Wednesday, November 16, 2011Daily Heraldthe Brown

Since 1891vol. cxlvi, no. 109

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news....................2-5editorial.............6opinions..............7insi

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opinions, 7

Brown’s JoePa? The ‘haunting relevance’ of the penn state scandal

Dps expands its online presence

Campus news, 5 wea

therNetworked

By shefali luthraSenior Staff Writer

About 10 Brown students joined members of Occupy Providence in a march on City Hall and the Providence Public Safety Complex Tuesday in response to the eviction of Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park in New York City early that morning.

The impromptu march — which began at 4:30 p.m. and continued for about an hour — started in Burnside Park. Protesters walked to City Hall and the public safety complex before returning to the park, chanting slogans such as “this is what democracy looks like” and “banks got bailed out, we got sold out.” Several cited solidarity not only with Wall Street protesters but also with Occupy movements in Oakland, Philadelphia, Albany and Vancouver.

“Occupy Wall Street was bru-

Occupiers march in solidarity with NYC

By GreG JOrDaN-DetaMOreSenior Staff Writer

Hedgehogs, alligators and bun-nies, oh my! Some students are living with more than just a room-mate.

Due to health and safety con-cerns, the Office of Residential Life does not allow students to keep pets in dorms, according to Richard Bova, senior associate dean of residential and dining services.

“You can have a small fish tank with fish,” and in approved cases, service animals, he said. “That’s about as good as your pets are going to get.”

Unless, of course, you break the rules. Bova said he has heard of students having all sorts of pets, including cats, dogs, snakes, “large amphibious-type things” and turtles.

“All things are possible at Brown,” he said.

‘alligators don’t like leashes’Nicholas Faber ’12 and Derrick

Duquette ’12.5 got an alligator at the beginning of their sophomore year, when they lived together in Chapin House as Theta Delta Chi brothers. They said they were in-spired by a senior friend who had a baby alligator that died.

“It was definitely spur of the moment,” Faber said.

Partygoers beware, a Greek gator lurks

Courtesy of Derrick DuquetteWhen it comes to dorm pets, some students go beyond the standard goldfish.

By elizaBeth KOhContributing Writer

The sounds of Chinese, Taiwanese and English mingled inside Vartan Gregorian Quad Sunday afternoon during the Peace Project Workshop of Brown’s seventh-annual Strait Talk Symposium. Empty coffee cups were strewn over the tables, and students — clad in jeans and T-shirts — chattered away.

It was the second day of the in-tensive week-long event, intended to bring together 15 student del-egates from the United States, Taiwan and mainland China and to “create a generation of peace-makers” to broker new relations between China and Taiwan in the long term, according to the event’s

organizers.“The idea behind this is very hu-

manitarian,” said Qian Yin ’12, chair of the 2011 Strait Talk Symposium and a former Herald staff writer. “It really challenges you to slow down and to think about the other side’s fears, concerns.”

Tatsushi Arai, associate profes-sor of conflict transformation at the School for International Training Graduate Institute in Brattleboro, Vt., and facilitator of the sympo-sium, said he has experience in con-flict resolution, but, “I have never seen anything like this in my life.”

Strait Talk, started by Johnny Lin ’08 in 2005, was created with the intent to facilitate non-partisan

Strait Talk Symposium forges ‘peacemakers’

Rachel A. Kaplan / HeraldStudents gathered this week to discuss prospects for peace in the Taiwan Strait.

No decision on Paterno ’50 award

The University has not made a decision about the future of the Joe Paterno ’50 Award in the week since Paterno was fired from Pennsylvania State University in light of a sex scandal involving his former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.

Marisa Quinn, vice president for public affairs and University relations, wrote in an email to The Herald that the situation at Penn State was “new and unsettled.” The University will track the developments at Penn State before taking any action related to the award, which has been presented to an outstanding first-year male athlete since 1991, she wrote.

The Big Ten Conference, of which Penn State is a member, decided to remove Paterno’s name from its championship trophy Monday. The trophy, formerly called the Stagg-Paterno Championship Trophy, will now be called the Stagg Championship Trophy.

Chancellor Emeritus Artemis Joukowsky ’55 P’87, chairman of the Brown Sports Foundation, said last week he did not want the University to “abandon” Paterno, according to the Associated Press.

Joukowsky was unavailable for comment.

—tony Bakshi

N E W S i N B R i E F

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Feature

continued on page 4

By Natalie VillacOrtaSenior Staff Writer

The University is considering re-vising its conflict of interest policy for research in light of increased collaboration between University researchers and private companies.

About 20 faculty members attended a forum yesterday to share opinions with the University Conflict of Interest Review Board on three major areas: research sponsorship by entities in which faculty members have financial

interests, CEO positions held by faculty and disclosure policies.

Reassessment of the Univer-sity’s conflict of interest policy follows changes instituted by the National Institutes of Health in August. By next August, any fac-ulty funded by the Public Health Service will be required to make information about their conflicts of interest accessible to the public.

Forum participants generally agreed the University could be doing more to encourage faculty to collaborate with industry and to

form their own companies. The University’s stated core

values include promotion of lo-cal and state economic develop-ment and sharing research with the public, said Jeffrey Morgan, associate professor of medical science.

But the language of the current conflict of interest policy discour-ages faculty from these activities, said Roberto Tamassia, professor of computer science and chair of

Conflict of interest policy under review

continued on page 3

Ben Schreckinger, PresidentSydney Ember, Vice President

Matthew Burrows, TreasurerIsha Gulati, 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 Fri-day 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 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 2011 by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Campus news2 the Brown Daily heraldwednesday, november 16, 2011

5:30 P.m.

“The Culture and Practice of

Painting in Song China,” List Art 120

5:30 P.m.

