Wednesday, February 2, 2011Daily Heraldthe Brown

Since 1891vol. cxlvi, no. 6

30 / 10

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Campus news, 8

Monsters InkIn prof ’s new children’s book, math can bite

examining Brown’s need to compete

opInIons, 7 wea

therUnique?

By MIrIaM FUrstStaff Writer

For 10 years, students have ventured off campus seeking the overcrowded dance floor, the blaring pop mu-sic and the copious drinks. But Brown’s Wednesday-night tradition has come to an end with the closing of the Fish Company.

After a month of rumors about renovations, a New Year’s Eve re-opening and conflicting Blog Daily Herald reports, Fish Co.’s web-site has confirmed that Brown’s Wednesday night hot spot no lon-ger exists.

The Rhode Island State Police Underage Drinking and Nightclub Safety Task Force raided Fish Co. Nov. 4, and arrested 26 people for “Unlawful Drinking and Misrepre-sentation by an Underage Person,” according to a Nov. 5 press release. Three Brown students were arrested at the bar.

Raymond White, deputy su-perintendent and chief of field operations for the Rhode Island State Police, told The Herald that he was unaware of the direct effects of these arrests on the bar. “Night-

Fish Co. goes belly up

By Jake coMerSenior Staff Writer

While the owner of the security firm accused of participating in witness intimidation in the Wil-liam McCormick case denies wrongdoing in a November de-position obtained by The Herald, his testimony fails to put the issue

to rest.In the deposition, Pat Brosnan

— the owner of Brosnan Risk Con-sultants — states that an investi-

gator in his employ anonymously hand-delivered a package to the home of witness Mike Burch’s

girlfriend to get a photograph of Burch. But the investigator already possessed a picture of Burch from the internet, and did not take a picture of him after delivering the package. Brosnan states the pur-pose of the ploy was to covertly surveil — not threaten — Burch,

Questions linger in alleged intimidation

By teD BUrkeContributing Writer

Five Brown professors were elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science this December.

Professor of Medical Science Edward Hawrot, Professor of Geo-logical Sciences Timothy Herbert,

Professor of Medical Science Agnes Kane, Professor of Geological Sci-ences John Mustard, Professor of Biology Gary Wessel and the other 498 fellows honored this year were recognized for their “meritorious efforts to advance science or its ap-plications,” according to the associa-tion’s website.

The association describes itself

as an “international non-profit or-ganization dedicated to advancing science around the world.” It also produces Science, one of the world’s most widely read science maga-zines. The association “facilitates and greases the wheels of science,” Mustard said.

The association’s Council elects fellows based on nomination by

other members of the association. “It is wonderful that these five

faculty members have been selected as fellows of (the association).” Clyde Briant, vice president for research, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. “It recognizes them for the outstand-ing contributions that they made

Five science profs elected to national society

Courtesy of Miriam FurstThe Fish Company, always a scene on Wednesday nights, has closed.

Nearly 400 bumped from poli sci course

More than 380 students will have to search for a new course to take this semester, as the Department of Political Science has capped POLS1510: “Great Powers and Empires” to 300 students.

“I’ve taught this class before and I’ve never had a problem giving overrides or students not being able to take the course,” said Minh Luong, the adjunct lecturer of political science who teaches the course. “Right now there are 680 people enrolled in this class, which way exceeds the capacity of (Salomon 101).”

The capacity of Salomon 101, including the balcony area, is 594 people.

According to Luong, another 125 students who had not yet registered were also trying to enroll in the class.

Luong said James Morone, professor of political science and chair of the department, told him the class must be capped and that only juniors and seniors will be allowed to enroll. Luong said that he felt this was “within

N E W S I N b R I E F

By ashley ayDInSenior Staff Writer

The Office of International Pro-grams will announce today the launch of “Brown Plus One” — a program that will allow juniors to begin earning a master’s degree from either the Chinese University of Hong Kong or The University of Edinburgh.

Juniors will complete the first half of a master’s during a semester or year abroad and then return for another year after graduating Brown to complete the degree.

The program will offer degrees in the hard sciences, social sciences and humanities, Kendall Brostuen, associate dean of the College and director of international programs, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.

The application process for the program will be similar to the stan-dard study abroad application pro-cess, with one addition — students will need to declare their intention to return to a foreign university to complete the degree after graduat-ing Brown.

Students will also be asked to explain their objectives for the fifth-year international master’s program and how the program will help them develop their liberal learning foun-dation at Brown, Brostuen wrote.

The program includes require-ments for those enrolled. “While abroad as juniors, students must complete a full-time course of study, including a Global Independent Study Project, or a GLISP, linked to their area of concentration,” Brostuen wrote.

The program’s coursework will include at least one graduate-level offering, which will be accepted in partial fulfillment of the master’s requirements, he wrote.

The program — which is part of Brown’s internationalization initia-tive — aims to provide students with the opportunity to incorporate a global perspective into their bac-calaureate studies and build upon that knowledge by adding a focused fifth year of study, Brostuen wrote.

“Brown undergraduate students have demonstrated over the years that they have the maturity and the self-discipline to excel at gradu-ate level courses delivered here in Providence,” he wrote. This pro-gram, he added, will allow them to do so at “two globally recognized universities.”

