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deDaily Heraldthe Brown

vol. cxliv, no. 85 | Thursday, October 15, 2009 | Serving the community daily since 1891

tentative BDS agreement reachedBy alex ulmer

Senior Staff Writer

The University and Dining Ser-vices workers reached a tentative agreement around 2 a.m. Thursday after days of intense negotiations — though ratification of the settle-ment remains contingent on an employee vote today.

Neither party would discuss the specifics of the settlement ahead of the vote, but members of the workers’ union’s bargaining committee said they would be rec-ommending that Dining Services employees ratify the agreement.

“It’s a total settlement,” said Joseph Sarno ’91, the University’s chief negotiator and director of la-

bor and employee relations. “Now they need to get an agreement from their party.”

Previous rounds of negotia-tions failed to secure an agree-ment, chiefly due to divergences over proposed changes to health care premium payments, retire-ment benefits for future hires and wage increases. The contentions were amplified by the University’s bruised financial situation, which Sarno said was a “big factor.”

The seven members of the bar-gaining committee will “strongly” recommend that workers ratify the settlement during two meet-ings today, scheduled between employee shifts, said Roxana Ri-vera, the chief negotiator for the

Service Employees International Union, Local 615, which repre-sents the nearly 200 Dining Ser-vices employees.

“There was a time we had noth-ing to recommend to the mem-bers,” said Rabbit Hoffinger, first cook at the Sharpe Refectory and a member of bargaining committee. “To say that we got this at the mid-night hour is to understate it.”

Negotiations to replace the already-extended contract be-gan Wednesday at 9:30 a.m., ac-cording to union officials, and an agreement was reached more than 14 hours later. Members of the bargaining committee added that they were granted today off from work.

Budget groups begin work across UniversityBy sydney emBer

Senior Staff Writer

The University hopes to identify approximately half of $30 million in necessary budget cuts this fall through the work of 12 recently formed subgroups of the Organi-zational Review Committee, accord-ing to executive vice president for finance and administration Beppie Huidekoper.

These subgroups, which include faculty, staff and students, each met independently for the first time Oct. 8, and are scheduled to come up with $14 million in recommended cuts, Huidekoper said. The ORC will propose a full $30 million in cuts to the Corporation at the meeting in February, she said, when the Uni-versity’s highest governing body will approve the budget for the 12 months beginning July 2010.

The subcommittees are part of the University’s latest efforts to trim down the annual budget after the endowment — a key source of annual revenue — lost nearly $740 million during last year’s financial

crisis.“There’s pretty much no part

of the University that is not ad-dressed,” Huidekoper said of the subcommittees’ focuses, adding that the current economic situa-tion has necessitated organizational changes that are “deeper” and that more directly address the Univer-sity’s efficiency.

The $14 million figure was cho-sen to encourage the subgroups to come up with aggressive ideas for deficit reductions, Huidekoper said. Administrators will inform the Corporation about the formation of these review teams when the body convenes this weekend.

“We are asking them to brain-storm and think creatively,” she said. “There’s no magic and no science.”

The 12 subcommittees — among them groups charged with oversee-ing academic departments, facili-ties, athletics, events management, library operations and student services — will develop recom-

Pieters-led team makes surprise find with lunar scanBy monique Vernon

Staff Writer

Water molecules have been found on the moon by a research team headed by Professor of Geology Carle Pi-eters. But like many momentous scientific advances, the discovery was made almost by accident.

“You don’t expect any water on the moon,” Pieters said, and neither did her research team, which was studying lunar mineralogy. But when the team happened upon indications of water that at first confused them, they investigated further and discov-ered they were genuine.

“When our team saw a clear signature of water on the surface, we thought it was wrong,” Pieters said.

After months of probing and test-ing to try to resolve the disparity, the team later concluded that there are molecules of water and hydroxyl — a functional group consisting of hydrogen and oxygen — on the moon’s surface.

The team’s conclusion appeared in an issue of the journal Science alongside two other articles that con-

curred with Pieters’s findings. One research group’s instrument was on its way to Saturn and found similar readings using their spectrometer, while the other’s was on its way to a comet.

When the Indian Space Research Organization offered to carry foreign instruments on their Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, Pieters and her team went to work on forming a detailed proposal to NASA to acquire funding to construct the instrument, known as the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, or M3. The project was accepted by NASA and the ISRO, and the In-dian spacecraft containing the M3 launched successfully in October 2008.

With 10 months of data from the craft, the team was able to observe the water and hydroxyl molecules with a “unique detection using spec-troscopy,” Pieters said.

“It is such a fantastic look at the way science works in the real world,” said Postdoctoral Research Associ-ate in Geological Sciences Jeff Net-tles. As a co-author of the Science paper, his role during the mission was to use software that processes and analyzes geospatial imagery to help analyze the surface.

After the team detected spectra and mapped them through the use of

NASA mission a smashing success for SchultzBy ana alVarez

Contributing Writer

A NASA spacecraft slammed into the moon early last Friday morning, exploding into a cloud of debris — and Professor of Geology Peter Schulz was elated.

The rocket’s mission — to search for signs of water in a cra-ter near the moon’s south pole by analyzing the debris produced in

the crash — was a “complete suc-cess,” said Schultz, a co-investigator on the project.

The objective of the Lunar Cra-ter Observing and Sensing Satel-lite, or LCROSS, mission was to determine if the make-up of the debris suggest a substantial amount of water is present in the crater, Schultz said.

If so, lunar mining stations could provide future water resources for

Earth, he said. Schultz is currently at NASA’s

Ames Research Center in Califor-nia, studying the data gathered from Friday’s impact. NASA will release initial conclusions soon, but the official scientific results of the mission will not be released until the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting in December.

Courtesy of J.P. Wiens / NASA AmesWith NASA’s help, Professor of Geology Peter Schultz smashed a rocket into the moon, hoping to find water.

two Brown profs make a splash in moon water research

continued on page 3 continued on page 3

continued on page 2

Alex Ulmer / HeraldNegotiators from both sides posed for a photo after reaching an agreement early Thursday morning.

sudoku

Stephen DeLucia, PresidentMichael Bechek, Vice President

Jonathan Spector, TreasurerAlexander Hughes, Secretary

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

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THURSdAy, OCTObER 15, 2009THE bROWN dAILy HERALdPAGE 2

CampUS newS “I mean, how is that not fun?”— Li Pallas, an assistant curator of a storefront art display, on the creation

a lens into olneyville’s communityBy hannah moser

Senior Staff Writer

Two large display windows look out onto Olneyville Square from a red brick building. It used to be a public library, but the building has since been transformed into Dirt Palace, a self-described “feminist art collec-tive.”

With the display’s nondescript black backdrop and the glare on the case’s glass, distracted passersby might walk past totally oblivious to the screen inside. The changing im-ages on the screen zoom in, Google-Maps style, on Dirt Palace’s location on the western side of Providence. The screen flashes images of people on a sidewalk, peering into a window. Some look quizzical, and others pose with friends, realizing that the camera is looking at them from behind the glass.

All these participants have placed their hands inside the white outline of a hand, triggering a sensor behind the glass. The camera flashes, and a few seconds later they are on the screen — and a new part of Dirt Pal-ace’s most recent art installment in its Storefront Window Gallery.

Dirt Palace’s seven members each have studio space in the building for their artwork, a range of media that in-cludes printmaking, film, lace making, writing, puppetry and painting. Each month they select an artist, usually local, to be featured in the gallery.

The window display has been ac-tive since the collective was founded in 2000. Dirt Palace looks for art they

think will be relevant and fun for its Olneyville audience, said Li Pallas, who helps curate the display. Past displays include a constantly moving flying brain and a “fantasy world” that presents liberation as a theme.

“I mean, how is that not fun?” Pal-las said.

Pallas said the collective seeks to bring “art into a community that might be otherwise disadvantaged.” She has a “personal bent” for displays that inspire relationships and com-munity, she said.

This month features the work of Sarah Bearse, a local installation artist.

