Volume CXLII, No. 59 Since 1866, Daily Since 1891 MONDAY, J ULY 16, 2007 T HE B ROWN D AILY H ERALD Exonerated Duke suspect awaits fresh start at Brown NEW YORK — Reade Seligmann ’09 is sitting in a Starbucks a block away from Times Square, talking about some of the stu- dents he knows at Brown, when a woman with black hair, heavy, dark-blue eye shadow and an “I Love NY” shirt approaches the table. “Would you care for a psychic reading?” she asks. Seligmann looks up at her, unfazed, and quickly smiles. “No thanks,” he says. Then he adds: “I think I know where I’m going.” It seems like a bold statement for Seligmann, who admits he couldn’t say that a few months ago, when he was one of three Duke lacrosse players accused of raping an exotic dancer at a team party in March 2006. But this evening, Seligmann looks relaxed, if a little tired af- ter 11 hours of work at Bear Stearns, the New York invest- ment bank where he is an in- tern. He is wearing a white Ox- ford shirt with an orange tie. His sleeves are rolled up. Tonight, all Seligmann wants to talk about is Brown, where he will enroll this fall as a transfer student and lacrosse recruit. He asks several questions about the open curriculum, the faculty and the history department, where he will be a concentrator. He says, half-jokingly, that he would quit his internship on the spot if he could start the semester the next day. BY STU WOO SPORTS EDITOR Longtime prof makes waves with her exit Writing Fellows director Rhoda Flaxman PhD’82 resigned late last semester, protesting both a per- ceived lack of University support for the peer tutoring program she founded and ran for two decades and the transfer of the program’s longtime administrative assistant. The popular professor’s res- ignation prompted University of- ficials to defuse a vocal backlash from writing fellows who sensed external meddling in their tight- knit group, just as the dean of the College was preparing to begin a wholesale review of writing in- struction at Brown. Writing fel- lows, who are selected through a competitive application process, help all the students in courses for which professors request their assistance. “I decided to leave Brown — I was going to retire in three years anyway — because I was ver y dis- turbed when I found out I was los- ing my staff,” Flaxman told The Herald in a July 10 interview. “Wendy Sheridan, the woman who helped me for 14 years, who has done a terrific job of manag- ing our courses and our work, was no longer available to the pro- gram.” “At this point in my life, I did not really want to be in a fight with administrators over sup- BY ROSS FRAZIER NEWS EDITOR College without the stress On a recent sunny afternoon in July, the Main Green was nearly as busy as when the trees first started blooming in April. Art students sat on the Quiet Green sketching the Manning Chapel, Frisbee players dashed around the University’s lawns and con- struction sounds from Wilson Hall belied the peacefulness of the tree branches swaying in the breeze. Many of the students loung- ing on the Green are high school students participating in Summer@Brown, while others are Brown students staying in Providence for the summer. Deborah Gorth ’09.5, who is living in a Governor Street apartment, is filling her days with both study and work. She is taking two classes, one in neuro- science and one in biology, and working at two labs doing bio- medical engineering research. Gorth admitted that her schedule keeps her busy — she woke up to study neuroscience on a Saturday morning — but she also said she is enjoying her summer in Providence. “It’s awesome,” Gorth said. “It’s a good mix of being produc- tive and having fun.” Gorth brought a car to cam- pus, so she has been able to ven- ture off College Hill for week- end entertainment. She went surfing in Newport, explored rural South County and made plans to attend a Red Sox game in Boston. Kaitlyn Laabs ’09, who also has a car available, has spent much of her free time scoping out the state. “I have a newfound love for Providence and for Rhode Is- land,” said Laabs, a Herald sports staff writer. For her, one of the greatest benefits of spending summer near campus has been developing a new rela- tionship with her surroundings. When she is not roaming Rhode Island, Laabs is studying for her American civilization class and working for WBRU. “You’ve got no stresses of the school year, but all the benefits,” Laabs said. She likes using her extra time to find new treasures in the area, from a great concert venue or a new restaurant to the perfect place for relaxing with a book. But Laabs said it’s the stu- dent culture that makes summer in Providence worthwhile. “I’ve met so many awesome people I never would’ve met during the year,” she said, ex- plaining how easy it was to run into the same few people over and over again until friendships formed. Though Adam Backer ’08 does not have a car, he has also found ways to entertain himself and meet new people in Provi- dence. Backer spent the past two summers here, and he said he can now navigate the city pretty well. “During the year, I’m always in the same few blocks, but now I can walk farther and see more,” Backer said. “There’s more time BY STEPHANIE BERNHARD FEATURES EDITOR Thayer St. bikers relegated to designated parking spaces Bikers are a loud, proud, Thayer Street staple. But a new amend- ment to the city code may soon keep some of them away. Motorcyclists visiting Thayer Street will soon be required to park in designated spaces. An amend- ment calling for the designation of parking spots as “motorcycle- only” was signed into law July 11 by Providence Mayor David Cicil- line ’83. Supporters of the amend- ment hope it will limit the number of bikers who choose to loiter on the commercial street. The new motorcycle-only spac- es will likely be indicated by blue painted curbs. Several parking laws were adjusted in order to ac- commodate motorcyclists, accord- ing to Adrienne Southgate, deputy city solicitor. While fines are still applicable for cars that park with their left wheels toward the curb or at an improper angle to the curb, they will no longer apply to motor- cycles, in order to ease the accom- modation of more motorcycles into BY CAMERON LEE STAFF WRITER 195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island www.browndailyherald.com Tai Ho Shin / Herald Summer@Brown students playing Frisbee on the Main Green enjoy the relaxed summer atmosphere. Tai Ho Shin / Herald Motorcycles have long lined Thayer Street. METRO Students find new ways to enjoy Providence continued on page 4 continued on page 4 continued on page 5 continued on page 12 READING, NOT COMPLAINING Incoming first-years don’t seem to mind the new mandatory summer reading, one of several changes implemented as part of an Orientation overhaul INSIDE: 3 CAMPUS NEWS post- POST- FOR THE SUMMER post-, The Herald’s weekly arts and entertainment maga- zine, gets an internship, wears the wrong clothes and gets knocked up INSIDE PRE-SORTED STANDARD U.S. POSTAGE PAID PERMIT NO. 2475 PROVIDENCE, R.I.
Transcript
Volume CXLII, No. 59 Since 1866, Daily Since 1891MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
Exonerated Duke suspect awaits fresh start at Brown
NEW YORK — Reade Seligmann ’09 is sitting in a Starbucks a block away from Times Square, talking about some of the stu-dents he knows at Brown, when a woman with black hair, heavy, dark-blue eye shadow and an “I Love NY” shirt approaches the table.
“Would you care for a psychic reading?” she asks.
Seligmann looks up at her, unfazed, and quickly smiles.
“No thanks,” he says. Then he adds: “I think I know where I’m going.”
It seems like a bold statement for Seligmann, who admits he couldn’t say that a few months ago, when he was one of three Duke lacrosse players accused
of raping an exotic dancer at a team party in March 2006.
But this evening, Seligmann looks relaxed, if a little tired af-ter 11 hours of work at Bear Stearns, the New York invest-ment bank where he is an in-tern. He is wearing a white Ox-ford shirt with an orange tie. His sleeves are rolled up.
Tonight, all Seligmann wants to talk about is Brown, where he will enroll this fall as a transfer student and lacrosse recruit. He asks several questions about the open curriculum, the faculty and the history department, where he will be a concentrator. He says, half-jokingly, that he would quit his internship on the spot if he could start the semester the next day.
BY STU WOOSPORTS EDITOR
Longtime prof makes waves with her exit
Writing Fellows director Rhoda Flaxman PhD’82 resigned late last semester, protesting both a per-ceived lack of University support for the peer tutoring program she founded and ran for two decades and the transfer of the program’s longtime administrative assistant.
The popular professor’s res-ignation prompted University of-ficials to defuse a vocal backlash
from writing fellows who sensed external meddling in their tight-knit group, just as the dean of the College was preparing to begin a wholesale review of writing in-struction at Brown. Writing fel-lows, who are selected through a competitive application process, help all the students in courses for which professors request their assistance.
“I decided to leave Brown — I was going to retire in three years anyway — because I was very dis-
turbed when I found out I was los-ing my staff,” Flaxman told The Herald in a July 10 interview. “Wendy Sheridan, the woman who helped me for 14 years, who has done a terrific job of manag-ing our courses and our work, was no longer available to the pro-gram.”
“At this point in my life, I did not really want to be in a fight with administrators over sup-
BY ROSS FRAZIERNEWS EDITOR
College without the stress
On a recent sunny afternoon in July, the Main Green was nearly as busy as when the trees first started blooming in April. Art students sat on the Quiet Green sketching the Manning Chapel, Frisbee players dashed around the University’s lawns and con-struction sounds from Wilson Hall belied the peacefulness of the tree branches swaying in the breeze.
Many of the students loung-ing on the Green are high school students participating in Summer@Brown, while others are Brown students staying in Providence for the summer.
Deborah Gorth ’09.5, who is living in a Governor Street apartment, is filling her days with both study and work. She is taking two classes, one in neuro-science and one in biology, and working at two labs doing bio-medical engineering research.
Gorth admitted that her schedule keeps her busy — she woke up to study neuroscience on a Saturday morning — but she also said she is enjoying her summer in Providence.
“It’s awesome,” Gorth said. “It’s a good mix of being produc-tive and having fun.”
Gorth brought a car to cam-pus, so she has been able to ven-ture off College Hill for week-end entertainment. She went surfing in Newport, explored rural South County and made plans to attend a Red Sox game in Boston.
Kaitlyn Laabs ’09, who also has a car available, has spent much of her free time scoping out the state.
“I have a newfound love for
Providence and for Rhode Is-land,” said Laabs, a Herald sports staff writer. For her, one of the greatest benefits of spending summer near campus has been developing a new rela-tionship with her surroundings. When she is not roaming Rhode Island, Laabs is studying for her American civilization class and working for WBRU.
“You’ve got no stresses of the school year, but all the benefits,” Laabs said. She likes using her extra time to find new treasures in the area, from a great concert venue or a new restaurant to the perfect place for relaxing with a book.
But Laabs said it’s the stu-dent culture that makes summer in Providence worthwhile.
“I’ve met so many awesome people I never would’ve met during the year,” she said, ex-plaining how easy it was to run into the same few people over and over again until friendships formed.
Though Adam Backer ’08 does not have a car, he has also found ways to entertain himself and meet new people in Provi-dence. Backer spent the past two summers here, and he said he can now navigate the city pretty well.
“During the year, I’m always in the same few blocks, but now I can walk farther and see more,” Backer said. “There’s more time
BY STEPHANIE BERNHARDFEATURES EDITOR
Thayer St. bikers relegated to designated parking spaces
Bikers are a loud, proud, Thayer Street staple. But a new amend-ment to the city code may soon keep some of them away.
Motorcyclists visiting Thayer Street will soon be required to park in designated spaces. An amend-ment calling for the designation of parking spots as “motorcycle-only” was signed into law July 11 by Providence Mayor David Cicil-line ’83. Supporters of the amend-ment hope it will limit the number of bikers who choose to loiter on the commercial street.
The new motorcycle-only spac-es will likely be indicated by blue painted curbs. Several parking laws were adjusted in order to ac-commodate motorcyclists, accord-ing to Adrienne Southgate, deputy city solicitor. While fines are still applicable for cars that park with their left wheels toward the curb or at an improper angle to the curb, they will no longer apply to motor-cycles, in order to ease the accom-modation of more motorcycles into
Tai Ho Shin / HeraldSummer@Brown students playing Frisbee on the Main Green enjoy the relaxed summer atmosphere.
Tai Ho Shin / HeraldMotorcycles have long lined Thayer Street.
METRO
Students find new ways to enjoy Providence
continued on page 4
continued on page 4
continued on page 5
continued on page 12
READING, NOT COMPLAININGIncoming first-years don’t seem to mind the new mandatory summer reading, one of several changes implemented as part of an Orientation overhaul
INSIDE: 3CAMPUS NEWS
post-POST- FOR THE SUMMER post-, The Herald’s weekly arts and entertainment maga-zine, gets an internship, wears the wrong clothes and gets knocked up
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PROVIDENCE, R.I.
One Hundred Years of Solipsism | Adrienne Langlois
HANSONFRIDAY, JULY 20 (Lupo’s Heartbreak Ho-tel, 79 Washington St.) — Everyone’s favorite boy band is coming to town!
“EXPRESSIONS OF FAITH: FROM THE STREETS OF NEW YORK TO JE-RUSALEM”JUNE 11 TO AUG 8 (Brown Hillel - 80 Brown Street) — Photography of Ned Harris is on display at Brown Hillel.
PROVIDENCE SOUND SESSION ‘07JULY 15 TO JULY 21 (many Providence venues) — Genre-defying music fes-tival sponsored by the Black Rep and the Cit of Providence.
FIRST-YEAR ORIENTATION BEGINSSUNDAY, SEPT. 2 — First-years move into the dorms and begin Orienta-tion activities.
CAMPUS NEWSTHE BROWN DAILY HERALDMONDAY, JULY 16, 2007 PAGE 3
Universities in the summer often look more like massive construc-tion sites than centers for learn-ing and research, and Brown is no exception. This summer, $30 mil-lion worth of construction projects have closed roads and turned heads around College Hill.
Among the projects slated for this summer are an expansion of the Walk, renovations to Pembroke
Hall and the J. Walter Wilson Lab-oratory and upgrades to the Uni-versity’s utilities. Construction of a temporary pool to replace the shut-tered Smith Swim Center will begin soon, and a number of smaller proj-ects, such as sprucing up residence halls and building new artificial turf athletic fields, are also in the works, said Michael McCormick, assistant vice president for planning, design and construction.
Perhaps one of the most notice-able projects will be the relocation
of the Peter Green House from its current location on Angell Street to a lot on the corner of Angell and Brown streets. Though the house will be moved in the span of a week, most of the work for the relocation, such as building a foundation on the new site, must be completed before the physical relocation can occur.
The space cleared by moving the building that houses the history department will become part of the
$30m in summertime construction projects underway
Former Chilean president appointed prof-at-large
Ricardo Lagos Escobar, former president of the Republic of Chile, officially began a five-year term as a professor-at-large on July 1.
Lagos, whose position is based at the Watson Institute for International Studies, will spend October on campus delivering lectures and working with stu-dents and faculty to design “pol-icy-relevant” research projects, said Barbara Stallings, director of the institute.
Lagos’ first event on campus will be a conference in early Oc-tober that will also feature former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, another pro-fessor-at-large who is now in the final year of his five-year appoint-ment at Brown.
