The Sports Issue (04.23.09)

nopqrstuv

bdgh- bd

=jklm

04.23.09 vol. xl, no. 22

2 [email protected] 11.02.06 The Harvard Independent

The Indy gets some fresh air.

Cover art by PATRICIA FLORESCU

11.09.06

Forum

Sports

News-in-Brief

I R an IMer“Natinal” PastimeFIFA Fiefdom

Pritzker ProdigyThe Meowel

The Many Forms of Fantasy

Informal ComplaintsPrefrosh: Don't Panic

3

456-7

8

9

As Harvard College's weekly undergraduate newsmagazine, the Harvard Independent provides in-depth, critical coverage of issues and events of interest to the Harvard College community. The Independent has no political affiliation, instead offering diverse commentary on news, arts, sports, and student life.

For publication information and general inquiries, contact President Diana Suen ([email protected]). Letters to the Editor and comments regarding the content of the publication should be addressed to Editor-in-Chief Sam Jack ([email protected]).

Yearly mail subscriptions are available for $30, and semester-long subscriptions are available for $15. To purchase a subscription, email [email protected].

The Harvard Independent is published weekly during the academic year, except during vacations, by The Harvard Independent, Inc., P.O. Box 382204, Cambridge, MA 02238-2204. Copyright © 2008 by The Harvard Independent. All rights reserved.

04.23.09

News Editor Forum Editor Arts Editor Sports Editor Design Editor Graphics Editor

Associate Business Manager Associate Graphics Editor

President Diana Suen ‘11

Editor-in-ChiefSam Jack ‘11

PublisherBrian Shen ’11

independentTHE HARVARD

Technology DirectorSanjay Gandhi ’10

Production ManagerFaith Zhang ‘11

Susan Zhu ‘11Riva Riley ‘12

Pelin Kivrak ‘11 Hao Meng ‘11

Patricia Florescu ‘11Candice Smith ‘11

Jenn Chang ‘11Sonia Coman ‘11

Staff Writers Peter Bacon ‘11 Rachael Becker '11

Andrew Coffman ‘12 Caroline Corbitt ‘09 Truc Doan ‘10 Ray Duer ‘11 Pippa Eccles ‘09 Jessica Estep ‘09

Nicholas Krasney ‘09 Markus Kolic ‘09 Allegra Richards ‘09 Andrew Rist ‘09 Jim Shirey ‘11 Alice Speri ‘09

John Beatty '11 Levi Dudte '11 Steven Rizoli '11

Graphics, Photography, and Design Staff Ben Huang ‘09 Edward Chen '09 Sonia Coman '11 Caitie Kakigi ‘09 Eva Liou ‘11 Caitlin Marquis ‘10

Lidiya Petrova ‘11 Sally Rinehart ‘09 Kristina Yee ‘10

Arts

News

For exclusive online content, visit www.harvardindependent.com

[email protected] 3The Harvard Independent 04.23.09

indynews-in-brief

Short & SweetNews that you could conceivably use.

This week: how not to die, how not to judge, how not to secede.

Don’t have friends? Get some.

Multiple studies have found that having friends or a social network can help you live longer, whether it’s increasing the survival rate of breast cancer victims or helping maintain brain health with age. 3,000 nurses with breast cancer were followed for one of the studies, and those without close friends were four times as likely to die from breast cancer as women with 10 or more friends.

Proximity of the friends did not matter, nor did having a spouse. Just having friends increased survival rates. Similarly for men, a six-year study found that only smoking was as significant a risk factor for heart

attacks and coronary heart disease as lack of social support. Friendship has deep psychological effects on people, perhaps due to its role in decreasing stress levels.

Researchers at the University of Virginia took 34 students to the base of a steep hill and asked them to estimate how steep it was. Those who stood with friends estimated that the hill was less steep than those who stood alone. The longer the friends had known each other, the less steep the hill became in their estimates. The studies have not specified what exactly counts as a

friend. (Source: NYTimes.com)

At the recent Summit of the Americas, President Obama shook the hand of Hugo Chavez, the President (dictator?) of Venezuela and even accepted a book as a gift (the book is titled Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent and blames foreign countries, like the United States, for exploiting Latin America). Republicans, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, have criticized the move as weak and dangerous to the security of the nation. Chavez has on occasion referred to former President George W. Bush as the devil and at other times has expressed anti-American sentiments.

However, other talking heads have found the gesture to be a welcome break from the past eight years. Chavez’s popularity at home is partly due to his anti-Americane status, so being civil to him actually takes away some of the leverage he has with the Venezuelan people and displays Obama’s self-confidence.

Venezuela doesn't have a lot of leverage with the US. It has oil, but as evidenced by the giant CITGO sign by Fenway, that’s been coming along just fine. Having better relations with

Venezuela certainly wouldn’t damage US economic ties with the country, and

Astronomers have noticed something rather chilling – the Sun has been relatively inactive this year. There are currently no sunspots and very few solar flares, rendering the Sun the

quietest it’s been in a long time. The Sun regularly goes through 11-year cycles of activity, during the peak of which it spews flames and gases the size

of planets. It then undergoes a calmer period. Last year was supposed to be a year of activity for the Sun, emerging from its most recent quiet spell. While

could only promote better political ties with Latin America. What better way to make up for centuries of exploitation?

