monday, march 30, 2009
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The March 30, 2009 issue of the Brown Daily HeraldTRANSCRIPT
www.browndailyherald.com 195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island [email protected]
News.....1-4Arts........5-6Sports...7-9 Editorial..10Opinion...11Today........12
M. Crew sweeps yaleRowing season starts of strong with three wins over Yale
Sports, 7‘pulled up’Eclectic new exhibit at the RISD museum keeps things “light”
Arts, 5let it bleedTory Har tmann ’11 encourages students to give blood, life.
Opinions, 11
insi
deDaily Heraldthe Brown
vol. cxliv, no. 40 | Monday, March 30, 2009 | Serving the community daily since 1891
Students support ‘Fall weekend’ by HannaH Moser and setH Motel
Senior Staff Writer and Staff Writer
More than two-thirds of Brown under-graduates favor changing the name of “Columbus Day” on the University calen-dar, according to a Herald poll conducted earlier this month.
Though 27.2 percent of students polled indicated that they would like the holiday to remain “Columbus Day,” 67.2 percent said they would prefer changing the name. Among the options on the poll — taken from the alternative names considered by students in the months before the poll — “Fall Weekend,” which was the name proposed to the Faculty Executive Com-mittee, garnered the most support.
45.6 percent of respondents supported keeping the holiday on the second Mon-day in October while changing its name to “Fall Weekend,” 8.4 percent were in favor of calling the holiday “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” and 5.3 percent suggested renaming it “Tomato Day.”
An additional 6.1 percent wanted to change both the name and the date of the
Brown hosts taekwondonat’ls for the first timeby Kevin pratt
Contributing Writer
As most Brown students packed their bags and headed home for spring break, more than 400 tae-kwondo competitors from colleges across the nation converged on campus last weekend for the 34th National Collegiate Championship, the first-ever taekwondo tourna-ment hosted at Brown.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology took first place in overall points at the champion-ship, which included two-person sparring and single-person com-petitions in choreographed form sequences called poomsae. Brown won the division for novices or color belts (as distinct from black belts) and placed second overall.
Sixty-five athletes from Brown competed this year, the most any school has sent to a national championship, said Angela Yang ’09, a former president of Brown taekwondo.
Planning for the tournament be-gan last April after Brown was told at the 2008 nationals at Stanford University that it would host this year’s championship, said Michelle Ramadan ’10, the club’s current president.
The Brown-hosted competition was distinguished from past years’ contests by the extensive use of a tournament Web site in the weeks leading up the event. The site was updated continuously by Web mas-ter Paul Jeng ’10 with competitor and volunteer registration infor-mation, the event schedule and items competitors should bring, Ramadan said.
Rex Hatfield, President of the National Collegiate Taekwondo Association, called the tournament the “first fully online champion-ship.”
“I think the online aspect of it helped take away a lot of the face-to-face problem-solving we’ve had
U. sees BIAP and AIP applicant increaseby Caitlin trujillo
Contributing Writer
The Career Development Center saw a 30 percent increase in the number of applicants for the Brown Internship Award Program and the Aided Intern-ship Award Program this year.
William Bordac, communications and public relations officer for the CDC, said the center received 235 total applications this year. While the CDC had anticipated an increase as a result of the troubled economic cli-mate, the total count was surprising,
Bordac said.According to Bordac, the CDC ex-
pects to award 50 students through BIAP this year in order to meet the increased demand. Last year only 41 BIAP awards, which are sponsored by third-party donors, were given out.
The number of AIP awards, how-ever, will remain steady at 25 because Brown funds them directly. Due to the budget crisis, the University was unable to provide for an increase this year.
Bordac said one of the reasons for the jump in applications this year was
the increase in unpaid — as opposed to paid — internships, resulting in more students looking for funding assistance.
Finding and securing internships this year while working with the BIAP timeline presented a challenge for some applicants. Anna Newby ’10 chose not to apply for BIAP primarily because of the mid-March deadline, which she thought was too early for many competitive and prestigious internship response deadlines. Be-
Courtesy of Dan BaileyBrown hosted the 34th National Collegiate Championship March 21 and 22.
Courtesy of BrownBrown researchers studied bats’ ability to acrobatically land upside down.
new research examines acro-bat-icsby Kevin pratt
Contributing Writer
Brown researchers have shed light for the first time on how bats perform the acrobatics necessary to land with their feet above their heads.
The research, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology earlier this month, shows that land-ing styles varied among species: Two species studied cart-wheeled into a softer landing, while a third back-flipped into a harder impact and landed on all fours. Daniel Riskin, a postdoctoral researcher in the De-partment of Ecology and Evolution-ary Biology who was the study’s lead
author, said the differences in land-ing styles may be due to evolutionary differences between the bats.
A broad aim of his research was to shed light on the function of bats’ unique body shape — the mammals have skinny, long legs that are well-suited to flying and roosting, but could be at risk of injury during forceful landings, Riskin told The Herald.
Associate Professor of Biology Sharon Swartz and Professor of En-gineering Kenneth Breuer assisted Riskin’s study, providing funding, personnel and access to the animals for the research. The research team used bats housed in the basement
of the BioMedical Center and at the University of Maryland.
High-speed digital cameras captured the bats’ landings, and a scale attached to the lab’s ceiling measured the force of their impacts. The research took advantage of bats’ natural tendency to choose a favorite roosting spot in a given enclosed space and keep returning to it, Riskin said.
The slow-motion videos of the bats’ landings, which Riskin has posted on his personal Web site, show bats swooping toward their perches, then — depending on their
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Herald poll
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Somewhat confident23.5%
Somewhat worried31.2%
Very worried14.3%
Don’t plan to get job immediately
15.1%
10.5%
Very confident
5.3%
Don’t know / No answer
How confident or worried are you about getting thejob you want to have after graduation?
Keep date and name27.2%
Keep date and “Fall Weekend”45.6%
“Indigenous Peoples’ Day” 8.4%
5.3%
“Tomato Day” 6.1%
Change date and name 5.6%
Don’t know / No answerRemove name and no day off
1.8%
The University currently recognizes the second Monday in October as the Columbus Day holiday. There has been some discussion about changing
the name or its status as a day off. How should the University respond?
Jessie Calihan / Herald
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. POSTMASTER please send corrections to P.O. Box 2538, Provi-dence, RI 02906. Periodicals postage paid at Providence, R.I. Offices are located at 195 Angell St., Providence, R.I. E-mail [email protected]. World Wide Web: http://www.browndailyherald.com. Subscription prices: $319 one year daily, $139 one semester daily. Copyright 2009 by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Daily Heraldthe Brown
MONDAY, MARCH 30, 2009THE BROWN DAILY HERALDPAgE 2
CAmPUS newS 44.5 percent of students are somewhat or very worried about getting the job they want after graduation
holiday, and 1.8 percent supported removing the name “Columbus Day” and not observing a holiday.
The FEC has yet to officially vote on the Fall Weekend proposal, as it did not have enough votes for a quorum at its last meeting.
The Herald poll was conducted from March 16 through March 18 and has a 3.6 percent margin of error with 95 percent confidence.
A total of 676 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, outside the Blue Room in Faunce House and in the Sciences Library.
In light of the current financial crisis, 10.5 percent of students polled said they were very worried about their ability to continue financing their education. 27.5 percent were
somewhat worried, 29.3 percent were somewhat confident and 30.9 percent were very confident.
Similarly, 10.5 percent of stu-dents felt very confident that they would be able to get the job they wanted after graduation. 23.5 per-cent reported being somewhat con-fident, 31.2 percent were somewhat worried and 14.3 percent were very worried. 15.1 percent of respondents indicated that they did not plan to get a job immediately after gradu-ation.
