friday, february 8, 2008

By Allison WentzStaff Writer

Racism has taken on “unfamiliar forms” in society today but still persists, social activist Angela Davis told an overflowing crowd in Salomon 101 Thursday.

“I want us to think about that which was not eliminated, those aspects of racism that have been allowed to continue, to develop and have grown even more in-tense than they were a half-cen-tury ago,” said Davis, who was delivering the University’s 12th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture.

Davis’ lecture was well-re-ceived by the audience, which punctuated the speech with ap-plause and murmurs of agreement throughout. Because the lecture hall filled quickly, additional spec-tators viewed the lecture on a si-mulcast in Salomon 001, which was also nearly full.

Davis originally became fa-mous during an international campaign to free her from an 18-month incarceration following her implication in an attempted prison break by the Black Panther Party. Her flight following the in-cident led the FBI to place her on its Most Wanted list, making her only the third woman ever to be placed on the list.

Davis now works as a professor of history of consciousness and feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has written eight books and lectured nationwide. A predominant theme in her work has been the social injustice of criminalization and the American prison system.

To draw a contrast with to-day’s more subtle injustices, Da-vis spoke about her experience growing up in pre-civil rights era Birmingham, Ala., which was, ac-cording to her, “the most segre-gated city of the South.”

“The protocol of racism I learned as a child I no longer have

to observe today,” Davis said, referring to segregation. “But I would be grossly exaggerating the contemporary circumstances of the city if I generalized by saying we have successfully eliminated racism.”

Speaking about the literal signs that pronounced the separation of blacks and whites during that era, Davis said, “Now that the signs are gone you might argue discriminatory practice continues under the sign of equality.”

Davis said that racism is still as overt as it was during segre-gation, but that “perhaps we do

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CAMPUs neWs oPinionsARts & CUltURe

set in WondeRPW’s latest play gives the audience ‘a sense of discovery’

5 11PRessURe’s onWith the RPL application deadline on Feb. 22, some are hoping to stay in the units for another year

ABsolUtelyMatt Prewitt ‘08 on how corruption can affect market economies

3toMoRRoW’s WeAtheRIt’s going to rain pints — of water. Unlike this week’s blood drive, though, prob-ably no batsrain, 41 / 32

No more parking for students on campus

By CARoline sedAnoSenior Staff Writer

Starting next semester, the Univer-sity will no longer provide on-campus parking for students, a University of-ficial announced Thursday at a public presentation on facilities design.“Next fall students will be parking off campus,” Michael McCormick, assistant vice president for planning, design and construction, said during the meeting. Students will have to find their own parking, as the existing spots will be “redistributed” for other University parking needs, he said.

The University has been trying to cut down on the number of student cars in the last few years with free use of Rhode Island Public Transpor-tation Authority and the introduction of rental company Zipcars to Provi-dence, McCormick said.

The number of student cars al-lowed to be parked on campus has dropped from 500 to 250 in the last couple of years due to these changes, he said.

Responding to a question on whether Brown plans to build un-derground parking below its planned facilities, McCormick said the Uni-versity is aware that there is “never-ending demand for parking” and has looked at the cost of underground parking, which he said costs $70,000 per space versus $3,500 per space for

above-ground spots.The University “is trying to make

it not necessary to have cars,” Mc-Cormick said.

Reaction around campus from students informed of McCormick’s announcement was mixed.

“My immediate reaction is there is still going to be a really big de-mand. Students feel like they need their cars,” Mallory Taub ’08 said. “People have jobs or have other le-gitimate reasons for having cars, so I guess demand for parking will go up and get more expensive.”

Other students said that student parking wasn’t a necessity

“There are other forms of trans-portation — I use RIPTA every week-end,” Asia Del Bonis ’11 said. “It’s not up to Brown to provide students with parking spaces.”

“I didn’t know Brown had student parking. I was planning on having a car, but I know it’s already pretty bad. I’m really pleased with RIPTA and safeRIDE so I guess I can live without one,” Andrew Migneault ’11 said.

But for upperclassmen who live off campus or who have already got-ten used to having a car, this change will be a bigger blow. It “makes peo-ple with cars more miserable – it’s already a pretty crappy parking situ-ation,” said Jon Spector ’10.

Taub said she thinks it would be important for students to at least have some kind of parking farther

Courtesy of Brown.edu

Renowned social activist Angela Davis spoke on the need for social justice.

Social activist Angela Davis packs Salomon

By ChAz FiRestonefeatureS editor

When it was finally his turn, Mark MacDonald ’08 strode to the front of the class knowing ex-actly what to do. He wrote his name on the blackboard and explained that his friends call him “Big Mac” because of his 6-foot-9 frame.

But then MacDonald paused, and the Lyman Hall basement started to feel a lot like the Pizzitola Center a few days earlier. There were the eyes of his peers, fixed squarely on him and anticipat-ing his next move, but there was also confusion, dizziness and a sudden loss of memory.

MacDonald stood silently for a few seconds as the other members of TSDA 0220: “Persuasive Com-munication” looked on. The usually articulate center for the basketball team says he didn’t just forget what he was going to say next, he forgot how to say it altogether.

So instead of continuing his introductory speech and talking about himself, he talked about Saturday, the game against Yale and the head-on collision with teammate Chris Skrelja ’09 that sent MacDonald to the floor with a bloody nose and a grade-three concussion.

An academic injury

Adjunct Lecturer in Theatre, Speech and Dance Pamela Howell remembers that moment in Lyman 007 well. As a section leader for “Persuasive Communication,” she assigned students to give two-min-

ute speeches intro-ducing themselves. She says that after MacDonald ex-plained his nickname, he appeared to lose his train of thought.

“He didn’t seem to make the

SPOTLIGHT

continued on page 6

Iraqi translator teaches at U.By soPhiA lAMBeRtsenStaff Writer

“It’s definitely different,” said special non-degree graduate student and Arabic teaching assistant Qussay Al-Attabi GS, who arrived in Providence from his native Iraq last summer to take classes and teach at Brown. “It’s a new culture, new people, new educational system, but I’m trying to cope with that.”

Al-Attabi, who grew up and went to college in Baghdad, served as a part-time interpreter for the U.S. Army in Iraq. His academic expe-rience in the U.S. has been much more demanding than his studies in Iraq, he said, but also much more rewarding.

In addition to taking graduate courses in the Department of Eng-lish, Al-Attabi instructs students in Arabic. He said he makes an effort in class to talk about his life back home and especially his experience as an interpreter for the military, “time allowing, of course.”

“The point of our class is just for us to get experience with conversa-tion,” said Kate Ganim ’08. “But he definitely has talked about his home … about the general state of Iraq, though not a lot about his personal experience.”

One major difference Al-Attabi sees in his home country is that students do not enjoy the same de-

gree of academic freedom.Al-Attabi said that all his life,

there have been significant restric-tions on freedom of speech in Iraq. Academics in particular faced these limits, he added. “It used to be that you could talk about anything ex-cept Saddam,” he said. “Now with the rise of religious fanaticism in Iraq, you can talk about everything except for certain religions.”

“Students in Iraq do not have the same opportunities as in America,” he added. “They can only dream of having the same facilities.”

Min Wu/ HeraldQussay Al-Attabi GS served as a transla-tor for the U.S. Army in his native Iraq.

continued on page 4continued on page 4

continued on page 4

Creative Arts Center will have outdoor amphitheater

Athlete freezes in class; Ohio State ‘man beast’

Courtesy of Patrick LynchSteve DeLucia / Herald graphic

How concussions affect academics

ToDay

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ACROSS1 Went down5 Spot on Mercury

or Saturn?10 Quite a bit14 Window

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compound17 Animated feature

about HumptyDumpty?

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20 Regret21 Omen in a

highbrowWestern?

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peninsula: Abbr.25 Longtime CORE

chairman Roy26 Syndication

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by a year30 “... hot wine with

not __ of allayingTiber in’t”: Shak.

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message48 Little help50 Memorable

wardrobemalfunction,e.g.?

54 Pandemoniacplace

55 Five-O detective,to McGarrett

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curves63 Queen’s

subjects

DOWN1 Kind of whale2 Queens landing

place3 For the most

part4 Last-qtr. month5 He dies in

Darnay’s placein “A Tale of TwoCities”

6 PianistRubinstein

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28 Miss Megley’scharge, in aSalinger story

29 MD and others30 Do something

31 __ Reader32 Parental limits?33 Really focused,

as an athlete34 Goes hog-wild35 Callaway of golf

equipment fame37 __ Lingus40 It’s often used for

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44 Early PCsoftware

45 Bridget Riley’s“Movement inSquares,” e.g.

46 Thick47 Crack49 Arial and Century51 Suffix with suffer52 Boys53 Works at the

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stacks: Abbr.

By Dan Naddor(c)2008 Tribune Media Services, Inc. 2/8/08

2/8/08

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Friday, February 8, 2008

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword PuzzleEdited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

[email protected]

C r o S S W o r d

S u d o k u

M e n u

Fill in the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 through 9.

© Puzzles by Pappocom

shARPe ReFeCtoRy

lUnCh — Swiss Corn Bake, Oven Browned Potatoes, String Beans la Belle, Chicken Fingers, Raspberry Chocolate Streusel Squares

dinneR — Seafood Pot Pie, Zucchini and Summer Squash, Anadama Bread, Strawberry Jello, Chocolate Cake

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PAGe 2 THe BROWN DAILY HeRALD FRIDAY, FeBRUARY 8, 2008

But seriously | Charlie Custer and Stephen Barlow

dunkel | Joe Larios

enigma twist | Dustin Foley

gus vs. them | Zachary McCune and evan Penn

Free Variation | Jeremy Kuhn

Classic deep-Fried Kittens | Cara FitzGibbon

Look up! It’s Chicken Finger Friday!

arTs & CulTureFRIDAY, FeBRUARY 8, 2008 THe BROWN DAILY HeRALD PAGe 3

Amid warnings, PW play goes for the gutBy Ben hyMAnStaff Writer

In the weeks leading up to tonight’s opening of Production Workshop’s new play, “The Music of Erich Zann in the Penal Colony,” warnings out-side the performance space, reading “Caution,” “Heavy Machinery” and “Keep Out,” have kept the show a fiercely guarded secret. The only indication of what the play’s audience is in for comes from a sign tracking the number of “Days Without Vomit” the production has enjoyed since Jan. 31. By Wednesday night, the count had reached six.

“The rehearsals were so intense that on two separate days, two sepa-rate members of the cast vomited during the climax of the play,” said David Harrington ’08.5, director of “Music,” which runs through Mon-day at the PW.

Just before the start of Wednesday night’s dress rehearsal, Harrington turned to the sign and replaced the six with a seven.

Adapted by Harrington and Ta-mara Del Rosso ’08 from texts by H.P. Lovecraft and Franz Kafka, “Music” filters theater, performance art, film and music through a horror movie

sensibility, producing a kind of pan-oramic experience for its audience.

“It’s a total assault on as many senses as possible,” Harrington said. “Keep your eyes open. Keep your ears open.”

As viewers arrive, they are herded into a room the production team calls the “Holding Cell,” where they wait, bathed in red light. Once the entire audience has arrived, they are ush-ered through an unexpected passage into the performance space, which has been transformed almost beyond recognition, by a monumental, kinetic and uncommonly impressive set.

To reveal any more than that would diminish the sense of discov-ery that audience members will feel as they navigate Harrington’s world. Suffice it to say that, in the course of its 45 minutes, “Music” touches on pretty much everything that has ever been included on a warning sign in a theater lobby. Though a few of its ‘horror movie’ moments fall flat, most succeed in unexpected ways.