Feeling cold? It’s not just you – so is the Sun.

some astronomers think that the Sun will soon resume its normal level of activity, others are holding out hope for a “mini ice age.”

In the 17th century, such a quiet period did indeed lead to a mini ice age, and some hope that such a period could help negate the effects of global warming. Other experts, however, are skeptical that a mini ice age can happen, much less that it would be possible to cancel out the effects of greenhouse gases on global warming. Since 1985, the Sun has had decreased activity, but global temperatures have risen. Still, the Sun’s lapse into inactivity has created a new buzz for astronomers.

First a fist-bump, now a handshake?

Middle-aged contestant Susan Boyle blew away the crowds in a recently performance of "Britain's Got Talent", a show very similar to American Idol. When the 47-year-old trained singer walked onto the stage there was audible catcalling and derisive whistling, and different camera angles showed many adolescent females sneering at the prospective singer as she answered the judge's questions. When Ms. Boyle began singing, expressions of visible disbelief and astonishment jumped onto the judge's faces. Her rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables stunned viewers who thought that only young, peppy women were capable of singing well.

Physical attractiveness and vocal talent not at all

related

"If Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that?" Those were Governor Rick Perry's words at an anti-tax "tea party" protest April 15. The context made it obvious that Perry was holding out the possibility of Texas secession.

A popular myth says that the treaty of annexation that resulted in Texas's entry into the union gave them a special right to secede; this actually isn't the case. The treaty did give Texas to divide into up to five states, but Texas didn't

bite at the time, and dividing now would require the approval of Congress.

Perry's recent discussion of secession doesn't seem to gibe with his 2002 statement about the Pledge of Allegiance (which contains the word "indivisible"): "The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite us as Americans and reaffirms what our

nation stands for. Texas schoolchildren

Governor Floats Possibility of Texas

Secession

and all Texans should continue to recite the Pledge with pride and honor."

Texas tried to secede once before in the middle of the 19th century during the Civil War; but lost.

If you were thoroughly impressed HUDS’ green ef forts for Earth Day yesterday, you were vastly underestimating the world’s green capabilities.

T h e W a r w i c k I n n o v a t i v e Manufacturing Research Centre has just developed a new racing car made from sustainable and renewable materials. Named the WorldFirstF3 racecar (putting the world first, get it?), this

car is powered by byproducts from chocolate-making and is made from vegetables. Here’s the breakdown by parts:

Steering wheel – Derived from carrots and other root vegetables

Seat – Flax fiber shell, soy bean oil

foam and recycled polyester fabricWing mirrors and Front Wing End

Plate – Flax fiber shell over a potato

starch coreEngine cover and Damper hatch –

Recycled carbon fiber

Lubricants – Made with a plant oil base

Radiators – Coated with a catalyst that converts ozone to oxygen

Brakes – Non-carbon discs; the team is working on developing pads made from cashew nut shell

And if that weren’t ridiculous enough, it reaches speeds of 145mph all while cleaning the air! Now that’s green.

Chocolate-Powered Racing Car


indy sports

SUSAN ZHU/Independent SUSAN ZHU/Independent

LET ME BEGIN BY SAYING THAT I AM not from Winthrop House, and so this article will not be an

arrogant meditation on how awesome I am at IM sports. That said, the intramurals program at Harvard is pretty cool, though unfortunately lacking in participants (unless you’re Winthrop, in which case, shut up).

Freshman year, I played one sport – basketball. It was fun to play and especially to win. I got some of my entryway-mates involved and we bonded through that experience. Our team went on to win the championship, helping Canaday on its way to its first ever Yard Bucket.

I figured this year would be pretty similar. I would contribute to my House by playing basketball. I’d stay a one-sport girl.

But no. I made the happy mistake of agreeing to be a sophomore IM rep after the first HoCo meeting of the year. The other sophomore rep soon dropped off the face of the earth (cough a Crimsonite cough), but I stayed around and before I knew it, I was offering my services to several sports I had either never played before or hadn’t touched since middle school.

I found myself on a soccer field,

By SUSAN ZHUIM sports are pretty cool.

There’s No “I” in “Intramural”

chasing after Dudley forwards who yelled to each other in Romance languages, on a volleyball court attempting to hit balls OVER the net without breaking any fingers, in the Murr center being taught how to play squash by my opponent and then getting my ass kicked by said opponent, captaining a softball team in the Stadium with my softball skills limited to watching the Phillies on TV over the summer, getting stabbed three times in quick succession in the fencing tournament by someone who had obviously fenced before, unlike me, who was there because fencing “looked cool.” I would have had the opportunity to embarrass myself playing frisbee too, had it not been a single elimination tournament in the spring. And crew sounds awesome, but my biological clock refuses to acknowledge any time before 10am as waking hours.

Believe it or not, I’ve enjoyed every moment of playing IMs. The funny thing is that I can’t remember the last time my team actually won a game, and not through the other team forfeiting. It was probably one of the basketball games, and that was last season. So what’s so awesome about playing IMs even

when every game seems to end in a heart-breaking loss?

It’s partly the experience of trying something new, partly knowing that you’re contributing to something greater than yourself (there’s no I in team, after all). With sports ranging from hockey and flag football to a swim meet and tennis, the Intramurals program has something to offer for everyone. Even if you feel like the most uncoordinated person in the world, you can still participate in the bi-annual River Run (or, if you’re like me, the River Walk). Most Houses love participation of any kind, so even if you’ve never played a sport before, you can learn to play from someone who (hopefully) knows what they’re doing. We only have four years in college, and who knows when the next time you can learn to row crew will be? In any case, you’ll help save your House from forfeit, maintaining House dignity for yet another day.