The Undergraduate Council of Students enjoyed an improvement in favorability ratings since October. 51.5 percent of students strongly or somewhat approved of UCS, as compared to 38.1 percent of stu-dents who said the same thing last semester. Students who strongly or somewhat disapproved made up 13.0 percent, a statistically insignifi-cant increase from last semester’s poll. The percentage of students
who responded “Don’t know/No answer” in regard to UCS’s job per-formance declined from 49.3 percent in October’s poll to 35.5 percent in the new poll.
President Ruth Simmons re-mained consistently popular, with 80.1 percent of those polled report-ing approval.
Following heavy attention — due in part to protests from Students for a Democratic Society — the Cor-poration’s approval ratings were at 38.7 percent. Last semester 33.7 per-cent indicated that they strongly or somewhat approved of the way the Corporation had been handling its job, though this difference is within the two polls’ combined margin of error.
75.9 percent of students polled reported that President Barack Obama has so far met their expec-tations as president. The 8.6 per-cent of respondents who said he has exceeded expectations was similar
in size to the 7.0 percent who said he has not met expectations. Last October, 86.1 percent of students said they would support Obama’s candidacy if the election were to take place then.
Providence Mayor David Cicil-line ’83 received 19.8 percent ap-proval from undergraduates, com-pared to 9.2 percent disapproval. However, 71.0 percent of students polled responded “Don’t know/No answer” in response to how he was handling his job.
Though 89.8 percent of students said they have not used prescription stimulants that were not prescribed to them during this academic year, 7.9 have used them at least once this year. Since the start of last se-mester, 3.1 percent of respondents have used prescription stimulants exactly once, 3.7 reported using them a few times and an additional 1.1 percent reported using them more regularly.
majority of students confident in job search, finance education
1. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Ruth Simmons is handling her job as president of Brown Uni-versity?
Strongly approve: 41.3% Somewhat approve: 38.8% Somewhat disapprove: 3.6% Strongly disapprove: 1.2% Don’t know/No answer: 15.2%
2. Do you approve or disapprove of the way the Undergraduate Council of Students (UCS) is handling its job?
Strongly approve: 10.1% Somewhat approve: 41.4% Somewhat disapprove: 10.9% Strongly disapprove: 2.1% Don’t know/No answer: 35.5%
3. Do you approve or disapprove of the way the Corporation is handlings its job as Brown’s highest governing body?
Strongly approve: 7.0% Somewhat approve: 31.7%Somewhat disapprove: 19.7%
Strongly disapprove: 5.0% Don’t know/No answer:
36.7%
4. The University currently recognizes the second Monday in October as the Columbus Day holiday. There has been some discussion about chang-ing the name or its status as a day off. How should the University re-spond?
Keep date & name: 27.2%Keep date & “Fall Weekend”: 45.6%Keep date & “Indigenous
Peoples’ Day”: 8.4%Keep date & “Tomato Day”:
5.3%Change date & name: 6.1%Remove name & no day off:
1.8%Don’t know/No answer: 5.6%
5. Compared to what you expected when Barack Obama was elected President, do you think that he has done better than you expected, about the same as you expected or worse than you expected?
Better than expected: 8.6%
About the same as expected: 75.9%Worse than expected: 7.0%Don’t know/No answer: 8.6%
6. How confident or worried are you about getting the job you want to have after graduation?
Very confident: 10.5%Somewhat confident: 23.5%Somewhat worried: 31.2%Very worried: 14.3%Don’t plan to get job
immediately: 15.1%Don’t know/No answer: 5.3%
7. How often this academic year have you used prescription stimulants — such as Adderall, Dexedrine or Rit-alin — that were not prescribed to you?
Not at all: 89.8%Once: 3.1%A few times: 3.7%A few times a month: 0.4%Once a week: 0.3%More than once a week: 0.3%Every day: 0.1%Don’t know/No answer: 2.2%
8. How confident or worried are you
about your — or your family’s — ability to finance your Brown edu-cation?
Very confident: 30.9%Somewhat confident: 29.3%Somewhat worried: 27.5%Very worried: 10.5%Don’t know/No answer: 1.8%
9. Do you approve or disapprove of the way David Cicilline ’83 is handling his job as mayor of Providence?
Strongly approve: 4.7% Somewhat approve: 15.1%Somewhat disapprove: 6.4%Strongly disapprove: 2.8% Don’t know/No answer:
71.0%
Methodology Written questionnaires were
administered to 676 undergradu-ates March 16-18 at the University Mail Room in J. Walter Wilson and outside the Blue Room in Faunce House in the three mornings and afternoons and at the Sciences Li-brary on the first two nights. To ensure random sampling, pollsters approached every third person and asked each one to complete a poll.
The poll has a 3.6 percent margin of error with 95 percent confidence.
The sample polled was demo-graphically similar to the Brown un-dergraduate population as a whole. The sample was 48.5 percent male and 51.5 percent female. First-years made up 29.0 percent of the sample, 30.5 percent were sophomores, 18.5 percent were juniors and 22.0 per-cent were seniors. 66.6 percent of respondents identified themselves as white, 8.1 percent identified as black or African-American, 10.4 percent Hispanic, 21.6 percent Asian, 1.0 percent American Indian or Alaska Native, 0.3 percent Na-tive Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, 1.5 percent identified with a racial group or ethnicity not listed and 0.9 percent chose not to answer. The sum of the percentages adds up to more than 100 percent due to respondents who identified with multiple ethnic or racial groups.
Senior Staff Writer Hannah Moser ’12 and Copy Desk Chief Seth Motel ’11 coordinated the poll. Herald section editors, senior staff writers and other staff members conducted the poll.
Herald poll results
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CAmPUS newSMONDAY, MARCH 30, 2009 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD PAgE 3
“It’s just a little more waggish that way.” — Will Litton ’09
online journal ‘wags’ finger at printby natalie uduwela
Contributing Writer
The “death of print” may be loom-ing, but three seniors don’t plan to mourn for very long.
Reacting to what they see as a “powerful stigma” facing online-only literary publications, Will Litton ’09, Will Guzzardi ’09 and Sandra Al-len ’09, all members of the improv comedy troupe “Starla and Sons,” have launched an exclusively on-line literary journal with a distinctly print flavor.
The literary quarterly, Wag’s Revue, features the work of promi-nent literary figures of today’s Web-minded generation and published its first issue earlier this month.
Released March 21, the debut issue contains work by the Director of the Literary Arts Program and Professor of Literary Arts Brian Evenson and an essay on the “‘hip-ster/douchebag’ dialectic” in con-temporary culture. It also features exclusive interviews with Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Dave Eg-gers and with founding editor of the literary quarterly n+1 Mark Greif and writer Wells Tower, who recently released a book.
The journal, whose URL is wag-srevue.com, opens with what Litton calls a “hyperbolized scathing mani-festo declaring the death of print,” in which the three co-founders emphasize their belief that online literature doesn’t have to exist in its current state.
With strict editorial controls, Wag’s Revue’s founders hope to combat the mediocrity they said results from the ability to publish such large amounts of lackluster material on the Web.
“When there’s unlimited space to print whatever, you can blog ev-
eryday and end up with a crockpot of really mediocre writing,” Litton said. “So much is getting published, there’s no journal with stringent editorial controls.”
The word “wag” in the journal’s title means a mischievous joker, and the use of the word “revue” — a collection of theatrical perfor-mances — was chosen over “re-view” because “it’s just a little more waggish that way,” Litton said in a press release.
Their goal is to selectively estab-lish a body of work that maintains a level of quality equal to print while changing its form of output.
