The Brown Daily Herald F riday, O ctober 24, 2008
Volume CXLIII, No. 98
Since 1866, Daily Since 1891
Gibbs recalls activist roots decades later
Library shelvers suffer from repetitive stress injuries By Alexandra Ulmer Staff Writer
Andy Pereira grabbed a stack of medical books and hauled them onto a shelf of the fifth floor of the Sciences Library. To do so, Pereira, a library technician, used a left arm scarred by two nerve transposition surgeries on his elbow and a shoulder surgery needed after 28 years of shelving books at Brown. He was awarded worker’s compensation for the injuries in 2000, 2002 and 2003 after he hired a lawyer to prove that they were workrelated. Pereira is one of six full-time shelvers employed by the University Library to lift, bend and reach, in addition to pushing carts of books weighing between 80 and 120 pounds. About 20 students assist them as part-time shelvers. Another shelver, who asked not to be named, said she has been away
since July because of a work-related injury. The absence has reduced the number of full-time shelvers to five instead of the usual six, and no additional full-time employee has been hired, nor have the wages been increased for the remaining shelvers. Of the three current shelvers and one former shelver in both the SciLi and Rockefeller Library who agreed to speak with The Herald, three said they had suffered workrelated injuries. “I can certainly see how you could get overused,” said Anthony DeLuise, an orthopedic surgeon specialized in upper extremities at Foundry Orthopedics in Providence. “If they’re heavy books and it’s all day long, probably.” “Repetitive motion can cause injuries,” said Shawn Baxter, occupational therapist and ergonomist at the John E. Donley Rehabilitation continued on page 6
SPOTLIGHT
By Hannah Moser Contributing Writer
Matthew Varley / Herald
Wednesday at Fish Co. still a first-year tradition
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Before beginning his lecture Thursday evening, J. Peter Scoblic ’97, executive editor of The New Republic, took a quick political poll of his audience. Of the roughly 30 students and others in attendance, not one supported John McCain for president. “Wow,” said a surprised Scoblic, whose appearance in Smith-Buonanno 106 was co-sponsored by the College Republicans, the Brown Democrats and the Brown Journal of World Affairs. But as his
arriving on foot, some in cabs and some in overloaded cars. Many came armed with drinks to down as they shivered in the line outside the door. Among the first to show up were eight girls sharing one plastic water bottle. “Is it done?” one girl asked, of the bottle. “Yeah, it’s done,” her friend replied, tossing it aside. As ever, Brown Night at College Hill’s bar down by the river had attracted droves of first-year students looking for a break from unit gab sessions and Wriston basements. “I don’t plan on going to Fish Co., but I usually end up here,” said Malcolm Burnley ’12 as he waited to get inside. “I usually don’t think I’m gonna have a good time, but surprisingly I do.”
Families dancing This weekend includes a dance concert showcasing various ARTS & CULTURE musical influences
continued on page 4
Scoblic ’97 dissects U.S. foreign policy failures
Patrons wait to get into Fish Co. on a Wednesday. The weekly “Brown Night” attracts plenty of first-year students.
At five minutes before 11 p.m. on Wednesday night, four vivacious Fish Co. bartenders poured red drinks for four eager Fish Co. bouncers. Then the eight young employees raised their plastic cups in a toast to impending debauchery. Though the bar at 515 S. Water St. had been open since 3:30 p.m., it was virtually deserted. Twenty early birds, mostly male, pocketed billiards at a corner table or puffed cigarettes outside on the waterfront deck. Next to the dance floor, DJ Meatball warmed up for the evening with a downbeat techno mix. It was the calm before the storm. As if by consensus, the party started at 11:20 p.m. Collegeage partiers converged on Fish Co. from all directions, some
continued on page 4
Alexandra Ulmer / Herald
Andy Pereira needed two surgeries to move the problematic ulna nerve in his elbow.
By Matthew Varley Higher Ed Editor
By Matthew Varley Higher Ed Editor
lecture and subsequent questionand-answer session revealed, his politics mirrored those of his audience. Scoblic, who ser ved as coeditor of the Brown Journal of World Affairs as an undergraduate and later worked as editor of Arms Control Today, is the author of “U.S. vs. Them: How a Half-Century of Conservatism has Undermined America’s Security.” A former visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment’s Nonproliferation Program and fellow at the
Renowned environmentalist Lois Gibbs described her transformation from housewife to environmental activist to a crowded MacMillan 115 Thursday night. Her talk, entitled “Love Canal ... 30 Years Later,” described the circumstances surrounding the 1978 toxic waste scandal that enveloped her upstate New York community of Love Canal and made her famous. As a 27-year-old stay-at-home mom with a husband, house and family, Gibbs said, “I believed I had achieved the American dream.” But when her usually healthy son developed symptoms ranging from asthma to epilepsy, Gibbs found out that his elementary school in their Niagara Falls neighborhood was built on 20,000 tons of chemical waste that was poisoning 900 families in the surrounding neighborhoods. Gibbs later discovered a report completed two years earlier that described the toxic nature of land in Love Canal, but a plan to remedy the danger was not enacted because of its cost. Gibbs expressed indignation that authorities had allowed families go on living in an area with known health hazards. “How dare they!” she said of the “cost-benefit analysis” that had judged the health of Love Canal citizens not worth the investment. Gibbs said Love Canal “taught us a lot about the way decisions are made in this country.” She said many corporations focus on making profits and make decisions about the environment based on what they can get away with. She said decisions should be made to prevent as much harm as possible, not how much harm people think the environment can tolerate.
STRUM FOR SUDAN
Eunice Hong / Herald
continued on page 4
Saturday Morning Project performs at the Stand For Sudan Benefit Concert for Sudanese refugees in the Hourglass Cafe.
proud to be sub-free More than twice as many firstyears as last year elected to live CAMPUS NEWS in substance-free housing
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OPINIONS
AN ARMY OF ONE Adam Swartzbaugh ’09, Brown’s only ROTC member, reflects on his time in the Corps
195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island
12 SPORTS
ATHLETE(s) of the week The Herald has not one, not two, but nine athletes of the week: crew’s men’s varsity eight
News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com
T oday Page 2
Friday, October 24, 2008
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
We a t h e r
Vagina Dentata | Soojean Kim
TODAY
TOMORROW
sunny 60 / 39
partly cloudy 63 / 49
Menu Sharpe Refectory
Verney-Woolley Dining Hall
Lunch — Swiss Corn Bake, Shrimp Stir Fry, Chicken Fingers, Raspberry Chocolate Streusel Square
Lunch — Chicken Fingers, Nacho Bar, Sticky Rice, Butter Cookies
Dinner — Noodle Kugel, Seafood Pot Pie, Strawberry Jello, Chocolate Cake
Dinner — Cajun Baked Fish, Grilled Chicken, Golden Corn and Rice Casserole, Chocolate Cake
Brown Meets RISD | Miguel Llorente
Sudoku Fill in the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 through 9.
Epimetheos | Samuel Holzman
Fizzle Pop | Patricia Chou
RELEASE DATE– Friday, October 24, 2008 © Puzzles by Pappocom
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle C r osswo rd Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
ACROSS 1 Friend of Sarkozy 4 Contents meas. 9 Deli option 13 Start to stop? 14 First name in R&B 15 Actor Bana 16 GP due for a whopping hangover? 19 Lively dances 20 “Since __ You Baby”: 1956 hit 21 Service designation 22 The flash in flashy jewelry? 28 Sheboygan’s st. 29 Church areas 30 Taro Festival site 31 Liszt’s forte 33 Construction area sign 34 Check out 37 Gang of bakery thieves? 40 Through 41 Unacceptable 43 Sluggish 45 Comet co-discoverer Hale 46 Abounds 48 Rattles on 52 Wardrobe for Stallone playing a transvestite? 54 Squib 55 Pushes (through), as a Senate bill 56 Foreword 57 Prankster’s item, and this puzzle’s theme 63 Since 64 Following a doc’s orders, in a way 65 Lincoln center? 66 Rush 67 Junctions 68 Olympus OM-2, briefly DOWN 1 “You bet!” 2 Capital of the Comoros 3 Habituates 4 “An auld knave’s __ bairn”: Scottish proverb
5 Drop the ball, say 6 Small songbird 7 Lei bringer, perhaps 8 Backup band said to be named for a car 9 Four, often 10 Sub ending 11 Zip 12 Adept 14 Hosp. workers 17 W.E.B. Du Bois was among its founders 18 __ Hai: Israeli monument site 22 __ B’rith 23 Swimmer’s place 24 Tickled notes 25 Jenny Fields’s son 26 Whopping 27 Stratum 32 Financial pg. debut 33 Dept. head 34 Headwinds may affect them, briefly 35 Elided pronoun 36 PayPal parent company
38 ‘’I’ve Got the Music __’’: 1974 hit 39 Cape 42 Ready to tap 44 Evening 46 Beats 47 Supposed inhabitant of ancient Qumran 49 Top-level projects? 50 Gist
51 One may be seen just outside a large office building 53 Pan 56 HMO concern 57 Touch 58 Equi- cousin 59 Roman sun god 60 14-Down org. 61 Dreamer’s acronym 62 Pleasure seekers?