“Serious Play,”

Pembroke Hall 305

8 P.m.

“independent Voices on the Middle

East,” List Art 120

8 P.m.

Fall Dance Concert,

Ashamu Dance Studio

SHARPE REFECTORY VERNEY-WOOLLEY DINING HALL

LUNCH

DINNER

Cheese Quesadillas, Asparagus Tips with Lemon, Baked and Breaded

Pollock, Dal Cali with Yogurt

Chopped Sirloin with Mushroom Sauce, Pastito, Mashed Potatoes,

Sauteed Broccoli with Garlic

Polynesian Chicken Wings, Stir Fried Rice, Steamed Pea Pods, Steak Fries,

Vegan Stir Fry Veggies with Tofu

italian Sausage and Pepper Sandwich, Vegetable Strudel, Peas,

Lemon Cookies, Egg Drop Soup

TODAY NOVEmbER 16 TOmORROW NOVEmbER 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 DA RBy alexaNDer KaPlaN

Contributing Writer

In the wake of her September an-nouncement that she plans to step down at the end of this academic year, President Ruth Simmons re-mains a popular figure in the eyes of students. Her job approval rating among students increased from last semester’s rating of 62.4 percent to 68.2 percent, according to the most recent Herald poll.

Of the 68.2 percent who indi-cated they approve of Simmons, 38.4 percent strongly approve and 29.8 percent somewhat approve. Around 20 percent indicated they were not familiar enough to an-swer, down from 25 percent re-corded in last semester’s poll.

The percentage of students who disapprove of Simmons’ job as president stayed relatively steady, dropping from 4.75 percent last year to 4.5 percent. Students told The Herald last semester that their disapproval stemmed in part from Simmons’ position on the board of the Goldman Sachs group.

About six percent of students held no opinion this semester on Simmons’ presidency.

The results of the student poll differ somewhat from that of the faculty poll conducted earlier in the semester. Of the 174 faculty responses, 72.5 percent approved of Simmons’ job and 18.3 percent disapproved. Around 7 percent of

the faculty was not familiar enough to answer.

Some students attributed the rise in Simmons’ approval rating to her impending resignation.

“I absolutely think that it is due to President Simmons’ imminent departure,” said Joshua Prenner ’14. “I think that because we know she is only with us for so much longer, we’re inclined to value all that she has given us, more so than we usually do.”

“You don’t know what you got until it’s gone,” said Vitto Di Vaio ’14.

Lily Goodspeed ’13 questioned the significance of the percentage boost. “Six percent is also not that much of a percentage increase. But I think people are realizing that she’s leaving and appreciating what she does do,” she said.

The large percentage of students that were not familiar enough to answer stems from “a disconnect between Brown students and what’s going on in the higher bu-reaucracy and what the decisions being made are,” Goodspeed said. “The Corporation has no transpar-ency at all.”

Laken Hottle ’13 also ascribed the lack of student opinion to the somewhat classified nature of Sim-mons’ position. “A lot of Brown students don’t actually know what’s going on beside the fact that she is president,” she said.

Methodologywritten questionnaires were ad-

ministered to 851 undergraduates nov. 2-3 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 3.1 percent margin of error with 95 percent confidence.

Find results of previous polls at thebdh.org/poll.

Student approval of Simmons rises

Katie Wilson / Herald

Do you approve or disapprove of the way Ruth Simmons is handling her job as president of the University?

Follow Sports! twitter.com/bdh_sports

the department. Tamassia’s com-puter science colleagues feel that “Brown is not the place to start the next Google,” he said. There is a perception that Brown’s conflict of interest policy is very strict be-cause of negative language in the policy, he said.

But the University’s policy is more flexible than Stanford’s or MIT’s, said Regina White, asso-ciate vice president for research.

The committee is aware that the phrase “conflict of interest” has a negative connotation, said Chris-topher Bull, senior research engi-neer, senior lecturer and member of the committee. It is looking for a different name but “can’t find the right words,” he said.

The forum then moved to the topic of faculty members serving as CEOs of private companies. Morgan brought up the difference between conflicts of interest and conflicts of commitment. There are other detractions from fac-ulty members’ time, such as family matters and illnesses, that are not considered conflicts, he said.

A music professor might have a band on the side or a literature professor might also run a literary magazine, said Mark Suchman, professor of sociology. Morgan and Suchman agreed it is not the title of CEO that matters but in-stead whether the faculty member is able to fulfill his or her duties, including attending department meetings, teaching classes and be-ing on campus four days a week.

But Gerald Diebold, professor of chemistry, wanted to know how these faculty members could be distinguished from “dropouts” who decide that they are only go-ing to show up for their classes and do nothing else. Bull answered that the committee does not look at non-financial activities and is not trying to create a general pol-icy for conflicts of commitment.

The current policy of mandato-ry disclosure requires that faculty members disclose their conflicts

of interest to students who are working on the faculty member’s research. The committee proposed that the chair of the faculty mem-ber’s department also have access to this disclosure.

Most of the faculty present at the forum agreed with this change. But Diebold and Suchman were not in favor of a blanket policy. Diebold said in chemistry, the chair position changes frequently.

Suchman pointed out that it might create unnecessary awkwardness between colleagues — say, if one owned land on which gas explora-tion was being done and the other was involved in environmental research.

The policy and review board exist to address circumstances in which faculty members may have financial interests that may com-promise the objectivity of their

research and the University’s mis-sion. “There’s nothing wrong with conflicts of interest,” said Clyde Briant, vice president for research, but the conflicts need to be moni-tored and managed.

The committee has only dealt with one or two troubling cases since it was created four years ago, said Rod Beresford, profes-sor of engineering and committee member.

Campus news 3the Brown Daily heraldwednesday, november 16, 2011

tally attacked by the New York City police and Mayor Bloomberg,” one protester alleged, adding that the marchers were there “to stand in solidarity with our sisters and brothers” in New York.