U. to offer int’l master’s to juniors

continued on page 3

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News aNalysis

continued on page 4

A retrospective

r ot c r e c o n s i d e r e d

Herald archivesAmidst heavy student protest, the faculty voted to abolish Naval ROTC in the spring of 1972. Now, after Congress’ repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” 24 students have applied to sit on a committee to consider the program’s return.

See more coverage on page 2.

to their fields.” The five faculty members — who

will be formally welcomed as fellows at the association’s annual meeting Feb. 19 — all said the honor came as a surprise.

Being named a fellow is “more of an acknowledgement” than a new job, Wessel said.

Hawrot said it is a “great honor to be recognized for science over ones career.”

He said the election of five pro-fessors puts the University on the national stage, and that the Univer-

sity should “receive some praise for the investments they have made for the high quality of research going on here.”

Wessel researches sperm and how eggs are activated at fertiliza-tion. He also studies germlines, which eventually become a stemcell and then an egg or sperm.

“I love doing my job here,” Wessel said. “Students are the background for research. The process of educat-ing is two ways.”

Hawrot, who is also the associate dean for the program in biology, fo-cuses on understating the “structure-function relationship of nicotinic

acetylcholine receptors,” he said, the basis for nicotine addiction. He also studies alpha-neurotoxins, which are derived from snake venom.

Mustard, who studies how the surfaces of planets are shaped and looking for major changes, said he is interested in both planetary and environmental science. He also said he hopes to answer the question of whether life ever existed elsewhere in the solar system.

Kane, who is also the chair of the department of pathology and laboratory medicine, directs and helps build graduate training pro-grams and gets funding for them. Her research is focused on asbestos fibers and nanomaterials and the adverse health effects with which they are associated. She collaborates with Robert Hurt, professor of en-gineering, in her research. Kane has also worked on a number of both national and international advisory panels.

Herbert is the chair of the De-partment of Geological Studies. He said he focuses on “understand-ing the ways in which climate can change naturally,” by studying the ocean’s bottom. He and his team produced the world’s longest pa-leotemperature, a recording that helps understand how temperature changes over time.

Ben Schreckinger, PresidentSydney Ember, Vice President

Matthew Burrows, TreasurerIsha Gulati, Secretary

The Brown Daily Herald (USPS 067.740) is an independent newspaper serving the Brown University community daily since 1891. It is published Monday through Fri-day during the academic year, excluding vacations, once during Commencement, once during Orientation and once in July by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Single copy free for each member of the community. POSTMASTER please send corrections to P.O. Box 2538, Providence, RI 02906. Periodicals postage paid at Providence, R.I. Subscription prices: $280 one year daily, $140 one semester daily. Copyright 2011 by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Campus news2 the Brown Daily heraldwednesday, February 2, 2011

12 P.m.

Annual Hazardous Waste Training,

brown Office building, 4th Floor

5 P.m.

Tea and Feminism,

Sarah Doyle Women’s Center

4P.m.

Queer Faith Discussion Group,

J. Walter Wilson 411

6:30 P.m.

Anand Giridharadas book Signing

and Lecture, Smith-buonanno 106

SHARPE REFECTORY VERNEY-WOOLLEY DINING HALL

LUNCH

DINNER

Castle Hill Inn Pork Spare Ribs, Sticky Rice with Edamame, Vegan

Ratatouille, Fudge bars

Rotisserie Style Chicken, Spinach Quiche, broccoli with Cheese Sauce,

Squash Rolls, Fudge bars

beef Tacos, Vegetarian Mori Soba Noodles, Vegetarian Tacos,

Chocolate Krinkle Cookies

Turkey Tacos, Vegan burritos, Corn and Sweet Pepper Saute, Chocolate

Krinkle Cookies

TODAY FEbRUARY 2 TOmORROW FEbRUARY 3

C R O S S W O R D

S u D O K u

M E N u

C A L E N DA R Twenty-four apply to ROTC committeeBy BraDley sIlverMan

Staff Writer

Twenty-four undergraduates have applied for the two student seats on the University committee formed to consider the return of the Re-serve Officers’ Training Corps to campus. According to Diane Mokoro ’11, president of the Un-dergraduate Council of Students, the two undergraduate committee members will be chosen by Friday morning.

While all the details of the pro-cess by which the committee will reach its recommendation have yet to be announced, undergraduate committee members can expect to attend 10 90-minute meetings, Mokoro wrote in an e-mail to the student body announcing the ap-plication process.

The committee was announced in the wake of Congress’ vote to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the policy under which gays could only serve in the military if they did not reveal their sexual orientation.

Since the vote, Brown and other Ivy League schools have an-nounced intentions to reconsider their bans on campus chapters of ROTC.

In early January, the University announced plans for the formation of a committee to consider its re-sponse to the policy’s repeal. Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron will lead the committee, which will submit recommendations to the faculty and administration on fu-ture ROTC and military recruit-ment on campus.

Brown, along with many other universities, banned ROTC in the 1970s in the midst of anti-Vietnam War protests and allegations that

ROTC students were not held to the same high academic stan-dards as others. Since then, the 1993 passage of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has resulted in resistance to re-implementing ROTC on many campuses.

According to a University state-ment, the original decision to end Air Force and Naval ROTC in 1971 and 1972, respectively, stemmed from academic concerns, such as whether the program should have its own department and whether or not its courses should carry aca-demic credit.

“It will be an open and rigor-ous process in line with Brown’s academic goals and policies, as well as its responsibility to serve the nation’s needs for outstanding leadership,” the statement said.

