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mechanical cirque‘Birdhouse Factory’ brings industrial-inspired acrobatics to the PPAC

Arts, 5’Tis The seasonThe University’s annual “Brown Gives Green” charity drive kicks off again

News, 2a TinTed lensFatima Aqeel ’12 thinks the media influence how a country is perceived

Opinions, 7

insi

deDaily Heraldthe Brown

vol. cxliv, no. 106 | Friday, November 13, 2009 | Serving the community daily since 1891

In fifth year, Strait talk builds bridges once againBy max Godnick

Staff Writer

Fifteen student delegates from Tai-wan, China and the United States have been on campus since last week to discuss and mediate disputes among the three countries at the fifth annual Strait Talk symposium. Originally founded by Johnny Lin ’08, this year’s Strait Talk ended Thursday after a week of workshops, discussions and presentations.

The symposium’s goal is to “have young people come together from places where they haven’t had a lot of exposure to each other as people,” said the program’s director, Henry Shepherd ’08.

Prospective participants from the three countries apply to be delegates and five students from each nation are selected to join the symposium. “By bringing them together and put-ting them in the same space, they will come to see the situation in a new way and a new level of understanding will be reached,” Shepherd said.

While Brown students have made up the bulk of the delegation in previ-ous symposia, only one Brown stu-dent, Alina Kung ’12, is among this year’s delegation, Shepherd said. The other American delegates hail from

Harvard, Wellesley College, the Ohio State University and Johns Hopkins University.

Part of this cultural understanding stems from the fact that delegates from each nation are housed together for the duration of the symposium, said Han Cui ’10, the program’s fi-nance coordinator and a Herald as-sistant sports editor. “This is part of the whole concept of trust building. It allows them to learn about the other side on a personal level.”

The program is coordinated by a steering committee of about 15 to 20 students, Shepherd said.

Upon arriving at Brown, the del-egates participate in a combination of closed-door “interactive conflict resolutions” and public events open to the entire Brown community.

Tatsushi Arai, assistant profes-sor of conflict transformation at the School for International Training

A year after election, three in four approve of obamaBy sarah Julian

Staff Writer

More than three in four students — 77.2 percent — approve of the way President Obama is handling his job, with 19.8 percent strongly ap-proving and 57.4 percent somewhat approving, according to a recent Herald poll.

The percentage of students who said they approved of Obama is below the percentage of students — 86.1 percent — who reported just before last year’s election in last fall’s Herald poll that they would vote for him.

Among the remaining students, 11.8 percent said they somewhat disapproved, 4.5 percent said they strongly disapproved and 6.6 per-cent said they did not know or had no answer.

The Herald poll was conducted from Nov. 2 through Nov. 4 — one year to the day after Obama’s elec-tion — and has a 3.6 percent margin of error with 95 percent confidence. A total of 687 Brown undergradu-ates completed the poll, which The Herald administered as a written questionnaire to students in the

University Mail Room at J. Walter Wilson during the day and in the Sciences Library at night.

Jeremy Feigenbaum ’11, presi-dent of Brown Democrats and Herald Opinions columnist, said he thinks the poll numbers reflect the fact that “the president’s agen-da for health care reform and to increase loans for higher educa-tion is vastly popular in the Brown community.”

Obama’s job approval rating among Brown students is significantly

higher than his rating nationally, which is just above 50 percent in recent Gallup polls.

Health care and climate change legislation particularly affect col-lege-age students, Feigenbaum said. Obama’s pursuit of such leg-islation, as well as Brown students’ support of a “progressive agenda,” makes him especially popular on campus, Feigenbaum said.

Feigenbaum said the Brown Democrats have been revitalized by Obama’s presidency, with in-creased attendance at meetings

Behind the scenes, putting the ‘plan’ in meal planBy miriam FursT

Contributing Writer

Most students know the Sharpe Refectory like the backs of their hands.

Without a second thought, they know where to go for veg-etarian-friendly fare or for three different types of peanut butter — but few know about the little decisions that go into creating each meal at the Ratty and the Verney-Woolley Dining Hall.

Since Administrative Dietitian Gina Guiducci started working for Dining Services a year ago, she has planned the menus for the Ratty, the V-Dub and lunch at the Ivy Room. Guiducci takes several factors into consider-ation — including dishes’ nutri-tional value, their popularity, the kitchens’ production capabilities, holidays and the Dining Services budget.

Behind the scenes in Brown’s dining halls, most of the meals are prepared on site and from scratch. “The more processing

a food goes through, the more nutrients it is stripped of and the more additives and preser-vatives they contain,” she said. “We know exactly what is going into the food.”

Executive Chef John O’Shea, who has been working at Din-ing Services for 33 years, said Brown’s ability to produce

so much food from scratch — including the pizza made for the

Ratty’s “Tastes of the World” line — is unusual for college dining services. For example, Dining Services has machines used for producing its own meat products, such as the patties used for burg-ers. Brown’s kitchen also has its own in-house bakeshop, O’Shea said.

Guiducci said she strives to create menus for both dining halls that have a balance of pro-tein, carbohydrates and fat.

But while her priority is creat-ing healthy menus, Guiducci said she also seeks to provide students

Min Wu / Herald File PhotoAlex Feldman ’10 (left) and Daniel Oviedo ’10 celebrated last fall after President Obama’s election. A year later, Obama continues to enjoy sig-nificant support on campus.

FeaTure

continued on page 3 continued on page 2

on Senior Day, frosh may shineBy dan alexander

Senior Staff Writer

Before the football team plays Dart-mouth on Saturday, the spotlight will be on the 22 senior players being honored on Senior Day. But once the ceremony ends and the game starts, two first years might steal the show.

