, he has earned our respect and the suspension of our disbelief through his constant determination, professionalism and grace. So come on Philly, for once in our lives, let’s show some class.

Davis ’10: Philadelphia quarterback McNabb is mistreated by fanscontinued from page 12

Taub in 39th, with times of 2:30.75 and 2:31.02, respectively.

“We were missing Blaine Martin (’11) this weekend, and it would have been nice to have her so we could’ve had another skier to pos-sibly score,” Consiglio said. The top

four skiers for each squad count towards the team’s score.

The Bears return to action next weekend, where they’ll face the challenge of skiing on two differ-ent mountains. The slalom races will be held at Pats Peak, N.H., on Saturday, and the giant slalom will be run at Loon Mountain, N.H. on

Sunday.“We’re going to have to travel

Saturday night, which we haven’t done this season,” Consiglio said. “It shouldn’t be a big deal though, and we want to definitely finish in the top three. Hopefully we can pull everything together and even get a win this weekend.”

Skiing looks north for weekend racescontinued from page 12

minimum three games, a testament to the collective mental strength of the team.

“Overall, it was a positive day for us,” Cerullo said. “Obviously it would have been nice to have won (both), but all of the pairs were tightly matched and everyone fought really hard. To come off that loss and win against Colby 9-0 was great, and hav-ing to play two matches in one day is always a good experience for the team.” Cerullo has won four consecu-tive matches, beating his Bowdoin opponent 9-5, 5-9, 9-2, 9-0 and Colby’s No. 1 9-3, 9-2, 9-2.

The men’s team will face Williams today, a big match that will test the strength of its recent positive mo-mentum. Cerullo is confident in the team’s ability to perform well against

the Ephs.“I try to instill confidence in the

guys that we can beat this Williams team,” he said. “They’ve fallen a few spots in the rankings and we will feel confident coming off these recent wins. It should be a close match but if we remain mentally focused, I think we can win.”

Similarly, Pyne and the women’s team are looking forward to a hotly contested match against Williams.

“We’ve all been working re-ally hard up to this point,” she said. “This Wednesday’s match is a big one in terms of us both being in the top eight. We expect to do well but Williams (is) a very good team so it should be a close match.”

Williams will take on the women at 5 p.m. and the men at 7 p.m. at the Pizzitola Sports Center later today.

Squash hopes to draw bigmomentum from weekend


s t a f f e d i t o r i a l

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First, we must commend the Task Force on Undergraduate Education’s members for their evaluation of the New Curriculum and advising. We have little doubt that this was an appropriate time for a comprehensive review of Brown’s curricular identity and that the process was executed in an inclusive way, with the task force seeking input through a MyCourses site and reaching out to students to inform them about the process. With a forum planned for next week to discuss the task force’s recommenda-tions, this second, full review of the New Curriculum was conducted in an open manner.

But for all the groundwork laid to make its work transparent, which raised our expectations of fundamental change, we must say we are un-derwhelmed by the task force’s recommendations.

Much of what it suggests will bring students previously left out of the advising process in from the cold — transfers, international students, ju-nior faculty and sophomores will all benefit from more advising attention. We are also intrigued by the idea of an online portfolio, which may give students a more holistic sense of their education.

Yet much of the report is vague, focusing on statements of liberal learning from closed-door committees and mission statements for each concentration. A more substantial assessment of our curriculum would have examined how Brown could fully retool advising instead of just expanding it, how students’ broad interests can be met through some avenue other than a double major and how effective grading can happen in a system as open as ours. At the very least, the report could have confronted the widely accepted failure of the writing requirement. These are some of the more controversial, tougher-to-solve issues, but they are also the more important ones.

We also sense today’s New Curriculum struggles to give students the initial, broad education needed to truly pursue whatever course of study they wish. Originally, the New Curriculum called for the now-defunct modes of thought courses to address this issue, but more could be done. Instead of focusing on what happens on the front end of the process, the committee timidly tacked a requirement on to the back end, suggesting students complete a more narrow “capstone” experience.