During the march, the New York Supreme Court delivered its deci-sion to back Bloomberg’s order that protestors could not camp in the park. Police raided the park at 1 a.m. Tuesday. The police took down tents and arrested over 100 people, including protesters and journalists reporting on the movement.

Outside City Hall, one protester said though the city of Providence has cooperated with the movement, Occupiers still have reason to be skeptical of city officials’ help or support. The protesters will not leave until they have seen evidence of change, he said. “We’re going to be out in the park as long as it takes,” he said.

Mary Alice Reilly ’13 said she is not heavily involved in the Oc-cupy movement, but she does de-liver food to Burnside Park from the Brown Market Shares program. She joined the march after receiving an email from Occupy College Hill members.“I’m just glad to be able to throw a body here,” she said.

Protesters specifically criticized the alleged Verizon bailout, Mayor Angel Taveras’ decision to close four Providence schools and police bru-tality against “peaceful protesters” in other Occupy movements.

Providence resident Andrew Stewart criticized the “Republi-can” media, specifically targeting the Providence Journal. “We need to get off of relying on corporate media to feed us our information,” Stewart said outside the public safety com-plex. “Only then, when we liberate our minds, will the liberation come.”

Marchers criticize police

U.’s conflict of interest policy too strict, profs saycontinued from page 1

continued from page 1

The pair named the gator Chubbs after a character in the 1996 movie “Happy Gilmore.” Less than a foot long when they ac-quired him, Chubbs is now over 2 1/2 feet in length, Faber estimated. Faber and Duquette also kept him in their junior year Chapin room.

Duquette, who now keeps the alligator in their off-campus house, said he lets Chubbs go free around his room but not around the house. “He loves to hang out in the bottom shelf of my TV stand.”

Duquette refers to Chubbs as a “guard alligator,” though the ga-tor has never attacked anyone. In fact, Chubbs is scared of people, he said. “We’re like giants to it.”

In previous years, “we’d let it hang out on the porch with us” when fraternity brothers were relaxing outside Chapin in nice weather, Duquette said. He and Faber showed Chubbs to peo-ple at parties and would some-times bring him downstairs to the lounge, always holding him to make sure he did not escape, Duquette added.

An on-campus alligator can be an unexpected sight. “They’re kind of shocked to find out it’s actually an alligator,” Faber said. “It was definitely a good talking point.” People now ask about Chubbs “all the time,” he said.

Chubbs currently lives with two turtles and eats rats and fish, Duquette said. The pair was un-successful in its attempts to make the gator a vegetarian.

The two also made a leash for Chubbs, but “alligators don’t like leashes,” Faber said. “We tried to train him. That didn’t work out that well either.”

‘hide the pets from reslife’Nate Bowling ’08 and his suit-

emates picked up their African pygmy hedgehog after it was ad-vertised on the website Daily Jolt.

Bowling and his friends “looked at this beast of a crea-ture,” decided “we definitely want this” and paid about $35 or $40 for it, he said. They decided to name the small creature — “the size of a potato, maybe” according to Bowling — Kugel.

“I thought a hedgehog was pretty hilarious, and it was, most of the time,” Bowling said.

But looking back, “I’m sure (the seller) got rid of it because it was so heinously mean,” Bowl-ing said. When he and his friends went to pick up the hedgehog, it bit one of them — a sign of events to come.

Bowling said they used a win-dow screen to close off part of their Graduate Center suite bath-room, letting Kugel have free reign of the space. One time, a student from next door came to use the bathroom, unaware he was en-tering the hedgehog’s residence. “He was peeing, and the thing just runs up and bites his foot,” Bowling said.

“I thought it was fun. I don’t think most of my roommates thought it was fun,” he said.

Sometimes Kugel was messy. When the suitemates returned one night after a fire alarm, they found Kugel had “defecated and urinated all over,” said Megan Schmidt ’08.5, one of Bowling’s suitemates.

Visitors to the suite “all thought it was cute, unless they tried to hold her,” Bowling said — though a hedgehog is “slightly more pleas-ant than, say, an alligator.”

“It drew blood from at least one visitor who thought holding a hedgehog would be cute and fun, which it was neither,” he said.

After junior year, during which

Bowling lived off campus, Kugel died from Wobbly Hedgehog Syn-drome, he said.

The suitemates were never caught with the hedgehog. “The great thing about Brown is they tell you” when dorm room inspec-tions will be conducted, Bowling said, adding that he would hide Kugel in his closet during inspec-tions.

“Students are very creative. They shuffle the animal around,” Bova said. “It’s kind of like, hide the pets from ResLife.”

lost and foundEarly in his freshman year, Joe

Goldberg ’12 and his roommate bought a bunny and named it So-phia Rose Maddox 223.

“I really like bunnies,” Gold-berg said. “I thought that was a feasible dorm room pet, even though that wasn’t allowed.”

“Once I thought it was trained — which was naive — I let it just chill out in the room while I was in class,” he said. “It pooped all over.”

Sophia hopped away in a gar-den one time and would not come back, Goldberg said. He left to go to class and could not find her when he came back later. A junior living on his hallway finally caught the bunny.

Sophia “was a big pull for the ladies” during a Halloween party in his room, Goldberg joked.

Goldberg said he kept the bunny in a cage in his room and was never caught by ResLife. After six or seven weeks, he sold it on Craigslist. “What was I going to do with it for Thanksgiving?”

He said he thinks people choose to have pets for compan-ionship or to have “a pet for show.”

“Freshman year, people had fish — they all died, showing that college freshmen are not capable of caring for a fish, which says a

lot,” Bowling said.

see you later, gator“We do occasionally get a com-

plaint if someone has an animal on a hallway,” Bova said, citing dog barking as an example. Pets have been found this way and through dorm room health and safety inspections.