Stallings said it is likely that La-gos and Cardoso will spend time collaborating while at Brown, de-scribing the two as “close friends and colleagues.”
“One of the reasons that Pres-ident Lagos agreed to accept our invitation was because he heard from President Cardoso that he had had a good experience here over the last four years,” she said.
The Herald was unable to reach Lagos for an interview.
Under Lagos’ leadership from 2000 to 2006, Chile signed free trade agreements, established unemployment insurance, ex-panded healthcare coverage and
extended compulsory schooling. After a military coup seized
power in Chile in 1973, Lagos went into exile, but later he re-turned home and became a lead-er of the opposition to General Augusto Pinochet, who ruled the country until 1990.
“Chile has been an important leader both in the re-democrati-zation trend in Latin America and also in terms of economic and so-cial development,” Stallings said. “(Lagos) will be able to bring firsthand experience to these questions for students to under-stand them better and for the public to understand more about what’s going on in that particular part of the world.”
Brown’s Latin America pro-gram already stands out among its peers, Stallings said, having recently been awarded a Depart-ment of Education Title IV grant, which is a highly selective grant awarded for the study of interna-
BY OLIVIA HOFFMANSENIOR STAFF WRITER
With the class of 2011’s arrival on campus just a month-and-a-half away, organizers have yet to hit any major snags in preparing the Uni-versity’s new Orientation program, administrators say.
A revamped, shorter Orientation was first recommended in January by an Orientation review committee. Orientation programming, which is now slated to begin on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, will feature a streamlined series of class meet-ings and a more condensed sched-ule leading up to the beginning of classes, with activities continuing into the first three days of shopping period and the subsequent week-
end, which University officials have dubbed “First Weekend.” A sum-mer reading requirement has also been implemented for all incoming first-years.
The summer reading require-ment — which calls for incoming students to read a book, write a let-ter to their adviser in mid-August discussing it and participate in a fac-ulty-led discussion of the book dur-ing Orientation — represents one of the most significant departures from past practices, and the Orien-tation review committee’s report urged caution in implementing it.
“We need to carefully think about how to sell this idea to the incoming class,” the report said. “This initia-tive will be ineffective if a significant portion of the class (does) not read
the book.”But nine members of the class of
2011 interviewed by The Herald all said they intended to read the book — “How Proust Can Change Your Life” by Alain de Botton — and that they supported the requirement.
Kathleen Braine ’11, a prospec-tive political science concentra-tor from Columbus, Ohio, said she planned to read the book and that the requirement did not bother her. “We had to read like seven books for my school, so one is not that big a deal. It actually looks kind of inter-esting.”
Stephanie Van ’11, a pre-med stu-dent from Rockville, Md., agreed. “It’s only one book,” she said. “I trust Brown to choose a book that everyone will enjoy.”
BY MICHAEL SKOCPOLSENIOR STAFF WRITER
Summer reading, so far, gets positive reviewsStudents win mtvU grant for music visualization software
The idea started with late-night discussions and a hacked iPod nano, but Osiris, a project created by three Brown undergrads, soon gained the attention of mtvU and Cisco Systems, which granted them $25,000 for their project. Zachary McCune ’10, Sebastian Gallese ’10 and Schuyler Maclay ’10 were one of five groups — and the only comprised solely of un-dergraduates — who won a grant in the second annual Digital In-cubator contest to pursue digital media-related projects.
Osiris provides visualizations of songs by using online visual databases like Flickr. Using the lyrics of the song, the program searches keywords in image da-tabases to match up the music with pictures.
The students initially created Osiris as a final project for a digital art seminar taught by Mark Tribe ’90, assistant professor of modern culture and media studies.
According to Tribe, the course is designed for students to make art. “The way I run it, we do a lot of reading, we have discussions and we look at art, but instead of exams, we have these final proj-ects in which students collabo-rate in groups of three to four.”
It was in this class that Mc-Cune, Maclay and Gallese met. Gallese said it took several late night meetings for the idea to re-
ally come together.“We were thinking that we
could do cool graphic displays on iPods but then thought ‘Oh, that doesn’t really work,’” Gal-lese said. “Then we started messing around with visualizers, and we realized that people had never really done anything with that before.”
The project, named for the Egyptian god of the underworld, is different from those currently available, which only use abstract images based on the music that is playing.
“The visualizer is extremely static, and one of the most un-sophisticated pieces of technol-ogy that people still have on their computers,” said McCune, a former Herald staff writer. “It’s probably the same that it’s been since color computers were intro-duced.”
“We’ve gone from a predomi-nately audio, to audio-visual, to an interactive age. This combines everything and takes everything to another level,” Maclay said. “As an artist, I was interested in that transition. If you look at mu-sic, it went from purely music to the development of MTV and mu-sic videos, live shows being per-formances, not just sound. I was interested in what the next steps
thanks for reading
Courtesy of Brown.eduFormer Chilean President Ricardo La-gos Escobar
Tai Ho Shin / Herald
Construction has been a common scene on campus this summer. The area between Churchill House and the Urban Environmen-tal Lab on Angell Street is no exception.
SENIOR STAFF WRITER
BY SCOTT LOWENSTEIN
continued on page 6 continued on page 6
Administrators expect smooth transition to new Orientation
continued on page 8
SENIOR STAFF WRITER
BY IRENE CHEN
continued on page 8
FEATURE
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007PAGE 4
port,” Flaxman added.Dean of the College Katherine
Bergeron said the staffing change was originally proposed by her predecessor as dean, Professor of English Paul Armstrong. In a July 12 e-mail to The Herald, she wrote the change was part of a compre-hensive plan to rethink the Uni-versity’s writing requirement.
Fellows question U.’s reasoningAfter learning last semes-
ter that Sheridan would be reas-signed to work with deans in Uni-versity Hall, Flaxman mailed let-ters to more than 800 current and alumni writing fellows, describing what she saw as the University’s lack of support for the program and, according to a recipient of the letter, a conspiracy to change its structure and culture.
Bergeron, like other Universi-ty officials, was initially unaware of the letter. She first learned of it when two concerned writing fellows met with her in late April and other students sent letters of complaint to The Herald and the dean, alleging insufficient back-ing for the student writing fellows, sources said.
“The way Rhoda expressed it to us was that she was going to be expected to do administrative work on top of her normal du-ties,” said Nick Swisher ’08, one of the writing fellows who met with Bergeron. “We were really con-cerned about these changes be-ing made without any sort of stu-dent input and that these changes would affect the way the Writing Fellows program was run, in that the fellows themselves would now be running the program.”
Bergeron asked Flaxman for a copy of the letter she sent to al-ums, sources told The Herald, and soon after offered a 25 hour-per-week administrative assistant to Flaxman’s replacement, Doug Brown, who will direct both the Writing Center and Writing Fel-lows this fall.
Until then, Brown was slated to direct both programs without any staff support, Flaxman and several writing fellows said. Because the Writing Fellows program works with nearly half the undergradu-ate population each year, Flaxman said staff support is imperative.
Bergeron told The Herald that Flaxman announced her retire-ment before discussions of staff support for the Writing Fellows were ever completed. “After fur-ther discussion with staff and stu-dents during the spring and sum-mer, we concluded that the best use of our resources would be to
hire a new staff member to assist with the program,” she wrote.
Writing fellow Fiona Heck-scher ’09 said Bergeron, Brown and Associate Dean of the College Kathleen McSharry met with fel-lows on May 14 and told them an assistant for the program would be hired.
Heckscher described the meet-ing as “a great brainstorming ses-sion” that provided a link between fellows and the administration. But Swisher, a former Herald opinions editor, said though he appreciated Bergeron’s gesture, her talk of a broad curricular eval-uation didn’t answer writing fel-lows’ specific concerns about why Flaxman’s staff was cut in the first place.
“If Brown’s going to be re-eval-uating writing in the curriculum, it seems they were shutting out the people who might have some-thing very valuable to say about it,” Swisher said. “What caused most of the turmoil was the worry there wasn’t going to be adminis-trative support for the program. Now that there is, I wonder why all these changes needed to hap-pen under the circumstances they did.”
“It’s all so surreptitious,” Swisher added.
New leadership and directionThough writing fellows said
Flaxman’s resignation is a sig-nificant loss to the program, they said they have confidence in Doug Brown, who currently directs the Writing Center and will also lead the Writing Fellows next year.
Brown said Thursday he is sensitive to fellows’ concerns that the program’s unique culture will fade with Flaxman’s departure.
“There’s the culture of this pro-gram and the practice of this pro-gram. The culture is vitally impor-tant, so we’ll be working together to preserve it,” Brown said. “As far as methods and practice, that’s what will be evaluated.”
Fellows were particularly con-cerned that the program faces consolidation with the Writing Center. “My sense from meet-ing with Dean Bergeron is that perhaps her office didn’t have the best perspective on each pro-gram’s goals,” Swisher said.
Though two programs have al-ways been distinct entities, next year they will both move into J. Walter Wilson Laboratory, which is being transformed into a stu-dent support center, and the pro-grams will be run by one person. The Writing Center is staffed by graduate students who provide individual writing support to stu-dents and lead writing workshops,
whereas the writing fellows are undergraduates assigned to pro-vide assistance in specific cours-es.
Both Bergeron and Brown said they have no intention of combin-ing the two programs. Brown said collaboration between the pro-grams would be limited to social events or retreats.
Brown and Bergeron said stu-dents can expect increased focus on the University’s writing re-quirement. In a Herald poll con-ducted in the spring, fewer than half of Brown students said they believe all undergraduates fulfill the University’s writing require-ment, which mandates “compe-tence in reading and writing” to graduate.
McSharry will work on that issue next year, Bergeron wrote, with an eye toward linking vari-ous writing support programs. This fall the Writing Center will have weekly seminars on writing within different disciplines, and a student-faculty committee should be formed by the fall, Brown said, to advise on the University’s writ-ing programs.
While writing fellows like Swisher remain skeptical of Bergeron’s call for “strengthening the connections between many parallel programs,” others see an opportunity for dialogue.
“A lot of different parts of the University tend to finger-point when it comes to determining who is responsible for providing writing education — programs point to the administration, ad-ministration points to professors, professors point to departments,” said Katherine Saviskas ’06, who wrote her senior thesis on the his-tory of the Writing Fellows pro-gram. Now, she said, “We have a chance for a campus-wide conver-sation about how to give people the writing education they need.”
Even as the Writing Fellows program moves forward without Flaxman, several fellows were quick to point out that the pro-gram has suffered a significant loss. “Her departure may be an opportunity to update the pro-gram, but I really dislike the way that opportunity arose,” Swisher said.
Flaxman said she is excit-ed about spending time on her consulting business. “The next step of my career is to spread a methodology of writing,” Flax-man said, adding that she has al-ready been working with four in-stitutions. “I think it will be more effective to work with faculties than with my wonderful writing fellows, who work solely in the Brown context.”
to waste.”This summer, Backer’s favor-
ite haunt is the Steel Yard in Ol-neyville, a community space for teaching and creating art. At night, Backer said, the Yard often hosts parties attended by Brown and RISD students, as well as lo-cal artists and community mem-bers.
Though he ventures to Ol-neyville occasionally, Backer, like most Brown students, lives and
works on the East Side. He is rent-ing a room at Watermyn co-op, eating his meals at Finlandia co-op and doing electrical engineer-ing research through a Royce Fel-lowship.
Backer said he is having more fun this summer than last, when he was spending all of his time re-searching, funded by an Under-graduate Teaching and Research Award, and taking an intensive emergency medical technician class.
The key to a good summer in
Providence, Backer said, was set-ting aside enough free time to en-joy the social scene.
Gorth agreed. “Even cooking dinner is really a social event,” she said. The only negative as-pect of Providence in the summer, Gorth said, is the oppressive heat and lack of air conditioning.
Laabs admitted that apartment living has its challenges but said she does not regret staying in Providence.
“It’s probably the best decision I made,” she said.
continued from page 1
Longtime prof.’s departure prompts concern over U. writing programs
continued from page 1
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Building and development proj-ects in Fox Point will be heavily restricted over the next 12 months due to a moratorium passed July 5 by the Providence City Coun-cil. The ordinance was designed to delay development along Prov-idence’s waterfront as well as on the property made vacant by the relocation of Interstate 195.
The ordinance establishing the 12-month moratorium was passed in hopes that extensive neighbor-hood planning will take place over the next year, both locally and as a part of the city’s Comprehensive Plan for Development, said City Councilman Seth Yurdin, who rep-resents Ward 1, including all of Fox Point.
Yurdin said the neighborhood, which is near Brown’s campus, would benefit from more thought-fully planned development proj-ects. “The history of Fox Point has been really affected by the way the big construction projects have been implemented,” he said. “The original I-195 cut Fox Point in half and displaced a lot of people.”
The ordinance does not ban all building projects in Fox Point, Yurdin said — just those that would require special permission from the zoning board of appeals, most commonly any buildings tall-er than six stories.
Yurdin said he has received a lot of support for the ordinance, not only from residents and busi-nesses in Fox Point but also from Providence residents in general. “People want to see the city’s plan implemented, rather than piece-meal development,” he said. “It’s not just a neighborhood issue.”
While the largest parcel of land
affected by the ordinance is the area made vacant by I-195’s relo-cation, there has also been contro-versy over a section of waterfront property in Fox Point. For the pur-poses of the interstate’s relocation, the state Department of Transpor-tation acquired control of a six-acre piece of property — formerly occupied by the nightclub Shoot-ers — at the head of Narragansett Bay, just west of India Point Park. However, this land is no longer needed by the DOT and is cur-rently vacant.
Many residents of Fox Point would like to see that vacant land
used for a public park, according to Daisy Schnepel, president of the Fox Point Neighborhood Associa-tion. The FPNA, along with Sen. Rhoda Perry, D-Dist. 3, Friends of India Point Park and Rep. David Segal, D-Dist. 2, have lobbied the DOT for public access to the land.
Perry and Segal, a former Ward 1 councilman, wrote in a letter to DOT Director Jerome Williams that there is a “substantial and growing interest” to use the prop-erty for public activities and that several non-profit groups have
METROTHE BROWN DAILY HERALDMONDAY, JULY 16, 2007 PAGE 5
M E T R O I N B R I E F
Incarcerated ex-mayor returns to Providence a free manBuddy’s back. Providence’s longest-serving mayor, convicted on feder-al racketeering conspiracy charges five years ago, was released from a halfway house in Boston June 20. Cianci moved into his nephew’s East Greenwich home and is now working for the upscale downtown Providence condo complex 903 Residences, the Boston Globe re-ported June 9.