The play’s eight resilient actors give strongly committed perfor-mances. Jack Sullivan ’09, playing the Officer, invigorates his mostly

Pangaea features MFA playwrightsBy RoBin steeleartS & Culture editor

In the intimate, dark box of the McCormack Family Theater, a man and woman sit awkwardly in their underwear on a worn bed-spread, working themselves up to consummating their ambiguous relationship. So opens the new play “Inked Baby,” by Christina Anderson GS, which premiered Feb. 6 and kicked off the New Plays Festival 26.1.

The festival showcases the work of three first-year graduate playwrights — Anderson, Meg Miroshnik GS and Dipika Guha GS — in a trio of original plays collectively titled “The Pangaea Plays,” running Feb. 6 to 10.

Presented by the Literary Arts Program and Brown/Trinity Rep-ertory Consortium, the produc-tions represent a collaboration be-tween the playwrights and masters of fine arts actors and directors from the consortium. In addition, undergraduates and professional actors from the local community are participating.

Guha’s “Grand MotherLand” began its run last night and will have a second show Sunday. The play centers around the character “Nana” — Paola Grande GS. Nana “tries desperately to keep her grip on her home in a world that is in-creasingly not her own” as she is “harassed by her child-maids (and) doted on and swindled by

her grandsons on their annual vis-it,” according to production notes on play festival’s Web site.

Similarly, Miroshnik’s “Bad Money” also features a female character coping with the world around her. Described in produc-tion notes as “a story about an emerging market and the cost of hard currency,” “Money” focuses on protagonist Agnetta, played by Sarah Malkin GS, who has “a nose for currency fluctuations.” The show will premiere tonigh and run again Saturday.

“Inked,” which has a second show Saturday, focuses on the couple Gloria and Greer, played by Lynnette Freeman GS and Jude Sandy ’05 GS, respectively, living in a polluted urban environment and yearning for a baby.

Gloria’s sister Lena, played by Angela Thomas GS, decides to help the couple out by becom-ing a surrogate mother, since the couple can’t afford artificial insemination. This results in the sexual encounter in the first scene. Needless to say, this solution only increases tensions between high-strung Gloria and the more easy-going Greer, as Lena’s pregnancy progresses.

The set — a homey bed and loveseat in front of a wooden-frame backdrop stuffed with gar-bage bags — provides a confined space for these tensions to play out. Anderson has an ear for con-temporary language, particularly

the conversational flow of dialogue between intimate friends. The ac-tors’ deliveries ring true, allowing the audience to take pleasure in the natural humor and delicious awkwardness of the characters’ interactions.

While the unusual personal circumstances of the characters are the strength of the play, and likely enough to carry it, Ander-son introduces a strange medical mystery subplot midway through that is rather off-putting. This plot line gradually comes to the fore, providing for an unexpected, somewhat ambiguous conclu-sion. As the play progresses, the stage gradually becomes strewn with garbage — dirt, slips of pa-per, popcorn — which ultimately plays into a central theme of con-tamination.

The festival, whose previous in-carnations have featured the early work of such notable playwrights as Sarah Ruhl ’97 MFA’01 and Nilo Cruz MFA’94, has been strongly influenced by the presence of Pulit-zer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel, the professor of literary arts and director of the playwriting pro-gram. She recently announced that she will leave the University after this semester for an appointment at the Yale School of Drama.

The second installment of the New Plays Festival is scheduled for mid-April and will feature work by second-year graduate playwrights.

continued on page 6

M O S T I N D U S T R I O U S

Robin Steele / Herald

Local artist Lee Bontecou’s 1962

untitled work, which blends welded steel,

canvas and wire, is on display in List

Art Center as part of “Women’s Work:

Selections from the Collection,”

featuring pieces from the David

Winton Bell Gallery collection.

THe BROWN DAILY HeRALD FRIDAY, FeBRUARY 8, 2008

away and provide shuttles to and from the campus.

“I know a lot of upperclassmen who have cars,” she said. “If you don’t have a car you know someone who has one.”

“I was hoping to have a car at some point so now I’m not sure,” Karthikeyan Harith ’11 said. “It would be expensive and cumber-some to find parking. I want a car because trains are expensive if I want to go to Boston or New York. This seems really sad.”

“It is a problem that they are avoiding the parking issue,” said Peter Mackie ’59, Brown’s sport archivist.

“Students are not going to be happy about off-campus parking, and I’m especially worried about killing off fan base during sporting events,” he added. “People are not going to want to walk three blocks in the cold snow. It’s a very bad situation, and they are just trying to put it on the back burner.”

Building the campusAlso during the presentation on

plans for construction, four archi-tects showed updated plans for new University facilities that they said are designed to draw the campus together.

In a separate announcement, the

University revealed that it has cho-sen Schwartz/Silver Architects for the upcoming renovations to Faunce House. The $15-million Stephen Rob-ert ’62 P’91 Campus Center, slated to be completed in 2010, will provide new student gathering spaces, meet-ing rooms for student groups and another campus eatery.

The Creative Arts Center, a $45-million facility to be located along the Walk between Olive and Angell streets, will house a theater, gallery, shop space, studios and a black box theater. The indoor theater will con-tinue onto an outdoor amphitheater, with a glass wall that can be used to increase seating for indoor events or purely outdoor movie viewings.

Architect Charles Renfro, of the New York-based firm Diller, Scofidio and Renfro, said he hopes that lower walls — made entirely of glass — fac-ing the Walk will create more open space for the pathway connecting Pembroke College and the Main Campus. Additionally, the side facing the street will have video screens and glass poster cases for showcasing art, Renfro said.

The multi-disciplinary facility will also have a “green” roof with plant life on it. Though limited funds pre-clude creating a roof that would be accessible to students, it will be a “beautiful addition to the campus,” McCormick said.

Many at the meeting were happy

to hear about the green roof on the Creative Arts Center, especially 25 students taking ENVS0410: “Environ-mental Stewardship and Sustainable Design” this semester, who attended the last half-hour of the presenta-tion.

“Last year students from this class worked on that very concept, and now they are doing it,” Envi-ronmental Stewardship Initiatives Manager Kurt Teichert said.

The $69-million Mind Brain Behavior Building will house labs, classes, offices and social space as the new home for the cognitive and linguistic sciences and psychology departments, as well as the Brain Science Program. There will also be one classroom that opens out into a small garden for a “more intimate

place for classes,” said Tom Chung, of Leers Weinzapfel Associates.

The revamping of the Erickson Athletic Complex will consist of a new swim facility, the Nelson Fitness Center, a new entrance to Meehan Auditorium and the replacement of the parking lot with open green space.

“Providence is a spectacular place — unfortunately our site is not a spectacular space,” said Gary Brewer, associate partner at Rob-ert A.M. Stern Architects, the firm responsible for the changes to the athletic complex. The plans will be an “extension of what we consider to be the best of Brown,” he added.

The changes to the athletic facili-ties will mean a loss of the existing public squash courts in the Smith

Swim Center, which the University does not plan to replace.

The removal of the Urban En-vironmental Laboratory to create space for the Mind Brain Behavior Building was also addressed. Mc-Cormick said the University does “not have any plans yet as to what will happen to the building.”

“If they are going to tear down existing buildings they really need to commit to making something ex-traordinary, and I’m just not sure about it,” Stephan Wollenburg ’09, who takes ENVS0140, said of the new buildings. He was especially worried about how the Mind Brain Behavior Building will affect the UEL.

“We are of course worried and interested as to what will happen to that building,” he said.

U. unveils designs for campus construction

Tai Ho Shin / Herald File PhotoThese parking spaces may soon be a sight for sore eyes for undergrads, who will soon lose access to on-campus parking.

continued from page 1

not recognize it as being so overt because we have learned how to ignore it. We have learned to be colorblind.”

She went on to talk about how being “colorblind” means that “on a college campus, we do not no-tice the dearth of black and Latino students.” Americans also do not notice that prisons are “exactly the inverse” of college campuses, with a predominately black or Hispanic

population, Davis said.Davis’ lecture also addressed

recent race-related remarks in the media, including Golf Channel an-nouncer Kelly Tilghman’s use of the word “lynch” on air in a quip about Tiger Woods. She said what concerned her most was not neces-sarily the comments themselves but “the extent to which we treat all these incidents as separate.”

Of the civil rights movement, Davis said, “Ordinary people be-came collectively aware of them-

selves as potential agents of social change, as holding within their col-lective hands — not their individual hands — the power to create a new world.”

She stressed the importance of the collective body over the in-dividual, tying her lecture to the 2008 presidential election.

“Regardless of who is elected, we can’t assume that he or she will effectively represent our dreams in the future,” she said.

Davis concluded her lecture by answering questions from the audi-ence for about 30 minutes.

“Each generation has to find its own way,” she told an audience member who asked her how to fight racism today.

The difference today, she said, is that people are “isolated indi-viduals” rather than a community of people fighting together for change, as during the civil rights movement.

“Helping others is charity, vol-unteerism, now,” Davis said.

Davis also elaborated on her re-search about the American prison system and its injustice during the audience question period, saying that there is a “contradiction” in-herent in rehabilitating criminals from behind bars.

“How can you teach someone to be free if you determine every move they make?” she asked.

Davis said that prison reforms are always about “a better prison,” but should instead be about the eradication of incarceration alto-gether. She stressed the impor-tance of bettering the education system, saying that most criminals would not be in prison if they had access to quality education in their childhoods.

Davis: ‘Colorblind’ society must refocuscontinued from page 1

Growing up in Iraq during an age of United Nations-enforced sanctions, Al-Attabi remembers when Iraq was prohibited from importing pencils because their graphite was categorized as “dual-use,” meaning it could be used for weapons production. “I don’t know how many thousands of pencils you would need to make a bomb,” he said.

At that time, Iraq was also not permitted to import or copy books, Al-Attabi said. When he studied at the University in Baghdad, the libraries housed only books predating the 1990 sanctions and completely lacked periodicals and journals.

“There was… a cultural cut from the world,” Al-Attabi said.

However, Al-Attabi considers himself lucky for the education he received in Iraq, which he said was more available to him because of his father’s career as a university professor and his mother’s posi-tion as a teacher.

When he was translating for the Army, he was “treated really well, with respect,” by the Ameri-cans he worked with, Al-Attabi said. Traveling with the military helped him see his own culture from a new perspective, he added, and it made the lack of commu-nication between Americans and Iraqis particularly obvious.

“I had to work like a bridge between those two different cul-tures,” he said.

As an interpreter, Al-Attabi said he needed to be sensitive to idiom-atic differences and colloquialisms between Arabic and English. Hav-ing grown up in Baghdad, Al-Attabi was familiar with the specific Iraqi dialect and the contemporary ex-perience of living in Iraq, which

he said was not the case for every interpreter.

In 2003, the U.S. Army had few-er than 30 interpreters for all their forces in Iraq, Al-Attabi said, and most did not speak Iraqi Arabic. Many who were from Iraq had left in the 1960s and 1970s, and were unfamiliar with the experience of living in the country today.

Because of this lack of suf-ficient quantity and quality of translators, Al-Attabi and many other Iraqis were recruited by the military. Recruitment of Iraqi aca-demics “was fortunate because so many people had the opportunity to work, and… got the chance to cooperate and tell the U.S. about the culture,” Al-Attabi said.

Ganim said Al-Attabi’s class-room style is “very engaging,” and that students are encouraged to participate in conversation in a positive manner.

“He makes it a very comfort-able classroom environment, where there’s not a ton of pres-sure,” Ganim added. “He does a good job without making it a stressful atmosphere.”

Al-Attabi said he feels com-pletely accepted at Brown and has not encountered any discrimina-tion based on his culture or back-ground. Despite the comfortable environment students notice in his classes, Al-Attabi finds his work here at Brown to be extremely demanding, though he said he never stops being grateful for the opportunities here.