Many other schools, including Harvard, are considering allowing the program to return.

“The repeal of (“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”) is a historic step,” wrote Harvard President Drew Faust in a statement. “I look for-ward to pursuing discussions with military officials and others to achieve Harvard’s full and formal recognition of ROTC.”

But obstacles to the reintroduc-tion of ROTC still exist on many campuses. At some schools, it is not clear whether there is strong enough interest on the part of stu-dents, faculty or the military to justify ROTC’s return.

Currently, Brown students may participate in ROTC train-ing through a unit at Providence College. As of last Spring, only one student — Joy Joung ’11 — was participating in the program, ac-cording to an Apr. 29 article in The Herald.

But Lynn Della Grotta ’13, who is currently spearheading efforts to bring ROTC back to Brown through a group called Students for ROTC, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald that it was never fair to hold the military responsible for a policy imposed by civilian elected representatives, noting that the armed services take their orders from Congress, which originally passed the policy.

“The absence of ROTC may have been a reflection of students’ sentiments in the sixties and sev-enties, but now I believe Brown students, along with the entire na-tion, are aware of and thankful for the sacrifice these courageous men and women in uniform make in order to keep our country safe,” she wrote. “Therefore, it only seems right to have in this decade the return of ROTC, in order to reflect students’ sentiments today.”

“Having a greater presence of Brown students in leadership posi-tions in the military would allow for input into how the military would evolve in the future,” she added.

Abbott Gleason, professor emeritus of history and slavic studies, began teaching at Brown in the fall of 1968, shortly before ROTC was banned on campus. He said that the program was wildly unpopular at the time due to stu-dent attitudes about U.S. foreign military involvements.

“At almost all of what you would call liberal colleges in the United States,” he said, “attitudes flung wildly against ROTC because of the Vietnam War.”

— with additional reporting by nicole Boucher

Science association welcomes profscontinued from page 1

Campus news 3the Brown Daily heraldwednesday, February 2, 2011

A timeline of events in the mcCormick case

August 30, 2006 — First-year orientation begins for William McCormick, then a member of the Class of 2010 and a wrestling recruit.

Sept. 6 — A female classmate of McCormick’s makes a complaint to the university that he has been stalking her.

Sept. 13 — The female student alleges that McCormick raped her on the night of Sept. 6. McCormick is forced to leave campus.

Sept. 14 — Russell Carey, senior vice president for Corporation affairs and governance, hands McCormick a plane ticket home to Wisconsin. He is not informed that he has been accused of rape. Over the following days, McCormick is made aware of the accusation, begins preparing a defense with his adviser — assistant wrestling coach Mike burch — and hires attorney Walter Stone to advise him. According to federal court records, Stone’s law firm — Adler Pollock & Sheehan — was representing the university in a separate matter while Stone was advising McCormick in the disciplinary process.

Oct. 3 — The female student’s father — a university alum,

donor and fundraiser — e-mails President Ruth Simmons, “Ruth … I am working to resolve the matter with the student who attacked (the female student) — the goal is to have him withdraw from brown and not have a university hearing. This will enable (the female student) and the other students to avoid having to come in contact with the student and face questioning from his advocate.”

Oct. 15 — McCormick withdraws from brown, citing medical reasons. In court documents, he will later allege the experience aggravated an existing seizure condition.

September 2009 — McCormick’s new lawyer, Scott Kilpatrick files a complaint under seal in Rhode Island Superior Court. The claim alleges that McCormick was falsely accused and that the university mishandled the accusation because of the financial relationship of the female alum’s father to the university. The motion to seal is granted, and there is no public record of the suit. The case is soon transferred to federal court, where it is again placed under seal.

April 12, 2010 — The Herald prints a story based on a leaked copy of the complaint. The case is unsealed later that day at a hearing in front Judge William Smith.

Sept. 27 — A package addressed to burch — who has been named a witness in the case — is hand-delivered anonymously to the home of burch’s girlfriend, a single mother. It contains an invitation to a free meal at Downcity Diner — a restaurant across the street from the law firm representing McCormick. burch shows up for dinner, where he finds out the restaurant was given cash by two women to pay for his meal. The next day, burch receives an anonymous phone call about the package.

October 2010 — using subpoenas, McCormick’s lawyers trace the number used to call burch about his satisfaction with the gift to former New York Police Department Detective Pat brosnan, owner of a private security firm. brosnan works regularly for the female alum’s father.

Jan. 6, 2011 — Well over a year into the suit, Federal Judge William Smith recuses himself without explanation.

Jan. 19 — burch is granted a temporary civil restraining order against the father of the female alum in Rhode Island Superior Court in connection with the package and phone call.

Jan. 25 — burch files a criminal complaint against the female alum’s father with the Pawtucket Police in connection with the same incident. The investigation is currently ongoing.

Jan. 28 — burch is denied a permanent restraining order in Superior Court because he had already raised the issue of witness intimidation in Federal Court. At the hearing on the restraining order, the female alum’s father says Judge Smith recused himself from the federal case because his daughter is applying to brown.

but the investigator called Burch about the incident the following day from a blocked phone number. He testifies that the investigator was offered money to obtain the picture in 2009, but the investiga-tor did not attempt to do so until late 2010. He testifies that he was unaware Burch had spoken in the press about the case, but he had received news articles — attached to e-mails — about the case.