Alien Weather Forecast | Stephen Lichenstein and Adam Wagner
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Dunkel | Joe Larios
xwordeditor@aol.com
10/24/08
T he B rown D aily H erald Editorial Phone: 401.351.3372 Business Phone: 401.351.3260
University community since 1891. It is published Monday through Friday during the aca-
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once in July by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. POSTMASTER please send corrections to
Ross Frazier, Vice President Mandeep Gill, Treasurer Darren Ball, Secretary By Larry Shearer (c)2008 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
10/24/08
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A rts & C ulture Friday, October 24, 2008
Weekend concert offers range of dance By Sydney Ember Contributing Writer
This weekend, a number of dance companies will appear in the Family Weekend Dance Concert, an annual performance showcasing a wide selection of dances with influences ranging from a cappella music to political issues in West Africa to urban waltzes. The show, a sampling of faculty-directed pieces assembled by Senior Lecturer in Theatre, Speech and Dance Julie Strandberg, will run Friday through Sunday in Ashamu Dance Studio. The concert is an upbeat show with a variety of dance styles set to an eclectic mix of music, including live fiddle, Malian drumming and music from the tragicomic German film “Good Bye Lenin!”
The show opens with the dramatic, energetic number “Parson’s Etude,” a repertory study by David Parsons, a contemporary dance choreographer. The piece creates a mysterious atmosphere through the interplay of light and shadow on the dancers’ moving bodies as they contrast modern, sharp movements with flowing ballet motions on the softly illuminated stage. The dancers, members of the Dance Extension Company, toss and turn their bodies in motions suggestive of fitful sleep, hitting their movements sharply and exactly before collapsing dramatically as the mysterious glow suddenly vanishes. The Dance Extension Company also performs “Short Stories,” a piece by guest choreographer Kanji Segawa that captures a series of human nar-
ratives ranging from solitude to playful familial unity. The dancers move together in exaggerated gestures that suggest the motions of mimes while also displaying more graceful movements, all set to music from “Good Bye Lenin!” The longest and most dynamic number in the program is performed by New Works/World Traditions, a company seeking to fuse political issues with art. Choreographer Michelle Bach-Coulibaly, senior lecturer in theatre, speech and dance, created “Eating My Ethics: Bloodline Excerpts,” based on the company’s tour in West Africa last summer. The piece, a “rough draft” of excerpts from a larger work performed continued on page 4
Sabar ’93 reads from new book on Iraq By Ben Hyman Arts & Culture Editor
Writer and journalist Ariel Sabar ’93 read from his new book “My Father’s Paradise” in the Brown Bookstore Thursday afternoon. The former Providence Journal reporter discussed the history of the Jewish presence in Iraq and his quest to reconnect with his father, a Jew born in Kurdistan. Sabar described his father’s upbringing in the provincial Kurdish town of Zakho, an environment notable for cooperative relations between its Jewish and Muslim populations. His father, Yona, grew up
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speaking Aramaic, an ancient, very rare language, managing to preserve it even after his family immigrated to Israel in the 1940s and began to speak Hebrew. Yona moved to the U.S., eventually becoming a scholar of his native tongue, producing the first AramaicEnglish dictionary and working as a professor at UCLA. “His homesickness gets turned into a career,” Sabar explained. “The one souvenir he takes with him is this language.” Sabar recalled his adolescent rebellion against his father, who never really adapted to the Los Angeles culture that Sabar valued. “At one point, I even stopped calling him ‘abba,’ or
‘father,’” Sabar said. After his own son was born, however, Sabar decided to repair his relationship with his father and traveled with him back to Zakho, the experience that he relates in his memoir. They found the town had been transformed and modernized by oil money, Sabar said, but they were still able to find older inhabitants who remembered the town in which Yona had grown up. “The stories of Jews from Muslim lands have not been well-documented,” Sabar said, explaining his aims for the memoir. “What we see in the headlines today isn’t representative of Iraqi history,” he said.
E ditors ’ picks Tonight: Senior Lecturer in Music Fred Jodry performs the “Goldberg Variations,” by J.S. Bach. The performance begins at 8 p.m. at the First Unitarian Parish House, 1 Benevolent St. It will be followed by a gala reception at the Zachariah Allen House, 1093 Smith Street. Tickets are $10 for students, $35 for general admission. Tonight and tomorrow: Family weekend a cappella! Harmonic Motion performs a free concert tonight at 9 p.m., followed by the Jabberwocks and Brown’sTones at 10 p.m. On Saturday, the Higher Keys perform in List 120 at 4 p.m, followed by the Chattertocks at 6 p.m in the same venue. The Bear Necessities and Ursa Minors also appear at 6 p.m. Tomorrow: MEZCLA’s Family Weekend Social, from 10 p.m. to 12 a.m. in the Leung Gallery, with dance lessons in meringue, salsa and bachata from 10 to 11 p.m. Tomorrow and Sunday: Brown University Chorus Concert, with Fred Jodry conducting a concert version of Henry Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas,” with student soloists and Baroque orchestra. Also featuring Jason Smoller ’09 on oboe in Stephen Chatman’s “There is Sweet Music Here.” Performances on Saturday at 8 p.m and Sunday at 3 p.m. $5
tickets available for students Sunday, all other tickets $10. Now through Sunday: “Celebrating El Dia de los Muertos,” presented by the 2008 Barbara Greenwald Memorial Arts Program and sponsored by the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities and the Friends of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology. Learn about El Dia de los Muertos, and participate in crafts and activities from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Full program from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Haffenreffer Museum in Manning Hall. Now through Oct. 27: “3 Chairs 2 Cubes: 5 Short New Plays by Undergraduate Playwrights,” presented by Production Workshop. Performances at T.F. Green Hall, Friday to Monday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Free tickets available online at pw.brown. edu and at the box office an hour before each show. Now through Nov. 2: “The Forgetting Machine,” presented by Rites and Reason Theatre and directed by Emma Tai ’08. Performances Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 7 to 8:30 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m. with a postplay Folkthought discussion. At the George Houston Bass Performing Arts Space, located in Churchill House, 155 Angell St. Performance free, but there is a suggested donation of $10.
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At concert, from Africa to waltz continued from page 3 by the company this summer in Mali, represents a “new direction that the piece (in its entirety) is going in,” Bach-Coulibaly said. “This gave us a chance to pull it apart.” The dancers, wearing jeans, white chemises and black vests, shuffle onto the stage in a group as a spoken word performer soliloquizes from atop a piano to the notes of a Chopin waltz played by Zak Stone ’09. The dancers’ natural, flowing movements, set to the sounds of a fiddle played by Ida Specker ’09, meld into rhythmic steps reminiscent of an African dance. As a Malian drum group begins to beat their instruments, the dancers undulate rhythmically in concentric circles, stepping in rhythm with the drums — a dramatic, evocative conclusion to the concert. The show also features a captivating exploration of formal and casual partnering in “Urban Waltz,” choreographed by Meida McNeal, a postdoctoral fellow in theatre, speech and dance. Wearing flowing white skirts, the dancers combine an eclectic mix of styles from ballet to formal ballroom dancing to sensual tango. McNeal said she was interested in exploring a waltz’s rhythm of threes in her piece, which showcases material from her larger work entitled “Give Thanks.” Jamie Jewett, adjunct lecturer in theatre, speech and dance, choreographed the theatrical number “Falling Up,” which, he said, “blurs the lines between dancers and singers.” The piece features live a cappella music and rhythmic clapping as the dancers provide their own beats through song and audible breathing. “There is obviously a real richness at Brown, and I wanted to take advantage of that,” Jewett said of the piece, which he created for his modern dance students. Performances are tonight and tomorrow at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.
