the millenium development goals

THE STUDENT WEEKLY SINCE 196909.30.10

THE MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS

Inside: Peretz, The Town, Gordon Brown, and fall TV premieres.

09.30.10 vol. xlii, no. 4

2 [email protected] 09.30.10 • The Harvard Independent

The Indy prepares to save the world.

Cover art by PATRICIA FLORESCU

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Co-PresidentsPatricia Florescu ‘11

Susan Zhu ‘11

Editor-in-ChiefFaith Zhang ‘11

Staff Writers Arhana Chattopadhyay ‘11 Peter Bacon ‘11

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NEWS3 The MillenniuM DevelopMenT Goals

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ForuM5 no holDs BarreD

6 locaTinG Yourself on The weB

arTs7-8 fall Tv preMieres

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[email protected] 3The Harvard Independent • 09.30.10

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Miles to go on the Millennium Development Goals before we sleep. By YUYING LUO

You would not be alone in thinking that the goals set were lofty, and probably difficult to achieve now that we are two-thirds of the way to the deadline set a decade ago. And indeed, it is a grim reality that we are off-track on meeting many of the benchmarks defined by the MDGs.

Yes We Can

Last week, a three-day summit w a s h e l d i n N e w Y o r k between September 20-22

to evaluate the progress of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Attracting a list of the who’s who in global politics, including President Barack Obama, the high-level summit received surprisingly minimal media coverage. Perhaps it is not at all that surprising considering that the majority of the general public probably have not even have heard of the MDGs — but in this case, awareness is not an indication of significance.

The MDGs are composed of eight international development goals that operate on a global and local scale. They aim to 1) eradicate extreme poverty and hunger 2) achieve universal primary education 3) promote gender equality and empower women 4) reduce childhood mortality 5) improve maternal health 6) combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases 7) ensure environmental sustainability and 8) develop a global partnership for development.

The MDGs were adopted by all United Nations member states in the year 2000. At that time, all countries pledged to have met these goals by 2015. You would not be alone in thinking that the goals set were lofty, and probably difficult to achieve now that we are two-thirds of the way to the deadline set a decade ago. And indeed, it is a grim reality that we are off-track on meeting many of the benchmarks defined by the MDGs.

Countless statistics like the fact that over 20,000 children continue to die each day from illness make it difficult to pat ourselves on the back for the progress that has been achieved. A global financial recession has depleted countries’ resources and restricted many of their abilities to contribute to funding. A looming problem with accountability and transparency

has emerged at the forefront of the debate over donor reluctance. Many recipient countries are dealing with continued political turmoil and instability, resulting in interrupted provision of and access to services. A lack of reliable infrastructure also casts the sustainability of current projects in doubt.

It is easy to lose hope that the future the MDGs envision will ever come to fruition. The field of international development is

notorious for breeding compassion fatigue. Yet it is also indisputable that there has been progress. Global poverty rates have declined a percentage point since the inception of various MDG projects. Hundreds of thousands of children are in school. The fight against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria has had remarkable success over the last decade, thanks in large part to the establishment of the Global Fund,

and more people are on antiretroviral treatment than ever before. And, despite the economic recession, a historic pledge of $40 billion from governments, private companies, and non-profit organizations was made at the summit to improve child and maternity health across the globe.

There seemed to be a shared sense of mixed sentiments after the summit. To be sure, there is much to be done, but a serious evaluation

of what projects have and have not been successful is definitely needed to set the stage for future project implementations. Moreover, there is concern that we will only see a fraction of the $40 billion pledged at the conference—after all, there is no global governing body that will punish governments or companies for breaking the promises they made. But politicians and the private sector alike can be held accountable by one

body: the populous. At these high-level summits, there

is always a sense of disengagement from the general public. Mass media has inured us to images of starving children and unthinkable human rights atrocities. Paradoxically, the immediacy of such stories has put a paralyzing distance between our reality and the reality of those living in developing countriess. Such a distance is perilous, but perhaps it is needed so we do not have to face the stark reality that children do die every minute from preventable diseases or that half this world lives on less than five dollars a day.

Rock stars like Bono and political heavyweights like Bill Clinton have all been championing the MDGs for years. But it is obvious that they can’t do everything. Change, as clichéd as it sounds, does begin on the individual level. The impetus of future global change is contained within people l ike you or me: small contributions from a larger population—whether it be monetary or through voluntary efforts. If you are skeptical, consider this: even in the economic downturn, over half of Americans made contributions to Haiti. Regardless of who you are or what the situation is, there is always something you can do to help. This fact is routinely disregarded because it is so easy to dismiss the scale of impact of an individual’s effort. But the multiplying effect of individual efforts is undeniable and unparalleled.

UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon expressed the urgency of meeting the MDGs, “We must not fail the billions who look to the international community to fulfill the promise of the Millennium Declaration for a better world.” It sounds like a utopian vision—but better a vision than none at all.

Yuying Luo ’12 (yluo@fas) wants those governments and companies to pinky-swear.


