The November 2, 2009 issue of the Brown Daily Herald
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www.browndailyherald.com 195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island [email protected]News..... 1-6 Sports.....7-8 Arts ........ 9 Editorial..10 Opinion...11 Today ........12 BLUSTERY DEFEAT Football loses in overtime to Princeton after three missed field goals Sports, 7 INTERNATIONAL FACES More students from abroad are studying in the U.S. than ever before News, 3 HEALTHY DEBATE Sean Quigley ’10 tries to put the protest back in Protestant Opinions, 11 INSIDE D aily Herald THE BROWN vol. cxliv, no. 97 | Monday, November 2, 2009 | Serving the community daily since 1891 Downtown, big ideas are soon to be tested BY BRIGITTA GREENE SENIOR STAFF WRITER In fewer than two years, Brown’s new Medical Education Building will welcome its first class of students. But looking at the building now, it is hard to tell. The block-long former factory sits waiting, its 165 windows staring blankly out onto Richmond Street. And though the Med Ed building sits just under a mile from Faunce Arch, few University students now find themselves strolling past its en- trance — not to mention anywhere within the Jewelr y District itself. The Jewelr y District, once a bus- tling manufacturing center but now a neighborhood in flux, lies between Brown’s College Hill campus and the Alpert Medical School’s partner hospitals downtown. Over the past decade, the University has looked to the area as an outlet for growth beyond College Hill. Administrators view the planned opening of the new Richmond Street facility in 2011 as Student dies in rooſtop fall while abroad BY SYDNEY EMBER SENIOR STAFF WRITER Arun Stewart ’11, a student whom professors and friends described as “brilliant,” “passionate” and “incredibly hip,” died Friday in Beijing, where he was studying abroad. He was attending a rooftop gathering with friends near Tsin- ghua University when he lost his footing, according to an e-mail from President Ruth Simmons sent to the community Saturday night. “At this point, few details have emerged,” said Marisa Quinn, vice president for public affairs and University relations, adding that the incident was being investigated by local authorities. She said the accident occurred approximately 10 miles from Tsinghua. Stewart was pursuing a degree in East Asian Studies, following what people who knew him called an intense passion for Chinese lan- guage and culture. Driven by a desire to perform, Stewart wanted to perfect his Chinese so he could convey humor to his audience through Chinese dialogue called “cross-talk,” said Lingzhen Wang, associate professor of East Asian Studies and Stewart’s adviser. “He was one of the very few brightest students I have ever taught,” Wang said. “I saw in this kid a ver y ambitious plan for the future.” Wang, who taught Stewart twice in classes on Chinese cin- ema and 20th-century Chinese literature, said Stewart wanted to perform as a popular entertainer in China, using language to unite people across cultures. He was also fascinated by Chinese poetr y and late imperial literature, she said, which enhanced his cultural understanding because he had read the works he was studying in their original form. Stewart’s enthusiasm spilled beyond the classroom. He was granted a fellowship through the Department of East Asian Stud- ies before he traveled to Beijing. Wang said Stewart and three other students went to Shanghai to do a project on Chinese food, restau- rants and migrants and study local business owners. The group was working on a detailed report that Wang said was a project Stewart was completing for Brown while studying abroad. “The interest he had in the hu- manities in general really made him a quite unique and outstand- ing student,” she said. “I just hope there are more students at Brown who will approach different cul- tures the way he has approached it.” “He loved to tease and be teased,” said Professor of Com- parative Literature Dore Levy, who taught Stewart and three other stu- Faculty missing ombudsperson to manage conflicts BY NICOLE FRIEDMAN SENIOR STAFF WRITER A staff position responsible for hearing and addressing the concerns of faculty and postdoctoral students will remain vacant this year after a failed search to fill the spot coincided with a hiring freeze instituted last year. For the past three academic years, the University employed a part-time ombudsperson in a pilot program, who worked with faculty members to “medi- ate and try to resolve issues,” said Pro- fessor of Physics Chung-I Tan, chair of the Faculty Executive Committee. Typical duties of the position includ- ed moderating disputes and acting as Courtesy of Brown An artist’s rendering of the reinvented Richmond Street around a renovated medical school education building. Today, the Jewelry District site is mostly desolate around the University-owned property. Edible car competition heats up with Food Network star BY JENNA STECKEL CONTRIBUTING WRITER Gravity and inertia don’t figure into most toddlers’ calculations as they meddle with their mashed potatoes. But for participants in this year’s Edible Car Competition, playing with food means fun with physics. In Barus and Holley last week, Brown’s Society of Women Engi- neers and the Division of Engi- neering pitted 20 teams against each other to assemble a func- tional, stylish and entirely edible car in just one hour. But this year’s contest, only the second ever, included Brown stu- dents and faculty — and Bob Blum- er, host of the Food Network show “Glutton for Punishment,” which airs in 30 countries and chronicles his adventures in the world of culi- nary competitions. “I have five days to learn a particularly daunting skill that revolves around food before tak- ing on professionals,” Blumer said — professionals who, in this case, were Brown’s own engineer- ing students. Edible engineering Last Friday, the teams first scrambled to divvy up a buffet of potential car parts, including pumpkins, Life Savers, zucchini and rice cakes. Unlike the first edible car contest, held in spring 2008, the cars could only utilize the ingredients that SWE pro- Quinn Savit / Herald The Food Network filmed this year’s Edible Car Competition, which took place last week in Barus and Holley. continued on page 3 continued on page 4 continued on page 2 FEATURE TOWN/BROWN The Herald examines Brown’s multifaceted relationship with the city it calls home. Last in a five-part series. continued on page 6
Transcript
www.browndailyherald.com 195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island [email protected]
News.....1-6Sports.....7-8 Ar ts........9 Editorial..10Opinion...11Today........12
Blustery Defeat Football loses in overtime to Princeton after three missed field goals
Sports, 7international faces More students from abroad are studying in the U.S. than ever before
News, 3healthy DeBateSean Quigley ’10 tries to put the protest back in Protestant
Opinions, 11
insi
deDaily Heraldthe Brown
vol. cxliv, no. 97 | Monday, November 2, 2009 | Serving the community daily since 1891
Downtown, big ideas are soon to be testedBy Brigitta greene
Senior Staff Writer
In fewer than two years, Brown’s new Medical Education Building will welcome its first class of students. But looking at the building now, it is hard to tell.
The block-long former factory sits waiting, its 165 windows staring blankly out onto Richmond Street.
And though the Med Ed building sits just under a mile from Faunce Arch, few University students now find themselves strolling past its en-
trance — not to mention anywhere within the Jewelry District itself.
The Jewelry District, once a bus-tling manufacturing center but now a neighborhood in flux, lies between Brown’s College Hill campus and the Alpert Medical School’s partner hospitals downtown. Over the past decade, the University has looked to the area as an outlet for growth beyond College Hill. Administrators view the planned opening of the new Richmond Street facility in 2011 as
Student dies in rooftop fall while abroadBy syDney emBer
Senior Staff Writer
Arun Stewart ’11, a student whom professors and friends described as “brilliant,” “passionate” and “incredibly hip,” died Friday in Beijing, where he was studying abroad.
He was attending a rooftop gathering with friends near Tsin-ghua University when he lost his footing, according to an e-mail from President Ruth Simmons sent to the community Saturday night.
“At this point, few details have emerged,” said Marisa Quinn, vice president for public affairs and University relations, adding that the incident was being investigated by local authorities. She said the accident occurred approximately 10 miles from Tsinghua.
Stewart was pursuing a degree in East Asian Studies, following what people who knew him called an intense passion for Chinese lan-guage and culture. Driven by a desire to perform, Stewart wanted to perfect his Chinese so he could convey humor to his audience through Chinese dialogue called “cross-talk,” said Lingzhen Wang, associate professor of East Asian Studies and Stewart’s adviser.
“He was one of the very few brightest students I have ever taught,” Wang said. “I saw in this kid a very ambitious plan for the future.”
Wang, who taught Stewart twice in classes on Chinese cin-ema and 20th-century Chinese literature, said Stewart wanted to perform as a popular entertainer in China, using language to unite people across cultures. He was also fascinated by Chinese poetry and late imperial literature, she said, which enhanced his cultural understanding because he had read the works he was studying in their original form.
Stewart’s enthusiasm spilled beyond the classroom. He was granted a fellowship through the Department of East Asian Stud-ies before he traveled to Beijing. Wang said Stewart and three other students went to Shanghai to do a project on Chinese food, restau-rants and migrants and study local business owners. The group was working on a detailed report that Wang said was a project Stewart was completing for Brown while studying abroad.