Friday, October 24, 2008
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
Scoblic ’97 predicts victory for Obama in November continued from page 1 New America Foundation, Scoblic explained and sharply criticized the rise of a dichotomous, moralizing standard in American foreign policy. For Scoblic, the “most important thing” in the upcoming presidential election is “whether the candidates see the world in black-and-white terms” or acknowledge that there exists greater complexity in foreign relations. In his speech, he called McCain, the Republican nominee, the inheritor of a conservative ideology that divides the world into good and evil. According to Scoblic, this binary has “ramifications for policy choices” because it holds that “good cannot coexist with evil.” Scoblic said McCain has endorsed this worldview for “well over a decade,” identifying the Arizona senator as among a group of conservatives who searched for America’s next foreign policy adversary after the end of the Cold War. This view “contrasts remarkably” with Barack Obama’s ideology, Scoblic said, adding that while Obama has used phrases like “good” and “evil” in his campaign, he does not fundamentally divide the world into those categories. For Scoblic, the “us versus them”
mentality is dangerous in an era when the “existential” danger of nuclear terrorism poses “the greatest national security threat facing the United States.” He said the Bush administration was — with the possible exception of the “first few years of the Reagan administration” — the first to “fully embrace” the blackand-white doctrine, and he blamed it for a failure to adequately confront nuclear proliferation. Scoblic argued that Iran and North Korea posed a greater threat to the U.S. in terms of nuclear capabilities than Iraq, but that the latter was selected for invasion in 2003 because of its relative military weakness and because it offered the possibility of regime change. Scoblic pointed out that since the invasion, North Korea has detonated a nuclear weapon and Iran has continued to enrich uranium. Scoblic’s lecture traced the origins of the “good and evil” worldview to the modern conservative movement that began decades before the Bush and Reagan administrations. Scoblic said the Great Depression and World War II undermined the traditional conservative ideals of laissez-faire capitalism and isolationism, which in turn gave way to a new set of priorities in the post-War era. The new conservative movement
was comprised of economic libertarians, pre-Religious Right traditionalists and a vehement group of anticommunists who made their cause a “quasi-religious struggle between good and evil,” he said. While most Americans in the era opposed communism, Scoblic said the third group he mentioned saw the Cold War “not as a geopolitical controversy but as an apocalypse.” In time, Scoblic said, the libertarians and traditionalists coalesced around the anti-communists to lead to a binary worldview that pitted the “good” of America against the “evil of the Soviet Union.” While Scoblic stopped short of attributing “every mistake in U.S. foreign policy” to this framework, he warned that the ideology leads to dangerous “overzealousness” and oversimplification. For example, he said, the U.S. strategy against terrorism failed to take into account the different ideologies and goals of groups like al-Qaida and Hezbollah. Responsible foreign policy, Scoblic said, requires talking “about each case specifically” rather than building “one worldview through which you can filter everything.” He acknowledged a “political benefit” to the good-versus-evil framework to the extent that it “energizes people” and serves an instinct
of defensiveness for a nation under threat. But he had no doubts that changes in American politics were imminent. “Between the Iraq War ... and the financial crisis,” Scoblic said, “you’re looking at a situation not entirely dissimilar from the 1930s, when the legs of the conservative movement were undercut by international events.” Though unsure of the future of the Republican Party, he predicted there may be a “resurgent moderate” voice in the party. On the other hand, he said, it may be that the socially and religiously conservative arm of the party rises to political dominance. Though Scoblic said he did not think Obama’s lead in national polls was “because he has a more enlightened foreign policy,” he said he had no doubts about the outcome of the election. “Obama’s going to win,” Scoblic said, “and that is going to put this (binary) worldview out of commission for four years.” But he added that the polarizing ideology that has dominated U.S. foreign policy for the last eight years can never be discarded completely. If current international threats escalate during the next administration, Scoblic said, it could “come back with a vengeance.”
Life as usual at Fish Co.: sticky floors and DJ Meatball continued from page 1 Albert Llobet Portel, a RISD student from Barcelona, Spain, was in line with his teammates from the Brown club soccer team. It was his second trip to Fish Co., which he called a bad American bar. But Avery Houser ’12 was more enthusiastic. He said he has been to Fish Co. ever y Wednesday of the semester “except the first one.” “All the freshmen go,” Houser said. “I didn’t fight the wave.” Unlike campus fraternity parties, Houser said, Fish Co. always
has shown him a good time. “There will be people dancing and there will be alcohol — that reliability is what’s important to me,” he said, adding that the fun times compensated for the “sticky floor.” As the line grew, a Providence Police officer drove by, slowing his cruiser as he dragged on his stogie, sur veying the scene and continuing on his way. By the time Houser passed the bouncer and paid the $6 cover charge, the sidewalk outside Fish Co. was littered with plastic cups and beer cans. In half an hour, the bouncers had turned no one away. Inside, it was a steamy, pulsating dance party. Patrons piled their coats on the benches against the bar’s back wall and elbowed their way to the sprawling central bar. “Give me beer,” a student said. Expecting an onslaught, bartenders had already poured plastic cups of domestic beer, which sell for $2 apiece. More economical drinkers paid $6 to sip 28-ouncers from yard-long incandescent tubes. Though the booze comes cheap at Fish Co., failing to tip will earn you a scolding. As the party picked up, bartenders served from satellite bars outside and on the covered porch. Fish Co.’s decor vaguely alludes to its name: in one corner
of the ceiling, a plastic shark swims through a hula-hoop of neon light. But it looks more the part of “RI’s premier nightclub destination” — as described by its Web site — than the “Bar and Grill” its signs advertise. Cookouts are sometimes held at Fish Co. during the summer, but there is no regular food service. And while there are beautiful views of the harbor, the Providence skyline and the former South Street Power Plant from its outdoor deck, few nonsmokers step outside to take in the scenery. One couple sat by themselves to reflect on the evening in the chilly October air. “What drunk level are you?” the young woman asked her friend. “Seven,” her companion replied. Back inside, a group of machos took swings at a computerized boxing game between slugs of beer. As they pummeled the punching bag and cheered their digital damage reports, a young man and woman made out a few feet away. But most people either crowded the dance floor on one end of the building or walked in an endless circle around the bar. Females wandered in packs of three to five, while males stood and socialized together or walked around alone.
Guys slapped shoulders, girls gave hugs and Fish Co. smelled like a Macy’s perfume counter. Then, at 11:50 p.m., DJ Meatball put on Flo Rida’s “Low” and the dance party reached a new level. While students grinded on the dance floor, girls jumped on the platform behind the dancers and twisted around brass poles. The last hour of the night revealed DJ Meatball’s variety: “In the Ayer,” “Drop It Like It’s Hot” and “Lollipop” gave way to “Wannabe” and “Sweet Caroline.” The lights came up at 1 a.m. on the dot, right in the middle of “Your Love.” DJ Meatball, a Bermuda native whose real name is Jose, has been living in Providence for 30 years and spinning at Fish Co. for five. He called the crowd “energetic,” “open-minded” and “very eclectic,” adding that Wednesday is “definitely college night.” “If I had to play polka to get people to dance, I would play polka music,” Meatball said. “Understand your crowd and they’ll keep coming back.” Houser said he would keep coming back, too — for a while. “I can’t wait until my junior or senior year when I have friends with houses off campus,” he said. “But now that’s not an option, so I’m going with (Fish Co.)”