Bearse adapted her installation from similar pieces she had previ-

ously displayed in Boston’s City Hall and a Harvard art gallery. While the camera in the Olneyville display re-sponds to movement — a hand in front of the sensor — the camera in the city hall installation responded to noise at a certain volume, Pallas said. Loud voices triggered the cam-era, which then took a snapshot of the speaker and projected it onto the screen.

The installation “instantly made people feel so violated,” Pallas said, that it was altered after 48 hours to no longer include the still shots.

Bearse’s project was partly a re-action to a culture in which unprec-edented amounts of personal informa-tion are made public on Web sites like Facebook and MySpace, Pallas said. The display toys with the concept of “playing with these public and private spaces,” she said.

But the project is structured dif-ferently in Olneyville than in Boston, since many of the people getting their picture taken put themselves inten-tionally in front of the lens.

“It ends up showcasing our neigh-bors,” Pallas said. “I feel like it’s for the community here more than any-one else.”

Brown prof joins group of elite scholars By Julia Kim

Contributing Writer

David Konstan, professor of clas-sics and comparative literature, was inducted into the prestigious Ameri-can Academy of Arts and Sciences this past weekend, alongside such luminaries as former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former South African President Nelson Mandela and Academy Award-winning actor Dustin Hoffman P’09.

The AAAS, which was founded in 1780 as a forum for collaboration among the nation’s elite scholars, leaders, professionals and artists, annually honors “men and women of exceptional achievement” with election into its membership. Kon-stan was one of 212 new fellows and

19 Foreign Honorary Members in-ducted Saturday.

Induction into the AAAS “marks the highest level of recognition in the arts and sciences,” said Profes-sor of History and Classics John Bodel, who has worked with Kon-stan since 1984.

“It’s a great honor,” Konstan said. “I was very moved.”

His election as an AAAS mem-ber is the latest of many honors for Konstan, who has accumulated many awards and distinctions for his work during his more than 40 years as a professor, scholar and writer. Konstan’s research focuses on ancient Greek and Latin literature and philosophy, and recently has

mendations for deficit reductions through a combination of savings and strengthening revenue streams, Huidekoper said.

Although the groups consist mostly of faculty, students and staff, Huidekoper said the subcommit-tee leaders, which include many of the University’s top administrators, would be doing most of the work.

It is not uncommon for large uni-versities to convene these kinds of specialized review groups, Hu-idekoper said. But many tend to employ outside consultants rather than build from within, she said.

“What we did want to do is do our own work,” Huidekoper said. “We want the University to be struc-tured in a way that is smart.”

The subgroups will submit their recommendations to the ORC and the University Resources Commit-tee, which will then offer proposals

to President Ruth Simmons and the Corporation for final decisions re-garding budget reductions.

“At this point, they’re trying to understand what their scope is,” Huidekoper said. “It’s going to take a lot of time.” It is too soon to speculate on any proposals, she said, adding that the teams are still in a formative position.

“We are still trying to work out how we will carry out the charge we have been given by the committee,” wrote Dick Spies, executive vice president for planning and chair of a review group that will focus on fundraising operations, in an e-mail to The Herald.

Marisa Quinn, vice president for public affairs and University relations and one of the chairs of a review team that will focus on the graphics, Web and communications sectors, said her group intends to meet weekly over the course of the next few months to come up

with “ways to support the Univer-sity more efficiently and ensure a greater quality.”

During her group’s first meeting, she said, the team briefly discussed “what we thought success and fail-ure would look like in the process” to more successfully select “stake-holders” to aid in enacting their proposed deficit-reduction plans.

Though her group does not in-clude student members, she said, she intends to engage with a team of students during future discus-sions.

But the University was well-equipped to assess efficiency, she said, adding that primary support structures were already in place for self-examination.

“It was important to get a sense of how these different areas we’re reviewing af fect our students,” Quinn said. “We’re looking at ways we can really support the mission of the University most efficiently.”

Budget committees roll up their sleevescontinued from page 1

Julia Kim / Heralddavid Konstan, professor of classics and comparative literature.

continued on page 5

Hannah Moser / HeraldPut your hand on this unremarkable-looking outline and you’ll soon see yourself displayed on a screen behind the glass. The Olneyville storefront is known as the dirt Palace, a “feminist art collective.”

feature

CampUS newSTHURSdAy, OCTObER 15, 2009 THE bROWN dAILy HERALd PAGE 3

“This will be a thing for textbooks.”— Professor of Geology Carle Pieters, on the significance of findings about the moon

U. scores another high grade for ‘sustainability’By emily KirKland

Contributing Writer

For the second year in a row, Brown has received an A- on the College Sustainability Report Card, which compares the environmental prac-tices of 300 colleges and universities nationwide.

The 2010 report, which was re-leased last week by the Sustainable Endowments Institute and refers to the year ending July 2009, places Brown among the top 23 schools in the country for sustainability.

Brown earned straight As in seven categories, including green building, investment priorities and “food and recycling.” The Commu-nity Harvest Program, LEED Silver buildings and greenhouse gas reduc-tions were highlighted as examples of demonstrated leadership. Brown earned only two Bs, one for Adminis-tration and the other for Endowment Transparency.

“This is nice validation,” said Kai Morell ’11, a leader of EcoReps, a student group focused on environ-mental initiatives.

“It’s nice to have maintained our grade,” said Christopher Powell, director of sustainable energy and environmental initiatives.

While the University’s overall grade held steady at an A-, its grades in individual categories improved. The biggest jump was in the Climate Change and Energy category, where last year’s B became an A.

The report cited the University’s

commitment to reducing its green-house gas emissions by 42 percent below 2007 levels by 2020 — and its achievement of a 7.7 percent re-duction so far — as the basis for the grade.

“Last year, we had goals,” Powell said of emissions reductions. “This year, we had results.”

The other improvement was seen in the Endowment Transparency category, which was given a C last year and a B this year.

In the 2010 report, Brown re-ceived only one other B, for Ad-

ministration. In determining the Administration grade, the Sustain-able Endowments Institute awards a sizable boost to schools that have committed to carbon neutrality — which Brown has not yet agreed to do.

“Most schools that signed have no clue how to achieve that goal,” Powell said, explaining Brown’s de-cision to forgo the commitment to carbon neutrality. Instead, he said, Brown set its own emissions reduc-tion goal.

The Sustainable Endowments In-

stitute relies on surveys distributed to administrators and students to compile information, and then makes comparisons between schools based on a list of 48 criteria. No school has ever earned an A overall.

This year the surveys were far longer and more detailed. But there are still questions about the validity of the letter grades.

“This needs to be taken with a grain of salt,” Ari Rubenstein ’11, one of emPower’s leaders, said. “If we’re already at an A-, there must be something higher than an A.”

Max Monn / HeraldSidney Frank Hall’s LEEd certification contributed to brown’s leading A-minus grade.

images, they were able to provide more concrete findings.

“It was a Christmas present,” Nettles said.

“There is a whole field of sci-ence that is in its infancy,” Pieters said. Her team’s discovery has opened up doors in the study of how the surface of the moon and other “solid, silicate, rocky bod-ies” interact with their environ-ments, she said.

“Water is a very important component for long-term explo-ration,” Pieters said. If found in abundance, it can be used for fuel by astronauts.

continued from page 1

moonfantasy forresearchers realized

After the initial rocket crashed into the lunar crater to create debris, a second spaceship car-ried instruments developed by Schultz, who was involved with the mission from its earliest stages, to collect data about the debris.

The data will allow him to ana-lyze how deep the crater was at impact, how high the debris rose and how fast it fell.

“All instruments worked well” during the mission, he said, and “enough data was collected.”

People hoping to glimpse the lunar crash on Friday expressed disappointment once it became clear that plumes of debris from the crash would not be visible with backyard telescopes as NASA had announced, accord-ing to an article on CNN’s Web site.