The deposition was taken Nov. 3 by McCormick’s lawyer, Scott Kilpatrick, two weeks after he filed a motion alleging that Burch had been subject to witness intimida-tion. Burch — a former assistant wrestling coach and the Univer-sity-appointed adviser to McCor-mick when he was accused of rape in 2006 — received an anonymous package Sept. 27 inviting him to a free dinner at the DownCity Diner “to show our appreciation for ev-erything you do.”

The following day, Burch re-ceived a phone call about the pack-age from a blocked number. Using subpoenas, Kilpatrick’s law firm traced the call to a phone owned by Pat Brosnan, the founder of a New York private investigative firm known to work for the father of the female alum who accused McCormick of rape. McCormick is suing the female alum, her father and the University in federal court.

In the deposition, Brosnan states he was retained in 2009 to surveil Burch and ensure his daily patterns would not bring him into contact with the female alum, then a senior. Brosnan says the surveillance ended in 2009, but that at that time he offered the investigator assigned to the case, Sharon Clatch, $1,000 to obtain a picture of Burch if she were to find herself in Providence in the future.

He states delivery of the package was not a threat but a ploy to lure Burch into a situation in which Clatch could take a picture of him, and that neither he nor the female alum’s father were aware of the ploy until after it had taken place.

But according to Clatch’s notes — subpoenaed in connection with the deposition — Brosnan’s firm already possessed a picture of Burch taken from the internet. And according to Brosnan’s de-position, Clatch did not take any photograph of Burch after deliv-ering the package, even though Burch went to the restaurant after receiving the invitation.

Brosnan says he asked for the photograph “because I suspected, particularly when the civil case came above ground, that there may be a possibility this may evolve at some later date for the client into a focused surveillance … and it would certainly be very handy to have a recent photograph.”

Brosnan states that his em-ployees performed surveillance of Burch in September of 2009, but “never got a photograph.”

Kilpatrick asks Brosnan, “You needed a picture of him because you didn’t have one and didn’t know what he looked like; right?” to which Brosnan responds, “I didn’t have a picture, no. There was no picture.”

According to the deposition, Kilpatrick then brings Brosnan’s attention to notes from Clatch’s 2009 surveillance of Burch, which include a headshot of Burch taken from the internet.

Brosnan confirms the photo-graph is of Burch and responds, “We didn’t feel that the photos were of sufficient quality and clar-ity and crisp enough in case that we had to go on a surveillance, on a focused surveillance, at a later date.”

After Clatch finished the ploy, Brosnan says Clatch called him to tell him, “it worked; he went to dinner. And unfortunately, she still didn’t get the picture.”

When asked why Clatch failed to get a photograph of Burch, Bros-nan first responds that he does not know. When asked why Clatch said she did not get a photograph, Brosnan responds “lighting.”

“Maybe because she tried to draw him on at 7:30 at night,” Kil-patrick replies. Clatch’s invitation requested Burch come to dinner at 7:30 p.m.

Later in the deposition, the questioning turns to Clatch’s phone call to Burch the follow-ing day, and the role it played in the ploy.

When first asked why Clatch called Burch the following day from a blocked number, Brosnan responds, “I don’t know.” When asked again about the purpose of the call, Brosnan says Clatch “wanted to convey to (Burch) that there was no ulterior motive to the extent that she thought that this would be helpful to him to understand in some way. That’s what she said to me.”

Brosnan states in the deposition that he did not know that Burch was a witness in a lawsuit “until re-cently.” He also states that although the female alum’s father had sent him news articles in which Burch talks to reporters about the Mc-Cormick case, he did not read the articles and was unaware Burch had been vocal in the media about the case.

Brosnan says he does not think the package — which consisted of an invitation and flowers — could reasonably have been considered scary.

He did not respond to e-mails and a phone call seeking comment for this story.

Private investigator’s testimony fails to settle allegationscontinued from page 1

Stephanie London / Herald Mike burch, a former assistant wrestling coach, alleged witness intmidation after a private investigator delivered a package to the home of his girlfriend with an invitation to a free dinner at the DownCity Diner (pictured above).

Campus news4 the Brown Daily heraldwednesday, February 2, 2011

clubs will be under scrutiny by us, but the licensing board will be the one who can make the decision. We had members of Providence Police with us (on the night of the Fish Co. bust), and they turn that information over to their respective licensing board,” he said.

After the arrests, rumors circu-lated through the Brown commu-nity that Fish Co. was permanently closed. But according to the bar’s website at the time, it was only closed for renovations and was set to reopen on New Year’s Eve.

At that point, the information on the website was true, according to Blaine Grinna ’11. Grinna had been organizing Brown Night at Fish Co. and knows the bar’s former own-ers, Jay and Gene, though he said he does not know their last names. While Fish Co. did get fined a total of $650 as a result of the Nov. 4 raid, according to Providence License Administrator Serena Conley, that night did not directly lead to the bar’s ultimate closing.

A decision made between Fish Co.’s two owners months before the raid played a larger role in the end of Fish Co., Grinna said.

The famous riverside building will reopen in March, but under a new name and new management, according to TonightinRI.com.

Neither the former nor the new owners of the venue could be reached for comment.

‘an equal opportunity place’“Fischco was an institution,”

Grinna said. Fish Co. has been a staple of Brown’s social scene since 2002, when a few members of the Theta Delta Chi fraternity started Brown Night at the bar to earn money working as bouncers, he said.