News

At 16, the rugby star gordon brown made history as the youngest student to ever enroll at the University of Edinburgh. Blind in one

eye following a sports injury, his titles evolved to include university lecturer, Member of Parliament, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Capital letters are the trend in power designations.

Brown began his Malcolm Wiener Lecture in Political Economy to an overflowing audience at the John F. Kennedy Forum on September 23 with the illuminating confession that “When you go into politics, rationality and objectivity are left behind.”

The Scottish MP moved beyond this platitude (that seemed to ring frightfully true for the American political system) to address what he deemed the “first crisis of the global age.” The recent global financial meltdown Brown linked with the 1929 Great Depression in saying, “Then, as now, governments were amateurs in a world with great challenges to be met.” He called for new policies in response to a serious shift in the global framework. “For over 200 years Europe and the United States have dominated the global economic scene,” Brown asserted. “This is the first time since the Industrial Revolution that they are responsible for a minority of investment, trade, goods and services.”

Brown’s solution to this worrisome trend simply and unsurprisingly was to have open access to Asian markets. It seems unreasonable, Brown claimed, that Western manufacturers have been “ignoring” 60% of the world’s population. He emphasized, “There has been an unbalanced and unsustainable discrepancy between consumption and manufacturing.” The answer, driven by American leadership, would entail opening up markets in Asia to an increased active consumption of American and European goods. Referring to potential, job creation, and progression, Brown favored global reorganization for global problems, as the time for nationalism and inwardly focused countries “has passed.” He rejected protectionist trade policies like sanction, bans, and import quotas, citing them as ineffective and, in the long-run, counterproductive for trade, as such measures only increase hostilities on both sides. He stressed that the glory days for American and European manufacturing were not in the past; so long as new consumer markets could be opened in newly-developing Asia, particularly in countries like China and India which are building new middle-classes, manufacturing in both hemispheres could benefit from mutual, open trade.

Such sentiment goes against the legislation passed on September 29 by the United States House of Representatives – H.R. 2378, the Currency

Reform for Fair Trade Act, would impose sanctions on China for its “undervalued or overvalued (misaligned)” currency based on the U.S. dollar. In the world of sticks and carrots, unfortunately, sticks rarely work. Imposing sanctions on China will mean that China can find other markets for its products – who doesn’t want cheap goods? – and, in retaliation, might now be less willing to open up its newfound consumer markets to America. Luckily for the US, it’s not Japan. Otherwise, retaliation would be guaranteed. For those who are unwilling to believe that the Chinese middle class would ever have wanted anything to do with American products anyway when so much cheap manufacturing occurs in China itself, here’s a fact: General Motors is still alive today because it found a new market in China – GM sales in China increased by 67 percent in 2009 - to replace declining (dead?) sales in the States. Perhaps our own legislature should think beyond short-term election results and actually think about what will be good for our country in the long-run. The manufacturing industry might like politicians a bit more this November (let’s face it – who would actually like them this November?), but it will still be at operating under actual potential without a new market that, unlike the current American market, is willing to spend money.

Still, as H.R. 2378 shows that Brown’s economic recommendations are controversial, the former PM addressed the problem of risk management. The financial sector took risks without sufficient underlying capital and, Brown argues, “The values for fairness, enterprise, competition, and responsibility need to be brought to markets and government.” Strikingly demonstrating his political tact, the current MP then called on optimism. He spoke to the formation of a global constitution that would contract the stated morals into the global economy. This constitution would further eliminate or heavily sanction “tax havens” to ensure that finance is transparent and liquidated.

Allowing that his idea for a global revolution and a global constitution may sound implausible and even impossible to today’s world, Gordon Brown spoke to what seemed impossible to the world just 20 years ago: ending apartheid in South Africa and collapse of the Soviet Union. Brown then passionately affirmed, “Today I feel fortunate to represent a jobless constituency.”

Art Bartolozzi ’12 (abartol@fas) doesn’t believe in revolutions without dancing.

Susan Zhu ’11 (szhu@fas) wishes we had President’s Questions and athletic intellectuals in Congress.

By ARTHUR BARTOLOZZI and SUSAN ZHU

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown proposes a global revolution at the IOP.

Moving Forward the Right Honourable Way

SUSAN ZHU/Independent




indyForum

By SAM BARR

NO HOLDS BARRED

HARVARD'S SELECTIVE ANTI-BIGOTRY

Harvard’s position on the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, banning the group

from organizing on campus until “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) is overturned, has always struck me as a bad idea. It just doesn’t make sense to punish ROTC cadets for the decisions of anti-gay politicians.

Still, you have to admire the s t r e ng t h o f H a r v a r d ’ s s t a n d against DADT (and on behalf of the DREAM Act, for that matter) when you compare it with the moral mushiness recently on display in the case of Martin Peretz. Earlier th is month , Peretz , the New Republic’s editor-in-chief, made some characteristically sweeping denunciations of Muslims, which coincided awkwardly with, first, a plan to donate a Harvard research fellowship in his name, and second, a plan to honor him at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Social Studies program.