Gibbs: ‘Man thinks he knows’ Earth’s limits continued from page 1 The world has a climate crisis today “because man thinks he knows” how much the planet can tolerate, Gibbs said. She and other members of her generation — the “gray-hairs,” as she called them — would not experience climate change’s full effects, she added. But, she told the students in the audience, “It’s you and your children who are going to wonder where” to get clean drinking water.
Change is “not as easy as just screwing a new light bulb in,” Gibbs said. People need to change government and public culture. Gibbs also discussed the toxicity of polyvinyl chloride plastic and the work she has done to encourage companies to use safer packaging materials. Because corporations covet the brand loyalty of 18-to-25year-olds, she said, they will be more likely to listen to students’ calls for change. Several students who attended
said they found Gibbs’ lecture inspiring. “I thought she had a good synthesis of consumer advocacy projects and government advocacy work,” Allison Ehrich Bernstein ’09 said. “What she was talking about has to be fought on both fronts.” Amanda Labora ’12 tagged along to the lecture with friends who are interested in environmental studies. But she said listening to Gibbs renewed her faith that individual people can bring about change. “I actually got chills,” she said.
C ampus n ews Friday, October 24, 2008
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D orm - room fresh
Frosh sub-free population more than doubles By Suzannah Weiss Contributing Writer
Kim Perley / Herald
R.J. Ruppenthal, the author of “Fresh Food From Small Places: The SquareInch Gardener’s Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting and Sprouting,” demonstrates how to grow food in unusual places — even dorm rooms.
N e ws
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Brief
Trick or treat! Here’s a condom A few lucky Brown students will find an unusual treat in their mailboxes this Halloween. The Brown chapter of the national organization Medical Students for Choice has been selling Condom-grams to students who’d like to send one to someone special for the holiday. “We were trying to think of fun moneymaking things we could do,” said Lauren Goddard MD’11, one of the MSFC members who helped organize the fundraiser. She added that they got the idea from the Temple University chapter of MSFC and “had to steal it.” Proceeds from the Condom-grams go toward sending MSFC members to the organization’s national conference, where students will learn about abortion techniques and other reproductive health-related issues not often taught in medical schools. Goddard said that even though abortion is one of the most common medical procedures in the country, “you really have to seek out abortion training” in medical school. That is one problem MSFC is working to correct. According to the national Web site, MSFC is a group of medical students dedicated to making “reproductive health care, including abortion, a part of standard medical education and residency training.” The Condom-grams — covered in foam Halloween decorations, like pumpkins, witches and spiders — contain a condom, a chocolate and a holiday-inspired greeting. A note on the gram reads, “Someone is wishing you a safe and happy Halloween — because nothing is scarier than unsafe sex!”. Lily Shield ’09, former Herald Opinions columnist, said “anything that encourages condom use is always good.” She added, “I think it’s a really cute and fun way to promote safe sex.” Many students visiting MSFC’s table on the Main Green on Wednesday were very supportive of the fundraiser. “Oh my God, I so want to get one from someone!” said Itsuka Kurihara ’11. While some students ordered Condom-grams for their significant others, many ordered them for their friends. Susan Scavone ’12 said she was sending hers to someone on her floor. “I thought it’d be a really funny joke,” she said. “He’s gonna get it and be like umm...” — Shannon O’Brien
The number of first-years living on substance-free floors is more than double the usual number, and University of ficials don’t know why. In recent years, 40 to 50 freshmen have opted to live in sub-free spaces, but about 125 students in the Class of 2012 are living on substance-free floors, said Associate Director of Residential Life Natalie Basil. This increase “seemed to just kind of pop up,” she said. Though Brown is mandated by federal and state law not to permit anyone under 21 to drink, members of substance-free communities have made an additional commitment to avoid alcohol and drugs and want an environment that will suppor t their decision, Basil said. The Office of Residential Life has historically made one or two floors substance-free, most often in Perkins Hall. Now that these spaces are in higher demand, according to Basil, they are spread throughout campus in Keeney Quadrangle, Littlefield Hall and on Pembroke campus. “Some of the critique we got from the student body was that the second floor of Perkins was a sub-free dorm for many years,” said Basil, who wanted to spread out sub-free living spaces so that their residents “weren’t isolated to just one building on campus.” The increase, Basil said, could
Herald File Photo
About 125 first-years are now living in sub-free areas, including some in Keeney Quadrangle. have been caused by the fact that ResLife “tweaked (its) housing questionnaire slightly to ask the question in a different way.” The online form, as usual, provided boxes for students to indicate which special communities they preferred. This year, there was also a link next to each special interest community providing more detail about it, as opposed to a separate informational page that students in the past often “skimmed over,” Basil said. “To be terribly frank, I didn’t want to entertain the chance that
I might be paired with a roommate who would come back to our room wasted ever y weekend or who would hold beer par ties in our room,” said Theresa Lii ’12, a resident of a sub-free area in Perkins. Jocelyn Bell ’12, another freshman living on a substance-free floor, simply “didn’t want to be around all the partying that was happening,” she said. “My group of friends in high school was ver y sub-free,” said Clara Kiely ’12, a resident of a substance-free floor in East Andrews.
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Friday, October 24, 2008
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
Library shelvers prone to problems from repetitive nature of work continued from page 1 Center in Providence. He added that, among employees who work in libraries that he treats, “you see a fair number of shoulder injuries and back injuries.” Ensuring a safe work environment for Brown employees is a priority, University Librarian Harriette Hemmasi wrote in a letter to The Herald. “The University has policies and procedures in place to ensure the health and safety of employees.” Director of Insurance and Risk Jeanne Hebert said that Brown fared favorably in a 2007 benchmarking report comparing workers’ compensation in different institutions. “We have a good, strong program,” she said. Neither Hebert nor other University officials would discuss specific cases for this article, citing privacy concerns. Lawyer Stephen Dennis, who specializes in Rhode Island workers’ compensation law, said that he has seen many slowly developing injuries coming out of Brown and has taken on numerous cases, including Pereira’s. The heavy books, he said, “just break these guys and women down.” Work-related back pains Pereira said his shoulder first became painful in 1999, and his doctor deemed the injury work-related. “I thought I was set,” he said. But he discovered he needed a lawyer to prove his case — three times he ended up needing a lawyer to get compensation. Dennis, his lawyer, immediately asked him if he had missed any work because of his injury, Pereira said. He had not, since he instead opted to go on light-duty — alternating between working in the library and the booth at a parking
garage on Brook Street — instead of using his sick days. He and his lawyer filed a court petition in 2000, but withdrew it without prejudice — meaning they could take the case back up if the shoulder pain resurfaced — after realizing that his shoulder injury would likely not be ruled work-related because he had not missed any days of work. By this time, the pain had extended down to his elbow. In July 2000, he saw a doctor, who told him the problems in his ulna nerve were workrelated. But when he presented his doctor’s evaluation to his employer, “Brown didn’t accept my injury as work-related. Even with my doctor’s advice,” Pereira said. He went to court again, where the judge requested an examination by an impartial medical examiner, who also said the injury was caused by the job, Pereira said. He was awarded worker’s compensation in September 2000. Over the next three years, Pereira would endure an unsuccessful surgery, another worker’s compensation claim, another round of corrective surgery and, in August 2003, a final worker’s compensation claim. Each time, he said, a court-appointed physician said his injuries were related to his work at Brown. If an injury is established as workrelated, insurance pays the lawyers. If injury is not established, the lawyer is not paid, Pereira said. Pereira continues to work as a shelver despite his history of injuries. “When you’re supporting a family, you can’t just quit a job,” he said. Before he suffered his injuries, Pereira made $676 per 37.5 hour work-week before taxes, he said. He now makes $815 a week. Problems for others A former shelver told a similar story of a physically taxing job. Stephen Conlon, who incurred a herni-
ated disk in his back that he said is a result of his 14 years as a shelver, said the work has “a lot of ergonomic red flares.” “The floors are stone and books start from the ground up to as high as nine feet,” he said. His back pains were initially mild, Conlon said, but became acute in November 2001. “I woke up one night and I couldn’t walk,” he recounted. Because of the gradual development of his injury, he said he did not feel compelled to take any action — “until that unforgettable night.” He went to see a doctor several weeks after his back pains began. The physician would not certify that the injury was work-related, though Conlon maintains that it is. After his surgery in 2001, which his health insurance paid for, Conlon returned to the Rockefeller Library and now works as a clerk in its preservation section. A current shelver has experienced pain in her feet for about two years. Lisa Shea, who has worked as a shelver for about six years, said at the time her doctor diagnosed the bursae in both of her inflamed feet as work-related. “It’s not a woman’s job,” Shea said. “It pays well. That’s why I’m doing it.” She said she decided to have surgery on her feet on her sick time because it was easier than going through the process of filing for worker’s compensation. “I’ve learned to work around it,” she said of the pain. Head of Preservation Eric Shoaf said shelving does have a “physical component” to it, but that other jobs do, too. Shoaf said the library has taken action to prevent injuries, such as hosting a workshop on how to properly shelve and having workers divide up their time on the job so that they are not doing the same movement
for too long. “We’ve certainly given them the skills (to prevent injury),” he said. “Whether they apply them or not, I don’t know.” Stephen Morin, director of Environmental Health and Safety, said that safety training is always available on campus. He added that shelving is not an area that jumps out as having a high occurrence of injuries. Block out blues A block out period in May and December can put additional stress on employees. Shelver Russell Tandy said his job becomes more painful during these periods, when students are checking many books out as they study for exams or work on papers. For these busy six weeks, shelvers are requested not to take vacations. Tandy said he is fortunate not to have suffered any injuries in his 10 years of work. But he said he has lost strength in his right hand, which becomes particularly painful during the “block out” period. “We don’t understand the May ‘block out’,” Tandy said. “You would think you’d have all summer to put the books back.” All shelvers are needed during these weeks so that students and faculty can access books, Director of Labor Relations Joseph Sarno said. He said that vacations are not forbidden, but “discouraged.” Staffing is increased during the block out periods to help the full-time employees. Shelvers are the only library employees subject to what is known as a block out, Karen McAninch ’74, business agent of the United Service and Allied Workers of Rhode Island, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. The United Service and Allied Workers of Rhode Island, whose executive board Pereira sits on, represents 80 library workers at Brown. The union does not think a block out period should be allowed, and has
Have a lovely weekend.
