The Brown Daily Herald T uesday, M arch 4, 2008
Volume CXLIII, No. 28
Since 1866, Daily Since 1891
City preps for primary crowds
Recycling race baffling Bruno again By Alessandra Suuberg Contributing Writer
Brown students have five weeks left to step up their recycling rates if they want to break a record of “middle-of-the-pack” finishes in the eighth annual RecycleMania. Until April 5, colleges across the country will compete to collect the most recyclables and produce the least amount of trash, with week-by-week results posted on RecycleMania’s Web site. According to the most recent tally, Brown was ranked 69th out of 85 schools participating in RecycleMania’s Whole Campus Grand Champion competition as of week four, which ended Feb. 23. That competition is one of several that make up RecycleMania, which began on Jan. 27. Coordinators at individual colleges report numbers of recycled materials every week, according to the contest’s Web site. In its fourth year of participation, Brown is one of 400 schools from 46 states plus the District of Columbia taking part in the contest, according to Andres Perez-Charneco, an assistant at RecycleMania. Perez-Charneco said the competition is seeing record-breaking participation rates, helped in part by the use of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. Perez-Charneco also said RecycleMania could expand further to take on an international scope in the near future. He said the contest was opened this year to schools in Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean, though none actually participated this year. continued on page 4
By Colin Chazen Contributing Writer
Courtesy of Joshua Asen and ilovehiphopinmorocco.com
Jennifer Needleman’s ’02 and Josh Asen’s ‘02 friendship on College Hill led them to a Moroccan hip-hop festival.
Old friends see rap rise in foreign land By Gaurie Tilak Staff Writer
On her first day at Brown in the fall of 1998, Jennifer Needleman ’02 befriended Josh Asen ’02. At the time, neither could have known that almost a decade later the duo would release their first full-length film as business partners. Last year, Rizz Productions Inc., a company the two started in 2004, released the documentary, “I Love Hip Hop in Morocco,” which follows the development of the first Moroccan music festival in the country’s history dedicated entirely to hip-hop. The film “follows the whole story from the earliest conversation with the main characters,” Asen said, and has been featured on CNN as well as in film
festivals across the globe. The film begins with Asen issuing a proposal for the music festival to the U.S. Embassy in Rabat, Morocco. After securing funding from the government and the Coca-Cola Company, Asen and a number of Moroccan hip-hop artists spend months organizing and preparing
FEATURE for Morocco’s first ever hip-hop festival, which shares its title with the film. The documentary focuses heavily on the stories of the artists, who perform and speak in Moroccan Arabic, French and English. But Asen said the film — and filmmaking in general — was not something the pair considered until after they left College Hill.
After graduating from Brown, Needleman and Asen parted ways temporarily. Asen, who majored in French and music studies, took a job with a hip-hop music label. His interests in hip-hop and the Middle East soon converged on a chance trip to the region. “I initially went to Morocco just to visit an ex-girlfriend of mine who was studying abroad there,” Asen said, adding that he “just stumbled on hip-hop” there. He then grew interested in studying hip-hop as an emerging musical style in Morocco. On the advice of his then-girlfriend, Asen applied for and won a Fulbright scholarship in 2004 to do research on hip-hop in Morocco. continued on page 4
Space Club’s boldest to attempt NASA ‘Vomit Comet’ By Devin Gould Staff Writer
Courtesy of nasa.gov
In the “Vomit Comet,” students will perform experiments in simulated zero gravity, as the plane makes a series of steep climbs and dives.
3
METRO
RaBid reporters John Kerry speaks to “belligerent” journalists at the Providence Newspaper Guild’s Follies ’07
www.browndailyherald.com
5
CAMPUS NEWS
bombs away! URI gets explosive research center and receives bomb threat, in unrelated incidents
11
OPINIONS
No matter what club students join at Brown, they can pretty much guarantee they won’t end up floating inside a Vomit Comet, a plane that rapidly climbs and dives to simulate zero gravity. That is, of course, unless they join the Brown Space Club. The Space Club has been accepted to NASA’s Microgravity University, as it has nine of the past 10 years. Five members of the group will travel to Johnson Space Center in Houston for 10 days. There they will conduct experiments inside an airplane that uses repeated ascents and descents to create the experience of weightlessness because of microgravity, a state in which the effects of gravity are almost nil. The plane is dubbed the “Vomit Comet” by participants and the continued on page 4
Get with the times Sarah Rosenthal ’11 calls the Republican party into the present and away from Ronald Reagan
195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island
rain, 49 / 28
Facing a competitive presidential primary, Rhode Islanders are expected to vote in record numbers today. The record turnout could create problems as cities and towns across the state have closed more than 80 polling centers since the 2004 primary, when only 6.7 percent of registered voters cast ballots, according to a Feb. 27 article in the Providence Journal. But a Providence election official says he does not expect there to be any problems. “We’re ready,” said Laurence Flynn, executive secretary of the Providence Board of Canvassers. “At the last moment, we made the necessary steps to make it easier for the voter to not get jammed up in lines.” The original plans for the primary were laid out months in advance, Flynn said, and had to be revised at the last minute when it became clear that voter turnout would be higher than usual. At each polling center in Providence, there will now be a monitor to help organize lines and direct voters to the correct polling sites, something the city has never done before, Flynn said. Additional set-up crews will also be used to ensure polls open on time, he said. Still, the closed sites may create difficulties for voters. “Now that people are going to turn out in record-high numbers, polling place confusion this Tuesday will be inevitable,” Ariel Werner ’09, a coordinator for Students for Barack Obama, wrote in an e-mail. On Providence’s East Side, three districts, including the one that represents Brown, have been merged together into a single site, Flynn said. The Salomon Center will be the polling site for the combined 2,501 registered voters from the three districts. Voter turnout in the city of Providence could double from the 8,000 in the 2004 presidential primar y continued on page 4
Where to vote on the East Side Ward 1 • Dist. 1, 2, 3, 4: Vartan Gregorian School, 421 Wickenden St. • Dist. 5, 6, 7: Salomon Center Ward 2 • Dist. 1, 5, 6: Temple Beth-El, 70 Orchard St. • Dist. 2, 3, 4, 7: Jewish Community Center, 401 Elmgrove Ave • Dist. 8: EPOCH, 353 Blackstone Blvd. —Source: Providence Journal
tomorrow’s weather If today’s election crowns a clear winner, even tomorrow’s rain won’t dampen his or her spirits
News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com