TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013 since 1891vol. cxlviii, no. 52

INSIDE

Senior panel Students exhibit capstones at Theories in Action

Vacated spaceCity officials debate the fate of “Superman” building

Page 4

Gun controlFirearm legislation moves to R.I. General Assembly

Page 8

Page 2

65 / 54

tomorrow

61 / 51

today

Daily HeraldTHE BROWN

By ALEXANDRA MACFARLANE AND SARAH PERELMANUNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR

AND SENIOR STAFF WRITER

No Brown students were reported in-jured after two bombs exploded by the Boston Marathon’s finish line around 2:50 p.m. yesterday, though at least 20 students and alums attended the event.

Three people were killed, and al-most 150 people were injured in the incident, multiple news outlets reported Monday.

Gov. Lincoln Chafee ’75 P’14 told the Boston Globe no Rhode Island citizens had been reported injured as of Monday night.

The White House has not yet deter-mined whether the attack was foreign or domestic, Reuters reported, but the FBI and Secretary of Homeland Secu-rity are taking appropriate measures, President Obama said in a speech in response to the events.

Five minutes after the explosions, the site was filled with debris, ambu-lances and people fleeing the scene, said Julien Ouellet ’12, who works in the Prudential Tower, located approximate-ly 200 yards from the scene. Ouellet, a former Herald senior editor, witnessed the aftermath at the marathon’s finish line from a window in the tower.

Half an hour after the attack, the site was like a “ghost town,” Ouellet said, adding that the “whole scene was entirely deserted save for policemen.”

National Guard and SWAT teams entered about an hour later and began turning over trash cans — likely look-ing for other possible explosives — and sifting through debris, he said.

When Ouellet first heard the bombs, it sounded “as if someone dropped books on the floor above,” he said, adding that he didn’t know anything had happened until he heard ambu-lance sirens outside. The workers in his office were

NO U. STUDENTS REPORTED INJURED IN EXPLOSIONAt least 20 students and alums attended the Boston Marathon Monday

By ABIGAIL SAVITCH-LEWCONTRIBUTING WRITER

After thousands of students were un-able purchase Spring Weekend tickets Monday morning due to technical issues with TouchNet, a third-party service that handles credit card payments, Brown Student Agencies and Brown Concert Agency successfully resumed sales Mon-day evening.

Out of 6,400 tickets intended to be released to the student body 8 a.m. Mon-day — 3,200 tickets for each day of the concerts — only 1,000 were successfully sold, said Connor Shinn ’14, executive

director of BSA.This marks the fourth year in a row

that the online sale of Spring Weekend tickets has faced technical issues. BCA and BSA rescheduled sales for Monday night and Tuesday morning to sell the rest of the tickets intended for release Monday morning.

Ticket sales Monday night went smoothly, said Emma Ramadan ’13, booking chair for BCA.

“We’re really happy that TouchNet fi-nally pulled through and did what they’re supposed to,” Ramadan said.

In response to past problems with the site, BCA and BSA made changes to the sales website this year, Shinn said.

Shinn said TouchNet hosted the sales website last year and didn’t have enough capacity to serve the influx of student customers, resulting in a site crash. This year, BSA created its own ticket-selling

server on Amazon that could handle 30,000 customers at once, Shinn said.

But the University has a contract with TouchNet that mandates that BSA’s web-site use TouchNet to process payments. Though Shinn said TouchNet assured BCA and BSA the service would be pre-pared for a high number of payments, the site still experienced difficulties this morning.

TouchNet did not respond to requests for comment as of press time.

Many students had charges pending on their credit card statements Monday morning but did not receive an email with their tickets attached.

“I woke up at 7:45 to get those tickets,” said Jason Addy ’16, who said he received an error message the first time he tried to purchase tickets and later found he had been charged without receiving a ticket.

BCA posted on its blog Monday

afternoon that students who had been charged but did not receive an email con-firmations had not actually purchased tickets, and their pending charges would be canceled. It is TouchNet’s responsibil-ity to contact credit card companies and cancel pending charges, Shinn said.

About 120 students requested a nega-tive number of tickets Monday morn-ing, further overloading TouchNet and interfering with the BCA website, Shinn said. Each of these students were charged $10 but didn’t receive tickets, he added. Diane Chouinard, coordinator of Fi-nancial Services, refunded each student individually, Shinn said.

“Today sucked. It really did,” BCA members wrote in their blog post Mon-day afternoon. The post also said BCA and BSA were working with TouchNet and University administrators to reopen ticket sales on

TouchNet stalls Spring Weekend ticket salesThe site caused problems with morning sales, but BCA released more of the tickets in the evening

By MATHIAS HELLERUNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR

As the University undertakes major changes to its housing system with a

multimillion-dol-lar investment on the line, students expressed mixed

views on how well residential life builds community.

First-year units and mutual friends are the most common ways students form connections that lead to housing groups, with 35.7 percent of current sophomores, juniors and seniors hav-ing met most of the people with whom they currently live through other friends

and 35.2 percent having met most of their housing mates through their first-year units, according to results from a poll The Herald conducted last month.

Twenty-two percent of students in all class years met most of the people with whom they live or plan to live through teams or student groups, and 19 per-cent found most of their housing mates through academic settings.

Ten percent of students met most of the people with whom they live or plan to live through a fraternity, sorority or program house, 3 percent were ran-domly assigned housing and 8 percent indicated the poll question did not ap-ply. An additional 9 percent of students, including some who studied abroad last semester or chose to live alone, indicated they are not in standard housing groups. Poll respondents circled all options that applied to them.

The Corporation allocated $56 mil-lion for hous-

Housing renovation plans aimed to bolster communityThe University’s extensive renovation plan is meant to unify students based on class year

By KIKI BARNESSENIOR STAFF WRITER

After controversy flared online Sunday over a proposed budget cut to the liter-ary arts publication Visions, a meeting Monday afternoon between Undergradu-ate Finance Board representatives and Visions leaders appeared to partially resolve what UFB members described as a misunderstanding.

But Visions continued to circulate an online petition as of Monday eve-ning criticizing UFB for a general lack of transparency and what the publication’s leaders saw as an initial attempt to usurp its editorial independence.

Next year the publication is likely to receive all the funding it originally re-quested, said Zachary Fischer ’13, UFB chair.

Initial budgets for student groups next year were released the week before spring break, marking the first time Visions editors heard the publication was slotted to receive 85 percent of its proposed funding. When Visions, a Brown-Rhode Island School of Design Asian/Asian-American literature and art publication, went to a UFB appeals meeting April 9, its leaders were told the cuts were due to the high number of RISD student contributions in its most recent issue, said Larry Au ’14, Visions editor-in-chief.

In response, Visions posted a petition online Sunday lambasting UFB’s deci-sion and demanding the board revise its decision in a

UFB, Visions controversy resolvedLeaders of the magazine petitioned against the board’s funding cut and threat to control content

LYDIA YAMAGUCHI / HERALD

About 34 percent of juniors and seniors reported meeting their current housemates in their first-year dormitories such as Keeney Quadrangle.

DAN ZHANG / HERALDThree individuals died and nearly 150 were injured after two explosions near the finish line at the Boston Marathon Monday afternoon./ / Boston page 5

/ / Tickets page 2

/ / Housing page 3 / / Visions page 5

NEWS ANALYSIS

university news2 THE BROWN DAILY HERALDTUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013

ACROSS1 Soccer officials5 “You __ dead!”:

“I’m telling mom!”10 Location14 Berry in healthy

smoothies15 “No way!”16 Jazz classic

“Take __ Train”17 Lost color in one’s

cheeks19 Greasy spoon

grub20 Hit hard21 Like blue hair22 “Faust” dramatist24 Fred’s dancing

sister26 Bartender’s twist28 Beer to drink on

Cinco de Mayo30 Four quarters31 Tax agcy.32 Archaic “once”33 Talk show

pioneer Jack36 Residential bldg.

units38 Stack of

unsolicitedmanuscripts

41 Bush secretary oflabor Elaine

43 Madeline of“BlazingSaddles”

44 Emails the wrongperson, say

48 U.S./Canada’s __Canals

49 Sunrise direction,in Köln

51 Buyer’s “beware”53 Tribal carving57 Go58 City on the Rio

Grande59 Feed the kitty61 “Cool” monetary

amt.62 Even-handed63 It may be filled

with a gardenhose

66 Helsinki resident67 Actress Burstyn68 Hip-swiveling

dance69 Vexes70 Extremely poor71 Ruin Bond’s

martini

DOWN1 Daily grind2 Besides Chile, the

only SouthAmerican countrythat doesn’tborder Brazil

3 __ market4 Break a

Commandment5 “Toy Story” boy6 Fend off7 Dance around8 Somme salt9 Where Nike

headquarters is10 Considerable, as

discounts11 Terse critical

appraisal12 Ties to a post, as

a horse13 Art gallery props18 Delightful spot23 “Paper Moon”

Oscar winnerTatum

25 Many, informally27 Change from

vampire to bat, say29 Kwik-E-Mart

owner on “TheSimpsons”

34 Extend aninvitation for

35 “I knew it!”37 Thorn in one’s side39 Appears strikingly

on the horizon40 Co. letterhead

abbr.41 Welcome

summer forecast42 Noticeable lipstick

color45 Come down hard

on46 Filled pasta

47 Top-notch48 Golden Slam

winner Graf50 Said52 Away from the

wind54 Takes home55 Punch bowl

spoon56 Over and done60 Hard to see64 French landmass65 Acidity nos.

