Tuesday, December 4, 2007

The Brown Daily heralDTuesday, december 4, 2007Volume CXLII, No. 120 Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

www.browndailyherald.com 195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island News tips: [email protected]

INSIDE:

hired?Fear not seniors. It looks as though the job market is actually expanding despite an uncertain economy.

CAMPUS NeWS

3OPiNiONS

11FiCkle FANAtiCSA Herald poll found that support for athletic teams varies widely across class years.

SPOrtS

12PriMAry dUtyA group of guest colum-nists encourages students to get out and get regis-tered to vote this spring.

heAdS held highThe men’s soccer team is focusing on the positives of the 2007 season, despite last week’s loss.

CAMPUS NeWS

3

Standardized tests coming to college?By evAN BOggSsTaff WriTer

Admission officers often talk about standardized test scores, from the SAT to the ACT and beyond. But with legislation in Washington proposing standardized assessment for college students, University Hall has become embroiled in a nationwide debate over a different kind of assessment in higher education.

The discussion was sparked over two years ago, when Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings cre-ated the Commission on the Future of Higher Education. The commis-sion, often referred to as the Spell-ings Commission, was charged with determining how well college students are being prepared for life beyond campus, especially in the workplace.

“It is a good question to be asking — what is the value added by going to school for four years?” said Brenda Allen, associate provost and director of institutional diversity.

But while many in academia say the commission’s inquiry was laudable, its findings caused worry among university officials across the country.

Issued in 2006, the Spellings re-port found that prose literacy “for all levels of educational attainment” and document literacy “among those with at least some college education” decreased between 1992 and 2003. In addition, the report said, “em-ployers complain that many college graduates are not prepared for the workplace” and parents and students “have no solid evidence, comparable across institutions, of how much stu-dents learn in colleges.”

Among other recommendations,

More students use marijuana than tobacco, poll findsBy FrANkliN kANiNsenior sTaff WriTer

Anyone who has walked through Wriston Quadrangle on a Saturday night would not be surprised that a recent Herald poll found that over three-fourths of undergraduates had consumed alcohol in the past month and that over 80 percent reported using some substance.

Of the students polled, 77.8 percent responded that they had used alcohol, 32.5 percent had used marijuana and 17.6 percent

had used tobacco. 17.9 percent of respondents said they had not used any substances.

The Herald poll was conducted from Nov. 5-7 and has a 3.9 percent margin of error with 95 percent confidence. A total of 621 Brown

undergraduates completed the poll, which was administered as a written questionnaire to students in the Uni-versity Post Office at Faunce House and in the Sciences Library.

Neither Director of Health Edu-cation Frances Mantak or Kathleen McSharry, associate dean of the Col-lege and dean for issues of chemical dependency, were fazed by these results.

Mantak said the results of the Herald poll are, for the most part, consistent with data she has seen from other surveys.

“From my experience, Brown is not incredibly different from the rest of the student population in the

Down the Hill, RISD students cook up T-shirtsBy MAttheW vArleysTaff WriTer

T-shirts and hooded shirts cus-tom-designed by two Rhode Island School of Design students may soon add a unique flare to College Hill wardrobes. In the meantime, look for RISD sophomores John Verdery and Zio Ziegler wearing their art on their sleeves.

The students, who both have experience in apparel design, be-gan collaborating this semester on a new clothing line called Thun-der Over Thunder. In addition to planning marketing campaigns at Brown, RISD and other universities, Verdery and Ziegler have shown samples to high-end boutiques in New York and Los Angeles. Their work combines screen print and applique in a montage Ziegler de-scribes as “graffiti color and style meets Rembrandt and Botticelli” — with a spiritual side.

“I’m Buddhist ... and pretty into

Eastern philosophy and literature right now,” Ziegler said.

The name Thunder Over Thun-der comes from the “I Ching,” a clas-sical Chinese text, and evokes “the creation of a new, strong entity,” he explained. The two said they hope to fill a niche in the fashion industry.

Verdery said he “started get-

ting disappointed in the brands” available in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood.

A native of the city, Verdery es-tablished a reputation customizing sneakers in high school. “I started seeing a lot of the same stuff, the all-over prints that were way over-priced,” Verdery said. “That’s when I started wanting to learn to print T-shirts.”

Verdery found an ally in Ziegler, who transferred to RISD this semes-ter from Chapman University in his home state of California.

“I was always the guy that did the soccer team T-shirt” in high school, Ziegler said. As a high school fresh-man, he began marketing his own apparel under the brand name Live Loyal. Ziegler studied film and ad-vertising at Chapman — he had never taken an art course before arriving at RISD.

Though they have dif ferent styles, both students “wanted to have the great, new spectacular shirts that you can’t find in stores,” Ziegler said. Both study illustration and began making late-night trips to RISD’s printmaking studio early this fall to design clothing in their free time.

“We’d hike up there at two in the morning with bags of ink and bags of T-shirts,” Ziegler said. “We had to sneak in, climb up the stairwell, look out for the monitors and wash out the silk screens by the end of the night. Silk screening is pretty

l I k e A H A w k

kim Perley / HeraldA hawk observed students on wriston Quadrangle Monday.

FEATURE

The Times’ Ethicist picks apart plagiarismBy rAChel ArNdtsenior sTaff WriTer

For nine years as the Ethicist at the New York Times Magazine, Randy Cohen has been resolute in his tough arguments about topics from Ad-derall use in college to the ethics of being given the wrong change. On Monday evening he pointedly discussed another controversial sub-ject — plagiarism — in his lecture, “Plagiarism: A kind of defense.”

In the lecture presented by the Graduate School, Cohen spoke to a half-full Salomon 101 and defended plagiarism in various forms of writ-ing such as novels and some televi-sion writing. “I’m all for plagiarism in its place,” he said, but he noted that journalism is not the place for lifting words from others — “every quote is meant to be sourced, and every source is meant to be cited.”

Cohen began the lecture by de-scribing Ian McEwan’s alleged pla-giarism his 2001 novel, “Atonement.” The British author was accused of taking full sentences from a 1977 book by Lucilla Andrews called “No

Time for Romance.” Cohen won-dered whether McEwan’s plagiarism could be considered “a legitimate literary technique.”

“Every idea has many ... sourc-es,” Cohen said. “Why isn’t every novelist covered in shame for not citing the editor?” he asked.

In his defense of plagiarism in novels, Cohen looked to his own work for “Late Night with David Letterman.” During his time writ-ing for the program, Cohen some-times found the show’s work later was plagiarized by other sources, but he said it gave him “a total sense of superiority. … They stole because they had to.”

“Owning an idea is a very slip-pery concept,” he said. Neverthe-less, “getting credit meant some-thing emotionally,” he said, even when credit was simply being listed with other writers in the closing credits of the show.

Cohen suggested that plagiarism could sometimes be taken as a form of flattery. Still, he said, the gravity of plagiarism is clear. He spent the rest of his talk outlining the reasons he

thinks people care so deeply about plagiarism in the first place.

People think it is “profoundly moral to give credit where it’s due to the creator of a work,” Cohen said. To make his point, he referred to

the Renaissance, when the primary painter had other artists help paint specific sections. Nowadays, how-ever, “uncredited writing is becom-

Chris Bennett / Herald

Randy Cohen, the New York Times Magazine’s “ethicist,” told students last night that using Adderall as a study drug may be unhealthy and illegal but is not unethical.

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THE HERALD POLL

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Alcohol TobaccoMarijuana None

77.8

%

32.5

%

17.6

%

17.9

%

Student substance use in Fall 2007

ToDay

The Brown Daily heralD

Editorial Phone: 401.351.3372Business Phone: 401.351.3260

Eric Beck, President

Mary-Catherine Lader, Vice President

Mandeep Gill, Treasurer

Dan DeNorch, Secretary

The Brown Daily Herald (USPS 067.740) is an independent newspaper serving the Brown

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semester daily. Copyright 2007 by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.

ACROSS1 Wise guy5 Switch positions9 TV censoring

device14 Cameo

gemstone15 Budding

aviator’s hurdle16 1836 siege site17 Military might19 Humdingers20 Luigi’s love21 Pinky or Peggy22 Chubby and

then some23 Make like new25 __ d’oeuvre27 More ritzy29 Sporty car roof33 Geese on the

ground37 Flooring wood38 Outdoor holiday

decoration site39 Writer Zola40 Flower child?41 Three-time N.L.

Manager of theYear Dusty

42 Bright star43 Bad-mouth44 They’re only

pretending45 Classic Jags46 To-do list48 Bath bubbles50 Paper-folding art55 Disapproving

look58 Roadside rest

stop60 Out for lunch, say61 Hawaiian

veranda62 Protect64 Ward off65 Junk mail in your

e-box66 Three, in Bonn67 “Sometimes a

Great Notion”author Ken

68 Himalayanlegend

69 Verdi’s Ethiopianprincess

DOWN1 To date2 Japanese

cartoon style3 Greek

sandwiches4 Use, as influence

5 Bear, in Burgos6 “The French

Lieutenant’sWoman” novelist

7 Escape8 Grump9 Bravery

10 Delmonico beefcut

11 Robust12 Shock jock with

three MarconiAwards

13 Sit for aportraitist

18 Magazine withan annual“Sexiest ManAlive” feature

24 Fish eggs26 Sitcom planet28 Word that can

follow both partsof 17- and 62-across and 10-and 36- down

30 Confiscate31 Walkie-talkie

word32 Anc. Iranian33 Group after

boomers34 Wildly35 Be generous36 Goblets and such

40 Fraidy cat41 Chorus from the

flock43 Mom’s mate44 Depression-era

monogram47 Label word for

losers49 Oneness51 Mild Dutch

cheese52 Arcade games

pioneer

53 Stuck in the mud54 Columbus’s

elusivedestination

55 Anti-aircraft fire56 All-night dance

party57 Tip jar fillers,

mostly59 Necklace clasp

resting place63 British recording

co.

By Jerome Gunderson(c)2007 Tribune Media Services, Inc. 12/4/07

12/4/07

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Tuesday, December 4, 2007

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

[email protected]

c r o s s W o r d

s u d o k u

W e a T h e r

m e n u

Fill in the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 through 9.