Though basketbal l remains my one true sport, my favorite intramurals memory is playing a bunch of big Pfoho guys in softball under the lights of Harvard Stadium in a downpour. It was my first-ever softball game, and I played catcher because that seemed to require

the least softball knowledge and/or skill. The first time I got on base was exciting. The first time I got on base because I had an actual hit was exhilarating.

Ultimately, the best part of playing intramurals has been meeting new people. Sometimes the interaction will be limited to the field or the court, with a casual wave or hi in the dining hall – but that’s still better than being total awkward strangers at the salad bar when you both reach for the same dressing. Sometimes you can actually become friends with the people you meet through IMs, and that’s pretty neat.

There are still a few events left in the spring IM season. A swim meet and potential kickball tournament await, as well as most of the tennis tournament, some volleyball, soccer, softball, and frisbee games. So go out, support your House, show your spirit, learn a few new tricks, and make some new friends. Who knows? Maybe you’ll even find your next significant other, asking you at a HoCo meeting to be the next IM rep.

Susan Zhu ‘11 (szhu@fas ) i s

looking forward to the water polo

tournament.


indysports

AL M O S T T H R E E W E E K S I N T O its season, Major League Baseball’s two best teams

hail, respectively from the American League East and the National League East. Surprise surprise. There’s no doubt in my mind – and no doubt in the minds of most – that baseball’s Eastern divisions are its strongest, so it makes sense that teams from those divisions would already be distancing themselves from the competition.

What doesn’t make sense is exactly which teams are doing the distancing. You won’t find the 2008 Word Series Champion Philadelphia Phillies at the top of the NL East: so far, they’re positively middling. Nor will you see their opponents in that Series, the Tampa Bay Rays, leading the AL East in anything except losses. The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, the Atlanta Braves and New York Mets – all of last year’s contenders, all the teams thought to have a chance this year, are someplace other than at the top.

The AL East standings, actually, look rather more like they might have near the end of a given season three or four years ago than at the end of last year’s: Boston and New York near the top, Baltimore hovering around .500, Tampa Bay in the cellar. Wait a second, you say – where’s Toronto? Oh, right. Leading the division. With the second-best record in baseball.

So how are the Jays doing it? For starters, they’ve scored more runs (99 through Wednesday) than any other team in the bigs. Not bad for a team being led in average, RBI and home runs – and in almost every other offensive category – by their second baseman. Second base is not exactly where one usually looks first for run production; it’s not one of the two positions (catcher and shortstop) where defense is actually more important than offense, but it’s probably next on the list. Just don’t

tell that to Aaron Hill, who is playing absolutely out of his mind.

But runs aren’t everything. The third-highest scoring team in the AL, the Cleveland Indians, also has the league’s worst record. So for actual starters, having Roy Oswalt – and a superbly effective Roy Oswalt at that – helps tremendously: the Jays won all of his first three starts.

Even more impressive and even more wacky, perhaps, is the best team in baseball so far this year: the Florida Marlins. That’s right folks. Florida’s young, powerful offense (they’re third in the league in runs and tied for third in home runs, behind St. Louis and the Colorado Rockies, who play, after all, on top of a mountain), and their young, solid pitching (also third in the league and first in the division, in ERA) have earned them a higher winning percentage than any other team in the sport.

The Marlins, of course, might just be due. The ballclub won its first World Series in 1997, just its fifth season of existence. Six years later, in 2003, the Fish did it again. Six years after that, here we are in 2009. Those two championship years were

the only two in which Florida has ever made the playoffs; otherwise, they’ve been non-factors. Another playoff appearance, or even another Series, after another six years would be beyond strange. But it might also be proof of something I’ve suspected for a long time: the Baseball Gods do exist. And they’re out of their minds.

From a somewhat less metaphysical standpoint, the Marlins also might have had a little outside help: they’ve notched more than half (6 of 11) of their total season wins and scored more than half (45 of 83) of their total season runs against baseball’s worst team, the Washington Nationals. The lowly Nats are so out of sorts that some of their players donned jerseys with the team name misspelled for a game last week. The “Natinals” episode was apparently an honest mistake, but it’s endemic of the confusion and impotence that has characterized their season so far. Maybe all those runs – and a few of those wins, including three in which the Washington bullpen blew late-inning leads – were a little easier to come by for Florida than some others.

Toronto might be getting a hand as well, albeit a little less directly. C.C. Sabathia, savior of the Yankees’ beleaguered rotation, has started with a fizzle in his new city, going a mediocre 1-1 with a 4.81 ERA. The stars of the Red Sox are beginning to show their age, and the team has already lost two shortstops (Julio Lugo and Jed Lowrie) and one very important pitcher (Daisuke Matsuzaka) to injury. Last year’s American League Champions, the Rays, have been inconsistent on the mound and at the plate, losing a bevy of close games. The Jays are playing well, but it doesn’t hurt that everyone else is playing poorly.