By C.C. Burnikel(c)2013 Tribune Media Services, Inc. 04/16/13

04/16/13

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Tuesday, April 16, 2013

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

xwordeditor@aol.com

7 P.M.

Kink, Leather and BDSM

Salomon 001

7 P.M.

Brown Lecture Board: Ron Paul

Salomon 101

5:30 P.M.

Who’s Afraid of Religious Passion?

Pembroke Hall 202

5:30 P.M.

Obama’s “War on Terror”

The Underground

SHARPE REFECTORY VERNEY-WOOLLEY

LUNCH

DINNER

Stri Fried Chicken with Noodles, Vegetable Egg Rolls, Fried Rice, Bread Pudding with Raisins

Chicken Breast with Brandied Glaze, Creamy Parmesan Primavera, Stir Fried Tofu, Panettone Bread Pudding

Tomato Quiche, Reuben Sandwich, Steak Sandwich with Onions and Mushrooms, Chocolate Chip Cookies

Steak Sandwich with Onions and Mushrooms, Vegetable Strudel, Chocolate Chip Cookies

TODAY APRIL 16 TOMORROW APRIL 17

C R O S S W O R D

S U D O K U

M E N U

C A L E N D A R

Shefali Luthra, PresidentLucy Feldman, Vice President

Samuel Plotner, TreasurerJulia Kuwahara, Secretary

The Brown Daily Herald (USPS 067.740) is an independent newspaper serving the Brown University community daily since 1891. It is published Monday through Friday during the academic year, excluding vacations, once during Commencement and once during Orientation by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Single copy free for each member of the community. POSTMASTER please send corrections to P.O. Box 2538, Providence, RI 02906. Periodicals postage paid at Providence, R.I. Subscription prices: $280 one year daily, $140 one semester daily. Copyright 2013 by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.

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EDITORIAL(401) 351-3372

herald@browndailyherald.com

BUSINESS(401) 351-3260

gm@browndailyherald.com

By MOLLY SCHULSONSENIOR STAFF WRITER

Seniors will present on topics ranging from Algebra in Motion to the use of classical music in television advertise-ments during the fourth annual Theories in Action conference April 26-28.

Ninety-six seniors will participate, up from 21 participants last year and nearly twice as many as in 2010, when the conference was first created, said Peggy Chang, director of the Curricular Re-source Center, which co-sponsors the conference with the Office of the Dean of the College.

Last year, about 600 audience mem-bers, including friends and advisers of the participants, as well as Providence community members, attended the con-ference, Chang said.

“This is an opportunity for students across departments, across disciplines, even students who are campus leaders in extracurricular service projects, to think about what has been meaningful for them during their time at Brown and to talk about the social and public signifi-cance of what they’ve done,” Chang said.

The 2007 Task Force on Undergradu-ate Education suggested the University should “encourage more students to think about doing capstones … and to improve advising about life after Brown,” Chang said. In light of the Task Force’s recommendations, the Theories in Ac-tion conference was created as a way to bring members of the senior class together and “(celebrate) the research, leadership activities, artistic produc-tions and other capstone projects” that they’ve done, according to the confer-ence website.

During the application process, par-ticipants choose to present their projects with posters or as a part of a panel with other groups. This year’s conference showcases 19 panels in Petteruti Lounge and the Salomon Center and 16 posters in the Leung Gallery.

While many seniors prepare to pres-

ent their theses to members of their de-partment, Theories in Action is about “broadening” the audience, Chang said.

“They’re really excited to talk to people outside of the handful of advis-ers they’ve been working with for a year and a half,” said Darcy Pinkerton ’14, co-coordinator of Theories in Action.

Madeline Sall ’13 focused on clas-sical music in television advertising for her thesis and will be presenting on a panel entitled “Transformers: Aesthetic Narratives in Disguise.” She knew of people who participated in Theories in Action before and thought the confer-ence “sounded really cool.”

“It’s easy to end up in one place and not really understand or know what is going on in other departments and what other people are working on,” she said. “This conference puts all of these people together and forces a larger conversation.”

While her thesis was “meant for fac-ulty of the music department,” she said she wants her presentation to be “less technically derived, more about semiotics and the cultural context.”

Each panel project consists of three or four presenters or groups.

“As much as possible, we try to pair people together who might not ordinar-ily go together in a conference that is discipline-based but who have common themes,” Pinkerton said. “They’re excited to figure out how their work relates to other people’s work.”

“I’m going to be in a panel, and we decided to call it ‘Enhancing the Brown Experience through Mindfulness and Self-Reflection,’” said Riyad Seervai ’13, who applied to the conference to pres-ent on his involvement with the Yoga and Mindfulness Club. Seniors from the Matched Advising Program for Sopho-mores and Social Classmates are also part of the panel.

“Our overarching theme would be mindfulness in general and some form of self-reflection, allowing people to think about what they want to get out of the Brown experience,” he said.

More students this year than ever before are presenting on extracurricular activities. Three seniors involved in the New Scientist Program, which focuses on promoting diversity in the sciences, are presenting a poster at the conference.

“(NSP) has kind of defined my expe-rience at Brown,” said Tanayott Thaweet-hai ’13, a coordinator of NSP. “Theories in Action gives us an opportunity to show what we’ve been working on these past four years.”

Nobody presented on an extracur-ricular passion in the conference’s first year, though organizers advertised the opportunity to do so, Chang said. “We tried really hard to change that,” she said, adding that this year, “a nice set of folks are representing projects outside of the academic areas.”

Kathy Takayama, director of the Sher-idan Center for Teaching and Learning, held two mandatory training sessions — one for panel presenters and one for poster presenters — to offer advice on what to include in the posters and “get-ting jargon out of their presentations,” Chang said.

“I’ve never made a poster before and I found it very helpful,” Thaweethai said. The center had sample posters hanging on the wall, he said.

“The most traditional ... disciplines that tend to know what it means to do a poster are the STEM areas,” Chang said. “It’s becoming more popular in the social sciences, but it’s not necessarily some-thing that people know how to do to.”

Most participants are involved in dis-ciplines with “more of a social focus,” Chang said. “We get a lot (of participants) from environmental studies, political science, international relations and also a lot from public health,” she said.

Seniors concentrating in applied math and physics are also presenting.

“Tailoring presentations to specific audiences, and in particular to ‘non-experts,’ is a very important skill, and participating in this conference allows seniors to work on these skills, in addi-tion to networking with others,” wrote Bjorn Sandstede, professor of applied mathematics, in an email to The Herald. Sandstede encourages his students to take part in the conference, Chang said.

“It’s inspiring to see what people do here,” Chang said. “It’s a great representa-tion of why you want to come to Brown and what is so special about Brown. It’s about finding something you’re pas-sionate about and getting really deeply involved in it.”

Theories in Action gains popularitySeniors representing an array of disciplines joined the panel to showcase their capstone projects

Monday night and Tuesday morning to compensate for the tickets that should have been sold Monday morning.

TouchNet promised it would use more servers to prevent another jam, Shinn said.

BCA and BSA chose to sell the re-maining 2,500 tickets per concert at two

separate times to prevent students with evening activities from missing out on the opportunity to buy tickets — 1,250 tickets per concert went on sale 8 p.m. Monday, and 1,250 tickets per concert will go on sale at Tuesday at 7 a.m. to avoid interference with senior pre-reg-istration at 8 a.m.