Brendan Hermalyn, a gradu-ate student in planetary sci-ences working with Schultz on the impact physics of the crash, added that the analysis will bring “unique insights out of the data.”

continued from page 1

Crash goes off without a hitch

UCS creates new category for fundraising groups By suzannah Weiss

Senior Staff Writer

The Undergraduate Council of Stu-dents passed a revision to its Code of Operations Wednesday, allowing for official recognition of student groups whose primary purpose is fundraising for off-campus organi-zations.

Because the Student Activities Fund comes out of students’ pock-ets, student groups have not granted official categorization of any kind unless their efforts directly benefit Brown students — as opposed to external charities, for example.

“The money is meant to be spent for students on campus and not just

to be filtered through off-campus organizations,” said UCS Student Activities Chair Brady Wyrtzen ’11. But the idea of adding a new category for service groups had been percolating since last spring, he said.

UCS has traditionally classified student groups as Category I, II or III. Category I encompasses most new groups, granting little or no financial support, while Category II and III status provides major clubs and organizations with sti-pends from the Student Activities Fund. Since last year, there has also been Category A for club sports,

providence author finds niche in science writingBy chelsea xu

Contributing Writer

“At Classical, they used to call me the eternal freshman — and in high school that wasn’t entirely a compliment,” writer Jonathan Weiner told a Salomon 101 crowd of community members and a smattering of students Wednes-day night.

Author of “The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time” and a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism, Weiner described how his undy-ing curiosity, fascination with biol-ogy and love of writing propelled him to reconcile science and the

arts. In his book, Weiner discuss-es Darwin’s theory of evolution and the groundbreaking work of Peter and Rosemary Grant.

“The Beak of the Finch” was selected for the 2009 orientation program First Readings. This is the third year of the program, in which freshmen and transfer stu-dents receive a summer reading assignment before they arrive on campus. Students used the book as a springboard to write intro-ductory letters to their academic advisors.

According to Dean of the Col-lege Katherine Bergeron, this was

continued on page 5continued on page 5

THURSdAy, OCTObER 15, 2009THE bROWN dAILy HERALdPAGE 4

CampUS newS “It’s a hometown effort.” — Jeff Prystowsky ’06 on The Low Anthem’s Providence show

Bikes, handbags, birthday cake stolenBy Ben schrecKinger

Senior Staff Writer

The following summary includes all major incidents reported to the De-partment of Public Safety between September 9 and September 29. It does not include general service and alarm calls. The Providence Police Department also responds to incidents

occurring off campus. DPS does not divulge information on cases that are currently under investigation by the department, PPD or the Office of Student Life. DPS maintains a daily log of all shift activity and general ser-vice calls which can be viewed during business hours at its headquarters, located at 75 Charlesfield St.

Sept. 911:27 p.m. Officers were dis-

patched to the Fish Company to assist the Providence Police with an investigation involving Brown students. Upon arrival they were advised by Providence officers that two Brown students were involved in an altercation with Fish Co. staff and then with Providence officers. The two students were arrested by the Providence police and were being charged with disorderly conduct.

Sept. 1110:20 a.m. A student reported

three handbags with a total value of over $6,000 stolen from her room in Sears House. She had last noticed the bags on Sept. 10 at 4 p.m. and noticed them missing on Sept. 11 at 9 a.m. The room door was left unlocked.

4:12 p.m. A student stated that she had secured her mountain bike to the bike rack at Graduate Center Tower C on Sept. 6 at 8:50 a.m. She stated that she went to retrieve her bike on Sept. 11 at 9:30 a.m., and it was gone. The new Kryptonite chain and lock were still attached to the bike rack and were not damaged. She stated that the way she attached the bike may have left the bike vul-nerable because if the handlebars were removed the bike could be freed without disturbing the lock.

Sept. 1212:00 a.m. Officers responded

with Providence Police to 212 Wil-liams Street after PPD received a call about a loud party with revel-ers filling the street. When Brown police arrived, Providence officers were already on scene and actively dispersing the partygoers and clos-ing down the party. Four renters of the property, all Brown students, were cited by PPD for violating the noise ordinance.

Sept. 173:09 p.m. Student reported his

bicycle was taken from the bike rack at Marcy House, and that he was “pretty sure” he locked up the bicycle with a cable lock on Sept. 16 at 7 p.m. When he returned on Sept. 17 at 12 p.m., he noticed the bicycle missing.

Sept. 182:26 p.m. Complainant reported

that half of her ice-cream birthday

cake was stolen from a refrigera-tor in a common area in Sidney Frank Hall. The incident occurred sometime between 3 p.m. on Sept. 17 and 2 p.m. on Sept. 18. She also reported that other food items were also stolen from the refrigerator in that area in the past couple of days and months prior, that belong to other students that work in the labs on that floor. The common area room does not have a lock on that door and access can be gained by anyone.

Sept. 2111:29 a.m. Student stated that

on Sept. 19 at approximately 5 p.m. he left his backpack in the Sharpe Refectory. He remembered at 11:30 p.m. that he left his backpack and contacted DPS. Officers responded and were unable to locate the back-pack. On Sept. 20 he went back to the Refectory and looked through the lost-and-found but the back-pack was not there. The backpack contained a laptop, iTouch and one book.

12:23 p.m. Student stated her wallet was stolen from New Pem-broke 4 on Sept. 16. She stated that she was at a friend’s room with 15 other Brown students when her wallet went missing. She searched the room but could not locate the wallet.

9:40 p.m. Student stated that at approximately 9:40 p.m. she left her room in Bronson House and went to the laundry room. Her room door was approximately three inches ajar and the laundry room is 50 feet up the corridor. When she returned to her room approximately 10 minutes later, her laptop had been stolen from her desk. The laptop was unplugged and cords were left behind. There are no witnesses or suspects.

Sept. 238:30 a.m. An employee in Pem-

broke Hall reported that on Sept. 18 at 5 p.m. she noticed all the folding tables on the ground floor level. On Sept. 21 at 8:30 a.m. she noticed one of the folding tables on wheels was missing, and then on Sept. 23 at 8:30 a.m. she noticed another folding table with wheels missing. There are no witnesses or suspects.

Sept. 272:16 p.m. A resident counselor in

Bronson House reported that at 10 a.m. she noticed graffiti depicting images of male genitalia and some words drawn in black permanent marker on a door of a room. She stated that she waited until 2 p.m. to speak with one of the residents of the room to find out if there was any reasoning behind the markings and found there was not. Neither room-mate wished to file a complaint. Fa-cilities Management was notified of the graffiti. There are no suspects at this time.

Sept. 287:24 a.m. Facilities Manage-

ment employee reported five large cement flower pots on Manning Walkway were tipped over and one pot with a value of $500 was found broken.

alums play avon homecoming show tonightBy ellen cushing

Senior Staf f Writer

Eight years ago, as freshmen, Jeff Prystowsky ’06 and Ben Miller ’06 were jazz DJs for WBRU’s graveyard-shift jazz show, 2:30-5:30 a.m.

Now, years later, Prystowsky and Miller — who, along with Jocie Adams ’08, compose the folk trio The Low Anthem — have toured the world and amassed a fan base far beyond College Hill. Tonight, they will be returning home for a show at the Avon.

Local bands Brown Bear and Death Vessel will be opening.

“It should be a really special show,” Prystowsky said, adding that this will be the first live show at the Avon in over a decade — a

feat that took a little convincing.“It took a lot of work to get them

to agree with this,” he said of an ar-rangement that has proven fruitful despite the Avon’s lack of concert infrastructure.

Getting over logistical issues wasn’t the concert’s only hurdle: Due to a scheduling problem, all of the band’s instruments have

already been shipped to Seattle in advance of the band’s upcom-ing West Coast tour, Prystowsky said. Despite the difficulties, he said, friends of the band have lent instruments, and local establish-ments have offered their support. The show will go on.

“All of our friends are helping

us out — WaterFire is providing the sound and lights; Trinity Bre-whouse is providing subsidized beers,” he said. “There were all these problems, one after another, and people stepped up from the community. It’s a hometown ef-fort.”