Now, we have seen that the university will go to great lengths to defend its gay students—banning all groups that would discriminate against them, even when that means hurting cadets who may very well oppose DADT. And we have seen that Harvard will protect i ts immigrant students when their presence in this country is threatened.

S o , i n t h i s c l i m a t e o f Islamophobia, with mainstream politicians comparing moderate Muslims to Nazis and terrorists, surely Harvard wil l renounce Peretz at least as squarely as it

has renounced DADT and anti-immigrant fear-mongering? Surely re fus ing the Peretz research fellowship is not too much to ask?

Surely nothing. Harvard is going to keep the money, thank you very much. And reports that Peretz was “d is inv i ted” f rom speaking at the Social Studies event were exaggerated. In a September 21 email to Social Studies concentrators, Professor Anya Bernstein said that Peretz’s anti-Muslim statements are the “diametric opposite of what we in the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies stand for,” but she reiterated that Peretz would still be honored at the event. (As indeed he was, this past Saturday.)

A statement from the university tried to pass this off as a brave stand for freedom of speech: “We are ultimately stronger as a university when we maintain our commitment to the most basic freedoms that enable the robust exchange of ideas.” The irony, of course, is that Peretz’s opposition to those basic freedoms is precisely what got him in trouble. He said on his blog earlier this month that it is hard for him to “pretend that [Muslims] are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.” He apologized, as he had to, but he did not apologize for the statement that “routine and random bloodshed... defines [Muslims’] brotherhood” or that “Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims.”

So the question becomes, do we

need to be tolerant of intolerance? Harvard’s answer is clear: only if there’s money involved. No need to tolerate the military’s intolerance of gays or the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s intolerance of illegal immigrants. But Peretz’s intolerance of Muslims is just part of the “robust exchange of ideas.”

What should the more principled a m o n g u s c o n c l u d e ? O n t h e Harvard Political Review’s blog, Max Novendstern ‘12 proposes that we adopt what he calls the “intent/effect principle”: speech that hurts others by design is clearly repugnant to the university atmosphere, but speech that hurts others unintentionally is “the direct consequence of diversity itself, of high contact struggles between people of genuine difference.”

N o v e n d s t e r n ’ s p a e a n t o “ the unease o f the new, the uncomfortable, the forbidden” is admirable and articulate, but his intent/effect principle is, in the end, unworkable. The line between what is hurtful-by-design and what is hurtful-in-effect could never be drawn reliably. Intent to harm is a very high bar, and a lot of reprehensible people and statements would not clear it.

The key, of course, is that we aren’t talking about censoring Peretz or taking him “away from the table,” to borrow Novendstern’s terminology. We’re just talking about refusing to honor him. Peretz is welcome to come to campus to express his views, and anybody who shouts him down or disrupts his

speech should be ashamed. But the Peretz fellowship fund

is different. It will inevitably bear the university’s seal of approval. Yes, of course there have been problematic donations in Harvard’s past; just imagine how many donors must have owned slaves. But the modern university is a more self-conscious place, and that’s a good thing—it produces an atmosphere of inclusivity.

The editors of the Harvard Crimson downplay such symbolic concerns; for them, all that matters is the tangible good that the Peretz fellowship might do. But symbolism matters: it helps to define what our community values, and what it doesn’t. And if ever there was a time when Harvard needed to take a symbolic stand, to demonstrate its values to the world, this was it. I can only imagine how difficult the last couple of months have been for Muslims at Harvard and elsewhere, to see themselves vilified, their holy book desecrated, their motives suspected.

In this context, Harvard’s Muslim community deserved more than perfunctory noises about the evil of bigotry. It deserved something on par with the support Harvard has offered to gay men and women through its opposition to DADT, and to illegal immigrants through its support of the DREAM Act. As an Economist blogger recently pointed out, the Peretz affair and others like it help to “delineate the boundaries of acceptable discourse.” Unfortunately, Harvard has only helped to blur them.


Forum

Come and Get MeLocating yourself in the age of the Internet.

By GARY GERBRANDT

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

I never thought i’d be the mayor of anything, but thanks to the magic of the Internet, I certainly

proved my critics wrong. Of course, I’ve never been elected to that office by anyone, and I’ve already entered a contentious battle over territory with one of my friends. Thanks to Google, Apple, and a little company called Foursquare, my online self has gained a substantive local dimension, and now everyone knows where I am.

You can’t do much on the Internet today without being made aware of your location. The technology is nothing new; your ISP can identify your IP address, which is unique to the network you use, and match it to your zip code. Advertisers and websites track your browsing history, and they can figure out your general area to target ads more specifically. For example, if you Google “dentists,” you wind up with dozens of local results: classified ads in the post-yellow pages era. All of them are a few minutes away from you. It’s convenient, hardly invasive, and even a bit excitingly futuristic.