“All the alumni are sad about the

closing. It’s a formative part of the Brown cultural experience,” said Kate Whalen ’07.

Whalen said the first time she went to Fish Co. as a first-year, she did not know what to expect. “You walk in, and it’s completely overwhelming,” she said. “It’s not like the rest of your Providence bar experience.”

“I remember having so much fun dancing there freshman year,” she said. “You just go and get lost in the crowd. I think we did more dancing freshman year than senior year. Senior year was just more chill at Fish Co..”

The news of Fish Co.’s closing circulated among Whalen’s friends within hours of it being posted on Blog Daily Herald, she said. “Fish Co. was so different than going out on Thayer Street or going to a house party,” she said.

“Fish Co. was one of those places that regardless of who your friends were — whether you were a sports person or a frat person — everyone would go,” she said. “Fish Co. was an equal-opportunity place.”

Even though she graduated Brown, Whalen said she cannot imagine not being able to return to the bar. “We wanted to rent Fish Co. to have a party for our fifth-year re-union. Everybody loved that place. I don’t know where else you could get dressed up and go out with 20 of your friends on a Wednesday night.”

“And Halloween Fish Co. and all those special Fish Co.s — what’s going to happen?” she added.

Mourning the ’co.Students on campus had simi-

lar concerns about Fish Co.’s fate. Walker Williams ’11 started a “Free Fish Co.” campaign Dec. 1, when Blog Daily Herald first reported a rumor that it was closing.

“Whether you love it or hate it, Fish Co. was part of Brown culture,” Williams said.

Williams designed a “Free Fish Co.” T-shirt and, within the first night of launching the website, there were 200 preorders, he said. “We wanted to show the owners of Fish Co. how much support they had behind them.” There were 1,500 hits to the website on the first night — “a quarter of the Brown student body, which gives you an idea of how big Fish Co. was on campus,” Williams said.

Whalen and most of her friends purchased “Free Fish Co.” T-shirts to mourn the loss of the bar.

Swathi Bojedla ’07 said that two years ago, one of her friends rented a party bus in New York City to take recent alumni back up to Brown to celebrate a birthday at Fish Co..

Bojedla still remembers her first night at the bar. “I thought Brown was the best place on Earth partly because of Fish Co.,” she said. “I also met so many of my good friends there.” During her senior year, Bo-jedla and her friends all signed up for the same existentialism class Thursdays at 1 p.m. so they could recap the night at Fish Co. together every week, she said.

“Obviously, Brown’s an amazing school, and everyone is so smart, but it was great to have an off-campus crazy college bar to go to,” Bojedla said. “I don’t think a lot of other Ivys have that.”

Bojedla and Whalen both said that memories of Fish Co. are some-thing that alumni and current stu-dents can bond over and share.

the end of an era“Wednesday nights will never

be the same,” Dave Rosen ’14 said. “Fish Co. was a great way to break up the school week . . . you can’t really dance at frats. Fish Co. was definitely the most wild and it was fun to chill on the porch there.”

The University administra-tion knew that “Fish Co. was the Wednesday night thing,” said Mar-garet Klawunn, vice president of-campus life and student services. The University had to deal with

several incidents a year that oc-curred either at Fish Co. or as a result of an event that took place at the bar, she said. A policeman was also stationed at Josiah’s on Wednesday nights to handle any problems, which were more likely to occur when students returned to campus from Fish Co., she said.

While Brown students domi-nated 515 S. Water St. on Wednes-days, Thursdays were Providence College Night.

“Thursday nights were definitely Fish Co. nights and were a blast,” said Amanda George, a sophomore at PC. “It was the melting pot for all the schools and was physically bigger than the other bars we go to.”

In addition to the end of an era of Wednesday nights at Fish Co., the closing will have further implica-tions for Brown’s social scene. “Not having Fish Co. definitely changes rush,” said Adam Driesman ’12, the recruitment chair of the Sigma Chi fraternity. “It was a great place to meet a lot of the potential rushes and was an equal playing field for all the fraternities.” He added that the fraternity is seeking a new loca-tion for its “annual disco inferno party,” which is nicknamed “Disco Fish Co..”

Even though “Fish Co. was the spot,” Grinna said he hopes students “can continue to have incredible experiences like we did at Fish Co. as a student body, not just as small cliques in respective College Hill bars.”

Fish Co. property to reopen under new ownership

Courtesy of Miriam FurstStudents celebrate St. Patrick’s Day at Fish Company.

continued from page 1Students exceed auditorium capacity

N E W S I N b R I E F

reasonable limits of what the university believes is best for the students,” adding that an oversized class makes it difficult to grade exams and goes against fire safety regulations.

“It’s upsetting obviously, I think everyone is upset about it,” said Rachel Rosenfeld ’13, who — as a sophomore — will not be allowed to take the course. She said she had heard Luong is “amazing.”

“Given the unprecedented situation, there was a tough choice to be made and Professor Morone made it,” he said. “The people affected this year will have the opportunity to work with me in an improved version of the course in the future.”

According to Luong, the Office of the Registrar was so sure that the class would have low enrollment that events had already been scheduled in Salomon 101 on some Wednesday and Friday evenings during class time.

“I am both shocked and very humbled,” Luong said. “The last time I taught this class there were a little over 300 students and the time before that around 267.”

Luong said that he has “no idea” why the course was so popular this year, suggesting that it was perhaps due to a resurgent interest in period movies, human rights and international relations. He added it might also be due to an impression that this course will not be taught again, as he had initially indicated in his first lecture. but given the popularity of the course, it will likely be offered again, he said.