Brown cornerback A.J. Cruz ’13 and Dartmouth freshman quarter-back Greg Patton are the reigning Ivy League Defensive and Ivy League Offensive Players of the Week.

Cruz had a team-high nine tackles, three pass break-ups and one interception for Brown last week. Patton, meanwhile, got his first chance in a varsity game for Dartmouth because of injuries at quarterback. The freshman stepped into the Big Green’s wildcat forma-tion and had 29 carries for a school-record 243 rushing yards and two touchdowns.

Zung Nguyen Vu / HeraldStudent delegates converged on campus for the fifth annual Strait Talk.

continued on page 4

sPorTs

continued on page 3

The herald Poll

oh BaBy, BaByProduction Workshop has done it again with “The Play About the Baby”

Arts, 5

sudoku

Stephen DeLucia, PresidentMichael Bechek, Vice President

Jonathan Spector, TreasurerAlexander Hughes, Secretary

The Brown Daily Herald (USPS 067.740) is an independent newspaper serv-ing the Brown University community daily since 1891. It is published Monday through Friday during the academic year, excluding vacations, once during Commencement, once during Orientation and once in July by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Single copy free for each members of the community. POSTMASTER please send corrections to P.O. Box 2538, Providence, RI 02906. Periodicals postage paid at Providence, R.I. Offices are located at 195 Angell St., Providence, R.I. E-mail herald@browndailyherald.com. World Wide Web: http://www.browndailyherald.com. Subscription prices: $319 one year daily, $139 one semester daily. Copyright 2009 by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.

editorial Phone: 401.351.3372 | Business Phone: 401.351.3260Daily Heraldthe Brown

FRIDAy, NOVEMBER 13, 2009THE BROWN DAILy HERALDPAGE 2

CAmpuS newS

with plenty of dining options. “While we do menu French

fries, ice cream and soda every day, we also menu lean protein like chicken, skim milk, dark leafy greens and brown rice.”

Dining Services plans meals according to a five-week cycle, Guiducci said, which means that meals are planned for each of the five weeks and then repeated. “A five-week cycle allows for a lot of variation in the items that are of-fered before they reappear in the next cycle,” she said.

Individual items on the Ratty menu with quirky names, such as “Wisconsin Baked Ziti” and “Poly-nesian Ratatouille,” were named long before Guiducci came to Brown, she said, adding that Din-ing Services chefs are the “true creative minds behind the recipes

and their names.”O’Shea said names are often

taken from the original recipes in which chefs found their ideas. Dining Services tries to develop new recipes so that its menu does not stagnate — using winter and summer breaks, for example, to come up with new ideas to add to its recipe file.

Dining Services also arranges a few themed dinner events through-out the year, O’Shea said, such as Thursday night’s Texas BBQ Din-ner Special at the Ratty and the V-Dub. Dining Services also plans to coordinate an Earth Day Special in April.

Occasionally, meals from these events become part of the regular menu. For example, Guiducci said, the standard menu item “Pirate Ship Pork Loin” was taken from a pirate-themed dinner a few years ago.

health and flavor a balancing act for BDS

Frederic Lu / HeraldAdministrative Dietician Gina Guiducci balances the dining halls’ menus, but the name “Polynesian Ratatouille” precedes her tenure.

employee campaign for charity underwayBy leonardo moauro

Contributing Writer

The Brown Gives Green campaign, an annual employee-centered charity drive, has kicked off a new season of giving after raising nearly $180,000 last year.

At the head of the drive this year are Karen Davis, vice presi-dent for human resources, and Professor of Physics Chung-I Tan, chair of the Faculty Execu-tive Committee.

Fundraising began Nov. 1 and officially ends Dec. 31, but the coordinators will “accept your money at the beginning of Janu-ary, too,” Davis said. Though the fundraising program usually starts in mid-October, the manag-ers elected to begin in November because they “decided it would be more efficient to narrow the time frame,” she said.

All the proceeds of the cam-paign will be given to two local charity organizations, the Fund for Community Progress and United Way of Rhode Island. Do-nors can choose which organiza-tion and specific program within the charity receives their dona-tion, Davis said.

The fundraising program does not have a specific monetary goal, said Angela Hilliard, manager of employee programs and charity

coordinator. “We are much more concerned about increasing the number of people that donate,” Hilliard said, though they are aim-ing to improve on last year’s total proceeds. The program registered 345 donors last fall, a 30 percent increase from the year before.

Employees founded the drive about twenty years ago, though the campaign’s name was changed from “Brown Charities Drive” to “Brown Gives Green” for last year’s program, Hilliard and Da-vis said.

People can donate money by completing charity forms or, start-ing last year, through an online payroll deduction, an option half of the donors chose. The written forms will be sent out later this week, Davis said.

The drive includes what has been dubbed “Change for Change,” a program to collect small sums of money from many people, which yielded $1,475 in donations last year. The program is organized by site coordinators in most departments that manage the donation boxes (which are used mayonnaise jars).

Site coordinators also organize charity events, such as yard sales and lunches. Last year, Brown Dining Services gave out candy for change on Halloween and the Department of Psychology held a bake sale.

This year, Hilliard said, the Watson Institute for International Studies and the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior are holding five-minute massage sessions for donors in their de-partments, provided by members

of the Brown University Relax-ation Project.

Hilliard said she regularly provides the site coordinators with updates about the drive and comes up with “new strategies to promote the campaign.” Last week, for example, she suggested that all site coordinators incorpo-rate the charities’ logos in their e-mail signatures.

Another Brown Gives Green initiative is the Bookstore Round-up, a program in which Bookstore cashiers ask customers at check-out if they would like to round up their orders to the nearest dollar and donate the difference to char-ity. Nicholas Lopez, Bookstore staff cashier, said about 60 percent of customers have contributed to the initiative. The proceeds of this strategy amounted to $1,300 last year.