However, location for the purposes of advertising is a relatively primitive art. The ability to determine one’s location to closer than a few dozen blocks is new: mobile networks have been able to triangulate calls based on the cell towers used for most of the past decade, but their users have only been able to figure out where they are since the middle of the naughties. I remember using my father’s clunky Blackberry to “pinpoint” myself (within a few miles) on Mapquest four years ago, and it was indeed exciting to see the vague, nebulous circle of certainty. Then I realized that the map was completely wrong. It was still pretty fascinating.

Since then, mobile phone companies have developed the technology further. Apple’s 2008 introduction of GPS and WiFi-based location to the iPhone and iPod touch led to a rapid, competitive change in the mobile world. Research in Motion added the same features to the Blackberry soon after, as did most phones using Google’s then-new Android operating

system. Today, it’s hard to find any phone which does more than text and make calls that doesn’t have some location-based features. Companies like Skyhook Wireless, which indexes WiFi hotspots based on their locations, and those great guys in the Department of Defense, who developed the GPS system in the seventies, have seen their technologies pushed to the limit.

Over the past few years, start-ups have been pushing new applications that make use of their users’ locations. Recently, the social Web has become saturated with everyone’s location. From lesser-known programs like Gowalla, Brightkite, Google Latitude, SCVNGR, and Loopt, to those which have incorporated location as an additional perk, like Flickr, YouTube, Blogger, Twitter, Yelp, and, recently, Facebook, everyone knows where everyone else is, all the time. One of the first location-aware applications was Dodgeball: someone w o u l d t e x t t h e i r location to the central server, and its response would indicate their nearby friends. Google bought Dodgeball in 2005, but its founders left in 2007.

Instead, in 2009, they created the popular Foursquare . Three million users have used Foursquare to “check in” to buildings, places, and restaurants, with the hopes of becoming the person who visits most frequently — the mayor. You can earn perks, take advantage of specials like free S t a r b u c k s c o f f e e , and collect “badges” which demonstrate your real-world bar-hopping prowess. It’s surprisingly fun for the smaller group of more active users, including

myself. Right now, I’m the mayor of Thayer

Hall — I make sure to check in every morning when I get up — and I was the mayor of Annenberg for about a week. I’m six days away from stealing the mayoralty of Lamont from someone named Reed. (You’re going down, Reed.) Whenever I check in, Foursquare sends an update to Facebook and Twitter, so everyone can keep tabs on me as they wish. It’s a strange mix of entertainment and creepiness; only a few years ago, it would have been insane to put your location on the Internet, considering there are so many perverts out there (as my mother constantly reminds me when she sees I’ve checked in to that pedophile-infested cesspool we call a library).

Now, though, we live in the age

of too much information. Everyone is disturbingly aware of every social move their friends make, thanks to the wonderful stalking resources of Facebook. We already know who’s dating whom, when someone is hungover at work, and it takes five seconds to scroll through a News Feed and keep apprised of the daily drama. Foursquare and its many location-aware brethren are here to connect our creepy online behaviour with the real world. They’re an interesting, but logical, development in the world of social media, and they’re likely to become more prominent in the near future.

And, hey, they make creeping a lot easier.

Gary Gerbrandt ’14 (garygerbrandt@college) is ready to take advantage of this brave new world.


indyArts

New Beginnings

By SAYANTAN DEB

courtesy of wikipedia.org

A look at three much-anticipated fall TV premieres.

New pilots, old favorites, and hopefully nail-biting beginnings add up to what

promises to be a great television season this fall. So, did three of the most anticipated returns live up to the hype and hoopla from their season finales and flashy promos?

From Paris, With Gossip

In the much-anticipated fourth season premiere of Gossip Girl, the Upper East Siders have left

familiar turf. Their new playground: Paris. That, however, doesn’t change the players. There’s still fashion therapy, now in Rue de Vouillé instead of Madison Avenue. There’s still an art gallery, now at the Louvre instead of the MoMA. And there’s still a dunk in a fountain — just not at Central Park. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s recap where we left our favorite bunch of desolate twenty-somethings at the tragic end of last season.

Nate and Serena, our favorite high school lovebirds, are so over. Dan and Vanessa, the Lower East Side pseudo-bohemians of NYU, have bid each other adieu. Blair and Chuck, the volatile valentines, are so done. And Jenny Humphrey, the young Queen

Machiavelli, having left her throne at the steps of the Met for the quaint suburbs of Hudson, is over and out.

That’s where our “Belles du Jour” pick up this season. While last season quite literally ended with a bang, this season starts off slower. Serena is getting over Nate quite successfully, thanks to a never ending line of Parisian waiters and Vespa-riding males. Nate has also been successful in fending off the emotional pangs of his umpteenth break-up with the help of Chuck’s little black book, as well as women in black lingerie — but it’s all in desperation. Nate needs to get over S, and I would really like to see him man up this season. The sad lover boy image is frankly getting a bit old, and the writers need to realize that the UES-ers are not in high school anymore.