The band — which released its third album, “Oh My God, Charlie Darwin,” last September — has maintained a strong relationship with Providence.

Prystowksy and Miller began playing together during their first-year stint at WBRU in a variety of groups and genres of music. They finally settled on a name and a sound and began playing shows at the Underground and around

arts & culture

crime log

continued on page 7

S P I C y W I T H - O U C H !

Lara Press / HeraldMax Mathias ’10 helped another student with his flu shot during the seasonal clinic at Josiah’s.

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CampUS newSTHURSdAy, OCTObER 15, 2009 THE bROWN dAILy HERALd PAGE 5

revolved around the history of emo-tions in ancient Greek society.

Ancients provide modern people with a “diverse and rich set of emo-tions,” Konstan said.

The honor also comes as Konstan nears retirement after more than 20 years on Brown’s faculty — Konstan told The Herald on Tuesday that he intends to retire from teaching full-time at Brown at the end of this academic year.

The induction of Konstan, one of Brown’s best-known classicists, into AAAS is “a great honor for Brown classics,” said Bodel, who chairs the department.

Bodel also had high praise for his friend and colleague. “He’s really one of the most dynamic figures in our profession” as well as “a widely re-spected scholar abroad,” he said. “He is really quite a remarkable person.”

In addition to his academic achievements, Konstan is “one of the most active and engaging” teachers at Brown, with “enormous energy (and) enormous charisma,” Bodel said.

Election into the AAAS is a two-step process that begins when current members nominate individuals they believe should be considered for elec-tion. Nominated individuals are first considered by peers in their discipline “who consider their scholarship and contributions to the field” and decide whether to recommend induction, said Paul Karoff, an AAAS spokesman. Then the Academy’s members elect each year’s class from the winnowed group.

The induction ceremony, which took place in Cambridge, Mass. over the weekend, involved “speeches (and) more speeches,” Konstan said. “Everybody got up, shook hands,” signed some papers, and were in-ducted.

Group honors classics professor Konstan

continued from page 2

Nick Sinnott-Armstrong / HeraldJonathan Weiner, author of “The beak of the Finch,” spoke to a crowd in Salomon 101 Wednesday night. The science writer said he realized science writing was his niche after four years of poetry courses.

which receive recognition but not money, Student Activities Director Phil O’Hara said.

The addition of Category S, proposed last week and approved by the UCS general body without argument, allows clubs created for the benefit of causes not related to Brown to get all the University sup-port of a Category I group except for money.

These privileges include incor-porating the school’s name into the group title, using a mailbox and oth-er resources in the Student Activi-ties Office and having permission to table-slip, said O’Hara, who met with Wyrtzen and supported the UCS Student Activities Committee.

Wyrtzen, who devised the pro-posal along with the SAC, said the code change “was definitely some-thing that we wanted to get going on as quickly as possible” because the SAC already has had to turn down fundraising groups requesting categorization this fall.

One of those groups was Nour-ish, a group whose mission is “to fight global poverty” by supporting “sustainable development projects,” according to Carolyn Brown ’11, who started a chapter of the club on campus and said she hoped it would be granted Category S status. The advantages of formal Univer-sity acknowledgment, Brown said, include being allowed to reserve room space and announcing events through Morning Mail.

UCS President Clay Wertheimer ’10 said the addition of Category S was “a smart solution.”

“There’s definitely some gray space,” he said. Groups that in-corporate teach-ins, lectures or other ways of spreading awareness around the community, he said, are still eligible for Category I, II and III status.

Brown said her group does not need University funding because the organization’s national office provides it, but that if Nourish were to receive a portion of the Student Activities Fund, it would go toward spreading awareness of world hun-ger and recruiting student partici-pants. “We weren’t trying to funnel money directly from University re-sources,” she said.

Whether or not the new catego-rization will affect existing groups is still up in the air, though Wyrtzen said it probably will not. The pur-pose of the code revision was “to incorporate the groups that we’ve had to turn away already,” he said, adding that if there are categorized groups that, upon reevaluation, seem better suited for Category S, “We might have to boot them.”

The debate over which groups are eligible for University funding — a “long, philosophical discussion,” according to O’Hara — has been present for decades, he said.

A challenge for UCS, O’Hara added, is that because students “only have four years,” it is “hard for a student group to have a long view.” Still, he said, the decision to recognize fundraising organizations will have a lasting impact, because their role is “a long-term issue.”

— With additionalreporting by Kyla Wilkes

UCS passes resolution for new group category

the program’s “most successful first reading yet,” adding “even the non-scientists found themselves captivated.”

The spark of Weiner’s passion for scientific writing came during his senior year at Classical High School, which is in Providence. A visit to the library led to Weiner’s discovery of an article in Scientific American, “The Social Amoeba,” by John Tyler Bonner, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton.

Weiner was captivated by the article, in which Bonner elegantly tells a story of how amoebas come together to form “fabulous towers” in times of crises. Weiner decided then that he had to write about biology.

Weiner eventually attended Harvard, where he chose to study writing over biology.

“Since now I was a poet, I now had to hate science,” Weiner joked. But despite four years of poetry courses, he realized science writ-ing was his niche. He launched his science writing career with the es-say “Marching Along with the So-cial Amoeba,” which was published in Harvard Magazine. Weiner’s first book, “Planet Earth,” was a companion book to the seven-part PBS television series.

Struggling with writer’s block, Weiner turned to Bonner, who gave Weiner the idea of writing about evolution and the work of the Grants. They were involved in a classic evolutionary study of measuring the beaks of the Galapa-

gos finches and watching natural selection in action. The study was renowned in biology but largely unknown outside of the field.

“I lit up. This is my story!” Weiner said. “It possessed me from the minute I heard it.”

Still a young writer, Weiner spent two years “wooing the Grants,” who were initially hesi-tant about the book. The Grants documented each step of Dar-win’s argument about the Gala-pagos finches and the swing of a “pendulum” in favor of certain beak sizes based on pressures of natural and sexual selection.

The Grants eventually agreed to work with Weiner, who said he had fallen in love with the finches and the evolutionary process as much as the Grants and their stu-dents had. Weiner said watching

“evolution in action” is especially exciting because Darwin was so convinced that the process would be impossible to see “by mortal humans.”

Maya Sikand ’13, who attend-ed the lecture, said she appreci-ated how Weiner took evolution out of the small example of the finches and applied it in a wider context.

William Donovan ’12 asked Weiner whether he would do anything differently if he had the chance to return to Harvard.

“I spent four years trying to crack the kind of seed I wasn’t equipped to crack,” Weiner said. “It was only when I realized that I actually loved the science and the writing and I could put the two together — it was then when I found my way as a writer.”

‘Beak of the Finch’ author speakscontinued from page 3

continued from page 3

THURSdAy, OCTObER 15, 2009 THE bROWN dAILy HERALd PAGE 6

metrorhode Island townsconsider sharing servicesBy george miller

Metro editor

Rhode Island’s cities and towns, their budgets tighter than ever, are considering sharing services such as fire departments and trash pickup to save money.

With 39 cities and towns packed into the nation’s smallest state, con-solidation appeals to many, includ-ing the state’s General Assembly, which has launched a commission to study the idea. Providence Mayor David Cicilline ’83 is calling for state legislation to pave the way for re-gionalization.

The state commission met for the first time last week, electing as its chair State Sen. Lou DiPalma MA’89 P’09, D-Dist. 12. DiPalma, who introduced the bill that created the commission, said the increased efficiency and effectiveness from shared services could provide a cru-cial boost to cash-strapped towns.

“We can’t delay this any longer,” he said.

DiPalma, a former member of the Middletown town council, said there will be no “one-size-fits-all” solution, and that different services may make sense to share statewide, between just a few towns or not at all. But he said he fully expects to put forward concrete proposals when the commission reports back to the Senate in January.

DiPalma declined to comment on any specific plans, saying the commission will explore all options but focus on “backroom” services, such as public safety and tax assess-ment, that don’t involve day-to-day constituent interaction.

