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disciplines Medical School teaching reputation peer institutions facilities
stretched thin ambitious
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growing up innovation
values
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undergraduate
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direction
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financially blind admsison
laboratory
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competitiveness The Brown Dailyresearcher Herald | Commencement 2008
admit-
table of contents
EDITOR ’ S NOTE Graduating seniors and the nostalgic alums converging on College Hill this weekend all love Brown. Each of us had a unique experience at this famously individualistic institution, but there are some defining characteristics that permeate the university-college culture. As bulldozers and a billion dollars transform our alma mater, some of those beloved features may not last. We were Brown students at a time of profound change for the University. Over the last four years, we’ve grown up on College Hill. And as we developed, so did Brown — with bigger buildings, deeper pockets and loftier goals. Construction sites along Angell Street and marquee donations may not have had an obvious impact on our daily lives. But there is little question that the ambitious plans driving the University (examined in our cover story, “Is a Bigger Brown Better?”) will redefine this place for the next generation of Brown students.
Commencement
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Commencement Events Honorary Degrees & Senior Orators
Features
6 Looking Back A Connected Campus 10 18 Burying the Brown Brothers A University in Transition 21 Brown’s Facelift 28 a timeline of four years at Brown our technological evolution from phones to facebook
a lasting legacy for the slavery & justice report? how ruth simmons’ ambitious agenda is transforming the university-college
a map of new developments slated to supersize college hill
34 From Paper to Pixel
the herald’s archives go digital
editors’ columns
2008 by
the numbers
the herald senior survey comics final thoughts
ST A F F
editors
writers
design
eric beck mary-catherine lader stephen colelli allison kwong ben leubsdorf sonia saraiya jonathan sidhu anne wootton
michael bechek samuel byker chaz firestone isabel gottlieb franklin kanin chaz kelsh alex roehrkasse michael skocpol
stephen delucia chaz kelsh allison kwong photo
39 46 49 63 64
& graphics
ashley hess roxanne palmer min wu Cover design by Steve DeLucia, using a text cloud of the Plan for Academic Enrichment.
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The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
COMMENCEMENT 2008 schedule of major events Friday, May 23 5:30 – 8:30 p.m. Brown Bear Buffet, one of Brown’s oldest traditions with a meal and entertainment by Brown a cappella groups. Sharpe Refectory, Main Dining Room 9:00 p.m. – Midnight Third World Center reception Third World Center, 68 Brown St. 9 p.m. – 1 a.m. Campus Dance. At midnight, an informal, impromptu singing of the Alma Mater will take place on Sayles Hall steps. The College Green
Saturday, May 24 9:30 a.m. Hour with the President Lincoln Field 9:30 a.m. – 2 p.m. Commencement Forums, a series of academic colloquia by faculty, alums and distinguished guests.
cap and gown. In case of heavy rain, graduating seniors report directly to the First Baptist Church in America. The College Green
12 p.m. – 3 p.m. Alumni Field Day, barbecue and outdoor activities for alums and their families. Erickson Athletic Complex
3 p.m. Baccalaureate Service. The multi-faith ceremony will be video-broadcast on the College Green and in Salomon Center and Sayles Hall. The First Baptist Church in America
2 p.m. Baccalaureate Procession Formation. Graduating seniors assemble wearing
4 p.m. – 6 p.m. Brown Daily Herald Alumni Reunion 195 Angell St.
Sunday, May 25 9:45 a.m. Commencement Procession Steps Off Faunce Arch, the College Green 11:30 a.m. Graduate School Convocation Ceremony awarding of degrees. Lincoln Field 11:30 a.m. The Medical School Convocation Ceremony awarding of degrees. The First Unitarian Church
12:10 p.m. College Ceremony The Grounds of the First Baptist Church in America Live video broadcast on the College Green and in Salomon Center and Sayles Hall. Live audiocast into Manning Chapel, Meehan Auditorium, and the Pizzitola Center.
1:10 p.m. University Ceremony. Senior Orations and awarding of honorary degrees. The College Green
Departmental Ceremonies will take place immediately afterward at assigned locations as listed in the Commencement program. Most following ceremonies, depending on the number of graduates in the department, will end no later than 4 p.m.
The Commencement procession will be cancelled only in the event of heavy rain.
The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
H O N O RARY D E G R E E S Judith Jamison
Edwidge Danticat MFA’93 A graduate of Barnard College, Danticat hails originally from Haiti. Her Brown thesis was the foundation for her novel “Breath, Eyes, Memory,” released in 1994 and picked four years later for Oprah’s Book Club. Danticat has written several critically acclaimed books, among them “Krik? Krak!,” a National Book Award finalist, and “Brother, I’m Dying,” also a National Book Award finalist and recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. She has also taught creative writing at the University of Miami and New York University.
Jamison, a dancer and choreographer, is the artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Her dance career began in 1964 when she joined the American Ballet Theater, becoming a member of Alvin Ailey a year later. She became the artistic director in 1989. Jamison has received numerous accolades, including the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center Honor. She has appeared in ballet companies all over the world, in Broadway shows and in a PBS special that won her an Emmy Award. Her talents are both artistic and academic: she has worked to build an M.F.A. program at the Ailey School in cooperation with Fordham University.
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baccalaureate Address
Dave Eggers Dave Eggers is the author of numerous books, including “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” a memoir about having to raise his younger brother after their parents’ death from cancer. He is also the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publisher in San Francisco known for its quarterly literary journal. The recipient of an honorary degree from Brown in 2005, Eggers has also founded 826 Valencia, a writing lab in San Francisco for young people that has expanded to cities across the country. He is the editor of “The Best American Nonrequired Reading” and the coeditor of the Voice of Witness series of oral histories.
Choon Fong Shih Robert Redford
Primarily known for his film work as an actor in widely lauded movies as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “All the President’s Men” and “The Sting” and as a director, Redford is also distinguished by his work as an environmentalist. He founded the Institute for Resource Management and has also served as a trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Redford founded the Sundance Institute in 1981 to support independent films and filmmakers. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Directors Guild of America Award, a Golden Globe, the Academy Award for Best Director for “Ordinary People,” the Screen Actors Guild’s Lifetime Achievement Award and a Kennedy Center Honor.
A member of the Brown faculty from 1981 to 1997, Shih earned his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1973. He is known internationally for his engineering work on nonlinear fracture mechanics and computational methods for fracture analysis, with over 150 publications in scientific journals. He became president of the National University of Singapore in 2000. A foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he will become founding president of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia later this year.
— By Chaz Kelsh
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The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
Wendy Strothman ’72 P’07 Strothman has worked in publishing for over 30 years, including at Beacon Press and Houghton Mifflin’s Trade and Reference Division. In 2003, she found the Strothman Agency in Boston, representing authors who have won a combined two Pulitzer Prizes, one National Book Award,
Matthew Mallow ’64 P’02 After graduating from the New York University School of Law, Mallow led the corporate finance department of law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flam LLP for 25 years. He served as chair of the Committee on Securities
three Caldecott Medals and two Newbery Medals. Strothman has served as a member of the Brown Corporation since 1990 and as its secretary since 1998. She established the Wendy J. Strothman Faculty Research Award in 2002 to fund research by members of the Brown faculty. She has received numerous awards, including the Publisher of the Year Award from the New England Booksellers Association. Regulation of the New York City Bar Association. He is currently the chair of the Campaign for Academic Enrichment, having served as a member of the Brown Corporation for 17 years and as its treasurer for ten. Over the years, he has served on numerous Corporation committees and has also served as the chair of the Brown Annual Fund.
Maria Zuber MS’83 PhD’86 Zuber is the Professor of geophysics and chair of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She studies the structure and evolution of planets and maps the topography and gravity field of planets using laser-ranging and radio-tracking systems on spacecraft. In 2004, Zuber helped monitor the landing of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit. Her laser altimeter on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft produced the best topographic model available for any planet. In 2002, she was name one of the 50 most important women in science by Discover magazine.
S E N I O R O RATO RS Amina Massey ’08 Massey came to Brown because she knew professors here would “follow her lead” in what she wanted to study. The Minneapolis native ended up an ethnic studies concentrator, focusing on the social construction of illness and its effects on ethnic groups in America and abroad. Her thesis focused on “the ways that chronically ill black women use spirituality to manage their illness,” she said. She gave cameras to women in Philadelphia and Brazil to document their sicknesses, interviewing them based on the pictures they took. She will speak on how she has used her own personal ideas to create a more universal movement. “I personally have been able to change my own personal sense of struggle into something that I can use to relate to other people, and in that connection, make meaningful social change,” she said. Massey will enter a graduate program in medical sociology next year at the University of California at San Francisco.
Olivia Olsen ’08 A native of Sweden, Olsen spent most of her childhood in France, just across the Swiss border from Geneva. She attended an international school in Geneva, thrown into English-speaking classes with no prior English experience at age eight. “It was a very lonely time,” said Olsen, though she adapted quickly, eventually applying to American and British universities before choosing Brown. Olsen concentrated in comparative literature, following the literary translation track to a thesis composed of an English translation of a Swedish novel, “Hunden,” or “The Dog,” by Kerstin Ekman. Building on her academic and
personal background, her speech will discuss crossing borders through translation. “Translation can be from one language to another, but it’s something that we do every day anyway,” she said. “You write a piece of music, and you translate your experience into something someone else can understand.” Olsen remembers the “random encounters” she has had at Brown as a defining aspect of her experience. She met one of her best friends through a casual conversation in the Blue Room as they shared a table. “We sometimes complain that Brown has no school spirit, but I think that’s school spirit,” she said.
— By Chaz Kelsh
lookingback the class of 2008’s four years at brown
April 2, 2005
Pope John Paul II dies at age 84 and is replaced by Pope Benedict XVI three weeks later.
Dec. 26, 2004
Oct. 27, 2004
After storming back from a deficit of three games to none versus the New York Yankees in the ALCS, the Boston Red Sox complete a sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals 4-0 to capture their first World Series in 86 years.
An earthquake in the Indian Ocean produces a 100-foot tsunami that strikes Southeast Asia, killing more than 225,000 people in 11 countries.
March 15, 2005
After controversial comments about gender and intelligence, Harvard President Lawrence Summers is ousted in a 218-185 “lack of confidence” vote by the school’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Nov. 3, 2004
President George W. Bush is elected to a second term as president after earning 50.7 percent of the popular vote at 286 electoral votes to Senator John Kerry’s 251.
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Jan. 31, 2005
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The United Nations releases a 176-page report concluding that mass murders and rapes are occurring in the Sudanese region of Darfur, but “genocidal intent appears to be missing.”
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March 23, 2005
Dean of Admission Michael Goldberger named athletic director.
Week of March 7, 2005
Delta Tau pledges given join-or-wrestle ultimatum by coach as fraternity nears extinction, later revitalized in 2006 by a large pledge class.
March 18, 2005
Mark Porter named new Department of Public Safety chief, the first black police chief in R.I.
Sept. 7, 2004
CONVOCATION Classes begin for the “best class ever!”
Weekend of April 22, 2005
Sept. 15, 2004 Sidney Frank donates $100 million to boost financial aid.
Howie Day, Ben Folds, Talib Kweli and The Shins play Spring Weekend shows.
Winter break, 2005
Gov. Donald Carcieri ’65 declares a state of emergency in response to nearly two feet of snow, the most in R.I. in 27 years.
April 29, 2005
Former President Bill Clinton speaks on interdependence to thousands in Meehan Auditorium. — Compiled and written by Chaz Firestone
The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
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March 11, 2006
On trial for war crimes he committed during the war in Bosnia, the former president of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic is found dead in his jail cell.
Aug. 29, 2005
Hurricane Katrina sweeps through the southeast United States, killing more than 1,800, costing over $80 billion in damage and displacing over half a million people.
world july
august
Oct. 26, 2006
U.S. death toll in Iraq reaches 2,000.
Jan. 25, 2006
Sept. 29, 2005
John Roberts Jr. is confirmed and sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States.
september
Hamas takes power by winning a majority of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council.
october november december
january
June 9, 2006
2006 february
march
The World Cup kicks off in Germany with the hosts defeating Costa Rica, 4-2. Italy downed Germany in the final a month later to claim the country’s fourth title.
april
Simmons publicly kicks off $1.4 billion Boldly Brown campaign.
Sept. 2, 2005 President Simmons announces that the University will take in 100 students displaced by Katrina.
Jan. 11, 2006
33 campus police officers begin carrying firearms.
Nov. 12, 2005
Shots fired during oncampus melee.
May 3, 2006
After push from anti-outsourcing coalition, Brown Bookstore remains independent.
October 2005
The Herald reports that congressional candidate and Assistant Professor of Political Science Jennifer Lawless received thousands in contributions from advisees and their families. Lawless eventually returns student donations but keeps family donations.
Sept. 19, 2005
june
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Oct. 22, 2005
2005
may
Sen. John Kerry P’97 speaks in Salomon 101, criticizing the “incompetent and negligent response to Katrina.”
May 8, 2006 March 14, 2006
David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98 named provost.
After heated debate and campuswide forums, the College Curriculum Council votes against adding pluses and minuses to the grading system.
Nov. 19, 2005
Football team wins first ever outright Ivy League Championship by blowing out Columbia 52-21.
Weekend of April 20, 2006 Common and Wilco rock Spring Weekend concerts. MCAT-takers hit the books indoors.
Nov. 14, 2006
Fox News’ “O’Reilly Factor” airs footage of Sex Power God, dubbing the event “pure debauchery.” Criticism of SPG continues the following day on the radio as O’Reilly calls President Simmons “a pinhead” and tells a caller, “You would have been safer in Baghdad than on the campus of Brown University.”
April 8, 2006
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., calls for more women “at the table” in a lecture as anti-war groups protest outside and hecklers disrupt her talk.
July 1, 2006
Katherine Bergeron steps in as new dean of the College.
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The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008 March 6, 2007
Scooter Libby is convicted of lying to a grand jury investigating the 2003 leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, Libby’s sentence is later commuted by President George Bush.