Al-Attabi said he is not opti-mistic that any level of academic freedom will emerge in his home-land. “We might have books in the libraries again, but we will not have people willing and living in the academic environment to read them,” he said. “Not within ten years.”

Iraqi grad student recalls Army translator days

www.browndailyherald.com


Campus newsFRIDAY, FeBRUARY 8, 2008 THe BROWN DAILY HeRALD PAGe 5

As deadline looms, students ponder life with freshmenBy eMMy lissSenior Staff Writer

While many students are just start-ing to think about whom to live with next year, some have already decided to live with freshmen. As the Feb. 22 deadline to apply to the Residential Peer Leader program approaches, current freshmen are sizing up the opportunity and cur-rent counselors are contemplat-ing spending another year in the units.

Undergraduates can apply for a variety of positions in the RPL program. They can be Residen-tial Counselors or Women’s Peer Counselors living in a freshman unit, or they can become Commu-nity Assistants and be assigned to an upperclassman housing area. Students who have already partici-pated in the RPL program can gain more responsibility and become RPL Representatives — experi-enced RPLs who oversee a group of counselors.

Sabrina Boyd ’11 said she has known since arriving at Brown that she wanted to be a Residential Counselor. She said her plans were reinforced by “getting to know my own RCs and WPC,” who made the adjustment to campus life easier.

Other students said they too were motivated to join the program by their positive first-year experi-ences.

“I got a lot of guidance from my

RCs, and if I could help freshmen next year, that would be good,” Ste-ven Holman ’11 said.

“It’s hard to say there is one ideal set of characteristics” when it comes to selecting RPLs, said Natalie Basil, associate director in the Office of Residential Life. The program strives to be “a representa-tion of the larger community as a whole,” she added.

But she said RPLs need to be engaged in the community, under-standing of others, good listeners and must have strong leadership qualities. ResLife looks for candi-dates who show opportunities for growth, not just past experience.

The primary requirement is that RPLs have “a sense of caring for the students,” she added. “They are the eyes and ears of the community.”

Current RC Ben Lowell ’10 speaks with pride about running into “his” freshmen around cam-pus.

“You see your positive presence have an effect,” he said. ”You see how you’re helping freshmen get connected and feel comfortable at Brown.”

The RPL application is now avail-able on ResLife’s Web site. Students are required to complete short-answer questions and provide two recommendation letters. One must be from a Brown-affiliated individ-ual — a current RPL is strongly

There will be blood: Sayles drive a success

By nAndini JAyAKRishnASenior Staff Writer

Apparently, it takes more than a small flying mammal to deter Brown students from being civic-minded. Despite being interrupted by a bat flying around Sayles Hall on Wednesday, a three-day blood drive organized by the Rhode Island Blood Center collected 292 pints of blood this week.

“You can’t have a blood drive with a bat flying around,” said Peter Hanney, manager of donor recruit-ment at the center, who had thought blood collection Wednesday would have to be canceled.

But Facilities Management stepped in to remove the bat, de-laying the drive for only an hour. Despite the commotion, the cen-ter collected 89 pints by the end of the day — just one pint short of its goal.

The drive, which took place Monday through Wednesday, was sponsored by Health Services, the Health Promotion Committee, Al-pha Epsilon Pi fraternity and Kappa Alpha Theta sorority.

Though 292 Brunonians do-nated blood, about 50 people who wanted to donate blood had to be turned away for various reasons. Some were turned away because in the past year they had visited a foreign country with a higher inci-dence of diseases such as malaria.

On Thursday, the center also col-lected nine pints of blood during a smaller drive run out of a bus behind Facilities Management’s office on Lloyd Avenue.

Hanney said the drive was suc-cessful because student groups did an “excellent job” promoting it, especially through Facebook, which he called “a great way of communicating.”

The groups put up fliers, table-slipped, made a Facebook group and set up an information table at the Sharpe Refectory to publicize the drive, said Brooke Hair ’10, community service chair for Kappa Alpha Theta.

Blood drives at Brown always have been successful, said Sheila Sweeny, a supervisor at the drive.

“I think, all in all, every drive does well. When you combine all of the days, you get a good response,” said Sweeny, who has come to Brown for blood drives countless times during her 25 years at the blood center.

Hanney said Brown held one of the first blood drives organized by the center when it opened in 1979 and has contributed nearly 33,000 pints of blood since then.

The donated blood can be split into red blood cells, plasma and platelets, saving up to three lives, Hanney said. The blood collected from this week’s drive could save up to 903 lives, he added.

The drive allowed some to give

Herald File Photo

The three-day blood drive in Sayles on Monday through Wednesday drew 292 pints of blood and nearly hit is goal despite an intruding bat.

Xbox 360, Ratty knife and loveseat cushions disappearBy MAx MAnKinSenior Staff Writer

The following summary includes all major incidents reported to the De-partment of Public Safety between Jan. 24 and Jan. 30. It does not in-clude general service and alarm calls. The Providence Police Department also responds to incidents occurring of f campus. DPS does not divulge information on open cases that are currently under investigation by the department, PPD or the Office of Stu-dent Life. DPS maintains a daily log of all shift activity and general service calls, which can be viewed during business hours at its headquarters, located at 75 Charlesfield St.

thursday, Jan. 24:3:47 p.m. Student reported that

his Xbox 360, two controllers and a game were taken from his friend’s room in Morriss Hall. The system was last seen on Dec. 20 and was noticed missing on Jan. 20. There were no signs of forced entry and the door appeared to be in working condition. There are no suspects at this time.

Monday, Jan. 28:1:22 p.m. A custodian reported

that he noticed the cushions were missing from a couch, a loveseat and a chair from the first floor lounge area of Perkins Hall. The cushions were there when he left work on Jan. 25. There are no suspects at this time.

tuesday, Jan. 29:11:32 a.m. Officers were dis-

patched for a report of a suspi-cious person in Rockefeller Library. The male was last seen on the “A” level of the library. An employee reported that there was a male in the building that was making the staff uncomfortable. She reported that there had been a student at the front desk when the male came in. The male signed himself in as a guest and said that he was affili-ated with the University. Another employee reported that the male approached him and asked if he remembered him from the period when he worked for a moving com-pany. The male’s story about work-ing as a temporary employee for the University did not make sense and the male was sweating. Officers stood by the main entrance and the south side of the building. The other officers on the scene searched the building. The suspicious male was not located.

12:10 p.m. While on patrol, an of-ficer noticed graffiti in yellow spray paint on the southwest glass window pane of Rockefeller Library. Facili-ties Management was notified.

8:12 p.m. Brown Dining Servic-

es employee stated his eight-inch chef’s knife was taken from the Sharpe Refectory. He reported he left the knife under the vegetable sink located in the southeast cor-ner of the kitchen at approximately 7:30 p.m. When he returned at ap-proximately 7:50 p.m., the knife was missing. There are no suspects at this time.

Student helps fight the flu in Penn labBy Alex RoehRKAsseSenior Staff Writer

Emerging subtypes of influenza A virus have many worried about the possibility of an imminent flu epi-demic, with the disease’s resistance to existing preventive and treatment methods only compounding those fears.

But one Brown student is help-ing opened a new window of oppor-tunity for designing drugs that can better target the influenza virus.

Anna Levine ’08 has worked with a team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, which announced last week the discovery of the essential structure of the viral protein M2, the molecular receptor of preven-tive drugs.

Levine “played a pivotal role” throughout the project, said proj-ect leader Bill DeGrado, professor of biophysics and biochemistry at Penn’s med school.

Previous influenza drugs had targeted parts of the same viral pro-tein. But those have now mutated, essentially blocking the drugs and rendering them ineffective, Levine said. The goal of the project she par-ticipated in — “many, many years” in the making — was to identify a potential target in an essential part of the protein’s structure that could not adapt to drugs and develop a resistance, she said.

“Now we know where the sweet spot is,” DeGrado said, referring to a molecular channel in the viral pro-tein that new drugs might target.

Levine got involved in the proj-ect after doing research at DeGra-do’s lab during the summer after her freshman year. She said she started out learning the basics of

lab work and experimenting with proteins, and eventually came to spend a majority of her summer and winter breaks working on the project.

DeGrado said Levine joined his team at a crucial juncture. At the time, influenza drugs were grow-ing so ineffective that some were pulled off the market, generating a widespread sense of urgency for re-searchers to pin down the structure of the viral protein. Levine helped to jump-start a push in that direction, DeGrado said.

The process used to determine the viral protein’s structure — x-ray crystallography — is like “looking at a rainbow to learn about prisms,” Levine said. By bombarding crys-tallized forms of the protein with intense radiation, her team deduced the molecule’s structure.

Such methods can be tedious, Levine said, noting that the process often boils down to trial and error.

“Because the end had so much potential, it drove us not to give up,” Levine said. “The gravity of the work and its implications were really exciting.”

DeGrado echoed Levine’s excite-ment for the implications of the proj-ect’s results, especially considering the project’s painstaking nature.

“It’s been sort of a long slog,” he said.

The work Levine did in the Penn lab will also serve as her senior the-sis in chemistry. Though she hasn’t written a word yet, the fact that the research is complete has her com-fortably confident that she will pull it all together, she said.

Now, DeGrado and his team will work to design synthetic com-pounds that can effectively neutral-ize the viral protein, Levine said.

But the satisfaction of having a final product — a dynamic treatment for influenza A — will have to wait.

“It’s a really long road from this kind of thing to having a drug on the market,” Levine said.

As for her future plans, Levine said she would like to explore the intersection between medical re-search and international health. Though the research she has con-tributed to is important, she said, it only matters if the results get to the people who need them most. Levine hopes to be a part of this process when she goes to work for the consulting firm McKinsey and Company after graduation.

“I’ve met a lot of incredible people who care about these is-sues and have incredible access to the resources for dealing with them,” Levine said of her future colleagues.

Because she has invested so much time in the research project at Penn, Levine said that for her, the project’s results are accompanied by a bittersweet sense of finality.

“I’m incredibly privileged to have worked on this team,” she said. “This is like the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

continued on page 6 continued on page 6

continued on page 6

Courtesy of Bill DeGrado

Structure of a viral binding site

CRIME LOG

Despite bat, blood center collects 292 pints


blood for the first time. “Every time I see (a blood drive)

I feel guilty for not doing it,” said Geralyn Hoffman, curator of pro-grams and education at the Haffen-reffer Museum of Anthropology.

Hoffman, who “gets ill” when she sees blood, said she heard about a boy who donated his bone marrow to save his dying father. Compared to donating marrow, “this is so easy,” she said, tearing up.

More experienced donors said they were glad to be able to give back to the community.

Betsy Jacobson ’11, a New York native who has donated blood to the Red Cross before, said she encour-ages everyone to “try it out.”

“It doesn’t hurt at all,” she said.Those who are afraid of giving

blood might change their mind if they watch a friend giving blood, said Baird Langenbrunner ’09, who gave blood for the fifth time on Wednesday.

Bat doesn’t stop blood drivecontinued from page 5

encouraged. Following a round of interviews by ResLife staff and current RPLs, applicants will be informed of decisions by March 14.

Students can request specific dorms on campus, but Basil said ResLife concentrates on build-ing what they believe would be “strong teams.”

“We want communities get-ting exposure to all dif ferent types of people,” she said.

Counselors are generally happy with their placement.

“You build a community of friends within the RPL group,” said Rebecca Fein ’10, a current RC.

Fein has been so happy with her experience that she plans to reapply, which “shows the suc-cess of the program,” she said.

Basil said more and more RPLs are returning each year, which is integral to program. Her ideal staff would be com-

posed of half new and half re-turning counselors, as it would “add to the depth of leadership skills,” she said.

Having counselors of differ-ent ages and experiences makes the program more valuable and useful to students in the residen-tial halls, Basil said.