Consolidation is not a new idea in the state, and DiPalma said the com-mission will hear from communities that have tried sharing services be-fore. He wants to hear “the good, the bad and the ugly,” he said.

Examples of towns sharing services include the Government Health Group of Rhode Island, a health and dental insurance co-op encompassing 15 cities and towns, and the Bristol-Warren regional school district, which consolidated in 1993.

Sharon Ahern, speaking as act-

ing town manager for Westerly last week, said regionalization “makes sense.” Each city and town manag-ing its own departments “doesn’t necessarily work to our fiscal ad-vantage,” she said. “Certainly it’s something we should be looking into.”

Westerly has already acted to consolidate the finance and recre-ation departments of the town and its school department, Ahern said.

At last week’s commission meet-ing, members heard a presentation from John Simmons, executive di-rector of the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council, that outlined examples of shared services from the state and nationwide.

Simmons told The Herald that interest in sharing services exists, but the commission needs to decide how best to implement it.

Meanwhile, Cicilline is pushing for legislation to allow the creation of a metropolitan fire district, police district and public works district that Providence would share with Pawtucket, Cranston, Central Falls, North Providence, East Providence and Johnston.

The legislation will be filed dur-ing the next session of the General Assembly, which begins in Janu-ary, said Karen Southern, Cicilline’s press secretary. He is currently look-ing for a sponsor, she said.

After receiving approval from the state, Providence and its neighbors could begin work on crafting the districts, which could maximize city services in tough economic times, Southern said.

Some firefighter’s union officials have expressed reservations about the plan, citing high costs and call-ing the proposal “political grand-standing,” the Providence Journal reported earlier this month.

But Gov. Donald Carcieri ’65 praised the proposal in a press re-lease.

“This action by seven mayors of our cities and towns is a step in the right direction,” he said. “Perhaps the magnitude of the financial chal-lenges the state, and our cities and towns, face will take these ideas beyond discussion to meaningful action.”

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A Model for Regionalized Government?Fairfax County, Va.Rhode Island

George Miller, Jessica Calihan / HeraldFairfax County in northern Virginia operates with one centralized government rather than distributed municipalities. Some point to it as a model for how the small state of Rhode Island could operate.

Population(July 2008)

Area (sq. miles)

Budget(FY ‘09)

Median Household Income

Local Governments

1,050,788

1,545

$3.27 billion

$52,755

39

1,015,302

395

$3.35 billion

$105,200

1

Jessie Calihan / Herald

police effort cracks down on parties

metro in brief

“Operation Red Cup” may sound like the most epic house party of all time, but it is in fact quite the opposite — a full-scale effort by the city of Providence to crack down on the raucous behavior of Providence College, Johnson and Wales University and Rhode Island College students carousing off campus in the Elmhurst neighborhood, northwest of downtown.

Town-gown relations have been tense in the neighborhood for years, said Ward 5 Councilman Michael Solomon, a proponent of the crackdown. but in the last several months, students’ drunken revelry has “really gotten out of hand,” he said.

“I think what’s happened is that the word’s gotten out that it’s a party district,” he said.

The parties have been getting rowdier because they have been “drawing people from outside the area,” Solomon said. In fact, police have “spotted a few high school students” partying in the neighborhood.

“There’s never been a unified effort” to clean up the neighborhood, Solomon said. but this most recent effort brings together city government, law enforcement, the students’ schools and landlords.

“I think when everybody gets together it’s going to be easy to tackle the problem,” Solomon said.

Solomon said he believes the effort has already started to send a message. He said 70 arrests have been made in just three weeks.

The councilman has proposed a city ordinance that would fine landlords — anywhere from $250 to $1,000 dollars — who do not evict tenants after three noise complaints in a single year.

Providence Police have also begun reporting the identities of misbehaving students to their respective colleges. “Hopefully their parents are going to know,” Solomon said.

PPd did not return multiple requests for comment.

— Ben Schreckinger

metroThe brown daily Herald

THURSdAy, OCTObER 15, 2009 | PAGE 7

“The word’s gotten out that it’s a party district” — Ward 5 Councilman Michael Solomon on “Red Cup” crackdown

State colleges raise tuition and fees againBy anish gonchigar

Staff Writer

The Rhode Island Board of Gover-nors for Higher Education voted last week to increase tuition and fees at state public colleges for the 2010-2011 school year.

According to the Providence Journal, in-state students at the University of Rhode Island will pay 9.9 percent more next year, while students at Rhode Island College will pay 9 percent more, and students at the Community College of Rhode Is-land will face a 8.2 percent increase. Room and board fees will increase by about 5 percent at URI and RIC, the Journal reported.

Tuition and fees at Rhode Island state schools have been continually increasing in the last few years. Fees at the three colleges increased by

about 10 percent for this school year, and overall tuition and fees have catapulted since 2004 — 64 percent at URI, 75 percent at RIC and 72 percent at CCRI, according to the Journal.

But these tuition and fee increas-es have not been met by similar in-creases in income. According to the Providence Journal, median family income in Rhode Island only grew by 11.3 percent between 2005 and 2008, making it increasingly difficult for poor and working class families to afford higher education.

Jane Fuscl, a spokesperson for RIC, said the school does not enjoy implementing these changes but has no choice in the matter.

“No one, including administra-tion and students, are happy when there’s a tuition increase on the ho-rizon,” she said.

Fuscl added that she hoped the tuition hike would be coupled with an increase in educational quality.

“Our mission is to provide afford-able, quality education, and we hope to stay in that realm of possibility for our students,” Fuscl said.

Joshua Laguerre, student body president at RIC, said an increase in tuition and fees will be detrimental for poorer students.

“RIC takes in a lot of first genera-tion students,” Laguerre said, adding that fewer low-income students will be able to attend after the tuition increase.

Laguerre said student demon-strations will likely occur before the bill passes.

“Don’t be surprised if there is some kind of event or rally or some-thing along those lines that takes place in the spring,” he said.

Providence at venues such as the Hot Club and Local 121.

“We did a lot on our own in Providence in terms of building what we have today,” Prystowsky said.

All three band members studied music at Brown — Adams joined the band in 2007 when she was still a senior — and Prystowsky said their experiences at the University shaped them as artists. “The pro-fessors of music at Brown certainly were influential, being people who were serious about music.”

He also said the band — which now lives together on the East Side — was very much shaped by the greater Providence arts commu-nity.

“In terms of Providence, it’s probably shaped us more not for the content of our songs, per se, and arrangement, but for being a great community of artists here,” Prystowsky said.

Prystowsky also said the art-

ists’ community in Providence is very collaborative, a quality that fostered the group’s growth.

“It’s a small town, and you have the Brown bands, but then you also have these Providence bands that help each other out and stay in touch,” he said.

“A lot of people at Brown don’t realize it, but the city of Providence has a lot of art going on,” Prys-towsky added. “There’s a lot to the city to explore, but people write it off because it’s not Boston and it’s not New York.”

After the show, Prystowsky, Miller and Adams will be reunited with their instruments in Seattle for the West Coast tour, after which they will begin a weeks’ worth of shows in London and Holland, be-fore heading back home to begin recording a new album.

After touring with top song-writers like Ray LaMontagne, per-forming alongside the likes of Elvis

Costello and playing high-profile festivals that draw hundreds of thousands of people, there is one venue The Low Anthem has yet to play: Spring Weekend.

“We’ve tried to play Spring Weekend and they wouldn’t let us,” Prystowsky said. He continued. “I was like, ‘we’re playing Lolla-palooza and Bonnaroo; can’t we play Spring Weekend?’ And they said no. We’ve been rejected the past eight years.”

alums to play avon homecoming tonightcontinued from page 4

arts & culture

By fred milgrim

Contributing Writer

The equestrian riders took matters into their own hands at their home show this weekend with a strong win, earning them first place in the show as well as in the Region 1, Zone 1 season standings.