To create excitement around the campaign, this year’s drive places emphasis on prizes to do-nors, Davis and Hilliard said. The campaign decreased its printing budget in order to create awards — $25 Bookstore gift certificates — for certain first-time donors. At the end of the drive, the coordina-tors will also give four random donors the “Giving Fever” prize: $100 gift certificates to the Fac-ulty Club. Site coordinators that come up with original fundraising ideas can aspire to win the “Most Creative ‘Fun’-raiser” award.

But coordinators are still try-ing to come up with fresh ideas.

“We need to do more,” Hill-iard said. “There are potentially 5,000 people who can give on this campus.”

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and events and an excitement at “just the fact that he’s in the White House and the fact that he’s push-ing this agenda.”

College Republicans President Keith Dellagrotta ’10 said the rea-son for Obama’s high approval on campus was the liberal leanings of the student body, but he also partly attributed the approval to general student-age attitudes.

“Any student has an idealistic view,” he said, and students hope for “health care for all that doesn’t cost anything or a perfectly energy-efficient environment. As you grow older, you sort of learn that a lot of those idealistic views you had weren’t feasible.”

Dellagrotta said student en-thusiasm might be down from last fall because many of Obama’s campaign promises, such as new policies in the categories of health care, energy and gay rights, have not been implemented yet.

“I realize it’s still early in his presidency,” Dellagrotta said. “But he had a lot of big promises that he said he was going to get moving quickly.”

The results of the Herald poll “bode well for Obama,” wrote Wen-dy Schiller, associate professor of political science, in an e-mail to The Herald. “But the Brown student

body is not the set of voters that the president is most afraid of losing. It is the independents and moderates in both parties that the president won votes from in 2008.”

CAmpuS newSFRIDAy, NOVEMBER 13, 2009 THE BROWN DAILy HERALD PAGE 3

“Any student has an idealistic view.”— Keith Dellagrotta ’10, president of the College Republicans

Graduate Institute in Brattleboro, Vt., moderated the mediation ses-sions, as he has every year since the program began. After seven days of dialogue and negotiation, “the dele-gates produce a consensus document that represents the agreements that they have come to,” Shepherd said. “The goal of the consensus document is to show an understanding about the other side.”

For the second year in a row, del-egates from Strait Talk have been invited to present their consensus document to the Asia Society as well as the Council on Foreign Relations, a non-profit think tank, both located in New York City.

The public events included a peace project workshop, perspectives on cross-Strait international relations, the final consensus document presen-tation and discussion panels focused on history, international relations and identity.

Cui said she thinks Strait Talk’s public events add to campus dialogue. “As of now, not a lot of stuff at Brown is concerned about contemporary Chinese politics or social sciences in general,” she said.

Specific proposals this year in-cluded a cultural and arts exchange, in which “cultural heritage items could be shared in a joint exhibition to show commonalities in art,” said Shepherd.

Delegates also proposed a col-lection of oral histories from people who remembered periods of tumult between China and Taiwan.

This year, the delegates represent-ed a more diverse group than ever be-fore. “Before, it was very Beijing- and Shanghai-dominated,” Shepherd said. “But this year, the delegates’ regions of origin are more diverse.”

For the future, Strait Talk is work-ing on building a base of alumni and hopes its influence will reverberate for future generations.

“Our goal is to have a generational impact on the way of thinking in the future,” Shepherd said.

The organization has 90 alums around the world. “People who have done our program in the past have gone on to powerful positions in law, diplomacy, intelligence and armed services,” Shepherd added. “We want people who will be in a position of power in the future so they can affect the situation.”

Strait Talk is in the process of cre-ating an organizational infrastructure that can gain an official non-profit 501(c)(3) designation, something they hope it will obtain by the end of this year.

The nonprofit would “help advise chapters of Strait Talk and support alumni,” he said.

Alumni networking is a major pri-ority of the organization, Shepherd said. Recent coordination efforts have included a private online social net-working site and an academic news-letter circulated to alums every two weeks.

“We have alumni in New York, mainland China and Taiwan who meet up all the time independently of Strait Talk and take the time to continue talking about these issues,” he said.

Strait Talk also hopes to expand to more campuses in the future, Shep-herd said, having held its first sympo-sium at the University of California, Berkeley, earlier this year.

“The potential to reach new com-munities is really great. We have a huge opportunity to really have an impact on the situation,” Shepherd said.

Fifth year in the books, Strait talk looks to the future

continued from page 1

C H O C O L AT E R A I N

Kayleigh Butera / HeraldThe Special Events Committee held its annual “Candyland” event in Sayles Hall Thursday night.

do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack obama is handling his job as president of the united states?

strongly approve

somewhat approve

somewhat disapprove

don’t know/no answer

stronglydisapprove

one year later, obama still popularcontinued from page 1

“I was hoping I’d get (Ivy League) Rookie of the Week,” said Cruz, who was honored as the league’s top de-fensive rookie for an earlier perfor-mance against Cornell. “Every time I’ve looked through, you never have a freshman win the (Ivy League) Defensive or Offensive (Player of the Week), so I was like, ‘Alright my only shot is Rookie.’ ”

Apparently not.Cruz is unlikely to be swatting

away too many passes from his fel-low freshman award winner this week — Patton is more of a threat on the ground than in the air. In the Big Green’s overtime victory over Cornell last week, Dartmouth ran a two-quarterback system, with Patton as the rushing quarterback and Con-nor Kempe as the passer.

“We haven’t thrown the ball a whole lot with (Patton),” said Dart-mouth Head Coach Buddy Teevens.

“We had two attempts on Saturday, and they weren’t pretty.”

But Cruz is still excited to face the young quarterback.