Bova said pets are found about once a year, though none have been found yet this year. “Rarely do we get complaints about it,”

and “rarely do we discover it,” he said.

If an animal is found, students are given 24 hours to “move the animal to an appropriate place” such as a student’s home, an ani-mal shelter or the apartment of a friend living off campus, Bova said. ResLife has never had an is-sue of students refusing to comply.

ResLife found out about Chubbs last spring, Faber said, and told him and Duquette to remove it.

Duquette said he sent the al-ligator home — where it had al-ready stayed over winter break — for the short remainder of the semester. He is not sure how Re-sLife found out about it.

Keeping the alligator is not a problem now that Faber and Du-quette live off campus. They plan to take Chubbs to a zoo in Maine after they graduate. “They have an alligator exhibit,” Duquette said.

Pets are largely banned for a number of reasons, including allergies, noise, some students’ fears of animals, fleas, fur and “the mess it leaves behind,” Bova said. Another major concern is that students will leave pets unat-tended in their dorm rooms over winter break.

While ResLife occasionally gets complaints about dogs barking or allergy problems, “I have not heard of any illegal pets attacking other students,” he said.

Bova said he is sympathetic to students who want to keep pets.

“I am a huge, huge lover of dogs,” he said. The “best way to have a pet is when you’re a se-nior and you’re eligible to live off campus,” he said. “Find a landlord who is pet-friendly, and have your dog with you.”

Or alligator.

Feature4 the Brown Daily heraldwednesday, november 16, 2011

Courtesy of Nate Bowling (above) and Nicholas Faber (below)on-campus pets may be adorable, but their stays in dorms are often short.

On-campus pets usually more trouble than they’re worthcontinued from page 1

Campus news 5the Brown Daily heraldwednesday, november 16, 2011

Chester Crabson | Tess Carroll

Fraternity of Evil | Eshan Mitra, Brendan Hainline and Hector Ramirez

The Unicomic | Eva Chen and Dan Sack

Co M i C S

discussion about and between both sides of the Taiwan Strait. The pro-gram has since gone on to create a national board with chapters in Berkeley and Hong Kong. A new chapter in Taiwan is slated to host its first symposium in 2012.

The Brown symposium, which has its final event tonight, is a mix of general panels and private ses-sions intended to encourage a safe space for delegates to talk freely about Cross-Strait issues. The pan-els, which are open to all members of the University community, draw speakers with a background in Cross-Strait relations, from aca-demics to think-tank scholars, said Lan Mei ’14, the program’s public events coordinator.

“The information that we give (speakers) about Strait Talk pres-ents a very positive image,” she said. “They really like the concept of coming here for this cause.”

But at the heart of the sympo-sium is the series of private ses-sions held Sunday through today in which delegates create a con-sensus document, which details a “set of policy recommendations for policy makers,” Yin said. The ses-sions employ a method called In-teractive Conflict Resolution, which promotes “mutual recognition and consensus building, seeking a framework in which participants can acknowledge each other’s iden-tities, grievances and aspirations,” according to Strait Talk’s website.

The atmosphere at these sessions differs from that at the Peace Project Workshop Sunday afternoon — stu-dents were engaged in more muted and serious conversation and were focused on the detail-specific work of creating a consensus document.

The delegates clearly felt they were working toward a greater goal.

“It’s a really refreshing experi-

ence because you get to see people across the Strait as well as the U.S.,” said a Chinese delegate, who want-ed her name withheld for security reasons. “We have these (conflict resolution) meetings which defi-nitely help us realize the problem and how to solve it.”

One of the more notable results of the week-long symposium are the friendships formed there.

“It’s comparable to a Brown con-nection,” said Alina Kung ’12, the 2011 Peace Project coordinator. “You can talk to a Brown alumni, and you can automatically make all these assumptions because you had the same experience, and you share that deep connection. That’s how it feels like when you meet up with a new Strait Talk person.”

“A movement involves a sus-tained process, involved different stakeholders, especially in terms of interest, and it has to be acceptable to many people,” said Arai, who has facilitated the Brown sympo-sium since its inception. “We’re not daydreaming that those small student-led dialogues will eventu-ally change something so drastic, but it is possible that a group of 100, 200 people across those two sides will have sustained friendship and also happen to have some social influence.”

But the symposium remains long-term in scope.

“This is a 10- to 20-year propo-sition, not a three-year proposi-tion, but I think there is no peace building without a long-term com-mitment,” Arai added. “That’s the future.”

The conflict resolution sessions culminate in the presentation of the consensus document to the Brown community during the final panel of the symposium, which will take place tonight in Kassar Fox Audi-torium at 8 p.m. This year, the 15 delegates are also presenting to a

combination of think-tank mem-bers and government officials in Washington, D.C., at the end of the week.

The student-run symposium, which is supported every year by the Watson Institute for Interna-tional Studies, received increased funding from the Year of China ini-tiative. There was also heightened interest from potential delegates. The number of applications for the Taiwan delegation doubled from last year, while applications for the U.S. delegation tripled.

Because of the increased finan-cial support from the Year of China initiative, the symposium was able to attract and fund international speakers, Kung said. “In the past, we wouldn’t solicit people in Taiwan or China because we didn’t have the money to fly them over,” she said.

“(The Year of China) is really trying to engage the whole Brown experience for students,” said Chung-I Tan P’95 P’03, professor of physics and director of the Year of China initiative. “Because of the Year of China, we are helping ad-vertise and make (Strait Talk) better known, so hopefully more people engage.”

By MarK ValDezContributing Writer

The Department of Public Safety will launch a new website this spring and is creating a new stu-dent job to coordinate social me-dia, said Michelle Nuey, manager of public relations and outreach for DPS.

“The current website is infor-mative, but a little too stagnant visually,” Nuey said. The new website will feature the same information but will be more easily navigable and appealing to viewers.