— aparna Bansal

continued from page 1

Campus news 5the Brown Daily heraldwednesday, February 2, 2011

bb & Z | Cole Pruitt, Andrew Seiden, Valerie Hsiung and Dan Ricker

Cabernet Voltaire | Abe Pressman

Dot Comic | Eshan Mitra and brendan Hainline

CO M I C S

“I think she does a good job of understanding kinship as something to do with bonds that are more than just biological,” said Alfredo Aguirre ’10, who did independent research with Leinaweaver in 2009. “So kin-ship is more than just a blood type. But it’s also a social phenomenon.” Aguirre said it was “really impor-tant” to move away from the “very Western” view that kinship is “purely biological.”

Leinaweaver found that parents often sent their kids away to provide them with opportunities, perhaps at a better school in an urban area. In other cases, a godparent would request to take care of the kids to have companionship, to gain extra help around the house or to help out the child’s family. Some of the kids she spoke to expressed a desire to leave to ease their parents’ burden. Leinaweaver told The Herald she found many “layers of motivation” that were in the end “difficult to un-tangle.”

“The thing I miss most about Peru is the people I got to know,” Leinaweaver said. “One of the strange things about anthropology is we’re trying to find out about inter-esting anthropological (phenomena), but because we stay there so long . . . often it becomes a friendship.”

Leinaweaver is on leave this semester. While she was studying families in Peru, she was a single, childless PhD student. Now, she’s taking phone calls with her newborn baby in hand. She writes articles in between the baby’s naps, she told The Herald, and her latest work is on Peruvian immigrants in Spain. She said she spent the last two sum-mers in Spain, comparing young Pe-ruvians who have been adopted by Spanish families to the children of Peruvian families who migrated to Spain. Some of these families were the ones she encountered during her work in Peru.

“In some sense, it’s a continuation of the earlier study,” she said. “I’m looking at the same question in a transnational sphere: adoption ver-sus migration, how are they similar or different.”

Next year, Leinaweaver will bring her “communication skills into the classroom” by teaching an introduc-tory anthropology course, Lutz said.

“I love to talk about my research when I’m teaching,” Leinaweaver said. “That is a way to make an-thropology more real to students, to show pictures and say this is me doing fieldwork — harvesting po-tatoes and looking like an idiot. I think that incorporating that level of personal experience can be really effective in the classroom.”

Prof’s book explores Peruvian kinship bonds

Peters said. “We saw absolutely fantastic il-

lustrations,” Peters said. “I told ev-erybody in our company that this book would become a real classic children’s book.”

A K Peters sold the book to mathematicians at various confer-ences, Peters explained.

“I showed the book to (Keith Devlin) at the last mathematics con-ference,” Peters said, adding that NPR responded very quickly.

“I believe mathematics is some-thing that is completely misunder-stood by the public because of bad teaching,” Peters said.

He said he recalled an e-mail he received in which Schwartz was de-scribed as “a new Dr. Seuss.”

“You Can Count on Monsters” won first prize in the children’s cat-egory in the annual Book Builders of Boston competition this spring, Peters said.

Schwartz said he believes that his previous publications with A K Pe-ters allowed him to get his children’s book “in the back door,” he said.

“The children’s book market is brutally competitive.”

NPR features kids’ book

continued from page 8

continued from page 8

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editorial & Letter6 the Brown Daily heraldwednesday, February 2, 2011

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E D I TO R I A L CO M I C b y s a m r o s e n f e l d

“Fish Co. was an equal-opportunity place.”— Kate Whalen ’07

E D I TO R I A L

Brown’s independent bookstore has long been a point of pride among members of the community. Most other Ivy League schools’ official bookstores are actually specialized outposts of Barnes & Noble.

In fact, the Brown Alumni Magazine reported that a University committee recommended outsourcing the bookstore to a chain like Barnes & Noble or Borders in 2007 before a protest movement sprang up arguing that “an independent bookstore would be more responsive to the community’s needs.” Ultimately, this position carried the day.

Students and administrators have put up with some of the drawbacks of this arrangement — not the least of which is the significantly higher price for textbooks — for various reasons. Indeed, the current situation is buttressed by the pride of independence and an almost automatic, typically Brunonian opposition to the kind of corporatization that a Borders takeover of the bookstore would represent.

And for the most part, the bookstore actually was refreshingly easy to use. The generous textbook return policy in particular often made the bookstore competitive with other textbook vendors despite the greater cost of textbooks. With unlimited returns throughout shopping period, ten-day returns after shopping period and no questions asked through-out, the bookstore facilitated a liberal shopping schedule and eliminated a lot of stress that would otherwise attend the purchase of textbooks.

This is why we were so disappointed to learn of the bookstore’s recent change to its return policy. The Herald recently reported that under the new policy, returns will only be allowed three days after purchase during shopping period, only for dropped courses for the next two weeks and not at all for the remainder of the semester. What’s worse, all returns must be accompanied by physical proof in the form of an official transcript, course schedule or drop slip.

This is a tremendous change for the worse at the bookstore. We understand that, as Director of Bookstore Administration Steven Souza told The Herald, some students previously abused the generous return policy to avoid actually paying for books. Some alternatives to the new policy come to mind; the bookstore could prevent a student from buying a book he or she has already bought and returned, for example.