With its administrative language and unprovocative proposals, the report won’t elicit protest or excitement on the Main Green, as the New Curriculum did in 1969.

The report says that the New England Association of Schools and Col-leges, whose upcoming reaccreditation procedure provided the impetus for the task force’s work, will expect more details than are provided in the task force’s current recommendations. We expect more too.

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The headline in a wire story in Tuesday’s Herald (“A murderer returns to class,” Jan. 29) was inaccurate. The subject of the piece, Martin Tankleff, was released from prison following an appeals court ruling overturning his conviction, and the prosecuting attorneys dropped all murder charges.

Since we got back from the winter break not that long ago, most of us have recently expe-rienced a harrowing, long-distance journey, likely filled with pain and suffering. Or, less melodramatically, intrusive security checks, long lines and delays. Especially around im-portant holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas come to mind), flights are delayed, sometimes for hours, causing passengers to miss con-necting flights and thereby slowing down all national air travel.

Three of the chief culprits of this crime are those diabolical gatekeepers of air travel into the Big Apple: Kennedy, La Guardia, and Newark Liberty (one must admire the cruel irony of this name). The Business Travel Coalition estimates that approximately 75 per-cent of delays in the United States originate at one of these airports. Businessweek reports that at Kennedy alone, the average time spent waiting on the tarmac has increased more than 60 percent over the last four years, to 36 minutes. These three airports hold the dubious distinction of occupying the three lowest positions on the ranking of airports with the most on-time arrivals and departures, according to New York magazine. Only 57 percent of Newark’s flights come in on time, leaving many passengers frustrated.

There is certainly plenty of blame to go around. Some would blame us, the People, for being excessively tightfisted and demanding more flights than is strictly realistic — we even have the audacity to travel more than previously. Still more shrug their shoulders and blame terrorists, tamely accepting ab-

surdly long lines and the airports’ spectacu-larly pointless and aggravating War on Water as the price for security. Freedom isn’t free, after all. It requires that we sacrifice a little Liberty. Though the government crackdown we demanded after September 11, 2001, has unquestionably worsened the situation, the root of the problem lies elsewhere. Most of our problems stem from the government’s reluctance to invest in new technology and maintain adequate infrastructure.

For a few thousand bucks, many cars sold in the United States can have sophisticated,

satellite-guided Global Positioning Systems installed. It seems reasonable that, when mil-lions of us are hurtling across the country at three hundred yards per second, there would be more advanced and reliable systems ensur-ing our safety and guiding the fragile plane through the crowded air space. Alas, this is not the case. Businessweek reports that not only were most present flight patterns established in the 1920s, but the technology used to direct and control air traffic is not yet

run by satellite, has not been updated since the 1980s and is so old that only six program-mers in the country know how to write for it. No need to worry, though. The government has recognized the error of its ways — we’re told that by 2025 we should have an upgraded flight control system. Perhaps Honda could show them how to implement it.

So why will it take another fifteen years to get the kind of technology we should have had fifteen years ago? The argument over jurisdiction is without a doubt a convincing one. It would be more convincing, though,

if the federal government hadn’t unilaterally imposed a new regulation every time a ter-rorist was caught. We already have to take off our shoes in every US airport, and heaven help the revolutionary who tries to smuggle more than three ounces of water onto a plane. It doesn’t take much imagination to fear for the tragic indignities that could result from a prospective terrorist getting too creative about where or how to hide his weapon. There is no question that federal regulators can bend

the industry to their will in a heartbeat.What about money? Surely everything

revolves around the almighty dollar. Some estimate that fixing the system could cost as much as $44 billion. Perhaps the issue does boil down to the government being unwilling to spend the necessary amount. Either way, it’s an embarrassment. Among numerous other examples of waste, Congress just passed a $280 billion farm bill that, while funding food stamps, also squanders tens of billions of dollars subsidizing rich farmers. As the collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis highlighted, maintaining, updating and ex-panding transportation infrastructure is not very high on our list of national priorities. Just as bridges need to be fixed and replaced, so too do airports. The critical funding shortage cripples our country. Meanwhile, politicians quibble over budgets, all the while blowing unimaginable amounts of money on fanciful and wasteful ventures.