“For literature, it’s interesting because there’s this incredibly pow-erful stigma if you’re only published on the Web — there’s something bastardized about that,” Litton said. “A lot of that has to do with the certain aesthetic to holding a book in your hand and smelling it and turning its pages, and also the way that literature is put up on the Internet right now looks very plain and boring.”
To fight that stigma, Wag’s Re-vue’s online material looks like that of a print journal, complete with an
issue cover, table of contents and page numbers.
“We wanted to create a space online that resembles a physical page — that has the same sort of safety and certainty that you can get with print,” Allen said.
The founders said they hope for the journal, which is free, to be economically sustainable through its upcoming contest, in which par-ticipants pay a small entry fee to submit a piece and have the chance to win $500 dollars in three different literary fields — fiction, nonfiction and poetry — which are the respec-tive interests of Litton, Allen and Guzzardi.
Rather than profit, the trio’s goal is to create a reputable literary out-let for upcoming writers of today’s online generation, which they hope to maintain for years to come.
They plan to publish Wag’s Re-vue quarterly, with release dates timed to equinoxes and solstices.
“Starla is a model for what happens when we fully commit to something,” Allen said. “In a per-fect universe, this will take off and be something we do for several years.”
Courtesy of WagsRevue.comWag’s Revue, a new literary publication founded by three Brown students, exists online only to bring print-quality writing to the Web.
SUBU’s popularity fades with timeby ellen CusHing
Senior Staff Writer
In the spring of 2007, a group of stu-dents formed the Student Union of Brown University, intended as a demo-cratic forum for members to air their concerns about University policy. The group grew quickly, attracting 400 members in its first semester and 150 more the next fall.
But just two years later SUBU has effectively disappeared, with former members citing an overly ambitious agenda and the inevitably fleeting na-ture of student involvement.
“Basically, SUBU’s not really doing too much these days,” said Will Em-mons ’09, one of the non-hierarchical group’s original organizers. The orga-nization has not held a meeting this year, he said. Last spring’s meeting was canceled because it did not attract enough students for a self-imposed quorum of 1 percent of the student body, or 59 students.
The group was originally founded as a large-scale forum for student voices and interests, Emmons said.
“I think the original impetus be-hind trying to organize SUBU was (that) we wanted to find a way to build a mechanism that would harness stu-dent voices,” Emmons said. “SUBU was kind of envisioned as a collective democratic voice for students to im-pact the university.”
Alex Tye ’10, another organizer, explained that the student union was founded largely as a response to the Undergraduate Council of Students.
“A lot of us had been kind of disap-pointed by the job that UCS was doing in representing students, and up to that point, UCS had kind of a monopoly
on being the way students had repre-sented themselves,” he said.
But Michael Glassman ’09, who was UCS president last year when the student union was still active, said the group’s position as an alternative to the bureaucracy of UCS may have contrib-uted to its own eventual dissolution.
“I went to a (SUBU) meeting, and they spent so much time going over codes and rules, which is a complaint people have with UCS,” Glassman said. “So when people saw that, I think they lost interest.”
“People seemed really excited about the idea, but it’s hard to keep up that momentum.” Glassman said.
Tye and Emmons also said that after such a visible beginning, it was simply difficult for the group to main-tain its momentum.
“Organizing SUBU was a bold task,” Emmons said.
Tye said the student union’s ambi-tious goals required a level of attention that may simply have been unsustain-able.
“For the entire time it was around, SUBU was in the phase where it re-quired a lot of attention from people,” he said. “It was trying to be a really large group, which meant that it re-quired a lot of participation from a lot of people.”
When a core of active members graduated or left to study abroad, many of the group’s remaining members began directing their activism energy to other radical groups on campus, especially Students for a Democratic Society, he said.
“After so many people graduated, the original organizing crew folded
Library debuts revamped Josiahby aMy CHen
Contributing Writer
In an age where library resources are increasingly making use of new technologies, Josiah, the library’s online catalog, has been retooled with a series of new features that have been available since earlier this month. The new features include text messag-ing of book call numbers and access through Josiah to searchable, digital volumes on Google Books, along with other small upgrades.
The codes for both applications were adapted by Goran Tkalec GS, a graduate student of religious studies who also studies computer science. He collaborated with Bonnie Buzzell ’72, senior knowledge systems librar-ian, to implement the technology.
For texting, the user enters his or her cell phone number and car-rier into Josiah. The resulting text message will include information on the title of the source, its call num-ber and which of Brown’s libraries houses it.
The information on Google Books, in the form of images and text, “can help (a user) determine if the item is likely to be of interest before going to the stacks or placing a request,” ac-
cording to Josiah’s Web site. Though more than a million volumes are avail-able on Google Books, not all texts or images are complete, and its scans may be imperfect. Moreover, texts on Google Books cannot be saved or exported, according its Web site.
Brown’s librarians are always aware of new developments at other university libraries, said Jean Rain-water, co-leader of Integrated Tech-nological Services. The text message feature adapted similar technology that was originally created by Adam Brin ’00 for Bryn Mawr College, where he worked as a librarian, Rain-water said. The original code for the Google Books function was developed at Virginia Tech.
The new services have garnered positive reviews from frequent library users and librarians.
“I appreciate that Brown Library Services now links Josiah entries to Google Books,” said Heather Lee, a second-year Ph.D. student in Ameri-can Civilization who said she uses Jo-siah for research at least once a day.
“Previously, if a book was checked out of the Brown libraries, I would have checked Google Books for a digital copy in the case that I needed to read it immediately,” Lee said.
“This new feature saves me trouble of searching another database.”
Rainwater said that, as a librarian, she particularly likes having direct links to Google Books. She said it allows her to consider which books to replace in the library.
The other, smaller enhancements to Josiah include an automatic e-mail notification from Josiah to the user when a newly catalogued item match-es a saved search from the user’s ac-count, Buzzell wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.
Christine Baumgarthuber GS, a graduate student in English who uses Josiah to do her research and to study for her exams, said the Josiah layout and navigation was already fairly straightforward. Having recent-ly led students through the catalog and database in a section of ENGL 0110: “Critical Reading and Writing I: The Academic Essay” class that she teaches, she found that her students’ feedback was generally positive.
Rainwater also said another new feature would soon be added to the catalog. Users will be able to find call numbers in Josiah and take them to a floor map of the library, which will show the user where to find the books, she said.
continued on page 8
MONDAY, MARCH 30, 2009THE BROWN DAILY HERALDPAgE 4
CAmPUS newS “I feel like this is an annual struggle for students.”— Anna Newby ’10
species — either turning or flipping upside-down before clasping onto a plastic grate.
Data from the videos were used to generate graphs of the bats’ move-ment during landing — with specific measurements of the animals’ pitch, yaw and roll — Riskin said.
The species that landed signifi-cantly harder than the other two, and with four points of contact rather than two, was Cynopterus brachyo-tis, which typically roosts in trees. The softer landers were closer evo-lutionary cousins, Riskin said, that usually roost in rocky caves.
“A species seems to have a way of landing,” he said. “You can ask why some species have that char-acter, and others have a different character. ... I think the answer to that is that bats that roost in foliage can land as hard as they want — it won’t hurt.”
If they landed as forcefully as their tree-dwelling relatives, cave-roosters would risk a hazardous col-lision of their fragile hind legs with the rock ceiling.
Riskin said he wants to repeat the landing experiments with more bat species from South America, which is home to a wide variety of bats with
different feeding and roosting habits. This further study could lead to a better understanding of how differ-ences in bat species have evolved over time, he said, and would test the idea, suggested by his initial re-search, that bats roosting in caves land more softly.