“Our RPLs are students as well — they can relate what they’re going through,” she added.

Because RPLs are close in age to the students in their units, they often become friends with those they oversee in addition to being helpful resources. Boyd said she considers her WPC to be one of her closer friends.

Fein said that in the midst of her busy schedule, she probably would never have bonded with students in the Class of 2011 had she never been RC, one of the perks of the job.

“You become part of a com-munity you wouldn’t otherwise be a part of.”

Students ponder applying to various RPL programs


Wednesday, Jan. 30:2:41 p.m. The reporting party

stated that he left room 444 of the GeoChem Building at 1:15 p.m. When he returned at 1:40 p.m. he noticed that his laptop was miss-ing from his desk. The cable lock that secured the laptop was broken and left on top of his desk. There was no sign of forced entry or any other damage found. The lab door was unlocked during the time of the theft. There are no suspects at this time.

4:56 p.m. A student stated that on Dec. 27 at 10 p.m. she placed her black computer camera in the top drawer of her desk in her room in Andrews Hall. When she returned from winter break on Jan. 27 at 4 p.m., she noticed the camera was missing. She stated she secured her room prior to leaving for win-ter break. There are no suspects at this time.


Xbox, knife, cushions are missing

transition into what he was going to talk about next,” Howell says. “He kind of just stared off into space for a few seconds.”

Though he regained his compo-sure, MacDonald says his inability to concentrate hampered him aca-demically for the week after the Jan. 26 injury.

“I was feeling tired, my thoughts were scrambled and I would get nauseous when I focused on the teacher,” MacDonald says. “I just wasn’t myself.”

Friend and classmate Kim Bundick ’10 says she noticed some-thing different about MacDonald when they sat together in a sociol-ogy class.

“You could tell that he wasn’t OK,” says Bundick. “He wasn’t really tak-ing notes. He was just kind of staring at the professor.”

MacDonald was fortunate enough to have his professors send him lec-ture notes and excuse his absences that week. But as Rob Cotter ’06 learned his senior year, a strong sup-port system isn’t always enough.

It was April 2006 when Cotter, a defenseman for the lacrosse team, was running up toward the center of the field. A teammate then launched a pass a few feet behind him.

“I had to turn my head and body to make the play,” Cotter says. “Be-fore I could even look forward I just got trucked by some man-beast from Ohio State.”

Cotter says he blacked out for a second but got back to his feet before returning to the sidelines. He even-tually left the game. Though he was relatively symptom-free after a few days, he was pulled out of a game against the University of Notre Dame when his trainers realized he wasn’t playing like himself. The physical exertion caused Cotter’s condition to regress sharply.

Though on the sidelines for over a month, Cotter was expected to at-tend class like any normal student. But he quickly learned that his in-jury was not confined to the field, experiencing sensitivity to light and what he says felt like “a constant headache.”

“I slept a lot and did not go to

most of my classes,” Cotter says. “It affected me, physically and psycho-logically. I was handicapped.”

A complicated injuryClinical Assistant Professor of

Medicine Razib Khaund has seen his share of athletes with concus-sions like MacDonald’s and Cotter’s, both as a sports medicine specialist at Providence-area clinic University Orthopedics and as on-site physi-cian at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. But even he is quick to admit that little is known about the physiology of concussions.

“Advanced as we are in medicine, we are still quite limited in our over-all management of concussions,” Khaund says. “Only just recently has a consensus definition been reached of what a concussion even is.”

But what doctors are well acquaint-ed with, Khaund says, is the danger associated with them: symptoms of concussions range from irregular sleep and poor appetite to visual prob-lems and cognitive dysfunction. Yet despite the severity of the condition, Khaund says people are often too careless in their identification and treatment of concussions.

“A concussion is literally a brain bruise,” he says. “When you think about how we manage other bruises, we’re very cavalier.”

But Khaund says the biggest danger of a concussion is not the concussion itself, but the increased vulnerability to further damage — what Khaund calls “second-impact syndrome.”

“After one concussion, the follow-up needed to cause a recurrent con-cussion is less,” Khaund says. “The first insult primes your head, and a relatively innocuous impact the sec-ond time around causes a cascade of serious effects.”

MacDonald suffered one serious concussion before his most recent, and Cotter got a second concussion a year after the Ohio State game.

Russ Fiore, Brown’s head athletic trainer, says he and his training team are as careful as possible to guard against recurrent concussions. From the moment athletes are hit to the moment they step back onto the court or field, trainers watch them carefully.

“We start the assessment right

on the sidelines,” Fiore says. “If we suspect anything, we take you out of the game.”

If an athlete takes a hard hit dur-ing a game, athletic trainers use a test called the Standardized Assessment of Concussion to quickly examine the player on site. Athletes are asked elementary questions about the cur-rent date and perform more compli-cated tasks such as remembering lists of words or reciting a string of digits backwards. They also do basic exercises like push-ups and sit-ups, as symptoms often reveal themselves during physical exertion.

Fiore says athletes suspected of more serious injuries are monitored physically and mentally over the fol-lowing hours and days. They undergo further diagnostic tests at Health Ser-vices or even a hospital emergency room, where MacDonald spent seven hours the Monday after his injury. In the most serious cases, athletes must be free of symptoms for two weeks before returning to their sport.

But Khaund says even rigorous monitoring may not be enough to identify a concussion, because of the natures of both the injury and the injured.

“How many of those kids that want to impress the varsity coaches come out and take a hit, but don’t want to tell the doctor or coach for fear of looking weak?” Khaund says. “Then they get hit again and get second-impact syndrome.”

Cotter attributes the worsening of his condition to this sort of feeling. After the hit that caused his concus-sion, he ignored his minor symptoms and told the trainers he was ready to play.

“I wasn’t being perfectly honest with the trainer. I told her I felt 100 percent when I didn’t,” Cotter says. “I was also trying to convince myself that I did not have a concussion.” He adds that he might have missed only one week had he rested, “but instead I was out for six.”

Fiore says false reports are always on the back of his mind, so he and the other trainers give stern speeches to every athletic team before the season begins.

“Don’t lie to me,” he says. “If you have a concussion, this is your brain, not your ankle.”

MacDonald says at first he experi-

enced a similar desire to play through the condition, but soon realized he couldn’t ignore his injury.

“It’s the biggest game of the sea-son so far, and I’m a senior, a captain,” he says. “But then I saw it was a little bit more dire than I first realized.”

Fiore says he has one last line of defense against false reports. Two years ago, the athletic depart-ment began requiring all athletes to complete a cognitive function test called ImPACT — Immediate Post-concussive Assessment and Cogni-tive Testing — at the beginning of the year. In order for athletes with potential concussions to return to their sport, they must score as well as they did at the beginning of the year on ImPACT, which tests cogni-tive abilities from reaction time to higher-order reasoning.

“An athlete can lie to you,” Fiore says, “but the one thing they can’t lie on is the ImPACT test. That’s why I like that test.”

Fiore also stresses the importance of knowing each athlete and his or her particular behaviors personally so he can tell if something is amiss.

“Each of our athletic trainers (has) a close relationship with our athletes,” Fiore says. “If I ask, ‘How are you doing?’ and I get a blank stare from someone who normally doesn’t give me a blank stare, then I suspect something.”

A social injuryMuch as they would like to, Fiore

and Khaund cannot treat concussions — the most common prescription is a

healthy dose of rest. In time, Khaund says, patients recover on their own. But the meantime can be stressful for collegiate athletes in ways that have no relation to school or sport.

Cotter recalls his injury changing all aspects of his lifestyle — athletic, academic and social.

“I didn’t watch TV without my sunglasses on for a month,” he says. “You wouldn’t believe how it affects your social life.”

Cotter says one of the harshest symptoms of his concussion was a social awkwardness that accompa-nied him wherever he went.

“It’s something that not too many people around you understand,” he says. “You don’t walk around with a sign up saying, ‘I’m concussed.’”

Back in Lyman Hall, Howell says that an injury — especially one as private as a concussion — could in-tensify the already-demanding pres-sures of Brown’s academic and social environment.

“I think they affect academics not only in terms of material retained, but there is a very real concern that any injury makes you feel very self-con-scious, especially within the academic milieu of Brown. You worry you’re going to appear dumber than every-one else,” she says. “Many injuries are visual — someone’s got a cast, someone’s got an ice pack — and we have a certain amount of sympathy. But when you have an injury like a concussion, and it isn’t necessarily explained to everyone, I think that itself becomes an embarrassment and a frustration.”

Concussions hinder academic, social lives

expository role with a creepy, ner-vous menace. Colette Garrigues ’11, as the reclusive musician Erich Zann, uses a kabuki-like control over her body to unsettling effect.

Though “Music” certainly re-wards a familiarity with Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony” and Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zann,” most au-

dience members will feel a certain kinship with the Explorer, played by Tara Schuster ’08, who is repeatedly confronted with a text in a language she cannot read.

“Music,” too, speaks its own peculiar language: Whereas many plays aim for the head or the heart, “Music” sets its sights squarely on the gut and, more often than not, it hits the mark.

Lovecraft-, Kafka-inspired play induces vomiting



Immediate Memory

I am going to test your memory. I will read you a list of words and when I am done, repeat back as many words as you can remember, in any order.

Trial 2 & 3: I am going to repeat that list again. Repeat back as many words as you can remember in any order, even if you said the word before.

Complete all 3 trials regardless of score on trial 1 & 2. 1 pt. for

each correct response. Total score equals sum across all 3 trials.

List Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3

Baby 0 1 0 1 0 1

Monkey 0 1 0 1 0 1

Perfume 0 1 0 1 0 1

Sunset 0 1 0 1 0 1

Iron 0 1 0 1 0 1

Total

IMMEDIATE MEMORY TOTAL SCORE !

Standardized Assessment of ConcussionBrown trainers give the Standardized Assessment of Concussion to quickly examine athletes after a hard hit. Above, a question from the test asks athletes to remember simple words.

worlD & naTionFRIDAY, FeBRUARY 8, 2008 THe BROWN DAILY HeRALD PAGe 7

Consumer spending slowed in January, report shows

By Bill tURqUe And KAtheRine shAVeRWaShington PoSt

WASHINGTON — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, making her first appearance in Virginia Thursday before Tuesday’s regional primary, matched herself up not with op-ponent Sen. Barack Obama, but Sen. John McCain, who is on the verge of the Republican presidential nomination.

Speaking to about 2,000 stu-dents and supporters in the gym at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington County, Clinton men-tioned her Democratic opponent from Illinois only once. She said that it appeared as if McCain, who benefited from the withdrawal Thursday of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, had sewn up the race.

As Virginia Democrats choose between Clinton and Obama on Tuesday, their decision could hinge in part on who they see as the candidate most able to beat front-runner McCain in Novem-ber. Clinton appeared to have this in mind Thursday as she took on McCain.

Although Clinton called her Sen-ate colleague from Arizona “a friend of mine,” she said McCain offered little in the way of change.

“I believe he offers more of the same,” Clinton said.

She cited McCain’s prediction that U.S. troops could be in Iraq for as long as 100 years and said that

if elected, she would commission a plan for withdrawing U.S. forces within 60 days.

“Senator McCain has said, well, he doesn’t know much about the economy and has the same policies that haven’t worked for the last 10 years,” Clinton said.

Her sole mention of Obama came over health care, renewing her contention that unlike his blueprint, her plan would guaran-tee health coverage for all Ameri-cans.

She was greeted warmly by the crowd. Many people had waited for up to three hours in the bleachers for the New York Democrat, who was running behind schedule. Her national campaign headquarters also are in Arlington.

Washington-Lee students got no time off from class for Clinton’s visit — it was only a half-day because of teacher training — but they were still enthused. The former first lady also drew a heavy contingent of women 45 and older, a segment of voters that has helped buoy her bid for her party’s nomination.

