THE BROWN DAILY HERALD M ONDAY, F EBR UAR Y 12, 2007
Volume CXLII, No. 14
Since 1866, Daily Since 1891
Students support early admission, affirmative action, Herald poll finds BY STU WOO FEATURES EDITOR
Students overwhelmingly support the College’s early admission program and largely favor considering racial diversity in the admission process, a recent Herald poll found. Though Harvard and Princeton universities made headlines last fall when they announced plans to drop their early admission programs, most Brown students believe the University should continue to offer the program. Seventythree percent of Brown undergraduates polled said they support having an early admission program, while just 15 percent said they oppose having one. Most respondents — 53 percent — said they support consid-
Har vard names first female president BY MICHAEL SKOCPOL SENIOR STAFF WRITER
ering race and ethnicity in the college admission process to promote campus diversity, while 30 percent said admission should be based solely on merit. But when students were asked if preference should be given to children of alums, 57 percent opposed doing so, while 23 percent supported it.
Harvard University named Drew Gilpin Faust its 28th president Sunday. Faust, a Civil War historian and current dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, is the first woman to hold the post.
CAMPUS WATCH
THE HERALD POLL
students who had previously preferred to study elsewhere. “I wouldn’t study in the SciLi if it weren’t for the Friedman Study Center,” said Neerav Parekh ’09. “It’s nicer than any other study space at Brown.” Juli Thorstenn ’09 agreed. “I used to never come to the SciLi,” she said. “Now I come every day.” Several students said the use of natural lighting was their favorite feature. “I come
The announcement followed Faust’s unanimous confirmation by Harvard’s alumni Board of Overseers at a special meeting Sunday. Word of the impending appointment had been circulating for days, and the university’s student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, broke news of the appointment late Thursday night. Faust is an accomplished historian who has served as the dean of the Radcliffe Institute since 2001. The Radcliffe Institute is a research institute with a focus on gender and women’s studies that is the smallest of Harvard’s 12 schools. In a statement yesterday, Faust said she is honored by the appointment and stressed the importance of collaboration and breaking down barriers. James Houghton, the member of the Harvard Corporation who chaired the search committee, called Faust “an inspiring and accomplished institutional leader, a superb scholar, an outstanding teacher and a wonderful human being” in an e-mail sent to members of the Harvard community Sunday afternoon. Early in the search process, President Ruth Simmons’ name was linked to the position. She never emerged as a serious candidate as the search progressed, though her name was reported to have been on a list of 30 candidates submitted by Harvard’s search committee to the Board
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The poll, conducted from Jan. 29 to Feb. 2, has a margin of error of 4.7 percent, except for a question about on-campus needs, which has a margin of error of 5 percent. When asked what they thought were the University’s most pressing on-campus needs for improvecontinued on page 6
Chafee ’75 to call for progress in Israel tonight BY MICHAEL BECHEK SENIOR STAFF WRITER
Christopher Bennett / Herald Student reaction to the functionality of the Friedman Study Center is mixed .
In his first major speech since losing his re-election bid last November, former Sen. Lincoln Chafee ’75 will speak tonight about the prospect of peace in Israel, and he says he’ll try to resist the temptation to talk too much about a certain other country in the region starting with the same letter. “It doesn’t do any good to look back,” Chafee — the only Republican senator to have voted against the Iraq war — told The Herald. “Right now we have to look forward. And I think a big part of the missing debate on Iraq is this important aspect to our success in Iraq, that any progress in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process will help us in Iraq.” Tonight, in the 76th annual Ste-
Students praise Friedman Study Center despite lack of ‘warmth’ BY JOY CHUA CONTRIBUTING WRITER
The Friedman Study Center opened to much fanfare two weeks ago and has garnered rave reviews from students and administrators. But how useful is it as a place to, well, study? Some students say they like its long hours, bright lighting and cafe, but others criticize an ambiance that they say simply doesn’t feel like a library. The center has attracted
Christopher Bennett / Herald
Lincoln Chafee ‘75
phen A. Ogden Jr. ’60 Memorial Lecture on International Affairs, Chafee said he will “focus on the missed opportunities to fulfill the president’s vision of a viable contiguous Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace with Israel.” continued on page 4
A look at the University’s animal testing BY STU WOO FEATURES EDITOR
In an episode of the “The OC” that aired late last year, Brown first-year Summer Roberts gets suspended after she is caught breaking into science labs to free rabbits in an attempt to save them from inhumane experiments. Though writers of the Fox drama may have been exaggerating Brown students’ liberal activism, they were right about one thing — the University does keep animals, from fruit flies to sheep, for research. University officials say they do their best to ensure the research animals’ safety, but the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals claims that Brown researchers have been conducting cruel and ineffective studies. The Brown Animal Care Facility currently has three operational sites, wrote Mark Nick-
INSIDE:
3 ARTS & CULTURE
el, director of University communications, in an e-mail to The Herald. The main site is a five-story, 59,000-squarefoot center in the Bio-Medical Center, and sat-
FEATURE ellite sites are located in Hunter Laboratory and the Laboratories for Molecular Medicine at 70 Ship Street. A fourth site, in the Sidney Frank Hall for Life Sciences, is not yet operational. The sites house animals as small as frogs, turtles, rats and mice and as large as sheep and pigs, according to Nickel. There are usually about several dozen species at the facility, he added, with rodents accounting for more than 90 percent of the animals. A Bio-Med facilities pamphlet on the Alpert
“HOUSE OF GOLD” As part of the Brown Literary Arts New Plays Festival, Greg Moss’ play takes an interesting look at a sexualized suburban setting
www.browndailyherald.com
5 CAMPUS NEWS
Medical School Web site said the animal facility has an aquatic room — mostly for frogs, Nickel wrote — a quarantine space for rodents from noncommercial sources, a rodent housing suite and a biohazard rodent housing and procedural suite with “features surpassing (Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention) Biosafety Level 2 criteria.” There are also three well-equipped animal surgical suites. The facility is in compliance with government regulations on animal welfare and, since 1971, has been accredited every three years by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care.
BROWN-BLOODS More than 300 members of the Brown community turned out last week and donated 284 pints of blood
11 OPINIONS
195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island
Most of the research conducted on the animals occurs in Brown laboratories outside the facility, Nickel wrote. But to ensure the animals’ safety, all experiments must follow research protocol set by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, chaired by Professor of Medical Science Donald Jackson. Though faculty researchers are personally responsible for animals in their own experiments, researchers cannot modify the protocol without the committee’s approval. Veterinarians from both the committee and the animal facility can suspend experiments if protocol is
OBAMA, FAUST ALL HYPE? Nick Swisher ’08 asks whether Sen. Barack Obama and Harvard President Drew Faust can capitalize on their recent turns in the public eye
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12 SPORTS
M. TENNIS WINS TWO The men’s tennis team swept two matches at home on Saturday to increase its winning streak to six since the spring season started
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