However, this new policy is a serious overreaction that immediately eliminates any advantages the bookstore may have had over other retailers like Amazon.com. At Amazon, textbooks are usually signifi-cantly cheaper than at the bookstore, as students can see from Mocha’s side-by-side comparison, and two-day shipping is free for all students through the new Amazon Student program. Perhaps most importantly, though, Amazon permits returns for a full month after purchase, and we’ve heard the mailroom can help with shipping.

In our view, the bookstore has shot itself in the foot with this new return policy, which will undoubtedly cause many students to try out alternative methods for their textbook purchases. It might even lose more revenue from disappointed customers than the previous return policy cost.

Like many Brown students, we support the continued independence of the bookstore. It’s actually a nice place, especially after the recent renovations. But this misguided change in the return policy has seri-ously damaged its appeal to students and undermines the argument that an independent store can be responsive to our needs. We urge the bookstore to reconsider the changes and look into other, more sensible reforms that won’t have such a negative impact on students, shopping period and the bookstore itself.

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opinions 7the Brown Daily heraldwednesday, February 2, 2011

Two recent opinions columnists have ex-pressed different views on the Reserve Of-ficer Training Corps issue. Chris Norris-LeBlanc (“The ROTC Question,” Jan. 28) paints a political picture: Brown should not endorse the army by allowing an ROTC presence on campus. Heath Mayo (“The ROTC Answer,” Jan. 31) rejects the politi-cized view in favor of one centered around patriotism: Brown has a responsibility to support the forces protecting us abroad.

The issue, while it can be made about politics and patriotism, should be about neither. As much as Brown students tend to be of a liberal persuasion, the University would be going a step too far in continuing to ban ROTC based on an apparently uni-versal disapproval of our military’s actions. We send many students each year to be in-vestment bankers and consultants on Wall Street — the actions and moral choices of whom I frequently question. But it would be ridiculous to stop Goldman Sachs from recruiting at Brown. Clearly, the situa-tions have differences, but the point is that Brown has little business unilaterally op-posing the military and everything it does through a ban on ROTC.

Does that mean we have a patriotic duty to support our military in all of its

endeavors? No. As a Brown student gener-ally skeptical of much of our internation-al activity in the past few decades, I stand strongly by the claim that my skepticism does not preclude my patriotism. Brown students can and should continue to ques-tion our policy abroad. We can continue to do that even with an ROTC option here — in fact, it might make our questioning even more relevant.

Ay, there’s the rub, and now we come to what will likely be the most controver-sial part of this column. I think we gener-ally have very little direct experience with

or connection to the U.S. military. Relative-ly few of us have acquaintances, let alone close friends or siblings, in the armed forc-es. An ROTC presence on campus would be exactly that — a presence that we hardly ever see now. It makes me cringe on Veter-ans’ Day when Brown students uncomfort-ably give a wide berth around uniformed men or women, wondering what business the army has on a campus like ours.

Frankly, if more students at universi-ties like Brown were to enter ROTC, and by extension the U.S. military, I think we just might give that military — and the missions it undertakes — a little more rapt attention. Perhaps if more of us actually knew about U.S. military presences the world over and had met some of the women and men mak-ing up those presences, we would be in a better position to make the changes we want to see in our foreign policy.

Countless articles in recent years have exposed how much of the U.S. military is made up of recruits from rural America,

most of whom are from poor or lower-middle-class families. For all that Brown students tend to criticize the military, we certainly don’t have much of a role in it. If we, and others like us, had more of a pres-ence in, or exposure to, the armed forces, perhaps — dare I say it? — we would do more than passively disapprove of its ac-tions. Coming at the same point from an-other angle, our judgment of our current

military leadership and decision-making does not have to color our judgment of peers interested in such a career, nor does it have to color the program in which they have chosen to enroll in order to achieve their goals. An ROTC presence at Brown would invite, I believe, a more dynamic dis-cussion about the U.S. military and a more nuanced perspective from those inside and outside the program.

In sum, I see the ROTC issue as one of choice and awareness. No one would be forced to enter the program, and quite honestly, I don’t predict it would be very big here. But allowing that option would open the range of experiences and perspec-tives on our campus. It could also help to populate the top tiers of the military with some well-educated Brown students who have trained in an environment of great ideological diversity. Furthermore, a clos-er-to-home experience with army recruit-ment and training might spur those of us opposed to certain military choices to back up our arguments more and take them far-ther.

Whether it’s about politics or patrio-tism, I stand where I usually do: Let’s have a healthy debate about it. I believe that de-bate would be enriched by the participation of Brown students also interested in a mili-tary career.

Chelsea Waite ’11 could have put this article on a sign at the Rally

to Restore Sanity.

Politics and patriotism in the ROTC issue? No thanks

In President Obama’s recent State of the Union address, we heard repeated appeals to renew America’s long-term competitive-ness and to “win the future” against emerg-ing rivals like India and China. Similarly, in the decade following Ruth Simmons’ hir-ing as President in 2001, Brown has seen a heightened emphasis on becoming more competitive with other schools in the fight to attract the best students in the country and from around the world.

After inheriting a stalled and stagnant campus, the Simmons administration quickly initiated a raft of reforms under the Plan for Academic Enrichment. Many of them were incredibly beneficial, ranging from need-blind admissions for domestic, non-transfer students, to impressive in-creases in fundraising and faculty hiring.