The only one worse off than Nate is our poor B. She stares at her favorite Manet all day and indulges in chocolat divine by the Seine, until a prince pretending to be a pauper — or in this case a chauffeur pretending to be a prince — enters the scene, only to scorn her. So when the news of Serena’s acceptance to Columbia hits her along with the prospect of having to live in the shadow of Serena’s celebrity, it’s almost understandable

when she throws S into a fountain. While I love that S and B are back to being the lovable frenemies at their catfight-ridden best, they are missing their usual spunk.

Exiled to Brooklyn with Georgina, and little baby Milo (who may or may not be his son), Dan is ready to stay until Vanessa finds out. Daddy Humphrey is made aware of the fact through Georgina’s flair for the dramatic. I too am thankful for Georgina’s flair; she is one of the few redeeming factors in this otherwise clichéd storyline. With a sketchy phone call and devilish smile, she is back to her devious ways. I just hope baby daddy/ex-Lonely Boy Dan is smart enough to figure it out soon.

By the end of the episode, especially after Chuck’s entrance, momentum is building. He has mysteriously adopted the name Henry and successfully recovered from the mugging in Prague. He has also found his way to the city of love with a new lady friend by his side. Chuck’s mysterious summer, coupled with a newfound good boy image, makes for great intrigue. I want to know where baby Bass is headed from here.

We are left wanting more, but one does wish there was more of an edge to the episode that followed such a

dramatic finale. The new scenery makes the episode seem fresh, which it certainly isn’t if judged on content. But as a Gossip Girl fan, I’m not complaining. Our favorite characters are back, if not with a bang, and there’s just enough interest generated for me to tune in next week. Verdict: XoXo.

My Fair Grey’s

I am just going to come out and say it: season five and the earlier part of season six of Grey’s Anatomy

were a disappointment. Scratch that. A big disappointment — but just when I was about to give up on the show, something clicked, and Grey’s found its voice again. The episodes became edgier, wittier, and after the incredible season finale, I was left hoping that this new Grey’s isn’t just a transient upswing, but is here to stay. The season premiere lives up to my hope, and in several instances transcends my expectations.

My favorite aspect of the episode is its narrative structure. There is a new doctor in town, and he is in charge of evaluating the surgeons after the traumatic shooting in last season’s finale and determining if they can go


Arts

back into surgery. The story shifts between the doctor’s evaluation of the surgeons and specific instances when the surgeons had to face their trauma in the time that followed the shooting.

My favorite instance is Lexie Grey’s nervous breakdown. The way she rants off different prognoses until she ultimately reaches her breaking point is thrilling. I was never a fan of her character when she was introduced, but Lexie has grown on me. In this episode, she has finally delivered a performance of the same caliber as much of the seasoned cast. She not only explores the vulnerable side of Lexie through the breakdown, but she also portrays Lexie’s idiosyncrasies with aplomb. During the group counseling, her definition of “mass murder,” reflective of her photographic memory as well as the trauma she has suffered, is clear in her eyes. Later, when she tells off Alex, it is finally clear that Lexie Grey has finally blossomed into an individual, instead of fading into the ensemble.

Alex Karev has broken up with Lexie, and he refuses to remove the bullet lodged in his chest. He has gone back to being the arrogant, cocky Alex of season one, and after a lot of sappy Alex in the previous seasons, I think it is a refreshing change. He is the character I would love to hate this season. Another refreshing change this season is in Christina’s character. She has always been the doer — the strong, self-made surgeon — who can even operate with a gun to her head. It is indeed quite engaging to see her transformation into a much softer character (one reminiscent of Izzie Stevens, I might add). Sandra Oh is brilliant as the vulnerable Christina, who just wants to decide between lilies and peonies for her wedding. This is another character to look out for this season.

A bromance was long overdue for this show and we finally get it with a potential friendship between Hunt and Shepherd. Arizona and Teddy also seem to be bonding over their relationship woes, and this too has the potential to turn into a good friendship. After what felt like ages, the writers have given some screen time to developing friendships instead of just relationships, which is a very welcome change.

One negative to this episode was the lack of medicine. It is understandable, since the episode focused on the surgeons. At the same time, I would like to see more medicine on this show. Hopefully the next episode will deliver. Also, I feel that Chandra Wilson overdid her part. While it is understandable that the shooting has had a huge impact on her, I felt that her “tape and glue” monologue is too melodramatic. This one sequence

seems out of place in this otherwise sharp and subtle episode. Patrick Dempsey plays his part well, but the writers need to justify his change into an adrenaline junkie. The transformation was too swift. Maybe they did this on purpose, as later episodes will deal with the larger issue of the miscarriage. Hopefully, the character gets a decent arc. Even after six seasons, I still feel that Derek is the one of the lesser-known, overlooked characters. This might be a good season to delve into who he is beyond his relationship with Meredith.

Overall, Grey’s has finally turned the corner. While the past two seasons turned it into a sappy soap opera, this season promises to bring back the edginess of its early days. If you are one of the many fans who left the show, this would be a good time to tune back in. If you are one of those who were able to remain loyal like me, this season promises to reward us. Verdict: Let’s wait and watch.