“I certainly have not proven any-thing yet,” Riskin said.
But Riskin’s interest in bats ex-tends beyond their acrobatic capa-bilities.
“In museums, you might have one species of bat in the mammals section,” said Riskin, who has trav-elled around the world to study the animals. “In truth, one-fifth of mam-mals are bats.”
“If you’re interested in diversity, if you’re interested in the variation of animal body plans ... bats are a great system (to study) because there are so many different kinds,” he said.
Riskin enjoys seeking out and studying species of bats he hasn’t en-countered before, he added, because they always present “variations on the theme” of typical bat behaviors. His next research project may lead him to Madagascar, where a species of bat only recently found in signifi-cant numbers uses adhesive pads to affix itself to smooth surfaces, even glass.
riskin follows bat speciescontinued from page 1
cause the BIAP and AIP awards are non-transferable, applicants must commit to one internship without the flexibility of having funding for others.
“I feel like this is an annual strug-gle for students,” Newby said.
Newby applied for a variety of Middle Eastern policy internships — including positions with think tanks, non-profits and policy study institutes — most of which are un-paid. She said it is unlikely she will be able to accept an unpaid job without supplemental financial support from the organization or a reduced-hours schedule that would allow her to take a part-time job as well.
She said her goal is to attain a paid internship, though she added that this might be an unrealistic ex-pectation.
Ann Crawford-Roberts ’12 se-cured her internship over winter break and found the application process straightforward, though she said she knew others who could not solidify their plans in time and were deterred from applying.
“I knew people who weren’t se-cure enough and would find out too late,” Crawford-Roberts said.
Some students also think the
CDC needs to advertise earlier in order to alert potential applicants and give them time to pull their plans together. Paula Kaufman ’10, who got an internship with a West Virginia health clinic, said she was frustrated with the late publicity.
“Putting out notice one or two months in advance is insufficient,” Kaufman said. “I would presume there were a lot of people who would’ve applied had they known earlier.”
Bordac said he hoped the rush to secure internships by the application deadline did not prevent people from applying, since applicants are allowed to submit a letter from their potential employers stating that they are be-ing considered for a position, but do not yet have the internship secured. About one-third of applicants usually do not have their internships yet, he said, and this does not factor into the decision process.
“We give leeway,” Bordac said. “We’re very flexible and like to work with people.”
He said the CDC was looking into a variety of ways to help students in the future, including offering a workshop for the application process to aid future applicants. The CDC may also encourage students who complete internships to return to the
office and share their experiences, Borac said.
While the BIAP and AIP dead-lines have lapsed, the CDC is still working to find students internships and alternate funding sources. Bor-dac said the CDC is in the process of gathering information on intern-ship opportunities from the Swearer Center and the Watson Institute for International Studies. Further, he said the CDC hopes the University will be able to increase funding for future AIP awards, thereby increas-ing the programs’ accessibility.
“The University is trying to raise the profile of internships and raise the profile of their importance, not just in career pursuits but academic as well,” Bordac said.
CDC helps students find internshipscontinued from page 1
Kim Perley / HeraldThe CDC saw increased applica-tions for internships funded this year.
Arts & CultureThe Brown Daily Herald
MONDAY, MARCH 30, 2009 | PAgE 5
Documentary follows refugees from eritrea to r.I.by anita MatHews
a&C Staf f Writer
“Home Across Lands,” a documen-tary that follows the journey of Eritrean refugees from Ethiopia to Rhode Island, will screen this Thursday, followed by a talk with the film’s director, John Lavall. The event is sponsored by the Brown Refugee Youth Tutoring and En-richment program.
With the aid of the International Institute of Rhode Island, the refu-gees, part of a distinct Eritrean community known as the Kunama, become acclimated to life in the United States. The Kunama are considered to be some of Eritrea’s original inhabitants. Though they are demographically one of the smallest groups in the region, they have sustained a language and culture distinct from the rest of the surrounding country’s. The Kunama inhabit some of Eritrea’s most fertile land and have there-fore long been persecuted by the Eritrean government, leading them to flee across the border to live in Ethiopian refugees camps.
According to the press release, the documentary “illustrates the
ways the International Institute bridges the vast divide from life in a refugee camp to life in Rhode Island as they help the Kunama in making sense of apartment living, public transportation, employment and health care, while nurturing their own community as they adapt to a larger and very foreign one.”
The International Insititute’s mission to assist in refugees’ ac-climation process aligns with that of the BRYTE program. BRYTE matches Brown students with refugee families throughout Providence, allowing the students to serve as tutors and mentors. Through its tutoring program, BRYTE, like the IIRI, aims to allevi-ate the difficulties of assimilation experienced by refugees.
Lavall, who also produced the film, has won Emmy Awards for his previous work. He and a produc-tion team spent a year filming the Kunaman refugees as they bridged the nearly 7,000-mile gap between the Shimelba refugee camp in Northern Ethiopia and their new homes in Providence. Lavall and his production team filmed in both
rISD exhibit mixes stylesby ben HyMan
artS & Culture editor
There is a joyful, kid-in-a-candy-store quality to “Pulled Up,” an exhibit at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art. The feeling starts with the first glimpse of the Farago Gallery’s makeover. Its fleshy pink walls, lined on the bottom by an un-dulating swath of brick-red paint, signal that the cheerful show is as much about the space itself as the works within it.
“Pulled Up” is the fruitful result of a partnership between the Ameri-can artist Carl Ostendarp and Judith Tannenbaum, the Museum’s curator of contemporary art. Consciously responding to “Raid the Icebox I” — a 1969-70 exhibit that featured a crazed assortment of works from RISD’s collection curated by Andy Warhol — Ostendarp explored the Museum’s holdings and “pulled up” 16 20th-century works by an odd assortment of artists. Here, the high modernism of Adolph Gottlieb and Barnett Newman mingles with Jean Arp’s Dadaist gags and the postmodern exuberance of Warhol, Ed Ruscha and John Wesley. It’s a refresher course in the history of Kim Perley / Herald
“Pulled Up,” an exhibit at the RISD Museum of Art, features the work of 16 20th-century artists, including Andy Warhol and Joan Miro. continued on page 6continued on page 6
MONDAY, MARCH 30, 2009THE BROWN DAILY HERALDPAgE 6
ArtS & CULtUre “We are the only hope (many refugees) have.” — A staff worker at the International Institute of Rhode Island
Ethiopia and Providence — a risky venture given that the camp lies within the 50 kilometer zone be-tween Ethiopia and Eritrea deemed unsafe for travelers by the U.S. State Department.
Filming in Ethiopia presented other challenges to Lavall and his crew, he wrote in an email to the Herald. His production team had to avoid potential land mines on the roads, and to grapple with very lim-ited time during which to conduct interviews with families.
Back in Providence, the produc-tion team also encountered several obstacles. Lavall wrote that the crew wanted to ensure the most accurate retelling of the refugees story as possible. Such in-depth study, however, presented the crew with additional challenges.
“To tell this story effectively we needed to immerse ourselves into the day-to-day workings of the resettlement office and into the lives of these newly (resettled) families,” Lavall wrote. “Our goal was capture as much as we could
on film; their arrival at the airport, in the doctors office, the first day of school, a job interview.”
But Lavall explained that IIRI’s support was critical in allowing the crew to overcome these chal-lenges.
“We were very fortunate to gain access and permission at every turn,” he wrote, “it’s a testament to the strength of IIRI within the community. Whenever we ex-plained what we were doing and who’s story we were telling the mere mention of IIRI was enough for most people to agree whole-heartedly.”