Clinton will also campaign in Washington state and Maine before returning for the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner Saturday in Richmond. Obama also is scheduled to attend the Richmond dinner and will cam-paign in Virginia on Sunday and Monday, when he also plans an appearance at the University of Maryland.

Clinton and her supporters

“clearly see Virginia as a must win for their campaign. We think it is going to be a very competitive,” said Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.

The Obama campaign sent several surrogates into the area Thursday, including Ted Sorensen, President John F. Kennedy’s long-time confidant and speechwriter, who told an audience at the Lei-sure World retirement community in Silver Spring, Md., that Obama shares Kennedy’s sound judgment, peaceful bent and challenge of over-coming discrimination.

In Arlington, Clinton ticked through her policy prescriptives, including relief for struggling ho-meowners and students seeking low-cost loans. She promised a renewed effort to pursue alterna-tive sources of energy, noting that Germany “had placed a big bet” on solar energy.

Staff writer Tim Craig contrib-uted to this report from Richmond.

Romney bows out, McCain looks aheadBy dAn BAlzWaShington PoSt

Sen. John McCain ef fectively sealed the Republican presidential nomination Thursday when former governor Mitt Romney abruptly ended his campaign. The Arizona senator immediately turned his at-tention to repairing relations with disgruntled GOP conservatives and opening the general election campaign with a sharp critique of his Democratic rivals.

McCain signaled a hard-fought fall campaign against either Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama based on conser-vative principles and built around his national security credentials and reputation as an opponent of wasteful government spending.

He presented his support for President Bush’s troop surge strat-egy in Iraq as a badge of honor and charged that both of his opponents would recklessly adopt a timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces from the conflict without regard for the “profound human calamity” and heightened danger to U.S. security that he said would ensue.

“Often elections in this country are fought within the margins of small differences,” he said. “This one will not be. We are argu-ing about hugely consequential things. Whomever the Democrats nominate, they would govern this country in a way that will, in my opinion, take this country back-ward ...”

McCain was especially harsh in his criticism of Clinton and Obama on national security issues, assert-ing that neither fully recognizes the threat of an Iran with nuclear

ambitions and that both will con-cede to critics of America that this country’s own actions in its own defense have helped stir Islamic radicalism.

Arguing that Clinton’s and Obama’s resolve to combat those threats “will be as flawed as their judgment” about what brought about the threats, he said, “I in-tend to defeat that threat by stay-ing on offense and by marshal-ing every relevant agency of our government, and our allies, in the urgent necessity of defending the values, virtues and security of free people against those who despise all that is good about us.”

With McCain as the Republi-can nominee and either Clinton or Obama the likely Democratic nominee, this will mark the first campaign since 1960 a senator suc-cessfully makes it to the White House. Since then, four senators have won their party’s nominations but lost the general election.

McCain will also run on a bi-ography that has shown character and courage and a willingness to buck convention, and he initially matches up well against both Clin-ton and Obama, according to the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll. He holds an statistically insignificant lead over Clinton and trails Obama by a similarly insig-nificant margin. The poll suggests McCain will have solid support from within his party while also appealing to critically important independent voters.

But he will be running in a year in which energy and enthu-siasm lie with the Democrats. His steadfast support for Bush’s Iraq policies put him at odds with a ma-

jority of the country, and his own party has been demoralized since Democrats took over Congress in the 2006 elections. Beyond that is the question of whether a nominee who would be 72 when elected can effectively run as a change-oriented candidate in a year when many voters are clearly seeking a new direction.

Romney’s departure from the Republican race, triggered by a disappointing showing on Super Tuesday, wrote a storybook con-clusion to a nomination battle that saw McCain go from putative front-runner to struggling long shot to party standard bearer over the course of the past year.

But the reception McCain received at Thursday’s annual Conser vative Political Action Conference, where he was booed loudly when introduced, pointed to the fractured coalition that he must now reunite before what is expected to be a challenging fall campaign against either Clinton or Obama.

“I am acutely aware that I can-not succeed in that endeavor (of uniting the party), nor can our party prevail over the challenge we will face from either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama, without the support of dedicated conserva-tives, whose convictions, creativity and energy have been indispens-able to the success our party has had over the last quarter century,” he said.

Romney announced his deci-sion at the end of his appearance at CPAC and hours before McCain appeared. His speech sounded

Clinton focuses on matchup vs. McCain

By leslie eARnestloS angeleS tiMeS

Consumer spending slowed to a crawl in January, with retail sales at major chains rising just 0.5 per-cent in what was by one measure the month’s worst performance in nearly 40 years, according to reports released Thursday.Evidence of consumer caution came from both ends of the mar-ketplace.

Discounter Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said shoppers held on tight to the gift cards they received over the holidays or used them to buy milk and bread rather than toys or iPods. High-end Saks Inc. said customers shifted more of their spending to “promotional events” — in other words, making purchases when items were specially priced.

Wal-Mart’s sales were higher this January than last, though just barely, while Saks saw a 4.1 percent increase. Sales at Macy’s Inc. stores fell so much more than expected — by 7.1 percent — that the company slashed its quarterly profit forecast, and also said that as part of a restructuring plan it would eliminate 2,300 jobs. Costco Wholesale Corp., on the other hand, recorded a 7 percent hike.

There were widely divergent numbers for individual chains but disappointment for the industry as a whole.

The International Council of Shopping Centers, which tallied 43 chains, said sales at stores open for at least one year were the worst since it started keeping track in 1969.

“Whether we have a recession or not, things have slowed,” said Michael Niemira, chief economist for the council.

Although January sales repre-sent a small slice of the industry’s annual revenue, the results were disappointing on the heels of a downbeat holiday season. Look-ing ahead, the National Retail Fed-eration wasn’t upbeat, saying the shopping slump would impact U.S. ports where products destined for shopping malls are unloaded.

“We’re going to see little in-crease in cargo on the docks,” said Jonathan Gold, federation’s vice president for supply chain and customs policy. “Container traffic at the ports is a leading economic indicator because it reflects retail-ers’ expectations for sales.”

Industry analysts had thought gift card redemptions would lift January sales. It turned out that many Americans weren’t window shopping because they were too worried about the economy and whether they would keep their jobs, said Jharonne Martis, Thomson Financial’s senior research analyst. And if you’re not shopping, you can’t redeem your gift card.

“They’re not even going out to peek,” said Martis, who called the January numbers “incredibly weak.” “Consumers don’t have any confidence in the current economic situation. We’re not going to see discretionary spending increase until that gets better.”

In January, furniture sellers and specialty stores took a beat-

continued on page 8

Mortgage industry under pressure for progress reportsBy JonAthAn PeteRsonloS angeleS tiMeS

WASHINGTON — Facing pres-sure from Congress and consumer advocates, lenders are pledging to provide stronger evidence of their progress in reworking costly home loans to prevent borrowers from going into foreclosure.

Under a plan endorsed by the White House, lenders have agreed to freeze interest rates on certain troubled mortgages and to guide qualified borrowers into more af-fordable loans.

The plan is intended to avert mas-sive foreclosures as loans adjust to higher payments. But since the ef-fort was first announced by Presi-dent Bush in December, there has been scant evidence to determine its effectiveness, critics say.

New statistics released Thursday by an alliance of banks and mort-gage lenders provided ammunition for both sides in the dispute. The

HOPE NOW Alliance said lenders’ efforts to stave off foreclosure in-creased late last year, and more than two-thirds of delinquent subprime borrowers received assistance dur-ing that period.

Loan companies helped 545,000 borrowers with delinquent subprime loans during the second half of 2007, compared with 386,000 in the first half of 2007.

But much remains unanswered. The majority of actions were repay-ment plans, which typically give bor-rowers more time to catch up on delinquent payments. Consumer advocates say these may simply put off the day of reckoning for troubled borrowers, who will still face pay-ments they cannot afford.

HOPE NOW described other ac-tions only as “modifications” without explanation.

The information gap has raised doubts about the White House-

continued on page 8

continued on page 8


ing. Department stores as a group slumped, notching a 5.7 percent sales drop. For chains that sell luxury goods, the slip was 2.2 per-cent. Nordstrom Inc.’s 6.6 percent drop was particularly harsh con-sidering the 0.7 percent dip that analysts had expected.

Gap Inc., in San Francisco, beat estimates by dipping 2 percent, rather than the 6.5 percent drop that was expected.

In January, the main draw for

shoppers was low prices, Martis said. “There were very steep dis-counts — and definitely it is going to hurt profit margins.”

Niemira agreed and said more profit warnings were likely.

“Going forward, we certainly are starting off in a much more risky retail and economic environ-ment,” he said. “In that context, it would be prudent for companies to basically lower their guidance.” The experts said they didn’t an-ticipate a major flip in February numbers. And Martis said stores

now had even more motivation to cut prices. They need to make room for goodies tied to Easter, a holiday that this year falls earlier than usual.

“Now they have even more pressure to get rid of all that in-ventory,” she said.

On Wall Street, retail stocks were generally higher. An index of 31 retailers in the Standard & Poor’s 500 jumped 3.7 percent de-spite the weak sales as investors focused on companies that beat expectations.

like a conservative call to arms by a candidate still engaged in a battle for the nomination, but he explained his decision not to keep going as one influenced by the fact that the country is at war.

“I disagree with Senator Mc-Cain on a number of issues, as you know,” he said. “But I agree with him on doing whatever it takes to be successful in Iraq, on finding and executing Osama bin Laden, and on eliminating al-Qaida and terror. If I fight on in my cam-paign, all the way to the conven-tion, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.”

Aides said Romney made the decision after he was presented Wednesday with an analysis of what it would take for him to se-cure the nomination against Mc-Cain. Once it was apparent that there was virtually no way to win and that the long-teram cost to the party of a drawn-out nomination contest could be significant, the former business executive and management consultant made the decision to withdraw.

Romney praised McCain in the speech but did not offer an

endorsement. According to one adviser, he has no plans to offer a formal endorsement to preserve a role for his supporters in shaping the party platform at the national convention this summer.

Two candidates remain to op-pose McCain — former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas — but neither has a plausible chance to win the nomi-nation.

McCain continued the process of consolidating the party Thurs-day. Former Sen. George Allen of Virginia, who had backed former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee in the GOP race, appeared at the CPAC conference to announce his support for McCain.

“We are at war and the pre-eminent role of the president is commander in chief and in my judgment the best person to be president of the United States ... is John McCain,” Allen said. Other GOP senators who have clashed with McCain in the past, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn of Texas, got behind his bid as well.

But former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay underscored the resistance among conserva-tives when he said Thursday he was unsure whether he would vote for McCain in a race against Clinton.

“I’m going to be pushing the

conservative cause, and let’s see what John McCain does reaching out to conservatives,” he said on MSNBC’s “Hardball.” “If he contin-ues down to be the same old John McCain that used to have disdain for the conservatives, than I’m not sure who’s the most dangerous to be in the White House.”

Before McCain arrived at the hotel ballroom in Washington for his speech Thursday, other speak-ers admonished the audience to give him a polite reception as the new leader of the Republican Party. But twice when he was introduced, many in the audience booed him at length. Others cheered and waved McCain placards in an effort to drown them out.

McCain freely acknowledged his differences with many of the party’s conservatives but stoutly defended his 22-year record in the Senate as one that has been true to mainstream conservative principles.

“I believe today, as I believed 25 years ago, in small government, fiscal discipline, low taxes, a strong defense, judges who enforce, and not make, our laws, the social val-ues that are the true source of our strength, and, generally, the steadfast defense of our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of hap-piness, which I have defended my entire career as God-given to the born and unborn.”

Romney ends bid as McCain’s star rises

backed initiative and sparked legis-lative proposals that would require lenders -- who usually keep such details confidential -- to tell regula-tors more about their efforts to help strapped borrowers.