© Puzzles by Pappocom

snow shower / wind34 / 23

mostly cloudy35 / 21

ShArPe reFeCtOry

lUNCh — Tempeh Fajitas, Red Rice, Corn and Sweet Pepper Saute, Popcorn Chicken, Vivizone, Chicken Rice Soup, Vegetarian lentil Soup, Jelly Roll

diNNer — Acorn Squash with Curried Rice and Chickpeas, au Gratin Potatoes with Fresh Herbs, Fresh Vegetable Me-lange, Italian Meatloaf, Orange Turkey, Butterscotch layer Cake

verNey-WOOlley diNiNg hAll

lUNCh — Jamie’s Spiced Chicken wings, Baked Manicotti with Sauce, Corn and Broccoli Casserole, Bean and Bacon Soup, white Chocolate Chip Cookies

diNNer — Pot Roast Jardiniere, Stuffed Spinach Squash, Red Pota-toes with Fresh Dill, Oregon Blend Vegetables, Stir Fry Station

TODAY T O M O R R O w

PAGe 2 THe BROwN DAIlY HeRAlD TueSDAY, DeCeMBeR 4, 2007

But Seriously | Charlie Custer and Stephen Barlow

vagina dentata| Soojean kim

Octopus on hallucinogens | Toni liu and Stephanie le

Classic deo | Daniel Perez

Aibohphobia | Roxanne Palmer

Classic how to get down | Nate Saunders

Campus newsTueSDAY, DeCeMBeR 4, 2007 THe BROwN DAIlY HeRAlD PAGe 3

By iSABel gOttlieBsenior sTaff WriTer

Last week, the men’s soccer team’s impressive season came to a disap-pointing end with a loss to Old Domin-ion University in the NCAA tourna-ment. A crowd of 802 students turned out for the Bears’ biggest game of the year, among them a handful of die-hard fans.

“I’ve been to quite a few soccer games,” said Ross Leskin ’11. Then he clarified: He has been to every single home game the team played this season.

But Leskin’s ardent support of Brown athletics is far from the norm on campus. A recent Herald poll found that a slim majority — 52.7 percent — of undergraduates said they have attended a varsity sports game this semester. Though 69 per-cent of freshmen reported they had attended a game, only 47.4 percent of sophomores, 50.3 percent of juniors and 44.3 percent of seniors said they had.

The Herald poll was conducted from Nov. 5-7 and has a 3.9 percent margin of error with 95 percent confidence. A total of 621 Brown undergraduates completed the poll, which was administered as a written questionnaire to students in the Uni-versity Post Office at Faunce House and in the Sciences Library.

Tess Avitabile ’11 said she has never been to a game for one sim-ple reason: “I get bored watching sports.”

James Kraemer ’08, who also has not attended any games this semester but said he usually goes to one or two events every year, said he doesn’t typically go because “Brown teams aren’t very good.”

Karis Casagrande ’10 tried to go to a soccer game last year but left when she found out she had to buy a ticket.

“I’m not interested enough to pay money to get in,” she said.

All athletic events are free to students with Brown IDs except for NCAA postseason events, for which all attendees are required to buy a ticket. But the athletic department occasionally subsidizes student at-tendance — the department bought 500 tickets to the soccer team’s play-off game so the first 500 students to arrive could get in for free. “We blasted through those 500,” said Rick

Merriam, assistant athletic director of marketing.

The athletic department tries to encourage student attendance through Morning Mail, table slips and advertising in The Herald, on WBRU and on Facebook. Merriam said the department has reached out to residence halls and the Third World Center, created theme nights like the upcoming “Mardi Gras Night” at a men’s basketball game, initiated giveaways, brought musical acts like the Brown Band to games and of-fered student attendees the chance to win prizes through contests.

Encouraging student support of athletic teams “is my number one priority,” Merriam said.

In an effort to measure the initia-tives’ effectiveness, Merriam and his office have begun tracking student attendance at varsity games where tickets are sold. (Even though stu-dents admitted free to regular season games, others have to purchase tick-ets to many varsity contests.)

This fall, the men’s soccer team, which advanced to the second round of the NCAA playoffs before falling to Old Dominion, drew an average of 326 students to each of its games, hitting a season high of 1,112 stu-dent attendees at the season opener against Santa Clara.

Women’s soccer events averaged 118 students per game, and football events attracted an average of 740 stu-dents per game, with 1,066 students showing up for the team’s Homecom-ing game against Princeton.

Men’s and women’s basketball and ice hockey will be tracked this winter, along with men’s lacrosse in the spring.

When Moses Riner ’08 transferred from Duke last year, he decided Brown students needed some en-couragement to attend sports games. Riner created BrowNation, which is described on its Web site as “the only official fan club of the Brown Bears.” The club is based on the Inferno, a similar organization at Duke, Riner told The Herald in September.

For a $20 membership fee, BrowNation allows students to earn points for attending athletic events — with extra points for wearing body paint — which go toward free athletic apparel and giveaways.

Director of Athletics Michael Goldberger said BrowNation was “a great boon” to the athletic depart-

ment’s efforts to increase student attendance, and he said the depart-ment offers financial support to the program.

“We love the fact that (BrowNa-tion) is a student initiative,” Gold-berger said. “Students encouraging other students is really effective.”

Because the department has just started tracking student attendance, Goldberger said, there is no way to compare the numbers of students attending sports games before and after the creation of BrowNation.

Currently BrowNation has around 300 members, Riner said, a number he described as “phenomenal” be-cause he thought membership would be closer to 100 at this time.

“Giving students a reward for go-ing to games is a great incentive and has helped membership increase,” Riner said.

Still, some athletes say they occa-sionally wish they had more support on the playing field. Mark McAndrew ’08, co-captain of the men’s basketball team, said he appreciated the large turnout for the game against the University of Rhode Island earlier this month (the Bears lost 75-61) and would like to see such enthusiasm more often.

“In the URI game, (the fans) were all really excited, real pumped up. There was a great crowd, and we were all real into the game because of them,” McAndrew said. “When you have fans cheering you on, it makes it that much more exciting to play and play well.”

But often, “a lot of the people who attend the games are either friends of the people who are playing or just come to support because they like the sport, but not necessarily to cheer,” he said.

Graduating and looking for a job? There’s good news for you.A recent report by the Collegiate employment Research Institute

at Michigan State university said the number of job opportunities for this year’s graduating seniors is expected to increase 7 percent over last year.

large businesses — corporations with more than 3,900 employees — will provide the majority of the new job opportunities, according to the report, which was released Nov. 15.

kelley Bishop, executive director of career services and placement at Michigan State, said the report has been released annually for the past 37 years.

while other organizations conduct similar studies, Bishop called CeRI’s “the most thorough and comprehensive” because of the diversity of the employers CeRI surveys, which range widely in terms of geographic location, size and industry.

CeRI initially surveyed the employers that recruited at Michigan State, but then the institute partnered with MonsterTRAk four years ago to expand its sample pool. MonsterTRAk is a job and internship site geared toward current college students and recent graduates, and it now allows CeRI to distribute surveys among the employers that use its web site.

Bishop said about one out of three college students will end up working for a company with fewer than 100 employees, but he said these small businesses cannot recruit on campus because they lack the budget and personnel. MonsterTRAk’s cooperation with CeRI has increased the validity of their study by allowing them to reach this “hidden job market.”

Barbara Peoples, senior associate director of Brown’s Career De-velopment Center, said she agreed with the report’s findings, though she cautioned that there is still limited information about hiring op-portunities. Still, she was optimistic about an improving job market for graduating students.

“we’ve had a really good recruiting year as far as companies that have come on campus and interviews that have been conducted,” Peoples said. “we won’t have outcomes until the beginning of second semester.”

— Sophia Li

Student support a mixed bag at sports events

relax, seniors: Job opportunities for college grads are on the rise, study says

n e W s i n b r i e fP R e T T Y P R e T T Y

Chris Bennett / Herald“That Pretty Pretty; Or, The Rape Play,” a Sheila Callaghan play performed by the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium, concluded on Monday evening.

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’11 ’09’10 ’08class year

Varsity sports attendance in Fall 2007

69.0

%

47.4

%

50.3

%

44.3

%

the report suggested that “higher education institutions should mea-sure student learning using quality-assessment data” from standardized tests.

“The general response to the Spellings report has been fairly criti-cal,” said Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98. “One of the concerns is the need to deal with all of higher education as if it were the same.”

Speaking at the Teaching Forum of Brown’s Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning in Septem-ber, Kathryn Spoehr ’69, professor of cognitive and linguistic sciences, characterized the commission’s find-ings as follows:

“(Colleges) are being told that all students in all institutions should graduate having mastered the same set of knowledge and skills, that these skills can and should be measured by a standardized test and that we can evaluate the quality of a school by how much its students’ test scores improve between entry and gradua-tion,” Spoehr said at the forum.

Spoehr, a former provost, dean of the Graduate School and dean of the faculty, is herself a member of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges — she evaluates other schools’ reaccreditation processes — and is member of the University steering committee charged with overseeing Brown’s reaccreditation process.

The Department of Education intends to implement changes in

student assessment through the six national accreditation agencies, Spoehr told The Herald.

Accreditation agencies were cre-ated as nongovernmental watchdogs for education systems at all levels, from kindergarten to the doctoral level. Membership in one of the regional agencies is synonymous with accreditation, and all colleges that are accredited are eligible for government funding, including Pell grants and Stafford loans.

A proposed amendment to re-authorize the Higher Education Act could give colleges much less say in how they assess student performance.

The bill, debated by the House of Representatives committee on edu-cation and labor, is currently in line for a floor vote, said Tim Leshan, Brown’s director of government rela-tions and community affairs.

“It would move power for as-sessing the work of the students in higher education from the uni-versity to creating some potential standards by the Department of Education,” Leshan said. In other words, universities might no lon-ger be able to set their standards for assessment. Instead, the federal government could impose universal assessment criteria.

“The Department of Education is suggesting something so extreme to our business practices and what we know,” Allen said. “There will be resistance simply as educators — we should not allow ourselves to be held to that.”

“As conversation moves more and more towards (a resolution), there will be compromises,” she said. “My real belief is that we will find that happy medium.”

The University, a member of the NEASC, is in the early stages of its reaccreditation process with the as-sociation, which it undertakes every 10 years.

“We’re trying to be proactive,” said Allen, who is the University’s primary liaison with NEASC.

Allen said the association created a set of models that institutions could use to assess their students perfor-mance. These models range from

the use of standardized tests to a claims-based assessment, which is the method that has been tentatively adopted by the University.

Claims-based assessment is a pro-cess by which an institution makes qualitative statements about the ex-pected learning outcomes of its stu-dents and then seeks to prove these statements through internal data and studies, Allen said. For example, the University might attempt to prove that Brown students attend the most prestigious graduate schools, join top workplaces or are accepted by the most competitive medical schools, Allen said.