“The interest he had in the hu-manities in general really made him a quite unique and outstand-ing student,” she said. “I just hope there are more students at Brown who will approach different cul-tures the way he has approached it.”
“He loved to tease and be teased,” said Professor of Com-parative Literature Dore Levy, who taught Stewart and three other stu-
Faculty missing ombudsperson to manageconflictsBy nicole frieDman
Senior Staff Writer
A staff position responsible for hearing and addressing the concerns of faculty and postdoctoral students will remain vacant this year after a failed search to fill the spot coincided with a hiring freeze instituted last year.
For the past three academic years, the University employed a part-time ombudsperson in a pilot program, who worked with faculty members to “medi-ate and try to resolve issues,” said Pro-fessor of Physics Chung-I Tan, chair of the Faculty Executive Committee.
Typical duties of the position includ-ed moderating disputes and acting as
Courtesy of BrownAn artist’s rendering of the reinvented Richmond Street around a renovated medical school education building. Today, the Jewelry District site is mostly desolate around the University-owned property.
edible car competition heats up with Food network starBy Jenna steckel
Contributing Writer
Gravity and inertia don’t figure into most toddlers’ calculations as they meddle with their mashed potatoes. But for participants in this year’s Edible Car Competition, playing with food means fun with physics.
In Barus and Holley last week, Brown’s Society of Women Engi-neers and the Division of Engi-neering pitted 20 teams against each other to assemble a func-tional, stylish and entirely edible car in just one hour.
But this year’s contest, only the second ever, included Brown stu-dents and faculty — and Bob Blum-er, host of the Food Network show “Glutton for Punishment,” which
airs in 30 countries and chronicles his adventures in the world of culi-nary competitions.
“I have five days to learn a particularly daunting skill that revolves around food before tak-ing on professionals,” Blumer
said — professionals who, in this case, were Brown’s own engineer-
ing students.
edible engineeringLast Friday, the teams first
scrambled to divvy up a buffet of potential car parts, including pumpkins, Life Savers, zucchini and rice cakes. Unlike the first edible car contest, held in spring 2008, the cars could only utilize the ingredients that SWE pro- Quinn Savit / Herald
The Food Network filmed this year’s Edible Car Competition, which took place last week in Barus and Holley.continued on page 3
continued on page 4
continued on page 2
feature
toWn/BroWnThe Herald examines Brown’s multifaceted relationship with
the city it calls home.Last in a five-part series. continued on page 6
sudoku
By sarah mancone
Contributing Writer
A Brown-led study has identified a genetic variant that indicates an increased risk of alcohol abuse in adolescents. The study, led by Rob-ert Miranda P’04, assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior for research, focused on a receptor gene previously tied only to adult alcohol abuse.
The mutation — located on a gene known as the m-opioid recep-tor gene, or OPRM1 — could lead to a higher risk of alcohol misuse in adolescents and heightened sen-sitivity to the reinforcing effects
of alcohol.The study will help “shed some
light” and “get a better handle on the etiology” of adolescent alcohol abuse from a genetic perspective, said Assistant Professor of Com-munity Health Valerie Knopik, who co-authored the paper. Knopik said the study, which will appear in the January 2010 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Re-search, the official journal of the Research Society on Alcoholism and the International Society for Biomedical Research on Alcohol-ism, is significant because most literature on alcohol abuse has focused on adults.
The study involved 187 partici-pants between the ages of 12 and 18 from “high-risk disadvantaged neighborhoods and the court sys-tem,” Knopik said. The volunteers were asked to provide a genetic sample and complete a series of assessments.
The researchers searched for the OPRM1 gene mutation — called a polymorphism — and surveyed each participant to determine “al-cohol use disorder diagnoses and other psychopathology,” Miranda said. Those who exhibited the polymorphism were more likely to abuse alcohol.
“Our findings provide the first evidence to suggest that teenag-ers who carry a certain variant of the OPRM1 gene experience more alcohol-related problems,” said Miranda, “and are more likely to meet diagnostic criteria for an alcohol-use disorder.”
This variant was shown to en-hance how adolescents feel while drinking more than in adolescents without it, which partly explains why they are more likely to develop alcohol-related problems.
These findings, however, are not the sole causes of alcohol-use disorders, and both Knopik and Miranda emphasized the impor-tance of environmental factors.
Still, “the relative importance of environmental and genetic fac-tors appears to shift considerably over the course of adolescence,” Miranda said. The genetic muta-tion appears to play a larger role in determining alcohol abuse “once teenagers begin to drink,” he said.
This research will extend into fu-ture studies “to replicate these find-ings in a larger sample of youth and to identify protective environmental factors that reduce genetic risk for alcoholism,” Miranda said.
Drinking and alcohol abuse are “really complex behaviors,” Knopik said. “The candidate gene is just one piece of tens, of hundreds, of thousands of genes” influencing the actions of adolescents.
Stephen DeLucia, PresidentMichael Bechek, Vice President
Jonathan Spector, TreasurerAlexander Hughes, Secretary
The Brown Daily Herald (USPS 067.740) is an independent newspaper serv-ing the Brown University community daily since 1891. It is published Monday through Friday during the academic year, excluding vacations, once during Commencement, once during Orientation and once in July by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Single copy free for each members of the community. POSTMASTER please send corrections to P.O. Box 2538, Providence, RI 02906. Periodicals postage paid at Providence, R.I. Offices are located at 195 Angell St., Providence, R.I. E-mail [email protected]. World Wide Web: http://www.browndailyherald.com. Subscription prices: $319 one year daily, $139 one semester daily. Copyright 2009 by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
editorial Phone: 401.351.3372 | Business Phone: 401.351.3260Daily Heraldthe Brown
MONDAy, NOvEMBER 2, 2009THE BROWN DAILy HERALDPAgE 2
CampuS newS “We are all faculty or administrators, so by definition, we’re not impartial.”— Dean Rod Beresford, on the need for a staff ombudsperson to address concerns
new evidence supports youth alcoholism geneKim Perley / Herald
A study of alcohol abuse in adolescents has produced evidence of a genetic link to alcohol-related problems.
a confidential and neutral sounding-board for personal and professional concerns, according to an annual report from the ombudsperson’s office.
That experiment “worked out well,” Tan said. The ombudsperson was contacted by 28 to 59 faculty members and postdocs each year, according to the office’s annual re-ports.
After surveying the faculty, the FEC decided that the position — which reported directly to the presi-dent — should be made permanent. The University made an offer last year, but the candidate turned the job down because it was only part-time, according to the minutes of a Sept. 23, 2008 FEC meeting.
When the University imposed a hiring freeze on all staff positions soon after that date, Tan said, the FEC decided that “although this position is important, we would temporarily put this on hold.”
The Web site of the ombudsper-son’s office directs users to take ques-tions and concerns to Tan, Associate Provost and Director of Institutional Diversity Valerie Wilson or Rod Be-resford, professor of engineering and interim associate dean of the faculty.
“We are all faculty or administra-tors, so by definition, we’re not impar-tial,” Beresford said. Rather than try to replace an ombudsperson’s neutral view, the current structure provides the faculty with “helpful” resources, he added.
“This is an interim or short-term arrangement,” he said. “The long-term plan is not settled.”
Tan and Beresford said they have
not yet assisted any faculty member with a concern this year.
To see if the current structure is working, the FEC will review how many faculty members come forward this year, Tan said. Past ombudsper-son reports indicate the approximate number of cases that arise each year. “After a year we’ll probably want to review what’s transpired this year,” he said.
In the past three years, during which the University employed an ombudsperson, the number of cases taken to the FEC or the faculty’s Com-mittee of Grievances declined, ac-cording to past FEC meeting notes.
“In the past, the grievance com-mittee would basically have both jobs,” of addressing formal griev-ances and handling more general faculty concerns, Tan said.
An ombudsperson resolves problems before they become for-mal grievances and “can usually act much more quickly” than the griev-ance committee, “at the satisfaction of everybody else,” said Professor of Mathematics Richard Kenyon, the grievance committee chair.
The FEC still intends to hire an ombudsperson but has not yet de-cided when, Tan said.
In light of the University’s finan-cial needs, Beresford said, “It would be difficult to justify this (position) at this time, although that could change.”