“It will be exciting to go against him,” Cruz said. “I mean, he hasn’t thrown the ball too much. So if they do, hopefully I could pick him off, make a play.”

Head Coach Phil Estes said Cruz has been making plays for the Bears game after game this season. The freshman cornerback leads the Ivy League in passes defended — with 11 — and is second in the league in interceptions, with three.

Though he is now a league leader, Cruz started the season on the sidelines. He didn’t see any ac-tion in Brown’s opener versus Stony Brook. But when Rusty Leedy ’11 got injured against Harvard, Cruz got a chance.

“Whenever you have an oppor-tunity coming in, and you’re not the guy, you always — or at least

I always feel like — you’ve got to prove something,” Cruz said.

Cruz had 2.5 tackles, including one for a loss, against Harvard. He has started every game since.

In the last three weeks, he has had plenty of opportunities, with opposing teams throwing to his side often.

“They look at it and say, ‘Fresh-man.’ They look at his size, and say, ‘We can beat him,’ ” Estes said after the Yale game. “But A.J. is a hell of a player. He’s one of the best natural corners I have ever seen.”

The 5-foot, 9-inch freshman has had an interception in each of the team’s last three games.

Cruz “has been making big plays in big moments,” said co-captain Jimmy Develin ’10. “It’s incredible for a freshman to be doing that kind of stuff — especially at cornerback. I mean, that’s one of the riskiest po-sitions to play because, you know, you make a mistake, it’s usually a touchdown.

“He’s really been coming up big for us,” he added.

When asked about teams throw-ing to his side, Cruz smiled. “They keep trying to pick on me, but I love it,” he said. “That just means I get more action and more opportunity to make big plays.”

Develin said that’s what Cruz does best.

“He’s a playmaker,” Develin said. “That’s all there is to it.”

The match-upDartmouth didn’t win a game last

season. This year, the Big Green (2-6, 2-3 Ivy) will travel to Providence coming off of a 20-17 win over Cor-nell.

Estes said his Bears (5-3, 3-2 Ivy) will face a “much-improved Dart-mouth football team.”

Dartmouth has had an up-and-

down season, with only two wins to show for it. Earlier this season, the Big Green put up 24 points against Penn — more than anyone else has scored on the nation’s No. 1 defense. But the Big Green still ranks second-to-last in scoring offense in the Ivy League.

Only twice a Dartmouth rusher has gone for over 240 yards in a game. Yet the Big Green ranks sixth among the eight Ivies in rushing offense. Dartmouth running back Nick Schwieger, the league’s leading rusher, broke his finger and is out for the season.

Last week against Cornell, Dart-mouth’s two-quarterback system provided a replacement running game, with Patton coming out of the wildcat formation.

“It’s amazing to watch Patton just run and make some plays on some quarterback counters and sweeps,” Estes said. “He’s a terrific football player.”

On the other side of the ball, Dartmouth has struggled for most of the season. The team currently ranks last in the league in defense.

“They’re always in zone coverage with very little blitzes,” said wide receiver Bobby Sewall ’10. “They blitz somewhere along the lines of

8 percent of the time.”The Bears will probably turn

to the pass more often, especially if Dartmouth remains in its zone defense.

Brown quarterback Kyle Ne-whall-Caballero ’11 leads the Ivy League in completions, attempts, touchdowns, interceptions, yards, to-tal offense and pass efficiency. With two of the league’s top receivers in Sewall and Buddy Farnham ’10, the Bears’ aerial attack should have a big day against Dartmouth.

The Big Green rank last in the league in rushing defense, and, if the Big Green allows them to, the Bears will run, especially if their passing game puts them up early and they want to start grinding time off the clock.

Brown running back Zach Tronti ’11 is out for the season with a torn MCL and ACL, so Spiro Theodhosi ’12 will start in the backfield. Theod-hosi had 167 yards and one touch-down on 25 carries against Yale.

But the Bears aren’t taking the Big Green lightly.

“They’re playing every play to the whistle,” Sewall said. “Those are the teams that can really sneak up on you. Those are the teams you have to be aware of.”

FRIDAy, NOVEMBER 13, 2009THE BROWN DAILy HERALDPAGE 4

SportsFriday “A.J. (Cruz ’13) is a hell of a player.”— Phil Estes, head football coach

In Big Green, a defense ripe for attackingcontinued from page 1

head-to-head

5-3 (3-2 Ivy)

26.6 pts/game

20.2 pts/game

128.9 yds/game

281.2 yds/game

34.6%

records

scoring offense

scoring defense

rushing offense

Passing offense

3rd-down conversions

2-6 (2-3 Ivy)

17.9 pts/game

30.6 pts/game

123.2 yds/game

173.2 yds/game

37.5%

Brown dartmouthv.

Versus common opponentsyalePenn

W, 35-21L, 14-7W, 34-14W, 34-31

L, 38-7L, 30-24W, 20-17 OTL, 34-14

cornellholy cross

Arts & CultureThe Brown Daily Herald

FRIDAy, NOVEMBER 13, 2009 | PAGE 5

In ‘Birdhouse’ at ppAC, a circus of man and machineBy Brian masTroianni

Senior Staff Writer

Chris Lashua has always liked wheels.

He was about 13 years old when he started practicing stunts on his bicycle, and eagerly embraced the BMX craze of the 1980s, performing in freestyle biking competitions and state fairs throughout New Eng-land. Later on, as a performer with Cirque du Soleil, Lashua mastered and perfected the “German wheel,” a device in which the performer holds onto the inside of a wheel as it rolls across the stage.

Now, as the artistic director of his own circus company, Cirque Me-chanics, Lashua has created a new work, “Birdhouse Factory,” inspired by the industrial wheels of the small Massachusetts mill town in which he grew up. “Birdhouse Factory” appears Saturday at Providence Performing Arts Center.