“People were being a lot more rude than they should have been to the Brown

Concert Agency representatives,” said Ananya Bhatia-Lin ’16, who praised BCA for posting updates to the Class of 2016 Facebook group, blog, event page and elsewhere.

“I would be much more pissed if I didn’t get tickets at 8 p.m.,” said Jason Shum ’14. “But since I did, it softens the blow.”

“I’m much happier, but I’m not happy I had to get up at 8 a.m.,” said Elizabeth Powers ’14. She said BCA did a good job communicating their solution to the student body and that she appreciated their sympathy on the blog.

While BCA and BSA members said they are frustrated with TouchNet’s poor performance, the University’s contract with TouchNet makes it difficult for BCA and BSA to change services, Shinn said. “The difficulty is not only in the bureau-cracy but also in the cost” of setting up an alternative system, he said.

Joie Steele, faculty adviser for BCA, said BCA and BSA are “two of the hard-est working groups on campus” and that it is unfortunate the two groups always suffer the blame for issues with ticket sales.

/ / Tickets page 1

university news 3THE BROWN DAILY HERALDTUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013

ing renovations last year, setting the stage for large-scale changes to undergraduate residential life. Most renovations or im-provements funded by this project will be completed by this fall, The Herald previously reported.

The housing overhaul aims both to cluster students in specific geographic areas and to create a stronger community within each dorm, said Cody Shulman ’13, housing lottery committee chair for the Residential Council.

Administrators are moving to cluster all first-years into either Keeney Quad-rangle or renovated residence halls on the Pembroke campus, with Keeney sepa-rated into three buildings, The Herald previously reported.

The plan aims to create sophomore communities in smaller dorms clustered in the center of campus and on south campus. Caswell and Littlefield Halls and Hope College are already sophomore-designated, and Barbour and Perkins Halls will become sophomore-only this fall. New Pembroke and Wriston Quad-rangle will also have housing options for sophomores.

Juniors and seniors will be in suites and apartments, with Graduate Center, Vartan Gregorian Quad and Young Or-chard now open only to upperclassmen, The Herald previously reported.

The University’s plans involved con-siderable student input, said Director of Residential Experience Natalie Basil. Separating dorms based on class was a solution for first-years’ complaints about some units being “awkward and disjointed” because upperclassmen lived in their buildings, she added.

Senior Associate Dean of Residential and Dining Services Richard Bova said in his decade at the University, sophomores have often said they felt “neglected” by a lottery system they found skewed toward upperclassmen.

Administrators said they designed the plan for sophomore communities to prevent sophomores from feeling like an

afterthought.The University has “a very open and

independent system” that allows students to progress through their time at Brown from the “cohesiveness” of their first-year units so they can make their own housing choices by the time they are up-perclassmen, Bova said. “It is about the independence of progressively getting better housing.”

Out of boundsStudents said they see value in the

first-year unit system, but some criticized the current residential life structure.

“I would definitely say that my best friends have been kept and cultivated through where I’ve lived,” said Giulia Basile ’13, adding that she lived with most of her current roommates during her sophomore year and is still friends with people from her first-year unit.

Thirty-four percent of seniors and 34.6 percent of juniors met most of their current housemates through their first-year units.

Basile, who now lives off campus, said she supports the focus on communities based on class year for underclassmen. New common spaces being developed as part of the overhaul will facilitate this process, she said.

But living near students did not al-ways foster friendship, Basile said, adding that sometimes she “had no idea who was living around” her.

Many students expressed support for making off-campus permission easier to attain. First-years and sophomores are required to live on campus, and those who wish to leave the dorms as juniors must petition the University.

“I still don’t understand the reasoning behind making it so difficult” to live off campus, Basile said, noting that it is often cheaper for students to live in houses or apartments.

By keeping students from moving to private houses and apartments within campus boundaries, the University “forces people to live in places that are actually farther and actually less a part of

the community,” said Ana Rosenstein ’15. She added that a residential college sys-tem like Yale’s would not work at Brown because of a lack of space and suitable buildings.

“Sense of belonging”The lottery system and efforts to

create communities based on year dif-ferentiate the University from its peer institutions.

Yale assigns incoming students to one of 12 residential colleges, and many students live in their assigned residential colleges for the rest of their time at Yale.

“You can live with the same people early and have that sense of belonging,” said Elizabeth Bradley, master of Yale’s Branford College. “Each college is ran-domly put together so they’re a micro-cosm of Yale,” she said.

“It provides an immediate and ac-cessible group of friends,” said Sam Bendinelli, a senior in Yale’s Berkeley College. “College can be a big transition and knowing all these people from the get-go means more people to talk to in class.”

These spaces often foster “a lot of pride” in new Yale students, Bendinelli said.

The residential college model of mix-ing class years remains rooted at Yale, but a rising emphasis on the value of sopho-more clusters appears to be gaining trac-tion at the University and other schools.

As a small liberal arts college, Am-herst College features 37 residence halls, which are inhabited by at most 125 stu-dents each, wrote Pamela Stawasz, Am-herst’s assistant director of residential life, in an email to The Herald. Though Stawasz wrote that only first-years cur-rently have specifically designated resi-dence halls, she added this could change.

Recent research indicates that resi-dential communities based on class year benefit undergraduates even after their first year, Stawasz wrote. She added that in light of this research, many institutions have begun shifting their approaches to residential life by creating new sopho-

more-based housing.

Common groundForming a housing group with fellow

members of teams or student groups is common among students, especially ath-letes. Sixty-two percent of varsity athletes who took The Herald’s poll indicated they met most of their current cohabitants through athletic or extracurricular activi-ties, whereas 14.5 percent of students who are not on a varsity sports team did so.

Carter Aronson ’13, a member of the men’s crew team who has lived off campus for the past two years, said many of his housemates are also on the team.

Alex Scott ’16, a member of the wom-en’s softball team, said she is planning to live on campus with teammates next year. She added that she formed stronger ties with her teammates than she did with students in her first-year unit.

The opportunities to live in different campus areas over students’ four years is beneficial, Lauren Cheung ’15 said, adding that she does not support mov-ing to a residential college system with static housing.

“You need to give people their space,” Cheung said. “I like the chance to switch it up and have different roommates and different people living around me in general.”

But Scott said she believes the resi-dential college model does a better job than the University at building a sense of community. Scott said when she vis-ited Yale, she liked how most first-years remained with their residential colleges for all four years.

“It’s more like a family,” Scott said, adding that she believes there is benefit to mixing class years in one living space.

For some of the 10 percent of poll respondents who indicated meeting most of their housemates in a fraternity, sorority or special program house, these communities offer a way to avoid the lot-tery and the perceived disorientation that accompanies housing at Brown.

“The whole lottery system is sort of chaotic and doesn’t make sense and ends up screwing a lot of people over,” said Emily Walsh ’13, a resident of Technol-ogy House who expressed relief at having avoided the lottery.

Over 14 percent of sophomores — the most of any class — met most of their current housing mates through Greek life or program houses, while only 5.5 percent of seniors — the least of any class — met their housemates through those groups, according to the poll results.

Ben Chesler ’15 said he joined the

Social Action House after his first year to form a group of friends tied to his residential experience, adding that the University’s system should more fully re-spond to students’ needs for community.

“I’d like to see their mission more fit-ting overall the mission of Brown as an educational institution (and) as a social place, than just putting students into rooms,” Chesler said.

Greek life provides students with “a subsection of the University they closer identify with,” said Greek Council Chair Tommy Fink ’13.

The push for greater residential intimacy goes beyond Wriston Quad, extending to current efforts to use class year as a basis for making students feel more connected.

Shulman said he believes a dorm-specific focus can be more effective in fostering community than campus-wide events. He added that the University’s overhaul “standardized the community aspect” of housing by creating smaller communities for first-years and sopho-mores. But students remain divided over whether they will benefit from the cur-rent plan.

Residential Peer Leader Sophia Rabb ’14, who has served as an RPL for two years, said she believes first-year units are critical for building “a strong community for all four years.”

But as the University’s housing over-haul continues, students’ concerns over community remain at the forefront. Rabb, who will witness the University’s plans unfold as she continues next year as an RPL, said the pace of change can try stu-dents’ patience. “There is work to be done, but it has to be done slowly, and I think that’s frustrating to students.”

