Daily
Herald
the Brown
vol. cxxii, no. 18
Friday, February 17, 2012
Since 1891
IvyQ conference to Slavery explore queer identity memorial By Katrina Phillips Features Editor
Jonathan Bateman / Herald
“Born into” baseball, starter JJ Franco ’14 spent time with the Mets as a young boy. See page 5 for the full story.
Students from across the Ivy League arrived on campus yesterday to participate in IvyQ, an annual weekend-long conference that tackles issues of queer identity first held two years ago at Penn. Brown is hosting the conference for the first time and expects 500 students to participate in the weekend’s jam-packed schedule of lectures, panel discussions and socializing. Conference Co-Chairs Alp Ozcelik ’13 and Drew Heckman ’13 said they are excited the conference is at Brown this year and hope their planning of this year’s event will help form a framework for future hosts of the conference
and ensure its continued growth. This year, Registration Chair Ben Gellman ’14 said a limited number of registration slots were allotted to non-Ivy League students. The slots have been filled mostly by students from Rhode Island universities, but also a few from Vanderbilt University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The conference includes a series of workshop sessions in which participants can attend different panels and lectures on topics such as “enthusiastic consent,” the way “gay male physique magazines invented 1950s masculinity,” high school anti-gay bullying and more. In each workshop block, at-
(coin) for approximately $300,000 in an auction,” according to the criminal complaint. An Italian law — the Code of the Cultural and Landscape Heritage — states that all antiquities found in Italy after 1909 are subject to the absolute ownership of the Italian government. An informant notified the court that “the Italian government never gave (the) defendant or anyone continued on page 2
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“What happens if no one shows up?” That was the question I couldn’t bring myself to ask Obuamah Laud Addy, lead singer and drummer of the AS220 Criss Cross Orchestra, or Liam Sullivan, the group’s manager and guitarist.
Arts & Culture But it was nearly an hour after last Thursday’s show was supposed to start, and there were only four distinctly uncomfortable people in AS220’s performance space, despite the fact that the Criss Cross Orchestra has performed in this space the second Thursday of every month for over a year. Half an hour may be acceptable lag time — but an hour is disconcerting. Two band members changed their shirts. The backup percussionist’s girlfriend, wedged behind a tiny table, crossed and recrossed her legs. The keyboardist’s girlfriend mirrored her. Sullivan shifted his weight and frowned. Beers were bought, downed and refilled. Trumpet and French horn player Gerard Heroux, a former Brown adjunct
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news....................2 Arts & Culture.....3 SPORTS................4-5 editorial...........6 Opinions.............7
Nobel Prize-winning physicist enthralls first-years By Hannah Kerman Senior Staff Writer
“He’s sassy,” said Hannah Benenson ’15 as she climbed over another student to get to the middle of the row, a few seats closer to Professor of Physics Leon Cooper, Nobel Prize winner and instructor of the first-year seminar, PHYS 0100: “Flat Earth to Quantum Uncertainty: On the Nature and Meaning of Scientific Explanation.”
science “It’s my favorite class,” said Alex Bok ’15, another student happy with his choice to spend an hour and a half every Tuesday and Thursday listening to Cooper passionately expound on some of history’s great scientific discoveries. Discussing Isaac Newton and the writing of Principia, Cooper
Ping pong
Alum founds dance group that transcends cultures Arts & culture, 3
could not contain his excitement. “It seems logical when you view the ideas in the textbook, but really as it is being created, the science is just inspired conjecture,” he said in a voice both raspy and melodious. Looking exactly like a stereotypical physicist — pink shirt beneath a green corduroy jacket, flyaway white hair — he is dapper and witty. “Inspired conjecture after inspired conjecture leads to a new way of looking at the world,” he said. “In this way, science is almost closer to art than logic.” This is a man who understands scientific discovery. After graduating with a PhD from Columbia, Cooper began a quest to develop the theory of superconductivity. Superconductivity, a phenomenon occurring at extremely cold temperatures, allows metals to continued on page 5
Corrine Szczesny / Herald Nobel Prize winner Professor Leon Cooper lectures first-years in a physics seminar.
Class act
Moffat ’13 calls for drug reclassification Opinions, 7
weather
By Katherine Long Senior Staff Writer
Professor of Orthopaedics ArnoldPeter Weiss was arrested in New York City last month for allegedly possessing an ancient coin stolen from Italy. The coin remains the property of the Italian government, according to Italian law. Weiss faces second-degree felony charges for knowingly acquiring and attempting to sell a looted coin called Tetradrachm, which is
valued at over $50,000, according to the criminal complaint provided by Diem Tran, senior press officer of New York County District Attorney’s Office. The criminal court set bail at $200,000, and Weiss is expected to appear in court March 21 for possible grand jury action, Tran wrote in an email to The Herald. Tetradrachm is a 4th century B.C. Italian silver coin. The deponent in the case stated that he observed Weiss “attempting to sell the same
By Elizabeth Koh Staff Writer
Graceful metal skeletons, ash wood ladders stretching skyward, woven rattan curved into elegant silhouettes — the work of sculptor Martin Puryear, who has been selected to design a memorial to acknowledge the University’s links to the transatlantic slave trade, evokes a sense of minimalism even though he reportedly rejects the movement. The Yale-trained artist, who has received numerous accolades for his work, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award, has been showcased in galleries from the Guggenheim to the Museum of Modern Art. After its February meeting, the Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, announced Puryear’s commission to design a memorial in a campus-wide email. The announcement follows the University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice’s 2006 recommendation to erect a memorial “inviting reflection and fresh discovery without provoking paralysis or shame.” The memorial should be
Criss Cross Med School prof arrested for coin theft crosses genres at AS220 By Eunice Kim Contributing Writer
designer chosen
t o d ay
tomorrow
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