F R I D A Y FEBRUARY 18, 2005
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD Volume CXL, No. 18 GRAVITY GAMES Abstract artist Frederick Sommer’s experimental work on display at RISD Museum A R T S & C U LT U R E 3
An independent newspaper serving the Brown community since 1891 STEMMING THE DEBATE Matt Lawrence ’06: President Bush struck the perfect compromise in stem cell research decision OPINIONS 7
GYMNAST HEELS Jessica Pouchet ’06 overcomes Achilles tendon injury, goes on to earn ECAC honors SPORTS
8
TODAY
TOMORROW
snow 33 / 10
sunny 29 / 14
Marcel-Keyes must fund U. education herself BY JANE PORTER SENIOR STAFF WRITER
Before starting as a first-year at Brown in the fall, Maya Marcel-Keyes needs to take care of a few things. She needs to find a home, because her parents kicked her out for being a lesbian. She needs to find a way to cover the cost of an Ivy League education, a cost suddenly thrust on the shoulders of a 19-year-old. And, she said at a rally Monday, the world around her needs to find a way to address the issue of thousands of faceless queer teens living — and, as her close friend did last week, dying — on the streets. The gay-rights rally in Annapolis, Md., was her first public appearance. “The main issue that I have been concerned about is the large population of homeless LGBT kids,” Marcel-Keyes told The Herald. But she has a few of her own personal issues to take care of, she said, including “trying to find housing and things like that.” Things that include covering the cost of Brown tuition, which her parents refuse to help pay. Marcel-Keyes will visit the University this week to learn about the financial options available to students in her predicament, she said. Marcel-Keyes already has some financial support on her side. Last week, the Point Foundation, a national organization for students marginalized because of their sexual orientation and gender identity, announced that Marcel-Keyes will receive a scholarship to help cover the cost of tuition. The public pays attention to her situation because of who her father is, Marcel-Keyes said, but she added that there are countless teenagers who have been abandoned by their parents and whose voices are never heard. “It is really unfair that when something happens in my life, I get so much support, but for so many kids, they don’t get any attention,” Marcel-Keyes said. Republican Alan Keyes, who lost the 2004 Illinois Senate election to Democrat Barack Obama and ran for the Republican presidential nomination twice, raised his daughter in a conservative household, sending her to Oakcrest School for Girls in McLean, Va., a small Catholic school that “was about as conservative as my parents,” she said.
Alan Keyes’ political views are centered on a pro-life, pro-family platform that strongly opposes gay marriage and emphasizes the need to treat what he calls “America’s moral crisis.” “I grew up hearing how homosexuality was evil,” Marcel-Keyes said. “When you are little, your parents really define your view of the world.” In her Monday speech, sponsored by Equality Maryland, a gay-rights organization, Marcel-Keyes said she has watched the issue of neglected queer teens go unnoticed for too long. “I won’t be silent any longer,” she told her audience. “God works in really screwed-up ways sometimes,” she began her speech. “There are times in life when he doesn’t just nudge you gently in the direction he wants you to go, he sort of takes a two-by-four and whacks you over the head a few times. Last month felt a lot like that for me.” Last month, Marcel-Keyes was told she should pack her bags and leave her father’s apartment. Last week brought the death of a close friend who was living on the streets for two years after being turned away by his parents for being gay. But to a certain degree, Marcel-Keyes understands her parents’ decision: “Funding my education would be funding me towards
something they are against.” Marcel-Keyes is looking for financial support in other places. She hopes her trip to Brown this week will help her figure out what she is going to do about paying her way through college. Each year, the University hears from a certain number of students who don’t have the financial support of their parents, said Michael Bartini, director of financial aid. “We look at them on a case-by-case basis,” he said, unable to comment specifically on Marcel-Keyes’ situation. Point Foundation Executive Director Vance Lancaster said he hopes Marcel-Keyes’ situation will bring more attention to the problem of marginalized gay and lesbian youth — “a real issue out there that is being glossed over.” Many Point Scholars have found themselves in predicaments similar to MarcelKeyes’, Lancaster said. “A lot of the people we support were supported or loved by their families one day and disowned the next,” he added. Marcel-Keyes will be Brown’s second Point Scholar. Daniel Bassichis ’06.5 is the first of Brown’s Point Scholars. “Her experience is very dif-
First there was Friendster. Then there was Thefacebook. Now, there is DormInform. Jason Townes French ’08 launched the latest addition to the trend of social networking sites Tuesday. His site, DormInform.com, is a free online community intended to facilitate dorm interaction and social events. The site allows users to announce unofficial hall events to other users in their dorms, or to the entire school community. Users are able to create a virtual dorm by uploading photographs of their rooms, and to participate in forums unique to their dorms. DormInform also keeps a live ranking of dorms across campuses based on participation. French said he came up with the idea at the end of the Fall semester, and continued working on it throughout winter break and the beginning of this semester. “It was the end of last semester after finals period. There was still a trickle of peo-
see DORM, page 4
see WRANGHAM, page 4
Audrey Jaynes / Herald
Musician Lindsey Grey performed at Providence’s AS220 Local Hip Hop and Funk concert on Wednesday night. See Arts & Culture, page 3.