— With reporting by Sam Heft-Luthy and Brittany Nieves

Methodology

Written questionnaires were admin-istered to 1,202 undergraduates March 13-14 in the lobby of J. Walter Wilson and the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center during the day and the Sciences Library at night. The poll has a 2.55 percent mar-gin of error with 95 percent confidence. The margin of error is 3.9 percent for the subset of males, 3.4 percent for females, 5.1 percent for first-years, 4.7 percent for sophomores, 5.4 percent for juniors, 5.2 percent for seniors, 3.8 percent for stu-dents receiving financial aid, 3.4 percent for students not receiving financial aid, 6.5 percent for varsity athletes and 2.8 percent for non-athletes.

First-years

Sophomores

Juniors/seniors

2013-14 housing options by class year

Andrews

MetcalfMiller NP 1-2

Morriss-Champlin

Plantations

Emery-Woolley

315 Thayer

Hegeman

Little�eldSlater

Hope

Wayland

Keeney

Perkins

Machado

West House

King House

Barbour

Young Orchard

Grad Center

Vartan Gregorian

Quad

Wriston Quad

111 Brown

NP 3-4

Minden

Caswell

Note: Greek and program houses located in sophomore communities will still be open to junior and senior members.

If you are a sophomore, junior or senior, where did you meet most of the people you currently live with? If you are

a �rst-year, where did you meet most of the people you plan to live with next year? (Circle all that apply)

Not applicable: 8%

Other (live alone, went abroad, etc.): 9%

Random assignment: 3%

Fraternity/sorority/ program house: 10%

Through other friends: 36%

Shared classes and academic settings: 19%

Team/student group with me: 22%

First-year unit with me: 35%

GREG JORDAN-DETAMORE / HERALD

GREG JORDAN-DETAMORE / HERALD

/ / Housing page 1

city & state4 THE BROWN DAILY HERALDTUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013

By EMILY BONEYSENIOR STAFF WRITER

More than 91 percent of the undergradu-ate student population supports legaliz-ing same-sex marriage in Rhode Island, according to a Herald poll conducted last month. Nearly 86 percent of female students responded that they strongly agree that Rhode Island should legalize same-sex marriage, while only 78 percent of male students strongly agreed with legalization.

A 2012 Gallup poll reflected similar discrepancies in support across gender lines, with 56 percent of women agree-ing that same-sex marriage should be legalized in the United States, but only 42 percent of men expressing similar support for such legislation.

Some students said they believe the variance in support can be attributed to the difference in how men and women perceive the idea of marriage.

“Maybe women think about it more … like a romanticized thing,” said Na-tasha Rosario ’16. “Maybe there are a greater number of women who are com-fortable with LGBTQ,” she said, adding that the average woman may tend to sentimentalize same-sex marriage more than the average man.

“The answer I’m thinking of sounds sort of heteronormative,” said Susan Chakmakian ’14. “The way society works, women are depicted as think-ing more about marriage than men are.” Often women are more “accepting” of behaving outside the status quo when compared to men, she added.

Tyler White ’13 said the difference in opinion likely stems from a biological rather than cultural difference.

“Naturally women are more compas-sionate,” White said. “Women’s brains work differently than men’s do, right?”

Kavya Ramanan ’15 said women might support same-sex marriage more because LGBTQ rights are often associ-ated with the feminist cause.

“Because women traditionally are a marginalized group, and homosexuals are also another marginalized group, that there might be sort of … understanding

that society isn’t totally set up for them,” said Rachel Bloom ’13. “Maybe it’s that mutual understanding that things could be better all around, so why not stand in solidarity with that group?” Marginalized groups can be more empathetic to adver-sity faced by other minorities, she added.

About 87 percent of students who identified as “white” strongly agree with legalization compared to just three-quarters of students who identified as “non-white.”

The Herald poll revealed a nuanced correlation between religious affiliation and approval for legalizing same-sex marriage. Seventy-five percent of those who identified as Protestant strongly agreed that same-sex marriage should be legalized. But Protestants also com-prised the largest percentage of those who expressed strong disagreement with legalizing same-sex marriage at slightly more than 11 percent.

About 92 percent of those who iden-tified as Jewish strongly agreed with le-galization, with atheists, agnostics and those reporting “other” religious affilia-tion expressing similar support.

Bloom said she believes religious aff i liation

Poll: Vast majority supports R.I. legalizing same-sex marriageFemale students support the measure by 14 percentage points more than do male students

By JILLIAN LANNEYCONTRIBUTING WRITER

The Rhode Island General Assembly is considering a nine-bill package of gun control legislation — including a state-wide assault weapons ban — that Gov. Lincoln Chafee ’75 P’14 announced with other legislative and community leaders at a press conference last Tuesday afternoon.

“This is a conversation that’s taking place right now in every state and at the national level,” said Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed, D-Newport. The bills are the product of months of col-

laboration between legislators and law enforcement officials, she said. The call to action was in part inspired by the Dec. 14 elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., she added.

Some of the bills have already been introduced into the General Assembly, and the rest will be introduced shortly, according to a General Assembly press release. Attorney General Peter Kilmar-tin called the bills “common-sense mea-sures,” adding that they target criminals, not lawful gun owners. These bills are aimed to prevent unlawful gun owner-ship and equip law enforcement with the

means to effectively tackle the gun and gang violence in Rhode Island, Kilmar-tin said.

During the question and answer sec-tion after the announcement, one au-dience member spoke against the gun control measures, saying he believes the legislation could prevent citizens from protecting themselves against govern-ment tyranny.

Policymakers are obligated to ad-dress issues of gun violence while re-specting the rights of citizens, Chafee said. “Somehow we have to reconcile what the Second Amendment says and what’s happening in our streets and in our schools.”

Some of the proposed provisions

include banning the manufacture, sale, purchase or possession of semi-automatic assault weapons, magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition and weapons with their physical identification numbers somehow altered, according to a press release. A few of the bills exempt antique or inoperable weapons from the regulations.

Other parts of the package would in-crease the maximum penalties for crimes like stealing a firearm, possessing a stolen firearm and possessing a stolen firearm during a violent crime. One bill would ban “straw purchases,” where an indi-vidual buys a firearm for another person. Another bill would close loopholes that currently allow individuals under the

age of 18 to carry firearms if they have a permit or have parental permission. Minors would still be permitted to use firearms if “they are involved in a com-petition, hunting or … accompanied by a parent or qualified adult over 21 who is licensed to possess and use (a) firearm,” according to a press release. A second bill would increase penalties for people who give minors firearms that are then used in a violent crime.

The “Kilmartin” bill — named for the attorney general, who has pushed for the legislation — mandates that all indi-viduals seeking licenses or permits for firearms must undergo national criminal background checks. It also places control of licensing entirely within the Office of the Attorney General.

The package also proposes two task forces that would report back to Chafee before the beginning of 2014. One task force would examine existing state gun laws, while the other would work to en-sure Rhode Island successfully meets national standards for background checks and examine how mental health and substance abuse relate to gun safety. Rhode Island currently does not contrib-ute information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, a national database of individuals de-termined to be mentally unfit for gun ownership.

A final proposal would create an ap-peals board for those denied a firearm “based on a mental health adjudication or commitment or on substance abuse back-grounds,” according to the press release.

Speaker of the House Gordon Fox, D-Providence, stressed the importance of balancing mental health issues and gun safety. He said the legislature must be careful going forward not to cause people, who do not want to lose their right to purchase firearms, to fear seeking support for mental health.

Both Fox and Paiva Weed said the package will serve as the launching pad for discussion of gun control and that there will be evolving debate and com-promise moving forward. “If we get one gun off the street, that makes a differ-ence,” Fox said.

R.I. gun legislation targets unlawful ownership, assault weaponsThe bills include proposals for a task force to ensure the state meets national background check standards

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Asian

Black

White

Female

Male

Total

Rhode Island should legalize same-sex marriage.

Strongly agreeSomewhat

agree

Somewhat disagree

No opinion

Strongly disagree

GREG JORDAN-DETAMORE / HERALD

Support for legalizing same-sex marriage transcends demographic differences. Cross-tabulations are not statistically significant for races not shown./ / Same-sex page 5

second round of appeals. The petition specifically criticized Alex Sherry ’15, a UFB at-large representative, for alleg-edly telling Visions at the meeting that UFB could influence its editorial content because it funds the magazine.