There is, of course, no reason to expect that things will go on this way for much longer. Baseball players have a habit of regressing to long-term means, and as they go, so go their teams. Hill, for one, is hitting about eighty points above his four-year career average. We’ll see if he and the rest of Toronto’s freakishly productive lineup can keep it up. Maybe they can, but the odds are they can’t. The Marlins, for their part, just endured a three-game sweep at the hands (and the bats) of the Pittsburgh Pirates, scoring just six runs in the series and giving up eighteen. If their pitching proves inconsistent, as it might, even their reliably potent offense won’t be enough to keep them in contention, much less at the top of their division.

So don’t worry too much, you fans of perennial winners. This column, like this first few weeks of the season, probably won’t mean anything in the long run. Give it about 145 more games, and the baseball world will surely have righted itself, at least in its toughest divisions. I almost guarantee it. Almost.

Jim Shirey ‘11 (shirey.jim@gmail) always dreamed of playing for the

“Natinals.”

Topsy-Turvy in the MLB EastThe usual suspects aren’t the ones leading the pack in the AL and

NL East—for the moment.By JIM SHIREY

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons


indy sports

THE FÉDÉRATION INTERNATIONALE de Football Association (FIFA, for short, the global governing

body of the sport of soccer) has more member nations than the UN but when it comes time to make a decision only one man’s vote counts. That man is Joseph Blatter (a seventy-three year old Swissman universally known as Sepp), the President of FIFA. It is a position he has held since 1998 and does not seem likely to relinquish any time soon. Most of his decisions as President are aimed at consolidating his political power over the vast FIFA bureaucracy. Blatter (if the majority of the European press is to be believed) maintains his position in two ways. First, he is accused of pandering to the smaller members of FIFA (who see themselves as unfairly dominated by the traditional soccer power-houses like Argentina, Brazil, England, Italy, Spain, Germany, and France) in return for their support during elections. Secondly, he is said to allow his cronies to embezzle as much money from the FIFA trough as they reasonably can. This prevents serious internal challenges to his power. For example, Jack Warner, a Blatter ally from Trinidad and President of the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF), is still the Deputy Chairman o f FIFA ’s F inance Committee despite being fined $1 million by FIFA for his recent role in selling black-market tickets at the 2006 World Cup. Such behavior is not out of the ordinary for some FIFA officials.

Soccer is crooked from the least important players’ agent in the Cameroonian Third Division right up through the hierarchy of FIFA. Everyone involved in the game knows that. Most people have a pretty poor impression not only of Blatter’s sense of morality but also of his intellect. The typical view of the European press (as encapsulated

For the Game? For the World?

by Brian Glanville the crotchety but brilliant old dean of English soccer journalism) holds that “Sepp Blatter has 50 new ideas before breakfast – and 51 of them are bad.” This isn’t quite fair, though Blatter certainly does have a habit of putting his foot in his mouth. Among his most quotable phrases are an exhortation urging female soccer players to wear “tighter shorts” (Blatter considers himself a great supporter of the women’s game); a suggestion that Marco Materazzi and Zinedine Zidane that the duo have a reconciliation on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned during the apartheid years (Zidane was ejected from the 2006 World Cup for head-butting Materazzi); and, finally, an infamous “j’accuse” directed at Manchester United for treating their

star winger Cristiano Ronaldo as a “slave” at a time when the player was annually compensated with $10.2 million.

Despite his less-than-brilliant outbursts, Blatter was in many ways responsible for the modernization of soccer’s business side. Blatter’s m e n t o r a n d p r e d e c e s s o r a s President, the iron-fisted Brazilian Joao Havelange, deserves some of credit too. Under their two tenures, FIFA presented World Cups hosted by the United States in 1994, South Korea and Japan in 2002 and, next summer, by South Africa. Historically, this extremely lucrative opportunity has been open only to nations from Europe and South America. Moreover, Blatter has overseen a financial revolution in soccer, as clubs have made gigantic profits through the sale of their TV

rights and sponsorships to multi-national corporations, and also from the continued development of continental tournaments like the European Champions League – which now takes in almost $880 million dollars a year. Real Madrid, the world’s richest club, announced revenues of $536.42 million from the 2007-08 season. The clubs have used this excess cash to construct fantastic modern stadia and buy the best players from all over the world. Blatter has created tremendous revenues for soccer and, probably, for himself and his colleagues too. Profiting clubs, located mainly in Western Europe, have reinvested that capital in skillful but cheap foreign players.

By NICK NEHAMAS

Joseph Blatter’s plea for the “6+5” rule is a thinly veiled political ruse.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 7


indysports

For Blatter, however, this inundation of top teams with foreigners poses a problem. Blatter believes that leagues that invest in foreign stars at the expense of homegrown talent lower the quality of their national teams, which depend on their country’s clubs to turn out star players eligible for national selection. The clubs counter that their job is to win (as well as to be profitable) and that they have an obligation to put their best starting eleven onto the field each game without consideration to the players’ nationalities. Take Tuesday’s 4-4 draw between Liverpool and Arsenal, two of the best teams in the English Premier League: Liverpool played five Spaniards (their coach, Rafa Benitez, is a compatriot), two Dutchmen, an Argentinian, a Brazilian, a Moroccan, a Dane, an Israeli and Jamie Carragher (a dyed-in-the-wool Liverpudlian, a hero of the team, who would have been joined in the line-up by that other famous Scouser, Steven Gerrard, had he not been injured). Arsenal, meanwhile, selected four Frenchmen (any guesses as to where their coach, Arsène Wenger, is from?), a Dane, a Pole, an Ivorian, a Cameroonian, a Spaniard, a Brazilian, a Russian (the pint-sized play-maker Andrey Arshavin who scored all four of his team’s goals), and two English teenagers. So, one of the most anticipated games of the English soccer season ultimately featured only three Englishmen, and only two established England internationals (Carragher and Arsenal’s young attacker Theo Walcott , who came on as a substitute). The Premier League (Europe’s wealthiest) is Blatter’s favorite target for this sort of offense but the top continental leagues are also guilty of stuffing their rosters with Brazilians, Argentinians, Dutchmen, Africans, Middle Easterners, and Asians, leaving promising young native players to try their luck with mid-level teams or in the reserve squads of top clubs.