With each reaccreditation cycle, the University is required to prepare a self-study documenting how well it is meeting its own goals and mis-sion. Allen said this self-study will prove the crux of Brown’s attempt to demonstrate its assessment abilities — both to NEASC and the Depart-ment of Education.

“We are very much proceeding on the idea that it would be useful and necessary for Brown to think of (assessment methods) that would make sense in terms of outcomes of student learning in a Brown per-spective,” said Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron.

PAGe 4 THe BROwN DAIlY HeRAlD TueSDAY, DeCeMBeR 4, 2007

Courtesy of whitehouse.gov

u.S. Secretary of education Margaret Spellings supports the use of standardized tests in college.

Review of U.S. accreditation policies sparks concern

country,” she said.Mantak said she was surprised

by the high prevalence of marijuana use because she has seen other re-search that indicated the number was closer to 25 percent, and tobacco us-age was closer to 30 percent. She said the numbers may have differed be-cause students who took the Herald poll may not have been comfortable honestly answering questions about substance use in a poll administered by their peers.

“Because the survey was face-to-face with a peer, we have to look at how that affects peoples’ reactions,” Mantak said. She added that people are more likely to experiment with marijuana during college than when they are older.

Though McSharry was also sur-prised by the high reported marijuana usage, she said the other reported rates of substance use met her ex-pectations.

Use of other drugs was reported less commonly among students: 2.3 percent reported that they had used cocaine, 2.1 percent had used am-phetamines, 1.8 percent had taken prescription painkillers not prescribed to them, 1.8 percent had used psyche-delic mushrooms, 1.3 percent had taken LSD, 1.0 percent had taken ec-stasy (MDMA), 0.3 had used nitrous oxide and 0.2 had used heroin.

Students, like administrators, were not surprised by the rates of drug usage found by the Herald poll. Cory McAlister ’09, president of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, said he felt the numbers reflect the general popu-lation well.

The University’s policies on drugs are reasonable, McAlister said, and

Brown relies on students using substances responsibly. “I think the majority of Brown students who use drugs use them safely and use them responsibly, and I think that Brown’s policies support that,” he said.

“Moderate alcohol consumption can be a safe thing from the health aspect,” Mantak said.

The University looks out for the safety of the student before punishing substance use, and such a policy is conducive to safer drug use, McAl-ister said. “Health Services gives amnesty to students who come in if they are overdosing or experienc-ing a bad psychedelic trip and gives them treatment, so the health and safety of the student really comes first,” he said.

While almost four-fifths of under-graduates polled reported using some substance, 17.9 percent said they had not used any.

Putzer Hung ’10 said while he does not use any suabstances, he doesn’t have a problem with students who do, as long as they are not disrup-tive to others. For example, he said, students under the influence of drugs or alcohol who set off fire alarms in buildings are very disruptive.

Dan Velazquez ’10, another student who said he does not use substances, had a similar reaction. “If people use (drugs or alcohol) and are respon-sible about it and don’t excessively get drunk or overdose or anything, then I tolerate people with their decisions to use any sort of substance they may want to take,” he said.

While he does not usually hang around people who are under the influence, Velazquez said, “I’ve oc-casionally seen people who are intoxi-cated — it’s awkward to me. That’s probably the reason why I avoid it.”

More students use marijuana than tobacco, poll finds

continued from page 1


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worlD & naTionTueSDAY, DeCeMBeR 4, 2007 THe BROwN DAIlY HeRAlD PAGe 5

two

Iran slows nuclear program, report saysBy WAlter PiNCUSWashingTon PosT

WASHINGTON — Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure, and while it continues to develop an enriched uranium program, it appar-ently has not resumed moving to-ward a nuclear capability, according to a consensus judgment of the U.S. intelligence community released Monday by Director of National Intelligence John McConnell.

The assessment states “with moderate confidence” that “Teh-ran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program” as of mid-2007, but suggests that Tehran continues to keep that option open.

“Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nu-clear weapons than we have been judging since 2005,” according to one of the key judgments of the new assessment. Two years ago, the in-telligence community said publicly that it had “high confidence that Iran was currently determined to have nuclear weapons,” a senior intelligence official said today.

After that assessment was re-leased, the community increased its clandestine and open collection of information about Iran’s program, actions that led to the reassessment, the officials said.

The major shift in the intelli-gence community’s judgment about Iran’s nuclear weapons intentions is contained in unclassified mate-

rial from a new, classified National Intelligence Estimate sent to Capitol Hill today. The document represents the consensus opinion of the U.S. intelligence community.

The U.S. has been pressing the international community to put pressure on Iran to halt its weapons program, emphasizing the need to apply sanctions if Tehran contin-ued with its uranium enrichment program.

Intelligence officials credited increased international scrutiny of Iran’s nuclear program and the threat of exposure of its previously undisclosed uranium enrichment efforts with influencing Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons effort.

Senior intelligence officials said it is possible that Libya’s decision to halt its nuclear program and the war in Iraq were also factors, but said there was no direct evidence of either.

The acknowledgment that in-ternational pressure had an impact on Tehran’s weapons program was contrary to predictions in the 2005 National Intelligence Estimate that Iran would not be restrained by international obligations or pres-sures.

Intelligence officials noted that by ending the covert weapons pro-gram, Iran could continue trying to develop the capability to process uranium for use in power plants and remain within its treaty obligations, as long as its efforts were conducted openly. They added that gaining the

capacity to enrich uranium could aid a future weapons program, should Iran want to resume one.

The decision to release an un-classified version of the key judg-ments reverses a stand McConnell took in a speech just one month ago.

“Since our understanding of Iran’s nuclear capabilities has changed, we felt it was important to release this information to en-sure that an accurate presentation is available,” according to a statement from Donald Kerr, principal deputy director of national intelligence.

There was also concern that elements of the classified version would leak out after the document was sent to Congress, causing pub-lic confusion on key issues, officials said. The decision to release key judgments was discussed with the White House, which approved the idea. But it was the intelligence com-munity which wrote and released them, the senior intelligence offi-cials said Monday.

According to the document, Iran is considered “highly unlikely” to be technically capable now of producing enough highly enriched weapons-grade uranium for a weapon before 2009. With “moderate confidence,” the report puts that date at 2010 and probably not before 2015.

However, the assessment judges that Tehran continues to conduct research on other conventional weapons, such as missiles, that at a later date could be useful in a nuclear weapons program.

Russian election criticized as undemocraticBy MegAN k. StACkLos angeLes Times

MOSCOW — European officials and vote monitors Monday de-nounced Russia’s parliamentary elections as an undemocratic ex-ercise engineered by President Vladimir Putin and his party.

“Neither a free, fair nor demo-cratic election,” said a German gov-ernment spokesman. “Steered de-mocracy,” said the Swedish foreign minister. “Not a level playing field,” added the European observer mis-sion.

With Putin’s second presidential term drawing to a close and political uncertainty shadowing the coun-try’s future, Russians trooped to the polls Sunday to elect a lower house of Parliament, balloting widely re-garded as a plebiscite on the presi-dent’s ability to run the country. After an intense and often surreal campaign that featured Putin as its star and almost sole player, voters delivered a landslide victory to his United Russia party.

Putin, a 55-year-old former KGB agent, appeared unruffled by the criticism. During his regular Mon-day meeting with Cabinet ministers, he called upon Parliament to as-semble for its first session quickly, rather than wait the usual 30 days after an election.

The victory at the polls was “a sign of trust,” Putin said. “Russians will never allow the nation to take

a destructive path, as happened in some other ex-Soviet nations.”

With 98 percent of the votes tallied, United Russia was poised to capture more than 64 percent of the vote. The results gave Pu-tin’s party more than two-thirds of the seats in the lower house, a large enough majority to amend the constitution without the support of other parties.

Much of the criticism from the West focused not on events at the polls but on the carnival-like cam-paign engineered by the Kremlin. European election monitors pointed out indignantly that Putin had per-sonalized the parliamentary elec-tions by putting his name at the top of the United Russia ticket, involving himself to a degree they considered inappropriate for the sitting president.

Heavily state-controlled media cheered on Putin’s party, govern-ment resources were abused and opposition parties were harassed, the monitors charged.

“If Russia is a managed democ-racy, these were managed elec-tions,” Luc van den Brande, head of the Council of Europe delegation, told reporters in Moscow. “For us, it is an unprecedented situation that a sitting president is running in an election.”

Russia fired back against its crit-ics, dismissing the complaints as unfair barbs hurled by their West-ern foes.

New York airports are worst, report findsBy JOhN vAleNtineWsday

When it came to on-time perfor-mances for arrivals at the three major New York area airports this year, Kennedy, Newark-Liberty and LaGuardia took the prize — as the worst three performers in the U.S., that is, according to a report released Monday by the Bureau of Travel Statistics.

The report found that just 61.83 percent of all arrivals have been on time at Kennedy in 2007, ranking the airport 30th out of the nation’s 32 so-called major airports.

Newark was ranked 31st with 59.91 percent of its arrivals being on time. LaGuardia was last at 59.83 percent.

The three airports are also near the bottom in departure delays, with LaGuardia ranked 25th overall, New-ark 30th and Kennedy 31st — down from 23rd in 2006.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement that, despite re-cent moves by the U.S. Department of Transportation to ease congestion at the three airports, the findings are “a telling portrait of the bleak landscape air travelers face when they head to our nation’s airports.”

He called for the Federal Avia-tion Administration to “fully staff” airport control towers and to “main-tain open military air space on the East Coast.”

On Sunday, New York City Comptroller William Thompson Jr. released a 36-page report on how delays at the three airports have eroded the city’s ability to compete in the global marketplace. That re-port found the on-time performance at the three airports was 13 percent below the national average.

LaGuardia, with its short inter-secting runways and location on Flushing Bay, is notorious for being susceptible to delays caused by wind

gusts because of the heavy volume of flights in and out of the airport.

Departures at the two airports are also being affected by “destina-tion-specific” delays — with the FAA advising travelers to contact their air carriers for more information. Departures are being delayed up to 45 minutes at Kennedy because of volume.

Arrivals at LaGuardia are being delayed one hour and 59 minutes, the FAA said. Arrivals at Newark are being delayed two hours and 23 minutes.

THe BROwN DAIlY HeRAlD TueSDAY, DeCeMBeR 4, 2007

But size doesn’t matter as much as energy when it comes to crowds, McAndrew said. “You could have 30 people going nuts, or 400 people watching like it’s a lecture hall whose impact would not be as greatly felt as the 30 people going nuts.”

