THE BROWN DAILY HERALD M ONDAY,
Volume CXLII, No. 32
RCH
1 2, 2007 12, 20 07
Since 1866, Daily Since 1891
DPS, students disagree on meaning of stop data BY DEBBIE LEHMANN SENIOR STAFF WRITER
Field stop data collected by the Department of Public Safety shows that officers conduct stops “in a professional manner” and do not use racial profiling, said Chief of Police Mark Porter. But one University official said the small data sample was not conclusive, and student activists say the data does not match up with their experiences. DPS stopped 202 people in 2006, 71 percent of them white, according to the report. Blacks made up 16 percent of people stopped, while Hispanics made up 2 percent and Asians made up only 1 percent. 10 percent of those stopped were recorded as being of unknown race. The report also found that 84 percent of people stopped were male. 70 percent of those stopped were unaffiliated with the University. 28 percent were students and 2 percent were staff members, according to the DPS report. Of those stopped, 31 percent were “temporarily detained,” 25 percent were interviewed in the field
Min Wu / Herald Neeta Pal ‘09 performed in the Odissi style of Indian classical dance in an act called “Moksha” at the SASA Cultural Show on Saturday evening.
SASA show spices up tradition
Social justice focus of student, alum conference
BY LINDSEY MEYERS ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR
BY SARA MOLINARO METRO EDITOR
Traditional and modern elements of music, dance and comedy were effectively combined Saturday night when the South Asian Students’ Association presented its annual cultural show to an appreciative audience that filled Salomon 101 to capacity. The title of this year’s show, “Mazaa,” which is the Hindi word for pleasure, was an apt billing for the 13-act show, which struck a dy-
Criminal defense, environmental law, civil liberties and international law were among the many areas of expertise shared by alums who returned to campus this weekend for a two-day conference called “Advancing Social Justice Through the Law.” Over 100 people attended
ARTS & CULTURE namic balance between the old and new. Whether from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka or the Maldives, a number of South Asian cultures influenced the music, song, dance and comedy fetchingly presented by the show. There were kaleidoscopically colored garments in the Bollywoodinspired “Fashion Show,” choreographed by Afshan Ajmiri ’08, and rhythmically powerful music in the piece “East Meets West,” ably performed by percussionist Akshay Rathod ’10 and guitarist James Hinton ’10. The performance “Ek Ladki Ko Dekha,” a song from the classic Bollywood movie “1942: A Love Story,” provided a special treat as it ended with a serenade to a member of the audience. In addition to displaying South Asian culture, the show created a bridge to contemporary American music and comedy. A performance of South Asian dance and hip-hop, “Infusion” featured choreography by Brown Badmaash and included an Indian remix of Usher’s 2004 pop classic “Yeah.” Particularly effective were the comedy sketches, displayed on a screen between several of the acts. Humorously parodying both American and South Asian culture, these clips animated the crowd with barreling laughter. The emcees — Shyam Sundaram ’08, Binayak Mishra ’08 and Kumar Vasudevan ’08 — deftly provided hilarious comedy to the show.
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Brown daredevils scale University buildings BY OLIVER BOWERS SENIOR STAFF WRITER
They haven’t yet gained the notoriety of Alain “Spiderman” Robert, the urban climber who has scaled skyscrapers around the globe, but several student-daredevils are boldly ascending the walls of University buildings. Two weeks ago, two male undergraduate students, who spoke on condition of anonymity, scaled the face of the Graduate Center Bar and the wall underneath the Grad Center ramp. They call the activity “buildering,” a play on the
word “bouldering,” — a style of climbing without ropes in which rock climbers make short climbs that test strength and technique.
FEATURE The two students said they have also “chimney-climbed” into several sixth-story windows of Grad Center without ropes. “Chimney-climbing” involves scaling a rock-face, or building in this case, by bracing oneself between two closely spaced vertical surfaces. “We’ve pretty much climbed
everything on the Main Green,” said one of the students. He named Sayles Hall and Wilson Hall specifically and added that they have also climbed Barus Hall next to MacMillan Hall but were “kicked off” by officers from the Department of Public Safety. “It’s constantly an issue of whether Brown police will come,” the student said. The danger of getting caught continued on page 6 by the police, the students said, is one of the reasons they usually don’t use a rope. If a DPS offi-
Two male undergraduate students have taken to “buildering,” a style of climbing without ropes.
Divestment from Sudan, 1 year later Divest BY MATTHEW VARLEY CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Kori Schulman / Herald File Photo Feb. 25 marked the first anniversary of the Corporation’s vote for divestment from companies linked to the Sudanese government. Nearly 50 students demonstrated on the steps of Faunce last February to call for divestment from Sudan.
A NEW “ANARCHIST” Michael Dean ’09 has a new take on Dario Fo’s satire of bureaucracy, “The Accidental Death of an Anarchist”
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the conference, held in SmithBuonanno Hall. The conference was designed to “bring together like-minded people and to try to make connections between what people are doing on campus and outside of campus,” said Leo Beletsky MPH’04, one of the conference’s organizers and a law
and 24 percent received a warning. 15 percent of the stops were recorded as assisting the Providence Police Department with arrests, according to the analysis of the data. The Office of Institutional Diversity analyzed the field stop data, taking into consideration the proportion of each racial group in the community. Black male students, blacks unaffiliated with the University and whites unaffiliated with the University were all stopped disproportionately more than their base-rate percentages would indicate. Asians, Hispanics and white females were stopped disproportionately less than would be expected given their presence in the University population. Black male students made up 7 percent of stops and make up 5 percent of the student population, the analysis found. Blacks unaffiliated with the University made up 17 percent of stops and make up 14.2 percent of the Providence population. White male students made up
5 CAMPUS NEWS
February marked the first anniversary of the Corporation’s vote to divest from companies linked to the Sudanese government. Brown was one of the first universities in the nation to divest from Sudan in light of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region, where government-supported militia groups are perpetrating genocide against certain ethnic groups. Today, over 35 U.S. colleges and universities have divested, according to Scott Warren ’09 of the Darfur Action Network. “A lot of colleges became interested in divestment” following Brown’s example, Warren said, “and since
THREE ON TASK FORCE Three undergraduate students were named by UCS to the Task Force on Undergraduate Education
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195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island
then a lot of those colleges have taken action.” “Although Brown might not have had a ton of money invested in these companies, the momentum it has provided for other campaigns is at this point unquantifiable,” he said. Fourteen companies have since been added to the University’s investment blacklist, according to Professor of Economics Louis Putterman, who served on the Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investing Policies for several years and chaired the committee at the time of the Corporation vote. Putterman said the University’s “do not invest” list comprises mostly energy companies based overseas, as it is currently illegal BIRDS, BEES AND BEARS Katy Crane ’07 investigates the effect that global warming is having on such diverse animals as birds, bees and bears in North America
for U.S. citizens to do business in Sudan. The ACCRI has worked to identify “those companies that were most actively engaged in … generating profits that were taxed by the Sudanese government without direct benefit to the ordinary population in the country,” he said. In its review process of corporations, the ACCRI — which comprises Brown faculty, students and alumni representatives — is aided by the independent research firms Institutional Shareholder Services and the Investor Responsibility Research Center as well as other universities involved in divestment, Putterman said.
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continued on page 6 M. LAX BURNS FRIARS The No. 18 men’s lacrosse team had little trouble defeating Providence College 7-3 Saturday in securing its second straight win
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