For its entire history, soccer has been a game of identity. A

club team can represent a specific neighborhood, a social class, co-religionists, or an entire city or region. They are like political parties; in South America, for instance, club Presidents play a huge role in local and national politics and their teams provide members many social services the government does not. The paramilitary forces who carried out the most brutal atrocities during the Croatian War of Independence were largely organized supporters clubs marched straight from their stands to the battlefield; for these fans-turned-soldiers, the war was just as much about the rivalry between Dynamo Zagreb and Partizan Belgrade as about the conflict between Serbia and Croatia. Foreign players detract from this atmosphere, the argument goes (Blatter is silent on whether this jingoism is actually worth preserving).

The most f iercely beloved players in the game today are usually the ones who grew up supporting the club they now play for: Steven Gerrard of Liverpool, Paolo Maldini of AC Milan, Carles Puyol of Barcelona, Iker Casillas of Real Madrid. The most yearned-for desire of every soccer fan is to play in a real game for their favorite team. Gerrard, Maldini and co. are the lucky fans who have risen through the ranks and accomplished this goal. Most likely, they will spend their entire careers with their hometown club, selling jerseys, bringing fans to the stadiums, and never attracting the jeers of “mercenary” that have followed players who are arguably more talented than the group above but have, in some fans’ eyes, demonstrated that financial gain is more important to them than club loyalty. These include such greats of the modern game as Ronaldo, Luis Figo, Cristiano Ronaldo, and, for a few months, Kaka, until he finally turned down a lucrative move from AC Milan to Manchester City (a far less prestigious club only able to afford the transfer because it had recently been purchased by Sheik Mansour bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates) after months of

indecision. Blatter’s controversial solution

to the problems of players without loyalty, clubs without identity, and national teams without talent is to limit the number of foreign players on a club team to five. This has been dubbed the “6 + 5” rule, as it would mean each team would have to field a line-up of at least six native players and no more than five foreigners. Unfortunately, it is almost certainly in violation of the labor laws of the European Union, which prevent employers from discriminating based on nationality, and so stands little chance o f becoming real i ty . Furthermore, the proposed change is also unnecessary as Blatter’s diagnosis of a rot eating away at the foundations of soccer is premature.

Mercenaries have always been a problem in soccer, as in all professional sports. But before the 1960’s, soccer players were allowed to play for multiple nations over their careers, not just different club teams (the great Real Madrid striker, Alfredo di Stefano, an Argentinian, played six games for his homeland, four for rivals Colombia, and thirty-one for Spain!), so it is hard to argue the phenomenon of players changing teams for financial gain is more pervasive than in the past. The recent Liverpool-Arsenal game was no less exciting for its exclusion of Englishmen and it is impossible to argue that the overall quality of European league play has not increased dramatically since foreign players began to pour in. Finally, though Blatter likes to posit a link between the high number of imports in England’s Premier League and the national team’s failure to qualify for the recent 2008 European Championships, he neglects to mention the fact that Spain, who won that tournament, has a comparable number of foreign players in their league. So why is Blatter making such a fuss about a situation he probably won’t even be able to fix? Surprise, surprise the reason is most likely political.

Let’s run a quick cost-benefit

analysis. Who stands to lose from the 6 + 5 rule? Obviously, big European clubs, who would be forced to part with the majority of their famous foreign stars and the revenues they bring in. This, in turn, would decrease their ability to dominate their respective championships. It is hard to imagine an Inter Milan shorn of Julio Cesar, Maicon, Javier Zanetti, Esteban Cambiassio, Luis Figo, Christian Chivu, Dejan Stankovic, Maxwell and Walter Samuel (all regular players) winning the Seria A three years running (they are currently gunning for a fourth, with a comfortable ten point lead over arch-rivals AC Milan and Juventus). And who would gain from this flood of newly released players? Where would the Africans, Arabs, Asians, and South Americans go now that the rosters of higher-paying European teams had been closed to all but a few of them? Well, back to their native lands, of course, where they would play in front of sold-out crowds. Naturally, with no danger of their being lured to Europe by higher wages, their clubs could under-compensate them while taking in large sums at the gate. Everyone from the third division agent in Cameroon to Jack Warner would make a profit, and Blatter would be assured the vote of most FIFA nations outside of Western Europe. The most beautiful part of the gambit is that Blatter knows he can’t even pull it off. But he also knows he doesn’t even have to. The “6 + 5” rule is a simple message from Blatter to his FIFA constituents that he is doing his best to maintain their interests against odds his own policies created: the vast financial resources of the Western European leagues. Soccer is a dirty game and Sepp Blatter, despite never rising higher as a footballer than the Swiss amateur division, certainly knows how to play it.