There is a “possibility” that when the position is offered again, it will be as a two-thirds or three-quarters time job, rather than half-time, since the increased benefits might make the job “slightly more attractive,” Tan said. The ombudsperson’s role might also be expanded to address staff or student needs, he added.
Faculty fail to hire staff ombudsperson
continued from page 1
CampuS newSMONDAy, NOvEMBER 2, 2009 THE BROWN DAILy HERALD PAgE 3
“Brown can’t do it alone. And we don’t want to do it alone.”— Richard Spies, exec. vP for planning, on developing the Jewelry District
rise in int’l students reflects national trendBy ellen cushing
Senior Staff Writer
The number of international students — particularly those coming from Asia — has increased dramatically on U.S. campuses over the past several years, a trend that is changing the face of college admissions in many ways.
According to the Institute of Interna-tional Education, more than 68,000 stu-dents came from abroad to study in the United States in the 2007-2008 school year — a seven percent increase from the year before. The top five nations of origin for these students were India, China, South Korea, Japan and Canada,
according to the Institute’s data.At Brown, admissions statistics mir-
ror these larger trends. According to data provided by the
Office of Admissions, 33 students who attended high school in China entered Brown with the class of 2013 — up from 13 in the class of 2009. Over the same four-year period, the number of Korean students increased from nine to 21, the number from Singapore went from 10 to 14, and the number from India went from four to 15.
At the same time, the number of students from the Middle East, West-ern Europe and the Caribbean has decreased over the last five years.
“Ever since I’ve been here, there has always been an upward trend” in students coming from Asia, said Panetha Ott, director of international admissions.
Ott attributed the increase to the general trends of globalization and Web communication.
After the creation of the European Union, Ott said, schooling became free for any EU resident attending school in any other EU member nation. The result, Ott said, is that “Europe, which used to be the center of recruitment, gradually started sending fewer stu-
vided. While this meant there were no turkey-mobiles, as one team created in 2008, the contestants found innovative methods to turn vegetables into vehicles.
The day of the contest, Blumer and his teammates, Sam Rabb ’10.5 and competition creator Julie Sy-giel ’09, gathered in Barus and Holley’s foyer with their competi-tion. The teams sported names like the Gourd Accord, Bread Man Walking and Squash the Competi-tion and included competitors as unusual as 7-year-old Peter Curtin, working with his father, Professor of Engineering William Curtin.
At the end of an hour spent drilling, carving, chopping and nibbling, the teams carried their creations outside for judging and a test run. One member of each team held their car at the top of the specially built ramp, releasing it at event organizer Holly Laurid-sen’s ’11 mark and watching it roll, tumble or crash.
The winning team — Pump-kin Express — was the first to launch its culinary creation. Its entry rolled a full 174 feet to Brook Street, stopping just in time to avoid being crushed by two buses that pulled up as it approached the street.
But the team’s victory was not without controversy — a section of an apple attached to the car fell of f on the ramp and was discov-ered after the excitement of its success.
Lauridsen and the contest’s
judges said according to the rulebook, the car’s distance was determined by the distance the first piece — in this case, the apple — traveled. After the ruling was made, the team’s members looked up the rules.
“We printed out the of ficial rules and saw that the rules stated that the body and the wheels had to remain intact the entire time,” said Margaret Merritt ’11, one of the members of Pumpkin Express. Because the apple was on the car’s axle, not the body or the wheels, the vehicle’s full distance qualified as part of its score.
The runners-up fell short by yards — the Cur tins came in second, and Blumer’s team, the Vegi-Mights, came in third with a car that consisted of a zucchini body, wheels made of oranges and squash and even a broccoli driver.
cooking up a car competitionThe competition, one of two
“extreme food” events put on by SWE, was the brainchild of Sygiel, who helped create the group’s first event in fall 2007: a ginger-bread house competition that chal-lenged participants to construct the house that could support the most weight.
After the event’s success, Sygiel began thinking of other novel ways to incorporate fun into engineering events, she said.
Though Sygiel entertained a variety of possibilities, including a paper airplane folding contest, she ultimately found inspiration
in her childhood memories. “The University of Kentucky
hosted open houses and invited kids to participate in all these fun engineering events,” she said. One of her favorites, she recalled, in-volved making miniature cars from food — last year, a revved-up ver-sion rolled onto College Hill for the first time.
For this second installment, SWE’s leaders — headed by Lau-ridsen — placed a new emphasis on environmental consciousness and social awareness.
SWE bought most of the food through the online marketplace Goodshop, which in turn donated a percentage of its profits from the purchase to Amos House, a local social services agency.
All the scraps are being used as compost at the Urban Environ-mental Lab, Lauridsen said, and as food for Assistant Professor of Engineering Kelly Pennell’s chickens.
“We chose specifically to use food as our medium because en-gineers in this day and age have to think about sustainability,” Sygiel said. “If you build cars out of wood and metal and plastic, what do you do with the material?”
And unlike plastic, the entirely edible cars are biodegradable. “It was part of the thinking behind the event that there should be some other destination besides a dump-ster,” Pennell said.
hitting the booksThe “Glutton for Punishment”
team stumbled across the edible
car contest in a Google search for “food competitions,” Laurid-sen said. Producers contacted the University in April, she said, and preparations for the episode’s filming have been underway ever since.
Blumer and the crew, which for this episode included modern cul-ture and media concentrator Zack Caldwell ’10, were on campus the week leading up to the event, film-ing segments that Lauridsen said “highlight Brown’s sustainable food use,”, including a segment filmed in the kitchen of West House, a Brown program house and food co-op dedicated to environmentalism.
The Food Network star began his quest at the beginning of the week by building a car to serve as a “benchmark” of his initial skill, Pennell said.
“With no information from me, he had one hour to build a car (out) of produce,” she said. “It was an utter failure.”
“It lost a wheel on the way to the ramp and was in pieces all along it,” Lauridsen said.
Blumer then immediately “hit the books,” spending 13-hour days filming and learning the complex engineering behind a winning car from Pennell and Interim Dean of Engineering Rodney Clifton, Lau-ridsen said. Blumer also learned pumpkin-carving techniques from celebrated carver Richard Alford and spent a day testing car mod-els with the members of Brown’s Formula Society of Automotive Engineers race car team.
a recipe for success The main challenge to crafting
a successful vehicle is to make the wheels spin and support the car at the same time, Lauridsen said.
Sygiel advises having as much weight in the car’s body as pos-sible without breaking an axle. From her own experiments, Sygiel said, she has found that carrots make good axles, but “you have to chew them down to have the same diameter all the way around.”
Bundling fettuccine is another tactic Sygiel suggests, but as Blum-er discovered while experimenting with dif ferent models, vegetable wheels effectively “cook” the pasta they surround, producing soggy, weakened axles.
Professor Emeritus of Engi-neering Barrett Hazeltine, Pro-fessor of Engineering Allan Bower and Adjunct Lecturer in Visual Art Ian Gonsher judged the cars on appearance, speed and distance traveled.
“It’s easy to make it look cool,” Lauridsen said. “Making it func-tion is more of a challenge, at least in engineering,”
“All the theory and practice doesn’t do anything,” Blumer said, when it comes time to actu-ally build.
But Blumer’s coach thinks his experience as a chef served him well in dishing up a functioning vehicle. “People overlook how creative engineers are,” she said, “but it’s one of our most important skill sets.”
Food network films ‘extreme food’ challenge on campuscontinued from page 1
Nick Sinnott-Armstrong / HeraldThe number of students from foreign countries — particularly Asian countries — has increased at Brown and nationwide.
researchers awarded over $12 million to study obesity
By samer muallem
Contributing Writer
The Weight Control and Diabe-tes Research Center at Miriam Hospital recently received six research grants worth a total of more than $12 million from the National Institutes of Health. The money will be used to research weight-gain prevention and the benefits of losing weight.
Though the research center often examines the ef fects of diet and exercise on obesity, the grant-funded studies will focus on the behavioral causes of weight gain and their inhibition, said Rena Wing, director of the cen-ter and professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the Alpert Medical School.
The grant-funded studies are “much more focused on how to prevent … the behavioral causes of weight gain” and “the health benefits of weight loss,” Wing said.
Among the six research
grants is the competitive NIH Challenge Grant. Of the 20,000 applicants for the grant, Wing’s study was one of only 200 to be awarded funding. The grant is worth $930,320 and is dedicated to developing and evaluating an online program in which physi-cians can enroll their patients, helping those struggling with obesity to adhere to their pre-scribed weight loss program.