Brown’s tally of 43 points bested URI’s 34 and UConn’s 32, bringing their season total to 77, four points

ahead of second place URI.The competition began with the

Flat divisions. Because of Bruno’s extremely strong day, Liz Gilib-erti’s ’10 score in the Open Flat was dropped, but she made up for it later with a good ride in the Open Fences.

Following Giliberti, Emma Bog-donoff ’10, the pointed rider in Inter-mediate Flats, took the blue ribbon earning seven points for the Bears.

Rebecca McGoldrick ’12 then won in the Novice Flat for the second straight week.

Entering the Fences with 14 points after a strong showing in the Flats, Brown made an even stron-ger statement, tallying 18 points. Giliberti started off with a third place finish in the Open division. Rachel Griffith ’10 followed with a first place as the pointed rider in the Intermediates. Finally, Allison Dungey ’13, who took second last weekend, bettered her performance with a blue ribbon and added seven more points to the Bears’ total. En-tering the final three divisions, the Bears had a total of 32 points, only two shy of last week’s total.

Marisa Fuerst ’12 rode a horse that was less than cooperative, but still managed to take third place in the Walk-Trot-Canter — good for four more points. Rebecca de Sa ’10 ended the day on a positive note, once again taking first for the Bears in Walk-Trot.

The only home competition of the year was a success, with beau-tiful weather all day. Nevertheless, it was a hectic day, as the riders all had hosting responsibilities outside of their own competitions.

The Bears will be back in ac-tion on Halloween at Connecticut College.

THURSdAy, OCTObER 15, 2009THE bROWN dAILy HERALdPAGE 8

SportSthUrSDayequestrian earns best in show men’s water polo swims

to one win — and a lossBy liza Jones

Contributing Writer

While much of the student body relaxed over the long weekend, the men’s water polo team trav-eled to Massachusetts to face Harvard and Iona. After a 15-8 win against Harvard on Saturday, the team fell to Iona the following day, 10-9.

Against the Crimson, the Bears had complete control in the water from the beginning of the game, leading 3-2 after eight minutes. The second quarter was just as successful, as Bruno took a 9-2 lead. Harvard scored three goals to Brown’s two in the third quarter, but the Bears picked it up again to outscore Harvard, 4-3, in the final quarter to seal the 15-8 win.

On the offensive end, Sveto-zar Stefanovic ’13 lived up to his recent title as CWPA Northern Division Rookie of the Week by leading the team with five goals on Saturday. Gordon Hood ’11 added three goals, Ryan Gla-dych ’13 scored two, while Zach Levko ’10, Corey Schwartz ’11, Dean Serure ’13 and Cyrus Moj-dehi ’13 each contributed one.

Defensively, Kent Holland ’10 kept up his impressive stats in goal with seven saves in the first three quarters, and Max Lubin ’12 saved three after taking over for Holland in the final quarter.

After the impressive win over the rival Crimson, the Bears lost to the Iona Gaels, 10-9, in a close game on Sunday. Brown had an impressive lead through most of the game, including a five-goal lead in the beginning of the third quarter. But the Gaels were not fazed, as they rallied to a narrow 10-9 victory in the fourth. The game-winning goal for Iona was scored during a pen-alty shot with just four seconds left on the clock, costing Bruno its first regular season North-ern Division loss in two years. Stefanovic was again the team’s leading scorer with three goals. Gladych and Hood each scored two, while Serure and Schwartz each scored one.

Even with this loss hanging over their heads, the Bears were still able to defeat Connecticut College, 22-8, on Tuesday. Bruno will travel back to Connecticut College to face Queens (N.Y.) and Mercyhurst on Saturday.

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SportsthursdayTHURSdAy, OCTObER 15, 2009 | Page 9

The brown daily Herald

men’s soccer, unbeaten, keeps rollingBy Katie Wood

aSSiStant SportS editor

The No. 15 men’s soccer team (7-0-4, 2-0-0 Ivy) continued its winning streak with a 4-2 victory over Princ-eton on Saturday and a 3-1 win over Rutgers on Tuesday night. Four different Bears scored goals in the two contests, including two goals each from Sean Rosa ’12 and Nick Elenz-Martin ’10.

Brown 4, princeton 2The game against Princeton was

very offensive-minded on both sides, similar to the Sept. 30 Boston Univer-sity game that ended in a 3-3 tie. The Bears were led by Rosa, the reign-ing Ivy League Player of the Week, who contributed the first two goals of the game, and is now tied with Austin Mandel ’12 and Elenz-Martin as the leading goal scorer on the team with four.

“We did OK but didn’t play to our full potential,” said Ian Smith ’11.

The Bears came out ready to play, as Rosa scored in the game’s open-ing minutes on a pass to the middle of the box from Mike Manella ’12, nailing the ball to the lower right corner at the post.

The Tigers and the Bears played evenly through the next 30 minutes of play before Brown put together several strong offensive opportu-nities in the closing 10 minutes of the half. Jay Hayward ’12 and Rosa passed the ball back and forth to one another, away from their defenders, and were almost too unselfish as an extra pass ended the drive with sev-en minutes left. Taylor Gorman ’12 crossed a ball to a cutting TJ Thomp-son ’10 in front of the goal with five minutes remaining in the half, but this drive was also stopped by Princ-eton, as the ball was deflected out by the defense.

The Tigers extinguished Brown’s opportunities in the closing minutes of the first half, but the Bears came out just as offensive-minded in the opening minutes of the second.

“Our coach (Mike Noonan) gave us a fiery pep talk in the locker room and we came out with a renewed mindset,” Smith said. “We made a few adjustments and the goals came

with it.”Thompson crossed the ball over

to Rosa, who opened the second with a rocket from the 20-yard line, a common spot in Rosa’s goal-scoring resume this season. A mere 20 sec-onds later, the set-up man for the night, Thompson, sent a cross from the right corner to a cutting Elenz-Martin, who connected on a header for his third goal of the season.

“We were ecstatic,” Smith said. “Teams react dif ferently when they’re down and can let the game slip away. But Princeton never gave up, and we knew they wouldn’t.”

The Tigers responded immedi-ately with a rally, as Matt Sanner scored on a header that floated over goalkeeper Paul Grandstrand ’11 and into the right corner of the net.

Jay Hayward ’12 extended Brown’s lead in the 64th minute when Rosa was fouled hard by a Princeton defender, giving Hayward a free kick from 35 yards out on the right side of the field. Hayward placed the ball perfectly over the three defenders who established a wall in front of him. The ball curved nicely into the right corner of the net, notching Hayward’s first career goal for the Bears. Hayward became the 11th player on the team to score a goal this season.

“The biggest part about staying in the lead was keeping the connec-tion and communicating on defense,” Smith said. Princeton “created some chaos when they brought more play-ers up for offensive opportunities, but we also had our own advantage when we sent the ball to the opposite side of the field for our own scoring chances.”

The referees called a foul in the penalty box on the Bears in the 69th minute, which led to a penalty kick by Brandon Busch, who sent the ball to the back of the net to pull the game to within two. But Brown squelched the Princeton rally in the game’s final 20 minutes and emerged victorious, 4-2.

Grandstrand (6-0-4) recorded five saves in the contest, while Princeton’s Sean Lynch recorded one save of the five shots on goal by the Bears.

Smith returned to the starting

line-up for the first time this season after coming off a broken foot suf-fered during pre-season training. He was an integral part of the defense that prevented the Tigers from get-ting too close to the Bears on Satur-day night.

“It was great to get back out there, but I was a little rusty,” Smith said. “It was great to get back in the line-up and fight out there with the guys.”

Brown 3, rutgers 1The Bears hoped to extend their

winning streak Tuesday night in a tough non-conference battle against the Biga East’s Rutgers (5-7-0).

The Scarlet Knights and the Bears came out hot in the first half, as each team tallied over 10 shots. Rutgers capitalized on offense first in the 18th minute, when Ibrahim Kamara sent a header into the goal past Jarrod Schlenker ’10, who start-ed in goal for the Bears for the first time in his career. Schlenker and the defense tightened up and denied several scoring drives to keep the Bears in the game.