Cianci spent four years in a New Jersey federal prison before his May 30 release. He began working for 903 Residences June 8, the Globe re-ported.
Cianci initially planned to work for the XV Beacon hotel in Bos-ton, which was closer to the halfway house where he was required to stay. However, he decided to work in Providence to get away from the Boston media and to be closer to family and friends, the Globe reported.
— Simmi Aujla
Tai Ho Shin / HeraldDevelopment in Fox Point has been restricted by the Providence City Council.
Courtesy of BuddyCianci.com Vincent “Buddy” Cianci
City Council approves yearlong development moratorium in Fox Point
Proposed Thayer Chipotle gets zoning approvalBY NICK WERLESENIOR STAFF WRITER
Chipotle is one step closer to Thay-er. A proposal to build a location of the popular burrito restaurant chain on Thayer Street has re-ceived conditional approval from the Providence Zoning Board of Review.
The proposed building, steps from campus at the corner of Eu-clid Avenue and Thayer Street next to Kabob and Curry, re-quired exemptions from city code that requires businesses to pro-vide off-street parking spaces. The zoning board waived those requirements in early June, but its approval has not been official-ly recorded because of an admin-istrative backlog.
Once the official decision is is-sued, opponents of the exemption have 20 days to appeal. Then the project must pass other reviews, such as a review of the building’s fire safety, and obtain building per-mits from the city.
Andrew Teitz, an attorney rep-resenting Chipotle, called the zon-ing board’s decision a “key approv-al.” Other procedures are “more ministerial,” he said.
Though there is no date set yet for groundbreaking, David Shwaery, owner of the property, said he expects “Chipotle will be-
gin construction immediately once they get all of their approvals.”
The board’s decision has not quieted some College Hill resi-dents’ opposition to the project.
There is “a critical shortage of off-street parking in the Thayer Street area, and the action by the Zoning Board, if upheld, will only exacerbate that further,” said Will Touret, a member of the College Hill Neighborhood Association board of directors.
The CHNA is considering an appeal to the zoning board’s deci-sion, Touret said.
Barbara Harris, also a CHNA board member who opposes the decision, said she has “nothing against Chipotle” but said Shwaery and Chipotle have not met legal cri-teria for an approval.
“Every time you ignore the zon-ing laws, you risk diluting the pro-tections for the neighborhood,” Harris said.
the available spaces.Ward 2 Councilman Cliff
Wood said Thayer Street shop owners and patrons who were dissatisfied with the presence of bikers prompted him to intro-duce the amendment at the Prov-idence City Council.
“The whole point is so that as many people (as possible) can enjoy Thayer Street, whoever they are and however they get there,” Wood said. The amend-ment was intended to make it “easier to share the space” — not to exclude bikers, Wood said.
But biker Joseph Roman said he disagrees about the motives be-hind the change to the city code. “Look at all these bikes. Where are we supposed to go?” he said Thursday when he heard of the law, gesturing to about 50 bikes on Thayer Street that night.
“It will make the city more money,” said another biker, Kev-in Black. “That’s what they want — for us to park illegally in car parking spots and then ticket us (to pay) for their doughnuts,” he said.
Roman and Black were two of 10 bikers interviewed who had not previously heard of the law. Most bikers said they would not stop coming to Thayer but feared that the law would change the street’s dynamic for the worse.
The amendment was modeled after a similar ordinance in Maine that “seemed to work well,” Wood said. First signed into law in April, the amendment had to be changed and re-signed before it became official in July because of a technicality that prevented the amendment from applying to Thayer Street, Wood said.
— with additional reporting by Scott Lowenstein
continued from page 1
Motorcyclists curtailed on Thayer
continued on page 8
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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007PAGE 6
Walk, a green space that will link Lincoln Field and the Pembroke campus. The Peter Green House will be ready for occupancy in its new location by spring of 2008, McCormick said.
This summer the University will also renovate Pembroke Hall to house the Cogut Humanities Center and the Pembroke Cen-ter for Teaching and Research on Women. The center is expected to be completed by the fall of 2008.
McCormick explained that in the new Pembroke Hall, “most of the (renovated) spaces will have a completely different feeling from before.” He stressed that the Pem-broke Hall construction will take the history of the building into ac-count during its renovation.
“There are a lot of features that we want to make sure we hold on to,” including the top-floor library and a second-floor classroom that will be restored instead of being completely redone, he said. Still, some modern elements, such as new, energy-efficient windows that mimic “old glass,” will be used, McCormick said.
Renovations to J. Walter Wilson will also start late this summer, and the building will be ready for occupancy in the fall of 2008. The former laboratory is being trans-formed into a yet-to-be-named cen-ter that will house student servic-es offices.
“It is a very centrally located spot, and all the things that stu-dents need to get their jobs done will be in this primary location,”
McCormick said.Construction of a temporary
pool to replace the Smith Swim Center will begin this summer and should be completed by January 2008, according to Russell Carey ’91 MA’06, interim vice president for campus life and student servic-es. The pool will serve the swim-ming, diving and water polo teams while a new swim center is built in conjunction with the planned Nel-son Fitness Center, both of which are expected to be completed in 2010.
Also in the athletic complex, two artificial-turf football fields will be ready for play in the fall, providing “all-weather practice fields” for athletic teams and intra-murals, Carey said. McCormick added that Pembroke Field will be graded to better serve as a playing field and will receive a new fence and sand volleyball courts to “get more use out of it and make it a campus entity.”
Carey also described small-er projects aimed at improving campus life, such as renovating dorms to improve kitchens and bathrooms and improving handi-capped accessibility in residence halls across campus.
Outdoor areas around campus are also getting face-lifts, including new landscaping and sidewalks and improved lighting, McCor-mick said.
He said the new lights will be more diffuse, illuminating campus landmarks like University Hall, the Van Wickle Gates and Soldier’s Arch, and that low-level, ambient lighting will be placed along the sidewalks to avoid glare. Aesthet-ic improvements to the exterior of Wilson Hall on the Main Green will also contribute to a better at-mosphere, he said.
This summer also marks Brown’s recent engagement with the surrounding community, in-cluding funding improvements on Thayer Street and public streets.
“We used to be very hands-off with public streets,” McCormick said. “But we have realized that public streets are how everybody circulates through campus, and so we have a whole series of pedes-trian improvements throughout campus.”
Improvements on Thayer Street include replacing sidewalks, plant-ing trees and hanging flower bas-kets. The improvements, which are partially funded by Brown but not managed by University of-ficials, are part of a greater goal to improve cooperation with mer-chants on Thayer.
“The big difference we are hoping will be most noticeable is the creation of Thayer Street Dis-trict Management Authority so all of the merchants have a board of directors that speaks with one voice,” McCormick said.
Finally, routine utility projects to improve hot water and electric-ity distribution have been respon-sible for the road closings and bustling construction during most summers. Still, University officials
say this year’s projects represent something special.
“Every summer for us in Fa-cilities Management is an incred-ibly busy time, but this summer is a little bit different, because it is the first wave we are seeing of the planning process that (start-ed) almost five years ago” when the Plan for Academic Enrichment was first laid out by President Ruth Simmons, McCormick said. “We have a whole series of manage-ment plans that came from (the Plan for Academic Enrichment) that are now becoming individual projects you are seeing out there.”
Not all members of the College Hill community are as enthusiastic about the projects, however.
The construction projects are “kind of an eyesore,” said Baird Langenbrunner ’09, who is doing research on campus this summer. “It is a shame that they have to do them during the summer when students are touring. They make the campus a lot less attractive for them.”
Street closures have also proved inconvenient. Confused motorists trying to use closed streets are of-ten forced to turn around, and pe-destrians making the walk from the main campus to Pembroke campus are faced with a maze of detours and closed walkways.
Still, the ultimate goal of this year’s summer construction — street renovations and the Walk — is to streamline and consolidate campus connections, ultimately making it easier to get around, Mc-Cormick said.
“Improvements to the circula-tion structure on campus … will make the core of campus more connected,” which is worth the summer inconvenience, McCor-mick said.
Community groups have also criticized Brown’s construction goals as ignoring the residential and historical aspects of the Col-lege Hill neighborhood and have recently challenged projects, suc-cessfully derailing a planned park-ing garage in the Olney-Margolies Athletic Complex.
“We don’t want Brown taking over all of College Hill with their tax-exempt status ... and architec-turally insignificant buildings,” said Ronald Dwight ’66, a member of the College Hill Neighborhood Association.
Though McCormick cited Brown’s increased communica-tion with the community as a rea-son behind the University’s new strategy of building on the current campus instead of spreading fur-ther into residential areas, Dwight said the administration is still not doing enough to cater to the com-munity.
Brown’s cooperation with the community “is all lip service,” Dwight said, adding that “Brown is an arrogant institution to work with.”
Despite the criticism, Langen-brunner said he thinks the “ben-efits from construction outweigh the short-term costs.”
Relocation of Peter Green House among construction projectscontinued from page 3
tional cultures and institutions. It has a larger number of people in-volved than any of Brown’s other regional programs and is “far and away our most important one,” Stallings said.
Stallings said Lagos’ appoint-ment is also an indication of the University’s commitment to inter-nationalization.
“What the internationaliza-tion initiative is about … is both to bring the rest of the world to Brown to a greater extent and to send Brown out to the rest of the world,” she said.
Lagos’ appointment contrib-utes to both goals, Stallings said, giving Brown a higher profile and opening up opportunities for col-laboration for students and faculty through the use of Lagos’ contacts in Chile and elsewhere in Latin America.
With the addition of Lagos, the University now has five professors-at-large. Of the five, three — Lagos,
Cardoso and former U.S. Ambassa-dor to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke ’62 — are based at the Watson Institute.
Marta DaSilva ’09, an internation-al relations and history concentrator who plans to study abroad in Latin America in the spring, said bringing in these types of figures is “a huge deal for a lot of IR students.”
Because the concentration is interdisciplinary and offers four tracks, it is often difficult to sepa-rate all of the things that go on with-in the IR program and find a focus, DaSilva said. She said going to lec-tures by figures such as those serv-ing as professors-at-large at Brown is important because it’s “more in-teractive” and helps to engage stu-dents in the subject matter.
“When you actually meet the people that do this for a living, it kind of puts everything in perspec-tive and helps the people that are concentrating in the department decide what they’re actually do-ing with their concentration,” she said.
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Former Chilean president appointed prof-at-large
BY MICHAEL BECHEKSENIOR STAFF WRITER
Ben Boas ’06.5 posted the best ever finish by an American at an international mahjong competi-tion in June, placing third out of 133 competitors at the Open Eu-ropean Mahjong Championship in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Boas, who was playing mah-jong in Finland last week when reached by The Herald, wrote in an e-mail that this year’s champi-onship was the first ever to have a full American team, and the first to have an American top finisher.
Mahjong, which originated in China, is a strategy-based four-player game with intricate rules in which competitors use tiles to try to build complete suits, usually of threes, from either 13 or 16 tiles. According to the World Mahjong Organization, the game has been a worldwide pastime for over a century, “owing to its comprehen-sive cultural content as well as its merits of being interesting, com-petitive and helpful to wisdom and friendship.”
Boas was joined at the tour-nament by Alexander Young ’07, whom Boas wrote wasn’t planning on playing but “ended up substi-tuting for a Russian player.” Young finished in 59th place and was the next best American finisher.
“For someone who only learned the rule-set three weeks before the tournament, I’d say that’s pret-ty good,” Boas wrote.
The tournament’s champion was Denmark’s Martin Wedel Ja-cobsen, while Japan’s Kohichi Oda finished second.
In his e-mail, Boas wrote that
he has been playing mahjong since he learned it in Tibet in 2004 dur-ing a year off from Brown. When he returned the following fall he started a mahjong club, and later decided to write an honors thesis in East Asian studies on mahjong culture in Japan. Boas has since won a Fulbright fellowship to pur-sue the same topic next year while studying at Japan’s Kyoto Univer-sity and plans to compete at the World Mahjong Championship in November in Chengdu, China, he wrote.
Boas also wrote that he plans to “work with the European mah-jong community” in the next year as a consultant to develop rules for their Japanese-rules mahjong tournament.
Though Boas was not avail-
able by telephone, he has detailed many of his experiences on his blog.
“With 13 points out of a pos-sible 16, I had had a great start to the tournament!” Boas blogged on June 24. “But my luck soon took a change. Round 5 was a bit of a nightmare. My opponents includ-ed Sune, a very strong Danish player, and Emmanuel, the former French champion who handles his tiles so well, often he doesn’t even need to look at them because he can feel the patterns on the tiles with his thumb.”
“And yes, I’m not a Brown stu-dent anymore,” Boas wrote on June 25, though it isn’t clear to whom or what he was responding. “But hey, what can I say? I love my alma mater. Go Brown!”
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Air Force plans to improve military aircraft through study of bat flightThe U.S. Air Force is investing $6 million over the next five years to study the flight of bats in a project led by Associate Professor of Bi-ology Sharon Swartz. The study will focus on the flight of pregnant female bats, and researchers hope that understanding the physics of carrying so much weight in flight could help aircraft designers im-prove current aircraft models.
The research team has already reported that bats can execute air-borne maneuvers that birds and planes cannot while carrying up to 50 percent of their weight. They hypothesize that hundreds of tiny sensors covering bats’ wings might be the key to their airborne ma-neuvers. Researchers have also found that bats can fly with badly damaged wings and show no discernible changes in flight control.
This project is funded by a pool of federal money recently allocat-ed for the support of basic academic research into new technologies that have potential military applications.
U. drives int’l effort forward, with major progress expected by Sept.BY MICHAEL SKOCPOLSENIOR STAFF WRITER
The University should complete the first major steps of its official internationalization effort by ear-ly September, when officials hope to name a vice president for inter-national affairs and release the re-port of its internationalization com-mittee.
The committee — established in October 2006 to recommend how the University could raise its profile outside of the United States and enhance the international char-acter of its curriculum, campus life and research — is finalizing revi-sions to the report and expects to make its findings public at the be-ginning of the fall semester, said committee member and Assistant Provost Shelley Stephenson.
The University has also identi-fied a candidate for the new vice presidential position and is cur-rently in negotiations to finalize the appointment, added Stephen-son, who serves on the vice presi-dential search committee.
Those negotiations are unlike-ly to be completed before mid-Au-gust, Stephenson said, meaning
a vice presidential appointment could be announced around the time the report is released.
Stephenson declined to iden-tify the candidate or provide any information about the person’s background, citing the candidate’s request that nothing about the ap-pointment be made public yet.
The new vice president will be responsible for overseeing the next phase of the University’s in-ternationalization effort. Univer-sity officials and committee mem-bers have said they expect the vice president will use the committee’s recommendation to guide his or her efforts, at least initially.