The largest grant Wing’s re-search was given came from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. The grant, totalling nearly $6 million over five years, will be used to research the be-havioral treatments of obesity in adults and to prevent weight gain in young adults.
“Between the ages of 18 and 35, people gain about two pounds a year,” Wing said. “It is an epi-demic of obesity.”
The center’s other studies be-ing funded by NIH grants include an identification of the specific genes related to obesity, the im-pact of weight loss on Type-2 diabetes, the effects of weight gain on erectile dysfunction and the relationship between short sleep duration and obesity.
Studies to focus on ‘behavioral causes’ of weight gain
continued on page 6
a step toward a vibrant intellectual center.
The dream is infectious. Imagine sitting at a small sidewalk cafe on Richmond Street, sipping a cappuc-cino, discussing the applications of stem cell growth. A renewed Jewelry District, administrators say, will bring new life to downtown Providence. It will be like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Kendall Square, like a less-urban New York University.
But dreams will soon require blueprints, and glossy images must give way to nuts and bolts. As that process unfolds, the University will have to reconcile its goals with those of the city as a whole, and the future of Brown in downtown Providence will hang in balance.
a ct scan with that coffee?The opening of the Med School’s
new home in August 2011 will rep-resent a key moment in Brown’s history. By then, there will be more than 1,000 members of the University community present in the Jewelry District — what administrators con-sider to be a “critical mass” — ac-cording to architectural consultant Frances Halsband.
Halsband, who drafted the Uni-versity’s 2003 Strategic Framework for Physical Planning, was one of the first proponents of the University’s growth beyond College Hill. Growing research interests demanded large-scale facilities that simply wouldn’t fit within current bounds.
The Jewelry District emerged as an area with the capacity and flexibil-ity to allow for University expansion, but also as a place that could support community development in a broader sense, said Richard Spies, vice presi-dent for planning and senior advisor to President Ruth Simmons.
Research activity by universi-ties and hospitals in the district has “mushroomed” since the 1990s, said Edward Wing, dean of medicine and
biological sciences. The district is on a trajectory to become an intel-lectual hub.
In 2003, the University purchased property at 70 Ship St., and bought seven more properties in the Jewelry District in 2006. Administrators have looked to land freed up by the relo-cation of I-195 as another potential opportunity to acquire space.
Halsband presented a new “capac-ity study” for the Jewelry District to the Corporation at its meeting in October. The study, which included recommendations for mixed-used development surrounding Brown-owned properties, described “lively promenades,” sidewalk cafes, tree-lined streets and restored access to the historic waterfront, she said.
The Jewelry District Association, an advocacy group for neighborhood residents and businesses, has been working with Brown to develop plans for the area.
“Obviously they want the students to have some life outside the build-ing that they’re in,” said Jim Brown, president of the association. Brown has been working closely with the community throughout the planning process, he said, and he anticipates that the influx of students will foster new interaction.
This focus on community out-reach represents a new tack for Uni-versity planners. The 70 Ship St. lab, completed half a decade ago, has been used as an example of what not to do. The facility was designed pri-marily to maximize lab space, Spies said, not to encourage openness.
“If you walk by the building, the shades are drawn,” he said. “We need to think about making those spaces friendly to the street.”
In contrast, the Medical Education Building will encourage accessibility and interaction. The building will feature large windows, displays of student and faculty work and maybe street-level cafes, Wing said.
“With all these people down there, other kinds of businesses that they need will spring up,” said
Clyde Briant, vice president for re-search. He pointed to Thayer Street as an example of a retail corridor that depends on Brown as its economic driver.
Brown officials hope the name “Richmond Street” may soon conjure a similar image.
Providence weighs inMany of the proposed improve-
ments, including grooming and re-storing streetscapes, require coop-eration with neighboring landowners and community groups in the area.
“There aren’t too many things that we can snap our fingers and do,” Spies said. “Brown can’t do it alone. And we don’t want to do it alone.”
The University’s vision parallels the ideas of city planners, legisla-tors and community members for future development, although the city’s official vision is not yet fully articulated.
The city’s official Jewelry District Neighborhood Plan will be complete
in about two months, said Thomas Deller, Providence’s director of plan-ning and development.
Once that happens, the task in the coming months will be to integrate the University’s planning with the broader goals of the city.
But some of the city’s long-term goals are already becoming clear. The Rhode Island Public Transit Au-thority — in addition to reexamining existing transportation routes — is planning a new streetcar line, which in the next decade could connect “meds to eds,” running a loop from Brown through the Jewelry District to hospitals downtown.
There have been 15 or so studies in the past ten years examining plan-ning for the district, said Brown, the neighborhood association president. “In the broad sense, they’re all in agreement,” he said. The Jewelry District can and should become a hub of the city’s intellectual economy.
not quite a tea party
But the I-195 properties, contin-ued University planning in the area and local budget crises have brought to the surface underlying conflicts over taxation between the institution and the city.
Perhaps it is not her style to don feathers and start dumping Brown property into the Narragansett Bay in the dark of the night, but Simmons has made it clear that she will not stand for increased city taxes on the University.
The city — which collects no income tax and relies on property taxes to fund its schools — sees University expansion as a threat to its tax base, Deller said. About half of Providence’s land generates no property taxes, in large part because nonprofit institutions like Brown are tax-exempt. Faced with troubled schools and a shrinking budget, the city needs to protect all the revenue streams it can, Deller said.
“The whole property tax thing
MONDAy, NOvEMBER 2, 2009THE BROWN DAILy HERALDPAgE 4
CampuS newS
Kim Perley / Herald (left), Courtesy of Brown (right)The University plans to renovate the building at 222 Richmond St. into a new medical school education center, the centerpiece of bigger plans for the Jewelry District area.
continued from page 1
with Jewelry District expansion, u. aims to liven city
Courtesy of BrownBrown’s plans for expansion into the Jewelry District include the evolution of a retail corridor similar to Thayer Street.
continued on next page
is just a nightmare for the state,” Brown said.
When the city planning depart-ment was first considering its long-term approach to the Jewelry Dis-trict and surrounding areas in the early 1990s, officials expected that future development would come from taxable, for-profit ventures, Deller said.
But over the past 20 years, the economy in Rhode Island has changed. Taxable industry was once considered to be the prime engine of economic growth, but now, life sciences and biotechnol-ogy — often in the form of spon-sored University research — are key drivers.
The tax question has come front and center with the sale of land opened up by Providence’s so-called “Iway” project, which will relocate the junction of I-95 and I-195 and free up 20 parcels of new property where the highways once stood.
Brown expressed interest in the property, but with Mayor David Ci-cilline ’83 now pushing legislation to levy a new tax on non-profit insti-tutions and out-of-state students at private colleges and universities, it has scaled back its ambitions.
“We obviously — regardless of who ends up owning it — have an interest in how (the Iway land) is developed and want to see it devel-oped in a way that is supportive of this knowledge economy,” Spies said.
But the University is no longer making aggressive moves towards Iway land acquisition.
Administrators say it is the city, not the school, that has more to lose.
The problem is there are no developers at this point who are looking to buy up the land and start paying taxes, Wing said. “There’s not a tremendous alternative for the city at the moment.”
But city officials argue that, with no income tax, job growth offers little taxable revenue to the city, especially in comparison to what private development would offer.
“We need to figure out how we can grow and prosper as a city without losing our economic space,” Deller said.
entrepreneurship and potentialThe BrownMed/Downcity Ex-
press shuttle runs a loop connecting College Hill to the Jewelry District research facilities and hospitals down-town. Riding the shuttle is like playing a game of connect the dots; each satel-lite destination stands alone, isolated both from College Hill and from the neighborhood that surrounds it.
If city and University plans come to fruition, however, these facilities will slowly be engulfed by a growing and vibrant intellectual community.
“We must acknowledge that Brown has an effect on the success of the community and that the suc-cess of the community has an effect on Brown,” Spies said.
The school’s ability to attract and retain the best students and faculty is contingent on the perceived “competi-tiveness” of Providence, he added.
Moreover, the University hopes to encourage private companies to invest in the area, offering graduates a greater opportunity to live and work in Providence after graduation.
“We’d like to see a lot of industry go in there that will feed off of the re-search activity going on,” Briant said. “In the ideal world, we would have our researchers spinning out their businesses that would then locate right around where they are.”
In April, Brown, in collaboration with local business and government leaders, opened the Rhode Island Center for Innovation and Entrepre-neurship at One Davol Square. The center offers support for Rhode Is-landers — including Brown faculty and students — looking to start their own businesses.