McAndrew compared Brown to larger universities like the University of Michigan. “The crowds are larger, there are traditional cheers (and) everyone sings the fight song,” he said. “Those environments are fun to play in.”

Madison Miketa ’10, who plays on the field hockey team, which won one game in its fall season, said field hockey games routinely draw a crowd of 10 to 15 student fans, a number she called “pathetic.”

Miketa agreed that enthusiastic support transforms the game for the players.

“The ice hockey (players) would come to a lot of our games, paint their

chest and beat drums,” Miketa said. “It makes it a lot more fun to play when the fans are students.”

Often, fans at sports games are other athletes. McAndrew said he tries to go to as many sports events as he can, and Miketa said her field hockey team regularly cheers on the soccer and ice hockey teams.

Throughout their successful sea-son, members and coaches of the men’s soccer team often credited the strong student turnout at many games for energizing the team. “First and foremost, in order for a team to be successful, they have to feel like they are supported,” said Head Coach Mike Noonan. “We’ve had a rich tradition of success, and I think its because people have come out to support us.”

Noonan said the men’s soccer team has been “pretty favorable when it comes to attendance,” but, he added, “some of our students athletes could be better supported by our peers.”

new to us. ... The first time we tried to burn a screen it ended up not working. We ended up sleeping on the tables in the printmaking lab (waiting) for the emulsion to dry” to finish the prints before a 9 a.m. class.

The two have since paid a lab fee to use the studio and spend weekends and late nights after class experimenting with differ-ent designs.

“It’s so awesome ... to have all the ink, all the facilities, and figure everything out ourselves,” Ziegler said. “We like wearing them ... but the fun thing is printing them.”

An example of the pair’s recent work is a lightweight, white full-zip top with a faux-fur-lined hood. Across the back, an etched scale balances a heart and a revolver over a macabre landscape and the words “No Effort No Desire.” A variety of graffiti-style designs are layered all over the shirt, extend-ing vibrant colors across the seams and onto the margins. Faded flow-ers cut from vintage floral-print fabric are stitched on as a final touch.

The multi-stage, labor-intensive process has yielded 60 to 70 com-plete pieces so far, according to Verdery. He does much of the paint and ink work, while Ziegler draws

the base etchings and also works on sewing.

“It’s more of a collage effect in our clothing,” Verdery said. “We come up with individual images that we think would look nice on a piece ... and we make each T-shirt and each hoodie individual,” he said. Many shirts move from concept to reality in a matter of hours.

“Pieces will go from my sketch-book in a class in the afternoon to a silkscreen and then to a T-shirt by the end of the day,” Ziegler said. After a limited run, the silk-screens are washed out, “so it’s like a transi-tory art form.”

Rather than rotate merchan-dise on a seasonal basis, the silk-screeners produce everything on a limited-edition basis.

“The images constantly change ... if you buy something from us then the next day we’re going to have a different stock,” Verdery said. “Hopefully it never dies. It keeps it fresh. If everything is being printed on the spot and it’s only going for a limited run, it can always change.”

Verdery and Ziegler created a Facebook group for Thunder Over Thunder and are planning to launch a Web site with photos of their work and contact informa-tion.

To help fund the project, the

two have submitted designs to T-shirt Web sites. On Nov. 30, Ziegler won “Shirt of the day” on Designbyhumans.com — earning him $750 and a wider audience for his work.

On their own Web site, they hope to include a store for high-er-volume prints and an auction area for more limited items. The students have recruited Kate Owen ’10 to publicize Thunder Over Thunder at Brown, a job that will include distributing promotional stickers and wearing the brand around campus.

“People put business cards in wallets, people put stickers on posts and stop signs,” Ziegler said, citing the advertising strategy of the company Obey Clothing as an inspiration. “The job’s up to us to make the product that awesome, that it stays in your mind all the way until you get home. ... This is an independent, creative piece of artwork that is available in, what, 15 shirts? Maybe 100 shirts?”

As the business grows, Ziegler said he hopes to incorporate other students’ art into Thunder Over Thunder designs.

“We’re going to start featuring a whole bunch of our friends that are artists in school,” he said. “We’ll expand and take it where we want to as it progresses in our minds, but it’s a fun thing to do.”


RISD T-shirt designs to hit College HillMixed student interest in athleticscontinued from page 3

M. hockey falls to Northeastern, 4-3middle of the face-off circle and put the puck past the goalie to tie the game at three, with 7:09 remain-ing.

Bruno was unable to prevent Northeastern, from getting the goal back. With 5:32 remaining, Denis Chisholm shot the puck from the left side and put it past Sibbald to give the Huskies a 4-3 lead, which they held for the remainder of the contest.

Despite allowing four goals, Sib-bald played a strong game in the net for the Bears, making a career-high

37 saves in a game in which Brown was out-shot by a margin of 41-27.

“I felt that Mark has worked really hard. One bright spot this season has been the consistent effort of our goaltenders,” Grillo said. “I think our goaltending can be better, but it’s been pretty solid. I’m really happy about where those guys are with their work ethic, their effort and their daily commitment to this team.”

Friday’s game marked the end of a tough stretch for the Bears, who have played their last four games on the road, with three of the opponents ranked 12th or

higher nationally. It was a difficult string of games for Brown, who, after tying Saint Lawrence Univer-sity, lost three straight to ranked opponents Clarkson University, the University of New Hampshire and Northeastern.

“We’ve had a pretty tough sched-ule, all on the road, but the bottom line is, we’ve got to be better,” Grillo said. “We can beat those teams if we play with consistency, pace, and toughness.”

On Tuesday at 7 p.m., the Bears will face off at crosstown-rival Provi-dence College for the 22nd annual Mayor’s Cup.


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worlD & naTionTueSDAY, DeCeMBeR 4, 2007 THe BROwN DAIlY HeRAlD PAGe 7

Young Muslims tune into upbeat religious messageBy keviN SUllivANWashingTon PosT

CAIRO, Egypt — Muna el-Leboudy, a 22-year-old medical student, had a terrible secret: She wanted to be a filmmaker. The way she understood her Muslim faith, it was haram — forbidden — to dabble in movies, music or any art that might pique sexual desires.

Then one day in September, she flipped on her satellite TV and saw Moez Masoud.

A Muslim televangelist not much older than herself, in a stylish goatee and Western clothes, Masoud, 29, was preaching about Islam in youth-ful Arabic slang.

He said imams who outlawed art and music were misinterpreting their faith. He talked about love and relationships, the need to be compas-sionate toward homosexuals and tolerant of non-Muslims. Leboudy had never heard a Muslim preacher speak that way.

“Moez helps us understand ev-erything about our religion — not from 1,400 years ago, but the way we live now,” said Leboudy, wearing a scarlet hijab over her hair.

She said she still plans a career in medicine, but she’s also starting classes in film directing. “After I heard Moez,” she said, “I decided to be the one who tries to change things.”

Masoud is one of a growing number of young Muslim preach-ers who are using satellite television to promote an upbeat and tolerant brand of Islam.

Television preaching in the Mid-dle East was once largely limited to elderly scholars in white robes read-ing holy texts from behind a desk, emphasizing the afterlife over this life, and sometimes inciting violence against nonbelievers. But as TV has evolved from one or two heavily con-trolled state channels to hundreds of diverse, private satellite offerings, Masoud and perhaps a dozen other young men — plus a few women — have emerged as increasingly popular alternatives.

Masoud and others promote “a

sweet orthodoxy, which stresses the humane and compassionate” as an alternative to “unthinking rage,” said Abdallah Schleifer, a specialist in Islam and electronic media at the American University in Cairo.

As a “contemporary figure,” Masoud is fast becoming an influ-ential star among youth from “a middle-class full of yearning” who will eventually become decision-makers across the Middle East, Schleifer said. And as a product of American-founded schools in the region, Masoud is able to speak with authority about Western values in a way many others can’t. His most re-cent show, a 20-part series that aired this fall on Iqra, one of the region’s leading religious channels, attracted millions of viewers from Syria to Mo-rocco. Clips of the show appeared immediately on YouTube, and fans downloaded more than 1.5 million episodes onto their computers.

“We don’t need someone to tell us that if we don’t pray we will go to hell — we need someone to fol-low,” said Adham el-Kordy, 23, an Egyptian who is studying to be a gynecologist. “He talks about things that happen to me every day.”

The new Muslim televangelists are riding a satellite TV boom that began after the Persian Gulf War in 1991, when the region’s elites were shocked by the power of CNN. The Middle East now has at least 370 satellite channels, nearly triple the number three years ago, according to Arab Advisors Group, a Jordan-based research firm. Among chan-nels that offer news, movies and music videos are 27 dedicated to Islamic religious programming, up from five two years ago.

On the religious channels, some funded by governments and others by wealthy investors, voices such as Masoud’s still compete for attention with extremists’. It is too soon to fully gauge the long-term impact of the youthful preachers, but interviews with viewers as well as religion and media analysts made it clear they are a rising force.

“Governments have realized that the good old days of controlling what

people watch on TV are over,” said Jawad Abbassi, general manager of Arab Advisors Group. “This has also rattled the religious conservatives. They don’t like it that suddenly there is competition.”

In her home in northern Egypt, Leboudy teared up when talking about Masoud. “Without satellite, I never would have heard of Moez,” she said. “He is something I have been searching for my whole life.”

`i try to give them hope’On a recent Monday night in Al-

exandria, the ancient Mediterranean city on Egypt’s north coast, more than 1,500 people poured into a huge hall to hear Masoud speak.

The crowd divided by sex, as is customary in much of the Muslim world. Women sat on folding chairs behind men who sat close to the stage on large red carpets. A few women wore black veils covering everything but their eyes, but most wore brightly colored veils that cov-ered only their hair. Many wore tight designer jeans and carried expensive purses. The men were mostly clean-shaven and stylish, wearing jeans and Timberland and Nike shoes.

They were mostly in their late teens or 20s, university students or young professionals who had heard about the event on Masoud’s Web site or on his popular page on Fa-cebook.

Most of them had first seen Masoud on his recent series on Iqra, called “The Right Way.” The show was filmed in MTV style, with quick-cut camera shots showing Masoud on the streets of Cairo, Istanbul and London, and Jiddah and Medina in Saudi Arabia. Masoud interviewed young Muslims and non-Muslims on topics such as alcohol and mari-juana, veils for women, romance and terrorism. As he spoke in London, the bare legs of British women in miniskirts walking past him were blurred out to conform to Muslim standards of modesty.