The committee’s report, ex-pected to be about 20 pages long, will highlight specific suggestions from initial reports of its six dis-cipline-specific working groups, which will be appended to the re-port.
The Herald reported in April that proposals in the working groups’ reports include encourag-ing more science and technology students to go abroad and creating centers to coordinate the Univer-sity’s global health activities and study African development. The fi-
nal report will emphasize specific recommendations for University officials and will try to place the working group reports into a larg-er context, Stephenson said.
The appointment of the vice president for international affairs and the release of the committee’s report will be two of the most sig-nificant signs of progress in the University’s internationalization effort since it was announced last fall.
The appointment in February of former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke ’62 as a professor-at-large at the Watson Institute for International Studies and an informal adviser to President Ruth Simmons was also touted by University officials as a boon for the effort. Holbrooke is a former editor-in-chief of The Her-ald.
One project currently under-way is the creation of regional advi-sory councils in areas such as Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Uni-versity has also sent delegations to China and India in the past year to discuss collaboration with busi-nesses and universities in those countries.
CAMPUS NEWSTHE BROWN DAILY HERALDMONDAY, JULY 16, 2007 PAGE 7
Professor helps create removable tattoo Professor of Medical Science Edith Mathiowitz has created tiny microcapsules as small as the point of a pin, which can carry medicines, genes, paints or any other molecule that requires protection or controlled release. The devices will be used to make ink for the first durable but removable tattoo. The technique of suspending particles in biodegradable coatings has been used in the past for drug delivery.
The University recently signed a licensing agreement with Freedom-2 Holdings Inc., giving the company rights to make and sell the ink. Funding from the company has allowed Mathiowitz and her team to create dye-filled, microencapsulated beads for Freedom-2 tattoo inks. A single laser treatment breaks the polymer beads, allowing the body to naturally expel the dye trapped inside the microcapsules. Traditionally, it takes six or seven laser treatments to remove a tattoo.
A new study found that one in 10 hospice patients are referred “too late” to receive the full benefits of the intervention, resulting in unmet needs in the areas of pain relief and emotional support. Many patients are not referred to hospice care until the last 24 to 48 hours of life, said Joan Teno, professor of community health and medicine and associate medical director at Home and Hospice Care of Rhode Island.
Teno surveyed bereaved family members to gauge the quality of hospice programs, collecting information from over 100,000 surveys. The research team included Janet Shu ’02 MD’07 and Ramona Rhodes MPH’06, assistant professor of medicine and an attending physician at Rhode Island Hospital.
— Kristina Kelleher
One in 10 hospice patients referred “too late,” U. researchers find
Alum scores top U.S. finish in mahjong history
Courtesy of Ben BoasBen Boas ’06.5 put his mahjong skills to the test in Copenhagen, Denmark, placing third in the European championship.
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come together to consider uses for the property, which would re-duce the government’s expense by “several hundred thousand dollars.”
Schnepel told The Herald that the property at the head of the bay is a “signature piece of land” in a
floodplain, with deep water dock-ing capabilities. Ideally, she said she would like to see the property used for public marinas and as a tourist attraction to bring people to Providence.
“If it gets developed by an inde-pendent developer and becomes high-end condos, no one will have any access to it at all. It will all be
private,” Schnepel said.But the DOT wants to sell the
six-acre waterfront property to a private owner or developer and has repeatedly objected to the 12-month development moratorium. In a letter to Mayor David Cicilline ’83, Williams wrote that “the site’s optimum location, proximate to the water, and the state’s need for capital compel our wish to dispose of the site.”
Williams went on to write that the moratorium would “deprive us of the chance to garner revenue” and “diminish the property’s val-ue.” Representatives of the DOT voiced similar objections to the ordinance at a public hearing held by the Providence City Council, according to Ward 2 Councilman Cliff Wood.
Wood supports the moratori-um, calling it an “opportunity to step back and look at what we’re doing in that part of the city.” Ac-cording to Wood, the City Coun-cil’s Committee on Ordinances, of which he is a member, unanimous-ly voted in favor of the ordinance.
Wood said he felt especially optimistic about the ordinance since it will only be effective for 12 months. “A year isn’t that long, in terms of moving proper-ties through the government,” he said.
Officials from Cicilline’s office, which has yet to make clear wheth-er the mayor will sign or veto the or-dinance, could not be reached for comment.
Arune Gulati ’11, a possible neuroscience concentrator, said he planned to read the book and thought most of his classmates would do the same. “Most freshmen would be so intimidated by the fact that Brown is telling them to read a book that they will read it,” he said. “It’s a good way to break the ice, to get into discussion on the first day.”
“I am definitely planning on reading it,” said Rita Bullwinkel ’11, a San Francisco native. “I want to be prepared. You don’t want to come in looking like an idiot.”
But, she added, “The only way I know who Proust is is from the movie ‘Little Miss Sunshine.’ ”
In “How Proust Can Change Your Life,” the author “has chosen to weave Proust’s life, work, friends and era into a gently irreverent, tongue-in-cheek self-help book,” said a 1998 Publisher’s Weekly re-view. Marcel Proust was a French author in the early 20th century best known for his expansive sev-en-volume novel “In Search of Lost Time.”
Copies of the book were mailed free of charge to incoming stu-dents last week and were paid for by the Office of Alumni Relations and the administrative offices that run Orientation, said Interim As-sistant Dean of the College Carol Cohen ’83.
The book was selected by Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron, who originally pro-posed the summer reading and Orientation seminar idea to the Orientation review committee. In addition to selecting the book, Bergeron has also taken a person-al role in bringing the academic seminars to fruition and appealing to the faculty to lead discussions.
The review committee’s report stressed the importance of faculty participation in leading the semi-
nars and expressed concern about a plan that would require graduate students to take a teaching role dur-ing Orientation, but administrators in the Office of the Dean of the Col-lege said such concerns proved to be unfounded. A group of 66 vol-unteers — 54 faculty members and 12 administrators, including Presi-dent Ruth Simmons — has agreed to lead discussions, said Kathleen McSharry, an associate dean of the College. With just under 1,500 stu-dents expected to matriculate in September, each discussion group is expected to accommodate about 22 students.
In an e-mail to The Herald, Bergeron said she was pleased with the response.
“I was thrilled with (the) re-sponse (of the faculty),” she wrote. “And I was very pleased that almost half come from math/science fields. So it should be an eclectic mix.”
McSharry said faculty members would be given significant leeway in guiding their discussions as they see fit, but Bergeron said she chose the book because it “is more about life than it is about Proust and that she hoped it would provide first year students with an opportunity to reflect on the importance of new experiences.
Professor of Geological Scienc-es Reid Cooper is one of the faculty members who agreed to lead a dis-cussion group. In an e-mail to The Herald, he wrote that he was moti-vated to volunteer because he likes “interacting intellectually with un-dergraduate students, and particu-larly outside the constrains of hav-ing to sit in judgment.”
He expressed mixed feelings about the book itself, however. “The book chosen, while weird, is pro-vocative,” he wrote. “And provoca-tive is good, particularly if one pur-sues group discussion.”
He also expressed concern that having students write about the
book in a letter to their advisers will not be effective if first-year advisers do not read the book.
So far, other changes have also been implemented smoothly, ad-ministrators said.
Perhaps the most significant challenge is posed by the later start to Orientation, said Senior Asso-ciate Dean for Student Life Allen Ward, who co-chaired the working group of administrators who helped to implement the recommendations of the Orientation review committee this spring.
Moving the start of Orientation to the weekend was intended to make it easier for parents to bring their children to campus without missing work, Ward said, but ad-ministrators have run into one com-plication — most University offices that students and parents may need information from are closed on the weekend.
Some offices will make arrange-ments to remain open that week-end, and those that are closed could send representatives to an informa-tion fair on the first day of Orienta-tion activities, Sunday, Sept. 2, Ward said.
Many of the changes fell under the auspices of the Office of Stu-dent Life, McSharry said. The of-fice was primarily responsible for adjusting the class meeting sched-ule, another of the main changes recommended by the Orientation review committee.
While some class meetings from past years will remain the same — such as Professor of Africana Stud-ies James Campbell’s presentation on the work of the University Steer-ing Committee on Slavery and Jus-tice, which he chaired — others were changed completely. The first class meeting will feature an outside speaker who will discuss issues of drug and alcohol abuse, which is a departure from past formats, Mc-Sharry said.
might be.”Encouraged by Tribe, the
three students applied for the mtvU “Digital Incubator” devel-opment team grant. The compa-ny’s press release promised that winning teams would be granted access to “everything necessary to launch a successful online business: the creative firepower and reach of MtvU, the tech ex-pertise of Cisco, and the financial backing to see their idea realized — all while still in college.”
“We submitted this in Janu-ary. … We were crossing our fingers every day,” Gallese said. When MTV first called in May to tell them they had a crew in Providence and wanted to film a formal interview, the group got suspicious. “We’ve grown up in an age of reality TV,” McCune said. “We were expecting to be Punk’d or something. We sus-pected something but we had to feign absolute shock and awe.” But the trio needn’t have worried — MTV just wanted to tell them they had won $25,000.
“We were very appreciative of someone actually investing finan-cial resources in an ‘art’ project,” Gallese said. “It’s an honor to have people trust us and give us enough responsibility to do this.”
The three students have now undertaken different roles for the project. McCune has taken over as press manager, while Ma-clay serves as the contact and art managers. Gallese is the techni-cal manager. The group has also added Nick Greenfield ’09 as business manager.
“It’s a different feeling being in charge, being responsible for people working for you,” Gallese said.
McCune said that because
none of the group’s members had extensive computer science knowledge, most of the funds would go toward outsourcing the tech development. “We’re mainly using the money to hire outside people to collaborate with us, as well as taking care of server space that needs to be paid for, domain name, online certificates, but much of our money goes to hiring outside human resourc-es,” Gallese said.
“It’s challenging because it originated as an art project, we still like to think of it as having aesthetic aspects,” McCune said. “It’s kind of like we designed a sculpture, but are not going to do any of the actual sculpting.”
The group is looking at two different markets for the visual-izer. “Osiris LITE is going to be a free, web-based program that we hope to have finished in late Au-gust,” Greenfield said. “This will be available to the general public via a Web site.”
“Osiris PREMIUM is a sub-stantially more sophisticated product that we intend to individ-ually customize and sell to night-clubs and lounges,” Greenfield said. “PREMIUM would access a curated image library and a vari-ety of other media sources, rath-er than simply interfacing with Flickr, as at least early versions of LITE will likely do.”
The Osiris Project will com-pete for more funds in the fall, in-cluding a supplemental grant of $100,000. The group submitted a business plan in June for con-sideration.
“We have a bunch of differ-ent ideas of where it’s going to go, if we get more money,” Gal-lese said. “If not, it’s an art proj-ect at heart, it’s going to stay out (there) and the community can use it.”
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007PAGE 8
Students win MTVu grant for music visualization software
Required reading among new Orientation changes
Fox Point development heavily restricted for one year
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www.browndailyherald.com
CAMPUS NEWSTHE BROWN DAILY HERALDMONDAY, JULY 16, 2007 PAGE 9
Capital campaign passes $1b markBY FRANKLIN KANINSENIOR STAFF WRITER
The Campaign for Academic En-richment, which aims to raise $1.4 billion to fund President Ruth Sim-mons’ Plan for Academic Enrich-ment, reached its $1 billion mark on May 24. As of July 11, the fund-raising drive had raised an addi-tional $28 million.
With about 73 percent of its goal complete, the campaign will focus more time and effort on raising money in the greater New York City area, including Fairfield, Conn., and northern New Jersey. It will also expand operations in Cali-fornia, University officials said.
But that doesn’t mean the campaign will ignore the rest of the country, said Ronald Vanden Dorpel MA’71, senior vice presi-dent for University advancement. “Brown is a national institution.”
And the campaign will also con-tinue spending time fundraising overseas.
The capital campaign officially kicked off in 2005 after a two-year ‘quiet phase’ that raised $575 mil-lion. It funds endowments for pro-fessors, educational programs for students, new facilities and reno-
vations to existing residence halls. One of the most prominent
boosts to the campaign thus far was a $100 million donation in Jan-uary from the late Warren Alpert to improve the Medical School, now named for Alpert. “The Medical School has been one of the high-est priorities from the beginning,” said Richard Spies, executive vice president for planning and senior adviser to the president.
Future plans include construct-ing a new fitness center, replacing the Smith Swim Center and finish-ing the Walk, which will connect Lincoln Field to Pembroke cam-pus.
The campaign is “incredibly important — the most important thing Brown will do during the Sim-mons presidency,” Vanden Dorpel said. “It gives us the wherewithal to institute the president’s plan.”
Spies said “the plan came first — developed a vision and then tried to figure out what resources were required — and organized the campaign around that.”
But despite planning, the cam-paign has had to deal with some unanticipated expenses, such as the need to replace the Smith Swim Center, which was closed
last semester over concerns about the structural integrity of its roof.
The campaign adjusts to the unanticipated because it was built with flexibility, said Neil Steinberg ’75, vice president for development and campaign director.
“We just kind of go with it,” he said. “It’s not that rigid.”
And as the campaign proceeds, so do its priorities, Spies said.
“Things always evolve. The plan is evolving. New priorities and new needs emerge that you hadn’t anticipated and still have to deal with,” he said. “In some ways the campaign will have to change in order to reflect those changes … The core elements aren’t going to change, just some of the details might.”
“Some other projects might have to wait a little longer and we might have to reconfigure some of the things we’ve been thinking about,” he added.
Spies said the response to the campaign has been encouraging.
“The most exciting thing about the campaign is that people from the largest donors to the smallest have responded to that appeal to support the plan and all that can mean for Brown,” he said.
Student garden sprouts on Hope StreetBY MATTHEW VARLEYSTAFF WRITER
Fresh, locally grown produce may soon be available on campus, thanks to a new student vegetable garden that is taking root at the corner of Hope Street and Young Orchard Avenue.
Just a few months ago, the site was a rocky, barren patch of silt — now, lush green rows of basil, egg-plant and tomato plants are sprout-ing from rich black soil, protected by freshly-hewn wooden walls. Soon, carrots, cucumbers, zuc-chini, kale, beets and radishes will grow there as well.
The Brown Sustainable Food Initiative, a student group devoted to promoting local agriculture, is largely responsible for developing the garden.
During the academic year, Da-vid Schwartz ’09, Ben Mandelkern ’09, Zach Stone ’09 and Michael Glassman ’09 planned the proj-ect on paper. Mandelkern, Stone and Glassman received an Under-graduate Teaching and Research Award to put their plans into ac-tion this summer.