“It’s exciting and it’s promising,” said Brendan McNally, director of the center. “There’s truly the potential for this to be a real hub for entrepre-neurship.”
The goal is to offer alternatives to researchers who now must look to nearby intellectual centers such as Boston or New York City. The University is following in the foot-steps of cities such as Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and New Haven, Conn. that have allowed non-profit institu-tions to serve as the key drivers of economic growth.
“Brown is not simply sitting on College Hill and doing what it has done for the past 240 years,” Wing said. “It’s really taking advantage of its strengths.”
CampuS newSMONDAy, NOvEMBER 2, 2009 THE BROWN DAILy HERALD PAgE 5
“Brown can’t do it alone. And we don’t want to do it alone.”— Richard Spies, exec. vP for planning, on developing the Jewelry District
private growth, intellectual vitality figure into big plans
continued from previous page
Kim Perley / HeraldThe University also owns this biomedical research building in the Jewelry District, at 70 Ship St., above, which University officials cite as an example of a closed-off architectural approach to avoid in future projects.
dents to the U.S.”Moreover, Ott said, families in Asia
have become more open to and inter-ested in sending their children to the United States for school.
Kening Tan ’12, who went to high school in China, said there has been a “tremendous” rise in the number of students from her high school looking at colleges in the United States.
But Ott said serving this growing interest comes with trade-offs.
Recruitment is difficult when ad-missions officers must travel across an ocean to conduct information ses-sions, and it is a challenge to ensure
that all students have the tools they need to apply.
“You’re not going to be able to hit everybody,” Ott said.
As more students become inter-ested in studying in the United States, a cottage industry of application prepara-tion services has emerged, particularly in China.
Last month, Inside Higher Ed, an online magazine that explores topics in higher education, ran a story discuss-ing the ethical questions admissions officers face in reviewing applications that may have come from students who have received inappropriate assistance — including forged transcripts and test scores.
Ott said Brown works to ensure that all applicants — from the United States and abroad — present correct information to the University in their applications.
But “it’s hard,” she said, noting that “it’s also a phenomenon in the United States.”
Ultimately, Ott said that despite the complications of recruiting and admit-ting students from abroad, international students contribute greatly to Brown’s mission.
“If you are going to have good re-lationships with people, its important that they understand one another,” she said. “And one means of doing that is studying abroad.”
number of asian students has increased at u.continued from page 3
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dents in an independent study on Chinese poetry. “He had a shine on him.”
When she taught Stewart, Levy said he would come to her office before class to talk, and sometimes even to take a bite of her sandwich. “He was exceptional,” she said. “He embodied every possibility of diversity.”
Representatives of the Uni-versity, including administrators and officials in the Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life, have spoken to Stewart’s family members, who are preparing to travel to Beijing from their home in Dallas.
The Chaplain’s Office hosted an informal memorial gathering Sunday night, which swelled with nearly 40 friends and professors, who spoke of Stewart’s humor and style. Stewart’s commitment to justice and his ability to make everyone feel important were common themes echoed by all in attendance.
“I knew how much Arun was an important person here,” Alex Arruda ’11, who was Stewart’s roommate during their first year at Brown, said after the memorial.
“Everything he meant cannot be summed up,” he added.
“I think he would have laughed hysterically” at the descriptions of his character at the memorial, said Sean Feiner ’11, a thought echoed by Flannery Berg ’11, who said Stewart had “swagger,” but was always humble.
“If you were friends with Arun, you were friends for life,” Franny Choi ’11, one of Stewart’s clos-est friends and a Herald editorial cartoonist, wrote in an e-mail. “Arun was a kind, beautiful, un-apologetically genuine person. I am so blessed to have had his wit, his love and his friendship in my life.”
Stewart ’11 remembered as ‘exceptional’ student
continued from page 1
Courtesy of Franny ChoiArun Stewart ’11.
East Asia
Eastern Europe
Southeast Asia
Canada
international students at Brown
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dMONDAy, NOvEMBER 2, 2009THE BROWN DAILy HERALDPAgE 6
CampuS newS “If you were friends with Arun, you were friends for life.”— Franny Choi ’11, on Arun Stewart ’11, who died Friday
Jessie Calihan / HeraldThe number of international students at Brown has risen over the past several years — particularly the number from Southeast and East Asia.
Source: Office of Insitutional Research
By Dan alexanDer
Senior Staff Writer
Men’s hockey Head Coach Bren-dan Whittet ’94 said before this weekend that he didn’t know who would win the starting goalie job this season. His de-cision didn’t get any easier this weekend. Dan Rosen ’10 and Mike Clemente ’12, who each started a game this weekend, allowed just one goal between them.
Clemente got the start in the Bears’ season opener at Princ-eton on Friday afternoon. After 60 minutes of play, he hadn’t al-lowed a puck behind him. It took an overtime goal for Princeton to win, 1-0.
Rosen started against the University of Ontario Institute of Technology on Saturday, and had 10 saves without allowing a single goal in his 30 minutes in net. UOIT didn’t score until
SportsmondayMONDAy, NOvEMBER 2, 2009 | Page 7
The Brown Daily Herald
Late penn goal spells loss for w. soccerBy tony Bakshi
Contributing Writer
Despite a strong performance on an unseasonably warm Senior Day, the women’s soccer team fell 1-0 to the Penn Quakers Saturday.
A surprising breakaway goal in the 80th minute by Penn forward Marin McDermott gave the Quak-ers the only tally of the match, and silenced a Stevenson Field crowd expecting late-game heroics from the Brown squad (5-8-1, 2-4-0 Ivy League).
McDermott’s goal came after she found herself unmarked on the right side of the field. Goalie Steffi Yellin ’10 was forced to come off her line, and McDermott maneu-vered around her and then tapped the ball into the empty net.
Penn (9-4-2, 3-3-0) scored the goal while suffering an offensive onslaught by the Bears, who out-shot the visitors 11-4 in the second half and 16-8 overall. The Bears spent the majority of the second half in possession of the ball near the Penn goal, but could not deliver the needed blow.
Bruno’s best second-half scor-ing opportunity came in the 65th minute, as midfielder Gina Walker ’11 got free between two defend-ers in the Penn box. She dribbled through the opposition, and sent a strike towards the goal. But her shot went just wide, and she was relegated to covering her head in disbelief after the near miss.
Bruno played a solid first half as well. Following a pre-game ceremo-ny honoring the team’s octet of se-niors — Yellin, Brenna Hogue ’10, Bridget Ballard ’10, Melissa Kim ’10, Kellie Slater ’10, Paige Reidy ’10, Meghan Robinson ’10 and Kiki Manners ’10 — the Brown squad got off to a good start in front of the many family members and friends
on hand for the game. Manners, a forward, made her
first appearance and start of the season after having been out with an injury all season. She made an instant contribution on the field, forcing a Brown corner kick in the initial minutes before being substituted for.
The Bears got very close to notching a goal in the 25th minute, with two consecutive opportunities by key senior players. Ballard’s initial header off a corner kick
was blocked off the line by a Penn defender. Seconds later, another header by Robinson sailed just over the crossbar of the Penn goal, and was met by groans from Bruno supporters hoping for a score.
The disappointing loss dropped Brown to seventh in the Ivy League standings. The Bears close out their season next Saturday in New Haven, Conn., where they will face the Yale Bulldogs, who are currently second on the Ivy League table.
Jonathan Bateman / HeraldThe Bears also faced UOIT in an exhibition tune-up Friday.
m. hockey drops opener at princeton
Quakers’ defense keeps Bears away for a 14-7 win
Jesse Morgan / HeraldQuarterback Kyle Newhall-Caballero ’11 failed to find the end zone for the first time this season, as the Bears’ offense was shut down by Penn.
By Dan alexanDer
Senior Staff Writer
Before this Saturday, no one on Penn’s football roster had ever won an overtime game in college. They
d r o p p e d three straight in 2006 and h a d l o s t
three since. An overtime field goal hit the upright against Yale in 2006. The next week that year, a field goal missed versus Brown. An extra point missed against Princeton.
“We had had enough,” Penn linebacker and captain Jake Lewko said. “To hell with the old history of bad breaks — bad snaps, missed kicks, interceptions, all those. It’s over with.”
Penn ended its hard-luck streak against Brown on Saturday, defeat-ing the Bears 14-7 in overtime at Brown Stadium.
The Quakers’ defense stopped Brown on the Bears’ only four downs in overtime, keeping Brown’s of-fense off the scoreboard for the day.