Despite the challenges involved, the final product is an inspiring and informative documentary that high-lights the success of refugee out-reach programs in Providence.
“For many refugees, this is it,” says one IIRI staff worker in the film. “We are the only hope they have.”
“Home Across Lands” will screen at 7 p.m. on April 2 in the Hunter Carmichael Auditorium in the Hunter Laboratory on Waterman Street.
continued from page 5
Documentary depicts refugee struggle
modern art, with Roy Lichtenstein, Jackson Pollock, Joan Miro, Odilon Redon and Richard Artschwager all making appearances. Topping it off are two new paintings by Ostendarp himself.
The seasonal group exhibi-tion has become a Chelsea cliche, which makes this mishmash even funnier. Imagine if these guys — and they are, all of them, guys, but let’s get back to that later — had been working together, exhibiting together, Ostendarp seems to say. How would they have interacted with each other? Would they have gotten along?
As Ostendarp explores these questions, the two-tone walls serve as much more than a back-drop. They actively contribute to the exhibit, bringing out themes and underlining juxtapositions. The use of organic forms links Miro and Arp to 1960s and 1970s pieces by Myron Stout and Nicholas Krush-enick. Also, many of the works are connected in their response to color. They play off the predominant warm tones of the walls, a dialogue by turns harmonious and dissonant. A Jules Olitski print blends in so
perfectly with the color scheme that it almost goes unnoticed, while, directly next to it, a typical Josef Albers painting of dark green squares loses its hallucinatory calm as it tussles with the vibrant pink behind it.
For all its sunny buoyancy, “Pulled Up” also suggests darker undertones. Ostendarp acknowl-edges Warhol by including one of his unsettling electric chair prints. Similarly, Redon’s famous print “The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity” only becomes more disquieting, situated in this cheery context. Ostendarp’s paintings, too, capture the sense of dread beneath the exhibition’s cartoon mayhem. Each of his works takes a cry of rage and frustration — “Yaaah” and “Aaarrgh” — and renders it humor-ously in blown-up, blocky letters, using the two incongruously upbeat colors from the gallery walls. The paintings are both fun and desper-ate, and they recall the similarly laconic, text-based canvases of Rus-cha, who is represented here by a wordless print of soap bubbles.
The fact that every artist in “Pulled Up” is male and, for the most part, well known is, at first, exasperating. For all of the strange-
ness of the exhibit’s combinations, each selection on its own holds no surprises. But instead of being an-noyed, it’s probably best to treat this homogeneity as another kind of joke, even if it’s not entirely clear what the punchline is. Could Osten-darp have chosen his colors in order to highlight the hot-and-heavy, tes-tosterone-fueled competition among the works? Is it that men are always the immature class clowns? Perhaps the joke is actually about high-mind-ed art world rhetoric that conceals a persistent boy’s club and curatorial favoritism for established artists. Ostendarp leaves these questions unanswered.
All in all, the exhibit is a nimble and exciting demonstration of the power of context to affect our read-ings of an individual work of art. “Pulled Up” is so captivating that it takes a while to notice the show’s slyest trick — its soundtrack. Art rock and punk songs — including, of course, “Pulled Up” by the Talk-ing Heads, a band that met at RISD — burbles quietly at all times, giving the viewer permission to let loose and take things a little bit less seri-ously. It feels like a painting studio where the radio is on, the work is fresh and anything is possible.
eclectic exhibit mixes eras, artistscontinued from page 5
SportsmondayMONDAY, MARCH 30, 2009 | Page 7
The Brown Daily Herald
Lax team scores weekend hat trick by elisabetH avallone
SportS Staff Writer
The No. 11 men’s lacrosse team proved resilient against Dartmouth, Vermont and Delaware this past week, earning
decisive victo-ries against all three. The Bears advanced
to an overall record of 7-1, and 1-0 in the Ivy League.
In their Ivy League opener on March 21, the Bears toppled Dart-mouth 14-8. Andrew Feinberg ’11 led Brown with four goals, and quad-captain Kyle Hollingsworth ’09 totaled seven points on two goals and five assists. In a non-conference game against Vermont three days later, Hollingsworth tallied a career-high five goals and Feinberg added three in a 16-8 victory. Thomas Muldoon ’10 led Brown with four goals in Satur-day’s 13-5 win over Delaware, running Bruno’s winning streak to six.
“We have been playing very strong as a team,” Feinberg said. “In the past few games we have been well pre-pared to take on our opponents. Both the offense and defense have been executing our coaches’ game strate-gies very well.”
brown 14, dartmouth 8 On Saturday, March 21 the Bears
took on Dartmouth in the first Ivy game of the season in Hanover, N.H. The Big Green struck first with 7:41 to go in the first quarter. But Feinberg responded eight seconds later, the first of four straight goals for Brown. Feinberg notched his second goal, and Nic Bell ’09 and Hollingsworth each added one to conclude the first quarter with a 4-1 lead.
The Bears built a 6-2 lead midway through the second quarter, with goals by Muldoon and Feinberg. After Dart-mouth notched a pair of goals, Mul-
doon fired his second. Dartmouth an-swered with a goal, trailing Brown 7-5, but goals by Bell and Reade Seligmann ’09 thwarted Dartmouth’s comeback for a 9-5 lead to close the half.
The Bears added to their lead in the third quarter, with Feinberg’s fourth and Seligmann’s second giv-ing them a six-goal lead going into the final quarter.
Hollingsworth finished the game with two goals and five assists. Mul-doon (two goals, three assists) and Feinberg (4g, 1a) each finished with five points. Bell and Seligmann fin-ished the game with two goals each. Brady Williams ’09 and quad-captain Jack Walsh ’09 added a goal each.
Quad-captain Jordan Burke ’09 anchored the defense with 10 saves and seven goals against.
brown 16, vermont 8 Brown next traveled to Burling-
ton on Tuesday to face off against the University of Vermont. Hollingsworth scored a career-high five goals, cou-pled with Feinberg’s three to lead the Bears to a 16-8 victory over the Cata-mounts — their fifth straight win.
Williams, Feinberg and Muldoon launched an exciting three-goal lead five minutes into the game. But Ver-mont cut the deficit to 5-4 at the end of the first quarter.
Brown’s defense shut out Vermont in the second quarter and the offense tallied five goals for a 10-4 lead at the half. Hollingsworth scored two goals. Feinberg, Williams and Walsh each had one.
Brown dominated the second half, outscoring Vermont 6-4, to cushion their already substantial first-half lead. Goals by Hollingsworth and Bell gave the Bears a 12-6 lead after third quarter. In the fourth quarter, Hollingsworth, Feinberg and Jason
m. rowers dominate Bulldogsby andrew braCa
SportS editor
The men’s crew began the spring season by sweeping three races from Yale on Saturday on the Seekonk River. The Bears looked strong as they began their defense of last season’s Ivy League title.
“Yale’s got a really strong pro-gram, and our guys did a great job of racing them down the course,” said Head Coach Paul Cooke ’89.
On an unusually calm day on the Seekonk, Brown won all three races by comfortable margins. The varsity and the freshman boats each won by more than nine seconds, while the second varsity boat posted a five-second edge.
Matt Wheeler ’09 said the strong performances across the board were a “testament to the attitude we have in the boathouse right now. All three boats have been racing each other for months now, as hard as we can. We just went out there and did what we knew how to do.”
The varsity eight began the morning by trouncing Yale, clock-ing in at 5:43.0 while the Bulldogs trailed 9.9 seconds behind. The Bears jumped out to a quick lead
that continued to grow to open water midway through the two-kilometer race.