“They (lenders) say they’re do-ing all these things, they’re trying all these modifications,” said John Taylor, chief executive of the Na-tional Community Reinvestment Co-alition. “But you don’t really know what they’re doing.”

“Part of the problem is secrecy from top to bottom of how things work,” he said. “It’s not in the con-sumers’ interest at all.”

With the economic fallout of foreclosures spreading, the admin-istration faces pressure to document more clearly what is going on. Loan companies are under pressure to help about 1.2 million borrowers who are facing higher rates but who are current in their payments and aren’t absentee owners (a test de-signed to rule out speculators).

“This is not time to take baby steps,” said Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., at a recent Senate hearing in which he was one of several lawmak-ers calling on lenders to demonstrate progress in modifying loans.

Treasury Department officials maintain that lenders and billing companies are working more ef-fectively with borrowers to modify loans, such as freezing interest rates or refinancing.

The HOPE NOW coalition, which includes firms such as Wells Fargo & Co., SunTrust Banks Inc., Coun-trywide Financial Corp., JP Morgan Chase & Co., Litton Loan Servicing and many others, plans monthly re-ports that supporters predict will show progress in combating fore-closures.

“I believe what we’re going to see is that a good number of people are going to be helped because they

are going to be fast-tracked into a quick modification or refinancing,” Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. told a Senate Committee this week.

More detailed data could be re-leased as early as next month, said William A. Longbrake, senior policy adviser of the Financial Services Roundtable, an industry trade group, who also advises HOPE NOW.

Companies have not balked at providing information, Longbrake said. Rather, “The data systems were never set up to collect and retain the kind of information that everyone now wants,” he said.

HOPE NOW releases only ag-gregate data.

When contacted by the Los Ange-les Times for information this week, Wells Fargo, GMAC Residential Capital, Option One Mortgage Co. and Bank of America (which does not make subprime loans) all de-clined to provide individual statistics on their efforts to modify troubled mortgages.

An exception was Calabasas, Calif.-based Countrywide Finan-cial, the nation’s largest mortgage lender. Countrywide, which is be-ing acquired by Bank of America, reported that in December it com-pleted 13,273 loan workout plans — a 243 percent increase from 12 months earlier.

Just over 10,000 of the workouts were called loan modifications, the majority of which involved inter-est-rate freezes or reductions, said Jumana Bauwens, a Countrywide spokeswoman. She did not provide further details of the 10,006 modifi-cation plans.

The general lack of data is stir-ring demandas for new disclosure requirements. A bill by Sen. Chris-topher J. Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate banking committee, would require lenders to inform the Federal Reserve Board of their anti-foreclosure efforts.



Congress and consumer advocates push lenders


Consumer spending drops off in Jan.

Iran said to be in early tests of an advanced centrifugeBy MAggie FARleyloS angeleS tiMeS

UNITED NATIONS — Iran is test-ing an advanced centrifuge designed to more swiftly produce enriched uranium in defiance of Security Council resolutions ordering it to stop, diplomats confirmed Thurs-day.

The centrifuges are still in the early testing stages, and are not being used to enrich nuclear ma-terial, said diplomats familiar with information from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“It is significant that they were able to make this more advanced, more reliable centrifuge in just about two years,” said David Al-bright, a nuclear expert and former U.N. inspector. “It is also a trou-bling development that they could develop it in secret and be close to enriching uranium with it.”

He said it did not change the estimate of his organization, the Institute for Science and Interna-tional Security, that the earliest Iran could have a nuclear weapon is by the end of 2009.

U.S. intelligence agencies in December issued an assessment saying they had concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. The intelligence agencies said Iran ended covert efforts to

produce highly enriched uranium suitable for use in a bomb, but made it clear that it could resume its ef-forts at any time.

Enriched uranium can be used in the process to generate electricity or to produce material for a bomb, depending on the degree of enrich-ment.

Iran insists that it has the right to develop nuclear technology for civilian use, and has rejected the U.N. Security Council’s calls to halt enrichment and the IAEA’s re-quests to allow closer inspections. The IAEA says that Iran must re-build confidence after keeping its nuclear program secret for nearly 20 years, and buying black market technology.

The centrifuge seems to be based on a P2 design obtained illicitly in 1995 from the network of rogue Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. Iran notified the IAEA in 2006 it was working on the faster design, known as a modified P2, or as Iran calls it, the IR-2 but refused to let inspectors see it.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei got the first look at the centrifuge in January when he visited a workshop in Tehran.

The diplomats asked that their names not be used because they were not authorized to comment about the matter.

Writers strike could be reaching its finaleBy Meg JAMes, MAteA goldAnd MARiA elenA FeRnAndezloS angeleS tiMeS

HOLLYWOOD — Hollywood could be back on its feet as early as Monday.

The major studios and the Writ-ers Guild of America are putting the finishing touches on a deal that could bring an end to the costly walkout. Friday, the two sides are expected to finalize a three-year contract that guild leaders plan to present to thousands of writers in Los Angeles and New York on Saturday. The guild board could approve the contract Sunday and encourage writers to return to work the next day, according to people close to the negotiations.

Studio executives and TV pro-ducers have been preparing for that day for the last two weeks, hoping to salvage the remainder of the television season by quickly rev-ving up production to bring back some popular TV shows that have been languishing in repeats or were taken off the air.

“Everyone is motivated to get back to work as quickly as possible,” said Jonathan Littman, president of Jerry Bruckheimer Television, which produces “CSI: Crime Scene

Investigation” and “Amazing Race,” among other shows, for CBS. “They want to begin producing as many original episodes as they can.”

Movies that were derailed by the strike also could lurch back, including high-profile projects such as Columbia Pictures’ “Da Vinci Code” prequel “Angels & Demons” and Warner Bros.’ “Shantaram,” starring Johnny Depp.

Films are blessed with long lead times, and last summer studio ex-ecutives accelerated development and production schedules in antici-pation of a strike. As a result, the movie industry was not as hard hit by the Nov. 5 work stoppage as broadcast TV.

Production shut down in Decem-ber and January, after the supply of TV scripts had been depleted. That compromised the season, which officially ends May 21.

It will take four to six weeks and tens of millions of dollars to ramp up TV production in dozens of cavernous soundstages in Los Angeles, Burbank and New York, and not every prime-time series will immediately return to the air.

“It’s not just flipping a switch and having everything come right back on,” said Barry Jossen, execu-tive vice president of production for

ABC Studios. “There are a lot of fac-tors and considerations that go into these decisions. We are trying to determine the amount of material that was finished before the strike started, the creative status of the show and the broadcast schedule needs.”

Only about 10 to 20 prime-time network programs are likely to re-turn this spring with fresh episodes, including some of TV’s biggest hits, such as “Grey’s Anatomy” on ABC and “CSI: Crime Scene Investiga-tion” on CBS. Some viewers might not see new episodes of their favor-ites until fall -- at the earliest. Shows with complex plots, large casts and complicated production elements, such as NBC’s “Heroes” and Fox’s “24,” are expected to roll over to next season.

Studio executives say they can’t justify the increased costs of ramp-ing up production for every pro-gram halted by the strike. It would cost the studios millions of dollars extra — an average $200,000 more an episode, according to one esti-mate — to produce an abbreviated run for each series. Crews must be rehired, sets need to be rebuilt, and the costs of production would be spread over a smaller number of episodes.

FRIDAY, FeBRUARY 8, 2008 THe BROWN DAILY HeRALD PAGe 9

into his role on the team. “I just work on my all-around

game,” he said. “If Damon (Huff-man ’08) or Mark (McAndrew ’08) go out (of the game) I can help score. If Chris Skrelja (’09) goes out, I make some passes and get some rebounds.”

McAndrew acknowledged the role Williams has played so far.

“He has been instrumental in every Ivy League game,” McAn-drew said. “He is getting more comfortable every game and has really taken on the role of giving us energy off the bench.”

Part of that comes from Wil-liams’ superior athleticism.

“He is gifted from an athletic standpoint, which is different from our starting five. He can change the game with his athleticism,” McAndrew said.

But the role of spark plug does not necessarily show up in the box score. Williams is averaging only 4.9 points, 1.6 rebounds and 0.8 assists per game.

Head Coach Craig Robinson pointed out that Williams provides a lot of intangibles to the team that may not be obvious from statis-tics.

“It’s hard for a young player to fill up the stat sheet,” Robinson

said. “He is guarding the other team’s best man. He is very good at getting the ball up the court for us. Those things don’t show up on the stat sheet.”

On top of those intangibles, Wil-liams’ statistics have risen dramati-cally in the Ivy League season. In those games, Williams scoring and rebound averages per game have been 9.5 and 2.5, respectively. This improvement reflects the work that Williams has put in since his first day on College Hill.

Williams had to adjust his game to fit into the right place on a team that has aspirations for an Ivy League title and an NCAA Tournament bid.

“In high school I was more of a scorer,” he said. “We already have great scorers (here) though.”

To get playing time, especially as a freshman, Williams had to do something to stand out, namely play defense and rebound.

“I was never really a great de-fensive player,” he said. “Coach Robinson insisted that I play de-fense. I had to change my mindset on the court. I had to be tougher and do the little things.”

Doug Williams never had any doubt that his son would find his place because of his relaxed at-titude.

“He’s shown he’s willing to ad-

just,” he said. “Rhode Island is very different from where he’s been. He’s always been easygoing, even kind of shy.”

Doug Williams would also like to see his son be a little more aggressive and unselfish on the court. For now, though, Williams has the benefit of distributing the ball to the likes of McAndrew and Huffman, who are second and fourth in the Ivy League in scoring, respectively. But in the future, ev-

eryone sees potential for Williams to become a scorer again.

“He has a chance to be a great player given his natural ability and his work ethic,” McAndrew said.

Robinson echoed McAndrew’s words, saying, “I think he is even-tually going to evolve into a scorer for us, but at the college level you have to do everything.”

Maybe that’s what energy is. A little bit of everything put to-gether.

Williams ’11 provides spark for m. basketballThe men’s basketball team will take on Dartmouth at 7 p.m. tonight at the Pizzitola Center. Tomorrow night, they will play at home against Harvard at 7 p.m.

The games are the last two of a five-game homestand on which Brown is 2-1 so far. Bruno will be on the road for four straight games after this weekend and hopes to improve its Ivy League record against two of the weaker teams in the con-ference.

“This is the first weekend in most — if not all — of the guys’ history that they are expected to win both games,” Head Coach Craig Robinson said. “That’s what happens going from a culture of losing to a culture of winning. It’s a lot of pressure. You have to learn how to play when you’re expected to win.”

Brown may still be without center Mark MacDonald ’08, who suffered a concussion two weeks ago against Yale. He was scheduled to practice Thursday for the first time since his injury. The Bears will also have to deal with Ivy League-lead-ing scorer Alex Barnett of Dartmouth, who is averaging 16.9 points per game this season.

— Jason Harris

about doing things the same way before a game and during a game to keep me consistent. I need to do the same things to be ready mentally and physically, and superstitions make me feel more ready and more com-fortable with what I’m doing when I’m in the game.

What are your hockey aspirations after Brown?

Well, last year was my final year of eligibility for the (National Hockey League) Draft, and I didn’t get draft-ed. It’s pretty rare for a goalie to be drafted in his last year of eligibility. So coming out I’ll be a free agent. Obviously, I want to play hockey as long as I possibly can and at the high-est level I can, so the NHL is really the ultimate goal. But right now I’m just trying to enjoy college hockey. The great thing about college is you are on the ice so much and you’re playing so much that there are a lot of chances for scouts to watch you. It’s a great opportunity to get seen and maybe get the chance to play at the next level.

your team has had its struggles this year, but it seems to be turn-ing around coming off your two wins last season. What are the team’s goals moving forward?