The headliner for the final week of this year’s FirstWorks Festival in Providence,

“Birdhouse Factory” is a show based on the “simplicity of how the human body interacts with mechani-cal devices,” Lashua said.

The production places the genre of circus performance art popular-ized by Cirque du Soleil within the environment of a factory, circa 1935. In the show’s narrative, industrial workers unite after a bird is injured when it collides with the factory’s main steam boiler. As the show progresses, the workers construct birdhouses and express their in-dividuality — all through choreo-graphed acrobatics, of course.

Lashua said he feels at home with the industrial wheels and gears of his show’s sets. In addition to draw-ing inspiration from his hometown, Lashua looked to the artwork of Diego Rivera — who was commis-sioned by Ford Motor Company to do a series of Detroit murals in the late 1930s — and Charlie Chaplain’s 1936 classic “Modern Times.”

“The show is actually reverse-engineered. It began with us iden-tifying what machines worked, and then figuring out how it would look,

and what it would actually be about,” Lashua said.

Lashua founded Cirque Mechan-ics after completing a six-year tour with Cirque du Soleil’s “Quidam” in Japan.

“I didn’t really know anything about the Cirque du Soleil shows as a teen. I remember watching them on HBO, but that was about it,” Lashua said.

The German wheel became Lashua’s trademark as a performer. He even improved upon the origi-nal design by inventing a trolley on which the wheel rolls.

While Lashua received “great feedback” from his changes to the German wheel, he generated even more praise from his audiences and colleagues with the invention of a “spin cycle device,” which consists of unicyclists underneath a rotat-ing platform. A contortionist would perform what Lashua calls “Matrix-style” moves on top of the platform as it moves across the stage at vary-ing speeds.

In “Birdhouse Mechanics,” Lash-ua said, “we drive this through the factory setting, and this way we can show the contortion acts from all angles. People get to see the bicycle element move through space. We want to show how the acts merge acrobatics and technology.”

Now, as a father of three sons and head of Cirque Mechanics, Lashua does not have as much time to perform as he did in the past. But he remains involved in the creative process, currently developing a new show called “Boom Town,” set dur-ing the 1850s gold rush.

Lashua also still serves as a cre-ative consultant for Cirque du Soleil. He said “Boom Town” was “made possible” by Cirque du Soleil’s creation of its genre, but the new show is also distinct in its aesthetic approach.

“We’re trying to be respectful of their combination of acrobatics and choreography, but we do not focus on the fantasy setting,” Lashua said. “Instead, we focus on a real place and time. Fantastical things might happen, but it is grounded in reality — our look and feel is unique.”

Boy meets Girl meets existential voidBy Ben Hyman

artS & Culture editor

There’s an obvious difference be-tween using a set of directions to get somewhere and using a map. The former only provides one way of traveling from point A to point B. A map, on the other hand, is the sum of all directions, the totality of all possible routes. Maps open up options, and directions close them. Yet both maps and directions allow for the possibility of getting lost.

Edward Albee’s “The Play About the Baby” — opening tonight at Pro-duction Workshop under the direc-tion of Doug Eacho ’11 — is, yes, about a baby, at least superficially. But Albee’s language throughout suggests that the play really takes place in the metaphorical terrain of journeys: travel, departure, destina-tions, getting there, finding the way back, learning the route.

It’s a play that juxtaposes two characters of Edenic innocence against two characters of knowing, Machiavellian experience. On the innocence side, Albee gives us Boy (Paul Cooper ’11) and Girl (Deepali Gupta ’12). At the beginning of the play, they have a baby. Or perhaps they are babies themselves. In clas-sic Albee fashion, they’re both par-ents and children at once, and their wide-eyed ingenuousness is jarring when set against their frank aware-ness of their sexuality.

Then there’s Man (Ted Cava ’11) and Woman (Meredith Mos-bacher ’11). Dressed in elegantly conservative business clothing, they slowly infiltrate the drama, eventually taking it over. If Boy and Girl were slippery, the identi-ties of Man and Woman are harder still to pin down. This is particu-larly true of Woman, whose auto-biographical monologues sound literary and rehearsed — in other words, totally untrustworthy. It’s not clear who Man and Woman are, where they came from, or what they have to do with Boy and Girl.

“The Play About the Baby” is a slow burn, and it takes a while for the subtle characterizations and submerged conflicts of the first act to come to fruition. But

when everything clicks into place, it’s exhilarating and terrifying: an all-out verbal battle over not just the baby itself, but the baby’s very existence. Is it — was it — a living thing or a linguistic figment?

In the process, Man and Wom-an take Boy and Girl on a journey through the shadowy corners of what it means to be human in a world of aggression, domination and psy-chological and sexual manipulation. Man and Woman suggest that the most difficult and perilous journeys take place in the distances between people and between past and future. It’s an education, but there’s nothing sentimental about it.

There’s no getting around the fact that there’s a potentially prob-lematic imbalance in Albee’s script. Man and Woman get much more time to air their positions and de-velop themselves as characters than Boy and Girl do. Any reader of Milton will find it familiar: The Devil gets all the best lines.

Cava capitalizes on his mono-logues with impish menace, careen-ing between registers and keeping the audience unsettled, while Mos-bacher’s Woman bubbles with charm that deceives and disarms. The two of them refuse to allow the audience to become mere spectators. They weave among the seats and take delight in picking on people, asking

uncomfortable questions.In some ways, Cooper and Gupta

have the harder task here of individ-uating their characters and making their presence register under this onslaught. As Boy and Girl, they extract enormous pathos from the script and put everything on the line. The cast as a whole is incredibly impressive.

Eacho’s production — which keeps things moving in a brisk 100 minutes — aims for and achieves im-mediacy of impact, keeping the set spare and pulling the seats around in the tightest possible half-circle that mimics a thrust stage.