Sherry is running for UFB chair in the elections that begin today, and commenters on The Herald website have called for his defeat, citing the ontroversy.

Daniel Pipkin ’14, UFB vice chair and UCS presidential candidate in today’s elections, previously met with RISD offi-cials about funding collaborative groups, Au wrote in a follow-up email to The Herald. But other UFB members ap-peared to have little knowledge of the interaction, he added.

Pipkin told The Herald he was un-available to comment.

Fischer and Sherry said the budget cut was a preliminary suggestion, not based on the number of RISD student contributions.

This year’s budgeting process is the first in which UFB is actively trying to get RISD to partially fund collaborative student groups between the two institu-tions, Sherry said.

Visions leaders said they were not in-formed of this policy before they applied for funding. The publication only became an official Brown-RISD collaborative effort at the beginning of this semester.

Both before and after the April 9 meeting, Visions leaders contacted RISD’s Center for Student Involvement — the equivalent of UFB — but Au said they have not heard back yet.

UFB initially declined to fund the full proposed budget in order to open a discussion between the University and RISD, Fischer said, adding that the 15 percent initial decrease was due to the fact that some Visions magazines are distributed on the RISD campus.

Au estimated that less than 10 percent of Visions issues are distributed to RISD, describing the number as “negligible.”

“Distribution is always considered,” Fischer said. “The most important thing is that Brown students have access (to the publications) first.”

“By no means do we believe that RISD students shouldn’t be involved,” Fischer said, citing a lack of communi-cation from both parties as the cause of the conflict.

UFB is “trying to establish a part-nership between Brown and RISD,” Sherry said. The board’s intention with the preliminary budget decrease was to

give Visions time to ask RISD how much the school could contribute and then return to UFB to work out the differ-ence, he said.

“UFB’s (initial) budget is in no way set in stone,” Fischer said.

“I see (Visions) getting the full amount (of their budget) — I just don’t know where it will be from,” he said.

Budgets for student groups will not be finalized until the beginning of next year, Sherry said.

Visions’ petition received over 100 signatures in its first hour, and within 15 hours it had over 300 signatures, Au said.

At the meeting Monday afternoon, Sherry, Au and Fischer had a “productive conversation” about UFB’s communica-tion practices, Au wrote.

“UFB can’t tell us what we can and cannot publish,” Au said before the meet-ing.

“No one on the board believes that” UFB should dictate student publications’ editorial policies, Fischer said.

Sherry told The Herald, “I fundamen-tally oppose the notion that UFB has the right to dictate editorial content.”

But Visions leaders criticized the board’s approach to the situation. “The entire (budgeting) process was not trans-parent at all,” said Mabel Fung ’15, a Vi-sions managing editor.

Visions’ online petition criticizes UFB for not publishing its meeting minutes online.

In fact, UFB meeting minutes re-cently appeared online, under the “Supplemental Budgeting” section of UFB’s website, Fischer said.

The most recent meeting minutes are now available from the board’s April 2 meeting.

Kate Holguin ’13, managing edi-tor of Clerestory Journal of the Arts, a Brown-RISD collaborative literary arts publication, said RISD funds 10 percent of Clerestory’s budget annually.

“RISD is much smaller than Brown, and there isn’t as much involvement with student organizations,” Holguin said.

UFB has decreased Clerestory’s bud-get in the past due to a general lack of funds, Holguin said, adding that she feels UFB doesn’t respect arts and humanities groups as much as other student orga-nizations.

Holguin said she supports Visions’ petition, referring to its message as “tak-ing a stand against something that has been going on for a while.”

Additional content written by Sherry and representing UFB’s perspective has since been added to the online petition.

city & state 5THE BROWN DAILY HERALDTUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013

Class Notes | Philip Trammell

CO M I C

By MARIYA BASHKATOVA AND MEG SULLIVANSENIOR STAFF WRITER

AND SPORTS STAFF WRITER

The fate of Rhode Island’s tallest building remains uncertain after its only tenant, Bank of America, moved out last Friday. The tower, nicknamed the “Superman” building due to its resemblance to the Planet News building in the Superman comic books, was the tallest structure in New England when it was built in 1928. The tower will stand vacant unless a new tenant is found.

The owner of the Superman building, High Rock Development, hired Cor-nish Associates in January to research the feasibility of different options for the building, including converting it into residential units. Originally named the Industrial Trust Building, after the re-gional bank that commissioned its con-struction, the building has always housed a bank through its 85-year tenure on the Providence skyline.

The Superman Building is one of the earliest skyscrapers of the Art-Deco movement, which was prevalent in ar-chitecture and fashion in the late 1920s and 1930s. Though the Art Deco style fizzled by the ’40s, the Superman Building

is one of several well known American products of the movement, including New York City’s Empire State building, Chrysler building and GE building, the centerpiece of Rockefeller Center.

High Rock is asking the state for $40 million in historic tax credits to remodel the building. Because the state’s historic tax credit program is currently not in effect, the General Assembly would need to pass legislation to allocate tax credits to the company. In the past the state has provided the historic tax credit to make it easier for developers of historically important buildings to incur costs as-sociated with maintenance of aged and important properties. In an interview with WPRI, economist Dean Baker said giving High Rock historic tax credits is “crazy” because the credit will allow the owners to keep the building vacant and the rent artificially high. Instead, High Rock should sell or rent the building, he said.

Providence Mayor Angel Taveras asked the General Assembly for tax credits to help fund the building’s re-modeling as part of his “legislative wish list” to the House of Representatives, WPRI reported last month. The Senate Finance Committee heard legislation to reinstate the tax credit program last week, but the committee did not discuss the Superman building directly, and a vote has not been scheduled, Bloomberg Businessweek reported.

Taveras also told the press he is not ruling out the possibility that the building

might need to be torn down.Tearing down the Superman build-

ing would “be a travesty” because of the building’s significance and because demolition would require a large ex-pense of effort, said Mack Woodward, an architectural historian at the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heri-tage Commission.

“It very much defines the space of downtown Providence. It is crucially important from a history standpoint,” Woodward said.

Adding more residential space would help revitalize downtown by bringing more retail and foot traffic to the area, he said. Apartments in the building would “have tremendous appeal,” Woodward said, especially for young people who do not want to live in the suburbs or retirees who are ready to downsize.

The possible redevelopment coincides with Taveras’ recent resolution to revamp Kennedy Plaza by making it more acces-sible to pedestrians and drawing more people downtown.

The Providence Preservation Society is not able to comment on the best use for the building until detailed and concrete proposals are released, said Paul Wack-row, advocacy and education coordinator at the society. The society will evaluate proposals based on how they would af-fect the building’s interior and exterior architecture, he added.

“We hope any proposals would main-tain the architectural features that give the building significance,” he said.

Future of vacated building unclearCosts pose a challenge to the city’s plans to remodel Providence’s tallest building

plays into the discrepancy apparent between support among racial groups.

“You’d think it might be the other way around,” Chakmakian said. As margin-alized groups, minorities and LGBTQ individuals might stand in solidarity, she said, but “a lot of people in media who support same-sex marriage are also

white.”“My guess would be that people that

object to same-sex marriage are probably objecting along politically conservative lines or religious lines,” said Ralph Ro-driguez, associate professor of American studies. “Are they against same-sex mar-riage because they’re of a certain racial group, or because they’re of a certain faith?” he said.

/ / Same-sex page 4

/ / Visions page 1

instructed to stay inside from around 3:30 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. for safety, but many employees rushed outside to help out, he said.

Police used dogs to conduct search-es of trains departing immediately af-ter the attack, said Victoria O’Neil ’16, who was on a train from Boston to Providence around 3:30 p.m. She ran 10 miles of the race and was travel-ing to South Station at the time of the explosions.

The train station was crowded, and “everyone was on their phones, on Facebook, on Twitter, trying to call people and get updates,” O’Neil said. It seemed as if everyone found out about the events at the same time, she said.

“Just the idea of a targeted terror-ist attack hits home in a different way when it’s in the city you grew up in,” said Josh Linden ’14, who grew up in the Boston suburb, Acton, Mass.

Linden said he remembers getting a day off school for Patriot’s Day, the Massachusetts state holiday celebrated Monday, when he was younger and watching reenactments of the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

“It’s just shocking that in that kind

of celebration, you get a tragedy like this,” he said.