Rosa sent a pass to Thompson, who once again set up a goal for Elenz-Martin in the 37th minute of the half. The Bears finished out the first half with the momentum headed in their direction that would carry on into the second half.

Hayward lined up for a corner kick in the 62nd minute and sent a perfect ball right at the goal to Evan Coleman ’12. Coleman headed the ball to Thomas McNamara ’13, who connected on another header for the go-ahead goal. McNamara led Brown with five shots on the night, three of which were on goal.

With only a one-goal lead, the Bears kept the pressure on the Scarlet Knights and put together several more scoring drives in the games closing 30 minutes. Manella beat his defender in the 70th minute but fell to the ground on a hard hit by goalkeeper Alex Morgans that was not called a foul by the referee. Co-captain David Walls ’11 followed right behind Manella and put the ball away for a two-goal lead the Bears maintained to secure the 3-1 win.

Schlenker earned his first career win in goal with an outstanding sev-

en saves to pace the defense that allowed one goal on 20 attempted shots.

Brown travels to No. 6 Harvard (8-2-1, 1-0-1 Ivy) on Saturday for its third Ivy League match of the year. Harvard nearly fell at Cornell on Saturday, fighting out a 1-1 tie, and is seeking to bounce back from a 0-4 loss against No. 17 Connecticut

last night.“With each game we play, we’re

looking to solidify things,” Smith said. “We definitely wanted to stay on the winning side of things against Rutgers. Our team has confidence and some momentum after several positive results heading into our match against Harvard on Satur-day.”

Herald File PhotoThe bears earned their seventh win over Rutgers Tuesday, 3-1. The team, ranked 15th nationally, has not yet lost a game this season.

editorial & LettersPage 10 | THURSdAy, OCTObER 15, 2009

The brown daily Herald

E VA N D O N A H U E A N D E R I K S T A Y T O N

effect on target

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editorial

Brown’s administration, like any other, has its successes and its failures, and it deserves to be congratulated for the creation and continued im-provement of the Target of Opportunity hiring program.

The initiative, a part of President Ruth Simmons’ Plan for Academic Enrichment, allows departments to request new faculty on an accelerated timetable outside of the normal hiring cycle. Twenty of the 25 slots devoted to the program under the Plan are currently occupied, but while overall hiring is slowing down, the Target positions will become available for new hires if their current occupants leave the University.

Target of Opportunity hiring has already proven its worth in full and has made great strides since its inception. The most celebrated new professor brought in through the program is the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe.

But not all targeted hires are world-renowned luminaries. Outstanding junior faculty are also among the fast-tracked new arrivals, including some talented women assistant professors in the physical sciences, according to Dean of the Faculty Rajiv Vohra P’07. Without the program, they might well have been snapped up by our peer institutions; instead, they will help make Brown a leader in tapping into the underutilized potential of women in quantitative fields.

Brown’s targeting capabilities have also im-proved in recent years.

In 2005, The Herald reported that many depart-ments were disappointed by the University’s slug-gish reaction to requests for Target hires, which negated much of the program’s usefulness. Four years on, the process runs much more smoothly and quickly without sacrificing careful consider-

ation of departmental choices. The most tempting use of Target of Opportu-

nity is to stock the faculty with big names such as Achebe. But no department can run on star power alone. While the program has been well-utilized to date, Department Chair and Professor of History Omer Bartov has rightly suggested that target-of-opportunity hiring could enable an unhealthy shift in faculty composition.

Some departments could end up with an excess of senior professors; while each field has its own balance to strike between junior and senior faculty, an imbalance is an inherent risk of the flexibility targeting provides. And unreasonably high turnover rates from sought-after professors exploring other options could undermine the reliability and long-term planning required to maintain high-quality research and instruction.

If the administration continues to carefully moni-tor trends in the requests under the program, keep-ing in mind the widely varying priorities of the departments, the potential downsides of Target of Opportunity are unlikely to emerge.

The average student enjoys the luxury of being able to simultaneously revere Ruth individually and vociferate against the administration generally. But target-of-opportunity hiring, shepherded by a group effort, is a proven and ongoing success for which the administration deserves our thanks.

Yes, that success is conditional. But we would all do well to keep it in mind before condemning the administration en masse for their next slip-up.

Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board. Send comments to editorials@brown-dailyherald.com.

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THURSdAy, OCTObER 15, 2009 | PAGE 11

opinionsThe brown daily Herald

I may be naive to hope that alumni still read tTe Brown Daily Herald in its online format on a regular basis, but perhaps members of the nefarious Corporation or our esteemed President still find time to peruse these pages, because as classes resume, exams loom and the leaves change color, quibbles over money begin once more.

Let me begin by saying I sincerely hope that the University and the members of Brown Dining Services can find common ground. Yes, I realize that the economy ravaged our endowment, but that does not mean we can take it out on those who work here.

On the other hand, while the University cannot visit its endowment woes on its em-ployees, the fact remains that those who make more can afford to help those who make less acquire health insurance. The debate raises an interesting issue regarding how students see the University’s allocation of funds, and how anyone can pursue multi-million-dollar renovation projects while charging its em-ployees more for health insurance.

The University’s hands are tied most of the time. Brown’s budget isn’t one big pot; rather, it’s a small pot, with various soup bowls, salad bowls, chafing dishes, cook-ie sheets, deep fryers, and roasting pans scattered all around. These miscellaneous kitchen apparatus are all earmarked for spe-cific projects. Recent ones include the Sid-

ney E. Frank Hall for Life Sciences, the Ste-phen Robert ’62 Campus Center, the Cre-ative Arts Center and the Jonathan Nelson ’77 Aquatics Center. All of these projects have been either partly or entirely funded by donors.

But donations with strings attached aren’t unique to building construction. Any-one who receives a “named scholarship” from the University is a recipient of such a donation. These are earmarked for finan-cial aid purposes, based on certain criteria

set down by the donor. These donations are actually a critical part of the University’s “Boldly Brown” Campaign for Academic Enrichment. Yet even though the campaign reached its goal of $1.4 billion last May, it remains a critical part of helping Brown weather the economic crisis and continue to excel.

The Brown Annual Fund helps provide fi-nancial aid and research opportunities, and establishes professorships and classes. Gifts into this fund are deposited into the endow-

ment. Every year, the principal remains in the endowment funds, while the investment returns on that principle are spent. In es-sence, the Annual Fund helps expand the academic opportunities at Brown. Accord-ing to the Annual Fund’s Web site, 120 gifts of just $25 dollars helped establish an Un-dergraduate TRA. Fifty gifts of $50 helped a doctoral student stay on campus during the summer. These gifts, and other Annual Fund spending, helped fund education di-rectly, helping to pay for tuition, health in-

surance and other costs.As members of the Brown community,

we should all be grateful for the gifts that generous donors provide us. But perhaps it isn’t such a bad idea for donors to reanalyze the types of gifts to give in this economic cli-mate. Which will help the University more: one fancy new building or financial aid for 400 students?

Our endowment took a fairly substantial hit during the stock market crash last year; of the $2.78 billion dollars we started with,

we emerged with just $2.04 billion, a loss of $740 million in market value. If $3,000 equals an UTRA, imagine what could have been ac-complished with a direct infusion of $25 mil-lion dollars — an amount equal to the dona-tion required for the Swim Center — into the Brown Annual Fund.

Granted, donating money into the Annual Fund or into the endowment directly doesn’t get one immortalized in stone, or named on a plaque in a prominent place. But it does have the added benefit of helping students come here, to one of the best universities in the world, to learn.

The knowledge they gain while at Brown could one day cure deadly epidemics, or pre-vent them from even occurring: could put a man on Mars, or could help develop the next great novelist of our time. The Universi-ty isn’t suffering alone; students and faculty and their families struggle to pay the bills. A direct infusion of cash could revolutionize Brown’s financial aid policy, making an Ivy League education an achievable and realis-tic dream for students of all economic back-grounds.