As the lights came up in Alexan-dria, Masoud, tall and trim, wearing

Pro-Democracy candidate succeeds in Hong Kong electionBy MAUreeN FANWashingTon PosT

BEIJING — A pro-democracy candi-date has won a seat in Hong Kong’s legislature in a closely watched test of the former British colony’s desire for political reform.

Anson Chan, a former chief secretary for the government, cap-tured 54.6 percent of the ballots in Sunday’s election, while her closest opponent, Beijing-backed former security minister Regina Ip, received 42.7 percent, according to results in voting for the Legislative Council.

Chan’s victory breathed some life into Hong Kong’s ailing democ-racy movement and signaled that many members of the middle class in the bustling, capitalistic enclave are not satisfied with economic growth alone, experts said. But the race, described as a referendum on democracy, did not change the balance of power in the legislature, which elects only half its members and is dominated by pro-Beijing forces.

Chan is pushing for Hong Kong to be able to elect its own lawmakers by 2012, but Beijing has not said when reforms might occur. Ip, the losing candidate, has also said she supports democracy, but only when

authorities in Beijing permit it.“According to the percentages of

ballots each candidate got, we can say that Hong Kong people want po-litical reform,” said Joseph Cheng, a political science professor at the City University of Hong Kong who supports pro-democracy efforts.

“This election shows that Hong Kong people are concerned about checks and balances. They don’t want a one-party dictatorship to hap-pen in Hong Kong and they hope that there will be someone in the legislature to balance the power,” Cheng said.

“The striking factor is that Anson Chan won a lot of middle-class votes, which means that the middle-class voter is sending a message that they still support democracy, despite the political and economic changes,” Ma Ngok, a political analyst at Chinese University, said in an interview with government-run RTHK radio.

Experts aren’t optimistic that Chinese leaders will allow democ-racy in five years. Because pro-Beijing legislators already have a powerful election machine in place, pro-democracy legislators will be happy just to keep their current seats, Cheng said. “So this election is more like showing the position to the authorities.”

Study points to biological facet of anorexia nervosaBy deNiSe gelleNeLos angeLes Times

Prenatal exposure to female hor-mones increases the risk of anorexia nervosa according to new research Monday that bolsters the theory that the disorder has a biological basis in addition to a social and cultural one.

In an analysis of 4,478 pairs of opposite-sex twins, researchers found that males with a twin sister had the same chance of becoming anorexic as women in general, an in-dication that hormones circulating in their mother’s womb increased their susceptibility to the disorder.

The study, published in the Ar-chives of General Psychiatry, shed new light on the causes of the eating disorder, which is often linked to a cultural obsession with thinness and is 10 times more common in women than men.

“Any information that points to a biological origin is helpful, at least for future development of medication and other therapies,” said Thomas Weigel, a psychiatrist who treats eat-ing disorders at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass.

“If there is medical origin, that suggests a medical solution,” said Weigel, who was not connected to the study.

An often intractable disorder, an-orexia affects about 1 percent of fe-males in the United States and leads to death in 10 percent of cases.

People with anorexia are ob-sessed with body weight and diet to the point of starving themselves. Half the people with the disorder binge on food and then purge by vomiting or using laxatives or diuret-ics. The other half restrict the food they eat and excessively exercise .

Standard treatment for the disor-

der is behavioral therapy, and in se-vere cases patients are hospitalized to restore their weight. The relapse rate in the worst cases is high, and half are readmitted within a year.

The disorder has long been seen as a consequence of a culture that equates beauty with thinness, and people involved in activities that em-phasize weight or body image, such as modeling, ballet, gymnastics or figure skating, have a higher risk of becoming anorexic. Male jockeys and wrestlers who must stringently watch their weight also are at in-creased risk.

More recently, researchers have found evidence that a proclivity to anorexia might be genetic. A large study of female twins published in Archives of General Psychiatry last year found that the disorder was more commonly shared by identical twins. The study concluded that 60 percent of the risk of developing anorexia was linked to heredity and the remaining risk was related to social factors.

The latest study set out to explain why anorexia was more prevalent among women than men.

Researchers analyzed data on more 18,000 pairs of twins born in Sweden between 1935 and 1958. Among same-sex twins, the study found that the prevalence of an-orexia among females was 0.6 per-cent, which the researchers said was the same as the baseline rate they used for adult females in the general population. The research-ers found that females were about 12 times more likely than males to develop anorexia.

In opposite-sex twins, females had the same risk of developing an-orexia as females generally — but their brothers also had approximate-ly the same prevalence rate.

continued on page 9

THe BROwN DAIlY HeRAlD TueSDAY, DeCeMBeR 4, 2007

whole team.”Co-captain defender Stephen Saw-

yer ’09 felt a strong work ethic put the Bears over the top.

“It was the work we put in the last nine months since the end of last season,” Sawyer said. “We felt like we had something to prove. We lost so many people (from last year), nobody expected much of us. We wanted to prove people wrong.”

Whatever the reason for the team’s success, a motivated Bears squad achieved almost every goal it set back in March. The team’s lofty record, especially the undefeated conference mark and the school’s 19th Ivy League Championship, was Brown’s crowning achievements.

“Our season was definitely suc-cessful on a bunch of levels,” Britner said. “We had potential to go farther, but it was something special for sure to go 7-0-0 in Ivies.”

The team even achieved some off-field goals. Brown was awarded a National Soccer Coaches Association of America Academic Achievement Award, given to teams with at least a 3.0 collective GPA.

The one goal the Bears fell short of was putting together a successful postseason run. For the third sea-

son in a row, Bruno was sent home in the second round. Players said the loss to the Monarchs hurt even more because of the strong bond the team forged over the course of the season.

“Everybody is disappointed with the way it ended,” Noonan said. “It had an eerie feeling at the end.”

Just a few days after the loss, the coaching staff was already looking forward to next season. The team hopes to build on the positives from this season and make some adjust-ments so that next year the squad, will be able to achieve the one goal it missed out on this season.

“You try to keep what was good about this year,” Noonan said. “You also have to mix in some of the les-sons you learned Wednesday, which will serve the next group well going forward. Guys will use it as motiva-tion.”

“What we can take from this sea-son is knowing our own potential. Now that we have actually done it, we have a lot more confidence,” Sawyer said. “I don’t know yet what we want to do differently, but there will be things. We have to keep things fresh, but keep the same work ethic.”

Next season, the Bears will feel the loss of the four graduating seniors: Jon Behrendt ’08, Laurent Manuel

’08, First Team All-Ivy forward Kevin Davies ’08 and Britner.

“They are great players and great leaders. We will miss (their leader-ship) more than anything,” Sawyer said. “We have a good class coming in to fill the holes, but nothing can replace their leadership.”

Noonan admitted that the team will miss Davies, Britner and Man-uel, who all saw significant playing time, on the field, and noted that Behrendt’s contribution was just as important.

“I’m most proud of Jon Behrendt. For four years he played because he loved the game.”

Britner would like to continue playing. After his outstanding se-nior season, he is hoping to get an invitation to the Major League Soc-cer combine in early January, which could lead to his being selected in the MLS draft later this winter.

Meanwhile the returning Bears are already beginning preparations for next year. “There are always things you want to do better and want to change,” Noonan said.

There is potential for continued success next season with a strong returning nucleus, but nobody will soon forget the 2007 team. “Everyone felt like they didn’t want this year to end,” Noonan said.

Bittersweet season end for m. soccer

last long. As if the fabric of space-time itself had been ripped to shreds by the brief period of Canadian base-ball dominance, the foundation upon which the Jays had climbed their way to the top of MLB crumbled faster than Kim Campbell’s 133-day term as prime minister. The next season was marred by the infamous strike of 1994, sending the league into a two-year downward spiral of canceled and shortened seasons.

But all was not lost. In 1995, the Jays finished with a dismal 56-88 re-cord, 22 games behind the Yanks and a monstrous 30 games back of the division-winning Red Sox. Order was restored, and the following season was the first to see all 162 games played since the Jays had thrown the league — and perhaps the universe — out of balance, daring to dream of the impossible.

Unfortunately, Canadian ambition reared its ugly head again in 1997. After changing their uniforms — pre-sumably to forget all the trouble they had caused the league — the Blue Jays signed Red Sox ace Roger Cle-mens to a $25 million contract, threat-ening the establishment once again. But this time, tragedy was averted. Clemens’ rocket arm captured him the first AL Triple Crown for pitching in 50 years, but the Jays finished the season below .500.

Now, with the dollar surging to new heights and the biggest name in baseball on the market, the Jays could make a prodigious error. Bring-ing A-Rod north of the 49th parallel would spell the end of this most fruit-ful period of Yankee-Red Sox domi-nance, which, as we know, ends well for no one.

As happy, healthy, polite and able-to-drink-at-a-young-age as we are, we Canadians know our place — and it’s third in the AL East.

Firestone ’10: No A-rod for Jays

Deshaun Mars ’08 took first in the long jump to win the event for the second year in a row. Reginald Cole ’10 finished third in the same event and recorded a victory of his own when he won the triple-jump with a distance of 47 feet 4.5 inches. Jordan Maddocks ’11 took the high jump with a height of 6 feet 6 inches and Zach Jaffa ’08 won the pole vault.

Missing 60-meter Ivy League champion Paul Raymond ’08, Brown did not come away with any victories in the sprints but had several top-five finishers. In the hurdles, Matthew Jasmin ’09 won the 55-meter race with a time of 8:14. Last but not least, Eric Wood ’09 won the weight throw with a heave that traveled 59-01.00.

“I personally feel like I know I have a lot of work to do,” Jasmin said. “It’s always nice to place well for morale, but we’re trying to improve our times as much as we can.”

Both teams have ample time to prepare for their next meet, which will take place at URI on

Jan. 19. According to Lake, winter break will be a crucial training period. “We had a lot of personal bests — demonstrating that our fall training has gone well,” she wrote. “The goal now is to keep that going. The winter break will be critical for us, in that we do not lose fitness over the holidays.”

King said personal discipline will be key to the teams’ success after the break.

“The next month is crucial be-cause most of our training is on our own,” King said. “You have your own packets, and it’s all on you. Hopefully the people will either stay where they were to start the season in all events or improve.”

Lake is looking for improve-ment from both squads, which she acknowledged will be a difficult task. “We cannot afford to slack off during the holiday season,” she wrote. “The women’s team hopes to contend for the Ivy League Championship this winter and spring, but it won’t come easily. Our men want to improve on last year’s finish, which we will have to work very hard to do.”