DPS sees a need to increase its use of social media to increase community partnership and in-volvement and maintain a con-nection with students, Nuey said. By using outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, DPS will be able to receive student feedback of the department.

Though new media platforms will not convey new information, they will promote transparency. “Users would know more about

our operations and our missions,” Nuey said.

Information will include safe-ty tips, crime alerts and updates about events hosted by DPS. Currently, the primary modes of communication with the Brown community are through Morning Mail, emails and updates on the department’s website.

“Sometimes I check my Face-book more often than I check my email,” said David Barrera ’15.

In order to use social media ef-fectively, DPS will gather student input through focus groups and hire a student coordinator. This position, which will be posted to the student employment website by the end of the semester, will involve working closely with DPS administrators to create a social media strategy. DPS will look for a student who knows the “ins and outs of social media and … what appeals to students,” Nuey said.

Nuey will supervise the stu-dent coordinator, who she said should have graphic design skills and be very creative.

DPS to introduce new site, media initiatives

Strait Talk to hold final panel tonightcontinued from page 1

editorial & Letter6 the Brown Daily heraldwednesday, november 16, 2011

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EDiToRiAL CARTooN by sam rosenfeld

“Brown is not the place to start the next Google.”— Roberto Tamassia, professor of computer science

see poliCy on page 1.

E D i To R i A L

Last week’s Janus Forum debate on drug legalization was a refreshing break from mainstream political discourse. Salon.com’s Glenn Green-wald and former drug czar John Walters delved into an issue that our political leaders rarely address in any meaningful way.

One might argue that with the world mired in economic malaise, now is not the time for policymakers to address our drug laws. But the economic crisis makes drug enforcement issues even more pressing. As we attempt to tackle government spending, party leaders rightly proclaim that everything should be on the table. Yet “everything” seems to arbitrarily exclude drug policy.

The New York Times recently reported that the Drug Enforcement Administration “now has five commando-style squads it has been quietly deploying” to fight drug cartels in countries like the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Guatemala. These units were originally formed to combat the drug trade in Afghanistan. Now they are “blurring the line between law enforcement and military activities” while remaining largely out of the public eye.

This news is emblematic of the decades-old war on drugs. Poli-cies with rhetorical appeal, like fighting the drug trade, are too often exempted from proper scrutiny. Whether you side with Greenwald or Walters in the legalization debate, at least both speakers appealed to prioritization and cost-benefit analyses. At a time when all types of government assistance are being slashed, it is unconscionable that policymakers are not robustly debating programs like the DEA’s.

The absence of debate on drug laws is most unfortunate when it comes to marijuana prohibition. The extreme public health concerns associated with drugs like heroin naturally give us pause when we consider legalization. But it is shameful that few politicians are seri-ously questioning the wisdom of pouring tax money into prohibiting a substance many health experts consider less harmful than alcohol.

Last spring, we applauded efforts in Rhode Island to make progress in the face of federal inaction. At the time, an overhaul of the state’s medical marijuana system was moving forward and the General As-sembly was considering decriminalizing non-medical possession under one ounce.

Sadly, these forward-thinking proposals were discarded. House Speaker Gordon Fox let the decriminalization bill die without a vote. And in late September, Gov. Lincoln Chafee ’75 P’14 declined to issue permits that would allow medicinal marijuana dispensaries to set up shop, like in California. Dispensaries make more sense than the cur-rent framework, which allows patients to grow cannabis or buy it from a licensed caregiver. This system is more open to abuse and is harder for patients to use.

Chafee’s decision was not just poor public policy. The governor is wasting an opportunity to be a leader. Facing federal pressure to not implement medical marijuana policies, some governors, like New Jersey’s Chris Christie, are taking a stand.

Permitting medical marijuana dispensaries is a far cry from legaliza-tion. This fight is not about making it easier for first-years to get stoned in Keeney Quadrangle. It is about helping people with debilitating diseases ease their chronic pain. If the governor is unwilling to take up even this cause, we are doubtful real reform to America’s drug laws will occur any time soon.

editorials are written by The herald’s editorial page board. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.

Q U oT E o F T H E DAY

Rethinking drug laws

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An article in Tuesday’s Herald (“Human rights lawyer traces chronology of Islamophobia,” Nov. 15) incor-rectly spelled Arsalan Iftikhar’s last name. The Herald regrets the error.

Co R R E C T i o N

L E T T E R To T H E E D i To RInterest in ROTC needs contextTo the Editor:

Your article on student interest in the Reserve Of-ficers’ Training Program (“One percent express interest in off-campus ROTC,” Nov. 7) fails to put the polling numbers into perspective. If 7 percent of students were interested in joining an on-campus ROTC program, as the Herald poll found, this would make ROTC incredibly popular compared to most concentrations at Brown.

According to Brown’s Office of Institutional Re-search, the most popular concentrations among 2009 graduates were economics (9.4 percent), biological sciences (8.8 percent) and international relations (5.5 percent). In other words, were ROTC a concentration at Brown, it would be the third most popular.

At the end of the day, however, such polling elides a simple fact: Prospective Brown students go elsewhere to pursue their interest in ROTC. Indeed, polling Brown students about their interest in ROTC is akin to surveying attendees of a vegan convention about their interest in hamburgers.

It’s unfair to judge students about their interest in a program that has not existed for over 40 years. This makes it all the more incredible that 7 percent of students expressed interest in an on-campus program. The Herald’s poll should serve as a wake up call for Brown’s leadership, who seem intent on ignoring the opinions of students and alumni in order to keep the U.S. military out of sight and out of mind.