2006 Nov. 7, 2006
Aug. 26, 2006
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is elected president of Iran, allegedly calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”
august
Nancy Pelosi becomes the first female speaker of the House of Representatives.
June 29, 2007
Apple’s iPhone is released in the U.S. to much media acclaim.
Dec. 30, 2006
Just before dawn in Iraq, former dictator Saddam Hussein is executed by the new Iraqi government.
world july
Jan. 4, 2007
Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse ousts Lincoln Chafee ’75 from his U.S. Senate seat with 53 percent of the vote.
september
october november december
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April 16, 2007
32 people are killed at Virginia Tech by a student gunman.
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Oct. 6, 2006
The Sidney Frank Hall for Life Sciences is dedicated after a decade of planning.
Sept. 10, 2006
Chipalo Street ’06 GS alleges police brutality by Brown and Providence police. The next week, hundreds of students stage a protest, sporting band-aids and marching across campus in solidarity with Street.
Sept. 25, 2006
Jan. 25, 2007
Friedman Study Center makes its grand opening.
Oct. 12, 2006
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., enthralls a Salomon 101 audience, calling cynicism “the lazy way out.”
Gender-queer student calls for genderneutral bathrooms after claiming to have been harassed while wearing a skirt in a men’s bathroom.
Jan. 29, 2007
University accepts $100 million from entrepreneur Warren Alpert, renaming the Med School in his honor.
April 27, 2007
Brown announces that the Smith Swim Center will remain closed for good after rotting wood threatened its structural integrity. A temporary aquatic bubble is eventually erected.
Oct. 18, 2006
Brown releases its 106-page slavery and justice report, which calls for public acknowledgement of the University’s ties to slavery, the construction of a commemorative “slave trade memorial” and the creation of a center for research on slavery and justice.
April 21, 2007
The Flaming Lips headline the first outdoor Spring Weekend concert since the class of 2008’s arrival.
April 24, 2007
Oct. 18, 2006
Dining Services workers and the University reach a contract agreement after unionized workers threatened to strike.
Online registration under Banner begins for rising seniors.
May 5, 2007
The baseball team sweeps Penn to capture the Ivy League Championship. Brown wins the first game 1-0 thanks to a stellar pitching performance by Jeff Dietz ’08 and crushes the Quakers 20-6 in game two. It is Brown’s first league crown in 55 years.
The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008 Oct. 20, 2007
Republican Bobby Jindal ’91.5 elected as governor of Louisiana with 54 percent of the vote in a four-way race.
Dec. 27, 2007
In the midst of her campaign to become the Prime Minister of Pakistan for a third time, Benazir Bhutto is killed in a suicide attack at a political rally.
March 17, 2008
Jan. 2, 2008
Oct. 12, 2007
Former Vice President Al Gore shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about manmade climate change.”
july
august
september
In a stunning deal, JPMorgan Chase agrees to buy rival investment bank Bear Stearns for $2 a share. Only a year before, Bear’s shares had sold for $170.
Oil prices rise to $100 per barrel in the wake of a weak U.S. dollar and violence in oil-producing countries.
Feb. 3, 2008
The New England Patriots lose Super Bowl XLII to the New York Giants (with Zak DeOssie ’07) after starting the season 18-0.
2007
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october november december
December 2007
President Simmons named Glamour Woman of the Year.
Feb. 24, 2008
81-year-old Fidel Castro is replaced by brother Raul as president of Cuba.
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March 15, 2008
Two Molotov cocktails were thrown at the off-campus apartment of Brown/RISD Hillel employee and Israeli emissary Yossi Knafo.
Weekend of April 12, 2008
Lupe Fiasco, Vampire Weekend, Umphrey’s McGee, Girl Talk and M.I.A. play Spring Weekend shows in Meehan.
April 22, 2008
Oct. 13, 2007
Sept. 18, 2007
A pair of students throw pies at New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman during a lecture in Salomon 101.
Soapbox cars race down College Hill in Red Bull-sponsored competition.
Suffering from pancreatic cancer, Carnegie Mellon University professor Randy Pausch ’82 gives his “Last Lecture” to a crowd of 400. The text of his speech subsequently draws attention and inspires people around the globe.
Dec. 5, 2007
Dean of Medicine Eli Adashi announces resignation, surprising colleagues.
Dec. 30, 2006
Just before dawn in Iraq, former dictator Saddam Hussein is executed by the new Iraqi government.
April 7, 2008
After leading the men’s basketball team to a school-record 19 wins in his second year at the helm, Head Coach Craig Robinson resigns to become the head coach at Oregon State. No word on whether Robinson’s brother-in-law, presidential candidate Barack Obama, plans to switch allegiances from the Bears to the Beavers as well.
May 25, 2008
The class of 2008 walks out the Van Wickle Gates as part of Brown’s 240th commencement.
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The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
a connected campus from a single phone number to 18,000 facebook accounts in 99 years by sam byker
A
fter three months of resisting, Kaya Schmandt ’08 joined Facebook in December of her freshman year. “Everyone else had it and I didn’t,” Schmandt said. “I felt like I was missing out, because everyone else had pictures posted and would say, ‘We’re friends on Facebook,’ as though that somehow legitimized their relationships. And I wasn’t friends on Facebook with anyone.” Three and a half years later, Schmandt has 396 friends on the site and, like most Facebook users, maintains a profile page that displays her photograph along with a list of interests and personal information. Any of the 17,444 students, alums, faculty and staff in the Brown network — which requires only a University e-mail address to join — can see that Schmandt concentrates in ecology and evolutionary biology, traveled to Madagascar last year and listens to folk-rock band The Mountain Goats. When Schmandt graduates this month, she and her fellow seniors will hold a dubious distinction: The class of 2008 was the first in Brown’s history to enter the University after Facebook had taken hold here. When its members march through the Van Wickle Gates and down College Hill, they will become the first alums who never knew Brown without it. Though there are no hard numbers, a large majority of undergraduates at Brown have joined the social-network-
ing site since it debuted in 2004. Yet as Facebook’s popularity has risen, its use has drawn criticism from those who feel that it prevents users from making genuine social connections. “When I was in college, the way you met people is you met them in the dining room or in social occasions, or in the usual kinds of activities that took place in dorm rooms. And it was all pretty much face to face,” said Professor of Computer Science Andries van Dam, who has been at Brown since 1965 and whose work has been integral to the development of the Internet. “I think the idea of having a network of 300 friends is ludicrous. No one has that much intellectual and emotional capacity to have sustained, real relationships with 300 people.” Many alums voiced similar sentiments about other technology. Kathryn Robinson ’91 graduated from Brown less than two decades ago, but she says the changes since then have been drastic. These days, Robinson said, she and her husband “walk up on the campus now and we see all the kids just on their cell phones talking. And I think it’s great — wonderful, obviously — but we used to go to the Green and it was social. It was all social. People talking to each other, just hanging out on the Green. And I know that still happens, but … because we didn’t have cell phones, we were forced to interact with people.”
The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008 To observers like Robinson and van Dam, it seems like modern students’ adoption of social technologies like Facebook, cell phones and e-mail has created a sea change of such magnitude that it sets the nation’s current generation of undergrads funda-
would be surrounded by other couples amid the bookshelves, all talking quietly. More than eight decades later, Lubrano — at 106 years of age — is one of the University’s oldest living graduates. She’s also Kathryn Robinson’s grand-
If we got a long-distance phone call, we figured someone had died. Charlene Underhill ’59 mentally apart from those that came before it. But this isn’t the first time technology has changed life on campus. In fact, a series of innovations — from centralized mail delivery to dorm room phones to online instant messaging — have shaped students’ social lives for more than a century, a process that continues to evolve today.
a century of making calls
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hen Ruth Lubrano ’23 P’52 GP’91 was at Brown, the hot new social technology was the telephone. Ten years before Lubrano enrolled at Pembroke College, the University had obtained a phone number — a single phone number — for the first time. Outside callers could reach the switchboard by dialing Angell 744 — A-N-7-4-4 — while Brown men could call outside lines from three booth pay-stations, two in the basement of Faunce House (then Rockefeller Hall) and one in University Hall. Lubrano also had a telephone at her home in Cranston — a luxury at the time — and she used it often to talk with her future husband, Jack Lubrano ’24 MA’25, at night when the two had returned home after a day of class. In Lubrano’s time, strict rules separated the women of Pembroke College from their male counterparts at Brown, and contact between the groups was difficult. “He wasn’t in my classes and I wasn’t in his,” Lubrano said. “Talking on campus was more or less a no-no.” If the couple wanted to see each other during the day, they would have to arrange ahead of time to meet in the stacks of the John Hay Library. The Hay was one of the few places men and women could talk in peace, and often Lubrano and her future husband
mother. And just as technology on College Hill today is a far cry from what it was in Robinson’s era, few in Lubrano’s time could have imagined what things would be like in 1991. After Lubrano’s graduation, though, it took decades for the first changes to take shape. “We were in the colonial times as far as telecommunication was concerned in 1947 to 1951,” said Cleo Hazard ’51. “There wasn’t anything.” “We had a payphone in my freshman dorm so we could call home,” Hazard said. Outsiders could call the Brown switchboard and be transferred to individual dorms. “The phone would ring on the floor and somebody would pick it up and yell ‘Cleo, there’s a phone call!’” Hazard said. Maintaining contact with home “was difficult,” said Lotte Povar ’48 MAT’62 GP’06 GP’10. “But that was the way the world ran
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“Telephoning was just too damn expensive,” Povar said. “If we got a long-distance phone call, we figured someone had died,” said Charlene Underhill ’59. For the most part, though, telephones weren’t widely used on campus simply because they were unnecessary. “We had all of our meals served at the same time in Andrews, so you could see everybody that you wanted to see,” Hazard said, referring to the Pembroke dining hall. The same was true for Brown men at the Sharpe Refectory. Over the next two decades, however, as per-minute rates went down and Brown became less centralized, demand for phones rose dramatically. In 1974, the University began installing telephones in all on-campus rooms or suites, replacing a system in which students with private telephones had to pay high fees for their installation. Calls to all on-campus numbers were free, and Brown published a yearly directory containing all students’ phone numbers. Students were quick to take advantage of it. “Everybody was on the phone all the time,” said David Hammarstrom ’89. “The technology that meant the difference between life and death — social life and social death — was the answering machine, because you couldn’t count on your roommate to take the message.” “Leaving the cool answering machine message was a big thing — the latest music and stuff,” said Associate Professor of History Karl Jacoby ’87. “Those kiosks around campus that are
I think the idea of having a network of 300 friends is ludicrous. No one has that much intellectual and emotional capacity to have sustained, real relationships with 300 people.” Andries van Dam Professor of Computer Science in those days and you didn’t know any better. You wrote a great many letters to friends, and that was the way of communication ... I wrote to my parents for many years every day, even if it was only a postcard, because that was the one way to be in touch.” The University installed a payphone in each dorm for the first time in 1934. In 1951 it added more, so that each floor or tower had its own. Still, the shift had little effect on students’ lives. Cost was one factor.
mostly now just to dial for emergency, you could dial any on-campus number for them,” Hammarstrom added. “So you’d be near the Ratty and you would call somebody’s room who’s in Andrews and say, ‘Hey, do you want to meet for dinner at 6:30?’ So those phone boxes got a lot of use.” Two decades later, Donata Secondo ’10 arrived at Brown at the beginning of her freshman year accompanied by her older sister, who had started college
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The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
in 2000. “As we were unpacking, she was shocked to find that I hadn’t thought to bring a landline phone,” Secondo said. “She couldn’t imagine how I would stay in touch with friends — she thought I’d be completely isolated. And she insisted that we go to the mall to buy a phone, which ended up staying on my shelf gathering dust. I never gave the number to anyone but my mother and the only call I ever received on it was a wrong number.” “She was really surprised that we didn’t all study in set places in the library,” Secondo added. “She was like, ‘Well how would you ever find a friend in the library if you needed to study with them?’ ” The answer, of course — and the reason that Secondo’s phone gathered dust — is that since the late 1990s most students have brought cell phones to campus. Now, many can’t function without them. Jacob Schorr ’10 lost his phone last year. “It was impossible to be in touch with anyone because I had to count on running into them,” he said. “I spent much of my time walking around trying to run into people ... My friends thought that I was blowing them off.”
from p.o. box to inbox
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or the first half of the 20th century, Brown students picked up their mail in indi-
vidual dormitories. But as the University’s student body expanded, the administration needed a way to centralize its communications with undergraduates. To do so, it built the Faunce Post Office, which opened (to rave reviews) at its current location in 1952. The efficiency of the new system allowed on-campus mail to be sorted and delivered four times each day. The P.O. quickly became a center of oncampus social life, and it remained so for generations. Even after phones were put into each dorm room, “The big thing was actually checking your mail over at the P.O.,” Jacoby said. “We would check our mail like three times a day.” On Valentine’s Day the P.O. would be filled with flowers, balloons and candy, Jacoby said. Throughout the year its floor was littered with invitations and flyers. “They would not do mass stuffings in mailboxes, so if you were going to have a party or something, you would run xeroxes and tape them on people’s boxes,” Hammarstrom said. “You’d get to your P.O. box ... and depending on how popular you were, you’d have a whole bunch of invitations for parties that weekend taped to your mailbox.” “When I walk through the mailroom now it seems a little bit dead in comparison,” Jacoby added. “Then it was much more of a social center because you knew everyone was going to come through there a few times a day.” E-mail, in one form or another, arrived
in the late 1980s, but for years it remained more a curiosity than a social tool. “Everybody had the right to an e-mail account, but almost nobody had one,” Hammarstrom said. Since people checked it so infrequently, students used it mostly for listserv-style discussions about anything from technical issues to weird news of the day, Hammarstrom said. Professors quickly took advantage of it as a tool for communicating with colleagues at other institutions. “I thought e-mail was a really great invention,” van Dam said. “But in no sense was it a substitute for face-to-face contact with people who were co-located.” In the intervening years, e-mail has spread rapidly as a tool for communication between students and their friends at Brown and elsewhere. It has also opened connections between students and people they were once talked to rarely, including parents and professors. “My mom is a really big e-mailer,” said Becca Coleman ’10. “She actually gets this e-mail (from Brown) that has a bunch of events that are going on on campus during the week, so she e-mails me and my brother: ‘You should go to this tomorrow, it sounds great.’ ” “When you wanted to talk to professors, you had to physically go to their office hours and talk to them,” Jacoby recalled of his time at Brown. “I only once remember talking to a professor on the phone.” Now, he said, “People will e-mail me at two in the morn-
The University installs payphones in all dormitories. On-campus calls are free. (Brown still has only one phone number.)