Track and field starts season with a blast




TueSDAY, DeCeMBeR 4, 2007 THe BROwN DAIlY HeRAlD PAGe 9

corduroy pants and a maroon, open-necked shirt, descended stairs at the back of the stage to loud applause.

“Salaam aleikum,” he said, urging his audience to bow their heads for an opening prayer. For the next 90 minutes, Masoud worked the stage like a seasoned performer, his voice rising and then falling to a whisper, mixing Koranic verses with jokes and parables.

“We will be responsible to God on Judgment Day,” he said, arguing that violence against non-Muslims violates God’s will. “He will ask: Did you represent our religion correctly? If you feel happy that non-Muslims are being killed, this is wrong. They are our brothers.”

Many Muslim preachers say it is sinful for unmarried women and men to mingle without supervision. But Masoud told his young crowd that while sex before marriage was wrong, it was important for men and women to get to know one another.

“A lot of Muslims act as if we can’t enjoy this life, we can only enjoy the afterlife,” he said. “That is not right. We should enjoy life, enjoy music and art. This life is ours and we should enjoy it.” But, he added, “If you really truly love God and feel that all your pleasure comes from God, anything else will pale in comparison.”

redefining `Muslim’Masoud speaks like an adver-

tising executive because he is one; his preaching is only part time. His day job is producing and directing commercials. He has written some

musical jingles, including one for a Chinese restaurant called Wok and Roll, set to the American oldie “Rock Around the Clock.”

He grew up in Kuwait and attend-ed American high school there, later graduating from the elite American University in Cairo.

His easy fluency with English and American culture adds to criticism that Masoud and other new-gener-ation preachers, such as the well-known Amr Khaled, are pushing a sort of Westernized “Islam lite.” After his speech in Alexandria, an angry older woman in a black veil pushed her way to the front of the crowd. “Why don’t you talk more about punishment?” she said, urg-ing a more tough-love approach to preaching.

Masoud smiled at her and said, “Thanks for your advice.”

In an interview in his Cairo apart-ment, where he lives with his wife and young son, Masoud said he has memorized the entire Quran — he recites long passages with ease. He said he has spent the past six years in intensive study of Islam with re-nowned scholars, including Ali Go-maa, the grand mufti of Egypt.

As fundamental teachings, Masoud advocates adherence to prayer five times a day, peace toward all and ab-stinence from alcohol, sex outside of marriage and violence. Beyond those principles, he said, Islam is suffering from a “crisis of interpretation.”

“I’m sure Osama bin Laden knows a lot of the Quran,” he said. “But when a Muslim celebrates when the Twin Towers collapse, you have a big problem.”

Young Muslims tune into upbeat religious message


The Ethicist speaks on Adderall, plagiarism

www.browndailyherald.com

ing a very rare thing.”The second reason people care

so much about plagiarism is because “we’re petty, jealous people,” Cohen said.

He then suggested that perhaps “we say we do (care) but we very rarely actually destroy anyone for plagiarism.” Still, “for journalists this is a career killer,” he said. Pla-giarism in journalism gives “a real blow” to the relationship between reader and writer.

Despite its negative effects, plagiarism can benefit those who have not been accused, Cohen said, giving “professional vanity” to the innocent.

Nevertheless, specific types of plagiarism, such as a failure to cite sources in an academic context, are “not so fine.” Academic foot-notes, Cohen said, “are an aid to the reader,” and a failure to cite sources “undermines academic culture.”

“Context is everything” when distinguishing between plagiarism in the academic world, in fiction writing and in journalism, Cohen said. Though “we all draw on the work of other people,” each writer must “consider the reader’s expec-tations.” After his talk, Cohen took questions from the audience.

In answering how to treat nonfic-tion writing, he likened the genre to journalism and suggested that simi-lar standards should be upheld.

Another audience member asked about the ethics of political speech-writing. That genre of writing is ethi-cal, Cohen said, because “no one is deceived” — the audience knows politicians use speechwriters.

Students left the two-hour talk impressed by Cohen’s defense. “At first I was a little skeptical because we’ve always been taught to treat any kind of writing very delicately,” said Connie Zheng ’10. His argu-ments were “pretty compelling,” she said, and he was “well-spoken.”

Earlier in the day Cohen held a discussion with graduate students at the Faculty Club. He began his talk there by describing how he first landed the job of the Ethicist. “I do gather that the other candi-dates were more qualified than I,” Cohen said, but after he and the other three candidates answered the same three test questions, he was chosen for the job.

Now, almost a decade later, Cohen still reads all the letters he gets. “You get a glimpse of what people are thinking about,” he told The Herald.

Cohen works from home and mainly uses e-mail to receive letters

from the public, he told The Herald. Using e-mail allows the process to be more conversational, he said, and also allows people to say things they wouldn’t say otherwise. “They can’t see you so they can’t get any cues,” he said. “It’s so easy to hit ‘send.’ ”

When he first started as the Ethicist, Cohen wasn’t sure how long the project would last. “We’d underestimated how treacherous the readers could be,” he told The Herald.

Cohen spent almost a quarter of his time at the Faculty Club discuss-ing his recent response about the ethics of students using Adderall to study in college. Though taking Adderall when it is not prescribed is both illegal and potentially un-healthy, it is not unethical, Cohen said.

“I’m sorry about the plague that’s devouring your campus,” Cohen joked to the audience.

The point of college, Cohen said, is not to engage in competition but “to become an educated person.” Therefore, use of Adderall does not necessarily affect anyone besides the user. “You can’t be unethical all by yourself,” Cohen said.

— Additional reporting by Debbie Lehmann


s T a f f e d i T o r i a L

J E E H Y U N C H O I

Google footprintsThis space has frequently addressed students’ sense of privacy in an increasingly interconnected digital world. We’ve mused on admission officers poking at prospective Brunonians’ Facebook profiles, and we’ve contended with employers digging up photos of the drunken revelry of soon-to-be employees. As tech savvy as Brown students are, we’re often reminded that students sometimes aren’t aware of the true size of their Google footprints.

As a community newspaper in an era of new media, we’ve been forced to think critically about what we should do when sources — often fellow students — speak to The Herald on the record, only to regret it when they realize their remarks may not only be read by the Brown community but could long be available online with a Google search of their name.

While we’re sympathetic to our sources’ concerns, it would obviously be unethical to alter The Herald’s record on a case-by-case basis when the facts are correct and the words said on the record. Our articles form a historical record of the University and its environs, accessible both to readers who pore over past issues stored in the University archives at the John Hay Library and those who type a phrase into a Google search box.

To be sure, The Herald isn’t the only news organization tackling sources’ concern with their Google footprint. The New York Times’ public editor addressed the issue in an Aug. 27 column, quoting one editor who likened altering the historical record to “airbrushing Trotsky out of the Kremlin picture.”

These days, almost all correspondence or record is — or soon will be — publicly and easily accessible on the Web. With the click of a mouse, those juicy e-mails chronicling your spring break in Florida can be passed on to anyone, forwarded to a listserv and subsequently available on most search engines. What about mean-spirited text messages, your scathing critique of that study abroad program or responses on a discussion form? Even those could make it to Google, which has become our generation’s record of note. We’ve all come to love the Internet for research made pos-sible without ever having to step foot in the library, but we must accept as a consequence our own ability to be searched.

We’re certainly not advocating that students crawl into an Internet vacu-um. But Brunonians should be aware that — for better or for worse — they are leaving a trail of personality clues on Google. You were a member of the College Curriculum Council sophomore year? The group’s minutes show up on Google. You signed the online petition to keep the Brown Bookstore independent? That’s there too. Of course, there are some benefits to leaving an electronic trail. Guest columns written for top-notch student newspapers (like The Herald) surely must look good to potential employers, right?

So in this age, should sources avoid talking to a newspaper for fear of tarnishing their Google reputations? Obviously not — newspapers serve an important community need, and they rely on information provided by sources. But should individuals be mindful of what they say, knowing that it will eventually turn up in a Google search? Absolutely.

Senior Staff Writers Rachel Arndt, Michael Bechek, Irene Chen, Chaz Firestone, Isabel Gottlieb, Nandini Jayakrishna, Franklin kanin, kristina kelleher, Debbie lehmann, Scott lowenstein, Michael Skocpol, Nick werleStaff Writers Stefanie Angstadt, Amanda Bauer, Brianna Barzola, evan Boggs, Caitlin Browne, Sam Byker, Marisa Calleja, Zachary Chapman, Joy Chua, Patrick Corey, Catherine Goldberg, Olivia Hoffman, erika Jung, Chaz kelsh, Jessica kerry, Sophia lambertsen, Cameron lee, Sophia li, emmy liss, Max Mankin, Christian Martell, Taryn Martinez, Brian Mastroianni, George Miller, Anna Millman, evan Pelz, Sonia Saraiya, Andrea Savdie, Caroline Sedano, Marielle Segarra, Melissa Shube, Jenna Stark, Gaurie Tilak, Simon van Zuylen-wood, Matt Varley, Meha Verghese, Joanna wohlmuthSports Staff Writers Andrew Braca, whitney Clarke, Han Cui, evan kantor, Christina StubbeBusiness Staff Diogo Alves, emilie Aries, Beth Berger, Steven Butschi, Timothy Carey, Jilyn Chao, ellen DaSilva, Pete Drinan, Dana Feuchtbaum, Patrick Free, Sarah Glick, Alexander Hughes, Claire kiely, Soobin kim, katelyn koh, Darren kong, Christie liu, Philip Maynard, Ingrid Pangandoyon, Mariya Perelyubskaya, Viseth San, Paolo Servado, kaustubh Shah, Saira Shervani, Yelena Shteynberg, Jon Spector, Robert Stefani, lily Tran, Hari Tyagi, lindsay walls, Benjamin Xiongdesign Staff Brianna Barzola, Chaz kelsh,Ting lawrence, Philip Maynard, Alex unger, Aditya Voleti, wudan YanPhoto Staff Oona Curley, Alex DePaoli, Austin Freeman, emmy liss, Meara Sharma, Tai Ho Shin, Min wuCopy editors Ayelet Brinn, Rafael Chaiken, erin Cummings, katie Delaney, Jake Frank, Jennifer Grayson, Ted lamm, Max Mankin, Alex Mazerov, Ben Mercer, ezra Miller, Seth Motel, Alexander Rosenberg, emily Sanford, Sara Slama, Jenna Stark, laura Straub, Meha Verghese, elena weissman

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L e T T e r s

Injustice extends beyond false rape accusationsto the editor:

While we commend the Brown men’s lacrosse team for supporting the Innocence Project and raising awareness about the unjust nature of the criminal court system (“M. lax jogs to help innocent prisoners,” Nov. 28), the team failed to address the full picture of this injustice. The vast majority of people featured on the Innocence Project’s Web site were falsely convicted of rape and rape-related charges. Focusing on these cases paints a false picture of the way rape cases are treated in our jus-tice system. An estimated 2 to 3 percent of rape reports filed are found to be false. This statistic is no different from any other crime. Organizations like the Innocence Project focus on cases that are, statistically speaking, anomalies. This focus perpetuates the misconception that rape is often falsely reported and overshadows the true issue of under-reporting.