discussed the issue with the library, McAninch said. She said she hopes that this might change under new leadership. Enough extra help for shelvers? The absence of a full-time employee has not made the working situation easier for the shelvers. The library should be replacing employees who are on an injury leave, McAninch, of the United Service and Allied Workers of Rhode Island, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald, adding that this would avoid putting more pressure on those who are still at work. Shoaf, the library’s preservation head, said the libraries have both a full-time staff and part-time student workers who can pick up the extra work. “We can use all of our staff to fill in these gaps,” said Shoaf, who has overseen shelving for 15 years and will leave Brown at the end of the month. Shelving Manager Michelle Venditelli, who works under Shoaf, declined to speak for this article. Patrick Free ’11, one of about 20 part-time shelvers, spends eight hours a week putting away books at the Rockefeller Library. “The most difficult thing is going up and down,” he said, but added that he did not find the job particularly demanding physically. “But I’m a young guy, so it must be harder if you’re older and have back pains,” he said. Some libraries are starting to mechanize the borrowing process, thus alleviating some of the stress on shelvers. For instance, in July, the libraries in Douglas County, Colorado started using Vista Sorting — an automated materials handling system — to identify, check in and sort returning books. The library group is among the first in Colorado to implement such a system, in part to reduce “the risk of staff injuries associated with repetitive motion tasks and heavy lifting,” according to Business Wire.
Friday, October 24, 2008
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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
M. varsity eight tops Ivies, Bush wants potential illegals sacked European national teams By Nicole Gaouette Los Angeles T imes
continued from page 12 over a decade at the Charles, and for their performance, the nine men from the Championship Eight Boat have been named the Herald’s Athletes of the Week. To get to know the nine athletes better, we interviewed Wheeler. Herald: I assume team chemistr y is a huge part of winning a race like this. How did the team come together to place second? Wheeler: Our race at the Charles was just a continuation of the way we have been practicing all fall. We race each other as hard as we can everyday at practice, so it’s easy to come together on race day since there’s so much trust between our teammates. What were the goals of the team going in? Two big goals for us were to have our A boat win and our B boat finish in the top-ten. We barely missed the first goal by missing Washington by a second, but our team showed great depth by having two boats finish in the top ten. Not a lot of schools have ever done that. Were you expecting to do as well as you did? The Head of the Charles draws some really serious competition, so it was great to do so well. It’s hard to know what to expect. All you can do is race as hard as you can. What makes your team so successful? We’ve had great leadership from the captains. Our team is really motivated and enjoys working hard, so we’ve seen some good results so far this year.
What does doing well in a race like this do in terms of confidence heading into the rest of the season? The confidence down at the boathouse is high after the Charles, but we’re still working on gaining as much speed as we can. We have another regatta in a few weeks against a lot of tough boats, so we’re practicing as hard as ever. What teams are going to be your top competitors this season? At our next regatta, we’ll be facing a bunch of Harvard boats, so that’s keeping us very motivated right now. Every year, Harvard is a top competitor of ours. We can always expect a great race with them. Does your boat have any superstitions or team rituals you perform before the race? Before ever y race, each guy sticks his arm out the side of the boat and gives our coxswain a thumbs up. What was it like to compete against teams from Europe? Is their style is similar to the American style of rowing? International racing is just another reason why the Head of the Charles is such a great regatta. It was cool to go up against boats from other countries. It can be kind of intimidating going up against the French and British teams, with guys who have won Olympic medals, but it just made for a much better and more competitive race. The Bears will be back in the water on Nov. 22 in Boston where they will compete in the Tail of the Charles.
WASHINGTON — In a final drive to toughen immigration enforcement, the Bush administration will again try to institute a system that would force employers to fire workers who have discrepancies in their Social Security data. Homeland Security Secretar y Michael Chertoff said Thursday that he will ask a Federal judge to lift an injunction imposed against the “no-match” rule after foes ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sued to stop it last year. The move could affect millions of workers -- citizens and immigrants alike -- and continues to draw fierce opposition from business, civil liberties and immigrant advocate groups. In an annual address on border enforcement and illegal immigration, Chertoff said he expected continued resistance to the rule, but said his agency has addressed concerns raised in the lawsuit. Under the rule, businesses could be prosecuted for failing to respond to notices from the Social Security Administration that workers’ information does not match data on file with the government, often an indicator of illegal immigration, but frequently the result of simple inconsistencies or clerical errors. The no-match rule would be part of the Bush administration’s wide-ranging crackdown on illegal immigration, a campaign that also involves controversial mass workplace raids and requirements
that federal contractors verify that ever y employee is authorized to work. With less than three months before a new administration comes to power, Chertoff used the annual address to tr y to hammer out a legacy for himself and his young agency, founded in 2003. Chertoff declared that Homeland Security has made unprecedented progress in slowing the flow of migrants crossing the border. “For the first year in many years that anybody can remember, the efforts we’ve undertaken at the border have begun to turn the tide of illegal immigration,” Cher tof f said, citing a flat or declining number of illegal immigrants in the countr y, more aggressive enforcement at work sites and greater levels of infrastructure and personnel at the border. “Many of the things we’ve accomplished are things that people thought we couldn’t do,” Chertoff said. “We’ve done more in five years than has been accomplished in decades before.” The Homeland Security chief said the next administration should maintain current levels of enforcement and urged Congress to return to the controversial issue of comprehensive immigration reform, an issue lawmakers abandoned after reform efforts sputtered last year. Chertoff said that the crackdown would cast immigration reform in a more favorable light. “Americans will soon say ‘OK, it’s now time to allow more legal immigrants in,’ “ he said. “Ultimately, we’re going to have
to go back to Congress and ask for comprehensive immigration reform.” The no-match rule requires employers to give a worker 90 days to clear up any discrepancy in their Social Security data, such as names and numbers that do not correspond to government records. If the mismatch can’t be resolved, the worker must be fired, or the company runs the risk of federal prosecution. As part of the injunction last year, the agency was ordered to examine the rule’s potential impact on small businesses and determined it would cost up to $36,624 a year for the largest small businesses to comply, not including the costs of termination and replacement of workers. Some business owners were dismayed by Thursday’s announcement. “Local folks do not want to do the hard manual labor,” said Jim Wilson, owner of a suburban Minneapolis nurser y. “People act as if we just pay enough, we’ll get the (American) workers,” said Sheridan Bailey, who owns an Arizona steel fabrication business where the hourly pay has gone from $15.43 in 2006 to $22 this year. “It doesn’t matter how much you pay; you can’t get blood out of a turnip if the workers aren’t there.” Chertoff was not sympathetic. “Making money is not a sufficient justification for violating the rule,” he said. But Bailey said the issue was not making money, but sur vival. “We have to have labor; we can’t do it without labor,” he said.