If not for an interception that cor-nerback A.J. Cruz ’13 returned for a touchdown in the third quarter, Brown would have been shut out for the first time since 1996.
The Quakers’ defense — the stingiest defense in the Ivy League by points allowed — blanked the Bears’ offense, which had been the top offense in the Ivy League before Saturday.
Penn’s defensive line and line-backers recorded three sacks and put pressure on Brown quarterback Kyle Newhall-Caballero ’11 all day.
The Quakers’ pass rush “defi-nitely got him thinking,” Lewko said. “We were in there a lot, making him scramble, getting a couple shots on him — especially in pressure
situations.”Newhall-Caballero was 24-of-42
passing for 241 yards but didn’t have a touchdown for the first time all season.
The Bears’ attack was balanced in the first quarter, as they threw seven times and ran six. But running back Zach Tronti ’11 didn’t touch the ball in the second quarter and got only six handoffs in the final two quarters.
Tronti had 63 yards on 11 carries, making him only the second running back to gain over 60 yards against Penn this season.
The Quakers’ offense struck early. On Penn’s second drive of the game, quarterback Kyle Olson led his team 65 yards to the end zone for the only offensive touchdown scored in regulation. After throwing a 28-yard strike on the first play of the drive, Olsen threw short passes out of the I-formation for the remainder of the drive.
Olsen finished the first quarter 8-of-10 passing for 119 yards. But the rest of his day wasn’t as easy.
“It seems like later in the game, they were in more of a cover two,” Olsen said of Brown’s defense. “Those corners were staying down there in the flat areas, and we had to react to that and start throwing more passes in the middle of the field.”
Olsen threw four interceptions in the second half, three of which were passes over the middle. He finished 27-of-47 passing for 313 yards.
Penn Head Coach Al Bagnoli said his team — which usually focuses its attack around the run — turned to the pass because he didn’t want to run at Brown’s defensive line, which includes two All-Ivy players, co-captain Jimmy Develin ’10 and David Howard ’10.
continued on page 8
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MONDAy, NOvEMBER 2, 2009THE BROWN DAILy HERALDPAgE 8
SportSmonday “Not any one guy loses a game, and it takes a team to win.”— Football Head Coach Phil Estes
Develin was all over the field on Saturday, racking up 8.5 tackles, including one sack. And Howard — who had a scout from the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs watching him — made two tackles and forced two hurries.
“I thought our defense played outstanding,” said Head Coach Phil Estes. The tough unit “created those pressures for them to throw those interceptions, and it gave us an opportunity,” he added.
The Bears scored their only points of the game when Cruz took an interception back for a
touchdown on Penn’s first drive after halftime. Olsen tried to hit Penn wide receiver Joe Holder in double coverage, but Cruz wrestled the ball out of Holder’s hands and took it the other way.
Just after the start of the fourth quarter, with Penn just eight yards away from the goal line, Olson threw an interception to Blaine Grinna ’11 in the end zone, keep-ing the game tied, 7-7.
The Bears offense drove 65 yards downfield on the ensuing drive, setting up a 32-yard field-goal attempt for Patrick Rooney ’11. But Rooney, who was 0-of-3 on the day, sent it wide left.
Rooney, who is listed on the ros-ter as a wide receiver and made a dramatic, unlikely go-ahead field goal in the final seconds against Holy Cross three weeks ago, had a chance to be the hero again when he lined up for a 44-yarder with the score tied and just seven seconds left in regulation. Against a strong wind, Rooney didn’t have enough leg to reach the goalpost, sending the game into overtime.
“It wasn’t the last (field-goal at-tempt), but it was the one before that — got to have it,” Estes said. “Now he’s not the hero … Not any one guy loses a game, and it takes a team to win.”
By anDreW Braca
SportS editor
The field hockey team fell to Penn, 4-0, on Saturday in its penultimate game of the season.
The final game atop blustery W a r n e r Roof was a bittersweet experience
for seniors Whitney Knowlton ’10, Madison Miketa ’10 and tri-captains Jackie Connard ’10, Nora Malgieri ’10 and Michaela Seigo ’10.
“We’re all really sad that it’s ending,” Malgieri said. “Having our last home game was really emotional, but we have one more game left.”
The Bears (5-11, 0-6 Ivy) held the Quakers (5-10, 2-3) scoreless for 49 minutes before the flood-gates opened.
“We all worked really hard and
just couldn’t make it happen,” Mal-gieri said.
Brown goalie Caroline Wash-burn ’12 was the star of the first half, stopping all seven shots she faced to keep the Quakers off the scoreboard. Malgieri said the de-fense as a whole had a strong start to the game.
“We were communicating, and everyone was recovering,” she said. Washburn “had a lot of really great saves, and Laura Iacovetti (’12) was playing really well, but I don’t know — I think we stopped talking and got pretty tired by the end. That’s when it kind of fell apart.”
Penn scored four goals in the final 21 minutes to pull away.
“That’s kind of been our prob-lem all year — we allow those goals to happen,” Malgieri said. “It was great that we played so well in the first half, but we need to be able to keep that for 70 minutes.”
Penn outshot Brown by a mar-gin of 28-6. Washburn totaled 14 saves, and Abigail Taft ’12 came off the bench to lead the Bears with two shots.
Brown will travel to New Haven, Conn. on Saturday to close out the season against Yale (11-5, 5-1). The Bears will need to work hard this week to beat the Bulldogs for the third year in a row.
“We’ve been talking a lot about being personally accountable for what we’re doing on the field,” Sei-go said. “This week of practice is going to be really hard, physically and mentally.”
Malgieri said the team will focus on fundamentals such as communication and “stick-to-stick passing.”
“I think we’ll be fine for Sat-urday,” she said. “We’re all really frustrated with the loss, so we’re ready to go into our last game (and play) for a win.”
Field hockey loses season’s penultimate game
Jesse Morgan / HeraldField hockey fell to Penn Saturday after the Quakers scored four goals in the game’s final 21 minutes.
Football falls to 2-2 in Ivy standings with loss
continued from page 7
Anthony Borelli ’13 was in net and the Bears were ahead, 4-0.
“Michael Clemente played unbe-lievable against Princeton,” Whittet said. “And I thought Danny Rosen played very, very well.
“It’s up in the air as we move forward, he said. “I could see a rotation until somebody wins the job.”
Princeton 1, Brown 0 (ot)Princeton couldn’t score in 60
minutes of regulation play Friday, but it took just 1:16 in overtime for Tyler Beachell to beat Clemente and win the game.
The goal came just five seconds after the Tigers got a power-play opportunity because of an interfer-ence penalty against Jesse Fratkin ’11.
Princeton had only one more shot than Brown during the game, and it was the 32nd one that Cle-mente couldn’t turn away. Princ-eton goalie Zane Kalemba, who led the ECAC in save percentage last season, posted a shutout with 31 saves.
Princeton got out to a 10-2 shot advantage in the first period, but the Tigers didn’t dominate play, as the Bears spent much of the opening frame with the puck in the Tigers’ zone.
Although the Tigers couldn’t beat Clemente in the opening pe-riod, they had a number of chances in the center of Brown’s zone. The puck crossed the slot in front of Brown’s goal three times in the first period, but no Tigers were there to finish it.
The closest they came was when Mark Magnowski one-timed the puck in the slot, but Clemente turned it away with under five minutes left in the period.
Clemente got another scare at the start of the middle frame, when Tiger Sam Sabky wound up with a slap-shot from the left point. The puck went past Clemente, off the inside of the post and out of the goal.
Princeton kept Clemente busy at the beginning of the third period, but the Bears withstood the siege and came back to regain a 12-10 shot advantage in the frame.
Neither team could get the go-ahead goal in the final minutes of regulation, sending the game into overtime. It didn’t take Princeton long to score in the extra period, giving the Tigers a win on their season opener.
The season-opening game, played outside of the normal ECAC schedule, does not count in the con-ference standings but will count as an official game in both teams’ overall records.
Brown 6, uoit 1Brown scored 25 seconds into
the exhibition game on Saturday, and the game was never close again. By the end of the game, six
dif ferent players had notched a goal for the Bears.
Brown’s first goal came when tri-captain Devin Timberlake ’10 passed across the crease to Chris Zaires ’13, who one-timed it into the net for his first collegiate goal on the Bears’ opening shift of the night.
“That was a great first shift, but we didn’t play how we wanted to play in that first period,” said tri-captain Aaron Volpatti ’10. “I think we improved as the game went on.”