Christian Crynes ’10 was in the bow seat, followed by Gavin Crynes ’10 in the two seat, Wheeler in the three, Cole Bonner ’10 in four, Ben Duggan ’10 in five, Scott Morgan ’10 in six, Nick Ritter ’10 in the seven seat, Sean Medcalf ’09 at stroke and coxswain Rob O’Leary ’09.
O’Leary said it was important to begin the spring on the right foot.
“Coming into it we’re always a little unsure about where we stand, so it was good to come out of the first race with a win,” he said.
The second varsity eight dis-patched two Yale boats almost as easily. The Bears finished in 5:46.45, while the Bulldog boats lagged be-hind at 5:51.86 and 5:54.11.
The freshmen wrapped up the morning with a dominant perfor-mance in their first race on Brown’s home course. Brown’s first nov-ice boat finished first with a time of 5:42.77, followed by Yale at 5:51.90 and Bruno’s second boat at 6:00.16.
The freshmen’s strong showing pleased Cooke.
“It was a bit of a surprise,” Cooke
said. “The freshmen have been do-ing a nice job lately, but as much as the varsity is an unknown, the freshman (eight) is even more so, so for them to have such a success-ful race was a real thrill. It’s great for the future of the program.”
The freshmen also impressed the varsity rowers.
“We’ve been watching them train all year,” Medcalf said. “They came in as sort of a rag-tag bunch. To see them just handle that race and really take control, that was really good.”
The Bears will need the mo-mentum they earned this week-end when they travel to California to face stiff competition at the San Diego Crew Classic next weekend. Brown will face top crews from across the country, including Ivy League foes Harvard, Princeton and Yale.
“San Diego is going to be really tough,” Wheeler said. “Almost ev-ery powerhouse in the country is going to be there.”
But O’Leary said the Bears will be ready.
“We’re going to keep training and definitely get ready for a big race next weekend,” he said.
Courtesy of Mike BracaThe men’s crew team started off the season strong, winning three races against Yale on the Seekonk River.
Brownprinceton
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continued on page 8
MONDAY, MARCH 30, 2009THE BROWN DAILY HERALDPAgE 8
SPortSmonDAy
Pohanka ’10 each added a goal to the board. Charlie Kenney ’10 finished Brown’s scoring with a goal at 3:40 on the clock, in addition to his assist earlier in the game.
In goal, Burke had 12 saves and six goals against. Matt Chriss ’11 stepped into the net with five saves and two goals against.
brown 13, delaware 5 The Bears came home after a week
on the road to face the University of Delaware on Saturday. Brown earned its sixth straight win by easily out-scoring the Blue Hens, 13-5. Muldoon led Bruno with four goals, extending his scoring streak to 28 consecutive games.
“I think the greatest thing we have going for us is our chemistry,” Mul-doon said. “Everyone on the team
works well together and really cares about each other. We have a lot of talent but we don’t have to deal with egos. Everyone wants everyone else to succeed and our team plays really well together because of it.”
The Bears were untouchable early into the first quarter when un-answered goals by defenseman Jake Hardy ’10, Feinberg and Seligmann gave the Bears a 3-0 lead.
In the second quarter, Muldoon had his first of four off a feed from Wil-liams. After a scoreless first quarter for Delaware, the Blue Hens posted their first goal of the game with 9:12 left in the half. Bell responded with a goal, but Delaware posted their second for a 5-2 score. Feinberg, Muldoon and Hollingsworth had three consecutive goals before Delaware scored to cut Brown’s lead to 8-3.
Brown dominated the third quar-ter as Muldoon scored his third and
fourth of the game, and Williams add-ed another goal. After three quarters, the Bears led 11-3. Burke secured a scoreless third quarter with seven saves in goal.
Walsh and Jeff Foote ’11 opened up the fourth quarter with the two final goals for the Bears, who coasted to a 13-5 victory.
Seligmann and Hollingsworth finished with three assists and a goal each, and Feinberg added two goals and an assist. On defense, Peter Fallon ’11 limited Delaware’s Curtis Dickson to one goal.
“We are starting to play really well as a team, with each piece coming along and improving as the season progresses,” said defenseman Jake Westermann ’10.
The Bears will face off against Divi-sion I newcomer Bryant for the first time ever on Tuesday night in North Smithfield, R.I.
m. lacrosse blows out Delawarecontinued from page 7
ourselves into SDS and other groups,” Emmons said. He added that the fun-damental values and goals of the two groups were similar.
“The vision that inspired people to join SUBU — making student voices heard — has gone on to be really cen-tral to all the work that SDS does on campus,” he said.
Tye said he himself was less loyal to the student union as an organization than he was to groups he had been involved in earlier.
“For me personally, as someone who was involved less and less with the organizing aspects of it over time, it just wasn’t in the same category to me as something like SDS,” he said.
Despite the group’s dissolution, Emmons and Tye are proud of what
it accomplished in its brief time on campus.
“We did facilitate a good amount of dialogue on campus,” Emmons said.
Glassman also credited the group for inspiring conversation and ap-plauded its members for trying to influence university life. “Here’s this group of people excited about working on campus issues,” he said. “It was exciting to see.”
once-popular SUBU now defunctcontinued from page 3
CAmPUS newSMONDAY, MARCH 30, 2009 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD PAgE 9
to do in the past,” he said. The tournament — which was
also a qualifier for the Pan American Collegiate Taekwondo Champion-ships Sparring Team — took place on Saturday and Sunday, March 21 and 22. Competitors clad in white uniforms crowded the floor of Piz-zitola to practice the staccato tran-sitions between stances before the first day’s poomsae contests.
The tournament was divided between poomsae competition on the first day and sparring on the second.
Spectators, including teammates and parents of the athletes, watched the competition from the stands, which were roped off from the six mats in the arena.
David Huie, a senior at Princ-eton University who attended with thirteen of his teammates, said the tournament was running efficiently and on-schedule. Limited seating at Pizzitola meant that athletes had to wait outside the arena, in the Olney-Margolies Athletic Center’s holding area, to be called to their matches, and some competitors said the view-ing area was often crowded.
Ramadan said spectators were not allowed closer to the rings so stretchers could get to injured par-ticipants faster, if necessary. The ex-tra space also allowed for smoother transitions between matches, she
added.“We worked with what we had,”
Yang said of the space limitations at Pizzitola.
preparing to hostAround eighty-five volunteers,
mostly members of Brown taekwon-do, staffed the event. Many only competed in poomsae, then helped with logistics during the sparring portion of the tournament.
Volunteers also served as ring-runners, responsible for ferrying athletes between matches. Vol-unteer ringside scorers watched spars, recording points and keep-ing time with specialized software that displayed match information on computer monitors adjacent to each ring.
The tournament cost more than $30,000, according to Rama-dan, with much of the cost going toward overnight accommodations for tournament referees, use of the Erickson Athletic Complex, catering and equipment.
Yang, who was club president last year when Brown received its bid to host nationals, said that Brown’s status as one of the con-sistently high-ranking taekwondo colleges in the country made it a natural candidate to host the tour-nament.
“We felt it was time, and that our club had the energy and manpower to do it,” she said.
Undertaking nationals as its first tournament to host was neverthe-less unusual, Ramadan said. Stan-ford and MIT both had experience hosting other tournaments before they received bids to plan nationals, she added.
Much of the preparation for the tournament involved negotiating with campus offices and private businesses for lower prices on tour-nament supplies, Ramadan said.
Competitors were charged an entrance fee for the event, which helped to recoup costs, Ramadan said. The club received monetary support from campus offices, in-cluding the Office of the Dean of the College and the Division of Campus Life and Student Services. Two Brown students competed at the tournament free of charge with funding from the Third World Cen-ter and the Sarah Doyle Women’s Center.