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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
Friday, October 24, 2008
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Friday, October 24, 2008
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
After strong start, field hockey falters in PC game
Singer ’09: Intramurals, with extra fun
continued from page 12 early lead against a tough team may have surprised everyone but the Bears, who made it a team goal. “We were together in the middle of the field and we decided, score within the first five minutes,” said Leslie Springmeyer ’12. “That just boosts up the whole team, so it’s always great to score first.” The Bears rode that momentum to control the first 15 minutes of play, but the Friars would not be denied for long. They tied the score at 15:25 on a nifty play. PC star Nellie Poulin lifted a shot that Brown goalkeeper Lauren Kessler ’11 reached up to knock down with her glove, but the ball fell to Ashlyn Hudson, who slipped a shot past a diving Kessler just inside the left post. From there, PC was off to the races. The Friars scored again 49 seconds later, then 1:39 later, and then added the fourth goal 56 seconds later, with Poulin scoring twice to give the Friars a devastating 4-1 lead with 16:11 left in the first half. “We weren’t deciding quickly who had the ball, and then quickly recognizing, stepping up and taking away the dangerous players,” Harrington said. “We went into this game saying that one of the key things we had to take care of was PC’s forwards, because they are extremely dangerous, extremely fast and really get good touches on the ball. That short little spurt where we were indecisive really hurt us.” But the Bears recovered and prevented the Friars from taking a single shot on goal for the remainder of the period. Springmeyer said that once the team regrouped and got back on the same page, they got back in the game. “I think as a team we just lost a little bit of hope, and it took all of our teammates helping each other out, supporting each other, and then we started getting back in the flow of things, and I think we kept on fighting until the end,” she said. “I think definitely in the second half we were in it and dominating most of it.” That came from the adjustments the team made at halftime. Harrington said that the Bears recommitted to their original game plan of getting fierce pressure and remaining in front of their opponents, passing quickly to keep the Friars on the move and attacking PC’s strong forwards when they received the ball to prevent them from running wild. “We were really giving PC a hard time getting out of their backfield,” she said. “They weren’t able to move
as quickly or advance as quickly down the field.” PC added to its lead just 9:21 into the second half, but this time Bruno answered. Just 1:42 later Springmeyer, situated near the left post, collected a long pass from Nora Malgieri ’10 at the top of the circle and beat the diving goalie with a shot to the middle of the cage. “Nora did a great job of eliminating the defender, and gave a crisp pass to me, and I got it in the net,” Springmeyer said. The Friars added a final goal at 21:02, but the Bears limited the damage with an aggressive press that could have changed the game. “Tactically we were in the spaces that we needed to be to not let them out of their backfield or their midfield, and we were able to counterattack quickly because our pressure did such a great job,” Harrington said. “And I think if we had stuck to that the whole game it would have been a completely different score.” Brown held PC to just a 15-10 advantage in shots and actually led in penalty corners, 4-2. Kessler and her replacement, Caroline Washburn ’12, each made one save, while Sacco and Springmeyer led a balanced offense with two shots apiece. But Harrington reserved special praise for Natalie Harrington ’09, a senior making her first start of the season. “She’s been really consistent with being a force with the ball,” the coach said. “She’s really fast and really plays with a lot of heart and helped us generate a lot of attacking opportunities down our right side in the second half.” Still looking for its first Ivy League win after four losses, Bruno will face a stiff test when co-Ivy leader Cornell (9-4, 4-0) comes to Warner Roof on Saturday at noon. The Bears know how important the game is as a chance to make a statement. “We talked about, as a team, really working hard on our communication, our rest and our accountability going into Saturday,” Coach Harrington said. “And I definitely think that Saturday is going to be a great match. I think that our kids are getting better every day, and we’re progressing as a program. Saturday is an Ivy home match, and I think that we really have it within our ability to have a great game from beginning to end.”
continued from page 12 So if your low intensity hockey team is beating ever yone by seven goals or more, maybe it’s time to start thinking about moving up to mid. That being said, I am somewhat sympathetic to the scrum of teams who play in a division below their skill level. Winning is fun. In what other sports event at Brown can your team win six games and have an undefeated season?
Not to mention you get the same free t-shir t and photo-op regardless of how hard it was to plow through the competition. At the same time, there are definitely improvements that could be made. If you make a commitment to play on a team, show up. Understandably, a Thursday night indoor soccer game might not be the highest thing on your list of priorities, and occasionally more important matters emerge
at the last minute. But keep in mind that when you don’t follow through on your commitment, it shortchanges those who did. All in all, intramurals are a great and relaxed way to play college sports without having to deal with 5 a.m. workouts or long bus rides. Just don’t expect to play half the people on your schedule.
Ben Singer ’09 hasn’t shown up to half of his IM volleyball games
M. soccer in homestretch continued from page 9 won the Bryant game 1-0 and didn’t play well. The past two games we’ve played well, and have had momentary letdowns that have cost us the win. The problem is that we’re running out of season. We have four big games ahead of us — we’re focused on that.” The Bears are glad to settle into conference play for the remainder of the season as the team will have four to five days to prep for each team, according to Sheehan. Brown will face Cornell on Saturday at 7 p.m. at Stevenson Field in the penultimate home game of the season.
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E ditorial & L etters Page 10
Friday, October 24, 2008
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
S t a ff E d i t o r i a l
Diamonds and coal An apologetic diamond to the new “pom” cheerleading group, the Sugar Bears. Next time, we’ll be sure to use a larger font so the nearsighted reader doesn’t think you are the “porn” team. A cubic zirconium to members of the Corporation for reporting to the community that they had “robust, thoughtful and informative” discussions last weekend. We like being kept in the loop — but with details like that, you might have spent the whole time catching up on “Lost,” for all we know. Coal to Rhode Island’s nation-leading 8.8 percent unemployment rate, though it shouldn’t come as any surprise. Some of the state’s biggest industries have been threatened recently — including loitering, yelling at pedestrians from your car and operating “restaurants” as a front for dubious loan sharking operations. A diamond to the Moroccan ambassador, who spoke about how his country has modernized despite being viewed through outmoded images. Maybe we should put on our aviator goggles, get on a prop plane and come visit you and Humphrey Bogart. Coal to the student volunteers who help children at a school in downtown Providence write articles for their newspaper about candy, favorite teachers and ice cream. Next time, do it like a real paper: Find us the poison candy, the teachers who use corporal punishment and the ice cream that’s skimming five percent off the school budget. For finding that more Brown faculty have donated to Barack Obama than to John McCain this year, a diamond to Obvious Market Research, Inc. P ete fallon
On that note, a diamond to professors who signed a statement supporting William Ayers. We hope Ayers won’t be tarnished by the association with Brown faculty. A diamond diamond to Man Man, the “vaudeville,” “tribal” and “gypsy ska” band set to play at BCA’s fall show. You sound cool enough to be our friends friends. Coal to the University for putting two historic houses on the market for $10. We know home prices have come down a bit, but nevertheless, we feel that you shouldn’t be able to buy up the East Side for a handful of meal credits. A diamond to the football team for their convincing victory over Princeton. Next time, see if the Tigers want to put a few billion dollars of their endowment on the line.