The Faunce House mailroom opens to rave reviews, replacing a system that had delivered mail to students’ dorms. Oncampus mail is sorted and delivered four times each day.
Brown installs telephones in each room or suite, replacing a system in which students had to pay high fees to install private phones.
Facebook is launched from a Harvard dorm room. Two months later, it grows to include Brown. Students join in droves.
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Brown gets a telephone number – Angell 744. Incoming messages are left on a public bulletin board. Students can make calls from three booth pay-stations, two in the basement of Faunce House (then Rockefeller Hall) and one in University Hall.
Dorms get 24-hour service through the University swichboard, now at Gaspee 6771. Each dorm has a pay phone in every section. (Caswell Hall, for example, had three.)
Brown’s Computing Laboratory — housing a single, giant computer — opens on George Street near Brook Street.
Some dorm rooms have Internet access ports installed for the first time.
The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
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People will e-mail me at two in the morning and be upset I haven’t e-mailed them back by seven. Karl Jacoby ’87 Associate Professor of History ing and be upset I haven’t e-mailed them back by seven. There’s a sort of expectation of instantaneous connection with your teachers that you didn’t have before.” As students’ communications with each other has shifted, the way that Brown’s administration reaches them has changed as well. In 1909, University offices communicated with students through a bulletin board in the Student Union, which students were expected to check each day. The opening of the Faunce Post Office allowed for simpler delivery of administration mailings and departmental flyers. In the 1970s the Office of Student Life began publishing a bi-weekly newsletter with administration bulletins, announcements from academic departments and a calendar of events for the next two weeks. Today, the majority of communication is done via e-mail, including a daily digest called “Morning Mail,” which fulfills much the same function that Student Life’s newsletter once did. “I’m on the speakers committee, and the students were saying, ‘I don’t check my mail now for a week because everything important I get from other venues,’ ” Jacoby said.
cyberbrown “Computers?!” laughed Daniel Harrop ’76 MD ’79, a clinical assistant professor in the Warren Alpert Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, when asked whether he’d used them at Brown. “There was a computer. One.” The computer, an IBM mainframe, was housed in Brown’s Computing Laboratory on George Street, and it was reserved for academic use. In 1973, The Herald reported that the laboratory would cut services for low-priority users after a student used an advanced data plotting program to design a Snoopy calendar. Students continued to view computers as academic tools, useful mainly for word processing, until the World Wide Web debuted
in 1991. In 1993, the University installed high-speed Internet access ports in some dorm rooms for the first time. In 1996, a computer dating service sponsored by the Undergraduate Council of Students drew 1,500 Brown students, who filled out questions like, “If you were to compare yourself to a car, which would you pick?” to get a list of their most compatible classmates just before Valentine’s Day. That same year, online instant messaging arrived and quickly became popular on campus. Though many of his friends had cell phones, said Ivaylo Piskov ’05, “it was actually much easier to get in touch with them with ICQ” — the first instant messaging program. Nothing, however, could compare to the impact Facebook had when it arrived in 2004. Within months of its debut, a majority of undergraduates were members. “I actually had Facebook the summer before college and it freaked me out, so I went off of it,” Schmandt said. “But I remember there were a couple of people who friended everyone in our class, and I still know who they are and recognize them on the street, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, you’re the girl from summer before freshman year who friended everybody!’ ” “When I was abroad, Facebook was my primary way of keeping in touch,” said Lamya Khoury ’08. “Even though I was halfway around the world I still managed to stay connected in some way to Brown.” “I came from a small high school where I recognized everyone,” Schmandt said, adding that her transition to college was jarring. “When you’re part of as large of a community as Brown, there’s something nice about having your own Web page that’s a smaller, self-defined community ... just to put your world into context.” Now, many students find it difficult to imagine life on campus before the site. Without Facebook or cell phones, said Coleman, “I think people would just be a
lot more isolated from each other. ... I’d feel like I couldn’t get into contact with anyone, and I wouldn’t know what everyone else was doing. It would suck.” Technology “keeps you connected to everything even if you’re just sitting in your room,” she added. That, according to van Dam, is the problem. “When somebody tells me that they spend two hours a day on Facebook, I think to myself, ‘Wow, I would have much rather had you spend two hours actually meeting with people or playing Frisbee on the lawn or doing something that is more in the real world,’ ” van Dam said. “Get a life, people!” “I think communicating in cyberspace — as convenient as it is — produces an unreal way of communicating with people, and comes at the cost of learning how to have good social interactions,” he added. In the end, many students speak of the struggle to achieve a balance between technology and the real world. Facebook “is nice for the events, and for getting in contact with people, but since everyone else is on it you never want to miss anything,” Coleman said. “If it didn’t exist, it would save me a lot of wasted time when I should be doing homework.” “You just have to find the right balance,” Jacoby said. “You want it to be facilitating human relationships but not substituting for human relations.” “The message you have to tell yourself is that it has an off button.”
The Brown Daily Herald invites students, parents and alums to attend A Commencement Weekend Forum “Brown’s History Goes Digital: The Brown Daily Herald Archive” Saturday, May 24, 11 a.m. Lownes Room, John Hay Library
Burying the Brown Brothers Brown has finally wrestled with troubling questions about its past and influenced the national debate about slavery’s legacy. But are our hearts in it?
By Michael Bechek
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irst, there were whispers. There were murmurs that Brown, one of the nation’s wealthiest universities, owed much to the slave-trading dealings of its early founders. But for 200 years, Brown had kept quiet. In her first years at the University, President Ruth Simmons had heard a lot of this sort of talk, and decided it was time to set the record straight. Brown made national headlines in 2004 when the New York Times broke word that Simmons had formed a committee to examine these historical ties to slavery. Not everyone cared to ask why. The big news, rather, was that an Ivy League school was going to give “thoughtful inquiry” to the possibility of monetary reparations — a possibility that Simmons herself immediately dismissed in a Boston Globe op-ed. The committee, which sought from the beginning to stress its enthusiasm about discovering history rather than making it, had actually been around for almost a year before any reporters noticed. “I didn’t think it was controversial when it started,” Simmons said. In the following years, the University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice undertook an astonishingly ambitious project of historical inquiry and reflection that engaged Brown’s entire campus, and in October 2006 released a set of recommendations and a 106-page report. But Simmons and the committee members have disagreed about what, exactly, the point of that was. As the buzz surrounding the release of the report subsided, Simmons was left with her biggest doubts about the end result of
Min Wu / Herald Professor of Africana Studies James Campbell says that without an attempt at corrective action, the slavery and justice’s committee’s work would be “empty.”
more than three years’ work. “The greatest problem that I had with it,” she said, “was that I thought it would not be read. That’s a great shame.” Today, Brown is moving forward to implement the recommendations of the report, which include an academic initiative for the study of slavery and race and substantial resources for Providence schools. The question now is: What was the slavery and justice committee really for? It began with a question — what was Brown’s connection to the slave trade? — that led to another — what do we do about it? Brown is
now back on the right side of the truth, and it is looking to repair the damage done in the past. But might this be just as important? Shouldn’t everyone care?
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immons says, “Even if we did all of this, if we don’t get to the hearts and minds of people so that they’re prepared to act, then it’s to no avail.” In the year and a half since the committee’s report was published, the subject of slavery and its legacy has more or less dropped off the radar on Brown’s campus. Not only has the committee disbanded,
The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008 but — as James Campbell, the professor of Africana studies who chaired the committee, said — colleges have “four-year generations.” Brown’s freshman class this year was not here when the report was released. Simmons has expressed disappointment that more students are not familiar with the report. She and members of the committee have disagreed over making the report available in a more accessible form, something Simmons said she would still like to do. In the meantime, the committee’s work has left Brown with both a great gift and an enormous burden. It has chronicled in great detail the University’s complex web of involvement with the Rhode Island slave trade, explored historical injustices internationally and considered reparations efforts to counter those injustices. In the end, members of the committee submitted a detailed list of recommendations, advising the University to rewrite its official history, build a memorial to the legacy of slavery in Rhode Island, schedule an annual day of remembrance and strengthen recruitment of minority students. Discussions of how to implement these recommendations are moving forward — slowly. “I think I knew when I wrote the response that it was ambitious to start very quickly,” Simmons said, though she added that she was pleased to see so many of the recommendations moving forward. For Campbell, the legacy of this endeavor must be more than simply establishing the truth. “If institutions and societies are truly going to hold themselves accountable … they need also to think about what they can meaningfully and realistically do in the present,” he said. Part of doing that, he added, is to “ensure that history is remembered against what are almost irresistible tendencies to deny and forget.” Simmons and the committee wanted not only to examine the legacy of slavery at Brown, but to spark a national discussion. “If this nation is ever to have a serious dialogue about slavery, Jim Crow and the bitter legacies they have bequeathed to us,” the committee wrote in its report, “then universities must provide the leadership.” “I think what we wanted our study to show is that universities cannot stand for being places of public relations,” Simmons said. “Our job is to examine everything.” Since Brown’s committee started its work, other colleges and universities have engaged in various levels of discussion and action. Emory University launched the “Transforming Community Project” to examine its ties to slavery and discuss race. Faculty at the University of Maryland and the College of William and Mary have led studies of their schools and slavery. Even on the campuses of Harvard and Yale, there is growing discussion of what involvement those prestigious universities may have had in the slave trade. Still, Brown has been the leader, said Alfred Brophy, a professor of law at the University of Alabama who has written a book about reparations. “Brown’s investigation is a model against which everybody else will be judged,” he said. Brophy, who in 2004 got the University of Alabama to issue a formal apology for its role in slavery, added that “the vast majority of talk of university connections ... hasn’t even begun yet.” Campbell, who will leave Brown for Stanford this summer, said such developments are inevitable. “I truly believe that, in one fashion or another, conversations like this are coming to most universities,” he said. But nothing is so “empty,” Campbell said, as acknowledging past wrongs — and wringing our hands of them — without an attempt at corrective action.
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The grave of Pero, one of four slaves who worked on the construction of the College Edifice, known today as University Hall.
That, the thinking goes, is what an institute for the study of slavery might do. “Bringing these issues into the center of the intellectual life of the University and keeping them there, that’s what I take to be our responsibility,” said Professor of Economics Glenn Loury, who chaired a committee that recently studied what a prospective center might look like. More complicated is how to go about making amends for Brown’s past wrongs. In response to the committee’s recommendations, the University has set out to raise $10 million for the city’s schools. It will waive tuition for master’s students in education who commit to working with local schools. It has received a $5.75 million gift to aid students from sub-Saharan Africa. Such actions may not be perfect or complete, but they do constitute an attempt at corrective action. As the committee wrote in its report, “Retrospective justice is a messy and imperfect business.” Brown has been a model for all universities with entangled histories, opening the door for the debate about slavery’s legacy to take place. “In a sense, we gave people permission to talk about this subject in a dignified and non-sensationalized manner,” Simmons said. “I think most people on the campus still don’t understand how much (the report) has done, nor do they understand how much positive attention it’s attracted around the world.” The committee has succeeded in one thing. Those who once whispered about the slave labor that helped build University Hall now praise Brown for bravely facing up to its past. But the coming years will show if this undertaking is to amount to anything more than a historical exercise.
is a bigger brown better? how ruth simmons’ ambitious agenda is altering the university-college
By Michael Skocpol with photos by Ashley Hess
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ituated at the crest of College Hill, the Sidney Frank Hall for Life Sciences strikes an imposing figure. The downhill end of the building is a towering brick face, partly gridded with rows of windows that
look in on state-of-the-art labs and faculty offices. It occupies almost an entire block. To mute the impact of its bulk, a walkway slices through the middle, spanned by an airy pedestrian bridge.
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The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
Completed in 2006 and costing nearly $100 million, the building many students call the LiSci provides Brown’s growing Division of Biology and Medicine with much-needed lab and office space, filled with the advanced technology that leading-edge science increasingly demands. For professors grown accustomed to working in cramped and outdated labs, the building’s long-anticipated opening couldn’t have come too soon. But students are more likely to hurry through the chasm dividing its two wings than traverse the glassy archway overhead. A medium-sized lecture hall is the building’s only formal classroom, and students only sporadically occupy the stylish armchairs in its spacious lobby. The completion of Sidney Frank Hall is but the first among a slew of changes slated to transform Brown’s physical campus. It marks the northern terminus of the Walk, a planned pedestrian greensward along which a creative arts center and a new brain sciences hub will be built over the next few years. Now, Sidney Frank Hall overlooks open space and aging houses, but planners say the surrounding campus will soon grow up to meet it. Physical expansion is, in many ways, just now catching up to dramatic changes already underway at Brown. In this decade, Brown’s faculty and endowment, now approaching $3 billion, have grown rapidly while undergraduate acceptance rates repeatedly set new record lows. The Alpert Medical School began its steady rise in national rankings even before a $100 million gift renamed it last year, and a steady flow of fresh resources to the Graduate School have bolstered its formerly lackluster reputation. Long-serving faculty largely agree that the current initiatives are overdue — the University is acting decisively and ambitiously, more so now than it has in decades, they say. Depending on your point of view, these changes may thrill or frighten you. At issue is Brown’s traditional identity as a “university-college” committed to the primacy of undergraduate education. For the architects of Brown’s current path, the universitycollege identity is enduring and guides the current agenda. But in the eyes of some faculty and former administrators, the distinctive culture that defines Brown is fragile and could be jeopardized by the speedy expansion slated for the coming years.