Ultimately, the blame falls upon the av-erage American. The politicians see voters reward reckless wars, glittery buildings and fat tax refunds. New runways, improved flight patterns and better navigation systems are boring. Activism on behalf of enhancements in transportation infrastructure is not sexy. But it’s practical, and becoming more and more necessary every day. Hopefully in this election year, when the politicians are par-ticularly keen to listen to constituents, voters tired of wasting their lives on the tarmac will speak up before the problem gets out of control.

Tyler rosenbaum ’11 is on a hunger strike until he sees real, progressive change in

transportation policy.

We all came to Brown for different reasons. Some were wooed by the strength of a par-ticular academic program, others by study abroad options; some were recruited by sports teams, others by financial aid packages. Most of us, including myself, came here because we thought Brown would give us what we wanted out of college. What I didn’t consider so carefully, as I analyzed viewbooks of smiling students four years ago, was how Brown would give me what I wanted out of life. Now, as the specter of the real world begins to loom large, that suddenly seems like a gross oversight. Every attempt to plan for my future brings me to the same question: Why am I here? I remember why I came here, but a liberal arts education suddenly seems completely irrelevant to where I’m going.

Hoping for some leads, maybe just a few ideas on how the open curriculum applies to the real world, I went to the career fairs — both of them — for the second year in a row, and for the second year in a row I walked away empty handed. To an international relations major and aspiring journalist, the investment banks, consulting agencies and I.T. companies were all fairly irrelevant. The Bloomberg recruiter did let me know that he learned everything he needed to know on the job, which only made me realize another thing: I really don’t want to be an investment banker. So here I am again, wondering what I’m going to do with my life, and what I’ve been doing with it so far.

Since the heart of my problem is my im-pending graduation, I decided to look there for answers. In May I’ll receive a degree rep-resenting some sort of four-year accomplish-ment on my part. In the most basic terms, it

attests to the fact that I’ve paid at least four semesters of Brown University tuition and “satisfactorily” completed at least 15 courses here, as per the minimum requirements for transfer students. In theory, though, this degree will say more than that; my parents aren’t coming to Providence this May and sitting in plastic chairs on the Main Green to celebrate my ability to spend their money and get an “S” in 15 courses. In theory, this degree says something how much I’ve learned here and how much I know now.

I can write a 25-page paper with a bibliogra-phy, conjugate verbs in French, finish problem sets while pretending to take notes, answer multiple-choice questions in Chinese, under-stand the business section of the newspaper and stay awake for 24 hours when necessary. And ever since taking Modern Architecture with Dietrich Neumann, what used to be just “the Rock” is now a post-brutalist, reinforced concrete feat of engineering. (Although I

still can’t fathom what vampire decided the windows let in so much light they needed to be covered in tinted plastic.) I’ve gotten my 15 passing grades and paid my four semesters of tuition, and I still can’t imagine why anyone would hire me to do anything more complex than scoop ice cream. I know a lot, sure, but what can I do with it?

As of Oct. 11, I have an answer to this question. It’s courtesy of Michael Fairbanks, the director of an NGO that funds enterprise-based solutions to global poverty. In an at-

tempt to get the most out of Brown while I’m here, I went to a speech he gave on campus. He told a story adapted from Rudyard Kipling, which I’ll paraphrase here:

Two blind men were attempting to deter-mine what an elephant was. The first blind man reached out his hands, touched the el-ephant’s tusk and said, “Elephants are smooth and hard and sharp.” The second blind man, a few feet away, reached out his hands, touched

the elephant’s tail and said, “Elephants are long and skinny and hairy.”