The work was not easy — the founders labored for over a month before planting their first seed-lings in early July. Schwartz said the entire site was contaminated with lead when they first exam-ined it, requiring them to spread a foot of topsoil over the earth. The students spent weeks remov-ing debris, constructing a retain-ing wall and re-grading the 2,700 square foot garden with the help of Facilities Management. “We’ve been helped really invaluably by Facilities,” which contributed “a lot of time, tools and resources” to the garden, Stone said.
He said the garden would have an “educational aspect” and also serve as a “community-building tool.” He said he hopes Brown students will benefit from work-
ing at the site, cooking and enjoy-ing local food and “appreciating the difference between the food that comes from here and the food that you would get out of Stop and Shop.”
Stone said other Brown stu-dents have considered starting a vegetable garden in the past but have failed due to the difficulty of finding sufficient space close to campus. But Stone and Mandelk-ern persisted, going all the way to the top for assistance.
Stone recalled speaking with President Ruth Simmons at the sophomore barbeque last fall.
“I asked, ‘Do you garden?’ She said she did and asked me if I gar-dened,” Stone said. “I said I was trying to start a garden at Brown, and she said ‘That’s a great idea!’ ”
Simmons put Stone in touch with Interim Vice President of Stu-dent Life Russell Carey ’91 MA’06 and Grounds Superintendent Pat Vetere, who helped with site se-lection and logistics. Mandelkern said the group borrowed tools from the Urban Environmental Laboratory and received funding from the Center for Environmen-tal Studies.
Though they accepted assis-tance from the administration, the founders intend the Hope Street garden to be a space “run by students for students,” Man-delkern said. “Come fall, this will be a place where all students can gather, learn and take on leader-ship roles.”
“SuFI is the organization that is currently coordinating it, but the idea is that this will become a Brown student garden for every-one,” Mandelkern said.
Though the founders are still looking for markets for the vege-tables, Schwartz said Brown Din-ing Services has already commit-
ted to purchasing some of the stu-dent produce to serve somewhere on campus.
The garden “connects with a lot of things (the University) is in-terested in,” Carey said. He said Dining Services has been making greater efforts recently to serve sustainable, local and farm-fresh produce in the dining halls. Veg-etables from the student garden would fit the bill.
“I would be thrilled if some of it turned up on the menu in Septem-ber,” Carey said.
Schwartz praised the Univer-sity staff, whom he described as “great teachers.”
“You think of professors as the best teachers at a university, but I feel I have learned so much from these guys from grounds, from someone who works at the greenhouse … who have so much knowledge and expertise and who have taught us so much,” Schwartz said.
He envisions Brown students gaining “teaching experience, growing experience and entre-preneurial experience as well” as they sell the produce to the Brown community and beyond.
Schwartz plans to organize a collaborative program with Brown/Fox Point Day Care, in which children could help in the garden on a regular basis. He hopes that part of the garden’s bounty will be donated to hunger relief organizations.
Schwartz said the students ex-pect the garden to grow over the next several years.
“This is the first, inaugural, pilot year. I think you’ll see this space and all the programs asso-ciated with it really growing over a two-to-three-year time span,” Schwartz said. “It’s just one part of a large and growing interest among students in issues of sus-tainable agriculture and local food.”
FEATURE
U. launches commission to consider slavery memorialBY DEBBIE LEHMANNSENIOR STAFF WRITER
The University has established a commission to consider how best to publicly acknowledge Brown’s ties to the transatlantic slave trade and the history of slavery in Rhode Island.
The 10-person commission was created earlier this month in response to one of the recom-mendations made in the Octo-ber 2006 report of the University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. The recommenda-tion specified that Brown should set up a “living site of memory” as a way to address the Univer-sity’s historic ties to the Rhode Island slave trade and move for-ward.
The committee’s report de-tailed the University’s early bene-factors’ ties to the slave trade and offered a comparative study of how other countries have ad-dressed legacies of historical in-justice. In addition to a slave trade memorial, the report called for a $10-million endowment to im-prove Providence public schools and the creation of a center for slavery and justice research.
The commission, which in-cludes representatives from Brown and individuals nomi-nated by Gov. Donald Carcieri ‘65 and Providence Mayor Da-vid Cicilline ’83, will meet for the first time in August to recom-mend possible monuments, sites and ceremonies for a memorial.
Committee members said it is too early to say what kinds of proposals will be evaluated or what the timeline for consid-eration will be. But committee member Kerry Smith, an associ-ate professor of history and chair of the Department of East Asian Studies, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald that the process of dis-cussing proposals and debating outcomes is just as important as the memorial itself.
“That ability to engage in di-alogue with the community is very important in the memori-alization process,” wrote Smith, who also served on the steering committee.
Smith will draw from his own research, which focuses on the construction of historical mem-ory in Japan, in discussing me-morials.
“That, I suspect, gives me a sense of how tenacious and com-plicated questions of memory, of historical commemoration (and its absence) can be in communi-ties outside of the United States,” he wrote.
The commission is also com-prised of members of the Provi-dence community, including Joa-quina Bela Teixeira, the execu-tive director of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society. Teixeira said the BHS has ideas about what might make a meaningful memorial, but she said she would try to approach discussions with-out preconceived notions.
“This is not simply a memo-rial to one war,” Teixeira said. “It’s over centuries of time, and we need to honor the length and depth of that experience. We need to create in the hearts and minds of people who experience the site something that will tran-scend the nature of time and con-nect both black and white.”
Teixeira also underscored the scope of slavery’s history, saying it is “not just about Brown’s role in the trafficking of slaves, but about Rhode Island as a whole.”
Other members of the com-mission include Associate Pro-fessor of Visual Art Kerry Cop-pin, Professor of American Civi-lization and Director of the Nich-olas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization Steven Lubar and Dietrich Neumann, a professor of history of art and ar-chitecture. The commission also includes Deborah Smith, the di-rector of municipal and external affairs in the Office of the Gov-ernor, O. Rogeriee Thompson, an associate justice at the Rhode Island Superior Court, and Spen-cer Crew, the president and CEO of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cin-cinnati, Ohio. Rabbi Leslie Gut-terman of Temple Beth-El and Michael S. Van Leesten, presi-dent of the Van Leesten Group and deputy executive director of public affairs at the Massachu-setts Pequot Tribal Nation, will also serve on the commission.
In addition, Brenda Allen, associate provost and director of institutional diversity and Jo-Ann Conklin, the director of the David Winton Bell Gallery, will work with and advise the com-mission.
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WORLD & NATIONTHE BROWN DAILY HERALDMONDAY, JULY 16, 2007 PAGE 11
U.S. journalists in Mexico targeted as violence intensifiesBY MANUEL ROIG-FRANZIAWASHINGTON POST MEXICO CITY — The San Anto-nio Express-News, a 230,000-circu-lation daily, last week withdrew its U.S.-Mexico border reporter after learning of what appears to be an unprecedented plan to assassinate American journalists who frequent-ly write about drug cartels in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.
Sources have told several Tex-as newspapers that hit men from Los Zetas, a group of former Mexi-can military officers who operate as the Gulf cartel’s assassins, may have been hired to cross into the United States and execute Ameri-can reporters. Word of the threat shattered the widely held percep-tion here that foreign journalists are somehow shielded from vio-lent retribution in a nation that is now second only to Iraq in deaths of journalists.
“We are not immune,” wrote Eloy Aguilar and Dolly Mascarenas in a statement sent Friday to fellow members of the Foreign Correspon-
dents Association in Mexico. “We have a very confused and violent sit-uation in Mexico, with the govern-ment fighting drug cartels on one side and suspected guerrilla groups on the other. … An incident involv-ing a U.S. or other foreign journalist could be used by all groups to cre-ate more confusion.”
More than 30 journalists have been killed in Mexico in the past six years, but only one — freelancer and activist Brad Will, who was shot to death during teacher protests last year in Oaxaca — was American. Most of the killings are believed to be related to coverage of an ongo-ing war between drug cartels. Last year, drug gangs were suspected of firing automatic weapons and throwing a grenade into the news-room of Nuevo Laredo’s El Manana newspaper, seriously injuring one reporter.
Express-News Editor Robert Ri-vard, a former Central America bu-reau chief for Newsweek magazine, said in an interview Friday that steps have been taken to conceal the location of his former border
correspondent, Mariano Castillo. Castillo wrote nearly 100 stories
about cartels, crisscrossing the bor-der from the newspaper’s bureau in Laredo, Texas, for the past 4 1/2 years as drug violence escalated. His first piece about cartels, in late 2003, was headlined “Mexico town erupts into a battle zone; Grenades, machine guns roar south of the bor-der.” In his last front-page article, which ran in May, Castillo exposed the existence of a “shadowy and vio-lent group that calls itself the ‘Gente Nueva,’ or New People — and au-thorities don’t want to talk about it.”
For now the paper’s border bu-reau, which is a 2 1/2-hour drive from San Antonio, sits vacant. Ri-vard is grappling with a challenge faced every day by his counterparts south of border — how to cover a region where his reporters are tar-gets.
“It’s a dilemma,” Rivard said. “On the one side, no story is worth a reporter’s life; on the other side, you don’t want to back down from telling readers about an important story.”
Feds seek $3m fine against UC for Los Alamos breachBY RICHARD C. PADDOCKLOS ANGELES TIMES The U.S. Department of Ener-gy on Friday proposed a record $3 million fine against the Uni-versity of California for a secu-rity breach last year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in which a worker took home clas-sified documents on a thumb drive.
An investigation by the de-partment’s National Nuclear Se-curity Administration concluded that security procedures imple-mented by UC were so lax that the contract employee was able to leave the nuclear weapons lab with classified documents on her thumb drive and other doc-uments she had reproduced at work on a copy machine.
The security breach was dis-covered in October when police responded to a domestic distur-bance call at the trailer home of the employee, Jessica Quintana, and found the thumb drive and documents along with metham-phetamine paraphernalia.
Investigators said they found 431 classified documents and de-vices with more than 1,200 clas-sified pages at Quintana’s home. Among the documents were some dealing with nuclear weap-ons design and nuclear weapons testing.
Quintana pleaded guilty in May to one count of removing classified material. She faces up to a year in prison and a $100,000
fine.UC, which was the sole man-
ager of the nuclear weapons lab for more than 60 years but now runs it with a consortium of private companies, said it will contest the size of the fine, not-ing that the security breach oc-curred more than a month after the new management group took over on June 1, 2006.
“We are going to respond to the department on this matter,” said Chris Harrington, a spokes-man for UC in Washington. “Our response will point out that the university was no longer the sole manager of the laboratory when this incident occurred.”
The new management group, known as Los Alamos Nation-al Security and formed by UC, Bechtel National and other firms, faces a proposed fine of $300,000. William C. Ostendorff, acting administrator of the Na-tional Nuclear Security Admin-istration, called the stiff penalty against UC warranted because the security breach was serious.
Ostendorff wrote that the in-cident was “particularly trou-bling” because the breakdown in security procedures at the lab was similar to earlier deficien-cies cited during UC’s manage-ment.
Violations included not elimi-nating ports from the lab’s desk-top computers despite an earlier pledge to do so; not following re-
Robber asks for money, then a hugBY ALLISON KLEINWASHINGTON POST WASHINGTON — A grand feast of marinated steaks and jumbo shrimp was winding down, and a group of friends was sitting on the back patio of a Capitol Hill home, sipping red wine. Suddenly, a hooded man slid in through an open gate and put the barrel of a handgun to the head of a 14-year-old guest.
“Give me your money, or I’ll start shooting,” he demanded, ac-cording to Washington D.C. police and witness accounts.
The five other guests, includ-ing the girls’ parents, froze — and then one spoke.
“We were just finishing dinner,” Cristina “Cha Cha” Rowan blurted out. “Why don’t you have a glass of wine with us?”
The intruder took a sip of their Chateau Malescot St-Exupery and said, “Damn, that’s good wine.”
The girl’s father, Michael Rab-dau who described the harrowing evening in an interview, told the intruder to take the whole glass. Rowan offered him the bottle. The would-be robber, his hood now down, took another sip and had a bite of Camembert cheese that was on the table.
Then he tucked the gun into the pocket of his nylon sweat-pants.
“I think I may have come to the wrong house,” he said, looking around the patio.
“I’m sorry,” he told the group. “Can I get a hug?”
Rowan, who lives in Falls Church, Va., and works part time at her children’s school, stood up and wrapped her arms around him. Then it was Rabdau’s turn. Then his wife’s. The other two guests complied.
“That’s really good wine,” the man said, taking another sip.
He had a final request: “Can we have a group hug?”
The five adults surrounded
him, arms out. With that, the man walked out
with a crystal wine glass in hand, filled with Chateau Malescot. No one was hurt, and nothing was sto-len.
The homeowner, Xavier Cer-vera had gone out to walk his dog at the end of the party and missed the incident, which happened about midnight June 16. Police classified the case as strange but true and said they had not located a suspect.
“We believe it is a true rob-bery,” said Cmdr. Diane Groomes, who is in charge of patrols in the Capitol Hill area. But it’s one-of-a-kind, she said, adding, “I’ve never heard of a robber joining a party and then walking out to the sun-set.”
The hug, she said, was espe-cially unusual. “They should have squeezed him and held onto him for us,” she said.
Rabdau said he hasn’t been able to figure out what happened.
“I was definitely expecting there would be some kind of casu-alty,” Rabdau said this week. “He was very aggressive at first; then it turned into a love fest. I don’t know what it was.”
Rabdau, a federal government worker who lives in Anne Arundel County, Md., with his family, said that the episode lasted about 10 minutes but seemed like an hour. Rabdau, who lived on Capitol Hill with his wife in the 1980s, said he thinks the guests were spared be-cause they kept a positive attitude during the exchange.
“There was this degree of dis-belief and terror at the same time,” Rabdau said. “Then it miraculously just changed. His whole emotional tone turned — like, we’re one big happy family now. I thought: Was it the wine? Was it the cheese?”
After the intruder left, the guests walked inside the house, locked the door and stared at each other. They didn’t say a word. Rabdau dialed 911. Police arrived
quickly and took a report. They also dusted for fingerprints, so far to no avail.
In the alley behind the home, investigators found the intruder’s empty crystal wine glass on the ground, unbroken. continued on page 17
After a nightmarish year spent in the national spotlight, hound-ed by the media and the thought of spending the beginning of his adult life in prison, the 21-year-old Seligmann now has a destination, and he’s ready to be a college stu-dent again.