Yang said the tournament plan-ners relied heavily on the guidance of the Brown Taekwondo Instructor Board — Brown black-belts who coach other club members — and the club Master, Sung Park ’96.
martial artists host first championshipcontinued from page 1
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editorial & LettersPage 10 | MONDAY, MARCH 30, 2009
The Brown Daily Herald
F R A N N Y C H O I
Brown’s Chinese expansion
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The University just completed another couple of “memorandums of understanding,” this time with the Chinese University of Hong Kong. We hope Brown will capitalize on this opportunity to expand its presence and increase its offerings in China.
In the current economic climate, the internationalization initiative faces serious financial constraints. One recent article (“U. aims to spur ‘knowledge economy’ in R.I.,” March 18) reported that some graduate departments lacking funds have warned international students against applying, and need-blind financial aid for international students — a goal under the Plan for Academic Enrichment — is unlikely to happen in the near future. In light of these limitations, it’s encouraging to see that the University’s priorities are in the right place, at least geographically. China should be at the forefront of the University’s internationalization efforts.
We feel that Brown would benefit from forming ties with other Chinese schools in addition to CUHK. Almost two years ago, Brown established a medical exchange program with Zhejiang University. At the time, Zhejiang’s president Wei Yang PhD’85 said there would be “more collaboration” in the future, and last year, the Corporation approved a $1 million donation to promote exchange between the two schools. The University should consider increasing its involvement with Zhejiang as its next venture into China.
For now, CUHK has plenty to offer. Under the memoranda of under-standing, the University hopes to facilitate exchanges of graduate students and faculty and to create a summer study abroad program that would send students from Brown and CUHK to each campus for up to four weeks.
In the long-term, Brown should build on the summer program and develop full-fledged immersion courses at the CUHK campus similar to existing immersion programs in China offered by Middlebury College and Duke, Harvard and Princeton Universities.
Currently, Brown students studying Mandarin are encouraged to take summer immersion courses abroad, often under programs run by other schools. By hosting an immersion program of its own, Brown could incor-porate courses abroad into its Mandarin curriculum and ensure uniform academic standards. The University would also make immersion programs more attractive to Brown students who would be able to study abroad with a group of their classmates. The University stands to benefit from engagement with Chinese universities, and we hope Brown’s relationship with CUHK is the first step in a much broader project.
Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board. Send comments to [email protected].
Liberal racism is still racism to the editor:
As liberal Brown students are normally very much in tune with the feelings, values and needs of minor-ity groups in America, I was surprised and shocked by Jonathan Topaz’s words (“Washington’s cultural exchange,” March 13). In a shameful attempt to criti-cize the Grand Old Party by claiming unfoundedly that Republicans elected Michael Steele Republican National Committee Chairman due solely to the color of his skin, Topaz instead revealed his own ignorance and bigotry.
To suggest that Steele reached his esteemed po-sition based on his race alone is a grand insult to the African-American community. Topaz writes that “Republicans made it clear that any black man would do” in choosing their committee chairman. On the contrary — Steele is not any black man, nor any man at all for that matter. His impressive history, prior
to his current occupation, involves growing up in a working-class family before attending such prestigious schools as John Hopkins University and Georgetown University, and then eventually becoming Maryland’s first African-American lieutenant governor.
If the United States wishes to progress beyond its racist past, Americans must learn to look beyond skin pigmentation. There was a rightful outcry against Geraldine Ferraro when she claimed Obama’s suc-cess as a presidential candidate was due to preferen-tial treatment toward a black man. Topaz has made the same insensitive and inaccurate claim and such segregating comments are not needed when, at this important moment in U.S. history, the country is making giant steps toward racial equality.
Keith dellagrotta ’10March 18
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opinionsThe Brown Daily Herald
On countless hospital shows, viewers enjoy intense sexual tension between physicians played out during high-pressure medical procedures. These shows often begin with a frantic doctor calling for “four units, stat!” Many viewers won’t give this phrase a second thought, but the doctor is calling for four units of blood, and he or she will generally get it.
From media to reality, there is a funda-mental assumption that blood is available for our use. Even if people don’t consciously acknowledge it, they expect that if they get sick or get into a car accident, their local hospital will be able to treat them using donated blood.
This is not the reality. Blood cannot be manufactured; it must come from another person. Therefore, it is our responsibility to donate blood if we are eligible. Currently, according to the Mayo Clinic, “only 5 percent of eligible donors across the nation donate blood, but the number of transfusions na-tionwide increases by 9 percent every year.” Moreover, over 25 percent of Americans will need a blood transfusion at some point in their lives.
PBS Correspondent Jeff Yastine reports, “Baby boomers and those older, make
more of a habit of donating blood, while younger generations donate blood a lot less frequently.” In fact, Dr. Richard Benjamin, Chief Medical Officer of the American Red Cross, reports that “more hospitals (are) complaining of (blood supply) shortages and there are more times when we’re having to cut our deliveries to hospitals, because we simply don’t have enough of a reserve in the blood centers.”
In casual conversations about blood do-nations, many people have told me they
are afraid to donate because it hurts or be-cause they are afraid of blood. If you are honestly terrified of the procedure, then I do not advise you to do it. But if you are just somewhat nervous, I encourage you to try to donate. I promise, as a person who has had bruises on both arms because the attendant missed my veins, if they mess up you will get over it.
The staff I have encountered at each blood center I’ve donated at has been courteous, gentle and very willing to talk me through
the process. Moreover, the phlebotomists at every center have worked hard to ensure that the process is simple for me. Each drive, including the ones hosted here at Brown, allows me to schedule an appointment in advance at a time convenient for me.
One statistic is thrown around all the time when people talk about donating blood: ev-ery pint of blood can save three lives. Three lives. Look around you. Consider exactly what that phrase means. Remember that, as a generally healthy demographic, college-
age students are, for the most part, unlikely to need blood transfusions. But one, day you might. One in four of the people reading this will likely need a blood transfusion at some point in his or her life. If people don’t donate blood, if our society does not emphasize the practice of blood donation, then we, the future recipients of blood donations, will be out of luck.
Even if you’re lucky enough never to re-quire a blood transfusion, I hazard to guess that a vast number of you have had direct
contact with a person who has been saved by a blood transfusion. Both of my grandmoth-ers received numerous donations during their chemotherapy. They were lucky to have access to blood stores in this country, because it is not the case for everyone
Ultimately, donating blood satisfies the donor in numerous ways. There’s the cycli-cal aspect — if I donate now, maybe I will be able to receive the blood I need in the future. There’s the selfless approach — if I donate I will save a fellow human, which is something I would like to do. And there’s even the body image approach — according to the Mayo Clinic, you burn around 650 Calories by donating a pint of blood.
Not everyone can donate. Some cannot donate for unjust reasons: The American Red Cross’ policy that men who have had sexual relations with other men since 1977 cannot donate blood is discriminatory, coun-terintuitive and imprudent. Yet, for those of you who can donate, I implore you to do so. That only five percent of eligible Americans donate blood is an unacceptable reality — one I believe our generation must change.
Tory Hartmann ’11 is a political sci-ence concentrator from Hillsborough,
N.J. She can be reached at [email protected].
So you want to save a life?
You wouldn’t know it from reading the sports headlines, but there are actually two college basketball tournaments going on right now. After years of decline, and despite a recent effort to revitalize it, the National Invitational Tournament, or NIT, can’t seem to gain a foothold in sports culture.
As March Madness sweeps the nation, the NIT remains shrouded in obscurity. Many of its games are not televised or paid even a fraction of the attention sports journalists dedicate to the NCAA tournament.