The Walk will slice through the Sidney Frank Hall for Life Sciences beneath a glass skybridge (above), connecting the Pembroke and Main campuses.
A President with a Plan
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rown’s current momentum is often credited to President Ruth Simmons, and for good reason. When Simmons took its reins in July 2001, the University’s trajectory bore little resemblance to the energetic vision she has since cultivated. At the turn of the millennium, feelings of promise and possibility were in short supply. The year 2000 may have been the University’s
low-water mark. In February, then-President Gordon Gee abruptly quit after less than three years on the job, becoming chancellor at Vanderbilt University. In the midst of a dreary College Hill winter, the newly bare shelves in the president’s first-floor University Hall office underscored what many felt had already been true for several years: Brown had no coherent plan for the future. Many on campus had felt for some time that the University urgently needed to address several glaring weaknesses: a slumping grad
The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
school, the only non-need-blind admission policy in the Ivy League and an aging infrastructure. Plans for a new life sciences building, for example, had been kicked around for years without a single brick being laid. The longer a culture of inaction persisted, the more dire prevailing attitudes became. Brown at the time was “more concerned with deficiencies than it was with ambitions,” says Professor of Anthropology William Simmons ’60, who served as provost under Gee. “The idea that Brown could be bigger was not really an idea anyone had.” The prevailing notion under Gee, he said, was one of “growth through substitution” — any new initiatives would need to be paid for by budget cuts elsewhere. The University set out to find a leader who could tackle these mounting challenges. By November, the search committee had settled on Ruth Simmons, the dynamic president of Smith College and a former Princeton administrator. Simmons was not oblivious to the inertia on campus. Her first semester on College Hill, she said at a faculty meeting that Brown was facing “harbingers of mediocrity.” If Brown continued to hold pat, she said in a
recent interview, it risked no longer attracting top students and faculty. “Brown’s position in higher education could not be maintained on the then-current course,” Simmons says. “That was clear from all of the indicators — that in fact there were competitors fast on the heels of Brown and wanting to overtake its place.” With Brown’s malaise clear and its most pressing needs well-known, Simmons and the University’s governing body, the Corporation, sat down to chart a course. Their first discussions, she says, revolved around a fundamental question: “What should we be?” It was a crucial moment. “What I presented was the opportunity for Brown to be a college, a small place more comparable to Williams and Amherst and Pomona,” Simmons recalls. “I thought Brown could be an exceptionally fine college and certainly be among the top colleges in the country, and that was a viable option.” But she also presented the option to continue to compete with top research universities, she says. That was the course the Corporation overwhelmingly endorsed. “Nobody could imagine a different
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identity for Brown wherein we would be no longer an Ivy League university,” she says. “Once the University identified that as a goal, it was my view that we were not on the right track in terms of achieving that.” After a short but intensive period of campus consultation, Simmons laid out an agenda and set a tone. Fretting over Brown’s lack of resources would be replaced by a willingness to take measured risks and address clear needs. Among her swiftest acts was introducing need-blind admission — long a competitive disadvantage for Brown, avoided for years because of its cost. A dramatic expansion of the faculty headlined her plans. Simmons’ early initiatives morphed into a detailed vision, the Plan for Academic Enrichment — a comprehensive and constantly fine-tuned document, striking for its scope and its specificity. With the overarching goal of raising Brown’s academic profile, the Plan set forth a staggering number of projects to be fueled by aggressive spending across the University. An accompanying capital campaign has now raised well over $1 billion, providing a vital infusion of cash. Simmons has tempered her
Who killed shopping period?
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he class of 2011 doesn’t know much about those little pink slips. But students who arrived before electronic registration was introduced in April 2007 vividly remember filling out the Pepto-Bismol-colored add/drop forms, rushing up to professors after class to get their signatures and then waiting in line at University Hall to turn them in. With the administrative changes have come new rules — caps on course enrollment — and the enforcement of old ones, like pre-requisites for upper-level courses, that concern some students fond of Brown’s famed flexibility. Banner, a $23 million upgrade of University computer records, met resistance and skepticism from many students when its online course registration feature was introduced. A “Brown Against Banner” Facebook group attracted hundreds of members, and students anxious that the system signalled the end of the New Curriculum’s trademark freedom vented their frustration in letters to The Herald and at meetings of the Undergraduate Council of Students. University Registrar Michael Pesta says the move to Banner was inevitable and necessary. “Banner is part of the University’s attempt to stay up with the times,” he said. Lauren Kolodny ’08, UCS vice president for 2007-08, recognizes the benefits of online registration but remains somewhat wary of its impact. “On the one hand, it’s necessary for Brown to become more
electronic in general,” she said. On the other hand, Kolodny said, students worry that the changes will erode the freedom of the two-week shopping period that marks the beginning of each semester. Before Banner, professors could — and often did — make exceptions with the stroke of a pen. Now that Banner can block students from registering for some classes, some students worry the system inhibits Brown students’ ability to map their own academic path. “The system as it is isn’t tailored to Brown values,” Kolodny said. Professor of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences Sheila Blumstein, who is also a former dean of the College and interim president of the University, said Banner should not change the way students go about shopping period. “The idea was not to change registration philosophically, but just to make things easier,” she said. But Kolodny noted that Banner itself is not the problem — it’s a symptom of what many upperclassmen perceive as a bureaucratic transformation of the administration in University Hall. “I don’t think the Banner system will change Brown values,” she said. “I do fear that more and more things becoming systemized and institutionalized could do that.” — Franklin Kanin
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The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008 goals somewhat since she arrived. Her early talk about revolutionizing graduate education in the image of the New Curriculum, for instance, has given way to increasing stipends and lowering admission rates. While she used to worry about doing everything, she says she has now “made peace” with the fact that she won’t accomplish all she set out to do. But she hopes to leave Brown poised and prepared to cement its place in the uppermost echelon of higher education.
A Demanding Equation
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The $95 million Sidney Frank Hall for Life Sciences now dwarfs nearby buildings, but soon new construction will grow up to meet it.
s students pass in and out of the Van Wickle Gates, some of those who have borne witness to the changes Simmons set in motion are uneasy. In seeking to compete more vigorously with the cream of the scholarly crop, Simmons admits that Brown has placed higher research expectations on faculty. Some fear this shift will undermine undergraduate teaching and advising. “If we say that we want to be a great university, given the way that is defined today — not just in the United States but throughout the world — we actually have no choice. Research comes with it,” Simmons says. But while Brown’s research ambitions have grown along with the University itself, professors say, the number of hours in a day have not. Amid increasing demands, faculty say there is an expectation that research will take a front seat, though the signals are hard to identify. Start-up funds made available under Simmons have lowered hurdles for research projects, and tenure decisions weight research accomplishments as much as they ever have. Kathryn Spoehr ’69, a professor of cognitive and linguistic sciences and the provost when Gee resigned, is among the most acutely concerned faculty. “Everybody on the faculty is giving more attention to research,” she says, especially the junior faculty hired under the current administration. That means the biggest shift in culture may not be seen “for a little while yet,” she says. “In the long run, it’s going to erode Brown’s traditional emphasis on education,” she said. “It’s not that we are worried about all this investment in research,” says Associate Professor of Psychology Ruth Colwill, who,
Crunched for space
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t’s hard to miss the new big-budget buildings and construction projects transforming Brown’s campus, but as students walk past the new, mammoth Sidney Frank Hall for Life Sciences on the concrete path that will soon be reborn as a greensward linking the Pembroke and main campuses, a more immediate concern might be on their minds: Why is my section meeting in the lounge of a residence hall? “We actually run out of seminar rooms in the afternoon,” said University Registrar Michael Pesta.
When the J. Walter Wilson building opens this summer as a new student services center, the former biology laboratory will add 11 new seminar rooms, relieving some of the space pressure, Pesta said. The space crunch comes as the shift to lower class sizes — a priority of President Ruth Simmons’ Plan for Academic Enrichment and a key metric in college rankings — has driven the proportion of classes with 20 or fewer students from 66 percent to nearly 75 percent. Dean of the Faculty Rajiv Vohra P’07 said that as the faculty has grown in re-
cent years — a net increase of 106 additional faculty members since the 2001-02 academic year — the physical space of the campus has not kept up. “While you see a lot of construction going on, the fact is that there is a lot more need for academic space that hasn’t grown that much,” Vohra said. “The fact is that when you expand the faculty by this magnitude in this short a period of time, there are going to be other kinds of infrastructure support that might be lacking.” — Franklin Kanin
The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008 as chair of the Faculty Executive Committee, helps spearhead faculty involvement in University decision-making. “The concern for faculty is that we would shift the weighting of emphasis for faculty into research and away from teaching and service.” Others are less alarmed, but they still have concerns. Many agree that Brown must carefully recruit star hires, seeking those who will respect the value of teaching. Professor of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences Sheila Blumstein, who served as interim president after Gee’s resignation, is optimistic about the path Simmons has charted. But, she warns, Brown must sustain community even as growth continues. Brown’s small size has fostered faculty collaboration across departments, she said, contributing to its coveted reputation for interdisciplinary curiosity. “What Brown can’t lose is that community spirit,” Blumstein says. Asked about the impact of higher research ambitions, Blumstein pointed to Stanford as a cautionary model. Lauded as an exemplary research university, Stanford recently undertook an effort to “rediscover” the “importance of teaching undergraduates,” she says. “Brown has never had to do that,” she says. But, she adds, “We better not lose that, because you don’t get it back.” A sense that the current agenda is largely dictated by other universities’ standards, rather than informed by Brown’s existing strengths, concerns some faculty. Brown now emphasizes “competing with peer institutions on their terms,” Colwill puts it. “When we start comparing ourselves, who do we pick as the cohort?” Faculty appreciate investments made under Simmons but too often feel shut out of the decisions that drive them, Colwill says. For instance, faculty do not necessarily oppose higher research standards for tenure, but some feel the upper administration has already imposed that expectation without proper consideration of its potential impact on Brown’s culture. “I don’t always get the sense that a lot of things are thought through as well as they should be,” Colwill says, adding that many faculty feel the University should proceed more carefully. “What we have to be attentive to is making sure we just don’t simply accept change, or we don’t allow it to be thrust on us.” Simmons says she recognizes the fac-
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Pembroke Hall closed for renovations during the 2007-08 academic year and will reopen to house the Cogut Humanities Center and the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women.
ulty’s concerns. Many high-powered research universities do lose track of teaching, she acknowledged. But, she says, “What we have to face is that it is not either/or.” “If you’re in the marketplace today and you don’t care about teaching, the last place in higher education that you’d ever come is to Brown,” Simmons says. “A core value for us is that every faculty member, no matter how elevated, now matter how celebrated for research and scholarship, teaches undergraduates. ... If you hew to that in the recruitment process, you will lose some people, but I think that you will be able to preserve the culture.” But Simmons says she does worry that
making changes she feels are necessary can be difficult for faculty. “When you’re in a transition where you’re putting more emphasis on scholarship and research, inevitably there are people who get caught in the middle,” Simmons says. “The people you’re bringing in today will take that as a given, so they will move through their careers with the expectation that research is going to play a greater role. But what about the people who came here 25 years ago, and things are changing?” “How can we transition to that higher expectation without denigrating the people who have gotten us where we are, who may have had less of an em-
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The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
phasis on scholarship and research?” she adds. “That’s a very, very serious question that we have to pay attention to.”
Brown in the Balance
H
ow these changes will alter Brown’s place in higher education or its culture remains unclear, and the coming years will be pivotal. Even as a weakening economy threatens the double-digit endowment gains and robust fundraising Brown has recently enjoyed, work remains to be done. Simmons’ ambitions still require aggressive spending, and though she has not previously been inclined to slow growth for lack of funding, fiscal realities may test her resolve. Most faculty and administrators agree Brown has made great strides under Simmons but that it still lags behind its wealthier Ivy League brethren in many metrics. “We’ve been keeping up, but we haven’t been gaining ground,” Spoehr says. Given the vast resources at the disposal of competitors like Harvard and Yale, she says, “It’s very difficult for Brown to compete on all fronts.”
As the University steels itself to stay in the race — reaffirming major objectives with a “reassessment” of the Plan for Academic Enrichment earlier this year — Simmons’ course could over-stretch the University. When the class of 2008 returns for its 10th reunion — much less its 20th — Brown will undoubtedly look and feel different. The question is, what will remain familiar? For those concerned by the changes to date, Brown’s culture is already precarious — it lives and dies with the fast-changing student body and in the few extra hours a faculty member spends fine-tuning her lecture notes. In Colwill’s eyes, Brown’s identity is continually forged by its faculty and its students. Many faculty, she says, want to teach the unique brand of student drawn in by Brown’s ethos. “If there’s any sense the culture’s changing, then you may start losing students, and once you start losing students then the culture will change,” Colwill says. “My main worry is if things change, by the time we realize, by the time we recognize it’s changed, it will be too late at that point to do anything.” Simmons isn’t deterred.