Most people, the lecturer said, are walk-ing around seeing the world in the same way these two blind men saw the elephant. To an economist, everything from domestic abuse to illiteracy is an economic problem. To a sociologist, both are social problems. To an historian, they both stem from historical events. But domestic abuse and illiteracy, he said, like poverty, corruption and disease, are the elephant in the story. Each can be looked at from more than one viewpoint, and every perspective must be considered to get a complete picture of the elephant. Most problems are caused by a confluence of fac-tors; domestic abuse happens because of eco-nomic forces, yes, but it also has sociological, historical, possibly even architectural causes (if you can’t imagine architecture contribut-ing to domestic abuse, go take HIAA 85.) The inverse of this realization is that these problems have economic, social, historical, political and architectural solutions — in other words, complicated solutions. Mr. Fairbanks’ point was that liberal arts graduates — you, me and your roommate — are uniquely well-equipped to solve these problems. In other words, taking architecture, Chinese, econom-ics and religious studies last semester wasn’t a total mistake. It was preparation for a world in which nothing is simple or one-sided, in which solutions must be as complex as the problems they seek to solve, in which discus-sion must be (to borrow an IR buzzword) interdisciplinary and open-minded.

So this semester, to complete my well-rounded education, I’m taking geology. How can geology solve the AIDS epidemic in Africa and environmental degradation in China? Get back to me on that one in May.

Chloe Lutts ’08 wonders which part of the elephant the investment bankers are feeling.

By CHLoE LuTTSguest ColuMnist

Pain, anger and incompetence taint the heavens

Why are we here?

Taking architecture, Chinese,

economics and religious studies last

semester wasn’t a total mistake. It

was preparation for a world in which

nothing is simple or one-sided, in

which solutions must be as complex as

the problems they seek to solve.

The government has recognized the

error of its ways — we’re told that by

2025 we should have an upgraded flight

control system. Perhaps Honda could

show them how to implement it.

opinionsWEdNESdAy, JANuAry 30, 2008 THE BroWN dAILy HErALd PAgE 11

By TyLEr roSENBAuMoPinions ColuMnist

sporTs weDnesDayPAgE 12 THE BroWN dAILy HErALd WEdNESdAy, JANuAry 30, 2008

Squash improving after strong weekendBY LARA SOUTHERNContributing Writer

At 10:30 p.m. on Saturday, the Brown men’s and women’s squash teams returned to campus victorious, having won four out of five matches at their first away venue of the second half of the season. Although the men lost 6-3 in a tight match against longtime rival Bowdoin, they swept the board 9-0 against Colby, while the women’s team emerged triumphant from all three of its grueling matches against Bowdoin, St. Lawrence and Bates. The matches, which improved the women’s record to 6-4 and the men’s to 2-6, all took place at Bowdoin.

The early 6 a.m. start to the day and the subsequent four-hour bus journey up to Maine did nothing to sap the women’s team’s energy, as they romped to three successive vic-tories in a matter of hours, beating Bowdoin 8-1, St. Lawrence 9-0 and Bates 7-2.

Co-captain Minoo Fadaifard ’08 led by example, coming from behind in her match against Bowdoin to win 2-9, 10-9, 9-6, 9-4, and going on to beat her next two opponents in three straight games each.

“It’s always difficult to come back from behind in squash, particularly when tired, but I knew that if I fought my way through it, I could definitely win,” Fadaifard said. “Bowdoin’s top three players are very good, but as a team, we are stronger and have more experience,”

Second seed Laura Pyne ’10, also had an impressive victory at Bow-doin, fighting her way back from two games down to win the last three 9-6, 9-7, 9-1. Her teammate Charlotte Steel ’09 also came from behind in a five-game match, earning a hard-fought

5-9, 9-6, 4-9, 9-4, 10-8 win over her Bowdoin opponent.