Reade Seligmann ’09 said his experience with the criminal justice system “opened my eyes” to the sys-tem’s “injustices.” Let’s talk about injustice. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, one in six American women and one in 33 American men are victims of sexual assault. Of these assaults, 61 percent are never reported to the police. Of reported rapes, 50.8 percent lead to an arrest. So about half the time that someone reports a sexual assault, no arrest is ever made. If an arrest is made, 80 percent of these cases are prosecuted, and 58 percent of those that are prosecuted lead to a felony conviction. Of these convicted felons, 69 percent spend any time at all in jail. That means that 31 percent of people convicted of rape never spend a day in jail. When you multiply all these statistics out (as

RAINN did), you’ll find that only 16 percent of rapists whose crimes are reported ever serve prison time. And if you take into account the number of rapes that go unreported, only 6 percent of rapists will ever spend a day behind bars. 94 percent of people who commit rape walk free. That is injustice.

It is a terrible tragedy for a person to be imprisoned for a crime they did not commit. And in our criminal justice system, it is very often people of color who face this terrible injustice. Over half of the 208 inmates exonerated by DNA evidence for crimes they did not commit are black. This is not because white people commit less crimes but because the criminal justice system, as Seligmann pointed out, is unjust. But it is most often unjustly biased in favor of the perpetrators of rape, not in favor of the victims. The chances of a false rape case leading to jail time, given the statistics above, is incredibly rare. Certainly it can happen, as the cases of mistaken eyewitness and DNA identification on the Innocence Project’s Web site attest. But why isn’t the men’s lacrosse team equally concerned with the injustice that gives 83.7 percent of reported rapists a get-out-of-jail-free card?

Next year, we invite the Brown men’s lacrosse team to run for an another compelling cause — the cause of ending sexual assault and making sure the real rapists end up in prison. We agree that the court system needs to be reformed. But it needs to be reformed to protect rape victims in addition to those who are falsely accused of such crimes.

emily Mellor ’10 and the Sexual Assault task Force

Nov. 29

eDiTorial & leTTersPAGe 10 THe BROwN DAIlY HeRAlD TueSDAY, DeCeMBeR 4, 2007

ting lawrence, Brianna Barzola, Steve delucia, Alex Unger, Designers

kim Arredondo, Catherine Cullen, Alexander rosenberg, Copy editors

Sara Molinaro, Nick Werle, Night editors

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The broWn daiLy heraLd

Christopher Bennettrahul keerthiAshley hess

Photo editorPhoto editor

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hillary dixlerMelanie duchtaryn Martinezrajiv JayadevanSonia kimMatt hillArthur Matuszewski

POST- MAGAZINe

Managing editorManaging editorManaging editor

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General Managerexecutive Managerexecutive Manager

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Steve deluciaCatherine Cullenroxanne Palmer

PRODuCTION

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editors-in-Chieferic Beck

Mary-Catherine lader

executive editorsStephen ColelliAllison kwongBen leubsdorf

Senior editorsJonathan SidhuAnne Wootton

In 1972, gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson went on the road with presidential candidate George McGovern. Thompson observed a young electorate that had abandoned their duty to vote, retreating to Haight-Ashbury and replacing responsible citizenship with mind-altering drugs. In “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail,” Thompson chan-neled the establishment’s take on tuning in and dropping out:

“The kids are turned off from politics, they say. Most of ’em don’t even want to hear about it. All they want to do these days is lie around on waterbeds and smoke that goddamn mar-rywanna ... yeah, and just between you and me, Fred, I think that’s probably all for the best.”

In just under a year, Americans will vote in what is arguably the most important presi-dential election of our lifetimes. In the coming months, the students of our generation will have the chance to prove that we are different. We are informed, we are determined, and we are pissed off.

The 2008 primaries are starting earlier than ever. The Iowa caucus will take place Jan. 3, the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 8. On Feb. 5,

22 states will hold primary elections.Feb. 5 is “Super Tuesday” for Democrats in

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Utah. By most accounts, the Democratic and Republican party candidates will be de-termined that night, launching the longest general election season in the history of our country.

Many students are rightly disillusioned

by the ways of Washington. Americans face a future that is altogether scary. We are stuck in a rash and costly war. Our standing in the international community has become shaky. Domestic issues that affect our everyday lives, from education and health care to civil rights and the environment, remain unaddressed by

our leaders. Our government is more secretive, divisive and gridlocked than ever before.

No wonder so many students have turned a deaf ear toward calls to action. No wonder so many remain largely ignorant of and apathetic to the challenges that we face as a nation, re-cusing themselves from the process with the excuse that they “aren’t into politics.”

You don’t have to be “into politics” to rec-ognize that our political system is flawed. You don’t have to be “into politics” to realize that our futures are at stake. You don’t have to be “into politics” to be informed, or to be active

and passionate about justice and equality.In 2008, we have a choice. We can take

our place as a powerful, progressive voting bloc. We can show up to the polls in record numbers in January and February and again in November. We can change the direction of our country.

The time to act is now. Register to vote immediately. The secret truth is that the per-centage of registered young people who vote is comprable to that of registered voters as a whole — but we’re less likely to be registered. If you can’t return to your home state to vote, get an absentee ballot. Different states have different requirements and deadlines for reg-istration and requesting one, making it all the more necessary to act quickly to ensure that you are not disenfranchised.

As the board of Brown Students for Barack Obama, we are committed to the change that a President Obama would represent and enact. We have spent this semester organizing on campus and in Providence, making calls to Iowa voters, and traveling up to New Hamp-shire to canvass in the cold. We believe that a vote for Barack Obama is a vote to change the direction of our country.

But regardless of who might get your vote, do not abandon the suffrage earned for you by the hard-fought battles of prior generations. The beauty of democracy is its capacity for disagreement, dialogue and cooperation. Our votes, and our voices, are only meaningless if we decline our right to use them. We have to vote to be heard.

The bottom line? Register and vote. Vote for hope. Vote for action. Vote for change.

Ariel werner ‘09, Ben Mishkin ‘08, Jenna Silver ‘10, Adam Axler ‘08, Nicholas Greene ‘10, em-ily Sorg ‘10 and Max Chaiken ‘09 know a lot

about Nashua.

I was greatly perturbed to see the recent article in The Herald that addressed allegations by Qadira Abdul-Ali ’06, who claimed “that she was asked inappropriate questions about her Muslim faith when interviewing for admission at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, including whether she had been ‘radicalized’ ” (“Religious insensitivity greets alum in med school inter-view,” Nov. 28). Her treatment was deplorable for its ignorance of the greatness of Muslim traditions and culture, if not also for its sheer inappropriateness.

To be sure, I am not a Muslim. And while my Christian faith has the same ultimate roots as Islam — the Father of Faith, Abraham — I do take issue with many Muslim doctrines, with the Muslim understanding of how hu-manity derives religious epistemology, and, of course, with the saddening abuse of Islam at the hands of Islamic fascists. Nevertheless, I also have sharp, occasionally acerbic, disagree-ments with Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, Buddhism and the like. Yet I have an unwaver-ing belief in the essential goodness, although not necessarily the essential truthfulness, of most every religion in this world.

It is ruefully the case that disrespect for the beauty of Islam has become a bit of a cot-tage industry in Western society, particularly in the right-wing circles where I find myself more often than not. Many right-wingers will claim that Islam is a religion of violence — a religion for the barbaric; a religion for the crude and lewd.

I have serious qualms with such a view of Islam. For one, how can such persons possess the gall to condemn an entire religion that has been in existence for 1,400 years? Are those

persons so sagacious as to have “absolute” knowledge that has eluded billions of people for centuries? Or, more probably, are they merely ignorant, artificial persons who have a distorted conception of the Western tradition, of culture in general and of Islam’s place in relation to both?

Islam, as well as its holy book, the Quran, is majestic in both substance and form. Its teachings are profound and far-reaching — one need not be a Muslim in order to reap the benefits of a spiritual encounter with the truths that Islam promulgates in its own

unique traditions. Its ramifications for how one is to conduct one’s life are likewise mesmer-izing — discipline, humility and modesty, at least for this Christian, are desirable simply for their own sake.

Islam has also led to some of the greatest cultural achievements humanity has yet to see. The mosque is a magnificent form of architecture, to be admired and respected. The Quran, when viewed solely in terms of its poetic and literary forms, is capable of peering into the deepest corners of the hu-man soul, and disallows one from hiding from one’s own being. Every person, Muslim and

non-Muslim, could benefit remarkably from more encounters with the Quran in particular and Muslim traditions in general.

Muslim civilizations, like the Christian civilizations that have existed predominately in Europe and European offshoots, have also been a positively good thing for humanity. They merit the respect of any decent person, and those in the West should not fear a partial emulation of their greatness.

We in the West seem to have forgotten that, while the West’s greatest civilization, England, was embroiled in bloody conflict

during the Norman invasion and lacking in cultural greatness, Muslim civilizations were rapidly progressing in a Golden Age of unity, trade, philosophy, jurisprudence and the ratio-nalization of government. My Gaelic Christian ancestors were living in huts and still adhering to superstition while their contemporaries — African, Arabic and Persian Muslims — were building palaces and rejecting alchemy in favor of chemistry.

Let it be granted, however, that the West has clearly accomplished great things. When William the Conqueror commenced the Nor-man Invasion against the Anglo-Saxons in

1066, he created the conditions under which the great Western tradition of consciousness of natural rights and natural liberties, derived from the natural order of things as ordained by the Creator, became manifest. Those blessed to live in the outgrowth of the English tradi-tion, the United States — a nation that, while it has committed appalling evils which we should and must recognize, has come the closest that humanity ever will be able, to the realization of a harmonious existence of law and liberty — have inherited this consciousness.