Obviously, the majority of the season hasn’t gone the way any of us wanted it to or how we planned for it to go. But last week, beating two of our big Ivy League rivals was huge for us. It really reminded us that we are capable of beating anybody. Now we need to take the momentum from those wins into the rest of the season. We expect to be ready for every game from here on in. We know any team can beat us or we can beat them on any given night, it just depends who plays better on any given night, and we want to be the better team the majority of the nights.

Rosen ’10 steps out of the net for a quick chat



dence booster to win 9-0, especially after all of the close matches we’ve had in the last week.”

Of the upcoming match against Yale, Cerullo added, “ I’m looking forward to it. They’re a really good team so it should be a tough com-petition. I always prefer to play up and we’ll be prepared for a really tough match.”

The men are looking forward to a close match as well.

“As a team, we have to have everyone firing on all cylinders for Yale so that that will carry through for (the) MIT/Northeast-ern (matches) and the Nationals at Harvard in mid-February,” Head Coach Stuart LeGassick said.

The Bears will meet Yale tomor-row at the Pizzitola Center with the men playing at 12 p.m. and women at 2 p.m.


After wins, squash faces Yale on Sat.

“We established this foundation not only because we recognize that our local community needs our help,” said a statement on the foundation’s Web site, “but also to help bring knowledge, comfort and help to breast cancer patients and their families.”

Starting at the women’s ice hockey game this evening is an ef-fort to support “Pink at the Rink,” a collaboration between the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference and the American Cancer Society. This effort is a newly created variation of the traditional “Coaches against Cancer” event and it will include all ECAC women’s hockey teams, the ECAC’s Web site said.

In its games against Quinnipiac and Princeton this weekend, the women’s hockey team will wear specially designed pink game jer-seys that will later be auctioned off online. The minimum bid for a jersey starts at $150.

On Saturday afternoon against Princeton, the women’s ice hockey team will also hold a fundraising event called “Meehan Mayhem.” The event will include the distribu-tion of team posters, a post-game autograph session with the players and a special $8 ticket package that includes game tickets and food.

The men’s basketball team will continue another, more subtle means of raising awareness dur-ing their Saturday night game against Harvard. In an event the National Association of Basketball Coaches calls “Suits and Sneakers,” the basketball team’s coaches will be committing a fashion faux-pas in an effort to raise awareness.

Men’s basketball Head Coach Craig Robinson said he believes that “something as innocuous as wearing sneakers with suits” can generate a discussion.

The event was held last week

across the nation, with the men’s basketball coaches participating. But Assistant Athletic Director Rick Merriam, who is also in charge of marketing, organized it so both Brown and Harvard could partici-pate on Saturday.

“We’re happy to support the cause,” Robinson added. “It’s im-portant to everyone on our staff.”

Since many of these events are nationally driven and not all of them are necessarily held dur-ing the same weekend, it was up to Merriam to pick the games to spotlight, as well as the weekends to hold the events. Coordinating the events became another way to promote teams as well.

“Choosing which games (for the events) is just another part of our continuous effort to promote those women’s basketball and hockey games more,” Merriam said.

On the women’s basketball side, the team will host the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association “Think Pink” event, the NCAA’s “Pack the House Challenge” as well as Brown’s own event, “Blitz the Pitz,” over the second weekend of Awareness Week. The women’s basketball team’s will contribute to the fund-raising by holding post-game meet-and-greet session and, like the women’s hockey team, sell-ing a special ticket package.

The men’s hockey team will help fundraise during the second weekend, promoting “Coaches for Cancer” by wearing pink ties at both their Friday and Saturday games.

Though this is Brown’s first year participating, Merriam is look-ing to make it an annual event.

“It’s something the fans, the students and the student athletes can look forward to,” he said. “And it’s something the athletic depart-ment can do to fight breast cancer. We always want to be a part of the community.”

Bears go pink and get creative to fight cancer

the Super Bowl. DeOssie also plans to visit Brown within the next few weeks. Dougherty said the team is looking forward to seeing him.

“He’s pretty pumped, and it should be fun when he comes back to visit,” he said. “We’re kind of over the shock of seeing him in the NFL ... but it’s still great to watch him.”

But DeOssie did not have the whole-hearted support of all of his Brown teammates, as some regional pride and old allegiances

outweighed their personal connec-tion to DeOssie.

“The New Englanders ... were still rooting for the Pats, so we were giving them a hard time,” Dougherty said. “It made the night fun.”

Though DeOssie’s success failed to soften the blow for Patri-ots fans, his performance made the night special for others.

“It was great, because we know the types of people that are com-ing out of the program,” May said. “So to see a player like that is just really inspiring.”



Football players cheers for DeOssie ’07, mostly

Men’s basketball weekend preview

S t a f f e d i t o r i a l

D A N L A W L O R

Diamonds and coal

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eDiTorial & leTTersPAGe 10 THe BROWN DAILY HeRALD FRIDAY, FeBRUARY 8, 2008

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Coal to the bat flying in Sayles Hall during the blood drive this week. We’d love to make some sort of vampire joke here but can’t seem to get the bat up off our shoulder on this one.

Diamond to Zak DeOssie ’07 for a key tackle in the last minute of the Super Bowl. Well, maybe just a cubic zirconium; his Super Bowl ring will have enough ice anyway.

Cubic zirconium to the guy who ran up the Empire State Building. If you want a diamond, try doing the Empire State Building Challenge.

Coal to Forbes magazine for rating our fair city the 10th most miserable in the nation. As former Sen. Lincoln Chafee, visiting fellow in international studies, reminded us, this is a great place to live ... mostly because it’s so close to nicer cities and states.

Diamond to the creators of Tape Art Artaquarium for creating an ex-hibit that doesn’t “make products” or “sell anything” — just like that new “frozen yogurt” place. (We’re on to your little secret, Juniper.)

Coal to those students who used sneaky little tricks to combat Banner’s course caps. Thanks a lot.

We would sling a diamond at the person who was the target of a mys-terious drive-by slingshot attack, but he probably wouldn’t report it for more than two hours anyway.

While we’re at it, a diamond to Rhode Island. Between high taxes, funding cuts for the homeless and required “furlough” for state employees, you could use it.

Coal to the brilliant architects who included an outdoor amphitheater in their plans for the new Creative Arts Center. On second thought, we’ll keep that coal for when we have section there in February.

Diamond to the University employees honored at B.E.A.R. Day this week. If you live in Providence, you’ll probably need that diamond to pay your income taxes anyway.

A post-mortem diamond to Eff Scott Fitzjerald for demunstraeting just how far you can go in life without ever really lerning to spel.

e d i t o r ’ S n o t e

C o r r e C t i o n

Last week, as part of its usual fact-checking process, The Herald discovered that two news articles sched-uled for publication contained material taken from other sources’ reporting without quotation or attribution. The articles were never printed. The Herald began a thorough review of the writers’ published work, as it does whenever inauthentic content is found.

During that review, two published articles were found that contained passages similar or identical to those in other publications.

“Common App now has rival in Universal App,” (Sept. 26, 2007) contains text similar or identical to writing in an article in the Yale Daily News (“Common App faces new online rival,” Sept. 7, 2007). The article also contains information from an interview not attributed to the News’ reporting.

“James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA structure, resigns after racist remarks,” (Oct. 31, 2007) contained quotations not attributed to reporting for an article in the Harvard Crimson (“Watson Apologizes Amid Uproar Over His Comments on Race,” Oct. 19, 2007).

The Herald makes every possible effort to verify the authenticity of our contributors’ content before publica-tion. Our reporters and columnists receive continual training on the ethics of their work.

We sincerely apologize to the publications whose work was copied and to our readers.

In an article in Wednesday’s Herald (“Students’ eyes on Super Tuesday prize,” Feb. 6), a quotation on Super Tuesday activities was attributed to a source who did not agree to be named in the article. The Herald has re-moved his name from its online archives and regrets the error.

Everyone acknowledges that corruption is the ultimate cancer of capitalist democra-cies. Ideologies that defend the solvency of capitalism or democracy always do so only under the assumption that corruption is mini-mized. When people are buying each other off, capitalism does not promote the efficient distribution of goods and services, and elec-tions do not reflect the will of the people. In short, nothing works well.

But it occurs to me that our definitions of “buying each other off,” and by extension, our definitions of corruption, are negligently narrow. The vast majority of corruption in con-temporary America does not involve people literally bribing each other. Rather, it occurs in the realm of what we affectionately term “networks,” “connections” and “relationships.” How can we ever hope to rein in such a nebu-lous problem?

We can start by developing an intellectual framework that quantifies these commonplace abuses. The first step is to apply the idea that relationships have real monetary value.

This idea is neither new nor controversial. Every thinker in business, entrepreneurship, positive psychology and related fields agrees: Your relationships are unquestionably real assets. They have value that is, in economic terms, as real as a green dollar bill. This is the assumption underlying the careerist mantra: network, network, network.

The economist Gary Becker won a No-bel Prize asserting that most of the value in

the world economy is not traditional capital, like equipment and real estate, but rather “human capital,” or the potential productive capacities of humans. This intuitive concept is now accepted by many people. A similarly intuitive notion is that most human capital is “relationship capital.”

It is impossible to overstate the immen-sity of the relationship capital that courses through social environments. For example, I know for certain that most of my human capital is actually relationship capital. Here

is a thought experiment: Imagine that you have the exact same skills that you have in reality, but you are utterly socially discon-nected, like a lonely immigrant. You have no parents, relatives, friends or associates. You are not part of any clubs, networks or social institutions (like Brown). Now, nobody will take your meetings, and nobody will care if

you fail. Your expected future productivity just took a body blow.

Economists have used this term for years — the concept of “relationship capital” is established and respectable. So why hasn’t anyone conducted an analysis of how this vast asset category can be used to transmit value in ways that undermine the market and the political system?

In truth, the biggest difference between our relationship assets and our financial assets, like real estate or cash, is that they are largely

untraceable. When people buy each other off with financial assets, it’s illegal. When people buy each other off with relationship assets, it is seen as an ethereal social problem rather than a tractable economic one. I propose not only that it is tractable, but that it causes so-cietal ills on par with outright bribery.

The idea that our relationships have mon-

etary value is important, and it pertains to lots of fields. However, it has vast implications for our understanding of the concept of corrup-tion. It means no one has to pay anyone off for corruption to exist. You cannot buy your congressperson a house in order to secure favorable legislation — but it is entirely legal to buy your congressperson’s allegiance with relationship assets worth as much as a house. Obviously, analogous problems are rampant in business.

This means social ties between parties engaging in public matters should be suspect in exactly the same way that economic ties should be suspect. It means that we need to look more closely at interpersonal connections between powerful people.

The study of social networks is develop-ing rapidly. It has already become a hot area of academic study. As it advances further, we will develop more sophisticated tools to quantify things like relationship capital, and analyze variables like social distance. I predict that in the near future, we will have a clearer, more rigorous understanding of how the mon-etary value underlying social ties serves as an avenue for the corruption that undermines market democracies.

If some big-shot Ph.D. did some top-flight research in this area, I think it might gain trac-tion in the public consciousness and pose a significant challenge to the moral compasses that guide the daily lives of business people and politicians. Do I have any skilled social scientists among my readership?

Matt Prewitt ’08 is enamored with the elegant logic of namedropping.

In its preliminary report, the Task Force on Undergraduate Education critically examined Brown’s New Curriculum, a source of pride for administrators, faculty and students alike. The task force highlighted advising as a weakness. At around the same time, Brown’s Program in Liberal Medical Education program and Alpert Medical School announced advising changes. But PLME took a step in the wrong direction, announcing cuts in advising.