Brown pulled away to a 2-0 lead by the end of the first period de-spite getting only three shots on goal.
UOIT outshot the Bears, 7-3, in the opening frame, but Brown controlled the puck for most of the period.
Whittet said he thought his team came out slow, but played better in the last two periods.
“Our guys just thought it was going to be easy, they thought it was an exhibition game,” he said. “I don’t think they had the feeling that there needed to be that intensity. And I want it. I want that intensity, and I want that passion, and that drive — every, every shift.”
UOIT got only six shots off in the final two periods, one of which was a one-timer that beat Roselli.
With a 3-0 lead entering the third period, the Bears didn’t let up, and ended the game ahead 6-1.
“It was great because it went 60 minutes,” UOIT Head Coach Marlin Muylaert said.
But the final period was plagued by whistles, as the teams took a combined total of 16 penalties.
“I just felt that the officials were going to be really relentless in mak-ing sure that we were going to be the team always shorthanded,” Muylaert said.
UOIT took 15 penalties in the game for 38 minutes, compared to Brown’s 12 penalties for 40 min-utes. Whittet said he thought the officiating was “great.”
The Bears will return to the ice next weekend, when they will face Union and RPI in on a two-game road trip.
m. hockey drops Ivy opener despite tuneup
continued from page 7
Jonathan Bateman / HeraldThe Bears opened on home ice against UOIT with a 6-1 win.
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arts & CultureThe Brown Daily Herald
MONDAy, NOvEMBER 2, 2009 | PAgE 9
Craftland show finds a downtown homeBy ana alvarez
Staff Writer
Every December since 2002, Provi-dence shoppers in search of artisanal holiday gifts have relied on the annual Craftland show, a craft fair as homey and handmade as the work sold there. This year, the annual event has es-tablished a year-round presence at Craftland’s permanent store at 235 Westminster St.
The brainchild of local artists Margaret Carleton and Johanna Fisher, Craftland was conceived in October 2002 after its creators “just decided there was no good place to get good handmade products,” said Craftland artist and store employee Kristin Crane.
Deb Dormody, one of the origi-nal artists featured in Craftland who now organizes the store, said both Carleton and Fisher “were ruminat-ing about all their talented friends and how traditional venues weren’t the best fit to showcase their work and they decided to do something about it.”
Within the month, Carleton and Fisher had contacted 50 artists and obtained a donated retail space in downtown Providence. Craftland opened that November and remained open for the rest of the holiday sea-son. The craft fair was well received, and with each consecutive holiday season, the number of artists from Providence and around the world grew to 140.
Noting the growth and popular-ity of Craftland, Crane said, “There’s been this handmade revolution. I think people just want to get back to products that are more thoughtful and crafted well.”
As the Craftland spirit flourished and became ingrained into the holiday shopping routine of many Providence residents, demand for Craftland to open year-round began to spread.
When the financial crisis hit in October of 2008, the future prospects of holiday shopping — and with them, Craftland — seemed bleak. Despite such predictions, Crane said, “Craft-land did better than ever.”
Dormody wasn’t surprised by Craftland’s success despite the eco-
nomic setbacks, and noted that the harsh economic times made Provi-dence residents feel more compelled to support local businesses and art-ists.
“They’re sustaining artists in their community, they’re investing in their local economy, they’re buying work that only appreciates in value. Who can’t get behind that?” Dormody said.
It wasn’t until 2008 that the Craftland team, having weathered the economic storm with impressive gains, began to seriously consider expanding the store.
“We started to look at how we had grown exponentially each year, even in this economy, and it seemed right to give it a try,” Dormody said.
As Craftland has transitioned into its new role, the team behind the store has broadened the original concept.
“We still have our big holiday show, but for the year-round shop we have about 70 artists and have di-vided up the space so that we are also a gallery and classroom where we host the Craftland School of Craft,” Dormody said.
The gallery, which is set in the rear of the store, hosts small month-long exhibitions curated by, and featuring the work of, Providence artists.
Along with the gallery, the store is also offering a “School of Craft” with about 10 classes each month on dif-ferent craft techniques. Class topics include tote bag-making, Adobe Pho-toshop production and spray painting stenciled skateboards.
With all of this activity, Craftland has become “a great income genera-tor for a lot of artists,” Crane said.
“We’re all pretty proud of how many artists we’ve supported in the last eight years,” Dormody said, add-ing that this support of artists in the Providence community distinguishes Craftland from other stores.
Craftland has donated five per-cent of proceeds to a different charity every year. This year, the show will benefit Girls Rock! Rhode Island, an organization that offers music camps to empower young women and girls.
‘oak tree’ innovative, hypnoticBy fei cai
Contributing Writer
The drone of the audience quiets as the house lights dim. The stage lights brighten, and the audience sits back to enjoy a seemingly typi-cal two-man show.
The only catch? One of the ac-tors has never seen the script.
Thus begins Tim Crouch’s innovative play, “An Oak Tree,” which appears one night only at Leeds Theatre Tuesday at 8 p.m. The performance will be the first in Crouch’s monthlong U.S. tour.
The show dramatizes the meet-ing of two men — a father and a hypnotist responsible for the death of the former’s child — after a terrible accident.
Crouch, a British actor turned playwright, will play the hypnotist, and a local actor will play the fa-ther. As always, the second actor’s identity will not be revealed until the performance itself.
Crouch has performed the show more than 250 times around the world. Each time, he plays the hypnotist, and a different actor
— male or female — plays the father.
“I use hypnosis as a metaphor for art,” Crouch said. “In effect, I play the artist.”
By collaborating with a differ-ent actor each night, Crouch said, he aims to challenge established theatrical traditions.
“In the last hundred years in performing we got horribly stuck in a certain way of acting — a cer-tain style of preparation of acting,” he said. “I think we are, sadly, completely ignoring the presence of our audience in that prepara-tion, and my work brings the role of the audience into the forefront of the theater experience.”
In “An Oak Tree,” the actor playing opposite Crouch becomes representative of the audience, the playwright said, in that both the actor and the viewers are ex-periencing the performance for the first time.
“The actor is playing a charac-ter who is lost in their grief, who has lost the compass in their life. And that character is being per-formed by an actor who has also lost his compass,” he said.
Though the play does have a script, Crouch said, having dif-ferent actors every time creates a cer tain freedom within the text, “a kind of improvisation in the spirit.”
“We go and see the play not just for the words. We go for all the other stuff,” he said. “And it’s all the other stuff that is being made up in the moment.”
Lisa D’Amour, a visiting lec-turer in playwriting and the person responsible for inviting Crouch to Brown, said she was excited about the playwright’s coming. “He is an amazing writer and an amazing performer,” she said.
In addition to the performance of “An Oak Tree,” Crouch’s visit to Brown this week will include lectures and workshops for play-wrights and actors.
Crouch said he hopes students in the workshops will learn to leave behind the cultural stigmas that society has placed on theater.
“Theater is a cultural form that is available to anyone. And the transformation of theater is avail-able to anyone, not just to special-ist actors,” he said.
editorial & LettersPage 10 | MONDAy, NOvEMBER 2, 2009
The Brown Daily Herald
C H R I S J E S U L E E
we’re all right, Dave
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editorial
David Dooley, the new president of the University of Rhode Island, has grand plans for increasing col-laboration with Brown. He’d like the two universities to share research sites and equipment, work together on projects and grant proposals and allow students to cross-register for classes. We’re all for pooling resources, especially in tough economic times. But some of Dooley’s ideas are unsettling, and we urge the University to think carefully about whether these measures would benefit Brown.
Chief among our concerns is Dooley’s proposal for cross-registration between Brown and URI. The University currently allows cross-registration with the Rhode Island School of Design, and Dooley has hopes for a similar program between Brown and his school. But opening our classroom doors to URI students may do Brown more harm than good.
First, consider the impact of an influx of students on Brown’s course infrastructure. Overcrowding in classes is already a significant problem at Brown. A number of courses are so full that students must sit on the floor or on windowsills. One section of ENGN 0900: “Management of Industrial and Nonprofit Orga-nizations” has 261 students in a room with capacity for 140. What’s more, a shortage of teaching assistants is leading more professors to impose enrollment caps on their courses, making it harder to enroll in popular classes.