Sammie Gross ’15, who is also from the Boston area, said that she first heard of the explosions when she was on Facebook and saw status updates stat-ing a bomb had exploded at Copely, the square nearest to the marathon finish line. This was before any news outlets had reported on the events, she said.

Gross said nothing like this event has happened in Boston in her life-time, adding that the marathon is an especially “joyous and pure” event. Yesterday’s events will “probably hurt the psyche of the city,” she said.

Gross said she knew most of her family and friends would be watching the marathon from towns outside of the city, and she said she texted and called family members to ask if they had heard what happened.

Social media allowed Gross to hear about her friends in the city, many of whom posted updates to say they were safe, she said.

Jessica Mitter ’13 had recently dropped her boyfriend off the train station when she heard about the ex-plosions. “I had a big rush of fear and panic wave over me,” she said. “He was going to be getting in right at that time.”

“It reminded me a lot of exactly how I felt whenever I heard about (Sept. 11),” she said, “a lot of the same fear coming back up.”

Though Boston is a large city, it “feels like a small community that is supportive of each other,” Mitter said. “People are scared — but holding to-gether really strongly.”

The University is offering support through Psychological Services and the Department of Public Safety, wrote Russell Carey ’91 MA’06, executive vice president for planning and policy, in a community-wide email Monday night.

“While members of the community may see a heightened security presence in some areas, there are no local secu-rity threats or concerns in Providence nor any changes to University opera-tions,” he wrote.

Patriot’s Day “draws the world to Boston’s streets in a spirit of friendly competition,” Obama said in his ad-dress. “Boston is a tough and resilient town. So are its people. I’m supremely confident that Bostonians will pull to-gether, take care of each other and move forward as one proud city.”

- Additional reporting by Jennifer Kaplan

/ / Boston page 1

DAN ZHANG / HERALD

First responders were on the scene in Copely Square throughout the afternoon. University officials reported no immediate danger in Providence.

editorial6 THE BROWN DAILY HERALDTUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013

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

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

L E T T E R S T O T H E E D I T O R P O L I C YSend letters to letters@browndailyherald.com. Include a telephone number with all letters. The Herald reserves the right to edit all letters for length and clarity and cannot assure the publication of any letter. Please limit letters to 250 words. Under special circumstances writers may request anonymity, but no letter will be printed if the author’s identity is unknown to the editors. Announcements of events will not be printed.

A D V E R T I S I N G P O L I C YThe Brown Daily Herald, Inc. reserves the right to accept or decline any advertisement at its discretion.

E D I TO R I A L C A R TO O N b y v i t t o r i a n o d i v a i o

“I woke up at 7:45 to get those tickets. ”— Jason Addy ’16

See tickets on page 1.

E D I TO R I A L

In The Herald’s most recent undergraduate poll, about 61 percent of students expressed the opinion that the University should offer minors. Though impor-tant arguments for the introduction of new programs exist, we strongly believe minors should not be implemented. Introducing minors at Brown would not only undermine the purpose of the Open Curriculum, but it would also add to the problematic culture of pursuing credentials for the sake of resume padding, instead of engaging with the academic choices available at the University.

Introducing minors would further entrench a structure of pre-professionalism within Brown’s curriculum. Some may argue this is not a bad thing, but there is little denying that the perspective as a whole is diametrically opposed to the Open Curriculum. Students come to Brown for a variety of reasons and make use of the Curriculum in myriad ways, but the idea of a general liberal arts edu-cation, and Brown’s curriculum in particular, is for a student to study an array of disciplines to gain multiple critical points of access to problems and ideas, and then, over the course of working toward an undergraduate degree, come to focus on a specific area.

The reason behind the large number of courses required for a concentration is to train a student in his or her chosen discipline. This requires not only the articulation, practice and mastery of the skills that accompany that discipline — such as analytical writing for the humanities or logical proof deduction for mathematics — but also a significant area of expertise within the field that the student explores in depth. This scope of experience cannot realistically be con-tained in the reduced course load a minor demands. Either the initial ground-ing in the field would suffer, with worrying consequences for both post-college employment and later work conducted within that discipline, or the chosen focus would be dramatically reduced, in which case the student would not be given the chance to apply his or her skills and acquired knowledge in a meaningful way.

But perhaps most important is the fact that official minors are unnecessary because the agency the Brown curriculum allows its students give minors an unofficial — but transparent — existence at Brown. Students regularly take several courses in one department they are not concentrating in because they enjoy or feel they get a lot out of them. Taking enough of these courses is es-sentially creating your own minor — but one that you’ve constructed, instead of fulfilling yet another set of requirements, complete with unappealing classes and those taken just to fit within a certain program.

Because the Open Curriculum allows Brown students so much control over the direction of our educations, the need to slap a label on portions of our courses of study seems to rise out of desire to pursue credentials rather than learning for learning’s sake. This may seem necessary in the job market, but we doubt the mere ability to call a small set of courses by a particular program name will convince a prospective employer one way or the other — the fact that students have taken these courses is something they can emphasize without a label.

But we acknowledge some alternatives to minors could improve the relation-ships between students and their educations. A potential change to the curriculum could be a certification for certain select skills, like attaining fluency in a foreign language, mastering a specific programming code or reaching a professional skill-level with an instrument. Like being trained in depth in an academic dis-cipline, these examples reflect significant achievements of determination, focus, practice and passion — something we remain unconvinced would be conveyed by introducing a limitation on the Open Curriculum in the form of minors.

Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board: its editor, Dan Jeon, and its members, Mintaka Angell, Samuel Choi, Nicholas Morley and Rachel Oc-chiogrosso. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.

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An article in Friday’s Herald (“Nearly 400 students seek summer funding through UTRAs,” April 12) incorrectly quoted Rachel Kaplan ’15 saying she applied for an UTRA because older pre-medical students advised her to. In fact, she said she heard about the program through older students but applied so she could continue the research she began this semester. The Herald regrets the error.

CO R R E C T I O N

An article in Friday’s Herald, (“RUE program sees low enrollment,” April 12) stated that half of the students in the Resumed Undergraduate Education program were veterans last year. Half the RUE students who matriculated to Brown last year were veterans, but a minority of all RUE students are veterans.

C L A R I F I C AT I O N

The marketization of higher education has eroded the liberal arts curriculum at uni-versities across the nation, and Brown is no exception. Student publications and arts groups stand as bulwarks against the creep-ing pre-professionalization of the University. They vigilantly steward this campus’ public artistic and intellectual discourses. Their im-portance cannot be overstated.

So it should mortify the Brown commu-nity that the body tasked with delivering the resources needed to keep these groups go-ing, the Undergraduate Finance Board, has systematically discriminated against them and partaken in ethically questionable prac-tices in its annual budget allotment process. In particular, they have consistently target-ed student groups who consider cultivating a relationship with Rhode Island School of Design and broader Providence as central to their missions.

Early in this school year, UFB Vice Chair and UCS presidential hopeful Daniel Pipkin ’14 met with the director of RISD’s Center for Student Involvement, Don Morton, to select a set of Category III student groups that pub-lish material from both colleges. They were to have their funding cut by Brown with the expectation that the gap would be filled in by RISD — despite the fact that it was unlikely

RISD would ever be able to cover the differ-ence. These publications, which include VI-SIONS, Clerestory and the College Hill Inde-pendent, were never informed of this exper-iment they had been selected to participate in. And since, until recently, UFB had not published meeting minutes on its website for nearly two years, we would have never found out had Pipkin not told us — after the spring budgeting process had already concluded. In fact, the cuts made to our budgets were chocked up to other technicalities without

explicit mention of this agreement. The ex-planation for UFB’s decision is simple: The organization sneers at RISD students as ‘free-loaders,’ totally blind to the reality that cam-pus life at both schools is enriched by RISD students’ presence in our student groups.

This corruption is a danger to more than just publications. By our count, 18 student groups claim Brown/RISD status, officially or unofficially. We would venture that far more than 18 groups have RISD members — Brown student groups are unrestricted to RISD students and vice versa. By UFB’s log-ic, any group that welcomes members from our neighbor faces defunding. Judging by the experiences of Visions and the Indepen-dent, that cut is in direct proportion to the strength of their commitment to deepening

the bonds between the two schools in the service of broadening the exchange of ideas on College Hill.