Revenge of the Gleeks

With great success comes great expectations, and this is the case with Glee. When

Glee debuted, it was a dark horse. A musical about high school outcasts who sing their way through the trials of adolescence sounds like neither a winning nor an original concept. However, embracing archetypes and unapologetically playing up the sap made for great TV. Add a talented ensemble cast and some brilliant actors (in particular Jane Lynch as Sue Sylvester), and you have the breakout show of the year. This speedy path to success, however, brought Glee a lot of deriders, and the nay-sayers predicted that Glee was just a fad. Critics were all too willing to predict Glee’s fall, and the premiere of season 2 became the acid test.

As a self-professed gleek, I am happy to say that the season premiere of Glee lives up to all expectations, remains true to its essence, and introduces some layered storylines that have the potential to make this season even better than the last. In typical Glee fashion, the first five minutes of the show embraces its critics as a blogger confronts the glee club members about the criticisms people have posted on his blog. Glee member Kurt strikes back, telling the blogger and all of his anonymous posters to “get a life.” Then he receives the trademark slushie-in-face treatment. That’s when you know Glee is back.

The highlight of the episode comes after the title card, and what a highlight it is. The Cheerios and the Glee Club are facing budget cuts.

The reason: Coach Biest. The episode manages to give the character a lot of substance in just one hour. She is a tough woman who has a soft side. In theory, she should be able to identify with the outcasts of the Glee Club — but she is met with a cold reception by Sue and Will. This turns her into even more of a B...iest, and she eventually kicks football quarterback and Glee lead Finn off the football team. At the same time, you can’t help but feel sorry for the character. What makes her introduction even better is the coalition that forms between Will and Sue as they try to team up against her. This triangle has a lot of potential, and I hope the writers will use this great dynamic wisely.

I also loved the shades of gray that were introduced in Rachel’s character. She was too much of a goody two-shoes in the first season, but now we finally get to see her dark side. The claws come out when she faces competition in the form of Sunshine Corazon. Their cover of “Telephone” has already become one of my favorite Glee moments, heightened only by Sue’s “shut up!” at the end. Quinn is also back to being Queen Bee, and I am glad. The best part of Quinn’s character was her arrogance, and when she dons her Cheerio costume, you know she is back at the top of the pyramid.

While I am ecstatic that Glee excels in most of the episode, it is not without flaws. Sue is still Sue, which is great, but at the same time, I hope we get to see some new sides to her character this season. While we love the sort of dumb sweet jock image that Finn portrays, this episode takes it a bit too far. Does he really think that you can use a guy in a wheelchair as a battering ram during a football game? The writers need to make Finn, just a little bit more...let’s say, bright. Also, Sam, the new character who is a football jock shy about opening up to his artistic side, seems to be a copy of Finn’s character. While I am all for Glee embracing stereotypes, why is it repeating them? I hope that the writers have something more interesting planned for the character. Finally, while the creators had promised that the supporting characters will be getting more screen time, this episode barely gives the supporting characters any lines (barring Kurt in the introduction scene.) Every one of the actors is brilliant, and I hope that this season explores their characters more.

Overall, this episode lives up to the expectations from the previous season. In the case of Glee, that is definitely saying a lot. There are some interesting new characters, as well as some new dynamics with tremendous potential. The chemistry between

the characters is still amazing and importantly, Sue is still feisty. All of this leads me to the verdict: Get your Glee On!

Sayantan Deb ’14 (sayantandeb@college) is looking forward to seeing how the season develops.


indyArts

Time To Hit Up The Town

On e t h i n g m o s t h a r v a r d students will probably enjoy about the movie The Town is

seeing the glimpses of Cambridge and our local haunts flash past as a backdrop to a bank robbery and other escapades. Another thing most students will probably enjoy is the movie itself.

The Town delivers everything it promises in the preview, from the car chases and explosions to FBI agent debriefings. The shocking thing was that it did all of it without overindulgence. Instead of focusing on the cliché drama of the chase, The Town centered on the interconnected lives of the individuals, lending a very real feeling to the movie.

A l m o s t e v e r y s c e n e w a s underplayed, leaving room for emotional tension and the bare realities of a difficult life. Careful acting, a muted color palate and sharp darks and lights made the pace indeterminable at times.

The movie is set in Charlestown, the town allegedly from which the most criminals and bank robbers have come. It centers on Ben Affleck as Doug MacRay, a tough yet accessible robber whose way of life was cemented for him by

the people he grew up with and the place in which he lives. After one heist during which the bank manager (Claire Keesey played by Rebecca Hall) is taken as a spur-of-the-moment hostage, Doug is caught between two worlds as he falls in love with her. As Doug tries to get out, matters are complicated when the FBI starts the chase and Doug finds he is more entrenched in the workings of Charlestown than he had previously realized.

I know I ’m watching a good movie when halfway through I can’t remember which feelings are mine and which belong to the characters in the movie, and this is just what The Town does. Little by little it becomes real. It pulls you in, without using flash, to make you buy into the story as it unfolds. Even from behind a nun mask, it was possible to see the change in the direction of the movie as characters made difficult decisions. Ben Affleck’s latest has all the elements of violent reality and drama without pushing anything over the edge.

