The Brown Daily Herald T uesday, N ovember 11, 2008
Volume CXLIII, No. 110
Since 1866, Daily Since 1891
Recent grads laden with debt
‘Raw’ from defeat, Shays stresses need for honesty By Sara Sunshine Senior Staff Writer
Still reeling from his defeat on election day, Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., spoke to a less than halffull Salomon 101 about truthfulness in government on Monday afternoon. Shays, who has represented Connecticut’s fourth district since 1987, began the talk sponsored by the Taubman Center for Public Policy with a sad acknowledgement of his recent loss to Democrat Jim Himes. Shays was the only Republican representing New England in the U.S. House of Representatives, and he compared his failure to get re-elected after 21 years of service to an athlete at the height of his game not having his contract renewed. “I would have preferred to address you as a re-elected (congressman),” Shays said. “It’s still pretty raw. And it’s difficult for me. If you see me get a tear in my eye, it will be a sincere tear.” Shays stressed the importance of truthfulness in government in his talk, called “We Need to Go Where the Truth Takes Us.” “The fact is, unless we are truthful with each other, our country will continue to muddle through, will continue to kick the can down the road, will continue to ignore one inconvenient truth after another,” Shays said.
Shays cited many examples of these “inconvenient truths” that he said government figures tend to leave for later or flat-out ignore, including energy dependence and deteriorating infrastructure. Real action on these issues fails to materialize because it would be costly and time-consuming, Shays said. Other truths — like the flawed public education system — are inconvenient because they are so daunting, Shays said. “In urban areas, young people fall into gaping holes,” he said. “It raises the question of whether public education can really meet the competitive challenges of a global economy.” One of the biggest “impediments to truth-telling,” Shays said, is a press that “seems to have been dummied down to the point of absurdity.” Shays pointed to the death of local newspapers and lack of in-depth reporting as contributing factors to the media’s lack of accountability and responsibility. The advent of a 24-hour news cycle and the popularity of blogs worsened the problem, Shays added, by leading to the spread of misinformation. He told a story about his elderly mother showing him a clipping mailed out by an interest group about health care. The brochure said
Unaffected by new aid policy, grads to start repaying loans By Nicole Dungca Staf f Writer
Eunice Hong / Herald
Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., talked about the importance of an honest government, especially regarding the recent poor infrastructure.
continued on page 4
Alum dissects relationship between poetry and medicine By Kelly Mallahan Staf f Writer
Deep in the bowels of the Sidney E. Frank Hall for Life Sciences, surrounded by smaller primate skeletons and crude graffiti, are 25 dead human bodies. They are organized in neat rows, each on its own stainless steel gurney with plastic bags full of removed organs on the bottom shelf, eerily greeting everyone who enters the anatomy lab. These cadavers have
been dissected, disemboweled, seeks to “share with people and poked and prodded by students also to deal with the emotional at Alpert Medical School all se- intensity of the task of dissection” mester as part of their first year and to explore “the transition stuof study. dents undergo from non-doctor to The bodies are also doctor.” FEATURE the subjects of a new When she star ted book by Christine Monmedical school, “the first tross MD’06, a poet and house question that all my friends and staf f of ficer in psychiatr y at family had for me was, ‘What is Brown. anatomy like? What do bodies look Montross said her book, “Body like, what do they feel like?’” she of Work: Meditations on Morality said. She wrote her book in part as from the Human Anatomy Lab,” an attempt to answer those ques-
tions and also to communicate the profundity of cutting, touching and learning from actual human bodies, who had once been alive and loved. “It’s initially over whelming to be in a room with these cadavers and also to realize that you’re going to be asked to touch and cut them,” she said. “Body of Work” traces Montross’ experience from the first continued on page 4
Nicholas Swisher ’08 is beginning to feel the pressure. With over $20,000 to pay back in student loans, the former Herald opinions editor is currently searching for a job to help him with his first few payments, which are coming up in a few months. Swisher, who worked for President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign in southeastern Pennsylvania after graduation, plans to go to law school in two years but needs to find a job in the interim. So far, the options for the history concentrator have been limited in today’s uncertain economy. “It’s pretty brutal out there,” he said. “It makes me nervous about my prospects.” Recent financial aid policy changes at Brown — which replace loans with grants for most students whose family income is less than $100,000, and eliminate parental contributions for most students whose families make less than $60,000 — will likely make Swisher’s predicament less common for many students from the class of 2012 and beyond. Yet the history concentrator’s anxieties seem to echo the sentiments of other graduates across the country, who saw themselves graduate with high amounts of debt in an increasingly uncertain economy. Deeper in debt In 2007, the average college student graduated with an average of $20,098 in student loans, a 6 percent increase from $18,976 in 2006, according to a recently released report by the Project of Student Debt, a part of the nonprofit Institute for continued on page 4
Cambodian refugee discusses work, war By Sarah Husk Staf f Writer
Min Wu / Herald
Chhaya Chhoum, a Cambodian refugee, spoke on activism in immigrant communities.
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METRO
HUGS FOR THE HOMElESS Student group brings cheer to the homeless amid chilly weather and economic times
www.browndailyherald.com
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CAMPUS NEWS
Chhaya Chhoum grew up in the Bronx, living in a one-bedroom apartment with 10 to 15 other family members, no hot water and no heat. She is a Cambodian refugee whose family fled the country during the fall of the Khmer Rouge Regime, sur viving multiple relocations only to be placed in conditions of extreme poverty and cultural ignorance. Chhoum, who now works as a youth organizer in her old neighborhood, delivered a message of activism and change to a full Salomon 001 Monday night.
GOD GETTING YOU DOWN? A professor questions whether religion causes or prevents depression
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OPINIONS
Her lecture, entitled “We Have Ever y Right to be Against this War,” addressed issues facing the Southeast Asians in her community as well as the relevance of the Iraq War to immigrants like herself and her community. Chhoum was introduced by VyVy Trinh ’11 and Alexander Vang ’10, co-programmers of Southeast Asian Heritage Week, of which the event was a part. “Our stories are complicated,” said Trinh, who spoke of a shared histor y of colonization and oppression among Southeast Asian culture and called for “the politicization of Southeast Asian identity.”
GETTING BETTER William Martin ’10 argues that Republicans should focus on improving government
195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island
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Vang, who is one of only five Hmong students at Brown, shared his stor y of transitioning from a predominantly Hmong community in Fresno, Calif. to a heavily Caucasian community in Oklahoma, and then ultimately moving back to a Hmong community in Milwaukee. At Brown, Vang said, he still feels left out. “When you ask people what Hmong is, they say ‘Hmong? What’s that? Mongolian?’” he said. For Chhoum, who has been working to establish health justice for Southeast Asian refugees, it continued on page 6 THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN Football loses its perfect league record in Saturday’s game against Yale
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