We must also face the problem of con-trolling how our content is consumed. Part of UFB’s argument is that these publications not be allowed to distribute beyond Brown’s campus or face funding cuts. RISD students and Providence residents ought not be al-lowed to pick up the Independent, tune into Brown Student Radio or read Visions. This is a pernicious, unenforceable and elitist po-

sition. We frankly must be freely permitted to interact with life beyond the Main Green if any of the endowments of a Brown educa-tion are going to be put to use.

Instead, when asked at a public appeals meeting by VISIONS Editor-in-Chief Lar-ry Au ’14 whether he thought UFB had the power to dictate the editorial policies of in-dividual publications, UFB At-Large Repre-sentative and UFB Chair candidate Alexan-der Sherry ’15 retorted, “Why not, we give you guys money” and stated he believed UFB has the power to tell campus publications what they can and cannot publish. Sherry has since stated he does not remember say-ing this in the context of editorial policy. Of course, there are no meeting minutes to ac-company his account.

Sherry’s statement deserves all the out-rage the Brown student body can muster. What’s most terrifying is that his is a position held by a person poised to helm the organi-zation next year. This should signal to us that UFB is not only not doing the job it was cre-ated to do — encourage student co-curricu-lar activity through judicious and considered budgeting decisions — but also that the body represents a clear and present threat to pub-lic, intellectual discourse on campus.

The combination of the lack of institu-tional mechanisms to encourage scrupulous practices and student representatives drunk with power has totally undermined the le-gitimacy of the sole funding source for the majority of student groups, if it can be said to have had any legitimacy to begin with.

We believe UFB operates within the fol-lowing fantasy: that the money it budgets every spring is its money to mete out. It is, in fact, the student body’s money, and UFB’s task is to simply apportion it. Aside from warning students to stay away from Pipkin and Sherry during the coming elections, we hope this letter will ignite a conversa-tion about UFB’s role in directing and shap-ing campus life and our relationship to the broader community — without direct over-sight from anyone, least of all from students. To leave things as they are, the Brown com-munity courts disaster.

Raillan Brooks ’13, Larry Au ’14, Emma Ra-madan ’13, Kate Holguin ’13, Gavyn Ooi

’14 and Caroline Seyler ’15 hold leadership roles within various Brown/RISD organiza-

tions.

opinions 7THE BROWN DAILY HERALDTUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013

Facing the UFB’s dysfunction

We believe UFB operates within the following fantasy: that the money it budgets every spring is its money to mete out. It is, in fact, the student body’s money, and

UFB’s task is to simply apportion it.

BY RAILLAN BROOKS, LARRY AU, EMMA RAMADAN, KATE

HOLGUIN, GAVYN OOI, CAROLINE SEYLER

Guest Columnists

They say curiosity killed the cat. Let’s be more concrete. Before democracy became the bee’s knees and freedom of speech be-came a protected right, curiosity killed the heretic. It’s a little less appealing to say it that way, and it definitely would be harder to explain to a child, but this is really what the phrase means.

Let’s pretend that our modern cliche phrase was actually the heretic edition. You would have to explain to the child that, ac-cording to Merriam-Webster, a heretic is someone who “dissents from an accepted belief or doctrine.” Governments and so-cieties destroyed those who were curious enough to seek answers outside of the stock phrases that they would give about why life is the way it is and why their systems are supposedly the best. Some famous here-tics were Galileo, Joan of Arc and Darwin. Without people like them — people who were curious enough to say, “What would happen if I did or thought something differ-ent?” — we would still believe in male dom-inance, geocentrism and intelligent design, among other things.

Creativity is the product of curiosity. This means all the answers to making bet-ter medicine, solving world hunger, making sustainable energy or solving (insert world crisis here) will only be solved by someone who is curious. It is the main ingredient in

human progress and, as such, we should try to cultivate it in our citizens so that we may better compete.

The best way to cultivate curiosity is through our school system. Sadly, our schools kill curiosity.

From kindergarten through high school graduation, our school system systemati-cally squashes creativity. Every school is an assembly line. Fifty-minute class. Bell. Fif-ty-minute class with a new teacher. Lunch. Repeat. Homework. Not only does this structure make school as boring as pos-sible, but it also makes sure a student is taught in modules that can fit into 50 min-

utes. The system is made to be as imper-sonal as possible. Every person has his or her little bubble. The briefness of each en-counter with your history, math or English teacher makes only the most superficial of relationships possible. David Brooks put it best when he wrote, “Since people learn from people they love, education is funda-mentally about the relationship between a teacher and student.”

Kids won’t take the risk of thinking cre-atively with a teacher or class they don’t know. Instead, they will try to conform to what they think the teacher might want. It is said that it takes a village to raise a child, and surely there is much to be learned from the ideas and strengths of your peers. So why are our school days filled entirely with

lists of facts and test-taking techniques to memorize instead of a better balance that includes more creative expression?

Even worse for student creativity is the current assessment system, which empha-sizes a very narrow, test-oriented approach. Kids are told they cannot think differently or daydream because their school will fail them, their teacher will be fired and their parents will be disappointed. Our test-cen-tric curriculum obscures the reason we are teaching kids. The curriculum leaves them asking over and over again, “Why am I learning this again?”

Instead of focusing on tests, classes

should emphasize more of an engineering project style of teaching. Projects in which kids try to physically make something using the scientific theories and methods they are taught will go a long way toward relieving boredom. As any mother knows, “Because I said so!” isn’t a sufficient explanation in the eyes of a child. These projects will give kids an inherent reason for why they are learn-ing seemingly random physical laws or even historical facts on innovation.

A great part of President Obama’s edu-cation reform initiative, Race to the Top, is that it emphasizes a system of teacher ac-countability. But a huge part of how officials gauge teacher performance is through these tests. Why not spend a little more money preparing a test that not only rewards good

reading comprehension, but also creative problem solving and a willingness to think more boldly? These assessments could use a light mix of the old reasoning and com-prehension tests and combine them with outlandish prompts like “Explain the col-or orange.” These questions may be hard to answer and may be biased toward kids who were raised in a certain type of fam-ily, but this inherent bias is exactly why the scores should be ignored in favor of any sign of improvement. If a teacher demon-strates his or her students improved in their creative thinking and reasoning from the previous year, and they receive good assess-ments from students and families, then they should be rewarded.

For a country that spends nearly 5 per-cent of its GDP on education, we sure do not get a good return on our investment. Every day, there is an article in the paper about the growing wealth disparity in the United States. Liberals cry for increased taxes on the rich, lower taxes on the rest and more direct government aid for the poor. All of these solutions are artificial fixes that have not changed the widening gap. Our govern-ment can do the easy thing and play the pa-ternalist by throwing money and keeping its citizens dependent on the system — or it can choose to foster curiosity and interest in education so these future job seekers can be empowered. Curiosity is what will make us “Win the Future.”

Nicolas Enriquez ’16 is a member of the empirical generation. He can be reached

at nenriquez3@gmail.com.

NICOLAS ENRIQUEZ

opinions Columnist

A turn of phrase

The curriculum leaves kids asking over and over again, “Why am I learning this again?”

By SANDRA YANSTAFF WRITER

Beginning in the 2014-15 school year, Rhode Island will no longer use the

New England Common Assess-ment Program as

a measure of high school students’ aca-demic skills.

“Rhode Island is one of 46 states transitioning to the Common Core State Standards,” said Elliot Krieger, executive assistant for communications for the Rhode Island Department of Education.

As a result Rhode Island will col-laborate with other members of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, a consortium of 22 of the 46 states on the Common Core standards, to design a new assessment. The states designed the new uniform standards to serve as a “benchmark against those held by countries leading the world in education,” Krieger said.

Chad Colby, director of strate-gic communications and outreach at

Achieve, the organization contracted by the PARCC consortium to assist in developing the assessments, said his organization has begun conducting studies in six states to help develop the test. These studies will be expanded over the summer, and the assessments will be field-tested in the 2013-14 school year.

The state is “not at a point yet to know what the requirements are” or whether the state will apply graduation requirements based on high school stu-dents’ scores, as it currently does with the NECAP exams, Krieger said.

He added that he does not believe the new test will be a major transition for students in Rhode Island.

The NECAP test was administered on paper to students, while the PARCC assessments will be administered to stu-dents will be offered on laptops and tablets to be more “in line with how (students are) doing things these days,” Krieger said.