The romance too is underplayed, something audiences who are sick of overhyped romantic comedies

will appreciate. Doug and Claire’s relationship is half the driving force of the plot and half the showcase for the tensions and dangers of the life Doug leads.

The actors- who at first seemed just to be doing a good job of playing regular people- came through with true emotion and energy and actually did a great job of acting well-written characters. It can truly be said that Ben Affleck has done justice to a difficult role. He brought to life what could have been a flat and simple character without using it to propagate Ben Affleck as a brand. The character’s changing emotions are plain, but never too explicit or dramatic. The characters became close to the audience but did not need to be endearing. And many of them were certainly not. Jeremy Renner plays James Coughlin, whose tough-as-nails attitude is only to be expected but has surprising depth.

Blake Lively steps up to the plate to play a character very different from her usual upscale prep girl role in “Gossip Girls.” She plays her character for who she is: a slightly sad, sincere girl who is much too

young to be a mother. Meanwhile, Rebecca Hall is mostly enjoyable but not impressive. She becomes the every-girl she needs to be to build the base of the movie but never seems to shine forth as an independent or developed character.

The Town strikes a great balance- between the harshness of reality and the grand sweep of the movies, showcased in a couple of epic nighttime shots of Boston and Fenway Park. Some unexpected dramatic irony is funny without being too obviously comic relief. And there is very little relief. As they say, “it gets real…real fast.” As star and director, Affleck aims to bring out all the tension of the tough situations each character finds him or herself in.

As far as action and drama films go, this one is far ahead of the game, which is enough reason to see it. Of course, if you just want to see Ben Affleck dressed as a T worker, that’s enough reason too.

Zena Mengesha ’14 (mengesha@college) just wants Ben Affleck to know that if he’s reading this --- well, her email’s right there.

Ben Affleck’s newest thriller delivers all the right punches.By ZENA MENGESHA


SportS

Changing the Game

Fans aren’t the only ones affected by the economic downturn.

By BRETT GIBLIN

courtesy of wikipedia.org

P rofessional sports in america are b ig bus iness . Thus , when the recession hit and

continued into 2010, teams in professional sports were affected like any other industry, and the leagues and teams were forced to find ways to survive. One of the easiest ways to examine some of the effects of the financial crises on sports and how franchises reacted to them is to see how attendance revenues mandated the actions of Major League Baseball teams. According to the baseball business website the bizofbaseball.com, attendance figures for the MLB in 2009 and (projected) 2010 were down roughly 6.9 per cent, or just over 6 million fans, from record highs in 2007 and 2008. Although these figures hardly seem to spell doom or gloom for the major emagues, they must be

understood in the proper context. With new stadiums opened in the Bronx, Queens, and the Twin Cities, drops in attendance for many small market teams have been cushioned by the honeymoon effect of sellouts at these new ballparks. As a result, many teams were forced to maintain their viability in the face of decreased revenue in a variety of ways — through promotions, creative ticket packages, and putting the best product possible on the field.

In baseball, the major meague teams looking to fill their empty stands had only to look to their minor league brethren to f ind creative ways to put warm bodies in the bleachers. There is a reason why some minor league franchises draw as many fans as do the lowest drawing MLB teams on certain nights, and it as nothing to do with

the quality of play on the diamond. Rather, it has more to do with the fact that one might be able to buy a hot dog and a beer for one dollar each, or that the fans may get to vent their righteous rage by participating in a massive burning of LeBron James memorabilia.

Despite the fact that many of these extreme schemes are hardly translatable to venues encompassing more than 40,000 people attending televised games without inviting disaster (e.g . ten cent beer night at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, or this year’s vuvuzela fiasco in Florida), teams can adopt e l ements o f these strategies to produce resoundingly successful revenue jumps.

O n e p a r t i c u l a r s t r a t e g y employed by teams has been to focus on drawing more families to the ballpark. The advantage of

attracting these families is that they presumably spend much more money than single ticket holders on additional goods. These include concessions and memorabi l ia , which are less likely than seats to have a very price-reactive demand, and will sell regardless of (or perhaps in spite of) variable on-f ield performance. Hence, the number of Rock-and-Roll Fireworks shows and family value concession packs has skyrocketed in the past two years.

Most teams were also sympathetic to the cause of the average fan, and after learning early in 2008 how much attendance could be affected by the recession, scrambled to put together creative ticket pricing packages to maintain the levels of fans in the stands and revenue flowing through the turnstiles. Quarter- and half-season ticket

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indySportS

packages immediately became popular, as these schemes allowed the fan to pick a number of games (e.g. 6) against certain teams (like divisional rivals) or corresponding to certain promotions (fireworks dates). Other creative individual ticket pricing schemes actually depended on the predicted quality of the game experience. For instance, playing the Kansas City Royals in April had less perceived value than playing the Red Sox in July, and the ticket prices for each of these games would reflect this difference.