These victories make it six con-secutive wins for the women’s team, marking a complete turnaround in their season, which started off slowly with four losses in the fall.

“It’s always mentally pretty tough coming into the season against the five top teams, and emerging 0-for-four is pretty off-putting,” Fadaifard said, “but we all came into interses-sion hyped about the rest of the season and it’s exciting to win our three biggest matches so far, in one week, against Cornell (on Jan. 21), Bates and Bowdoin, all exceptional teams.”

Coming off its first win of the sea-

son last Tuesday against Amherst, the men’s team battled hard in a thrilling match against Bowdoin. Three excep-tional wins from captain Ed Cerullo ’08, No. 2 Adam Greenberg ’10, and No. 5 Evan Besser ’11 made for a captivating spectacle that resulted in a close loss for Brown, 6-3.

“They are a tough team to crack,” said Head Coach Stuart leGassick, “They had great depth — but we are looking forward to meeting them again in the Nationals in mid-February.”

Despite the loss, the men rallied to overcome Colby 9-0, with only one match continuing beyond the

W. skiers coast to success at N.H. carnivalBY MEGAN MCCAHILLassistant sPorts editor

The women’s ski team had the op-portunity to compete at Waterville Valley, N.H. — the site of nearly a dozen World Cup competitions over the years — as part of the Plymouth State Carnival. The Bears finished fourth as a team in both the slalom on Saturday and the giant slalom on Sunday.

Krista Consiglio ’11 continued the impressive start to her colle-giate career, winning both races. Consiglio has finished in the top two in five out of the six races she’s skied in so far, winning three of them.

“The conditions were really nice all weekend,” Consiglio said. “Saturday it was pretty sunny and nice and Sunday it snowed, but the coaches did a great job maintain-ing the course, so it really didn’t affect us.”

In the slalom competition on Saturday, Brown finished fourth behind Colby-Sawyer, UMass and Plymouth State. Consiglio domi-nated the field, winning the race by nearly a second with a time of 1:34.09. Two other Bears finished in the top 20, with Sophie Elgort ’08 taking 14th at 1:39.36 and Elisa Handbury ’10 coming in right be-hind her in 16th place with a time of 1:39.48. Mallory Taub ’08 and co-captain Anna Bengston ’09 both finished in the top 40 of the event,

which had over 70 skiers. Taub’s time of 1:50.75 was good for 36th place, and Bengston took 40th at 1:56.63.

“On Saturday some (of) our girls had a little trouble finishing cleanly,” Consiglio said, pointing out that a couple girls fell during their runs. “We’ve had more train-ing this winter on the giant slalom, so we’re not quite as comfortable on the slalom course.”

Despite competing in the giant slalom on Sunday, the second day of the carnival was not all that differ-ent from the first day for the Bears. Consiglio once again torched the rest of the field to win the race and complete her first sweep at a col-lege carnival. Her time of 2:20.12 was an astounding two seconds faster than the second-place fin-isher, from host Plymouth State.

As a team, Brown finished fourth on the day, coming in behind BC, Colby-Sawyer and Plymouth State. Besides Consiglio, Brown managed only one other top-20 finisher, as Bengston took 14th place with her time of 2:24.33. El-gort finished just outside of the top 20, coming in 24th at 2:25.50. The Bears had three other skiers place in the top 40, with Handbury’s 2:29.52 time good for 34th and co-captain Meaghan Casey ’08 finish-ing just in front of classmate Taub. Casey came in 38th followed by

Ashley Hess / Herald

Ed Cerullo ‘08 led the men’s squash team to a 1-1 record this weekend at Bowdoin, posting victories in both his matches at No. 1.

Ashley Hess / Herald

damon Huffman ‘08 was named Ivy League Player of the Week for the second time this season, after scoring a team-high 23 points against yale.