Nick Nehamas ’11 (nnehamas@

gmail) plays for Team JV, which

proudly boasts a Greek, an Italian,

a Hungarian, one and a half

Mexicans, and a New Yorker.

SOCCERCONTINUED FROM PAGE 6


indy arts

By LEVI DUDTEPeter Zumthor and a fresh look at architecture.

Judging Architecture

THE SOFT-SPOKEN, FASTIDIOUS SWISS architect Peter Zumthor won

the 2009 Pritzker Prize in a

decision released by the prize’s nine-

person jury two weeks ago. Zumthor’s

now international status as a Pritzker

laureate begs our contemplation of his

oeuvre, a small collection of buildings,

each at once uncompromisingly unique

and emblematic of his personality and

practice. This status also necessitates

an examination of the changing

relationship between the Pritzker

Prize and the practice of architecture

in recent history.

Zumthor’s buildings display an

extreme sensitivity to the nature of

their materials and the experiences of

their users. We see in each Zumthor’s

understanding of form as an extension

of pragmatic functional requirements.

Perhaps his most famous work,

Zumthor’s thermal baths in the town

of Vels, Switzerland stack sharply cut

local Valser quartzite and concrete,

carving cubic spaces, and dark, dank

corners into the earth. The building’s

beauty lies in its absolute austerity.

The only decorative elements present

are simple, curved faucets that stream

spring water into the baths. Precise

cracks in the building’s ceiling allow

angular light to pierce through into the

cavernous interior baths illuminating

nothing more than stone and the

warm water’s smooth, undulating

surface. The sum of these effects leads

the bather to experience Zumthor’s

creation as an almost natural object

found among the rural Swiss hills,

ingrained in the hillside.

Zumthor’s Kunsthaus (art museum)

in Bregenz, Austria offers a polar,

but equally austere architectural

experience to his thermal baths.

The museum’s context is a modern

urban setting and Zumthor chose his

materials to match the site, this time

dealing with smoky, translucent glass,

metal, and concrete. The building’s two

formal elements can be divided along

these material lines with the glass, and

metal forming an external shell in the

shape of a cube to protect the three-

storied, sculpted concrete interior from

environmental exposure. The matte

glass also modulates the building’s

natural lighting, allowing variable

conditions of sunlight and sky color to

set the mood of the museum’s galleries.

The combined effect is a strict but poetic

internal architectural space distinctly

urban in its material but decidedly

natural in its intentional manipulation

of ambient lighting.

We can extract from both of these

examples of Zumthor’s work his intense

aesthetic preoccupation with a sort of

phenomenological humanism. This

focus directs his design process, one

that stands basically alone in the

international architectural community.

He summons every innate aspect of his

project’s site in order to deeply immerse

his building’s visitors in a sensory

experience of context, space, and

material. Zumthor comments in one

of his few published works, Thinking Architecture, on the primacy of “old,

half-forgotten memories” of buildings,

spaces and settings experienced in

his past but persistently present in

his mind. He digs into these obscure

experiences, mining his memory for

inspiration and direction in his work.

This method guides him to craft spaces

and forms that flood the visitor with stimulating sights, sounds, smells, and

textures. His buildings often impress in

their ability to softly caress the visitor’s

every sense.

This design ethos determines

Zumthor’s uniqueness, especially

among his new Pritzker peers. These

peers include the likes of Frank Gehry

(1989), Renzo Piano (1998), I.M. Pei

(1983) and Rem Koolhaas (2000), all

names associated with high-profile

projects from wildly stylized museums

(Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain)

to towering skyscrapers (Pei’s Hancock

Tower, that tall glass shard shooting up

from our dear downtown Boston). All of

these men we could comfortably term

“starchitects,” that breed of modern

designer whose name is a brand

and whose projects are ubiquitous

international images first and buildings second. Zumthor did not diverge from

this crowd; he was born separate and

so he remains. His studio is no nexus of

commerce or culture filled with bustling pedigrees and flat-screen monitors, but a barn in his hometown with about

twenty committed assistants. The most

influential part of his architectural

education was a childhood spent

as a cabinetmaker’s apprentice, an

experience that still demands his

supreme sensitivity and attention

to the physical perfection his use of

materials in his buildings. All of these

innate traits set Zumthor starkly apart

from his fellow Pritzker laureates.

The issue, then, is whether all of

these innate traits set Zumthor above

his fellow Pritzker laureates. The

committee applauds in its published

recognition of Zumthor his ability “[to

pare down] architecture to its barest yet

most sumptuous essentials,” producing

what they call an “architecture of

permanence.” Such phrases couch

Zumthor not in traditional provincial

terms (the man works out of a barn in

rural Switzerland), but as an almost

messianic figure, a beacon of restraint and sustainability among superfluous buildings and their sensational

designers that has meandered down

from the Alps to guide our errant,

ostentatious drafting in a treacherous,

“fragile world.” Be still, my quivering

French curve! The Pritzker committee

must surely realize its minor hypocrisy

here. To excessively laud Zumthor’s

meekness is to debase the prize itself.

The Pritzker’s effects in the minds of

both the architecture industry and its

ebullient public since its creation in

1979 are entrenchment and celebration

of the “starchitect” ethos and ego.