He knows he’ll get stares when he introduces himself on the first day of class. He knows that, as a top varsity athlete, he’ll have to fight the dumb jock stereotype he says he tried to overcome at Duke. He knows he’ll meet skeptics who still think something happened at that party.
That is why he is in Starbucks tonight, spending two-and-a-half hours talking about the worst year of his life. He could be catching up on sleep so he can wake up at 5 a.m. to work out and get back into playing shape, but he wants every-one at Brown to know who he re-ally is.
“I hope that anyone who’s not supportive takes the time to meet me, because I want to meet them,” Seligmann says.
The line may be rehearsed, a by-product of spending a year un-der scrutiny and giving interviews to 60 Minutes, The Today Show and Newsweek.
But Seligmann looks like he means it.
***
On the afternoon of April 17, 2006, Seligmann and two lacrosse teammates were in their lawyer’s Durham, N.C., office, just down the road from Duke.
A month earlier, a 27-year-old exotic dancer alleged that three Duke lacrosse players raped her after she performed at a team party. The story of a black, single mother accusing wealthy, white college students of rape soon be-came a perfect media storm.
On this afternoon, a grand jury was to indict two of the players whom she had identified.
All the players had hired law-yers after the accusation came out and were now with their respec-tive representation awaiting the news.
Around 2 p.m., Julian Mack, Seligmann’s lawyer, told his three clients the indictments were sealed, meaning the names wouldn’t be released immediately. Seligmann’s two teammates left, thinking there was no point in sticking around. Seligmann and his father, Philip, stayed behind to talk about a billing issue when Mack’s secretary came in.
“Mr. Nifong’s on the cell phone,” she said, referring to Mike Nifong, the Durham Coun-ty district attorney handling the case.
Mack took the phone and start-ed talking. After a few seconds, he glanced up at Seligmann, who be-fore that point was thinking his other two teammates were in trou-ble.
“For some reason, you never think it’s going to be you,” Selig-mann says now.
After a moment, Mack stopped the conversation to ask Seligmann and his father to go into a confer-ence room, where Seligmann be-gan pacing the room, thinking, is it one of my friends? Or is it me?
After what seemed like forev-er, Mack entered the room and looked at Seligmann.
“She chose you,” he said.His father collapsed, and Selig-
mann retreated to the corner and sunk to the floor. He remembers thinking, “My life is over. ”
He doesn’t remember how long it took him to get over the shock, but when he finally did, he thought: “Wait, I have everything to prove.”
Seligmann said the worst part was calling his mother, who was attending a lacrosse game of his two younger twin brothers at Delbarton, the all-male Catholic school in New Jersey that he also attended.
Kathy, his mother, answered her cell phone as she was walking across the field after the game. It was her birthday.
“Mom, I need you to be stron-ger than you have ever been in your entire life,” Seligmann said.
“Who was it?” Kathy asked.Seligmann paused. Then, he
told her slowly: “Mom, she chose me.”
Kathy says “the world started spinning.” She remembers sprint-ing toward her car. When she fi-nally reached it, she collapsed, only to be helped up by Father Luke, the headmaster at Delbar-ton. Seligmann had called him right before he called his moth-er, asking him to find her as she heard the news.
As Seligmann, who calls him-self “an emotional guy,” tells the story, he begins to tear up. He looks down.
Even a year later, it’s hard to tell the story, he says, adding a nervous laugh. He recomposes himself to explain the rest.
***
Seligmann remembers going back to his dorm room. He wasn’t allowed to tell anyone about his in-dictment, so he pretended to his roommate that everything was fine. He picked up some things and then saw his girlfriend, now a Duke senior, whom he had to tell. Seligmann says now he wouldn’t have gotten through the ordeal without her support, and the two are still dating today.
Seligmann and his father then got a hotel room, where Selig-mann spent a few sleepless hours before leaving at 4 a.m. to turn himself into the Durham County sheriff.
He and fellow sophomore Col-lin Finnerty, who was also indict-ed the day before, drove to the back of the Durham County jail, where they had arranged to meet officers. (Team captain David Ev-ans, who held the party where the rape was said to have occurred, would be indicted a month later.) They were handcuffed and then driven 15 yards to the front of the jail, where camera crews were waiting, Seligmann says. He be-lieves Nifong orchestrated the whole thing to maximize media at-tention.
As he got out of the car, Selig-mann was blinded by camera lights. But strangely, he felt calm.
“Maybe it was because I was so detached from the situation,” he says.
The two went inside, where they signed papers and were
searched. When Seligmann was asked to place his finger on a fu-turistic-looking machine to be fin-gerprinted, he remembers saying to the officer, “Hey, this is kind of cool.”
Then he remembered it was he who was being printed, for a crime he knew he hadn’t commit-ted that could put him in jail for 30 years.
Seligmann was taken to a small, one-person cell while his father posted bail. He spent about 90 minutes there. He remembers trying to keep his mind busy, so he started reading the Spanish that former inmates had written on the walls in pen. It was near-ly finals period, and Seligmann should have been starting to study for his final in Spanish, which he says is not his strongest subject.
He remembers one phrase on the cell’s wall. “Ayudame,” it read — help me.
***
Lars Tiffany ’90 was hired away from Stony Brook University to be Brown’s new lacrosse coach last August. Almost immediately, he began recruiting Seligmann.
The coach had done his home-work, speaking with many in the lacrosse community who knew Seligmann. He heard the same from everyone he spoke to: If you know this kid, then you know he couldn’t have done it.
Tiffany says there was “no way” he would have considered recruit-ing Seligmann if he even had the slightest doubt about him.
“We cannot sacrifice the team and University for one person,”
Tiffany says.When he approached people in
the athletics department, he says there were a few skeptics. But nearly everyone, including Mike Goldberger, the director of athlet-ics, supported him, he adds.
Tiffany is glad they did, be-cause he sees a potential star in Seligmann, who at 6’1” and 220 pounds looks more like the star power running back he was on his high-school football team than a lacrosse player. (Seligmann says he got several Division I football scholarship offers out of high school and considered playing both sports this year at Brown, but decided against it).
“He’s got a strong, accurate shot,” Tiffany says, “and because of his frame, he can power dodge you, just run over you.”
But what impresses Tiffany most about Seligmann is his ma-turity and personality. In Febru-ary, Tiffany realized that the case might soon be dropped and that Seligmann could very well come to Brown. He called Seligmann and remembers the conversation as such:
“Reade, I need to know about every little thing, what you’ve been accused of or anything you’ve ever done wrong. Let me know any detail so I can pres-ent it to whomever, before it gets thrown at our face in the last sec-ond.”
The line was silent for a min-ute.
“Coach,” Seligmann finally said. “My freshman year, there was a party in my hallway, and all of us got written up for it.”
Tiffany remembers saying, “Is
that it? Is that everything that you got?”
The coach doesn’t think Selig-mann will have trouble adjusting to Brown, and lacrosse team tri-captain Jeff Hall ’08 says the team is excited to welcome him.
Seligmann, who says he always wanted to attend an Ivy League school, chose Brown over the oth-er two or three schools that were interested in him because of how the University treated him. They allowed him to visit the campus when he wasn’t even allowed back at Duke. Tiffany, too, played a big role in the decision.
“He said, ‘I’m going to stand by and wait for you,’ ” Seligmann says. “And no other coach told me that. I promised him I would go to Brown if I got in, once this was over.”
***
Kris Udekwu ’08 creates an interesting juxtaposition to Selig-mann.
Both were sought-after la-crosse recruits coming out of Catholic high schools. Both played for top college lacrosse teams before leaving their respec-tive teams sophomore year. (Ude-kwu quit after some of the coach-ing staff at Brown left.)
Udekwu, who is black and grew up in Raleigh, N.C., just a half-hour from Durham, prob-ably understands the Duke case better than anyone at Brown. He has been closely following it and wrote about it for the College Hill Independent, of which he is now a
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007PAGE 12
continued from page 1
Stu Woo / Herald
Reade Seligmann ’09
Prepared for classes and skepticism, Seligmann ’09 awaits a fresh start at Brown
continued on page 13
managing editor.He believes that when Selig-
mann gets to campus, the skep-tics will pounce.
“Historically, what Brown has been known for is making a meal out of things like this, as far as student activism goes,” he says. Sign-waving and protests, he says, are not out of the question.
One of Seligmann’s new team-mates, Jack Walsh ’09, doesn’t think there will be anything of that sort, but says he’s “fearful that people will be ignorant about the facts.”
***
For the record, Seligmann is innocent. He is quick to correct those who say the charges against him and his teammates were sim-ply dropped. On April 11, North Carolina’s attorney general de-clared them innocent.
Nothing happened at the par-ty that night, Seligmann asserts, and if something had, he would not have been there anyway. Cell phone records and a video of him at an ATM prove he was not at the party when the alleged rape was said to have occurred.
But it wasn’t until the case started unraveling, when the ac-cuser started changing her sto-ries, when DNA evidence didn’t match those of the Duke suspects, that people began to believe him.
A moment of relief came on Dec. 22, 2006. Seligmann was spending the holidays with his family in London when he re-ceived a Facebook message.
“They dropped the rape charg-es. It’s over,” the message read. It was from the girlfriend of Selig-mann’s brother.
Seligmann didn’t quite un-derstand what that meant, so he called his lawyer. He then found out that Nifong had dropped the rape charges against the three but that the prosecutor was still pursuing kidnapping and sexual offense charges.
“It kind of hit me in the stom-ach, because it wasn’t over at all,” Seligmann says. Instead, he be-came even more frustrated at Ni-fong’s persistence in the absence of evidence.
When Seligmann returned from London, he rejected an of-fer to return to Duke. He wasn’t interested, he says, and couldn’t have attended classes with the case looming over him. Instead, he continued what he had been doing: helping coach football and lacrosse at Delbarton and volun-teering at a soup kitchen near his hometown of Essex Fells, N.J.
At the kitchen, he says, people would often come up to him and say, “Do I know you from some-where?” Seligmann says many recognized him, and most offered words of support. Though it’s hard to believe, he says no one confronted him during the ordeal, though he received a few e-mails from strangers who suggested what would happen to him if he went to prison.
Seligmann’s new notoriety was strange at first, but he got used to it. He says he would often be on the treadmill at the gym, when CNN would suddenly flash his face across the screen. He tried to ignore the faces that turned to-ward him when that happened.
The strangest incident oc-curred right after he attended his first recruiting trip at Brown. He
was at an interview for a business internship in Jersey City, N.J. Someone was showing him how to use a Bloomberg computer ter-minal when a Bloomberg News alert scrolled across the ticker on the top of everyone’s screen.
“Duke suspect Seligmann re-cruited by Brown,” it read.
Again, everyone turned to look at Seligmann.
***
Seligmann is gregarious, elo-quent and unfailingly polite. But he is unforgiving about two sub-jects: Nifong and the accuser.
Nifong apologized to the Duke players and their families last month, when he spoke before the North Carolina State Bar’s disci-plinary hearing panel. But Selig-mann has no sympathy for the former district attorney, who has
since been disbarred and sus-pended from his position.
“I’ll never accept an apology from him,” Seligmann says. “It’s been too hard of a year.”
When asked what he thinks of Nifong, Seligmann breaks eye contact and appears upset. He says he has nothing more to say about him, adding that the state attorney general, who called Ni-fong a “rogue prosecutor,” put it best.
Seligmann is similarly mum about his accuser, who picked Seligmann out of a lineup. He says he wouldn’t accept an apol-ogy from her, either, but declines to say more.
Seligmann also does not want to talk about Duke, about how it suspended the team’s season shortly after the accusations broke, and about how it how sus-pended Finnerty and him from school when the case started.
(Evans was allowed to graduate.)“It’s all about Brown now,” he
says.
***
Seligmann was an honors stu-dent at Duke, a history major who made the Atlantic Coast Conference honor roll in his two years at the university, even though he had to complete his final semester at Duke from home, over the Internet.
He plans to study history at Brown and is considering adding economics as a second concentra-tion. His internship at Bear Stea-rns has gotten him more inter-ested in business, he says, but his heart, especially after the past year, is in law.
Seligmann knows some resent the three accused players for hav-ing the resources to battle the legal system. He is unapologetic about it, but after the Duke case, he realiz-
es more than ever how economics plays a role in law.
Seligmann says he and the two accused teammates plan to one day work with the Innocence Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to exonerating prisoners through DNA testing, or something similar.
His goal, he says, is to work to-ward making sure that something like the Duke case never happens again, that innocent people never have to go through what he went through, regardless of their finan-cial situation.
At Brown, he promises to start a club related to the Innocence Proj-ect, and to devote much of his time to its cause.
When asked if he’s comfortable making a promise, with the Brown community and much of the nation watching, Seligmann doesn’t hesi-tate to respond.
“They’ll be watching me any-way,” he says.
After a nightmarish year, Seligmann ’09 prepares to start anew at Browncontinued from page 12
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Shisha cafes fight British smoking banBY MARJORIE MILLERLOS ANGELES TIMES
LONDON — Gone are the sweet-smelling trails of smoke that used to bubble out of the water pipes at Al Arez cafe on Edgeware Road. Gone are five employees who Mohammed Khalil sacked a day after Britain’s na-tional smoking ban went into effect last week.
And gone are many of the Middle Eastern, North African and South Asian customers who used to pack into Al Arez to socialize and smoke the pipes, also known as hookah or shisha.
“This is a disaster for us,” Khalil said over a cup of sweet Arabic cof-fee in an empty restaurant. “We don’t drink. I don’t smoke cigarettes. But we smoke shisha, it’s part of our culture. And this is against our cul-ture.”
Khalil has joined the Edgeware Road Association and its Save Shi-sha Campaign, which is challeng-ing the new law that bans smoking in all enclosed public places from work sites to pubs, company cars to shisha cafes. The association is seeking an exemption from the law, arguing that it is discriminatory and has a disproportionate effect on the largely Muslim communities who smoke the tobacco and fruit paste. The group sent a letter to the gov-ernment on May 15 stating that the law would have a negative impact on “the culture and social practices and meeting places of the relevant ethnic minority communities.”
They did not receive a response to that letter or to a subsequent let-ter sent on June 29, according to Ibrahim el-Nour, who is heading the campaign. He said the next step is to go to court to seek judicial review.
The cafe owners say the law is killing their businesses, with sales down 50 to 80 percent in the first week. They argue that second-hand shisha smoke is only about 20 per-cent tobacco and, therefore, is not as harmful as cigarette and cigar smoke, but the government dis-agrees.
Liam Donaldson, the nation’s chief medical officer, said World Health Organization recommenda-tions and other studies show water pipes have as much nicotine as ciga-rette smoke. He denies any discrimi-nation, saying an across-the-board ban creates “a level playing field.”