So while it’s unlikely that our generous, esteemed and privileged alumni still peruse these pages, I humbly hope that just one will forego earmarking a building with his or her name attached, and help finance an educa-tion — help finance a future.

mike Johnson ’11 thinks the corporation should buy 2.038 billion scratch-off

tickets: one has to hit it big.

a plea for the removal of strings

It is somewhat strange that I can never as-sociate a cooked chicken on my plate with a walking, clucking chicken that I would otherwise never hurt with my own hands. It just doesn’t inspire the same warm fuzzy feeling. No doubt, organizations like Peo-ple for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Brown Animal Rights Club have come across many people like me, and dealing with us is one of their big challenges.

Plenty of people love animals but still eat meat. So what does that make us: hypo-crites, confused or just plain normal?

I’m not sure how other people deal with it (or if they do at all). But I know that I have felt guilty about eating meat, especially at times when I’ve had fewer problems in life.When I first came to Brown, for example, and felt that fantastic feeling that every-thing is possible, my guilt made me reduce my meat intake gradually until I was eating no meat at all. It lasted for about a month and a half. Sure, everything was still pos-sible, but it was made considerably harder in the face of chicken finger Fridays at the V-dub.

The part that I felt worst about was that my re-conversion to omnivorism wasn’t be-cause of a health or nutrition concern which would, in a way, legitimize my relapse. Rath-er, it was purely because I’d been eating

meat all my life, and, un-PC as it sounds, I think it tastes rather nice, actually.

In an effort to reconcile my love of ani-mals with my love of juicy, juicy hamburg-ers, I made my way to the volunteers who manned the PETA stalls on the Main Green recently. In response to my questions they asked me to imagine how I would feel if my own pet cats were shredded to pieces like some of the animals I ate were. It wasn’t

hard to do, with all those graphic images around me of animals being butchered and maltreated in every possible way.

But I can’t expect to have the same kind of bond that I have with my pets with ev-ery other animal out there, and so it didn’t really help make the connection between cooked animals and live ones.

Obviously, PETA might ask what the point of my caring about animals is when I’m going to eat them anyway.

Yet ironically, being eaten is not where the struggle ends for most animals, because there are plenty of other animal rights is-

sues.One of these is that the meat we eat is

produced and processed using highly ques-tionable means. For example, PETA’s own Web site publicizes how Kentucky Fried Chicken stuffs chickens into filthy, over-crowded factories, and then drugs them so that they grow large, so large in fact that they can’t even walk. This is obviously done to cater to the demands of a form of con-

sumerism that is going out of control. But not only is this practice bad for animals, it is harmful for us as well.

The Web site cited the fact that KFC slits chickens’ throats and drops them into hot water while they may still be conscious. Yes, the chickens will surely die, but there is no reason for them to be in pain while still alive.

Also, while plenty of people would agree that eating meat is justified, they would also agree that devouring the copious amounts of meat (and everything else too) that we do now is not okay. This over-consumption

makes us bigger than we need to be, leads to global warming issues and inevitably causes us to waste food. Any student who eats at the Ratty is probably shocked by the quantities of meat thrown away every day, like I am. This meat comes from animals killed for no reason at all.

As somebody who cares about animals and the planet, I could help advance PETA’s campaigns for all these causes — if only they wanted me.

Like any organization seeking major so-cial change, PETA needs popular support, and so it should allow people to contrib-ute what they can without being judged for what they decide not to renounce. As long as they help alleviate the conditions of an-imals in one way or another, they should feel a part of the animals rights movement, because they are still making a difference. And it should be okay if I turn up to a BARC meeting and eat a chicken patty, as long as I am helping the organization in another big way.

In the end, eating meat remains contro-versial. But animal rights groups shouldn’t waste the goodwill of potential supporters of other animal rights issues. In asking ev-eryone to do something as drastic as giving up meat, these groups may just be losing whatever support many people can give.

Fatima aqeel ’12 is an economics concen-trator from Karachi, Pakistan. She can be

reached at fatima_aqeel@brown.edu.

For the love of animals, and of meat

People should be allowed to contribute what they

can without being judged for what they decide

not to renounce.

brown’s budget isn’t one big pot; rather, it’s a

small pot, with various soup bowls, salad bowls,

chafing dishes, cookie sheets, deep fryers and

roasting pans.

by MIKE JOHNSONopinions columnist

by FATIMA AQEELopinions columnist

got something to say? Comment online! www.browndailyherald.com

thursday, octoBer 15, 2009 page 12

Today 29

Put your hand here to see yourself

Men’s soccer still unbeaten

The brown daily Herald

48 / 37

today, oct 15

12 pm — brown bag Series in Archae-

ology, Watson Institute

8:45 pm — Low Anthem at Avon The-

ater, 260 Thayer Street

friday, oct 16

2 pm — Sarah doyle Women’s Center

Open House, 26 benevolent Street

9 pm — brown University Jazz band

Conference, Grant Recital Hall

ACROSS1 Premium movie

station4 Hammer-wielding

Norse god8 First voice of

Mickey Mouse14 “This instant!”15 Will Rogers prop16 Rallying cry17 ISP with chat

rooms18 Took advantage

of19 Scrubs, as pots20 *Bakery fare

named for theirshape

23 Actress Holmes24 Mothers’ month25 Kid’s building

block28 Part of CBS:

Abbr.29 *Quixotic reveries32 1953 Western

hero to whomJoey cried“Come back!”

34 Vacation home,maybe

35 Stately tree38 “Wait, there’s

more ...”39 Half-__: coffee

order40 Prefix with friendly41 Sunday dinners43 Certain Sri

Lankan45 *Playground

fixture47 Immortal

racehorse Man __

51 Opie’s dad52 Coffee dispenser53 Eagle’s nest54 *Beat poet who

wrote “Howl”58 Ohio city north of

Columbus60 Pre-holiday times61 Pester62 Really digs63 Domesticated64 MMX ÷ X65 Basic doctrines66 One-armed

bandit67 “__ Haw”

DOWN1 Chips and nuts2 “Way to go!”

3 Little barn fliers4 Cease-fire5 L’eggs product6 Good thing to

keep whenhearing opposingviews

7 Bureaucraticwaste

8 “Take care of it”9 “Batt. not __”

10 Puffed up, as asprain

11 Make queasy12 Throw wide of

the mark, say13 NFL gains21 Rests one’s feet22 Ham holder26 Detroit-based

financial org.27 Capital on a fjord29 Variously colored

flower30 Small weight

units31 One way to lower

an APR33 Detest35 Funny Bombeck36 Minnesota’s state

bird37 Official spoken

language ofChina

39 Traveling show

42 Toronto’sincludes the CNTower

43 Quotas44 Leopold’s

co-defendant46 Hot dog holder48 A type of one

begins theanswers tostarred clues

49 Snoopy’s flyingpersona, e.g.

50 Baseball’sJackson, a.k.a.“Mr. October”

53 It’s a good thing55 Ex-senator Trent56 Genesis

grandson57 Pixar clownfish58 Sch. near

Harvard59 Enzyme suffix

By Todd Gross(c)2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc. 10/15/09

10/15/09

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Thursday, October 15, 2009

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

xwordeditor@aol.com

cabernet Voltaire | Abe Pressman

dot comic | Eshan Mitra and brendan Hainline

hippomaniac| Mat becker

sharpe refectory

lunch — Chicken Cutlet Parmesan

Sandwich, Zucchini and Parmesan

Sandwich, Garlic and butter Infused

Rice

dinner — Spice Rubbed Pork Chops,

Cheese Tomato Strata, Oven-browned

Potatoes

Verney-Woolley dining hall

lunch — Sloppy Joe Sandwich,

Falafel in Pita bread, Cauliflower au

Gratin

dinner — Roast Turkey with Sauce,

Shells with broccoli, Stuffing, Mashed

Potatoes

3 9calendar

menu

crossword

the news in imaGes

comics

47 / 38

today tomorrow

stW| Jingtao Huang

classic deep-fried Kittens| Cara FitzGibbon