Show some class, PhillyPhiladelphia is a two-headed monster. On the one hand, it is famous for its brotherly love and rich history, which dates back to the arrival of William Penn, the writing of the Declaration

of Independence and such historic structures as Independence

Hall and the Liberty Bell. On the other hand is Philadelphia’s evil twin brother, the one famous for its cheesesteaks, Tastycakes and, in the sports world, its passionate and almost always obnoxious fans. Philly fans famously booed and hurled snowballs at Santa during a 1968 Eagles game. When Michael Irvin, a member of the rival Dallas Cowboys, went down with a career-ending neck injury due to the old Veterans Stadium’s unforgiving turf, the fans erupted in cheers. We even threw D-sized batteries at J.D. Drew in right field during a Phillies game.

But all of these outrageous acts were, in their defense, directed at members of the opposite team or at least a neutral party. This is exactly why the most disgraceful behavior of all is Philadelphia’s continual, un-relenting, and blatantly unjust treat-ment of Eagles’ quarterback Donovan McNabb.

McNabb was recruited to play quarterback at Syracuse University, where he set Big East records for

s P o r t s i n b r i e f

For their roles in the men’s basketball team’s 77-68 win over yale on Saturday, tri-captain damon Huffman ’08 and guard Adrian Wil-liams ’11 were named Ivy League Player of the Week and Ivy league rookie of the Week, respectively.

The award was Huffman’s second such award, the first coming on Jan. 7, after a week when he scored 20 or more points against Notre dame, Army and American university, including a game-winning buzzer-beater against the Cadets.

This week Huffman scored over 20 again, dropping 23 on a Bull-dog team that had defeated 9-7 Bruno (1-1 Ivy League) just the week before. Huffman was efficient, shooting 7-11 from the field, including 4-6 from long distance and 5-5 from the free-throw line.

More importantly, Huffman was clutch, scoring all 15 of his second-half points in the last 10:01 after yale had come back to tie the score at 46. At times down the stretch, Huffman seemed to take over the game in the absence of fellow tri-captains Mark Macdonald ’08 and Mark MacAndrew ’08. Macdonald was on the bench with an injury early on, while MacAndrew sat out most of the second half after some poor passes and defensive lapses.

Much of Huffman’s support came from forward Chris Skrelja ’09 and Williams. In the first half, Williams provided Bruno with a spark, pressuring yale’s ball handlers and hustling all over the court. He too was a dead-eye from the free-throw line, shooting 7-7 from the stripe for the game and 6-6 down the stretch.

Huffman, Williams rack up Ivy League honors

The men and women’s swimming teams both fell to Harvard last weekend. The men lost 202-98, picking up just three first-place finishes in 16 total events. The brightest spot for Bruno was daniel ricketts ’09, who picked up two of those three victories in the 100- and 200-meter backstroke, with times of 51.93 and 1:53.38, respectively.

Brown’s other victory came from Jonathan Speed ’11, whose score of 325.88 was good for first in the three-meter dive. The Bears got second-place finishes from ryunosuke Kikuchi ’11 in the 200-meter butterfly, Kevin Hug ’08 in the 100-meter butterfly, CJ Kambe ’10 in the one-meter dive and the 200-meter freestyle relay team of Hug, ricketts, Brian Kelly ’08 and Tucker Wetmore ’10.

The women’s team fared slightly better, but still came up very short against the Crimson, 196-98. The women picked up four victories, but two came after the meet was already decided due to the fact that Harvard swept seven of the 16 events.

The team’s freshmen had the most success as Natascha Mangan ’11 won the 200-meter butterfly and Candice Sisouvanvieng-Kim ’11 won the 50-meter freestyle. The Bears also got a solid second-place showing from the young 200-meter medley relay team of Stephanie Pollard ’11, Sisouvanvieng-Kim, Susannah Ford ’10 and Sage Erskine ’11.

Both squads hope to turn their fortunes around in their next meet on Feb. 2 at Columbia.

—Sports Staff Reports

Swimming falls to Harvard

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Patrick DavisSports Columnist

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Wednesday, January 30, 2008