Yet even as he refuses the audi-ence any physical distance from the action, Eacho lays bare the mechan-ics of the production itself. The light-ing board is right there on-stage; pre-act music comes from a visible laptop and a pair of speakers. It is, as the Bostonians say, wicked smart — wicked and smart, in this case, suspending the audience between artifice and sincerity.

PW’s black box space works a kind of magic on productions like this. Self-limitation of resources combines with the weighty empti-ness of the theater itself, focusing energy on the central, triangular relationship of actors, audience and text. “The Play About the Baby” is PW doing what PW does best.

editorial & LettersPage 6 | FRIDAy, NOVEMBER 13, 2009

The Brown Daily Herald

J U L I A S T R E U L I

return of the soldier

C O R R E C T I O N S P O L I C YThe Brown Daily Herald is committed to providing the Brown University community with the most accurate information possible. Correc-tions may be submitted up to seven calendar days after publication.

C O M M E N T A R Y P O L I C YThe editorial is the majority opinion of the editorial page board of The Brown Daily Herald. The editorial viewpoint does not necessarily reflect the views of The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Columns, letters and comics reflect the opinions of their authors only.

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letter to the editor

editorial

Last Friday, The Herald published a poll showing a strong plurality of Brown students in support of the return of the Reserve Officer Training Corps, which prepares college students to serve in the United States military. With 33.8 percent of respondents uncertain, 41.3 percent said they would approve of ROTC’s rein-statement. These results should be a wake-up call for the faculty, the administration and the Undergraduate Council of Students: After nearly four decades, it is time for Brown to reconstitute this vital connection to America’s proud tradition of military service.

The University’s chapter was disbanded in 1971. Today, the most salient focal point for hostility toward ROTC is “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a policy that prohibits open homosexuals from serving in the armed forces. ROTC’s opponents claim that its reinstatement would run afoul of the University’s commitment to non-dis-crimination. In their view, all we have to do to keep our consciences clean is sit back and wait for DADT to be repealed.

That attitude is unacceptably complacent. The ex-clusion of homosexuals from the military is insulting and counterproductive — since DADT was estab-lished in 1993, more than 13,000 service members have been discharged for their sexual orientation, many of them mission-critical specialists. But despite President Obama’s pledges, the policy is not necessarily nearing its end. In a poll of service members last year by the Military Times, 10 percent of respondents said they would decline to re-enlist if DADT were repealed, and 14 percent said they would consider doing so. Several factors suggest that these numbers overesti-mate the threat, but if even a small fraction followed through, the end of DADT would trigger a devastating recruiting crisis even as our military commitment to Afghanistan escalates. Brown alumni with military commissions could play a small but appreciable role

in bolstering tolerance in the ranks and hastening the demise of DADT.

The reinstatement of ROTC would be welcome news for Brown students willing to serve their country. Cur-rently, cadets at this campus must travel to Providence College to train and study with the battalion there, and they receive no course credit for the many courses they take in their commendable pursuit of a commission. In the past, a few students have defied these obstacles. But this year, the severe inconvenience and virtual invisibility of this noble option has left the Providence battalion without a single member from Brown. Cadets benefit not only from practical training, but from the opportunity to earn significant merit-based scholar-ships. In the same Herald poll that showed student support for ROTC’s return, 38.1 percent of respon-dents were worried about their ability to finance their education here. They should have the chance to avail themselves of ROTC’s benefits without compromising their education.

ROTC would strongly complement Brown’s tradi-tion of public service. Though its significance is often ignored, Soldiers’ Arch is a powerful daily reminder that many Brown students and graduates have stepped forward across the years to make extraordinary sacri-fices to preserve the freedom and prosperity we value so dearly. The return of ROTC would help this campus to engage with the experiences of the tens of millions of Americans who serve or have served, and would foster diversity by attracting students from families with robust military traditions. For our country, for our university, and for ourselves, the students of Brown want ROTC on campus.

Editorials are written by The Herald’s edi-torial page board. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.

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honoring the war dead at BrownTo the editor:

I was glad to see Alyssa Ra-tledge’s ’11 recent column (“Do you know what today is?”, Nov. 11), because I too grew up formally rec-ognizing this day. I grew up in the UK during World War II. We lived on a hilltop south of London, on a regular night flight path for Ger-man bombers. I witnessed directly the toll of civilian non-combatants, and of air-war combatants. A kin-dergarten classmate was an early fatality; an uncle was lost in the El Alamein campaign; a cousin of my father, Lilian Rolfe, born in Paris in 1915, came from the safety of South America to become an SOE radio operator helping the Resistance in German-occupied France, but was captured in 1944 and executed in a concentration camp. Faculty mem-bers I have known here had their own war stories from around the world. A German academic host in the 1970s had seen his brother die when the family house was bombed in the same conflict. In remembrance of these and many others I hope to

see Veterans’ Day recognized more strongly at Brown in the future, and include not only remembrance of Brown students who served but, as part of our international standing and heritage, also honor persons around the world.

Ratledge speculated why ROTC was removed from the campus (there had been courses for credit taught by ROTC-appointees). I think investigation will show that faculty here decided they did not want courses for credit given by instruc-tors for whom the faculty had no say in selection and where course content could be limited to “official views,” and where dissenting discus-sion would be strongly discouraged, thereby failing to provide academic freedom for students, and where the military-appointed instructors would fear a record of considering ideas out of line with current policies.

Peter richardsonProfessor of Engineering

and PhysiologyNov. 11

letters, please!letters@browndailyherald.com

editor’s note

During the course of its standard copy-editing process, The Herald discovered that portions of an article scheduled for publication on Oct. 29 used language from another source without proper quotation or attribution. The passages in question were corrected, and The Herald reviewed all of the reporter’s past articles for similar problems.