Sure, URI students might jump at the chance to take such Brunonian classes as GNSS1960G: “The Globalization of Family-Making” and MCM0800E: “Race and Imagined Futures.” But Brown classes and professors are already feeling a strain. Adding more students to the mix will only make matters worse. And we’re not talking about a trivial number
of students. With nearly 13,000 undergraduates, URI’s undergraduate population is almost double the size of Brown’s.
Dooley told The Herald this week that collabora-tion, including cross-registration, could benefit both institutions. Brown offers programs that are unavail-able to URI students, and URI offers classes that are unavailable on College Hill. In theory, cross-registra-tion would give Brown students access to classes on nursing, pharmacology and marine research. But transportation difficulties will likely rule out these opportunities for most Brown students. Though URI has one campus in Providence, the campuses that offer more eclectic classes — the ones unavailable here at Brown — are far away from College Hill.
We don’t like to be overly pessimistic, but here’s the worst-case scenario: URI students enroll in Brown classes by the dozens, straining the University’s resources. On the other side, relatively few Brown students take the bus to Narragansett to study ocean-ography. Clearly, Brown does not come out ahead.
If the University decides to consider cross-reg-istration with URI, administrators must ensure that Brown can reap the benefits. That may mean placing a cap on the number of students who can cross-register in a given semester or severely limiting the types of classes students can enroll in. It may also mean setting up a shuttle between campuses so that Brown students can take advantage of URI’s rich class offerings.
Collaboration is good. We just need to make sure we get our money’s worth.
Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board. Send comments to [email protected].
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As I began my first year at Brown more than three years ago, I remember receiving this exact question, having made no effort to hide the fact that, at the French Legislative As-sembly, I would have sat on the right. Even to this day, when fellow conservatives and I make recommendations concerning where we see room for reform at our school, we are typically met with scorn — as well as the obligatory remark that we should have matriculated elsewhere.
The gripes range based on a given situa-tion, but the most common tend to revolve around four central claims: we do not accept Brown’s progressive consensus; we reject what is distinctively Brown; we seek only dis-cord and bitter disagreement; and we are so prejudiced and misinformed that we have not advanced to the moral consciousness expected of a Brown student.
Essentially, we are stubborn neanderthals disguised as stupid curmudgeons. Fit for Col-lege Hill we are not.
One need only consult the reaction to the recent Columbus Day rally, jointly sponsored by the Brown College Republicans and the Brown Spectator, in order to see how revil-ing are our presence and our criticisms. In a letter to the editor, Geoffrey Mino ’12 infers that the purpose of the rally must have been “to belittle rather than engage the community” (“Criticism of Fall Weekend stokes racial an-
tagonism,” Oct. 13). Mino then points to the President of the Brown Republicans, Keith DellaGrotta ’10, as the chief Brown antago-nist there.
DellaGrotta’s tireless work to better the campus, from his creation of the annual Dash for Diabetes to his long-standing involvement with Brown Christian Fellowship, should demonstrate that his loyalties are always with Brown. Moreover, he does not take his three-generation Brown pedigree lightly, a pedigree that greatly motivated the emotional content
of his speech. Had Mino possessed a belief in the possibil-
ity of a loyal opposition, he might have realized that DellaGrotta cringed at the thought of losing the Brown once attended by his Italian grandfather from Federal Hill, Guerino Della-Grotta ’36. For while destruction comes rather easily — as the recent Herald articles about Brown’s relationship with the Providence community should reveal — preservation is painstakingly difficult. So, not prone to inac-tion, DellaGrotta took a stand.
But, since he was critical of Brown’s de-cision, and sought a way to transcend the
practice of waving the bloody hide of native op-pression, he must have been deriding Brown. Such is the logic of a person like Mino.
Taking a cue from those who conflate criti-cism with disloyalty, the editorial page board characterized the crowd, among whom was yours truly, as betraying “rabidly anti-Brown sentiment” (“A day off, not a day on,” Oct. 19).
I wonder whether the board would make the same claim about those members of the Brown Corporation who, in 1926, voted to
increase the number of trustees by six mem-bers, and then removed all denominational considerations for those six members, as well as for the President. What of the members who, in 1942, removed all denominational requirements for all Corporation members?
If anything could be called un-Brown, it should be the premeditated and deliberate upending of the very charter that birthed the University. Not to mention how much of a slap in the face of Brown’s founders such a departure from more than 160 years of prec-edent must have been. They abandoned our school’s very identity as a Baptist, Christian
college. Or let us take a more recent example, while
still applying the logic that a critique, even a call for fairly substantial change, necessarily amounts to hatred. Must we conclude that the man largely behind the New Curriculum, Ira Magaziner ’69 P’06 P’07 P’10, was a despiser of Brown? He, after all, sought and succeeded in shepherding a major revision to the Univer-sity’s academic policies. How dare he.
In the end, it appears that far too many Brown students resort to the charge that a critic must be a traitor, especially when that critic is on the right. What could end a discus-sion sooner than the idea that one’s opponent secretly hates Brown and thus only disagrees out of a desire to encourage its failure?
One should expect more critical thinking from the Ivy League. Then again, in the minds of most progressives, discord does not and cannot arise either from conflicting principles or from genuinely differing interpretations, but rather from a lack of knowledge. “You’re just misinformed,” as so many opponents of the rally stated time and time again.
Clearly. It is not as though people actually could disagree in good faith, and then make their disagreements known through recom-mendations. That would be impossible, and uncouth to boot. Who could want to reform Brown? I mean, it is not as though it has ever been reformed before.
An open letter to the group Common Ground, from a former Israeli Soldier:
My name is Avi Schaefer. I am a freshman at Brown. I’m the one who doesn’t quite look like a freshman, who doesn’t quite act like a freshman and who generally shies away from the question, “So what did you do during the three years you weren’t in school?”
You know me as the quiet person who sat in the back of Common Ground meetings. I tried to speak up, but my opinions were not welcomed. No one echoed my call for dialogue — this is why I can no longer come. This is why I felt that I had to write a letter.
As a good friend put it, “Avi, it’s time to tell people the truth! Why are you afraid to tell ev-eryone what you have done?”
I was afraid, because I don’t know how to convince you that I dream of peace, desire it more than anything and have devoted my life thus far to it. How do I convince you of this, after I tell you that I volunteered to fight in the Israeli Defense Forces? If I said that I decided to go not because of hatred, but rather to work for peace, would you believe me? I went to the army so that my children will not have to — a dream I fear
may not come true. I am telling you this, Com-mon Ground: Justice and Equality in Palestine/Israel, so you know my story, to implore you to consider what I have to say.
I came to Brown looking for an environment that embodies the qualities of expression, open-mindedness and understanding. I arrived opti-
mistically searching to meet others devoted to a common goal: forging lasting peace.
Imagine my utter disappointment as I went to a meeting of your group, Common Ground, looking for a forum of honest dialogue, to estab-lish two states for two peoples, to find only the Palestinian side being represented, understood and shared. There was no attempt to recognize hardships on Israelis or assign mutual blame for conflicts.
I know that the group’s intentions are good, but this situation is too nuanced, too complicated and too important to only share the Palestinian
side. As my father always says, “An enemy is someone whose story we have not yet heard.” Only through recognition of the other side will there be peace.
When both sides truly understand that Israe-lis and Palestinians have a right to live, a need for legitimate safety and a desire to envision a
more peaceful future for their children, then there will be peace. Can we move past the nuances to work together? Can we understand each other in order to help both Israelis and Palestinians realize the other side’s story? If we at Brown cannot create a forum to understand each other, how can we ever assume that this will be created in the Middle East?
I am writing to you, Common Ground, to urge you to embody your name. Otherwise you should be honest and change your name, clearly stating that you are a pro-Palestinian group. If you truly want to be a place for common ground, then you
should look to further honest dialogue. While you bring both Palestinians and Israelis
to speak of the situation, you carefully bring only those who support your one side, and tell your one story. Your most recent events brought in Israeli voices who do not represent the general view of Israeli society.
If you are truly concerned about sharing the unheard voice, about achieving lasting peace, about finding the common ground that Jews, Muslims, Christians, Israelis, Palestinians and other citizens of the world all care about, you will be true to your name, and work towards peace. You will not demonize and vilify the Israeli side alone.
Let’s figure out how we can work together to do something productive to honor your name and find our common ground. I am here, ready and anxiously waiting for you to work with me, not against me. Do not give me another reason to lose hope, because my patience is sadly run-ning out. I wait for the day that the words of the Prophet Isaiah will ring true: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
avi Schaefer ‘13 is an international
relations and middle eastern studies concentrator from Santa