He said the law aims to lower the approximately 25 percent adult smoking rate in Britain and to pro-tect nonsmokers from second-hand smoke.
“We are looking at the experi-ence of California. We want to keep the subject of tobacco in the public eye so that pressure is kept up on public awareness,” he said.
Actually, while cigarette smok-ing is prohibited in California restau-rants, hookah bars are exempt and have become increasingly popular in recent years.
The British legislation also goes further than laws in some other Eu-ropean countries. In Belgium, for ex-ample, smoking is allowed at shisha bars, but food may not be served in the same place.
Around the corner from Khalil’s cafe at the Duke of York pub, man-ager Nick Leith is enthusiastic about the ban and says most of his custom-ers are, too.
“Most of the staff here are non-smokers and we can’t stand going home stinking like an ashtray. On Monday, we had a team in and they scrubbed the place from top to bot-
tom. We’re getting more families and American tourists and we think we’ll sell more food,” Leith said.
As Leith spoke and the Wimble-don tennis tournament aired on a flat-screen television behind him, one man eating a salad and two beer-sipping customers nodded in agree-ment. “It’s a little early to tell, but sales this week are about the same as other weeks.”
Back on Edgeware road com-mercial district, Lebanese music bounced off the mother-of-pearl in-laid tables at Fatma Hassan’s empty Miramar restaurant, and the scent of shawarma wafted out the door. Many cafes like hers still offer their customers pipes at sidewalk tables, where it is permitted by law, but the worst summer weather in decades has compounded their troubles.
“Our luck, the weather is really cold and rainy and people can’t sit outside,” said Fatma Hassan, man-ager of the Miramar restaurant. “If it’s like this now, what about in win-ter? I don’t know where we’re going to find money to pay the rent.”
Summer is usually high season on Edgeware Road, when well-to-do tourists head north from the Gulf States and other countries to seek refuge from the heat in London’s high-end department stores and out-door cafes. Restaurants on the road cater to them with halal meat and honey-soaked desserts, and refrain from selling alcoholic beverages to avoid offending the heavily Muslim clientele.
Women in black hijab or bright-ly colored frocks and head scarves meander up and down the road, chil-dren and shopping bags in tow. Men and women stop in the exchange houses and Islamic Bank of Brit-ain before meeting up in the cafes,
where they customarily lay packs of cigarettes on the table next to their cell phones and thick coffees.
Middle Easterners are heavy cig-arette smokers and they also enjoy the apple or mango-scented tobacco in a shisha for $12 to $20, the restau-rateurs said.
“People want lunch or dinner and then they want coffee and they don’t feel the taste of the coffee without a smoke,” said Samar Eid of the fam-ily-owned Al Dar restaurant. “Now they would prefer to have food at home, where they can smoke.”
El-Nour, chief executive the Edge-ware Road Association, says the ban is hitting Britain’s own Arab and Muslim communities as well, partic-ularly its young people who don’t go to bars and clubs that serve alcohol. El-Nour says cafes keep them off the streets, out of trouble and in contact with different generations.
“It is nice to have places to en-gage young people in debate, to break down barriers and to promote community engagement,” El-Nour said.
Cafe owners saw injustice in the fact that people are allowed to drink in pubs until drunk and aggressive, while a “calming” shisha smoke is banned from restaurants.
“Usually all the young people come smoke and they’re chattering and having a very nice time here,” said Hassan of Miramar. “Now it’s boring for them.”
Mohammed Nayeem of the AQ cafe agreed on a disappointing Fri-day afternoon.
“I used to keep a security guard at the door to keep too many people from coming in at once. By this time it would have been full. Seventy or 80 people can sit in here, but now look at it,” Nayeem said. “Empty.”
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THE BROWN DAILY HERALDMONDAY, JULY 16, 2007 PAGE 17
he arrived at Oneonta, he discov-ered that the team was about half rookies and half players who par-ticipated in extended spring train-ing in order to fine-tune parts of their game, so there was a wide range of experience levels.
Thomas’ new club plays in the short-season New York-Penn League and travels by bus to plac-es such as Brooklyn, N.Y. and State College, Pa., for games. The entire team stays in dormitories at Hartwick College in central New York. The undivided focus on baseball makes the minor league experience and competition “sim-ilar to summer ball,” according to Thomas, who played two sea-sons in the prestigious Cape Cod League. The intense schedule is the biggest difference, Thomas said.
“You play 70-plus games (in the short-season minor leagues) instead of around 30 in the Cape Cod League,” Thomas said. “There’s just so little down time. In college when you got home from an away series you’d have a couple days off, but here you have a game that next night.”
One of the fresh experiences for Thomas has been the number of spectators at the team’s games. Oneonta has the smallest atten-dance in the league with an aver-age of 1,147 fans per night, but this still dwarfs the Brown base-ball experience.
“There’s definitely more sup-port than at Brown,” he said. “We got a lot of people for the Ivy Championship, but here there are a lot of people every night. Some of the other teams get four, five, six thousand people.”
And Thomas has certainly put on a show. Just two months re-moved from leading the Bears in hits, RBIs and home runs, Thom-as has made an immediate impact on the Tigers. He played in 20 of the team’s 24 games through July 13, and has consistently hit in the middle of the lineup, logging at bats at anywhere from the second through sixth spots in the order. Thomas currently leads the team in walks and RBIs with 11 and 16 respectively.
Thomas has also focused on his defense and management of games behind the plate. One of the main keys to improving in this area is building a rapport with the pitchers on the staff. Thomas quickly discovered that he would need to work on his Spanish lan-
guage skills to develop these re-lationships as about half the pitch-ers are from Latin American coun-tries and speak little English.
“It’s a great excuse to learn Spanish,” Thomas said. “I took Spanish in high school, but speak-ing and using it here would be great for me. It’s almost like study abroad.”
As Thomas continues to try to improve every aspect of his game, he has kept his mind on the ulti-mate goal of moving up to a higher level of minor league play after the season ends.
“The ultimate goal is just to move up, but it can’t drive you crazy,” he said. “It’s easy to look at your stats all the time, but you can’t let them make you go nuts. The first day at Oneonta, some-one from the team said ‘Don’t wait for us, let your performance move you,’ and I’ve really taken that to heart. You can’t control anything except your performance on the field, so that’s where I have to show them.”
team practices daily during the season, is likely the biggest ben-eficiary of the new turf surfaces. “They were absolutely delighted when they found out,” Goldberger said of the football team and staff.
The new fields, which will mea-sure 370 feet by 380 feet, were de-signed by Gale Associates and are being installed by R.A.D. Sports, which installed the turf at Gil-lette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., home of the New England Patriots.
continued from page 20
Turf awaits football team, students on return to campus
continued from page 20
Tigers take baseball’s Thomas ’07 in seventh round
quired procedures for escorting contract employees on the prem-ises; and not conducting physical searches and inspections of em-ployees, the inquiry found.
“As revealed by this incident and the Department’s investiga-tion, the University of California had systemic failures in establish-ing adequate work controls, con-sistently implementing these con-trols, assessing the effectiveness of its protection measures and improving the quality of these
measures over time,” Ostendorff wrote in a letter to UC that ac-companied its findings.
For UC, the proposed fine amounts to more than half of the $5.8 million it received in 2006 for managing the lab. If the universi-ty is ultimately compelled to pay, Harrington said, the money will come from a laboratory reserve fund, not from funds used to edu-cate students.
Los Alamos has a record of security and safety problems go-ing back to 1999 when the FBI accused scientist Wen Ho Lee of
leaking nuclear secrets to China. He later pleaded guilty to one count of mishandling nuclear data.
In 2004, the laboratory was shut down for nearly six months after two classified computer disks were reported lost and an undergraduate intern was in-jured in a laser accident. Inves-tigators later concluded that the supposedly missing disks had never existed.
The closure of the lab cost the federal government an estimated $370 million.
continued from page 11
Feds seek $3m fine against UC for Los Alamos breach
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S T A F F E D I T O R I A L
EDITORIAL & LETTERSTHE BROWN DAILY HERALD MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007PAGE 18
With six weeks to go, a few words of advice for anxious ’11ers:
Senior Staff Writers Rachel Arndt, Michael Bechek, Zachary Chapman, Irene Chen, Chaz Firestone, Isabel Gottlieb, Olivia Hoffman, Nandini Jayakrishna, Franklin Kanin, Kristina Kelleher, Debbie Lehmann, Scott Lowenstein, James Shapiro, Michael Skocpol, Nick WerleStaff Writers Susana Aho, Taylor Barnes, Brianna Barzola, Evan Boggs, Aubry Bracco, Caitlin Browne, Joy Chua, Patrick Corey, Catherine Goldberg, Thi Ho, Andrew Kurtzman, Cameron Lee, Hannah Levintova, Abe Lubetkin, Christian Martell, Taryn Martinez, Anna Millman, Joy Neumeyer, Marielle Segarra, Robin Steele, Allissa Wickham, Meha VergheseSports Staff Writers Andrew Braca, Han Cui, Amy Ehrhart, Kaitlyn Laabs, Eliza Lane, Kathleen Loughlin, Alex Mazerov, Megan McCahill, Tom Trudeau, Steele WestBusiness Staff Dana Feuchtbaum, Kent Holland, Alexander Hughes, Mariya Perelyubskaya, Viseth San, Kaustubh Shah, Jon Spector, Robert Stefani, Lily Tran, Lindsay WallsDesign Staff Brianna Barzola, Jihan Chao, Aurora Durfee, Sophie Elsner, Christian Martell, Matthew McCabe, Ezra MillerPhoto Staff Stuart Duncan-Smith, Austin Freeman, Tai Ho ShinCopy Editors Ayelet Brinn, Erin Cummings, Karen Evans, Jacob Frank, Christopher Gang, Ted Lamm, Lauren Levitz, Cici Matheny, Alex Mazerov, Ezra Miller, Joy Neumeyer, Madeleine Rosenberg, Lucy Stark, Meha Verghese
Do look at a map of Providence. Don’t show up and ask where the mall is.
Don’t friend everybody on Facebook. And you can’t join The Underground Network of People Who Understand That the Rat-ty is Far Superior to the V-Dub Facebook group. Yet.
Do the summer reading but be wary of taking life tips from a sickly French intellectual whose most well-known protagonist had a crush on his mother. You did read the book, right?
Don’t spend too much time reinventing yourself. You got in here because of who you are — not because you wear Con-verse.
Do enjoy your last few weeks with high school friends. Every-one’s right when they say nothing will ever be the same.
Do treasure your time at home with your parents. The Ratty’s comfort food section isn’t exactly home-cooked cuisine.
Don’t take registering for courses too seriously. Everything at Brown is subject to change. Everything other than the quality of the Ratty’s comfort foods.
Do try to contact your roommate ahead of time when Brown notifies you in August. You’ll probably want to decide who’ll bring the martini and shot glasses.
Do get a Brown hoodie from the Brown Bookstore. Don’t get seven.
Do splurge at Bed, Bath & Beyond but stay away from the silk sheets — they’ll be covered in puke in a week’s time anyway.
Don’t overestimate how chill Brown is. You can’t smoke pot on the streets, you have to wear shoes and you will have home-work. Except during Spring Weekend.
Don’t freak out and ask everyone you know what you should do to prepare for college. No one can give you any relevant in-formation about the transition to college. That is, besides The Herald.
Do get excited about Brown. You won’t regret it.
In his 1961 inaugural address, John F. Ken-nedy famously made a bold proclamation to the world: “Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new genera-tion of Americans.” That line became my fa-vorite in all of presidential history from the very first moment I read it –– I even chose it as the quote I wanted in my high school yearbook. I liked it because its oratorical power arose from its dual function — it was both a declarative statement as well as a call to action, urging young people to participate in their democracy and leave their mark on the world by changing it significantly for the better.
Kennedy’s words on that cold morning in January 1961 inspired an unprecedented lev-el of hopeful idealism among young Ameri-cans. The contrast between the potential for positive change that participation offered in 1961 and the disappointment it eventually brought by decade’s end, when a govern-ment that refused to listen failed to make the reciprocal commitment Kennedy had years before promised it would, only added fuel to the fire of frustration and tumult that would come to define the 1960s.
But in 1961, of course, all the painful events and great struggles of the decade still remained unseen, and America’s young president both embodied and encouraged the unbridled optimism of its people. Here and now in 2007, our own generation can scarcely contemplate what such optimism might have felt like. Our leaders, both Re-publican and Democrat, no longer make sol-emn appeals to our better nature. Instead, empty rhetoric drives poll numbers, and the resulting change in poll numbers encourag-es more empty rhetoric. This vicious cycle can explain even the weightiest decisions made by our elected officials in the war in Iraq: empty rhetoric about Iraqi WMDs and false implications by the Bush administra-tion of a connection between Saddam, al Qa-ida and Sept. 11, 2001 influenced public opin-ion, and Congress ultimately yielded to that
public opinion by writing President Bush a blank check to go to war.
No, our generation truly cannot fathom what it must have felt like to hear the presi-dent’s words and not only believe them, but actually feel inspired by them. In the face of such overt pandering to fear –– the absolute lowest common denominator –– how could we?
In Al Gore’s new book, “The Assault on Reason,” he argues that the level of Ameri-can political dialogue has deteriorated, large-ly due to the fact that the 30-second TV spot and the sound byte have become the princi-pal way in which political messages are com-
municated in society. He further argues that the Bush administration has exacerbated this problem by manipulating flaws inherent in those forms of communication, in turn promoting imagery over substance and re-actionary tendencies over critical thinking to an even greater extent.
However, Gore remains hopeful about the prospects of breaking the stranglehold that the current media culture places on healthy political debate, pointing to the rise of instantly updateable, user-generated me-dia such as blogs, Wikipedia, YouTube and the like. This rapidly growing new species of Internet communication tools enhances the very aspect of the Internet which makes it revolutionary as a medium –– the ability it gives anyone, anywhere to make informa-tion available to the entire world. By ampli-fying the Internet’s power (and ultimately, our power) in this way, these new innova-
tions allow individual citizens voices’ to have real impact on the national (and global) po-litical dialogue which informs our opinions and shapes our political attitudes.
But Gore’s faith in this communication technology revolution to save us from “the assault on reason” rests on one key assump-tion: us. As media is gradually democratized and control over the dissemination of infor-mation becomes increasingly decentralized, the journalist’s obligation to “seek truth and report it” ultimately becomes every citizen’s obligation. If you don’t fulfill it, other people will –– but the “truth” they seek and report may not necessarily be, in your estimation, a
fair presentation of the relevant facts. If you don’t counter their contribution with your own, however, you have no right to be dis-appointed if society ultimately embraces its version of the truth over yours.