That review turned up a total of eight articles, dating back to Feb. 5, with passages that were identical or nearly identical to language in other sources. Many of the passages included attribution to the original sources but failed to indicate when language was directly copied from those sources. A note has been appended to the online versions of articles that had insufficiently cited quotations. A full list of those articles is included in the editor’s note online.

The Herald continually trains its reporters in proper attribution and journalistic ethics. We are reviewing those training procedures to ensure that The Herald’s standards are clear to all staff members.

FRIDAy, NOVEMBER 13, 2009 | PAGE 7

opinionsThe Brown Daily Herald

If you’ve been reading newspapers or watch-ing the news, you’ve probably been hearing a lot about Pakistan.

And probably not many good things.The thing about the media is that it is an

extremely powerful tool. For people who sit sipping coffee in the mornings, reading about parts of the world that they have never been to, newspapers are integral to forming impres-sions about this other world.

When I, for example, read something about Lebanon or Colombia, this will be the only impression I take with me of these countries for a while, probably until I have a chance to visit these places myself or befriend someone from there. But someone from Lebanon or Colombia would look at this information about their country with very different eyes.

Similarly, when I read or hear news about Pakistan, I think of it very differently than most other people do. Every time I read about a car bomb, or listen to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton express doubts about Pakistan’s commitment to the war on ter-ror, I know that conditions are bad, and for the past couple of months, they have been getting worse.

But on the other hand, I also know that people still go to work, children go to school and play in parks, there are still fantastic the-

ater performances and art exhibitions, and in science laboratories at hospitals, people are doing research and are trying to come up with solutions to the world’s big health problems. In other words, there are perhaps more problems than there are in the average country, but good things still happen. Good people exist.

It’s like how every time you read about Mexico, you read about murders and drug cartels, so you probably think people don’t even go out on the street. But Mexicans are

supposed to be the happiest people (at least according to my Macroeconomics book, “Macroeconomics” by Olivier Blanchard). So obviously, the Mexicans must have gotten something right.

Similarly, every time I read about Israel, I read about rocket attacks and people dying, but life goes on there as well. And for most people, it is a good life. You still live with the fear of dying, but if you think about it, differ-ent people all over the world are exposed to equally real dangers elsewhere. The prob-

ability of death may be the same for different reasons.

My only reason for my knowing what Paki-stan is actually like is that I was born and grew up there. And even though there have been political and economic problems, most people have had happy lives.

For many reading the newspaper, however, Pakistan is a country where nothing is going on as it normally should. Or at some level, they may know that things are still carrying on as usual, but they can’t comprehend how.

All this obviously implies that what is and what is not put out there by the media re-ally matters. When people start thinking of a country as being more “messed up” than it actually is, the country is likely to go on a downward spiral, where conditions worsen and the country suffers more than it other-wise would. Politically, the country becomes toxic, and nobody believes there is hope for it. Economically, fewer and fewer foreigners want to travel to it, invest in it or help it.

In other words, the content of newspapers

can have an impact on the state of affairs in a country, on what foreigners think of a country and on the country’s reputation as a whole.

This column is in no way pointing toward censorship. Solutions to problems can never be found by hiding what is going on, and more-over, people deserve to know the truth. But on the other hand, for a country that has so many bad things said about it, it is also important to present the other side of the coin.

As a Pakistani citizen, I don’t see the army as terrorist sympathizers. I see the army, the government and the Pakistani people making extraordinary efforts in the American-started war on terror.

The army is clamping down on its own people. Pakistanis are fighting other Paki-stanis. If you think something seems wrong with this situation, well, so do some Pakistanis. Others wholeheartedly support the war on terror, including the ordinary citizens who endure frequent suicide bombings. But they get discouraged when their country is given no credit for its efforts.

Those citizens deserve some recognition from the international media. While I’m not suggesting that the media totally flip their narrative about Pakistan so that it is only portrayed in a positive light, maybe once in a while they could see things from our point of view.

Fatima aqeel ’12 is an economics concentrator from Karachi, Pakistan.

She can be reached at Fatima_aqeel@brown.edu.

The media tool

Success in graduate school cannot be ac-complished alone. One of the most important relationships you will develop in grad school will be with your mentor, a person whose role goes beyond merely advising to include sup-port, encouragement and guidance.

What is the difference between advising and mentoring? An adviser counsels students to help them reach their academic and pro-fessional goals, advises on coursework and training programs and offers feedback on the student’s work and progress. While mentors can also perform these duties, their role in-cludes fostering a relationship with the student to help him or her develop professionally and personally throughout the time spent in grad school.

The myriad roles of a mentor include an adviser, who guides the student in his or her academic progress; a supporter, who provides emotional encouragement during difficult times; a sponsor, who helps the student find information on grants, internships and other opportunities; a tutor, who evaluates the stu-dent’s performance; and a model of integrity and good professional practices.

Choosing an academic adviser is often the first step. Although older students, post-docs and other faculty members can also serve as mentors, it can be advantageous when your primary faculty adviser considers his or her role to include mentoring, as well. Before ac-

cepting an offer to study together, find out if the adviser is committed to working closely with students or if he or she prefers a more hands-off approach, encouraging students to work independently.

Good communication is essential for a satisfying mentoring relationship. Both the student and the mentor should be aware of the other’s expectations and perceptions of effective mentoring. The result should be a graduate who is prepared to enter his or her profession with not only the knowledge

and skills necessary for success, but also the confidence to execute his or her plans.