Letters Lecture skewed statements To the Editor: It’s too bad that The Herald sent such a hostile reporter to cover my speech. As a consequence, there is not a single statement attributed to me that can be taken at face value in the article he wrote. For example, I didn’t say that the Brown faculty members were communists and totalitarians. I said that
the 60 Brown faculty members — who signed a letter condemning Brown’s president in 2001 for defending the freedom of the press after leftists trashed an entire edition of The Herald for printing an ad I wrote — were not liberals, but had a mentality that was communist. David Horowitz Oct. 18
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Correction An article in The Herald (“Sugar bears hope to sweeten athletics,” Oct. 21) stated that the new pom team is holding its final tryouts on Sunday. The final tryouts will be held on Saturday. C O R R E C T I O N S P olicy The Brown Daily Herald is committed to providing the Brown University community with the most accurate information possible. Corrections may be submitted up to seven calendar days after publication. C ommentary P O L I C Y The staff editorial is the majority opinion of the editorial board of The Brown Daily Herald. The editorial viewpoint does not necessarily reflect the views of The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Columns, letters and comics reflect the opinions of their authors only. L etters to the E ditor P olicy Send letters to letters@browndailyherald.com. Include a telephone number with all letters. The Herald reserves the right to edit all letters for length and cannot assure the publication of any letter. Please limit letters to 250 words. Under special circumstances writers may request anonymity, but no letter will be printed if the author’s identity is unknown to the editors. Announcements of events will not be printed. advertising P olicy The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. reserves the right to accept or decline any advertisement at its discretion.
O pinions Friday, October 24, 2008
Congress as a special interest JOSHUA KAPLAN | Opinions Columnist Campaigning in Ohio recently Gov. Sarah Palin echoed a common sentiment: “There’s anger about the insider dealing of lobbyists.” Standing on stage with an open barn in the background she went on to say “I love ‘Small Town USA’ because hardworking, good American (families), you guys, you just get it.” While Palin peppers every other sentence with a reference to small towns, Sens. Biden, Obama and McCain never go too long without mentioning them either. Listen to any of their speeches for any duration of time and you will hear that lobbyists are bad and small towns, along with their people and values, are good. Both major party presidential and vice presidential nominees are guilty of oversimplifying the issue to the point of absurdity. This oversimplification is dangerous because it places the blame for Washington’s problems outside of the Congress itself. Representatives in the House go about their days representing the normal interests of the constituents. But to others those so-called normal interests are ver y much special interests. While the line between pork barrel spending and normal interests is quite blurry, there is a distinction. Sen. Ted Stevens’, D-Alaska, infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” is the epitome of pure pork. At a cost of $223 million the bridge was to connect Gravina Island and its 50 residents with a nearby sizable town. But most requests for infrastructure and other expenditures are hardly so outlandish. Back to small towns and normal interests, a good example is agriculture. The real work in Congress gets done in committees, one such being the House Committee on Agriculture. The good people of Small Town USA’s representatives disproportionately sit on the agriculture committee. Of the 45 members of the committee, few represent districts in non-rural areas. Representing the perfectly normal interests of their constituents, the committee puts out legislation severely biased toward the agriculture industry. This year’s farm bill
(The Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008) allocated $307 billion to ensure that farmers of almost every crop will receive more from the government. An example of the absurdity: The government will purchase sugar for double the going global rate and then sell it at an 80 percent loss. Were lobbyists from the agricultural industry involved in the legislation? Undoubtedly. Nonetheless, in a committee filled with people representing agricultural interests, lobbyists or not, the legislation is going to come out heavily favoring agricultural interests. This is not inherently a problem. In an extremely diverse nation functioning under a representative democracy, people with similar interests will group together to further their cause. This comes as no surprise, as back in 1787, James Madison penned Federalist Paper No. 10 about the factions that will inevitably arise. He went on further to describe the mechanism by which our nation could effectively deal with them. Special interests are perhaps the purest embodiment of a faction. Lobbyists represent many issues near and dear to the Brown community. Sierra Club, the pro-environment group, believes “lobbying legislators is at the core of the democratic process in the United States.” Save Darfur has instructions on how to have an “effective advocacy meeting” with members of Congress on their Web site. While there are the multitudes of lobbyists who represent “nefarious” organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of America and “Big Oil,” determining what constitutes a good and bad organization is ultimately a difficult task. Furthermore, there is no neutral entity capable of making such a distinction. If lobbying were to somehow magically disappear, I do not doubt Congress’s agenda would change. But I strongly disagree with the notion that this would “fix Washington” as both McCain and Obama insist. Congress has plenty of its own problems without lobbyist involvement.
Joshua Kaplan ‘11 oversimplified this argument to fit the length of this column.
The cumbersome letter transmission process ROSE SUBOTNIK | Guest Columnist Am I the only faculty member who feels beleaguered by the rising onslaught of requests from graduate schools for electronic recommendations of our undergraduate applicants? Until recently it was possible to write a single letter for each student, send it to the Career Development Center, and trust the Dossier Service to send copies of it to all relevant graduate programs. No more. Now it seems necessary to keep a hawk-eye open for one electronic request after another (they are easy to overlook), to find a way of organizing and retrieving those recommendations, each with its various information and deadlines, and to keep track of a slew of user-IDs and passwords in order to re-enter each form multiple times. No more are we allowed to skip those tables checking off percentiles for numerous aspects of each student’s personality. I felt I had hit bottom when an electronic request arrived from Brown itself (et tu, Brunonia?) Law school applicants still seem exempt from this system. So far it still seems possible to send off a single letter for each student to the Law School Admission Council, which blessedly takes care of the multiple transmissions. No comparable system is at work in the graduate school admissions process. Changing one’s password for a single student at a single school may in fact change one’s password for another student applying to another school if the two happen to use the same electronic service. This inadvertent change invalidates information on the original e-mail requests that one is laboring so hard to keep track of. And one can waste large amounts of time trying to enter a recommendation on a Web site that has suddenly broken down. From my perspective, the graduate school admissions offices have, in a totally decentralized and disorganized way, made their own lives easier by dropping an unconscionable burden on the faculty who write the recommendations. At some point, at least for me, the burden will become intolerable, and I will pull back from the recommendation process. Already, for the first time in my life, I have set an internal date, coming up shortly, after which I will not accept new requests for recommendations. If other faculty members do likewise, the cost for the graduate schools’ ease will ultimately
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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
be paid by our undergraduates. I don’t even believe that this “paperless” system is genuinely paperless. I suspect that many if not most of those who receive our on-line letters print them out before reading them. I would. To whom does one complain about this new (non) system? One can’t stand on a mountain top and scream that one won’t take it any more. If enough faculty members resist
Until recently it was possible to write a single letter for each student, send it to the Career Development Center, and trust the Dossier Service to send copies of it to all relevant graduate programs. No more. the system, perhaps eventually it will change; but students will suffer in the interim. Might it be possible for the dossier service at each school to protect faculty from endless electronic requests by accepting our letters as on-line attachments and transmitting them to multiple graduate schools as they once did our hard copies? If so, how do we institute such a shift in policy?
Rose Subotnik is a professor emerita of music.
Civic engagement and the military BY ADAM SWARTZBAUGH Guest Columnist This column is long overdue, and it is my fault as the sole Reserve Officers’ Training Corps member at Brown that this issue has not been addressed recently. As many know, a panel was held last spring on the relevance of ROTC and its value on campus. While the panel successfully educated a lot of people about the task and purpose of the program, it was unfortunate that only a few dozen people were present to hear the discussion. I would like to briefly reflect on my experiences with the ROTC program. My initial motivations for joining ROTC were entirely personal. I joined because I wanted to improve myself, and I even felt that the military had no place on campus. A lot of research and three years of personal experience have changed my mind and convinced me that ROTC is indeed the quintessential method of officer training for a military in a democratic society that is representative of our principal civic values and that remains under civilian control. At Brown I spend most of my time questioning authority, redefining legitimacy and deconstructing the very meaning of right and wrong, black and white, up and down. The military is largely a yes-sir-no-sir reactive environment where creativity and out-of-the-box thinking is to some degree stunted in order to promote operational integrity and organizational functionality.