Jonathan Hillman ’09

An article in Tuesday’s Herald (“Another masturbator arrested as spree continues,” Nov. 15) stated that Paul Shanley, deputy chief of the Department of Public Safety, said the students who witnessed the incident identi-fied the suspect arrested as the man they saw. The student interviewed, who asked she remain anonymous, said that she and the other witness were never asked to identify the suspect.

C L A R i F i C AT i o N

opinions 7the Brown Daily heraldwednesday, november 16, 2011

Recent developments on the Pennsylvania State University campus have raised deep concerns about failures in reporting cam-pus sexual assaults. The vice president and athletic director have resigned. The school’s president and legendary football coach and former Brown football star Joe Paterno ’50 have been fired. Failure to report allegations of sexual assault is apparently not uncom-mon despite the Clery Act, a law enacted 20 years ago that mandates reporting of sex of-fenses.

This tragedy has haunting relevance for Brown for two reasons. First, Paterno has long been celebrated at the University, most notably with the annual Joe Paterno ’50 Award for athletic excellence. Second, Brown Director of Athletics Michael Gold-berger, President Ruth Simmons, Senior Vice President for Corporation Affairs and Governance Russell Carey and Vice Presi-dent for Campus Life and Student Services Margaret Klawunn are currently involved in a lawsuit in Federal Court and stand ac-cused in part of refusing to report to police — and covering up — a first-degree rape al-legation on their campus.

To be clear, one critical difference be-tween the Brown and Penn State sexual as-sault cover-ups is that at Brown, the accused

is suing the University for numerous civil rights violations. The female accuser’s fa-ther, a wealthy alumni donor and a leader of Simmons’ $1.6 billion Campaign for Aca-demic Enrichment, discouraged any investi-gation into his daughter’s charges. An email in the court records from the alumni-parent to Simmons clearly instructs her to squash all investigations into his daughter’s claims. When William McCormick, the plaintiff in the case, attempted to contact Simmons from his home, Simmons refused to speak

to him. In stark contrast, the family name of the alumni-parent is attached to medi-cal school scholarships and a medical school conference room.

What the Brown and Penn State scandals have in common is a willingness to cover up allegations of serious violent crimes to pro-tect university interests. It’s that simple. At Brown, administrators even allowed the stu-dent, who stood accused of a violent crime, to quietly transfer to another university. As far as Brown administrators were con-cerned, they intentionally allowed a suspect-ed violent rapist to roam another university campus unbeknownst to its students. It’s a

staggering thought. How does a university defend ousting a student under a rape accu-sation but refusing to tell the police or an-other university of the danger such a person might pose? Sounds strangely familiar to the Penn State travesty.

Chairman of the Brown Sports Founda-tion Artemis Joukowsky ’55 P’87 has already indicated his sentiments on the matter. Jou-kowsky said he does not want Brown to dis-continue the Joe Paterno ’50 Award, accord-ing to the Associated Press. Echoing a classic

university mantra, he said, “Loyalty means a great deal. You don’t just cut it off because something goes wrong.” Institutional loyal-ty is serious stuff. Shouldn’t we leave open the possibility that elimination of the Pater-no award might need consideration at some point? The renowned Big Ten Football Con-ference, in which Penn State competes, just announced the removal of Paterno’s name from the Big Ten championship trophy.

The fact of the matter is that none of this should surprise us. Joukowsky’s com-ments make sense in context. On what mor-al grounds would Brown administrators be able to discontinue the Paterno award given

the sexual assault allegation on their campus that they took extreme measures to cover up and are now being sued for? Joukowsky’s call to remain loyal to Paterno is consistent with how Brown has operated in the past: protect the sacrosanct image of the University at all costs — even human costs.

What’s difficult to determine is wheth-er blind loyalty to Paterno will translate to blind loyalty to the Brown administration. Brown’s president is known for her beloved, grandmotherly reputation and stellar record of achievement, which insulate her from criticism, perhaps with the exception of her profits from her Goldman Sachs tenure at a time when her students’ homes went into foreclosure. She is now a defendant in the courts with mounting evidence against her.

The most important question in all of this is whether Brown students and alums who are critical of Penn State will ignore the analogous situation facing their own admin-istrators. Will students actually demand that the Corporation no longer prohibit a trans-parent and student-led disciplinary system for the sake of everyone’s safety? If Brown students and alums do not hold their Uni-versity accountable, it makes one wonder what crimes will be covered up in the future.

Michael Burch GS was the judicial affairs adviser to William McCormick during the

University disciplinary process and an assistant varsity wrestling coach from

2001 to 2009. He is a witness in McCormick et al. vs. Brown University et al. He can be reached at michael.burch01@gmail.com.

On University loyalty to Joe Paterno ’50

I may be the only fan of NBC’s “Chuck” left in the world today. Tied with the His-tory Channel’s “Pawn Stars” as one of the dumbest premises of a show on air, “Chuck” is about the adventures of a com-puter store employee who ends up with a government supercomputer in his brain. I won’t go too far into defending the show. Yvonne Strahovski is gorgeous and Aus-tralian — just saying. I only bring up “Chuck” to deconstruct what I think is its most valuable asset: its understanding of interpersonal relationships.

Television has the ability to romanticize certain aspects of our life. The great thing about being able to write a script is that you have complete control: Everything works out just as you intend. Implausible feats can be accomplished because you wish it so. Your generic random charac-ter — call him Mr. MacGuffin — takes a bullet for the protagonist not because Mr. MacGuffin was oh-so-deeply inspired by the protagonist’s ideals in the 41 minutes the two spent together. He takes the bul-let to the chest — giving him enough time to croak out one more line — because it is impossible to have a show with a dead title character.

“Chuck” inherently gets this. You can tell two of the main characters, Chuck and Morgan, are friends because of the minu-tiae like the small, appreciative smile from Chuck when Morgan screams at him to “sweep the leg.” The show understands that it’s the small things, the aspects that seem the most trivial, that truly make a friend-ship. A friend of mine often says you can tell more about a man from his actions

than his words, which seems obvious but still rings true. The tooth fairy does not ex-ist, but that does not mean anything when your parents skip work to catch your Little League game.

