The Brown Daily Herald F riday, S eptember 26, 2008
Volume CXLIII, No. 79
Consulting, law pulling in applicants
Since 1866, Daily Since 1891
Endowment gains slow amid turmoil
SPOTLIGHT
U. outperforms peers in a rough year
By Chris Duffy Contributing Writer
The competition for law schools and consulting firms could get even stiffer. With finance jobs swiftly dropping away, law schools, grad schools and consulting firms will likely see an increase in applications, deans and employers say. Kimberly DelGizzo, director of the Career Development Center, said that the effects of increased applications in other areas will probably be spread out, but added that there’s been significantly more interest this year in programs geared toward consulting. DelGizzo noted a case-interview workshop with author Marc Cosentino, which had much higher attendance than similar events in years past. “We’ve seen a number of students who have decided, if not finance, perhaps consulting,” she said. Jon Nam ’09 worked at Greenock Capital, a hedge fund in New York this summer, but decided not to apply for jobs in finance because of the situation on Wall Street. “I just don’t think I’d get a job, honestly,” he said. “It’s a bad time since the economy is really weak, and the job market is flooded with all these people who had jobs and a lot of experience, so why would they hire people who aren’t trained?” Nam said that he’s now applying for consulting jobs and “pretty much anything else.” Increased interest in consulting jobs is likely to make this year more competitive than ever. “We’ve seen record numbers of people at our career fair (booth) and case workshops, and we’re expecting to receive a record number of resumes,” said Daniel Hong ’02, a consultant with Bain and Company who is in charge of recruiting at Brown. Hong declined to comment on how many students Bain was looking to hire this year but said, “We’ve always had a really strong recruiting presence at Brown,” which he hopes continued on page 4
by Michael Bechek and Michael Skocpol News Editors
Courtesy of the John Hay Library
In years past, live bears were brought to athletic events. But one of the bears died due to indigestion.
Bruno’s evolution from donkey to man By Lauren Pischel Staff Writer
It’s half an hour before the weekend’s big football game, and it’s time to suit up. Proud Brunonian Michael Spina ’10 has done all the mental preparation he’ll need — he’s fastened a pad to his chest, wrapped another around his waist and slipped on his full-body suit of Brown fur. Flanked by his sidekick, Cubby, Spina — a.k.a.
Bruno — strides onto the field as Brown’s fiercest fan. Brown’s two mascots spend most of the game running around, giving high-paws to guys and hugs to girls, posing for pictures and revving up the crowd with all their might. On this Saturday, the football team pulls out the victory, 17-7, over Stony Brook University’s Seawolves and their mascot, Wolfie. It took a hiring scramble to
ensure Brown could field a full mascot duo at all. The University usually employs between six and eight students to fill Bruno’s large, furry shoes, said Athletic Marketing and Promotions Intern Patrick Walker, but Spina was the only mascot to return from last year. Searching for the new mascots, Walker might have felt a bit continued on page 4
Thida: imprisonment a temporary death By Christopher Baker Contributing Writer
Thursday night, visiting writer Ma Thida called her imprisonment under the oppressive regime in her homeland of Burma, now known as Myanmar, a process of death and rebirth. The talk, entitled “Banned Books: an Insider’s Perspective on Writing and Resistance in Burma,” was co-sponsored by Amnesty International and the Brown Campaign for Burma.
Thirty-five students, faculty members and local residents came to hear the physician and human rights activist, nearly filling the Joukowsky Forum at the Watson Institute for International Studies. Thida, this year’s International Writers Project fellow, was imprisoned by the Burmese government in 1993 for actively supporting Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate and founder of the main opposition party in Burma. Thida was charged with continued on page 6
Quinn Savit / Herald Ma Thida spoke about her experience in Burma Thursday in the Joukowsky Forum.
Talks between CIS and Mocha for Banner merge on hold By Franklin Kanin News Editor
A link to Amazon.com and a new, independent domain name are among recent changes to Mocha, the popular student-created online course-shopping service. But one change announced last year has not come about: integrating Mocha with the Banner online registration system. The Mocha team has been trying to determine its next step for the site — which might include expanding the ser vice to other
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ARTS & CULTURE
schools and institutions — and has put discussions about integrating the site into Banner on the back burner. “If there are any plans to integrate Mocha more formally with Banner, they are not in the discussion stage, and given all of the other projects with which (Computing and Information Ser vices) is involved, I doubt that anything of that nature will happen in the near future,” Registrar Michael Pesta wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. Mocha has been used by students since 2006 as an alternative
glass-tastic? maybe not A glass art exhibit by RISD alum Dale Chihuly opens the new Chace Center
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CAMPUS NEWS
course catalog, first to the Brown Online Course Announcement and now to Banner. Students still have to officially register on Banner. Adam Cath ’07, one of Mocha’s founders, said interest in the merge remains, but busy schedules have prevented the two sides from moving for ward with any concrete plans. Mocha’s creators have graduated, and are all currently employed full-time, reducing the time they have to devote to the site, Cath said. Both Cath and John Styer, di-
club ed New BioMed Dean Edward Wing introduces himself at a town hall meeting
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OPINION
rector of enterprise application services for CIS, said the Mocha team has maintained a close working relationship with CIS, which has provided informal guidance for some of the recent changes to Mocha. While Mocha was previously hosted by the Department of Computer Science, over the summer the Web site moved to another server and its own URL, http:// brown.mochacourses.com. Users who type in the former URL are continued on page 6 we still exist — for now The Wiz Kids explain the Large Hadron Collider and other issues of speedy particles
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12 SPORTS
Outperforming the market and many peer institutions, the University earned a 6.3 percent return on its endowment in the fiscal year ending in June, Brown’s top financial officer said Wednesday. While the gain represents a definite step back from the greater returns seen in recent years, it reflects a relatively strong performance in a difficult economic year. Over a period in which major market indicators posted double-digit losses, the University’s endowment posted modest gains, surpassing $2.8 billion, said Elizabeth Huidekoper, executive vice president for finance and administration. Brown realized a better return in the recently concluded fiscal year 2008 than several of its competitors, including Stanford University (6.2 percent), Yale (4.5 percent) and the University of Pennsylvania (negative 3.9 percent). It also outpaced the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (3.2 percent) and Cornell (2.7 percent). Among Brown’s closest competitors, Harvard (8.6 percent) has so far reported a better proportional return. The numbers for fiscal 2008 include almost a full year of deteriorating market conditions, reflecting the credit crisis touched off by defaulting subprime mortgages in the third quarter of 2007. But they leave unanswered the effect of the dramatic events of recent weeks — which included the abrupt sale of Merrill Lynch, the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers and an emergency government loan to rescue American International Group, the insurance giant. With Congress nearing a deal on an unprecedented $700 billion bailout of Wall Street firms, the possibility of a prolonged period of small gains for institutional investors in coming years remains real. “This is not going to be a fun time, across the board,” Huidekoper said. She added, though, that the University’s endowment had “hardly any” exposure to Lehman and said she could not point to any significant investment that had yet resulted in dire losses. However it may compare to the performance of its peers or the market as a whole, the endowment’s return is disappointing compared with that seen in the recent past. In the preceding fiscal year, which ended in June 2007, the University earned a robust 21.7 percent on its endowment. The decline in the rate of endowment growth has already had serious implications for the University’s stracontinued on page 4 Athlete of the week Mike Gartner ‘09 earns an award for his performance at the Princeton Invitational
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