“I happen to believe that culture is heartier than most people say,” she says. “Every time the University makes a push, the doomsayers say it’s going to change inalterably and destroy some of the most important features of the University. It always happens that way. ... Think about the great moments of change in our country and on campuses. It’s always emotional for us to see things that have been so important for us in our lives change.” “At the same time, if people wanted to stop change at Brown, stop Brown from moving in a direction to improve on what it is and what it offers its students, I would not be here,” Simmons says. “Because I know profoundly it would be the wrong thing for Brown.” Instead, Simmons is driven by a different concern: “that the pace of change will be too slow.” “I believe that Brown is in a death struggle to retain its place — retain its place — in higher education,” she says. “If we do not work hard and intelligently at making improvements ... easily, within 10 or 20 years, we could be on the outside of the shop window looking in and saying, ‘We could have been there.’ ”
Fatter wallet, but more thin envelopes
J
ust a few years ago, getting into — and paying for — Brown was a whole different ballgame. At the beginning of 2002, the University didn’t have a need-blind admission policy, offered only $46.3 million annually in financial aid and its senior class had been admitted from a pool of 15,490 applicants. As the class of 2008 graduates, Brown is need-blind for domestic students, boasts a $68.5 million financial aid budget for 2009 and has just seen its most competitive year yet — 20,630 applicants and an all-time low acceptance rate of 13.3 percent. And as the policies change, so do the ambitious high schoolers looking to become Brunonians. Dean of Admission Jim Miller ’73 said new financial aid policies and international recruiting are attracting classes with greater socioeconomic, racial and geographical diversity than ever before. “We haven’t increased dramatically the number of international students, but we’ve increased the geography of international students,” he said. This year’s graduating seniors represent 37 nations; the students admitted into the class of 2012 hail from 45 different countries. Admission officers’ journeys abroad are garnering support from donors, too. In January, a Brown parent gave $5.75 million to support students from Africa. While some admission officers recruit abroad, those back
home are getting the word out that Brown is a place at which “students can do really elegant science,” Miller said. Th eir work may be paying off: last fall 36 percent of first-year students enrolled looking to complete a bachelor of science degree, up from 24 percent in the class of 2008. Most top-tier colleges have been bolstering their financial aid offerings and reporting lower admission rates each year, and Brown is no exception. Harvard, Amherst, Columbia, Princeton and Dartmouth have all revamped their aid policies in the past few years — some of them eliminating contributions altogether for students with lower family incomes. Eager to compete for the best students, Brown’s governing body announced in February an $11.5 million boost to financial aid, raising the aid budget by about 20 percent. Under the new policy, Brown families with household incomes under $60,000 will not have to make a parental contribution to tuition and students whose families earn less than $100,000 a year will not have to take out loans. James Tilton, director of financial aid, acknowledged that Brown’s new policies may not be as expansive as those of other institutions, but he believes they are impressive given Brown’s resources. — Franklin Kanin
The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
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Building the new Brown
V
Now a sidewalk through a construction site, the Walk is expected to transform the face of Brown’s campus.
In the meantime, as change continues, the debate will likely rage on. Spoehr’s predecessor as provost, William Simmons, has been watching Brown evolve as a Providence native, a Brown grad, a faculty member and a former top administrator. He’s not yet sure how the current administration will ultimately alter the University he’s come to know. “They’re improving Brown in ways everyone can recognize,” he says. “The degree to which they are making us
stronger versions of ourselves, that’s the question mark.” For now, he’s content to watch the changes unfold. To reveal their impact, he will look to how well Brown continues to stay connected to its East Side roots and how engaged its faculty remain in University service outside their own scholarly interests. And, he says: “Architecture.” The first new building along the Walk could open as early as 2010.
isitors to College Hill may be surprised by the abundance of fences brandishig “Building Brown” signs and blocking walkways around campus. But in just a few years, the signs will be gone, and Brown will look dramatically different, thanks to a campus overhaul costing more than $200 million. A long swath of open green space — the Walk — will connect Lincoln Field to the Pembroke Campus, anchored by two buildings devoted to interdisciplinary work: the Creative Arts Center and the Mind Brain Behavior Building. What was once known as “dumpster alley” will soon have grass, trees and benches in addition to the two new buildings, changing the flow of student traffic across campus, providing more communal space and offering a centralized pathway between the two sections of campus. Brown’s athletic facilities are undergoing a serious upgrade, too. The new Nelson Fitness Center will offer significantly more recreational space, a welcome change for students who previously had to compete with varsity teams for use of exercise equipment and space in the Olney-Margolies Athletic Center. A new swim center is being built to replace the Smith Swim Center, which was torn down earlier this year after officials shuttered the building due to structural deficiencies. Many day-to-day student activities — checking mail, replacing a lost ID card, visiting the Registrar — will be moved from their disparate locations across campus to the J. Walter Wilson building. Meanwhile, Faunce House, previously the closest thing Brown had to a student center, is being closely analyzed by the University and designers in preparation for its conversion into a bona fide campus center. And the staple of student life — the University’s 48 residence halls — are receiving major renovations as well, starting with a re-roofing project for several dorms this summer. Finally, several research centers will be moved to larger, upgraded facilities, giving them more room to bring in visiting professors, hold seminars or conduct research. For a complete look at how the campus is changing, turn to page 26. — Isabel Gottlieb
brow n ’ s Mind Brain Behavior Building » $69 million new construction » $35 million left to raise ($34 million will be debt-financed) » 80,000-square feet to house the cognitive and linguistic sciences and psychology departments and the interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Program » Features a large lecture space, seminar rooms, offices and labs
J. Walter Wilson Building » $18 million renovation » $10 million left to raise » The former laboratory building is being converted into a central location for student services, including the University Mail Room, the Office of International Programs, the Chaplain’s Office, the Registrar’s Office, Psychological Services, the Writing Center and the Brown Card Office » A small exterior expansion will create more gathering space near the entrance to the new mailroom
Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center at Faunce House
» $15 million renovation » $6.5 million left to raise » In February 2007, outgoing Chancellor Stephen Robert ’62 P’91 and several anonymous donors provided funds for an overhaul of Faunce House to transform the building into a bona fide campus center by the fall of 2010 — Compiled by Isabel Gottlieb, Designed by Steve DeLucia
The Walk
» $10 million project » $10 million left to raise » Anchored by the planned Creative Arts Center and Mind, Brain, Behavior Building, this ambitious greensward will link the Pembroke Campus to Lincoln Field, creating a new section of campus in the space previously dubbed “dumpster alley” » The section from Waterman to Angell streets was scheduled for completion this month, while the last piece of the walk, between Olive and Angell streets, will be completed in conjunction with the Creative Arts Center in 2010 or 2011
facel i ft
Creative Arts Center » $35 million new construction, plus a $10 million operating endowment » $8.5 million left to raise » Planning for the Creative Arts Center rose out of the need for an interdisciplinary arts space in which different departments and artists can collaborate on multimedia pieces » The 35,000-square foot building will include a 200-seat recital hall, multimedia labs and a recording studio, along with gallery space for multimedia installations » Architecture firm Diller, Scofidio and Renfro will design the center, expected to be completed in late 2010 or early 2011
OMAC
Nelson Fitness Center
PIZZITOLA NELSON FITNESS CENTER
SMITH SWIM CENTER
MEEHAN AUDITORIUM
Swim Center
» $25 million new construction » $14 million left to raise » After the 2007 demise of the Smith Swim Center, the swimming and diving and water polo teams have been practicing in a temporary $3.8 million “Aquatics Bubble” behind the OMAC. The new permanent swim center will have a 56-meter pool with two moveable bulkheads and springboard diving, 400-seat raised spectator seating on one side of the pool and deck-level folding bleachers on the other side, allowing Brown for the first time to host up to 800 spectators for large events such as Ivies » Designed by Robert AM Stern Associates in conjunction with the Nelson Fitness Center
» $35 million new construction, plus a $15 million operating endowment » $23 million left to raise » Adjacent to the Olney-Margolies Athletic Center, the new fitness center will add 65,000 square feet of space for recreational athletic use, including facilities for weight training, dance and yoga studios and a three-court basketball gymnasium that can accommodate up to 1,500 people for large lecture events » Designed by architecture firm Robert AM Stern Associates, the fitness center is slated for a fall 2010 debut
The Brown Daily Herald invites its alumni to attend a reunion reception
195 Angell Street (between Brook and Thayer) Saturday, May 24 4 to 6 p.m.
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The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
From Paper to Pixel The Brown Daily Herald begins digitizing its 120-year archive
By Alex Roehrkasse
F
or those eager to recall their years on College Hill or curious about campus buzz across the ages, tracking down the right headlines has traditionally been a tedious affair. Whether for information on the “protest years” of the late sixties, the David Horowitz anti-reparations ad scandal of 2001 or other notable pieces of Brown lore, one used to have to sift through The Brown Daily Herald print archives housed in the John Hay Library. But soon, a trip to the Herald archives will require nothing more than a click of the mouse. In a joint venture with the University Library, The Herald is beginning to digitize its annals year by year, with the intention of ultimately making the whole archives viewable and keyword searchable — for students, alums, professors and other researchers — from the newspaper’s and the University Library’s Web sites. A pilot project has been completed, but former Herald staffers involved in the process and library officials say the archives’ full digitization hinges on further fund-raising. Those involved in the project say The Herald has no current plans to digitize the Pembroke Record, the newspaper of the former neighboring women’s college, which published its last issue in 1971. For the pilot, University archivists have cut some of The Herald’s backlogs from their bindings and shipped
them off to Digital Divide Data, a company that specializes in scanning and processing documents for word recognition. An initial six academic years of the newspaper — 1891-92, 1903-1904, 1918-1919, 1941-1942, 1968-1969 and the spring semester of 1987 — were selected for the initial run. Earlier this month, the pilot became publicly available, on the Web site of the University Library’s Center for Digital Initiatives. The digitization project began last fall when the large outgoing editorial board started looking for ways they could leave a lasting impact at The Herald, said former Senior Editor Anne Wootton ’08.5. After researching similar projects at peer institutions, Wootton said she brought the proposed project to an enthusiastic Herald board of directors. The Herald had recently received a donation earmarked specifically for digitization from Kristie Miller ‘66, a former managing editor. “The importance of this project has always been recognized, but it wasn’t always possible,” Wootton said. Miller’s donation covered the $10,000 price tag of the pilot. But the project’s future depends on the ability to conjure up more funds. “The future of this project is entirely dependent upon
The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
successful fund-raising,” Wootton said. She and other former Herald editors said their fund-raising aspirations are “agnostic” but that they expect mostly to garner contributions from Brown alums interested in creating a digital window back to their days on College Hill, or from former Herald staff members keen on preserving their work. The going price? Any of the 120 years of The Herald’s publication can be digitized for about $5,000, Wootton said. Senior Library Specialist Gayle Lynch, who has worked in the University Archives for 40 years, said she regularly receives requests for copies of bygone issues of The Herald. Vague recollections and ballpark guesses on distant dates mean she spends lots of time searching for memories in the hard-copy volumes at the John Hay Library. She also says some of the more recent issues of the newspaper are actually more prone to damage because they are printed on acidic paper of poor quality. Lynch said she sees a strong alumni demand for The Herald’s digitization, noting that when she charges alums for their copies of the newspaper, they often send substantial donations in return. “I never thought I’d live long enough to see them digitized,” Lynch said of the old newspapers. Though a complete set of the Pembroke Record is on file at the archives in the Hay, University Archivist Jay Gaidmore said the papers are in particularly poor condition and would benefit greatly from digitization. While The Herald’s digitization plans do not currently include the Pembroke Record, the project’s student leaders say they hope to eventually incorporate that paper’s run into The Herald’s digital repository. “It’s just a matter of finding donors interested in supporting the Record,” said former Herald Editor-in-Chief Mary-Catherine Lader ’08. “We’re pleased that the University Archives have the physical copies (of the Pembroke Record), but of course, we’d love to see them digitized because that would make them easily searchable and protected for posterity,” said Christy Law Blanchard, director of alumni affairs at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. Newspapers at peer universities such as Yale and the University of Michigan have been undertaking similar digitization projects in recent years. The Harvard Crimson also partnered with Digital Divide Data to make their archives available online, but in text-only format. But the user interface and the file format of the forthcoming online Herald archives — which will allow text searches while preserving photographs and advertisements — will make the project’s results “top of the line,” Wootton said. The Herald has a leg up on other universities’ projects because of the groundwork laid by the experience and expertise of Brown’s library staff, Lader said. Patrick Yott, director the library’s Center for Digital Initiatives, said that his unit’s experience in digitizing and displaying other library archives online has helped make the Herald project run smoothly thus far. Those involved in the digitization project from both ends — The Herald and the library — see the partnership as a fruitful one with the shared goal of preserving a measure of Brown’s history. But given the strict independence of The Herald from the University, they also stress the strictly business nature of the relationship. A contract negotiated between Herald lawyers and the University counsel will ensure that the newspaper will retain its intellectual property and front the costs for the project, while the library will lend its expertise
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The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008 and develop its archives. University Librarian Harriette Hemmasi said that the library has undertaken similar partnerships before, always with the foremost intention of making archived information more accessible. “If (The Herald) hadn’t come to us, it’s something we would have done soon anyways,” Hemmasi said of the digitization project. While the online archives of the newspaper will make access a much more efficient process, she said, her experience with digitization suggests that the hard copies won’t go by the wayside.
Rather, artifacts’ easy digital access usually makes demand for the original even greater, she said. “It’s nothing like seeing the artifact itself,” Hemmasi said of the digital archives. “A lot of people like to see the real thing.” As for The Herald’s digitization, the pilot project will be on demonstration during Commencement in kiosks at the Rockefeller and Sciences libraries from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Wootton, Lader and Yott will hold a forum on the project on Saturday at 11 a.m. in the John Hay Library.