Sensing the truth that both English-speak-ing and non-English-speaking people have accomplished great feats and deserve the respect of all people, more than 200 years ago, the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke, a British Mem-ber of Parliament, delivered his “Speech on (the Rt. Hon. Charles) Fox’s East India Bill.” Criticizing those on his right who belittled Indian culture and sought to launch an impe-rialistic conquest in the region, he insisted, “This multitude of men does not consist of an abject and barbarous populace; much less of gangs of savages ... but a people for ages civilized and cultivated; cultivated by all the arts of polished life, whilst we were yet in the woods. ... There is to be found … a multitude of cities, not exceeded in population and trade by those of the first class in Europe.”

Would that those on the modern right had Burke’s courage! Would that they chose truth and humility over self-aggrandizement and jingoism! What a better, richer and more har-monious world it would be if only concurrent respect for one’s own longstanding cultural traditions, and the longstanding cultural tra-ditions of others, could be practiced by more people. Surely, we only stand to benefit from the wisdom of other traditions, and that in-cludes the wisdom of Islam.

Sean Quigley ’10 is an Old whig who is trying to negotiate his way between sedition and

chauvinism.

Islam and its right-wing detractors

Students are a vital primary voting bloc

You don’t have to be ‘into politics’

to be informed or to be active and

passionate about justice and equality.

SeAN QuIGleYoPinions coLumnisT

opinionsTueSDAY, DeCeMBeR 4, 2007 THe BROwN DAIlY HeRAlD PAGe 11

It is ruefully the case that

disrespect for the beauty of Islam

has become a bit of a cottage

industry in western society.

BY ADAM AXleR, MAX CHAIkeN, NICHOlAS GReeNe, BeN MISHkIN, JeNNA SIlVeR, eMIlY SORG, ARIel weRNeR

guesT coLumnisTs

sporTs TuesDayPAGe 12 THe BROwN DAIlY HeRAlD TueSDAY, DeCeMBeR 4, 2007

No Way-RodIt’s a good time to be Canadian. As the loonie continues to outperform the greenback in the currency mar-kets, we Canucks have begun to find

ourselves in excit-ing positions that bring new, amusing economic opportu-nities.

After years of ridicule for our colorful and oddly-named currency, it is our turn to laugh

now that a duck is worth more than America’s first president, whose pa-per image looks to Canadian eyes more like an alternative energy source than legal tender. And now that we’re raking in the kindling af-ter saving thousands on our Brown tuition bills, the Canadian Dream of running a maple syrup factory while eating round pieces of bacon and wearing a toque (pronounced “touke” and Canada-speak for those stretchy winter hats that keep your ears warm) is finally within reach.

But despite our new-found finan-cial capacities, there’s one thing you won’t see Canadians doing anytime soon — slapping our flag on the shirt of the best player in baseball, Alex Rodriguez.

It’s not that the Blue Jays are aller-gic to home runs, it’s not — as Herald Sports Columnist Tom Trudeau ’09 argued last week (“Building from within key in today’s MLB,” Nov. 27) — that pricey, big name players are the wrong way to go and it’s cer-tainly not that we’re lacking the funds (remember that duck business). It’s not even that the soon-to-be former Yankee is now a former-soon-to-be former Yankee after agreeing to a “basic framework” to stay in pin-stripes. It’s about a little thing we Canadians call respect.

Baseball, somewhere between curling and competitive lumberjack-ing on the Canadian sports radar, is not our thing. Sure, we succeed when we put our minds to it — since 2003, Canadian-born players have won a quarter of NL Cy Young, AL MVP and NL Rookie of the Year awards that Americans have won despite hav-ing 1/10th of their population — but let’s face it, we play hockey, you play baseball.

And that is why we don’t want to get in the way of one of the great-est sports rivalries around, which happens to be between the Toronto Blue Jays’ own division-mates from New York and Boston. The rivalry has produced enough historical mile-stones and nail-biting finishes that we think it’s worth keeping, and our Canadian manners simply forbid us from tampering with something that works so well.

But this is not to say that we haven’t learned from experience. Let’s travel back in time for a moment to the fall of 1993. The leaves are turning, the air is crisp and the Jays have just defeated the Philadelphia Phillies in six games, successfully defending the World Championship they had earned a year before against the Atlanta Braves. The season was Patriot-esque: four Jays started the All-Star game and they sent three more as reserves. John Olerud, Paul Molitor and Roberto Alomar finished 1-2-3 for the AL batting crown and Joe Carter hit the only come-from-behind, World-Series-winning, walk-off home run in Major League history.

The celebration, however, did not

M. soccer stands strong despite sour finishBy JASON hArriSassisTanT sPorTs ediTor

Though the men’s soccer team was bounced by Old Dominion University in the second round of the NCAA tournament last Wednes-day, the Bears’ success this season went beyond what happened on the field. Brown’s 15-1-1 regular season record and 7-0 Ivy League record were two major accomplishments that reflected the team’s strong bond.

“This was one of the most enjoy-able teams I’ve had at Brown,” said Head Coach Mike Noonan, who is in his 13th season with Brown and picked up his 200th win during the regular season.

It is hard to point to exactly

what made this team so special. Each team member had a different take on what Bruno did behind the scenes that enabled it to excel on the pitch.

“They were selfless. Players weren’t concerned with themselves first. That’s what made it so spe-cial,” Noonan said.

Co-captain and Ivy League Play-er of the Year Matt Britner ’07.5 felt confidence held the squad to-gether.

“It was an actual belief (in our-selves),” Britner said. “We didn’t know what to expect. We set the tone the first game. After (beating Santa Clara University, 2-1), confi-dence grew for all the guys, for the

Track and field kicks off season with successBy Peter CiPPArONe sPorTs ediTor

The men’s and women’s track and field teams don’t have many chances to perform at home. Over the past five years, the indoor sea-son-opening Alden Invitational has presented the team’s only chance to shine in the Olney-Margolies Athletic Center.

This Saturday, the Bears took advantage of their rare opportu-nity to host a meet, as seven mem-bers of the men’s team and three members of the women’s team took home first-place finishes. The meet featured competitors from the University of Connecti-cut, University of Rhode Island, Providence College, the College of the Holy Cross and St. Francis University and saw a number of standout performances from the home squad.

“It is always nice to compete at home,” wrote Director of Track and Field Craig Lake in an e-mail to The Herald. “A ton of parents and alumni came to watch and support the team. It is a perfect place to have a low key meet to start the season.”

On the women’s side, Thelma Breezeatl ’10 captured first in the 55-meter dash, returning to the form that made her the Ivy League Champion in the 60-meter dash last year. She finished in 7.07 sec-onds, just .01 seconds faster than the second-place finisher.

Perhaps just as noteworthy was the performance of women’s team co-captain Akilah King ’08 in

the same race. King finished third with a time of 7.21 in her first-ever race at that distance.

“I’ve never run the 55 before,” King said. “I usually run longer distances since it usually takes me longer to get going because of my height. But they put me in there kind of as a warm-up.”

With the strong performance, King qualified for the Eastern Col-lege Athletic Conference Champi-onships on March 8-9. In addition, her time placed her in the top-10 55-meter times in Brown history, according to King. King rounded out a busy day with a third-place finish in the 200 m sprint and sec-ond in the triple jump.

The meet also saw stellar de-buts from a number of the team’s freshmen. First-years turned in two of the team’s three first-place finishes, as Samantha Adelberg ’11 won the 1,000 m race and Natasha Smith ’11 won the high jump with a leap of 5 feet 6 inches.

“It’s nerve-wracking for fresh-men because they don’t know what to expect,” King said. “But all our freshmen did really well.”

Brown had multiple top-five finishers in four events, including the shot-put, pole vault and long jump, in addition to the 55-meter dash. The pole vault squad was especially impressive, as Kristin Olds ’09 and co-captain Tiffany Chang ’08 tied for second and Keely Marsh ’08 finished fourth.

On the men’s side, the Bears dominated all four jump events.

M. icers strike first but Huskies manage to hold onBy BeNJy ASherassisTanT sPorTs ediTor

The men’s hockey team squandered a two-goal lead at No. 12 Northeast-ern University on Friday night and lost 4-3, to drop the team’s record to 1-5-3.

In the opening period, Brown capitalized on four Northeastern penalties, building a 2-0 lead off of a pair of power play goals. The first goal came on a four-on-three advantage with 8:46 left in the pe-riod, when Chris Poli ’08 sent a shot to the left post. The Northeastern goaltender deflected the shot, but captain Sean Hurley ’08 was quick to gather the rebound, and with the goalie still on the left post, Hurley fired a shot to the upper right cor-ner to give the Bears a 1-0 lead.

Bruno struck again with 31 sec-onds remaining in the first period and 19 seconds left on a power play. This time it was Poli who scored for the Bears, when he got his stick on a shot from Hurley and redirected it past the goalie to give Brown a 2-0 cushion at the end of the open-ing frame.

In the second period, Northeast-ern’s Steve Silva scored two goals just over five minutes apart to tie

the game. His first goal came off a face-off win for the Huskies, when he tipped a teammate’s shot past goaltender Mark Sibbald ’09 to cut

the lead to 2-1. In the middle of the period, the Bears killed a Northeast-ern power play, but just 23 seconds later, Silva struck again, on another

redirection, to tie the game at 2-2 with 7:10 left to play in the second period.

Later in the period, Brown had a power play opportunity of its own but failed to muster even a shot on goal during the two-minute man ad-vantage, and the two teams headed into the final period with the score deadlocked at 2-2.

“In the second period, the things that we weren’t doing well enough in the first period came back to haunt us,” said Head Coach Roger Grillo. “We weren’t battling hard enough for the puck, and we weren’t skating well enough.”

Only 2:02 into the third period the Huskies took the lead, when Northeastern’s Jimmy Russo beat his defender and, despite a save from Sibbald, got his own rebound and fired his second shot into the net to give his team a 3-2 lead.

But Northeastern gave Brown another power play opportunity later in the period, and the Bears attacked the shorthanded Huskies to get the equalizer. Dave Robertson ’08 intercepted a clearing attempt from a Northeastern defenseman and made a pass to Sean Muncy ’09 on his right, who skated to the

Chaz FirestoneCrazy Canuck

Ashley Hess / Herald File Photo

Chris Poli ’08 scored to give the men’s hockey team a 2-0 advantage over No. 12 Northeastern on Friday, but the Bears lost the game, 4-3.

Ashley Hess / Herald File Photo

with the men’s soccer team’s successful season completed, Matt Britner ’07.5 plans to pursue a professional soccer career.

continued on page 6

continued on page 8continued on page 8

continued on page 8

MONDAY, DeC. 3M. BASketBAll: Brown 86,

Quinnipiac 79

TueSDAY, DeC. 4M. hOCkey: at Providence

S C O R e B O A R D

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

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