Editorial: 401.351.3372 Business: 401.351.3269
BY STU WOO SENIOR STAFF WRITER
that class. We had to design an eBay site for charities together. The class is still meeting and working on it even though we’re not doing it for credit anymore. We basically learned all we needed to know to create DormInform from that class,” he said. “I have a background with software programming, but this is my first stab at a fullblown web application. I learned most of the database languages … from CS 9,” French added. French dismissed the inevitable comparisons to Thefacebook.com by emphasizing the different functions of DormInform. “I hope people don’t see this as a Facebook knock-off. It’s supposed to be more oriented for the dorm, connecting people within the same living area, while Thefacebook connects you with people across campus and in other schools. Thefacebook does its job well, but we’re not in direct competition with them or anything,” he said.
see KEYES, page 4
INSIDE: ART AT AS220
ple around in Keeney, but I didn’t know who they were, and I started thinking if there was a way to better connect with people who were living around me, just to know who was going to be around, and so on,” he said. The idea soon extended to include unofficial social events. “Eventually I started thinking it would be a good idea to post announcements for parties and other events on the site. For example, if you were having a movie screening in your room and you wanted people to know about it, you could just post it online,” French said. After refining his idea for two weeks, French said he spent “four hours a day, for five days a week, for three weeks” in the CIT writing the programming code for the site. To assist him, he enlisted the help of Young Hwan Kim ’08, who helped with the programming, and Paul Monnes ’08, who designed the graphics and layout. Kim credited CS 9: “Building a Web Application” as another source of inspiration for DormInform. “Jason and I met in
Apes, humans share killing impulse While apes and humans are normally peaceful in their home environments, they both possess a tendency to kill when abroad, said Harvard University Professor of Biological Anthropology Richard Wrangham. Wrangham, invited to speak by Brown’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, explained his theories before a near-capacity audience of 150 in Salomon 001 Thursday afternoon. Wrangham said there were two views of human nature, developed by Enlightenment writers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes. In the Rousseauian view, humans are a naturally peaceful species. Killing is unnatural, evil and done for rewards. However, in the Hobbesian view, all humans are naturally aggressive and will kill whenever the opportunity presents itself. Wrangham believes that humans are defined by a combination of the two views. “Humans are Rousseau at home and Hobbes abroad,” he said. Wrangham, who is also the director of Kibale Research Project in Uganda, came to his conclusions after analyzing results from chimpanzee observation projects from the past four decades. As one of the closest species to humans, he said, chimps were ideal for a comparative study. Within their own communities, chimps and humans showed relatively peaceful tendencies, Wrangham said. Though male chimps often beat females, it almost never resulted in death. Human communities fought at a significantly lower rate than chimps, he said. However, the killing rate between different communities, both of apes and humans, is much higher, Wrangham said. The main reason chimps kill is rival removal, he said. Chimp communities seek to eliminate rival communities to expand their territory, which in turn leads to a faster reproductive rate. Wrangham said there is evidence that there were high killing rates between human societies as well. “War has been a regular feature of hunter-gatherers,” he said. “There have been very high killing rates among all known simple hunter-gather societies.” Wrangham also spoke about how chimps and humans tend to kill only when it is safe. For example, chimps are very selective in their killings. Chimps usually try to pick off solitary apes from rival communities. Normally, a killing occurs when a large group of male chimps, ranging from four to 15, encounters a single male chimp from another community. Humans also try to fight only when it is safe, Wrangham said. Hunter-gather societies usually attack only when they have the element of surprise. In state wars, most killings occur only when one side has an advantage. It is rare for two armies to line up against each other and charge, such as in “Braveheart,” he said. Also, in most battles, soldiers are usu-
DormInform.com aims to create sense of community BY SHAWN BAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
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