To learn more about the digitization project, come to a Commencement Weekend Forum: “Brown’s history goes digital: The Brown Daily Herald Archive” Saturday, May 24, 11 a.m. Lownes Room, The John Hay Library
The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
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editors’ columns stephen colelli a journalistic road less taken
I
’ve been carrying a secret for the past four years, but now is the time to finally come clean, the last chance I’ll get to set the record straight. I did not write for my school newspaper in high school. The only two pieces I ever had published were a pair of profiles for my town magazine – and one doesn’t even count since I wrote it in middle school. As an eager high school freshman, I never dreamed about writing for my college newspaper, and I had never even heard of The Brown Daily Herald. So why did I wander into a Herald sports staff meeting a week into my first semester at Brown? I can’t honestly say, since I didn’t know anyone there, I wasn’t accompanied by my freshman roommate or any of the five people I knew on campus at the time (all from my unit, of course) and I had no idea what to expect. My love of sports and my interest in writing led me to attend that first meeting. Over the course of the meeting, the sports editors doled out fall assignments to all the returning reporters. To my surprise, the sports editor actually asked me which sports I was interested in covering. I mumbled something about being a freshman, then added that I liked watching football and had played soccer in high school. The editor quickly moved on to the next person. At the end of the meeting, the man in charge told me to cover the field hockey team and gave me one responsibility: “Go to the damn game!” I struggled to articulate my utter lack of knowledge about field hockey and newspaper writing, but the meeting had already broken up. Needless to say, the night I turned in my first story, I expected the worst. I
anticipated ridicule for my horrendous piece of writing and reporting. Then a funny thing happened. My editor loved almost every one of the 600 words I had pieced together over the course of four hours (I was a little nervous my first time out). He said my writing led him to conclude that I had actually read a newspaper article before. The sports editors promoted me shortly thereafter. I eventually spent two semesters running the sports section and then served two more semesters on the editorial board of The Herald. Looking back, it is frightening to think that had I scoffed at my field hockey assignment, I would have missed out on the greatest experience of my college career. I learned more about myself and my university by reporting and editing the articles seen in The Herald’s pages every day. I learned how to interview people in authoritative positions without being intimidated or distracted. I learned how to prepare for interviews with the football coach so I could avoid wasting his time — and how to recognize the aggravated look that usually followed a question he deemed inane. I learned how to find the most intriguing and important aspect of a story and extract a (half-)decent narrative from it. I never felt more connected to the campus community than when I wrote and edited for The Herald. Some of my fondest memories from college came courtesy of the 2005 football team — the first Brown squad to win the Ivy League Championship outright. I reported from every game but one that season, and I had the opportunity to observe a group of true student-athletes accomplish a goal every bit as impressive as a national championship. The one game I’ll never forget from
that season is the lone game Brown lost, a 38-35 decision to Harvard in double overtime. It was a picture-perfect fall day. After an idyllic morning studying in Harvard Yard, I covered one of the most dramatic, well-played, heartbreaking football games I can remember. Along the way I had the good fortune to cover several hard-working, cooperative and professional individuals, guys such as Jamie Gasparella ’06, Steve Storrs ’06, Joe DiGiacomo ’07 and Zak DeOssie ’07. Even though they were in the middle of accomplishing something never before done at Brown, they always had time to take my calls after film study or give me five extra minutes after the game to chat in the locker room. During that season, I wrote a story about the 1976 Ivy League title team and investigated the similarities between the two squads. I spent a few afternoons in the John Hay Library perusing Herald articles about that season. The thought did not dawn on me at the time, but now looking back on my time at The Herald I can imagine a scribe in the future working through the archives of the 2005 football season. It is extraordinarily humbling to think that when a Brunonian 20 years from now needs to learn about the 2005 championship football team, he or she will likely rely on my copy to recreate the season. I can only hope I did an adequate job for all those who followed the sports I covered — and especially for that future aspiring journalist.
Stephen Colelli ’08 served as a sports staff writer, sports editor and executive editor for The Herald. He was also occasionally charged with writing witty — and often spurious — headlines to spice up the back page.
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The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
jonathan sidhu taking my time
W
henever my name shows up in Brown-related print, it’s inevitably followed by a decimal more appropriate for the Richter scale than a graduation year: ’08.5. I surely brought it upon myself, but like the threshold for a degree in honors (you wrote a thesis, right?), I’m stuck at the midpoint between — not an A and a B but — 2008 and 2009. Apparently Commencement is a chance to commemorate four years of problem sets and PowerPoint presentations, a few well-organized thesis paragraphs and the occasional jazz combo performance. There might have been an art opening along the way, a published article, a vocal recital or even an Ivy League championship football title. But for me, it seems, Commencement will be more of a clumsy comma than a full stop in the narrative that is my Brown education. Indeed, I’m excited to celebrate the accomplishments of my friends and classmates, but I’ll inevitably dodge the occasional “Congratulations, Jon” or “What are you up to next year?” How did I get in this lovely predicament? I took a semester leave last spring to pursue history-related research in Delhi, and along the way, I ended up reporting and writing for some newspapers and magazines. I have plenty of justifications in case you’re interested: something about being a professional student for upwards of 17 years — blah, blah, blah — and a new sense of perspective, which money can’t buy. Not even $180,000. I might not officially be in the Commencement program, but I’ll surely
enjoy walking back out the Van Wickle Gates, rounding off my (not quite) four years at Brown. I worry, though, that the symbolism will be lost on me: if I’ve walked out the gates into the world, where will I be next semester? Well, I imagine I’ll be working at my carrel on the fourth floor in the Rockefeller Library. Don’t pity me, though; I only have fifteen more weeks. Which is 108 days. But who’s counting? Okay, I admit it: no matter how awkward Commencement will be this weekend, I don’t regret my decision to take time off, and in fact, I believe it was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life. And in all seriousness, I cannot imagine an environment that could have been more supportive and critically engaged than Brown. That there are about 100 mid-year graduates like me suggests that Brown might be a little different from other colleges. The reasons for taking time are tremendously varied, but broadly speaking, many of the students I know pursued interests that complemented their academic careers. One friend volunteered at an orphanage in South Africa, another wrote for the Chronicle of Higher Education. One traveled through South America, while another pursued film production. We hear it often, I think, but it’s true that we learn as much outside the classroom as inside. My limited education in journalism came from reporting and writing for The Brown Daily Herald, and I honed drum playing in groups and bands over the years. It goes without saying that it is important to have
intellectually energetic students within a seminar, but it is also important to have smart friends around when you’re discussing the World Series or a New York Times feature. The University, through it all, was not only supportive of taking time off, but seamlessly fit me into the administrative apparatus. One dean meeting — and bam! — I was off to India; a quick email and I began pre-registering for my homecoming semester. Sure, there are the slight snags — basically that I’ll only walk through the Van Wickle Gates in May — but it’s been a relatively painless process. We’ve heard all the clichés about Brown and Brunonians, but I think there’s truth to be found in them. That Brown does not have a rigid core curriculum means that its students are not limited to courses that fulfill a prescribed code. Rather, we have the liberty to expand on courses of interest and investigate areas that might seem far-flung from our usual emphases of study. It is a peculiar thing to be surprised, regularly, by the insight and accomplishments of a group of people, but I say it with all sincerity. Congratulations class of 2008 (and 2008.5) — you deserve it.
Jonathan Sidhu ’08.5 was a Herald senior editor and arts & culture editor. A development studies concentrator, he will finish a concurrent master’s in the same field next fall. Assuming, of course, that he doesn’t take another semester off.
The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
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mary-catherine lader some sisterly advice
I
n September, my little sister will begin her second year at Brown, and I’ll be well into my third month of so-called real life. During shopping period, she’ll probably call me for advice about which classes to take, hoping I’ll offer pearls of wisdom gleaned from my four years spent navigating Brown’s cornucopia of liberal arts opportunities (actually this metaphor kind of sums it up nicely but I think the language is too boring for the very beginning of the piece -- something shorter?). At the risk of disappointing my parents, I’ll pass on one thought with little academic insight: don’t take notes on your laptop. It’s highly hypocritical — I take notes on my laptop. I’d like to think it’s because my sluggish handwriting could not begin to capture the lyricism of my eloquent professors’ lectures. But I do occasionally foray into multi-tasking. The thing is, I’m far from alone. When I realize I’m typing too furiously to be doing anything other than chatting online in half-English abbreviations, I self-consciously look around to see if my fellow students have caught on. More often than not, I notice a guilty smattering of fellow typists also talking to friends or, more likely, e-mailing group members about their next meeting, revising a contract for their start-up or corresponding with a lawyer about getting 501(C)3 status for their non-profit. Thanks to the New Curriculum’s flexibility, we can not only choose diverse academic paths to complement our extracurricular pursuits, but get credit for them — through independent study courses with a faculty advisor— as well. One beloved engineering professor famously has at least a dozen independent studies under his advising umbrella in a given semester. But when we can so easily reach
beyond Brown, I wonder who among us will choose to spend our energy and limited time on College Hill focusing on what lies within campus boundaries. Serving on university committees has less resume or Fulbright potential than starting an orphanage in Namibia from your Diman dorm room. Ironically, the curriculum that enables these divergent paths emerged from a moment of campus unity. It’s too often told, but in 1969 a group of students took hold of Brown’s direction and set a new course. These past four years have seen plenty of protest over minor issues (remember the furor over online course registration?) that overlook the bigger picture. Brown’s makeup is melting before our eyes, and we aren’t doing anything about it. We aren’t asking the right questions or articulating what we love about this place. Perhaps, in part, it’s because we’re too busy gathering for events beyond our ivory tower and building a launchpad to set in motion at Commencement. Of course, preparing for the future makes sense and semi-professional experiences outside the classroom provide a necessary complement to immersion in Kafka and/or quantum physics. Using campus wireless to apply for a summer job or keep track of a story assignment for the Brown Daily Herald, for example, helped me balance schoolwork and professional pursuits. Yet just six months after we printed our last issue as the 117th editorial board, I’ve almost completely forgotten the campus news stories we covered, the breaking news of no consequence, the headlines that got lost in the mix of activity. But the long nights spent working with earnest, funny, eloquent fellow editors linger. Like a winning season, I know that those nights will never be recreated in quite the same way. With them, I took on more re-
sponsibility than I could handle. Together, we were in charge of something we had little idea how to run, however much we may have thought otherwise at the time. We wrestled with decisions about students’ privacy, considered our role as a campus paper and sought to make the incredible changes at Brown come alive for students. I’m not sure whether we succeeded, but we tried. It’s hard to compete with ambitious undergraduates’ drive to push beyond their college confines. When things like campus wireless enable me to step outside Brown even as I sit in the middle of a lecture for which my parents are paying a hefty sum, it’s all too easy to forget why I’m really here. I didn’t come to Brown to figure out how to most efficiently organize my inbox, to finagle success where none is deserved or to discover which energy drinks have the highest impact. I came to Brown to indulge in four uninterrupted years of learning, failing for the right reasons, and thinking with people who don’t look like me, don’t think like me and have everything to teach me. You go out, thinking you should study. You stay in, thinking you should go out. You commit to run this organization, wondering if you should try new options. And you look for the next step secondguessing whether it’s the right one to take. And that’s the point. My time misspent wasn’t a mistake at all. Without it, I’d still be spending these rare Providence spring days calculating my next move instead of preparing a three-hour food fight. Mary-Catherine Lader ’08 was features editor and editor-in-chief of The Herald. After a month traveling with her sister, she’ll begin work in a renewable energy investing group at Goldman Sachs.
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The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
anne wootton the past, come to life
T
he inaugural issue of the Brown Daily Herald is almost 117 years old. The pages (there are four) are brittle and cracking around the edges, with library call numbers scrawled in the top margins. On that day — Wednesday, Dec. 2, 1891 — the Herald editors wrote somberly of their purpose in undertaking the sixth daily college newspaper in the country:
“This issue begins the career of the Brown Daily Herald. Whether it shall remain as one of the fixtures of Brown or die a natural death is left to the students themselves. ... The Herald will not lay claim to any literary merit but will contain only the college news, notices and announcements that may be of daily interest to college men. ... We ask a fair trial and we will demonstrate our right to live.”
After months spent working to digitize these crumbling pages, I’ve formed a very clear image of those editors: a few 20-year-old boys, darkhaired probably and wearing suits halfuntucked, setting type at a little press in the wee hours of the morning at the foot of a slumbering College Hill. Supposedly, the notoriously alcoholic press operator
delayed the Herald’s printing on more than one occasion. Though the early pages of the Herald were evidently serious in purpose, humor inevitably crept in, intentional or not. From Friday, Dec. 11, 1891:
“The bowling-alleys are in daily and hourly use; but we are sorry to see some who drop the balls rather than roll them.”
Do incoming students today know that the Herald once published as front page news the anthropomorphic records kept by the University of each entering class? The average weight of men in the class of 1908 their freshman year? 139.4 pounds. Height? 5’9.1”. These relics of turn-of-the-century college life are overshadowed in The Herald’s archives by graver moments in history that have shaken Brown’s campus — World Wars I and II, Vietnam. As race relations made headlines in the 1960s, The Herald’s tone shifted with a changing University, striking a tone more provocative and — maybe — more selfaware. “Blacks Set To Leave University,” reads a headline from Dec. 5, 1968, when the majority of black students walked out after President Heffner refused to set an 11 percent quota for black students at Brown and Pembroke. Despite that first editorial board’s
claim that The Herald be merely a college news bulletin, the newspaper’s archive has become an extensive historical repository — and The Herald’s editors, as transmitters of that history, played a unique role in shaping what today we look back on and call “Brown.” There is so much more. But I’d rather let the archives speak for themselves — they have a lot to say.
Feb. 2, 1904: “College Customs: 1. No Freshman may carry a cane or smoke on the campus (this to include Andrews Field). 2. Only Seniors may sit on the seats of the Van Wickle Gates. 3. No Freshman may wear a straw hat until May thirtieth. 4. No man may wear a silk hat or frock coat until the Junior Week of his class. 5. No Freshman may walk on the south side of College street during the college year (This rule does not apply after the Freshman-Sophomore baseball game, in case the game is won by the Freshmen). 6. No underclassmen may wear preparatory school insignia of any kind. 7. Only Seniors may sit on the middle east steps of University Hall.”
The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
From the Spring Weekend 1969 Special Issue, when Smokey Robinson and Janis Joplin were among the featured performers:
The first ever issue of the Brown Daily Herald, published on Wednesday, Dec. 2, 1891.
The day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, in Volume 51, Issue 58, The Herald’s editorial board voiced its thoughts in “The JapaneseAmerican War: An Editorial.” They wrote:
“War can come no closer and we are no longer afraid. We are a united nation determined through war to destroy the forces of war and to preserve the forces of peace. We know now that while there is one robber and one knife, no man is safe from attack. America has accepted war without hysteria. Although this is, for many of us, our first experience of wartime, we have learned the first lesson of warfare. Wars are won by calm and resolution, lost by emotional disorganization. ‘We’ll do what we’re told and stand by for further developments,’ President Wriston stated last night.”