The PLME department exemplifies the Brown mentality on many fronts. Like the larg-er Brown community, we’re often mocked for our flexibility and openness, and tendency to take advantage of the S/NC system. We don’t have as many requirements as our peers and we often further our education outside the class-room. We’re bleeding hearts who often believe in bringing ethics back to medicine. And don’t get us started on universal health care.

The heart of the PLME program is its advis-ing core. We have four outstanding advisors with medical experience outside of academia. They provide students with holistic advising, covering the personal, professional and aca-demic fronts. One-on-one meetings are encour-aged at least once a semester. Advisers make themselves readily available through e-mail and drop-in visits.

PLME students’ satisfaction with their advis-ing system is unique at Brown. Most sopho-mores drift in advising limbo, belonging to nei-ther Meiklejohn nor concentration advisers. IR concentrators bemoan their one, overextended concentration adviser. In contrast, PLME stu-dents simply love their advisors. Relationships are so close that one adviser regularly invites students to her home for Thanksgiving. PLME

advisers write personal recommendations, help students obtain emergency medical appoint-ments and even give hugs when appropriate.

But the PLME advising program is being cut. Our advisers are some of the most “expen-sive” at the University, holding M.D. degrees and the ability to practice outside medicine. Starting in February, two deans will only be available once a week, a substantial reduction. In fact, these changes are forcing some of the deans to focus more on their work outside the University, threatening their effectiveness as

advisors. To attend to students who now cannot reach their advisers, the one dean who is still fully available will hold open office hours. On a first-come first-serve basis, all PLME students can get their one-on-one time conveniently packaged in 15-minute intervals.

As PLME bridges to the Medical School, so do the changes in advising. Until recently, PLME advisers followed their students into their seventh year at Brown. This provided

a continuous and solid relationship, highly valuable during the stressful years of medical school. But advisers will no longer follow their students to the Medical School. Instead, all medical students will be directed to two deans and one adviser responsible for the whole school. This advising change will be especially hard for medical students who weren’t PLMEs. The medical advising “network” won’t allow for the initial support needed to transition into a class where half of the students have already graduated together.

These cuts have resulted in some added efficiency. PLME students are instructed to contact their Meiklejohns first, then their advisers. E-mails are sent through a triage system reminiscent of an emergency room — the e-mails go through PLME administrative assistants, the PLME Manager and finally an advising dean. This system is designed to route administrative questions away from deans, giving them more personal advising time. The

deans will need this filtering — because of the cuts, one dean will only be able to check e-mail twice a week.

When changes to the advising program were announced, the reaction was violent. Even before the alarming specifics were known, dozens of PLME and medical students joined the Advising Task Force to voice their sup-port for PLME as it is now. After only one meeting, students produced an overwhelm-ing response. PLME students come for the guidance, freedom and personal touch that the program provides, not merely the waived MCAT. The personal aspect of PLME advis-ing is paramount, followed by professional and academic support. In a medical system in which impersonality reigns, the old PLME advising system provided a training program that was anything but impersonal.

PLME advisers often know their students past experiences and future aspirations, where they came from and where they want to go. They hold personal meetings with their stu-dents, tackling problems in any frame of life. They are highly networked at Brown, knowing professors and deans in every department and administration. Yet somehow, the strengths in this program are being overlooked.

The irony of this decision is glaring. Brown has jump-started its advising improvements with a cutback in advising hours and availability. What may be the university’s strongest advising program is being downsized instead of com-mended. Cutting this program is a contradic-tory statement to students and advisers alike. And along with the lost hours goes the faith that the recent report will improve anything at Brown, advising included.

Did Joelle Karlik ’08 mention she got into PLMe?

BY JOeLLe KARLIKgueSt ColuMniSt

You don’t need to accept bribes to be crooked

Advising changes ill-advised

PLMe advisers often know their students past

experiences and future aspirations, where

they came from and where they want to

go. They hold personal meetings with their

students, tackling problems in any frame of

life … Yet somehow, the strengths in this

program are being overlooked.

In the future, we will have a clearer

understanding of how the monetary

value underlying social ties serves

as an avenue for the corruption that

undermines market democracies.

opinionsFRIDAY, FeBRUARY 8, 2008 THe BROWN DAILY HeRALD PAGe 11

BY MATT PReWITToPinionS ColuMniSt

By lARA soUtheRnContributing Writer

The Brown squash teams’ mental strength and perseverance paid off Wednesday night as they beat Tufts at the Belmont Hill School in Massachusetts.

After several hours of play, the men won their last two matches to beatthe Jumbos, 5-4, bringing their record to 3-8 for the sea-son. After three tense matches last week, the women’s squad finally got a break, dominating the Jumbos in a 9-0 victory, earn-ing its eighth win in 14 matches this season.

Having played well in their last few matches, the men went into their encounter confident they could win. But a motivated and determined Tufts squad seemed eager for an upset, winning three of the first four matches. But the Bears’ remained unrattled.

No. 5 Evan Besser ’11 and No. 2 Adam Greenberg ’10 pulled out two spectacular five-game victories to keep their team in contention.

Greenberg managed to keep his cool despite losing the fourth game after holding match ball at 8-6. He performed brilliantly in the fifth game, winning the match with a final score of 10-9, 2-9, 9-6, 6-9. 9-4.

“I knew I was going to have to win my match for us to beat Tufts overall,” Greenberg said. “If I lost we would have been placed into a lower draw at Nationals.”

After his win, there were two must-win matches left. No. 7 Pat-rick Davis ’10 and No. 4 Adrian Leanza ’11 then performed bril-liantly, both winning the needed matches in three games.

The women all played fan-tastic matches. Co-captain Me-gan Cerullo ’08 led by example, beating her opponent in three games(9-6, 9-3, 9-0). In the other

matches, only two went beyond the minimum three games, giv-ing the Bears an easy win before this weekend’s match against Yale. Yale will be the women’s final opponent before the Howe Cup at Princeton on Feb. 21.

“We all played really well,” Cerullo said. “It’s always a confi-

sporTs FriDayPAGe 12 THe BROWN DAILY HeRALD FRIDAY, FeBRUARY 8, 2008

Ashley Hess / Herald

Adrian Williams ’11, who scored 12 points and five rebounds last Saturday against Columbia, said he prides himself on his tenacious play.

Courtesy of DSpics.com

Adam Greenberg ’10 outlasted his opponent over five games Wednes-day to help turn the tables in men’s squash’s comeback win over Tufts.

Squash teams step it up against Tufts

Williams provides boost for m. hoops Star goalie Rosen ’10 talks about dad, ‘Mighty Ducks’By MegAn MCCAhillaSSiStant SPortS editor

For the men’s hockey team, Dan Rosen ’10 is the man behind the mask. But after recording 68 saves in the Bears’ sweep of Dartmouth and Harvard last weekend, he may

find it harder to stay incognito. For his efforts, he was named the Eastern College Athletic Confer-ence Hockey Goalie of the Week. This week, he shed his mask as The Herald’s Athlete of the Week to reveal a bit more about himself.

herald: When did you start play-ing hockey?

Rosen: When I was pretty young, probably about four or five.

Why did you decide to play goalie?

I’m not really sure. I played one year as a regular player, then switched to goalie. My dad was a goalie, he played Division III, so I think that probably had something to do with it.

What’s the worst part of being a goalie?

The worst part is anytime the team loses, or there’s a mistake made out in front of you, it’s kind of all on you. It’s not fun when you aren’t able to make the stop.

And the best part?Basically just the opposite. My

favorite part of being a goalie is be-ing able to come up with a big save that might change the game and maybe bails the guys out up front who might have made a mistake. There’s nothing like making a big save to help your team. Playing goalie is really a position where you are able to control the momentum of the game.

Besides your dad, what goalies do you look up to?

(Laughs). I don’t really look up to my dad as a goalie, he really wasn’t very good. But I’m from Long Island so obviously I really like Rick DiPietro, who plays goalie for the (New York) Islanders. And Marc-Andre Fleury, the (Pittsburg) Penguin’s goalie. Really there are a lot of goalies I like in the NHL because they are all so good.

What’s your favorite hockey movie?

It’s got to be “Slapshot.” That’s really my go-to hockey movie.

not a huge fan of “Mighty ducks?”

Well as a kid I really liked the “Mighty Ducks” movies, but they aren’t really hockey movies, they’re more like kids movies. “Slapshot” is a great hockey movie.

i know hockey players are known for being superstitious. do you have any superstitions?

I have an endless list of supersti-tions. Really for me they’re mostly

M. football cheers champ teammateBy BenJy AsheRaSSiStant SPortS editor

On Super Bowl Sunday, Theta Delta Chi might have been the most ex-cited place on campus. At the Chapin House fraternity, about 50 members of the Brown football team gathered to watch their former teammate, Zak DeOssie ’07, play as a long snapper and special-teams player for the New York Giants.

“Whenever he was on the field or made a play, there was just a general excitement in the room,” said Brown linebacker Jonathan May ’09.

“It pretty much turned us all into Giants fans,” added quarterback and Theta Delta Chi President Michael Dougherty ’09.

The atmosphere was particu-larly electric on the New England Patriot’s final kickoff return when DeOssie made the tackle on the Patriots’ Laurence Maroney at the New England 26-yard line.

“We were all going nuts, it got pretty crazy,” Dougherty said. “It was really fun to see him out there.”

On Tuesday, several members of the team went down to New York to see the Giants’ victory parade and reunite with their former teammate. Nearly all of the team members have gotten in touch with DeOssie since

Bruno goes pink for breast cancerBy Whitney ClARKSPortS editor

Brown athletics is changing colors for a few weekends this month.

Instead of the usual brown, red and black garb the Bears usually don, Bruno’s men’s and women’s hockey teams will be sporting pink starting this weekend, while the men’s and women’s basketball teams will get into the spirit as well.

No, this is not an early celebra-tion of Valentine’s Day. During var-sity athletics games for the next two weekends, Brown will hold its first annual Breast Cancer Awareness Week, when several events will pro-vide raise funds and awareness for the fight against breast cancer.

To encourage fan participation, $10 pink T-shirts will be sold at cer-tain events by the women’s hockey and women’s basketball teams, the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee and BrownNation. The Brown ticket office will also sell T-shirts during the week. Net proceeds from all the events will be donated to the Gloria Gemma Breast Cancer Resource Foundation.

The foundation was started in 2004 in memory of Gloria Gemma, and, with its headquarters in Lincoln, R.I.,., it promises that 100 percent of its earnings stay in the community.

continued on page 9 continued on page 9

continued on page 9continued on page 9continued on page 9

ATHLETE OF THE WEEK

By JAson hARRisSPortS editor

Energy. It’s an ambiguous concept in sports, but somehow it is under-stood by players, coaches and fans alike. It’s hard to describe what it is, but when it’s there it’s obvious to everyone. Whatever energy is, Adrian Williams ’11 brings it for the 10-8 (2-2 Ivy League) men’s basketball team.

Williams himself doesn’t even really know how to describe it.

“I just try to bring toughness to the team and be physical,” said the 6-foot-1 freshman guard from Atlanta who has become Brown’s spark off the bench. His smaller stature certainly does not limit him on the court.

“He doesn’t mind bringing it in-side with the big boys,” said Wil-liams’ father, Doug. Doug Williams P’11 is a former National Football League quarterback who was the Most Valuable Player of Super Bowl XXII, in 1988.

Despite his father’s inclination toward football, Adrian Williams opted for basketball in ninth grade. Until that point, he had played both sports, but as the time commit-ments grew, he had to choose.

“I have a highlight tape of him playing football in ninth grade,” Doug Williams said. “I saw that he could have played in college, but you can’t force anything on a kid.”

Adrian Williams had another path in mind.

“I just loved basketball a lot more.”

Williams displays that passion on the court, where he has eased

friday, february 8, 2008

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