One of the goals of the PARCC as-sessments is to be able to determine whether high school students are ready to be placed into entry-level college courses “because right now, we know too many students leave high school needing remediation when they go into a two-year or a four-year college,” Colby said.

daily heraldTHE BROWNsports tuesday

TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013

By NIKHIL PARASHERSPORTS STAFF WRITER

The women’s water polo squad fin-ished second in the Collegiate Water Polo Association’s Southern Division Championships, which Brown hosted over the weekend.

The team (15-19, 5-3 CWPA Southern) defeated Mercyhurst University 12-7 and Harvard 16-12 Saturday before losing 12-4 in the championship game against No. 12 Princeton Sunday.

The team will next compete as the fifth seed at the CWPA Eastern Championships at the University of Michigan later this month. If the squad finishes in first place, it will be granted a spot at the NCAA tournament, said Kate Woods ’14.

Madison Pepper ’15 and Woods led the way Saturday, combining for seven goals against Mercyhurst (13-13, 0-5) and eight against Harvard (16-14, 3-3).

Brown narrowly defeated both Mercyhurst and Harvard earlier this season, winning each game by two

goals. Woods said defeating Harvard Saturday showed the squad the earlier victory against Harvard was not just a fluke.

“We went into Saturday night thinking, ‘Was that game more luck, or was that because we’re the better team and we deserve to win?’” Woods said. “That’s at least what I was think-ing. So … winning that game was just really awesome.”

Head Coach Felix Mercado said the team was anticipating the Harvard matchup.

“We knew, ultimately, it was going to be us and Harvard for the semi-final game,” Mercado said. “And the game did not disappoint.”

Sunday the squad faced Princeton (23-5, 5-0), which had already beat-en Brown 15-4 earlier in the season. Though Mercado said the squad would “play and give it everything we have” in the championship game, the Bears ended up falling to the Tigers.

Woods said she did not think the score fully reflected the progress the squad has made this season and that the loss would serve as motivation for the future.

“We’ve come very far as a team,” Woods said. “I don’t think that the score necessarily shows that. Even though we did lose by less (than in

the teams’ previous match-up), I think that it doesn’t represent the fact that we’ve been through a lot this season together … It was good that that game happened because it’s pushing us to work hard this next few weeks before (Eastern Championships).”

Mercado said the team is not nec-essarily expecting to win at the Eastern Championships, adding that the team wants to “finish where (it’s) seeded or higher.”

“We’ve weathered the storm, and we’re in a really good position and we’ll see what happens,” Mercado said.

Woods also said the team can still accomplish goals without winning the tournament.

“We really just want to play well as a team,” Woods said. “It would be so awesome if we won, but I think that we’ll all be able to be pleased with ourselves and happy with the season if, in our final games, we’re just playing well together and having fun, playing the sport that we love.”

Regardless of how the team fares at the Eastern Championships, Woods said she will look back positively on the season.

“I feel like this season has been really great,” Woods said. “We’ve im-proved so much from where we’ve started. … I’m thankful for that.”

Bears take second at division championshipThe Bears crushed the Lakers and Crimson but fell to the No. 12 Tigers at home this weekend

It is often said that 50 percent of success is showing up. But when it comes to conventional fielding statistics in baseball, getting in good position to make the play can actually put you at a disadvantage.

Popular perceptions of defensive skill primarily revolve around one concept: the error. In a sport full of convoluted numbers and arbitrary distinctions — see the previous installments in this series — the error is one of the most intuitive statistics there is. Simply put, a fielder is charged with an “E” every time he fails to make a play he should have made. If an obvious defensive mistake — a dropped pop fly, a flubbed ground ball, a wild throw — leads to a hitter reaching base safely or a baserunner advancing, it is ruled an error. Though the designation of “E” may seem natural, keep in mind that it is an inherently subjective thing to keep track of. “It is,” the great Bill James once wrote, “without exception, the only major statistic in sports, which is a record of what an observer thinks should have been accomplished.”

When you tune into a game, the other fielding stat you’ll hear about is fielding percentage, the proportion of defensive

plays a team or player successfully con-verts. Fielding percentage is calculated by adding up a player’s (or team’s) total outs made — putouts (balls caught, bas-erunners tagged and forceouts induced) plus assists (runners thrown out) — and dividing by the sum of his (or its) putouts, assists and errors committed. A perfect score (no errors committed) would be 1.000, and the top finishers usually place in the high .900s. When your local broad-caster announces that your team is “fifth in the league defensively,” that’s what he’s talking about.

The problem with fielding percentage — so obvious that even some hard-nosed baseball traditionalists will concede it — is that it assumes all fielders have the same opportunities to make plays. As Jack Nicholson’s Frank Costello said in “The Departed,” “A man makes his own way.” And anyone who has ever seen Jim Edmonds or Andruw Jones dive for a ball or watched Kenny Lofton or Torii Hunter bring back a home run knows that fielders can create their own opportunities to make plays.

This brings us back to the error. One cannot say that a fielder unambiguously should have made a play on a ball unless that fielder is first able to get to the ball. “You have to do something right to get an error,” James once wrote. A player with a high fielding percentage and a low error count need not have great defensive

skills but simply “a talent for avoiding obvious failure.” As Michael Lewis put it in “Moneyball,” “The easiest way not to make an error is to be too slow to reach the ball in the first place.”

Imagine two third basemen are charged with fielding identical sets of 100 ground balls. One gets in front of all 100 of them, but 10 bounce off his glove or roll through his legs, and he loses 10 more would-be outs by making bad throws to first. The other gets to only 60 of the grounders, but he makes a clean play of each ball he gets a glove on. The numbers would make it clear that the second player is a better defender, with no errors and a perfect 1.000 fielding percentage to his peer’s 20 errors and .800 fielding percentage. But the first third baseman was far more effective — though he did not look as polished doing it, he retired 20 more batters than his counterpart thanks to his superior ability just to get to the ball.

Understanding this concept has not yet achieved the status of universal truth, but it is starting to take hold throughout baseball. For example, New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter (known for his vacuum-like ability to make clean plays on balls hit near him but notorious for his Derek Zoolander-like inability to get to balls hit to his left) won five Gold Gloves in seven years from 2004-10 in managers and coaches’ vote for the league’s best

fielders at each position, but was unseated in 2011 by a fielder with a bigger range who had committed more errors.

The problem with overhauling de-fensive statistics is the lack of an obvious replacement for errors and fielding per-centage. James’ first attempt at solving the puzzle was “range factor,” the number of successful plays a fielder makes per game or per nine innings. It was far from a per-fect substitute — though it accounts for the opportunities they make for them-selves, it also mistakenly assumes that all fielders have roughly the same chances to make plays — but it was a step in the right direction. As Lewis put it, James’ support for range factor over fielding percentage and errors left “an honest mess for others to clean up rather than a tidy lie for them to admire.”

The newest paradigm of defensive metrics, including Ultimate Zone Rating and Defensive Runs Saved, is the use of multidimensional batted ball data to model the benefits and damage a fielder provides and causes with the plays he does and does not make. Imagine a line drive hit at x velocity and y angle off the bat to z location in center field gets caught by the center fielder 60 percent of the time and results in a relative run expectancy increase of one run for the offense if it lands in the grass (don’t ask). If the center fielder makes the catch, he is credited with saving 0.4 runs (40 percent

of one run, the expected value of the batted ball for the offense). If he cannot, he is said to have cost his team 0.6 runs compared to an average center fielder.

But this new family of statistics has its own issues. First and foremost, these numbers lack intuitive appeal. The con-cepts of expected runs and counterfac-tual play-making turn the game into an abstract intellectual exercise that is as off-putting for fans as it is confusing. One cannot watch a game and count UZR on a scoresheet like strikeouts or RBI. Complexity need not be a vice in the search for understanding, but such statistical modeling is unlikely to appeal to most casual audiences. Also, these metrics are notoriously inconsistent, disagreeing both with each other’s rat-ings over the course of a season and with their own rankings from year to year. There is still more work to be done before we get numbers on which we can confidently rely.

Compared to hitting and even pitch-ing, quantifying fielding is still largely a mystery in the statistical world — and that’s before considering more subtle nu-ances like catchers’ pitch framing tech-niques and how defensive shifts move fielders out of their normal positions. I don’t know what the magic bullet is for fixing it, but you can’t do much worse than the ones you’ll find on the backs of baseball cards.

Fielding percentage and error don’t tell whole story

State to adopt new standardized testThe state plans to replace the NECAP to meet updated standards created with other states

LEWIS POLLISsports Columnist

W. WATER POLO

CITY & STATE

SABERMETRICS