The little things matter, yet they hap-pen to be the hardest to appreciate. We get so caught up in the soap opera that is our lives that it is hard to really wrap your head around the magnanimous actions of oth-

ers. Next time wonder if your friend is re-ally sitting down to play a marathon best-out-of-nine series of “FIFA Soccer 12” be-cause he enjoys staring at a TV screen for two hours or because it looks like you have had the worst day and need some compa-ny.

Taking a step back for some apprecia-tion is especially relevant. The last two weeks have been the November of our

discontent, as a phalanx of midterms has rained down fiery destruction from the lectern. It seems inconceivable at a school so steeped in ideological individuality that every single professor seems to believe that he or she should have a midterm ev-ery four weeks, but they do. If you asked most students about their workload, they would still, regardless of what it actually is, imagine themselves as Leonidas at Ther-

mopylae shouting “This is Sparta!” while kicking an unsuspecting midterm or two off a cliff.

Yet for all his bravery and badassery, Leonidas still had 300 guys backing him up. Life is similar — but without the in-sanely high levels of testosterone. While you might remember your heroic studying during that all-nighter you pulled to ace a chemistry exam, there was probably some-one there who took time out of his night to commiserate with you for a bit. Or may-be someone saw that you looked gaunter than the zombies of the “Walking Dead” and distracted you with a hilarious You-Tube video to get your mind off the fact that you still had to write an entire draft of a play due the next day.

Life often feels like you are a firing-range target, except instead of bullets, you are getting pelted with rotten eggs. At the end of the day, you have be able to live with the stench of all those eggs. Yet every once in a while, a person covers for you and lets you go one day without smelling terrible. That’s your friend right there. To put it an-other way, when your friend tells you to “sweep the leg,” laugh a bit — even if the 1990s is calling to get their terrible Karate Kid movie reference back.

Chip Lebovitz ’14 has a painfully long thank-you list to cover starting with

David Jacobs, Kevin Leitao, Tom Shaw and about 27 other fellows. He can be

reached at charles_lebovitz@brown.edu.

Sweeping the leg

if you asked most students about their workload, they would still, regardless of what it actually is, imagine themselves as Leonidas at Thermopylae

shouting “This is Sparta!” while kicking an unsuspecting midterm or two off a cliff.

As far as Brown administrators were concerned, they intentionally allowed a suspected violent rapist to roam another university campus unbeknownst to its students.

BY CHiP LEBoViTzopinions Columnist

BY MiCHAEL BURCHGuest Columnist

Daily Heraldthe Brown

Campus newswednesday, november 16, 2011

By haNNah lOeWeNtheilStaff Writer

A new Rhode Island law will ex-pand the list of materials the Uni-versity can recycle by 2013. The law, passed in 2008, will allow for recycling of more types of plastics and everyday items.

The state should expect to see the looser restrictions ahead of schedule — sometime after Earth Day, April 22, 2012 — said Sarah Kite, director of recycling services at Rhode Island Resource Recov-ery Corporation.

Currently, only 59 percent of items in landfills are eventually re-cycled. Rhode Island only recycles plastics categorized as 1 and 2, or

bottles and jugs. The new law will require the state to recycle plastics labeled 1 through 7, Kite said.

Plastics are categorized based on the polymer and properties of the container. The number is des-ignated by a symbol on the bottom of the plastic.

Under existing restrictions, the University can recycle tin, glass, aluminum and beer cans in yel-low mixed-container bins, said Gretchen Gerlach ’14, , an intern at Facilities Management and co-ordinator for the student group EcoReps. Other materials like Solo cups, plastic bags and Styrofoam cannot be recycled but will be re-cyclable under the new law.

Rhode Island law currently

does not require the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation to take materials it cannot sell after processing, Kite said. Other states do not restrict recycling based on the ability to reuse the materials, but “if you can’t sell a material onto the next user market, wheth-er it is paper, plastic, cardboard or aluminum, then it isn’t really recycled,” Kite said.

Plastics with numbers other than 1 or 2 cost more to recycle and are unable to be converted into new materials, Gerlach said. Unrecyclable materials are either burnt or disposed of in landfills.

Before implementing the new law, the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation determined

the best way to change its sorting process, Kite said. The corporation has been collaborating with the Office of Environmental Manage-ment to monitor the market for recycled products and expand the list of recyclables whenever pos-sible. “We needed time to research the best sorting technology and how much it was going to cost,” Kite said.

The corporation is now install-ing new equipment and preparing to accommodate the new laws, she said.

Electronics such as CDs and floppy disks may be recycled in designated areas. Certain bins in the Olney-Margolies Athletic Center accept batteries, and bins

in the Brown Bookstore take plas-tic bags.

Another problem with recy-cling stems from food contamina-tion. “If anything has more than 5 percent food contamination, it may not be recycled,” Gerlach said. For example, pizza boxes with leftover grease may not be recycled, and if contaminated materials taint other previously clean materials in recycling bins, the entire bag cannot be recycled.

Even with the new laws, there will still be some restrictions on recycling. For “some of the bigger, bulky stuff like cables, wires and chains, it’s a no right now,” Kite said, and “it’s going to be a no in the future.”

Recycling program to expand under relaxed restrictions

By DaViD rOseNContributing Writer

As the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority tweaks its proposed street-car route, the project’s long-term impact on the University community remains unclear.

The proposed route starts at the Starbucks on Thayer Street, goes through the bus tunnel to Kennedy Plaza, heads south to the Jewelry District — where the University’s Alpert Medical School and some research labs and administrative offices are located — and ends at Rhode Island Hospital.