Army members, like most Brown students, are passionate about serving their communities. Whatever chasm we think may exist between ourselves and the military could be bridged by reorganizing our commonalities. But, as leaders, officers have a chance to create change, to shake things up, to identify new missions and redefine how we achieve our ends. As students at Brown we are blessed with an opportunity to reshape the world — to influence, to inspire and to mobilize people. Politicians may wave the wand, but military officers make concrete decisions that dramatically shape the lives of thousands of people on a daily basis. I hope to reshape the military, to make it the best that it can be. Many people view the military merely as a tool of destruction. The military is, in fact, the single most efficient and effective organization in the world, and a force that can be commanded to do a range of truly incredible things. As its mission broadens, so do opportunities for change from within. The individual does have a voice in the military and is not merely a cog in the wheel. The individual as a leader is, however, part of a group and representative of its interests – putting others before his or her self, always. Of all the governmental, nongovernmental, nonprofit, relief and support organizations I have worked with around the world, none comes close to matching the U.S. Army’s ability to get things done. The Army does not take shortcuts, make excuses or complain. Rather, it assesses, executes and takes full responsibility for its actions. When I think of a bunch of bright-minded, liberal Ivy Leaguers in the too-often conservative and singleminded military, it warms my heart. This sort of involvement with the military is about service to the country but, above all, it is protection of the American Constitution and what it represents. To that extent, the mission of the American military is to serve and protect mankind. In the Army differences of color, gender and ethnicity are blurred. Unequal treatment based on sexual orientation could best be addressed through active engagement with the Army. Direct confrontation is much more effective than complaining from afar. Army members, like most Brown students, are passionate about serving their communities. Whatever chasm we think may exist between ourselves and the military could be bridged by recognizing our commonalities. Many Brown students want to start some kind of revolution. Many of us are motivated by the drive to change something. Brown can give us the intellectual capacity to get things done. Military experience can provide us with the ability to lead.
Adam Swartzbaugh ’09 is the current ROTC Commander.
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Friday, October 24, 2008
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
Field hockey falls to PC’s Friars, 6-2
Intramurals: A sporting dilemma It’s getting to be the end of October, and that means one thing for sports fans in New England: fall intramural sports playoffs. While those of us who showed up to our games will be making it to the postseason, there remains some skepticism about Ben Singer intramurals in HIGH NOTES general. First of f, there’s attendance. Many people come to intramural sports because they aren’t a big time commitment. Unless 40 minutes a week is a big time commitment. Still, for most teams, if half of your roster shows up, you’ve had a monster day already. The prophetic personnel at the IM department considered the attendance issue, and therefore require teams to have a certain number of players or they must forfeit. If a team forfeits more than once, it’s disqualified for the season. You’d think these types of ruless would ensure either that teams would show up to their games or that absent teams would be removed early on. The problem is that most IM seasons are about six games long. So even if only one or two teams don’t show up, that’s a third of your season gone already. Even more common than teams not showing up is the lopsided track meet. One team will show up with a few players, and their opponents show up with an armada of players so large that they can loan you enough for a full team and still have subs. Note: You can tell which teams will form these armadas because they have custom-made uniforms. This is actually a pretty fun outcome because ever yone gets to play, but it brings me to the next issue. Intensity. It’s the word the IM department uses to differentiate between the three tiers of play in each sport: low intensity, middle intensity and high intensity. It’s a good way to separate people, but not ever ybody really has a good gauge of how intense they are. Just ask the guy playing low intensity soccer why he wears metal cleats and keeps calling fouls on you. Or the pitcher who keeps brushing people back in low intensity Sunday softball. Believe it or not, the only serious injur y I’ve seen occurred during a brawl in a low division soccer game. Still, after witnessing my IM soccer team get crushed 8-0 by a team consisting of members of the Men’s Club Soccer team, I think maybe intensity isn’t the only thing that should be dividing these teams. Maybe it’s not P.C., but the IM forms should replace the word “intensity” with “skill.” In general, most people make this assumption when figuring out where their teams should play, but ever y year you run into a few teams that didn’t get the memo.
By Andrew Braca Assistant Sports Editor
Justin Coleman / Herald
Victoria Sacco ‘09 scored a goal for the second consecutive game to give the Bears a 1-0 lead over PC, but Bruno wasn’t able to hold on as the team lost by a final score of 6-2.
continued on page 9
Despite scoring attempts, men’s soccer falls short of goal By Katie Wood Assistant Sports Editor
Tuesday night, the men’s soccer team (8-4-1) finished its nonconference schedule with a 1-0 loss against Hartwick College (5-4-5). The loss is the second in a row for the Bears, who only 0 Brown have four Ivy Hartwick 1 League opponents left on the schedule. Although the team has faced disappointing results the past two games, allowing five goals to one scored, the team feels it has played well and is headed in the right direction. “We’ve become more focused as a team,” captain Dylan Sheehan ’09 said. “Our past two games have been the best performances of the season. The team has the right
mentality in going for ward. We just haven’t been lucky.” The Hawks scored the game’s lone goal in the 26th minute of play. Brown goalie Paul Grandstand ’11 came out of the net on the play, and a Hartwick attacker shot one past him to his left side. Both teams had an even number of shots (3-3) in the first half, but Brown had a big advantage on corner kicks (5-0). The Bears headed into the half down 1-0. In the second half, the Bears battled the Hawks on offense but could not score a goal. In the last 20 minutes of the game, a sense of urgency to score kicked in, and the Bears made several good shots on goal. Sean Rosa ’12 had a great look from 30 yards out but couldn’t find the back of the net as his shot hit the post and rebounded back
into play. David Walls ’11 picked up the rebound and sent the ball high over the goal. Sheehan made one last push for the Bears, as he had several good looks in the final minute of play. He smashed a shot just outside the 18yard box, but the Hawks’ reserve goalie made his first save of the season to secure the win. Sheehan attempted one last desperate shot in the final 10 seconds that went wide. Grandstand (2-3-1) recorded the loss in net. “We pushed hard in the second half, but Hartwick disrupted our game plan,” Walls said. “We were very frustrated because we couldn’t score and wasted a lot of time.” The Bears’ frustration on offense started long before the Hartwick game. Despite registering 26 shots over the past two games, Bruno
has only been able to connect for one goal, scored in the last minute of a blowout loss to Harvard last Saturday. “We’ve been generating the chances, and the goals haven’t been coming for us,” Sheehan said. “We’ve been working on finishing and the delivery of balls. Once we score one, the flood gates will open. Goals come in bunches. Hopefully we’ll be able to continue from there.” Head Coach Mike Noonan said the team performed well despite the loss and believes it is only a matter of time before the team’s hard work will pay off. “The team continues to play well and evolve,” Noonan said. “In comparison to the Hartwick game, we continued on page 9
M. varsity eight nabs second at Head of the Charles By Nicole Stock Staff Writer
The men’s crew team finished second in the Championship Eight this past weekend at the 44th Head of the Charles. Making up the Brown varsity eight were Christian Crynes ’10, Brent Mylrea ’11, Matt Wheeler
ATHLETES OF THE WEEK ’09, Cole Bonner ’10, Ben Duggan ’10, Scott Morgan ’10, Nick Ritter ’10 and Gareth Seymour ’09, with Rob O’Leary ’09 coxing. The Bears finished the race ahead of teams from France, Netherlands, Spain, England and Turkey that were racing with national team rowers. Brown was the first Ivy League team to cross the finish line. In fact, the top three boats for Bruno finished before any other Ivy League team’s first boat. This was the highest finish for the Bears in Courtesy of Brownbears.com
continued on page 9
The field hockey team played 66 minutes at even strength with No. 20 Providence College on Wednesday, but a defensive letdown made all the difference in a 6-2 loss. The Friars (10-8) scored four goals in a 3:24 span in the middle of the first half to ruin a generally strong effort by the Bears (3-10) on a cold and blustery afternoon on Warner Roof. “We did play well today, the majority of the game, but we have to play well for the entire game, and that’s what I expect of the kids,” Head Coach Tara Harrington ’94 said. “We need to really work hard to come with that consistency and that high intensity for the entirety of the match.” Brown struck first just 1:35 into the game, when Victoria Sacco ’09 scored on a penalty corner for the second straight game. Taking an
The men’s varsity eight bested Ivy crews and European national teams for second place at the prestigious Head of the Charles.
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