Maybe the committee felt that it needed

to apologize. Maybe the committee

felt that it needed a fresh start for our

surely subdued, green future. Either

way, Zumthor’s work has been great

all along and the committee’s attention

is well-deserved. I can only hope that

its May 29th ceremony honors Zumthor

appropriately: austere, sincere praise

that focuses our attention not on the

committee’s delicate appropriation of an

honest man, but on Zumthor himself,

his work, his life and his legacy.

Levi Dudte ’11 (ldudte@fas) plans to be the 2050 Priktzer Prize laureate.


indyforum

The Great Butter Rebellion of 1766

The first recorded student protest at Harvard College, according to the 2004 book “Harvard A to Z,” took place in 1766. Asa Dunbar, the grandfather of Henry David Thoreau, stood up in the dining hall (there was only one, at the time) and said, “Behold, our butter stinketh!— give us, therefore, butter that stinketh not.” Reportedly, half the student body agreed with Dunbar’s sentiment, and left the dining commons in protest.

Shortly thereafter, President Holyoke suspended half the student body, demanding that the instigator of the protest be named. But the students refused to back down and eventually Harvard acknowledged the rancid butter problem and lifted the student suspensions.

The Great Butter Rebellion of 1766 set a couple notable precedents. For one, it kicked off a centuries-long tradition of Harvard students protesting and fretting about their food service, which seems to have been, in reality, adequate since time immemorial. The Butter Rebellion was followed up a few years later with the ‘Cabbage Rebellion.’ Just this year, a group of Eliot House students protested their, err, situation, by dining pants-less. I shudder to think what President Holyoke would have thought of that.

More important ly , though , Harvard’s first protest was a success. The students stood, they shouted, they walked out, they circulated a petition, and “Old Guts” (the students’ sort-of-affectionate nickname for President Holyoke) had to give in. And what an appropriate victory it was! The elite class in waiting demanded what was theirs by right, and in so doing, achieved brief respite from the four year purgatory of penury and discipline which was a prerequisite of membership in that class. Dunbar’s success in adjusting the power structure must have provided some satisfaction to him in his old age, in reminiscing years later about his victory in The Great Butter Rebellion. Don’t get me

wrong, though. I’m sure the butter was bad.

Vietnam Protests in ‘69

From talking to and reading the words of former students and other individuals who were around Harvard in 1969 and the years leading up to ‘69, it seems to me that the student protest — or rebellion — of that year has produced similar feelings of nostalgia and self-satisfaction even in those who were not directly involved in the Administration Building takeover and the other more outré acts of acts of civil disobedience.

Students for a Democratic Society, the organizers of the protest, demanded that the ROTC program be abolished at Harvard, and the current ROTC students offered alternate university funding. Why should Harvard, the argument went, be aiding the US government in prosecuting a war which the majority of the Harvard community opposes? A reasonable enough argument on the face; certainly at least as legitimate as the argument underlying the Butter Rebellion: “we should get what we pay for.”

Allowing for inflation over the last two hundred odd years, the degrees of civil disobedience involved could even be seen as about equivalent: In 1766, some students left dinner ear ly wi thout permiss ion ; in 1969, 500 students occupied the Administration Building and carried an assistant dean bodily from the building. Both acts were outrageous to the delicate sensibilities of their respective times. The responses of the administration also had similarities: Pusey’s and Holyoke’s desire to punish outflanked, in both cases their ability to punish. Holyoke, unable to pin down the agent provocateur was unable to make any punishment stick. Pusey had to settle for three expulsions (mostly of students who actually engaged in physical assault) and a couple dozen suspensions. There’s been a great deal of continuity over the past couple hundred years, really.

Protest and Activism Today

Perhaps there is still some continuity, but a number of things have changed since the seventies. President Faust seems more receptive to protest and student activism than most of the past presidents of Harvard. Last year, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences co-sponsored a sort of protest, “Mt. Trashmore.” 400 bags of waste were piled on the lawn in front of the Science Center. Apparently there are plans for a repeat performance this year.

The Undergraduate Council has grown in size and influence since the sixties and seventies as well, and now boasts committees on college life, house life, student affairs, and undergraduate education, plus student-faculty committees on Gen Ed, libraries, athletics, advising, food services, and the Ad Board. On top of all that, many of the concentrations have student advisory committees; I’m an English concentrator, and let’s just say that there’s been no lack of encouragement to join the English concentration advisory committee.

Still, last year a group of concerned alumni from the class of ‘67 wrote an open letter to President Faust calling for the creation of “a Task Force to Investigate the Causes and Propose Possible Cures for Political Apathy and Careerism at Harvard College During these Deeply Troubling Times for the Nation.”

“Undergraduate life at the College today is not giving due encouragement to civic courage and political engagement,” the signers of the letter said.

The letter-writers meant well; perhaps they were under the influence of the nostalgia I described above. Their suggestion, however, was ridiculous: a university-sponsored task force studying ways to facilitate protest? Often, presumably, protest against the university? Any increased protest activity resulting from such a task force would be farcical and, ultimately, would stifle whatever real, grassroots protest might otherwise have bubbled up. The whole-hearted institutional embrace of green initiatives has certainly made eco-activism at Harvard less vivacious,

even if more effective. It’s not very ‘radical’ to sign up with the House Administrator to be the “green rep” for Leverett House.

