The BrowN Daily Herald F riday, M arch 14, 2008
Volume CXLIII, No. 36
Swedish classes to leave with instructor
Since 1866, Daily Since 1891
One year later, progress slow on S&J
SPOTLIGHT
Students considering GISP to replace classes
Committee says U. needs center to study issues related to slavery
By Christian Martell Staff Writer
While Brown students could choose from 24 foreign languages when picking classes this year, there may be one missing from that list in the fall — Swedish. Brown currently offers four beginning and intermediate Swedish classes through the German department. Ann Weinstein, coordinator of the Swedish program, has been teaching the language at Brown since 1982, but has decided to retire at the end of this academic year. “Several years ago it was decided that at my retirement Swedish would be discontinued,” the 67-year-old instructor wrote in an e-mail that her husband, Professor of Comparative Literature Arnold Weinstein, provided to The Herald. “These very small programs are vulnerable. I am sad Swedish will no longer be available.” Katherine Goodman, a professor of German studies who chairs the department, wrote in an e-mail that “the decision was not made by the Department of German Studies alone.” The change “was based on a number of complex issues which continued on page 4
By Sophia Li Senior Staff Writer
No first rule for Fed. Hill fight club By Chaz Firestone Features Editor
Cecily Dubusker wore a pointy red party hat as she taught proper workout posture to a handful of female twenty-somethings. She over-arched her spine (“this is what not to do”) and then collapsed into a slouch (“neither is this”) before settling into a “flat-back” position somewhere between the two. Then, lowering herself into a half-squat, she mimed two dumbbells with her fists and lifted them up to her
Meara Sharma / Herald
Paul Wallace ‘08 and Nick Clifford ‘08 premiered their new short film, “The Face,” last night at Avon Cinema.
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continued on page 4
Courtesy of Tobias Goulet
The Coed Fight Club for Girls, a local workout group, is neither coed nor a fight club. But it is for girls.
chest. Islay Taylor scrunched up her face and shot Dubusker a cynical look. “Cecily, you look like a dinosaur.” A loud roar erupted from Dubusker, who stomped around the cement-floored studio and clawed fruitlessly at Taylor with Tyrannosaur arms as she kicked off another meeting of the Coed Fight Club for Girls. Self-styled as “a ragtag assemblage of Providence’s most motivated exercisers,” CFCFG is
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CAMPUS NEWS
a group of fitness freaks and performance artists — “a Curves for the post-irony crowd,” Dubusker said. Neither coed nor a fight club, the group is certainly for girls, about 10 of whom show up to semiweekly meetings at the club’s de facto headquarters, a converted Federal Hill auto garage. Mostly artists and students in their midto-late 20s, the girls don booty shorts, brightly colored spandex continued on page 6
U. officials knew freshman faced child porn charges By Alex Roehrkasse Senior Staff Writer
ARTS & CULTURE
continued on page 8
L oc a l g u y s f a ce a c r o w d
Greek Lovers’ QuesT Brown Opera Productions debuts “Orfeo ed Euridice” tonight
respond or declined to comment. Director of Athletics Michael Goldberger wrote in an e-mail that he and others had been instructed not to speak on the issue. One of Zolnierczyk’s teammates wrote in an e-mail that the hockey team has “been given strict rules not to comment or even respond to e-mails, phone calls or questions at all” concerning the case. The coaching staff has not returned repeated requests for comment by The Herald. Though the case has received coverage in the Canadian press since September, Zolnierczyk played 16 games for the ice hockey team this season, which began in late October and ended last week. Zolnierczyk last played on Feb. 16 against St. Lawrence University. It is not clear exactly when University officials became aware of the charges. Yesterday, Zolnierczyk’s arraignment was once again postponed in provincial court in Port Alberni, British Columbia. The adjournment until March 27 was
The University should create a center for the study of slavery-related issues, said faculty on a committee looking into making the study of slavery-related issues more central at Brown in a report recently submitted to the Provost and the President. The recommendation is the latest in the University’s ongoing effort to come to terms with its historic entanglements with slavery, a saga that began five years ago with President Ruth Simmons’ nationally scrutinized decision to appoint the Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. That committee spent three years investigating Brown’s history, and then issued a 107-page report outlining the University’s ties to slavery and recommended that officials take action in response. Then, in February 2007, Brown’s highest governing body responded to the report, endorsing 12 ways it could begin to make amends for its historical connection to slavery. Just more than one year later, a step toward one of those proposals has been completed with the report to Simmons and Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98 from a committee established to investigate an initiative for teaching and research on slavery and justice. The committee officially submitted its report on March 5, said Professor of Economics Glenn Loury, chair of the committee— a few months later than the committee had hoped when it began its work a year ago. The Office of the Provost has not yet made the report public, but it’s likely that the report will be released within the next couple of weeks, wrote Vincent Tompkins ’85, deputy provost and member of the committee, in an e-mail to The Herald. Loury said the committee suggested topics of focus for its proposed center, including “the interplay between the history and legacy of slavery” and “questions of justice.” “The center could start with the historical experience of slavery in the Americas and move out from that to do research on broader questions of massive disappearances, society-wide injustice,” Loury said. “In the Slavery and Justice report, slavery and the Atlantic slave trade represented crimes against humanity,” said Professor of Africana Studies James Campbell, chair of the Slavery and Justice Committee and a member of the committee Loury chairs. “Part of the recommendations we made in the original Slavery and Justice report is that any center should have that broad conceptual and comparative perspective,” Camp-
Harrison Zolnierczyk ’11 was released from the men’s hockey team on Feb. 21, the same day the Providence Journal published an article about criminal charges the Canadian native faces in British Columbia. But University officials were aware of the charges before the article’s publication. Director of Media Relations Molly DeRamel told The Herald that University officials “were aware of the matter” before Zolnierczyk, whose arraignment on charges of child pornography and voyeurism was postponed in court yesterday, was released from the team. DeRamel would not elaborate further. University representatives have since repeatedly declined to clarify the process behind Zolnierczyk’s release, citing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act as preventing the disclosure of such information. Other than media relations officials, University personnel contacted by The Herald did not
Walking Forward Students protest budget cuts with shoes in the State House
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OPINIONS
Look to the past... Lindsey Meyers ’09 worries that Obama is projecting false hope, just like Jimmy Carter
195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island
rain, 46 / 33
tomorrow’s weather Hopefully you didn’t protest with your rain boots, so your feet can stay dry during Saturday’s morning rain
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