Unfortunately, mentoring is practiced un-evenly in doctoral programs, and the influ-ence of effective mentoring can be difficult to quantify. As part of Brown University’s participation in the national Ph.D. Comple-tion Project, the graduate school has been working to strengthen the mentoring of its students. Some of the areas of focus include encouraging more shared responsibility for the timely progress and success of students within a program; calling for regular meetings between students and mentors, including hon-

est and constructive evaluations; and helping both students and mentors be aware of their expectations and progress.

The graduate school has adapted two spe-cific tools (which can be found on the Advising and Mentoring page of the Brown Graduate School Web site) to serve these purposes. These are meant to serve as guidelines for thinking about the shared goals of the student and mentor, and can be modified to meet the needs of different programs.

The first of these is a self-assessment work-

sheet for grad students called an Individual Development Plan, or IDP. It is designed to help organize and plan the progress, needs and objectives of the graduate student and serve as a method of communicating these to the faculty mentor.

The IDP consists of three main parts. In Part I, the student provides a brief review of the progress he or she has made in the last year in terms of research, publications, con-ferences attended, teaching experience and other professionally relevant activities. In Part II, the student lays out his or her research and training plans for the next year. Part III gives

the student the opportunity to analyze his or her short and long-term goals and to identify steps that can be taken to reach them.

The second tool available to students and advisers from the graduate school is an Advis-ing Agreement between graduate students and faculty. This is a template that contains lists of responsibilities for both the student and the adviser. For example, the graduate student pledges to meet with the adviser to plan a timeline for his or her dissertation and to demonstrate his or her commitment to a graduate education by performing well in classroom and research settings.

At the same time, the adviser promises to meet with the student and provide resources to him or her for research, guide the student through the departmental milestones of the program and help the student to attend and seek out funding for appropriate professional meetings.

Both of these documents could be put to good use by faculty and students. Because it can be hard to implement improved mentoring practices at a University-wide level, it is up to individual students to seek out the support they need from advisers or other mentors. Clear expectations, shared responsibility for progress and good communication between the student and mentor are essential for a successful graduate career. Behind every suc-cessful graduate student, there is at least one proud mentor.

mary Bates gS is a Ph.d candidate in the psychology department. She can be

reached at mary_bates@brown.edu.

The importance of mentoring

One of the most important relationships you will develop in grad school will be with your mentor.

The content of newspapers can have an impact on the state of affairs in a country, on what

foreigners think of a country and on the country’s reputation as a whole.

By FATIMA AQEELopinions coluMnist

By MARy BATESopinions coluMnist

Friday, noVemBer 13, 2009 PaGe 8

Today 45

Big game against the Big Green

Boy meets Girl meets existential void

The Brown Daily Herald

52 / 46

Today, noVemBer 13

7 Pm — Men’s Hockey vs. Colgate,

Meehan Auditorium

8 Pm — Brownbrokers Presents:

Leavittsburg, Ohio, Stuart Theatre

TomorroW, noVemBer 14

10 am — Honoring the Harvest,

Haffenreffer Museum, Bristol

12:30 Pm — Football vs. Dartmouth,

Brown Stadium

cabernet Voltaire | Abe Pressman

dot comic | Eshan Mitra and Brendan Hainline

classic deo | Daniel Perez

sharPe reFecTory

lunch — Hot Turkey Sandwich With

Gravy, Broccoli Au Gratin, Frosted

Brownies

dinner — Saturday Night Jambalaya,

Red Potato Frittata, Grilled Bacon

Verney-Woolley dininG hall

lunch — Chicken Fingers, Vegan

Nuggets, Butterscotch Oatmeal

Cookies

dinner — Pasta and Seafood Med-

ley, Roasted Fingerling Potatoes,

Rhode Island Quahog Chowder

Coal to UCS, which spent its Wednesday meeting proposing a resolution to make it easier for UCS to pass resolutions. If the meta-resolution passes, all you’ll need for a successful vote is a simple major-ity — just about the same percentage of Brown students who don’t know what you do (according to a recent Herald poll).

A diamond to the clever math nerds who, The Herald reported this week, call their intramural hockey team “the Eulers,” after the famous mathematical thinker and the NHLers from Edmonton. Nice pun! We Thoreau-ly enjoyed it, Kant think of a better one and were on the Virgil of tears when we heard it. We Gauss what we’re trying to say is: We thought it was pretty Nietzsche.

Coal to the ingenious Machado resident who hid two $20 bills in her laptop, where no burglars would ever think to look for something valuable. But a lucky diamond to the cash-hungry Machado thief who spied the bills and ended up with a computer, too.

A cubic zirconium to Gov. Donald Carcieri ’65, who gave his veto pen a workout this week, nixing bills that would let Rhode Islanders claim the remains of a deceased domestic partner, head to a “com-passion center” when they need medical marijuana or vote in a special election to fill a vacant Senate seat. We know you’re just exercising your constitutional authority, but come on — you just ruined the week of every elderly, gay, aspiring congressman with glaucoma in the state.

Coal to the Institutional Review Board, which is trying to make it easier for undergrads to get ap-proval for research projects involving “experiments” on “human subjects.” It’s already hard enough to tell the difference between legitimate scientific inquiry and bad pickup lines — do we really want more math geeks studying how to lie tangent to your curves?

A diamond to Professor of Africana Studies and world-renowned writer Chinua Achebe, who was welcomed to campus Tuesday with a conversation about his work in Salomon 101. Don’t worry, Profes-sor Achebe, they made all of us sit through a book discussion when we first got here, too.

Coal to the fact that the field hockey team didn’t manage a win in the Ivy League this season. It’s a confusing result, given how much more time than many of our Ivy counterparts the typical Brown student spends on grass.

And a cubic zirconium to the students who took mallets to a replica of the Berlin Wall this week on the Main Green. We appreciate the sentiment, but did the rift between Quiet Green snugglers and Lincoln Field Frisbee-throwers really need breaching? Next anniversary, please, spare Brown this wall.

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