Later that academic year, on Jan. 12, 1942, the editorial board wrote, “The fifty-first board of the Brown Herald, as was the twentysixth, is forced to bow to the inevitable,” as The Herald ceased daily publication in the throes of World War Two. “Herald Enters On ThriceWeekly Schedule Until End Of Semester; Senior Board Action Concludes 23 Years Of Publication As Daily,” the headline reads.
“REPENT! Repent, for judgment is at hand. You have strayed from the paths of Righteousness. You have spent your days in Sloth and Villainy. ... You have indulged in Lechery, Avarice, Wanton Behavior and other forms of Moral Degeneracy. You hang suspended over a cauldron of Fire and Brimstone, into which you are about to plunge and suffer the fiery Pains of all the Horrors of the Nether Regions. The Transgressions you have committed in the name of youthful enthusiasm are hateful and gross Transgressions of your Proper Nature. ... Absolve yourself of your past Wrong-doing. It is not yet too late. Join not in the Bacchanalian revels. Spend the weekend in the wholesome, beneficial establishments of our upright advertisers instead.”
On Oct. 1, 1918, when Brown was officially christened as a military institution, the editors wrote:
“At noon to-day, when 150,000 college men in four hundred institutions throughout the country are sworn into the country’s service as regularly enlisted men, it will be a new world that we look out upon. To the more thoughtful of us, who look deeper than the mere superficial veneer of brick and mortar, of grass and trees, into the very heart and soul of what has been to most of us almost more than a home, a different light shines from the windows of University Hall, a new spirit breathes out upon us; and we cannot help feeling that we are strangers in a strange land.”
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From a special issue in the fall of 1968, in an editorial titled “Hope:”
“Contrary to prevalent opinion, the signs that welcomed you to Rhode Island at the state line do not proclaim in fine print ‘there is nothing to do here, go back to New York.’ Actually, Rhode Island is a repository of urbane mercantilism, scintillating social activity, and avant garde acculturation.”
From Dec. 12, 1891, the first ever exam period reported on by The Herald:
Dec. 12, 1891: “The door to Mr. McCabe’s typewriting room is locked now so that we know the deadly examination papers are being concocted.”
And on Sept. 11, 1968, the editors of The Herald offered advice to new students in their Freshman Week Issue:
“What am I doing here? And it shakes you up. Everybody racked up 800’s and has held five years of French and AP English and a full year of Calculus and you don’t even know what the word calculus means. “Since this is Freshman Orientation Week we really ought to join the other sages — from deans down to last year’s freshmen — in offering you advice on how to spend your four years here. Unfortunately, we ourselves have never found people’s advice particularly helpful, since when examined it usually turns out to be the same clichés we’ve been hearing all our lives; and as we said in the summer issue, college seems an especially good time for not taking other people’s word for things.”
Anne Wootton ’08.5 served as a Herald metro editor and senior editor. A classics concentrator, she will spend another glorious winter on College Hill finishing a thesis on her idol, Abraham Lincoln.
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The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
sonia saraiya what do we want out of brown?
F
or many seniors, including myself, the hordes of starry-eyed pre-frosh who swarm onto campus in spring leave us feeling unsettled. I remember being one of those enchanted students. I applied to Brown early decision, smitten by the New Curriculum, the quirky and vibrant student body and the prestigious academic reputation. Brown seemed to be the place where I could further become myself. In many ways, it has been just that. But academically, it fell short. Brown’s advising is notoriously poor, as we all know. But despite that, I always thought Brown’s administration was on my side. I shouldn’t have been so naive. This past year, I had a personal and academic revelation: I wanted to major in English as well as international relations, and I wanted to complete a nonfiction writing thesis on culinary culture. But I wasn’t allowed to do this. The process dragged on for months and I was ultimately rejected by President Ruth Simmons herself — whom Brown undergraduates have described as a grandmotherly figure who will bake you cookies. All this has made me question the priorities of Brown’s current administration. At this point, if I do pursue a career in writing about food, it will be despite Brown, not thanks to it. What did I want out of Brown? I wanted Brown to understand I’d made mistakes and to help me grow. Perhaps the dean of the College’s office was right
to reject me. But I don’t think so. And I seriously question Brown’s choices as an institution because of it. Late-Night Inspiration Last fall, on a night when I probably should have been doing something else, I realized how disappointed and uninspired I felt with my academic choices. That night, by clicking on random links on the English department’s Web site, I learned that I could have written a nonfiction writing thesis, which would have allowed me to work with a few professors on a long work of nonfiction writing over the course of a year. I already felt like the bastard child of the English department — I’d taken a lot of English classes, my favorite professors were in the English department and I’d worked at The Herald and post- magazine for years, surrounded by English majors. I was one course away from finishing my concentration in international relations, but I was inspired. It was a completely unexpected punch in the stomach, but I suddenly realized that I wanted to be writing a nonfiction writing thesis in food writing, I know I probably should have studied my options better instead of by chance discovering an amazing course of action in the middle of my senior year. But my advising has always been a bit shoddy. I didn’t have an adviser at all sophomore year, and after I declared my concentration, my adviser became
the international relations adviser, who has over 300 other advisees. Not exactly the best setup, I think. I counted myself lucky that I found out about the program when I did. What’s in a Deadline? When I came to Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron in November 2007 to ask to write an English thesis for the Fall 2008 semester, I had the approval of my parents and my professors in the English department. All that remained was for the dean’s office to grant me ninth-semester permission, which is usually reserved for students who have taken leave or who did not do well and need their academic term extended to meet graduation requirements. This year is also the first year that the deadline to declare a second concentration was moved up five months, from the April before graduation to November — ironically, only two weeks before I went to the dean. I was told that I had missed the deadline and could not file another concentration. Deadlines are serious, but it didn’t seem like enough to deny my request, especially considering Thanksgiving break was one of those two weeks I’d missed. I embarked on a lengthy journey with the Committee on Academic Standing, a body chaired by Deputy Dean of the College Stephen Lassonde that reviews the academic progress of all undergraduates. I had already explored every other
The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008 option, including staying for a fifth-year masters’ degree — impossible because English doesn’t offer a nonfiction writing masters’ degree — and purposely failing a class or two and forcing an extended stay (but since I’d have to declare my concentration in English to write an English thesis, failing wouldn’t accomplish much). I couldn’t see any other way to achieve my goal except to go through the CAS. My petitions to the CAS were probably the most heartfelt and honest statements I’ve written while at Brown, certainly far more so than the rote paragraphs I’d written for my original concentration declaration. I tried to express how much it would mean to my sense of self and my academic progress to be able to write this thesis. I was rejected. Twice, actually — once when I tried to add English as a second concentration and once when I gritted my teeth, threw out the ten credits I’d already completed for international relations, and tried to switch my concentration entirely to English. Strangely, Lassonde assured me before my second petition that if it had just been an issue of missing the deadline, the CAS would have pardoned me, but there was some other principle I was unable to grasp that I would violate by taking a ninth semester. Though the deadline was the only rule they could enforce, it was acknowledged by Lassonde to be a rule worth breaking. But if the deadline wasn’t the problem, what was? Lassonde had already rejected me, and Bergeron offered me tissues, sang me a few bars of a song about Paris and promised to investigate options for me — which she then forgot about. I didn’t know what else to do. So I
drafted an e-mail to Simmons — admitting my mistakes, but hoping that someone in charge would be willing to overlook them. The response was anticlimactic, but a blow all the same — I was not going to be helped, her assistant informed me. With Simmons’ silence sealing the deal, I was down, out and without a thesis — and I didn’t know why. I was willing to pay Brown for an extra semester. My professors were willing to read my thesis and support my journey. What difference could it possibly make to the University administration? Unanswered Questions When I decided to write this column, I emailed Lassonde to ask him to explain. His response was, more or less, that I needed to learn from my mistakes. “It’s important for students to carefully think about what they want to study and to understand that they have to live with the choices they make. There are many opportunities to explore the curriculum over the course of a student’s four years here, but there are also doors that close along the way, as students choose one path over another,” he wrote. I find this extraordinarily patronizing. I cannot go back and live these past four years again, so what do I learn from this? I’ve already made my mistakes, and I was simply trying to fix them, to make the $160,000 my parents have spent here work for me a bit better. I am not an example for other students, a warning to figure out your life quickly. I am a casualty of a poor advising system and inflexible rules — and possibly of an agenda that is barely articulated. Lassonde also wrote that the Committee on Academic
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Standing “has consistently determined that students who have enough credits to graduate and who can complete the requirements of their concentrations by their eighth term, may not be approved for an additional term of study to satisfy the requirements of a second (or third) concentration, or to change concentrations.” In short, the dean’s office wants me out. Maybe this is Brown’s version of tough love. Maybe Brown didn’t think that I was sincere in pursuing my thesis. Is the dean’s office concerned with making everyone graduate in eight semesters because that statistic is on a ranking somewhere, or are they driven by academic purpose? These days, the University is eager to ask me for money — at present through the senior gift, which implies at times that I should “give back” to this grand institution I am about to graduate from. Well, as far as I’m concerned, Brown owes me. I don’t want to be at an institution that makes you graduate in four years rather than fulfill your goals. There is no one-size-fits-all learning experience, we’re all told as we begin our time here. But they neglected to tell me that every learning experience has to fit into eight semesters. What do we want out of Brown? Do we want inflexible deadlines and rules? An impersonal administration with an eye for statistical glory? Brown’s administration should be sympathetic — not just to the students with personal problems or academic struggles, but to every story, to every individual. That’s all I wanted out of Brown. What about you?
Sonia Saraiya ’08 was editor-in-chief of postand a Herald senior editor.
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The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
In sickness and in health
back in 2004...
Statistics for the class of 2008, between Aug. 27, 2007 and April 18, 2008:
15,285 applied
2,505 admitted (16.4 percent) 1,429 enrolled Type of high school
public
795
private
505
parochial
96
unknown
33
3,980 visits during full services (daytime) 308 visits during evenings, nights and weekends 90 inpatient stays (could be any time of day, not necessarily overnight) 222 X-rays taken 287 flu shots 693 other shots (immunization, allergy, etc.) 15 supplies: crutches 72 supplies: ice packs
first-generation college 192 (13%)
class of 2008 trivia
most common names GIRLS BOYS Elizabeth 19 Michael Sarah 17 Matthew Alexandra 14 Jonathan Emily 13 Robert Jessica 12 Andrew Katherine 11 Daniel Hannah 10 Adam Jennifer 10 Alexander Julia 10 David
1) How much was a meal credit when we enrolled as
27 22 16 16 15 15 14 14 14
freshmen, and how much is it now? 2)
How many members of the class of 2008 served as president of the Undergraduate Council of Students?
3)
Who was mayor when we arrived at Brown in 2004?
4) How many kickball victories did The Herald have over
the College Hill ‘Dependent (known as the Indy)? 5) How many Ivy League team championships has
Brown won since 2004? 6)
What used to be where Shanghai, Blaze, City Sports, Roba Dolce and Blue State are now?
1) $4.20 in 2004, $5.55 now; 2) None; 3) David Cicilline ’83; 4) Four; 5) Eight; 6) Shanghai replaced Cafe Java, Blaze took over from Max’s Upstairs, City Sports moved in where The Gap used to be, Roba Dolce replaced a Smoothie King and Blue State was a photo development shop
students:
The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
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class of 2008 by the numbers library Together, the class of 2008 checked out 88,062 library items. Those would fill about 3,500 shelves, or about 2 miles. 61 : average number of checkouts per person 39 : mean number of checkouts per person over four years, or about five per semester. The most checkouts: 681, 715 and 745. 277 (19 percent of the class) checked out 10 or fewer items over four years, including 27 people who checked out none. 262 (18 percent) checked out 100 or more, including 8 who checked out more than 400. As of Monday, April 21, 2008, more than half of the class — 797 people — still have out a total of 6,900 items.
dining services Estimated cumulative food consumption by the class of 2008, collectively, over four years:
Chicken Breast
144,000 lbs
Milk (all kinds)
65,000 lbs
Cereal (all kinds)
40,000 lbs
Gate Pizza
169,600 slices
Fresh Tomatoes
82,000 lbs
Cheese (all kinds)
100,000 lbs
... and 53,000 Jo’s Carberry sandwiches
—compiled by Chaz Firestone
the herald senior survey the herald’s highly unscientific senior survey was conducted online through mycourses, april 20-april 25. 230 seniors completed the survey.
What are you doing next year?
If you could do it all over again...
I have no idea.
...would you choose Brown?
23%
92% 8%
Yes: No:
...would you still pick your chosen concentration(s)?
Corporate job (i-banking, consulting, etc.)
Bumming around
4%
3%
27% 30%
71% 29%
Yes: No:
13%
1%
Other job
NA
If Brown calculated class rank based on GPA, where in the graduating class do you think you would fall?
Other Graduate or professional school
Do you think you’re selling out? Yep: No way: I don’t know:
10% 71% 17%
Top 20%: 33.5% Second 20%: 27%
Do you think Brown’s culture has changed in the four years that you’ve been on campus?
Middle 20%: 31.7% Fourth 20%: 4.4% Bottom 20%: 1.3%
Yes, it’s changed for the better: Yes, it’s changed for the worse: Nope, it’s been pretty much the same: top 20%
11% 28% 61%
2nd middle 4th bottom 20% 20% 20% 20%
••• who was the best professor you had at brown?