However, much to the chagrin of fans and other teams, some major league franchises remain unfazed by the rest of the country’s economic woes, and as a result,

were not forced to change their operating procedures in response the average fan’s economic plight. Two extremely different examples could be found in 2009, where cer ta in teams reacted to the financial crisis with infuriating indifference.

I was (un) lucky enough to experience one of these arrogant displays firsthand. In 2009, the New York Yankees opened “The House that Steinbrenner Built,” a $2.3 billion monument to opulence funded in part by $1.2 billion in taxpayer subsidies. Even in light of the fact that the stadium was built on the backs of a tax base that could hardly afford to offer up such a huge sum of money in the middle of a severe economic downturn, the organization felt it was appropriate to charge up to

$1500 for single seats in the lower box area. As such, it was no wonder that as I sat in the second deck in left field on that opening weekend, the number of seats that were left empty in that first bowl behind home plate was as glaring as it was embarrassing. One might think the Yankees could weather the financial crisis while financing a stadium with minimal consequence, given that the Yankees are by far the most successful and wealthiest team in American professional sports. However, Yankee Global Enterprises, LLC, which is the parent organization that manages the Yankees and affiliates such as the YES television network, currently owe $3.2 billion in debt,

according to Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal. To put that number in context, in 2008, the entirety of the NFL’s 32 teams owed $9 billion, a number the league found alarming and has already reduced.

Such a situation is reminiscent of the circumstances surrounding the Hicks Sports Group, who own the Dallas Stars, Mesquite Championship Rodeo, the famous Liverpool Football Club of the Engl ish Premier League, and formerly the Texas Rangers. Owner Tom Hicks’ group accumulated over $500 million in debt through a combination of mismanagement and the financial crisis, and was forced for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protect ion culminating in the recent sale of the Rangers.

On the other side of the economic

spectrum, some of the smaller market teams whom one might expect to have been hit the hardest, not only survived the economic downturn but thrived. How is this possible? The answer lies in the revenue sharing systems employed by most professional sports leagues. For example, baseball’s revenue sharing agreement basically takes a percentage of revenue and luxury tax from the wealthiest of teams (i.e. the Yankees and Red Sox) and redistributes it to those smaller market teams most in need, as measured by revenue and on-field performance. It is generally assumed that these underperforming teams are suffering losses which need to be offset by outside revenue sources in order to keep the competitive balance. However, one can never be sure how much revenue is being shared, or what the teams spend it on, as MLB does not release its financial documents to the public. Thus, when the financial documents of a few teams were leaked to deadspin.com, many fans and team officials were outraged by what they saw as an egregious abuse of the revenue sharing system.

Among these documents were the 2009 financial statements for the Pittsburgh Pirates, a team that has not had a winning season in almost two decades. Despite the hit the Pirates had taken in attendance, they received more money from the revenue sharing system than they actually spent on baseball operations. As a result, they turned a $16 million profit while boasting one of the smallest payrolls and worst records in the league. The same was true for the Florida Marlins, a notoriously tightfisted operation, who were pressured so much by the public that they reacted by offering a huge contract to their star pitcher, Josh Johnson. To put the situation in perspective, each team had covered its expenses for the year before they sold a single ticket or put a single player on the field. Every gate receipt was simply turned to profit for use at the owner’s discretion. No doubt most businesses would have loved this sort of handout during the economic downturn.

The e f fect o f this economic downturn on the National Football

League was far less obvious, but digging beneath the surface reveals a bit of tarnish on American sports’ golden goose. Although you will not find empty seats in most NFL stadiums on television, there is a reason for this beyond the sport’s wild popularity. The NFL’s policy is that it will not broadcast a football game, even in the team’s home market, if the team does not sell out the stadium a certain number of days (usually three) before the game. The Jacksonville Jaguars, for instance, have consistently been blacked out in their own market due to an inability to sell enough tickets. This past weekend, the San Diego Chargers’ home opener was blacked out, due to the inability of the (recently very successful) franchise to sell 7,000 more tickets. Also gone are the long waiting lists for season tickets, as teams like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are experiencing: according to Forbes, the franchise used to boast a 100,000 person waiting list, yet now is holding ticket drives to find people to fill Raymond James Stadium. Forbes also reports that last year eight teams decreased in value — which marked the only time that any NFL team had decreased in value in the last ten years.

As we come out of the recession and look back at how our favorite sports teams were affected, we can only hope that our teams were forced to examine their business practices critically, and that the fan-friendly changes they made are long-lasting benefits which will extend to the consumer even in times of prosperity. The other option is to become fans of one of the monoliths for whom money is no object. Whatever we decide, and however the market fares, the world of sports will remain an escape for millions of people. And although the economy of sport is big money, it is nothing compared to the pleasure that results from following our favorite teams season after season.

Brett Michael Giblin ’11 (bmgiblin@fas) religiously devotes his time to a team that neither makes money nor wins — the Cleveland Indians. If neither happens in his lifetime, he will still die a happy man.

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"Each team had covered its expenses for the year before they sold a single ticket or put a single player on the field."

captured and shotBy PATRICIA FLORESCU

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