It is unclear whether the BrownMed/Downcity Express shut-tle would continue to operate if the street car system is constructed, said Dick Spies, executive vice president for planning and senior adviser to the president. Currently, the shuttle is the University’s only transporta-tion system to the Med School and affiliated hospitals. The small van runs approximately every 12 min-utes Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

“Ideally, (the streetcar) would be able to replace the shuttle,” said Michael McCormick, assistant vice president for planning, design and construction. But potential replace-ments will depend on the frequency of the streetcars and their travel time.

During daytime hours, the pro-

posed streetcars would arrive every 10 minutes and would take about 10 minutes to reach the stop closest to the Med School, which is a three-minute walk from the building, said Amy Pettine, special projects man-ager for RIPTA.

The BrownMed/Downcity shuttle system is not very efficient, McCor-mick said. It can be slow and may be insufficient to meet the University’s growing presence downtown.

But Spies recognized that “the shuttle is something that some people think is pretty convenient.”

“From my experience, it has worked very smoothly,” said Leah Newcomer ’14, who uses the shuttle system every Thursday to get to an internship at the Coro Center. Trav-elers can text the shuttle service to find out when it will arrive at a cer-tain stop, a feature she said she liked.

“I think people are used to the Downcity shuttle,” said Emily Li ’11 MD’15. A station at Starbucks will not be very convenient for medical students because many live closer to Wickenden Street and Wayland Square, she said.

The train station and Providence Place Mall are not included in the streetcar’s initial route.

Adding these two destinations would decrease ridership due to longer travel times, complicate the logistics of the project and make the system more expensive — perhaps

jeopardizing federal funding, Pet-tine said.

“All experts seem to say that you’ve got to keep (a streetcar line) relatively small when it starts. The rule of thumb is to keep it within two miles,” Spies said.

But the line — once completed — could be expanded to include both the train station and the mall in the future, Pettine said. The streetcar system in Portland has been en-larged many times since its original construction, she added. Because RIPTA is facing a significant bud-get shortfall and cutting bus lines across the state, any expansion of the streetcar system would depend heavily on its initial popularity.

While it remains unclear whether the streetcar route will be extended to the mall and train sta-tion and what effect it will have on the BrownMed/Downcity express shuttle, the system could have a big impact on the city.

Because the streetcar is a per-manent investment — unlike a bus route, it cannot be instantly shut down — businesses will be attracted to any area serviced by the system.

The streetcar line may also bridge a gap between the University’s fa-cilities on College Hill and those downtown, Spies said. “What makes Brown special is bringing everything that goes on into a space where they bump into each other,” Spies said.

Streetcar’s effect on shuttle unclear

Rachel A. Kaplan / HeraldThe BrownMed/Downcity Express shuttle offers transportation between College Hill and University-affiliated destinations downtown. After construction of RiPTA’s planned streetcar line, the shuttle may be obsolete.

By iNNi YOuhStaff Writer

A team of researchers found that marijuana use among youth in Rhode Island has not increased since the passing of the state’s medical marijuana bill in 2006.

The study compared high-school drug use in Rhode Is-land and Massachusetts after the Ocean State passed the medical marijuana bill. “I was interested in seeing whether there were any differences in marijuana use be-tween R.I. and Massachusetts that was attributable to the change in policy in R.I.,” said Esther Choo, assistant professor of energy med-icine at Alpert Medical School and emergency medicine physician at Rhode Island Hospital.

“I thought it was so interest-ing that people tend to oppose something out of fear,” Choo said. Medical marijuana is used to treat chronic pain and nausea for con-ditions such as advanced AIDS and cancer, but many worry that youth will gain greater accessibil-ity to drugs. “I thought it was a measurable question, so I got a team together,” Choo said.

The team collected data from 1997 through 2009 of 37,000 students from a database called the Youth Risk Behavioral Sur-veillance System, an anonymous survey of high school students administered by the public health departments of each state.

Because Rhode Island and Massachusetts are similar in many respects, the team assumed that all aspects of the two states are the same except for their medical marijuana laws. They analyzed the changes in the stated drug use in surveys.

“About 30 percent of students report using marijuana on average over all years. This is a big num-ber and is entirely consistent with what we know,” Choo said. “This is an anonymous survey that is taken amongst peers so students tend to be more honest.”

But since the survey is held ev-

ery other year, Choo’s team only had two data points — 2007 and 2009 — to compare to the data collected prior to the passing of the bill.

“So far we haven’t seen any-thing that confirms our fears about its effects on our youth,” said Choo. But “our medical mari-juana program in R.I. is still ramp-ing up, so I think the data in years to come is what (we) really need to focus on,” she said.

Mitch Earleywine, professor at SUNY Albany who studies mari-juana use, said Choo’s study is consistent with his own research. “Choo’s research is something new in part because she’s got the most recent evidence, but in all the states that I have looked at across time, I’ve got the same re-sults,” Earleywine said.

Earleywine raised the possibil-ity that marijuana laws increase the drug’s availability, even to those without a prescription, but he said he has no evidence to sup-port this point.

“We’ve seen it so much across time and across states we can take a lot of faith in what we have found. The take-home message is that we can help the sickest of the sick in our states without having to worry that the teens are get-ting a wrong message,” Earleywine said.

“I think the patients who are directly impacted by this law would appreciate (that) this study would allow people to see the clear divide between general and medi-cal consumption,” said Oliver Tor-res ’13, co-president of Students for Sensible Drug Policy.

Gov. Lincoln Chafee ’75 P’14 said last month he would not ap-prove the opening of dispensaries due to federal pressure.

“I sincerely hope that this study will persuade Chafee to allow the dispensaries to happen,” Torres said. “I think this research helps our cause for the time being, be-cause any counterargument would be targeted towards youth con-sumption.”

Youth marijuana use steady under new law