To engage others in discussion and ex-change ideas with them whether their worldview is similar to ours or not, to argue, debate and to reason, to question “facts,” to start blogs, Web pages, e-journals or what-ever is required to ensure the world hears us, to give an honest listen to others who see things differently: This will be the great chal-lenge to which our generation must rise.
As our generation assumes the mantle of leadership in the coming years, we will occupy a place and time in history that will allow us to essentially reinvent the institu-tion of American political dialogue for the 21st century. In so doing, the impact we will have will not be a fleeting political shift to
the left or right. Rather, our impact will be the enduring course upon which we place ourselves and the generations to come that will be judged by history only in terms of up or down.
The experiences that shaped our parents’ worldviews and indirectly influence ours provide both a lesson and a challenge. The lesson is that collective action is truly possi-ble if we believe in ourselves. The challenge, however, is that the aforementioned frustra-tion of the 1960s and early 1970s left our parents’ generation with a largely jaded at-titude toward politics that they have passed on to us. If we are going to work together to change anything or everything, however, we must all rise above our pessimism and each commit to doing our part.
I originally thought Time Magazine’s choice to name ‘You’ as 2006’s Person of the Year was stupid, but in retrospect I was wrong — it’s a powerful statement of truth. You are becoming the media. As such, You are the check on government, and it is your duty to speak the truth to power and to your fellow citizens. Jaded cynicism only makes sense in a world that will not change as a re-sult of your actions. Today, however, You are more powerful than ever before, and there’s no reason to believe You are incapable of stimulating positive change in the world.
We owe it to ourselves and to our poster-ity to start believing again both in the power of our own voices and in the ideal of demo-cratic debate by making the most of our First Amendment right to free speech. Choosing to renew these beliefs is not naive, as some might urge us to believe. Just because a pro-posal arouses idealistic passion within us does not mean that detached rationalism (upon which the forces of the status quo and its defenders always purport to have the mo-nopoly) necessarily opposes it. It is perfectly rational to believe in our capacity to foment change because unlike generations before us, we have an unprecedented level of power to shape political dialogue and communicate our message … if we choose to.
The torch has been passed to a new gen-eration of Americans once again. What we do with it will be determined by the answer to this question: What will you do with it?
Don Trella ’08 is a member of the “you” generation.
OPINIONSTHE BROWN DAILY HERALDMONDAY, JULY 16, 2007 PAGE 19
A comedy of terrors
This is why I’ll rot: Why rapper MIMS is condemned to hell
This spring, the rap world unleashed a best-selling monster upon us unsuspecting listen-ers. That beast took the form of MIMS’ self-promoting anthem “This Is Why I’m Hot.” The single was released in late January, and after a scant few months the song had be-come so ubiquitous that it managed to take the holy grail of achievements for singles — it topped the Billboard Hot 100 Singles list for two weeks. Since then, the music world has vomited up countless numbers of remix-es and rehashes, and the stodgy old white guys over at Microsoft have attempted to capitalize on the song’s popularity by includ-ing it in a commercial for the Zune.
I could go on here talking trash about what is undoubtedly one of the most widely known songs of the year. It would be easy — lyrics this inane haven’t topped the Hot 100 since the Macarena. As a religious stud-ies concentrator, however, I find something more deeply troubling about the song than its glaring stupidity alone.
The artist, born as Shawn Mims, turned his real-life surname into an acronymic ver-sion of itself, standing for “Music Is My Savior.” Considering how his hit single demonstrates the high esteem in which he holds himself, it would not be a stretch of the imagination to assume that MIMS fan-cies his song as the acme of musical perfec-tion. Thus, by the transitive property, “This Is Why I’m Hot” is MIMS’ savior. In one re-spect this is true; after all, it has certainly saved his bank account from ever being overdrawn. Does the song, however, com-pare to the one true savior, Jesus Christ?
Let’s review the song’s lyrics to reach a conclusive answer to this question. In the chorus, MIMS asserts that he is “hot ‘cause he’s fly,” and that all the rest of us “ain’t ‘cause we not (fly).” Outside of our Christo-logical debate, I can’t help but to point out the ironic fact that MIMS declares his supe-riority over everyone else in a song in which he samples three other popular hip-hop art-ists, but that’s irrelevant. MIMS demon-strates his massive superiority complex by repeating the phrase “this is why I’m hot” — by my count, a full 39 times through the course of the song — while denouncing the rest of us as decidedly un-hot on at least half a dozen instances.
For comparison, why don’t we examine Jesus’ No. 1 hit single, the Sermon on the Mount? The opening of the Sermon, known as the Beatitudes, features the famous as-sertion that the meek will inherit the earth. Additionally, Jesus makes references to the so-called “salt of the Earth.” Although the connotations of Puritanesque modesty and hard work that this phrase carries in English were not present in Christ’s Aramaic, at the time salt represented wisdom, purity and the convenant with God. All in all, regardless of language differences between ancient and modern times, Christ heaped praise upon those who were humble. The ego trip that is “This Is Why I’m Hot” shows that MIMS is about as humble as Hillary Clinton is warm and inviting. Need I say more?
MIMS’ decisive lack of meekness in his song is not the only departure from Christ’s teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. In the third verse, MIMS states that when “n*****s start to hate” he will “rearrange their faces.” I’d like to turn your attention to a little part of the Sermon called the Lord’s Prayer, in which Jesus tells humanity to “for-give them that trespass against us.” Maybe it’s just me, but a threat to disfigure anyone who crosses him doesn’t make MIMS look particularly amenable to forgiveness. Else-
where in the Sermon, Jesus asks his lis-teners to, when struck on one side of their face, turn the other cheek, and he specifi-cally denounces the Hammurabic notion of an eye for an eye. Where famous peacemak-ers like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. drew from the Sermon in developing their respective philosophies of satyagraha and civil disobedience, MIMS’ threat of retalia-tion against those who slander him clashes directly with Christ’s teachings.
I could go on about how un-Christlike MIMS demonstrates himself to be for lon-ger than the space of this column would al-low — for instance, while the Lord’s Prayer asks God not to lead us into temptation, MIMS describes how his prowess in the re-cording studio helps him to pick up “short-ies” — but I think I’ve demonstrated beyond any shadow of a doubt that the only reason MIMS might be hot in the hereafter is be-cause he’ll be surrounded by fire and brim-stone as he burns for eternity in hell. Be sure to join me next week, when I examine whether Fergie really is as delicious as she purports herself to be.
Adam Cambier ’09 can sell a mill saying nothing on the track.
I originally thought Time Magazine’s
choice to name ‘You’ as 2006’s
Person of the Year was stupid, but in
retrospect I was wrong.
DON TRELLAOPINIONS COLUMNIST
ADAM CAMBIEROPINIONS COLUMNIST
SPORTS SUMMER THE BROWN DAILY HERALDMONDAY, JULY 16, 2007 PAGE 20
BY ANDREW BRACA
W. rowers cap season with fifth National Championship
For graduating seniors, few things are important enough to merit missing their own Commencement. But on May 27, the women’s crew and its seniors skipped Brown’s ceremonies to win the NCAA Wom-en’s Rowing Championships in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
The championship triumph was Brown’s fifth in the past nine years. The Bears utilized depth superior to other top-ranking universities such as runner-up the University of Virginia and Ohio State University. The Bears capped their season with a victory in the Henley Women’s Regatta in England on June 24.
Even after overseeing five na-tional championship seasons since 1999, Head Coach John Murphy isn’t taking the crew’s success for granted.
“I definitely don’t think we’re a dynasty,” Murphy said after the Bears lost in the semifinals of the Henley Royal Regatta. “I don’t think there are dynasties in any sports. I think you have to work really hard and hope for the best, and nothing’s guaranteed.”
Murphy’s philosophy is to take things one year at a time, and 2007 was one of the best in the history of the program.
The season looked promising from the start as the Bears lost only one race in their first five meets. But on April 28, Brown’s varsity eight lost to Yale by two seconds
in the final tune-up of the season. Yale finished fourth at the national championship.
“I knew as the real spring finally appeared that everyone was going to get a little faster, including Yale, who had their share of bad weath-er,” Murphy said. “(But) I knew that we had some time to prepare to take our shot, and we did.”
The Bears fell to the Bulldogs again in the Eastern Sprints on May 13, settling for second despite victo-ries by the novice eight and second varsity eight crews. Still, Murphy viewed it as an encouraging perfor-mance.
Murphy’s optimism was borne out at Melton Hill Lake in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The varsity four, com-posed of freshmen Aubrey Fitz-
patrick ’10, Nicole McDonald ’10, Molly Junck ’10 and Rebecca Fein ’10, placed second. The second var-sity eight took third and the var-sity eight came in fourth, giving Brown 58 points for a four-point victory over Virginia. The consis-tent performance across the board garnered the Bears another cham-pionship to add to their previous NCAA titles from 1999, 2000, 2002 and 2004.
“I was just very happy and thankful for winning,” Murphy said. “Each year it seems to get a little bit tougher, the competition gets bet-ter. …Virginia had all three boats in the final and they have a very strong team (with an) outstanding senior class. It was extremely diffi-cult competition.”
The Bears followed up their state-side triumph by heading to England to compete in the Henley Women’s Regatta and the Henley Royal Re-gatta on the River Thames.
First, Brown won the Women’s Regatta by defeating Ivy League op-ponent Radcliffe in the final on June 24. But Brown fell short in the Roy-al Regatta, ending the season with a loss in the semifinals to Dortmund on July 7. The Bears gave a valiant effort, but ultimately were not fast enough to catch Germany’s nation-al crew, who Murphy described as “the fastest crew in Europe.”
“It’s a unique opportunity to race against the best in the world,” he added. “In a lot of sports you can’t do that.”
Though a lot of work went into
preparing for the trip, Murphy said it was a great way to end the season.
“We started to plan for this trip in December,” he said. “We really didn’t have a lot of time to sit back and enjoy the NCAA because we had to immediately start preparing for this trip. But it was a lot of fun. I think it’s a great race over here.”
Now that the season has come to a close, Murphy is finally able to reflect on a wonderful year.
“I think you come away appreci-ating the opportunity to work with these exceptional kids that we had this year,” he said. “I think it ended on a very good note. I think that’s the best you can hope for. We’ll get a little rest here, and then in Sep-tember we’ll start up again.”
SPORTS STAFF WRITER
U. replacing grass fields behind OMAC with turf
As Brown welcomes new stu-dents this fall, the football team will also greet two new turf prac-tice fields. The new fields, which will replace the grass practice fields behind the Olney-Margo-lies Athletic Center, are expected to be completed Aug. 15 for use during the coming season.
According to Director of Ath-letics Michael Goldberger, the operation began one year ago. “We brought in outside consul-tants, Cannon Design, to look at all of our athletic facilities,” he said. “They spent three months evaluating our facilities, then came out with their recommen-dations.”
Cannon Design’s top concern with Brown’s athletic facilities was the poor condition of the grass practice fields, which suf-fered from drainage from Ste-venson Field during inclement weather conditions. “We have an incredible shortage of playable fields,” Goldberger said. “The fields behind the OMAC are so wet. When it rains, they become unplayable.”
The new turf surfaces will stand up to the wet weather con-ditions in Rhode Island because they are permeable, permitting water to drain through them, and have a rubber granule infill that maintains elasticity when covered in frost and allows for snow to be cleared more easily. Turf can also withstand more frequent usage, up to three times
the number of hours per year recommended for grass fields, which must lie fallow to recover from overuse. The new fields will also have new lights, giving teams greater flexibility in plan-ning practice sessions.
After Cannon Design’s as-sessment of the grass fields, the athletic department made swift progress towards installing the Field Turf fields. “The Sports Foundation raised the money and it happened very quickly,” Goldberger said. “Construction began in May and will be com-pleted in August.”
John Berylson ’75 provided the lead gift toward covering the $3 million cost, which also in-cludes the price of installing 724 spectator seats on the one ex-isting turf field. Lead gifts from the Meister family — including Rich ’75, Steve ’76, John ’79 and Charlie ’81 — and Bill Kavan ’72 contributed to improving the ex-isting field and now the specta-tor stands. The added seats will increase the field’s usability as a venue for men’s and women’s la-crosse games early in the season or during inclement weather.
Likewise, the new turf fields will not benefit only the foot-ball team. Goldberger said the lacrosse, baseball and soccer teams, as well as intramural teams and club sports teams, may all gain from the new fields.
Still, the football team, which has been most troubled by the in-adequate grass fields where the
BY ERIN FRAUENHOFERSPORTS EDITOR
Thomas ’07 a Tiger after MLB draft
For the baseball team’s seniors, June 2 was the end of an era. As the Ivy League Champions lined up to shake hands after being eliminat-ed from the NCAA Tournament by Wake Forest University, most of the recent graduates knew that they had played their final game of competitive ball.
But for Devin Thomas ’07, the dream of playing beyond the col-legiate level has become reality. A week after that loss, Thomas was selected in the seventh round of the MLB Draft by the Detroit Ti-gers. Just six weeks removed from his final collegiate game, Thomas is a regular starter behind the plate for the Oneonta Tigers, a Class-A
affiliate of the Detroit Tigers. After playing college ball at
a high level all four years of his Brown career, Thomas says he is appreciative of his chance to play in the pros.
“Playing professional ball is something I’ve been hoping to do and looking forward to for a long time,” Thomas said. “It feels great to make it here. It’s really a valida-tion for all the hard work that you put in.”
The Brown star was selected by the Tigers as the 241st overall pick. Thomas said he was in the car on the way back to Providence when he received a call telling him that he’d been drafted.
“(Draft day) was kind of a tense day,” Thomas said. “I had talked to some teams so I kind of had
an idea who was interested in me, who wanted me. But it’s tough to get a specific idea.”
Thomas is Brown’s 17th draftee since the MLB draft began in 1965. Thomas was the University’s high-est drafted player since shortstop Bill Almon ’74 was the first overall pick in the 1974 draft.
After being drafted, Thomas reported to Lakeland, Fla., where all Tigers’ draft picks gather for an orientation camp and prepare for a June-to-September season with a club in either Lakeland or Oneon-ta. Thomas was assigned to Oneon-ta because “the Gulf Coast League (and Lakeland Tigers) is more for younger guys and higher-round draft picks,” Thomas said. When
BY PETER CIPPARONESPORTS EDITOR
Courtesy of Susan Fison P’07
Women’s crew scored 58 points to edge out the University of Virginia for the NCAA Women’s Rowing Championships title.
Jake Melrose / Herald File PhotoDevin Thomas ‘07 was drafted by the Detroit Tigers last month.