The reason for the protest climate has little to do with administration inaction and a lot to do with student attitudes. Current students at Harvard have a whole range of venues for expressing their opinions and engaging in activism that didn’t exist in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Anyone with an opinion and a bit of free time can start a blog and get their friends and colleagues reading it. The proliferation of e-mail lists means that it is no longer necessary to meet in person to engage in debate; even as I’m writing this article, several different e-mail lists are erupting into the latest iteration of the perennial debate over ROTC and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

It also seems that much of the activist energy at Harvard has been directed away from street protests and towards symposia, panels, lectures and presentations. Hardly a day goes by without my receiving an invitation to attend some meeting or another on a salient issue. Perhaps these habits of activism are more effective; certainly the symposium-planners and blog-writers are putting themselves at less risk of seeming ridiculous.

The scorn that many Harvard students exhibit towards the tactics of the Student Labor Action Movement and other protest-oriented groups, however, is misplaced. Brian Bolduc’s April 20 column in the Crimson offered objections that are largely stylistic; Bolduc mocked their “Greed is the New Crimson” slogan and pointed out that it was terribly, terribly rude for them to hand President Faust a letter. The Crimson’s “FlyByBlog” also got in a few shots. Bolduc was right about some of SLAM’s hyperbole, but if SLAM scaled that back a bit, my feeling is that they would still come in for mockery, because street protests are supposed to be for the powerless and the insane.

We Harvardians are not the powerless—we hold symposia.

Sam Jack ‘11 (sjack@fas) believes in the right of every Who to eat their bread butter-side-up.

By SAM JACKThe changing place of student protest at Harvard.

Butter Battles


indy forum

TH I S W E E K E N D I S P R E F R O S H WEEKEND, and swarms of wide-eyed high school seniors will

be converging on our campus to ooh and aah and decide to come to Harvard. As a freshman, I am not so far removed from my own prefrosh experience, which was admittedly less than stellar. I was confused and nervous and my prefrosh weekend was not the best advertisement to come to Harvard. The keycards given to all prefrosh were defective, so we had no access to the dormitories we were staying in (one night I waited in a group outside Thayer for a long time until some kind soul let us in). In addition my host was so busy I barely saw her, and on the second night my host’s roommate threw a loud party and I ended up staying in a nearby hotel with my mom. I could complain some more, but I think you get the point: prefrosh weekend did not allay my nerves over coming to Harvard. Now that I am here I am thrilled, but the truth is that prefrosh week was quite a terrifying few days for me.

That being said, prefrosh weekend did not prevent me from coming to

Harvard (obviously), and I doubt it will be the deciding factor for anyone else, either. Harvard is quite a magnetic force in and of itself, and the principle thing that prefrosh weekend can accomplish is to make the seniors feel happy and confident about coming here. Therefore, when I receive my prefrosh (I am hosting two of them with my roommate), I will keep these things in mind:

1. Frantic insecurity. If these prefrosh are anything like me (and many of my peers) they will be feeling horribly insecure about their own abilities and talents and many may even be questioning their fitness to attend Harvard (I certainly was). Also, the majority will be far from their homes and the ones from average public high schools may not be feeling so great about being with so many kids from prestigious private schools and exam schools.

So, shepherd your prefrosh. Do not release him or her into the wilds of Harvard alone and unguarded. I’m not trying to pretend to possess superior wisdom: I have simply lived at Harvard for almost a year and am

How to make prefrosh want to come to Harvard (as if they need any convincing).

comfortable with the area. This, I feel, is a serious flaw in the system of hosting prefrosh. The instructions hosts were given were minimal at best. The instructions simply told the hosts to give the poor prefrosh a place to stay, and that we were not expected to “hold his/her hand”. This, I feel, is a mistake. Hosts should be willing and able to be a guide for their prefrosh so they don’t end up wandering around aimlessly, vaguely intimidated and uncomfortable. There may well be prefrosh who are independent enough to want to be off on their own, but I do not believe it should be assumed that each individual will prefer this.

2. Disorientation. A large group of high school seniors, many with no experience of this region of the country, will be expected to navigate Harvard’s campus and find their way around with nothing more than a map. Statistics probably say (I can’t be bothered to check) that the great majority of these prefrosh aren’t particularly skilled at reading maps, and so these kids will have been dropped into the middle of a foreign

world with all expectations on them to figure it out.

Now, I know that admitted students are certainly very intelligent and are most definitely capable of figuring out everything on their own. However, I feel like this is often an added stress that will only make the prefrosh feel pressured. There ought to be more guides to show prefrosh how to navigate the campus and get to the Quad (of which’s existence I was not certain until orientation week) for the extracurricular fair.

These points are just small matters from my own prefrosh experience, but I have heard them echoed in many of my peers who attended prefrosh my year. If more attention were paid to guiding and assisting prefrosh throughout their jam-packed schedule of events, the entire process would be easier and more fulfilling and end with prefrosh who are looking forward to coming in the fall.

Riva Riley ([email protected]) had an interesting prefrosh weekend.

The Harvard Independent OPEN HOUSE

join us this Sunday, April 26th from 3-5 PM

Room 243

Harvard Student Organization Center at Hilles

By RIVA RILEY

Prefrosh Weekend:

Cap

tured an

d Sh

ot

PATRICIA FLORESCU/Independent

The Sports Issue (04.23.09)

Documents

Transcript of The Sports Issue (04.23.09)