9 votes
james morone
8
barrett hazeltine
7
gary wessel
6
kenneth miller
5
4
wendy schiller michael lysaght barbara tannenbaum michael vorenberg
arnold weinstein susan harvey matthew zimmt minh luong james campbell
3
dietrich neumann jim egan josef mittlemann
2
catherine imbriglio, jay stuckey, john michael silverman, anani dzidzienyo, ross levine, jin li, stephen smith, mark cladis, nancy jacobs, danny warshay, richard stratt, kerry smith, thomas banchoff, stephen mcgarvey, john stein, michael paradiso, amy remensnyder, stephen houston, martin west, jonathan waage, simone pulver, ivo welch, kaivan munshi, omer bartov, joseph pucci, tricia rose
1
paget henry, ross cheit, mari jo buhle, stefan benus, jon cohen, lisa egan, maureen sigler, forrest gander, brian evenson, susan smulyan, johanna schmitt, joan richards, claude carey, jack wright, kevin mclaughlin, james valles, oded galor, robert self, tara nummedal, douglas brown, ralph rodriguez, phillip contic, lynn joyrich, maud mandel, richard fishman, nathalie etoke-ilda, john starr, james simmons, anna aizer, john hughes, maria pizarro-prada, tamar katz, lynn davidman, jennifer slattery-bownds, ellen rooney, stuart burrows, john tomasi, ulrich krotz, stratis papaioannou, elliott colla, abbott gleason, julie urda, jennifer lawless, sharon swartz, patricia symonds, david josephson, william simmons, michael putnam, colin harrington, alexander levitsky, martha lang, lawrence stanley, arkady belozovsky, david dumas, scott allard, brian hayden, j. roderic beresford, matt garcia, lung-hua hu, anatoly zhitkovich, kurt teichert, linda miller, corey brettschneider, david odeh, tim harris, karl jacoby, robert cope, matthew bagger, justin fallon, lynne debenedette, mallica landrus, annie wiart, j. william suggs, geoffrey russom, marion orr, stan zdonik, pascal van hentenryck, john bodel, sharon krause, beth taylor
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The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
How many of your Facebook friends do you actually know and like?
Do you really feel $180,000 smarter today than you were four years ago? 44% 56%
Yes: No: 18%
All of them: Over three-quarters: Over half: Less than half: I don’t use Facebook:
How many sexual partners have you had during college?
17%
16% 12%
3% 42% 39% 14% 2%
Do you plan to keep in touch with your friends? Yes: No:
6%
7% 5% 4% 4%
5%
4% 1%
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10 11+
Other responses: “100,” “1000,” “not enough,” “S/NC,” and “Does Julia Roberts count?”
99% 1%
How many Brown students have touched your genitals (excluding yourself)? None: One: Two: Three to five: Six to ten: More than 10:
17% 14% 11% 27% 23% 10%
••• what is your favorite memory of college? BOLT • SPEC carnival on spring weekend • playing bocce ball with miniature pumpkins on the Quiet Green at 2 AM in the pouring rain. • my friends and I all joked around about being gay, and one of my best friends turned out to be homosexual. When he came out to us, none of us knew if he was serious. He was, but the jokes live on • my girlfriend ashley • walking butt naked onto a jam-packed Sci-Li Mezz and distributing doughnut holes and nice big smiles • making friends at TWTP and knowing I’ll be walking through the gates with them • Disney power hours • Alpha Delta Phi. For everything. • Fall Concert 2006 • meeting and hearing Bill Clinton after sleeping in Faunce overnight, long hilarious nights spent editing Post- and meeting my bffs as a freshman in Hope • Spagfest at 63 Governor Street • visiting the abandoned bridge downtown • seeing Bill Clinton speak, awkward professor interactions, intramural innertube waterpolo • going nuts on Wriston with sidewalk chalk with my friends dressed in mini skirts, wifebeaters, black bras and baseball hats • sitting on the steps of Faunce • taking a trip to Connecticut to pick up a canoe, party at Wesleyan, and steal a road sign • the Ratty • ADOCH • 4:20 a.m. on the main green, four years in a row • Meeting Street cookies with wine coolers from Spiritus • freshman year in Keeney :) • took a 10 p.m. bus to Newport with a bunch of people the night of Veterans Day freshman year for some late fall revelry. Passed out in a tree and almost missed the 5:30 a.m. bus back to Providence • reading at midnight on the Green with my roommate for our favorite class • laughing with the friends I’ve made • summer in Providence • getting lost on SafeRide as a freshman and getting off the same place I got on • getting my picture taken with condom man • freshman year face-shove in keeney — tribute to Joelle • coming back from summer break • being an MPC • pre-breakfast gin and tonics sophomore year • night biking • it’s a tie: either my 20th birthday where we ordered Kebab and Curry and sat on the floor of my double drinking and eating greasy Indian, or going to the GCB with friends • dancing naked in the hobbit sculpture • moving in • streaking Lincoln Field in the rain • spring break 2008 • threw a party on a balcony in my freshman dorm during ADOCH...over a hundred people must have been there at any given point that night • after my organic chemistry final, I walked out of Salomon to be greeted by two friends with multiple beers. The weather was perfect and I was done with all my finals • so many! But maybe mud sliding in my underwear on Lincoln Field at midnight after a rainstorm ... and then getting chased down by a car full of locals • going to Spats 12 nights in a row sophomore year • partying in North Smithfield • Phi Kappa Psi • Binder • dating a Herald executive editor • birthday party senior year. It was at my house, we had two kegs and pretty much everyone I’ve known over the past four years showed up. Also, pants were optional • being caught by DPS • seeing Hillary Clinton speak • late night Jo’s runs • doing a drunken can-can on Meeting Street • seeing my boyfriend snuggle with my best friend’s boyfriend • studying abroad (I love Brown, but living abroad really changed my life!) • streaking on the Main Green • barbecue in the snow freshman year after finals • SPG 2005 • the first weekend we were all on campus for this fall. everyone was so happy! it filled me up inside. also dancing on the beach with 20 brunonians in negril, jamaica. spring break!
The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
Have you...
How satisfied were you with... housing?
...had breakfast at Loui’s?
not very 17%
somewhat 63%
extremely 19%
Yes: No:
meal plan? extremely 16%
somewhat 48%
9%
Yes: No:
not very 58%
somewhat 32%
UCS? not very 59%
Yes: No:
Are you graduating in four years? 95% 4% 1%
24% 53% 20% 3%
19% 81%
...ever attended a Brown football game? Yes: No:
69% 31%
...ever had sex in the SciLi?
How much do you love Ruth? OMG, soooooo much: She seems pretty cool: I don’t get this whole Ruth thing: I think she’s awful:
53% 47%
...ever attended a naked party?
extremely 2%
Yes: No, graduating in more: No, graduating in less:
54% 46%
...ever stepped on the Pembroke seal? Yes: No:
somewhat 38%
92% 8%
...attended Sex Power God or Starf*ck?
not very 35%
advising? extremely
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Yes: No:
19%
0
How many all1-5 nighters have 5-10 you had to pull 10 or more in four years? way too many
12% 88%
35% 21% 10% 15%
• Orientation week...or what I remember of it • MSex! • Keeney late night conversations • staying up late in friends’ rooms talking about random things • My freshman year birthday party. I met a lot of people and got them drunk in the first week of classes. Good times • staying up all night talking in Keeney freshman year • drinking for breakfast • rolling-chair races on the patio of Andrews East and West • practicing and performing with Professor Stein for Dancing With The Profs • ice skating on the Main Green • the memories I don’t remember but are told the next morning • sleeping in the SciLi my senior year. We went in just before it closed and managed to find our way into a librarian’s office. It was SO tempting not to eat the candy on his desk • having sex in the Rock • Perkins and going abroad • finding out that a drunk girl I had let sleep in my bed pissed in it by the time I checked on her the next morning • as a freshman, walking away from my first meeting with Barrett Hazeltine (greatest man alive), and calling my mom to tell her that “I LOVE Brown” • being in New York to see Brown football beat Columbia and win the Ivy League Championship • neuroscience research • working SafeWalk on Thursday nights from 12 a.m. to 2 a.m. for $7.50 an hour. Worst decision • Water sliding on Wriston during Spring Weekend 2006 as we gave standing ovations to passing tour groups, yelling about how amazing Brown is • slacking off when I have a hell lot of work to do • I loved the giant back of the Ratty dinners all of my freshman unit friends used to have. I often laughed until I felt sick • 5 a.m. Loui’s after Campus Dance • graduation • come from behind win against Yale my freshman year...studying abroad...meeting so many great people • is it bad if they’re all sexual? • censored • playing/picnicing on the Main Green at night with friends • getting a job and realizing it was worth it • Kings followed by can-cans down Meeting Street • the Flaming Lips on the Main Green last Spring Weekend. The only outdoor concert of our Brown career! • remember college? • sneaking out on the roof of my freshman dorm and eating Ben & Jerry’s with my friends • blackout • cooking Carberrys at Jo’s while wasted • being around people who are intellectually stimulating and yet still can have fun • talking politics one-on-one with Tom Brokaw • Walking around barefoot • rollie chair races in an empty Rock
The Brown Daily Herald thanks the members of the class of 2008 who spent countless hours writing, reporting, editing, photographing, designing, illustrating and chronicling each day at brown. you will always be a member of the brown daily herald alumni association.
The Brown Daily Herald invites its alumni to attend a reunion reception
195 Angell Street (between Brook and Thayer) Saturday, May 24 4 to 6 p.m.
••• senior comics
roxanne palmer
charlie custer & stephen barlow | but seriously
ben leubsdorf | trust ben
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The Brown Daily Herald COMMENCEMENT 2008
••• final thoughts? from the herald’s senior survey what do I do now? • I entered a liberal, I’m leaving rational • Brown’s cool, with some needed changes • nudity breeds friendship • Brown is amazing. Period • four more years... • the number of Brown students who’ve touched my genitals may be low, but the number who’ve seen them is in the hundreds • when did we get so old? • wooo! • though it might seem difficult at times, remember your goals and keep perspective • bye bye Brown • many faults, yes, but still the greatest undergraduate experience around • oh-eight! • I wish I could do it all over again • I will miss you, Brown • let’s just do it all over again, shall we? • Loved it! • I am going to miss Brown. And not all of these questions were necessarily binary...omg binary is SUCH a Brown word! • not ready • I’m really going to miss Brown, more than I thought I would! • in deo speramus... seriously • so sad to leave this place • excited and sad to graduate • Brown is amazing! I have no motivation left, though... • we all grew up here, together. We might cross each other’s paths this summer, 10 years down the line, or at our 50th reunion. Whenever it is, we’ll always share that. No, seriously • I cant believe it’s all coming to an end... • Brown is a good place • God help us • Brown is the new Brown • congratulations, Class of 2008! • May 25th couldn’t come any sooner • I loved Brown! • Woohoo? • I can’t believe we’re graduating • What? That’s it? Don’t I get another go? • my time at Brown was amazing • I’m sad to go! I love Brown and the people here. It’s been a wonderful 4 years. • I would come here another four years if they would let me • I had a wonderful time at Brown. But the cost of tuition is too high • I love Brown • Brown should pioneer a five-year college experiance the same way they pioneered the New Curriculum • I have lived and loved • what I’ve loved most about Brown is the kind of students here — down to earth, interesting ... I’ve met a lot of good people! • I am obsessed with Brown and will do everything in my power to send my kids here one day. I without a doubt know this has been the best place in the world for me to have spent the past 4 years • Brown is a good place but could use some more direction for its students • fraternities have a bad rep here, but once you actually get to know the people in them, you’ll realize that all the stereotypes or preconceptions are wrong. At least with Phi Psi, can’t speak for Sigma • I’m gonna miss this place • thanks Brown, I will miss the time here! • Brown is a really unique place • I can’t believe it’s almost done. I’m glad Brown has Senior Week so we can have our Brown experience come full circle and re-visit freshman year • I’ve loved Brown. But I feel it’s time to move on • I love this place. We’ve had our ups and downs, but in the end I adore Brown • I found myself. That was the point — even if some days I’m still looking. • I will miss Brown. I am also really ready to be a real person and be done with the student life • I can’t think of a better place for me to have lived, studied and explored than here! Thanks Brown :) • job skills please? • hard to believe it’s over • i like cheese at the GCB • I will never belong to anything else as completely as I do to Brown • Brown is the shit • this survey makes me feel like I didn’t really experience Brown. Then again, I’m pretty excited to be leaving it. • I have a thesis to write • Cornell sucks • I fuckin’ love Brown • for all the complaints I have about Brown, it has been a really wonderful three-and-a-half years (excluding time abroad) • I love Brown. I’m going to miss it so much • stay in school forever... • Brown fucking rules! • the money paid for college was paying for the connections I have made rather than what I’ve learned...but Brown is the only place where I could have a religious studies degree and be a hip hop DJ • I’m gonna miss this place but I’m ready to take on the world • Brown is a weird place, and it does not reflect the real world • I f***ing love Brown • I love(d) Brown • I’m not ready to leave the bubble... • four years is never enough • go Bruno!! • pissed that Brown’s new financial aid policies didn’t concern the class of 2008 • I love Brown so much and I am so sad to leave this amazing place and my wonderful friends! • Barrett Hazeltine is a legend • Brown was the best thing that happened to me excluding the night I found alcohol • PLME = four more years • being gay in 2004 was so much more fun than being gay in 2008 • I don’t want to leave... ever • I love Brown! • Though I’ve made many mistakes in life, and even at Brown, coming here has CERTAINLY not been one of them • holy shit I can’t believe this is it • woo hoo • with our scotch and our rye and our whisky dry and our B-O-U-R-B-O-N! ‘08! • it’s a great day to be a Brown Bear • I love Brown...and I’m not sure what I’m going to do without it • no one cares about advising. My favorite thing about graduating is that no one will poll me about what I think about fucking advising • loved my time at Brown...will miss almost everything about the place • New York City here I come...after this last Louis’ breakfast • the light at the end of the tunnel is a Facilities Management truck operating a jackhammer next to Minden at 8 a.m. • where did all the time go? • thanks for the memories! • four more years! • “final thoughts” sound too much like “last words” for comfort. Contrary to popular belief, graduation is not death • this place did me right • Brown is an Ivy that doesn’t feel like an Ivy, which is why I love it • this new financial aid thing should be retroactive • I <3 Brown • greatest time of my life • Brown’s pretty tight • hipsters are the price to pay for going to this school • ALMOST DONE • we need better advising • spicy with • I don’t want to leave • I don’t have any finals this semester • I can’t believe it’s over • college is like toilet paper. The closer you get to the end, the faster it goes • i wish i’d had more fun and spent less time studying... • beer can make anything possible • I love Brown • is college really almost over? • ooooh eight! •