Daily Herald the Brown
vol. cxliv, no. 40 | Monday, March 30, 2009 | Serving the community daily since 1891
Students support ‘Fall Weekend’ By Hannah Moser and Seth Motel Senior Staf f Writer and Staf f Writer
More than two-thirds of Brown undergraduates favor changing the name of “Columbus Day” on the University calendar, according to a Herald poll conducted earlier this month.
Brown hosts taekwondo Nat’ls for the first time By Kevin Pratt Contributing Writer
As most Brown students packed their bags and headed home for spring break, more than 400 taekwondo competitors from colleges across the nation converged on campus last weekend for the 34th National Collegiate Championship, the first-ever taekwondo tournament hosted at Brown. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology took first place in overall points at the championship, which included two-person sparring and single-person competitions in choreographed form sequences called poomsae. Brown won the division for novices or color belts (as distinct from black belts) and placed second overall. Sixty-five athletes from Brown competed this year, the most any school has sent to a national championship, said Angela Yang ’09, a former president of Brown taekwondo.
Planning for the tournament began last April after Brown was told at the 2008 nationals at Stanford University that it would host this year’s championship, said Michelle Ramadan ’10, the club’s current president. The Brown-hosted competition was distinguished from past years’ contests by the extensive use of a tournament Web site in the weeks leading up the event. The site was updated continuously by Web master Paul Jeng ’10 with competitor and volunteer registration information, the event schedule and items competitors should bring, Ramadan said. Rex Hatfield, President of the National Collegiate Taekwondo Association, called the tournament the “first fully online championship.” “I think the online aspect of it helped take away a lot of the faceto-face problem-solving we’ve had
Don’t know / No answer
1.8%
Change date and name
5.6% 6.1%
Keep date and name
5.3%
Though 27.2 percent of students polled indicated that they would like the holiday to remain “Columbus Day,” 67.2 percent said they would prefer changing the name. Among the options on the poll — taken from the alternative names considered by students in the months before the poll — “Fall Weekend,” which was the name proposed to the Faculty Executive Committee, garnered the most support. 45.6 percent of respondents supported keeping the holiday on the second Monday in October while changing its name to “Fall Weekend,” 8.4 percent were in favor of calling the holiday “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” and 5.3 percent suggested renaming it “Tomato Day.” An additional 6.1 percent wanted to change both the name and the date of the
Courtesy of Dan Bailey
Remove name and no day off
“Tomato Day”
HERALD POLL
Brown hosted the 34th National Collegiate Championship March 21 and 22.
The University currently recognizes the second Monday in October as the Columbus Day holiday. There has been some discussion about changing the name or its status as a day off. How should the University respond?
“Indigenous Peoples’ Day”
27.2%
8.4% Keep date and “Fall Weekend”
45.6%
How confident or worried are you about getting the job you want to have after graduation? Don’t know / No answer
5.3%
Very confident
10.5%
Don’t plan to get job immediately
15.1%
Somewhat confident
23.5%
Very worried
14.3%
Somewhat worried
31.2%
continued on page 2 Jessie Calihan / Herald
U. sees BIAP and AIP applicant increase By Caitlin Trujillo Contributing Writer
The Career Development Center saw a 30 percent increase in the number of applicants for the Brown Internship Award Program and the Aided Internship Award Program this year. William Bordac, communications and public relations officer for the CDC, said the center received 235 total applications this year. While the CDC had anticipated an increase as a result of the troubled economic climate, the total count was surprising,
continued on page 9
Bordac said. According to Bordac, the CDC expects to award 50 students through BIAP this year in order to meet the increased demand. Last year only 41 BIAP awards, which are sponsored by third-party donors, were given out. The number of AIP awards, however, will remain steady at 25 because Brown funds them directly. Due to the budget crisis, the University was unable to provide for an increase this year. Bordac said one of the reasons for the jump in applications this year was
the increase in unpaid — as opposed to paid — internships, resulting in more students looking for funding assistance. Finding and securing internships this year while working with the BIAP timeline presented a challenge for some applicants. Anna Newby ’10 chose not to apply for BIAP primarily because of the mid-March deadline, which she thought was too early for many competitive and prestigious internship response deadlines. Becontinued on page 4
New research examines acro-bat-ics By Kevin Pratt Contributing Writer
inside
Brown researchers have shed light for the first time on how bats perform the acrobatics necessary to land with their feet above their heads. The research, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology earlier this month, shows that landing styles varied among species: Two species studied cart-wheeled into a softer landing, while a third back-flipped into a harder impact and landed on all fours. Daniel Riskin, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology who was the study’s lead
News.....1-4 Arts........5-6 Spor ts...7-9 Editorial..10 Opinion...11 Today........12
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author, said the differences in landing styles may be due to evolutionary differences between the bats. A broad aim of his research was to shed light on the function of bats’ unique body shape — the mammals have skinny, long legs that are wellsuited to flying and roosting, but could be at risk of injury during forceful landings, Riskin told The Herald. Associate Professor of Biology Sharon Swartz and Professor of Engineering Kenneth Breuer assisted Riskin’s study, providing funding, personnel and access to the animals for the research. The research team used bats housed in the basement
of the BioMedical Center and at the University of Maryland. High-speed digital cameras captured the bats’ landings, and a scale attached to the lab’s ceiling measured the force of their impacts. The research took advantage of bats’ natural tendency to choose a favorite roosting spot in a given enclosed space and keep returning to it, Riskin said. The slow-motion videos of the bats’ landings, which Riskin has posted on his personal Web site, show bats swooping toward their perches, then — depending on their continued on page 4
Courtesy of Brown
Brown researchers studied bats’ ability to acrobatically land upside down.
Arts, 5
Sports, 7
Opinions, 11
‘Pulled up’ Eclectic new exhibit at the RISD museum keeps things “light”
M. Crew sweeps yale Rowing season starts of strong with three wins over Yale
Let it bleed Tor y Har tmann ’11 encourages students to give blood, life.
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