In perhaps the most telling example of the NIT’s insignificance, perennial powerhouse Kentucky, having fallen on hard times and facing the prospect of missing March Madness for the first time since 1992, considered reject-ing an invite to the NIT. “We certainly don’t want to be perceived as arrogant, but we also don’t want to lower the standards of what is expected at Kentucky,” athletic director Mitch Barnhart said in an interview with ESPN.
Sports fans and the NCAA can only benefit from a stronger NIT. The tournament has the potential to increase the excitement surround-ing college basketball this time of year.
Rebuilding the tournament will require an increased and sustained effort by the NCAA, which has failed to market the NIT with any-thing approaching the same vigor it reserves for March Madness. But many of the pieces
necessary for an exciting sports event are already in place.
It is true that many of the game’s top play-ers make it to March Madness, like Okla-homa’s Blake Griffin. But many others find themselves in the NIT in any given year. Georgetown’s DaJuan Summers is one of a few probable first-round picks in the next NBA draft whose team accepted an NIT invite. Fan-favorite and the sensation of last year’s March Madness, Davidson’s Stephen Curry, is also playing in the NIT.
The NIT showcases many top programs with storied histories and large fan bases in-
cluding Penn State, Virginia Tech, Kentucky and Florida, to name a few. And by virtue of the selection process for March Madness, most notably the automatic bids that con-ference winners receive, it is all but certain that there will consistently be teams in the NIT better than some playing for the national championship.
This year, for example, Cornell got a seed in the NCAA tournament because they were the Ivy League champions. According to the
Ratings Percentage Index (RPI), a statistical tool used by the NCAA to seed teams in the tournament, Cornell was only the 115th best college basketball team this year. San Diego State, Creighton, UAB, St. Mary’s (Calif.), Il-linois State, and Niagara all finished the season with top 50 RPIs and trips to the NIT.
The talent in the NIT is not as deep as in the NCAA tournament, but the NIT isn’t lacking in excitement. Virginia Tech and Duquesne had a thrilling double-overtime game in the first round, and the Baylor-Auburn quarter-final match-up was one of many games in this year’s NIT that came right down to the
final seconds. Buzzer-beaters, which have provided many
of the NCAA tournament’s most storied memo-ries, are no stranger to the NIT either. Penn State star Talor Battle drained an incredible three-pointer as time expired to send his first-round game to overtime, and the highlight could easily compare with the most exciting moments from this year’s NCAA tourney.
Why then, with all the makings of a fun tournament, does the NIT continue to gener-
ate little or no excitement? When the NCAA settled an anti-trust lawsuit several years ago by taking over the NIT, it promised a new ap-proach that would elevate the tournament’s status. But it doesn’t seem like the NCAA is actually taking this project very seriously.
The NIT’s stigma won’t be overcome when nearly half the tournament’s first- and second-round games aren’t televised. Many others are relegated to ESPNU. In fact, despite having a huge contract with the NCAA to provide NIT television coverage, ESPN’s online NCAA basketball page features barely any informa-tion about the tournament.
Unless the NCAA makes a concerted effort to market the NIT, broadcast more games, and get NIT covered on major sports outlets, the tournament, the tournament will continue to suffer because fans won’t have the opportunity to get into it. For many, March Madness is an exciting time because there is such high potential for thrilling plays and tight games. These fans won’t reject exciting NIT action simply because it is the NIT.
I am confident I am not alone in preferring to watch the close first-round NIT game be-tween Creighton and Bowling Green over the 39-point thumping Louisville recently gave Ari-zona. But the NIT game wasn’t even televised. Hopefully the NCAA will soon recognize that a consolation tournament still has something to offer sports fans.
Dan Davidson ’11, a WNBA fanatic, can be reached at
In defense of the nIt
Sports fans and the NCAA can only benefit from a stronger NIT. The tournament has the potential to increase the excitement surrounding college
basketball this time of year.
Blood cannot be manufactured; it must come from another person. It is our responsibility to
donate blood if we are eligible.
TORYHARTMANN
opinions coluMnist
DAN DAVIDSONopinions coluMnist
Monday, MarCH 30, 2009 page 12
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4 pM — Romano Prodi — “Is there a
New Role for Europe in Today’s World?”
Salomon Center 101
7 pM — Semana Chicana Presents: Joe
Hernandez-Kolski, Salomon 001
toMorrow, MarCH 31
6:30 pM — 9th Annual Casey Shearer
Memorial Lecture, “Equal Play: Title
IX and Public Policy,” Salomon 101
7 pM — “The Ends of Slavery” Lec-
ture, Smith-Buonanno Hall 201
ACROSS1 Olfactory
enticement6 Fashion show
strutter11 Chugalug’s
opposite14 65-Down-
strengtheningexercise
15 Online surfers,e.g.
16 Cyberaddress,briefly
17 Franklin’salmanac-writingalter ego
19 “Right to beararms” gp.
20 Flower holder21 Scarlett of Tara22 Port in Yemen23 Detroit labor org.25 Furious27 Young, promising
fellow32 Hosp. staffer33 1/12 of a foot34 Conspiring band37 Solemn vow39 Woman’s golf
garment42 Nevada city43 Before surg.45 Consider47 Enjoy Aspen48 Beneficent
biblical traveler52 Cocktail maker54 Actor Affleck55 “__ brillig, and the
slithy ...”: Carroll56 Beautiful, in
Bologna59 Business garb63 Dine64 F. Scott
Fitzgerald titlecharacter, with“the”
66 “You __ here”67 Paris Hilton’s
sister68 Nigeria neighbor69 Hosp. VIPs70 Theater employee71 Garden shovel
DOWN1 Nile snakes
2 Civil uprising3 Nebraska tribe4 Cooing sound5 Mo. when 1040s
are due6 “__ Ado About
Nothing”7 Labor Dept. arm8 Sweetheart9 Grocery trip, say
10 Leary’s turn-on11 Church garb12 Flawed, as sale
mdse.13 Hangar
occupant18 Hawkeyes,
statewise22 Clamorous24 Sushi tuna26 “Dancing with the
Stars” network27 Broadway
disaster28 On __ with: equal
to29 Blends together
into a whole30 “Bleah!”31 Valerie Harper
sitcom35 “Puppy Love”
singer Paul
36 Pork cut38 Fish catchers40 Dream state
acronym41 Pekoe packet44 “The Raven”
poet46 Desert Storm
chow, initially49 Rubbish50 Oration51 Arched foot part
52 Second-stringsquad
53 Emmy or Oscar57 Tahoe, for one58 Astronomical
distance meas.60 Annapolis inst.61 Footnote abbr.62 Daly of “Cagney
& Lacey”64 Wildebeest65 Tummy muscles
By Donna S. Levin(c)2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc. 03/30/09
03/30/09
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
RELEASE DATE– Monday, March 30, 2009
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword PuzzleEdited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
the one about Zombies | Kevin grubb
alien weather Forecast | Stephen Lichenstein and Adam Wagner
enigma twist | Dustin Foley
sHarpe reFeCtory
lunCH — Savory Chicken Stew, Vegan
Brown Rice Pilaf with Mushrooms, Sea-
food gumbo, Dal Cali with Yogurt
dinner — Roast Beef Au Jus, Creamy
Rosemary Polenta, Spice Crusted
Chicken, Macaroni and Cheese
verney-woolley dining Hall
lunCH — Bacon Ranch Chicken
Sandwich, Baked Macaroni and
Cheese, Butterscotch Chip Bars
dinner — Spinach Pie Casserole,
Italian Meatballs with Pasta, Saigon
Beef and Ham with Veggies
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