But with the huge changes the school has seen comes a significant risk of losing the educational culture and university-college model that make Brown so attractive in the first place. In many cases, Brown’s leader-ship seems to be taking its cues more from trying to copy Harvard, Yale and Princeton — the “HYP(e)” schools for short — than from trying to improve Brown’s unique cul-ture. Just take how the recent tenure reform debate was sparked by the fact that Brown has a considerably higher rate of tenure ap-proval than other Ivy League schools, and how a principal argument for establishing the new school of engineering was “well, all

the other Ivy League schools have one.”Now, I don’t mean to suggest here that

Simmons has some agenda to undermine the New Curriculum and the university-college model. Far from it — although Si-mon Liebling’s columns such as “Brown, Inc.” do have significant merit. Rather, the risk is that in the rush to make improve-ments, Brown’s culture will be overlooked through neglect and die a slow “death by a thousand cuts.” By the time we realize a shift has happened, it will already be too late.

Brown has long had an emphasis on the liberal arts rather than professional or vo-cational training. In 1946, then-president

Henry Wriston lauded the University’s in-clusion of engineering within the liberal arts college rather than “segregating it in a separate school.” Similarly, Wriston not-ed how Brown had eliminated previous experiments with programs in medicine, agriculture, business and forestry because they were found to be “fundamentally in-compatible” with Brown’s commitment to liberal arts learning.

Today, of course, it is no secret that Brown has a rapidly expanding medical school, which soon will be geographically separated from the main campus and is in

the process of de-emphasizing the Program in Liberal Medical Education that kept it unique and relevant to the liberal arts. Add to that the new school of engineering (ev-eryone else was doing it!) and rumors of a future School of Community Health, and we see a subtle yet fundamental transfor-mation away from Brown’s university-col-lege identity.

In the midst of these changes, we seem to have lost sight of the best way for Brown to compete — by staking out a position that is uniquely “Brown” rather than becoming an also-ran “Yale Jr.”

For the subset of present and future stu-dents who are looking for a self-directed

liberal arts education at a school with a strong focus on undergraduates and the resources of a university (as I once was), I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Brown is the best choice in the world. There are plenty of great options for pre-profes-sionals, but if you try to think of other true university-colleges, it’s hard to get much further than perhaps Wesleyan or Dart-mouth. If Brown abandons its unique fo-cus and model, it would leave a gaping void in the college landscape. By instead com-peting with ourselves to be the best Brown University possible, we will be de facto

competitive with both colleges and univer-sities by offering the best of both worlds.

With so much change, we are at a tenu-ous crossroads. But there are steps we can take to preserve our educational culture while still improving the school. First, let’s make sure that we aren’t promoting the segmenting of the University into many schools without good reason. Liberal edu-cation thrives at the intersection of many different disciplines, so we should be wary of putting up barriers to interdisciplinary contact by breaking up the University.

Second, we must create incentives for professors to engage in undergraduate teaching and especially advising over ex-clusively prioritizing their research. Stu-dents come to Brown looking for under-graduate excellence, and faculty members must be here for the same reason. The New Curriculum, with its characteristic free-dom and resulting reliance on strong ad-vising, dies without a faculty deeply com-mitted to undergraduates.

Finally and most importantly, we need vigilance, energy and passion from the stu-dent body regarding the University’s gov-ernance and future. We should promote and be proud — not suspicious — of our differences from other schools. We cannot expect faculty and administration to main-tain the New Curriculum and a culture that most benefits undergraduate students — we must fight for that ourselves.

Kurt Walters ’11 was ecstatic to see a page labeled “The university college” in

the bookstore’s brown promo pamphlet. Here’s looking at you, brown PR team.

How we compete

In the midst of these changes, we seem to have lost sight of the best way for brown to compete — by staking out

a position that is uniquely “brown” rather than becoming an also-ran “Yale Jr.”

Frankly, if more students at universities like brown were to enter ROTC and by extension the u.S. military, I think we just might give that military — and the missions it

undertakes — a little more rapt attention.

bY CHELSEA WAITEopinions Columnist

bY KuRT WALTERSopinions Columnist

Daily Heraldthe Brown

Campus newswednesday, February 2, 2011

By krIstIna klaraStaff Writer

The fourth floor of the Sciences Library and a small area on Level A of the Rockefeller Library were recently renovated to create ad-ditional places for quiet study.

“Recently we’ve had more students ask us for quieter study spaces,” said David Banush, associ-ate University librarian for access services, adding that demand for such spaces in the SciLi was par-ticularly high. The new space is divided into four rooms of varying size, which Banush said are “first-come, first-served,” and a larger, open space which is designated for quiet study.

In the main room, several white tables dot the variegated purple and brown rug. Freestanding white boards intersect the tables, and there are moveable purple divid-ers that can be used to section off study spaces.

“I’m a fan,” said Sumitha Ra-man ’13. “It’s quiet and big and open.”

Steven Lavallee, head of the Friedman Study Center, said re-quests for more space were voiced multiple times at a Friedman-Rock Advisory Council meeting. The committee consists of four stu-dents appointed by the Under-graduate Council of Students and four appointed by Brown’s library faculty.

Stacks on the A level of the Rock were removed to make room

for the new study space, and many shelves of books were moved to the Library Collections Annex. “It re-ally reflects the changing nature of the use of library facilities,” Banush said. “We’re not acquiring as much printed material as we used to and people aren’t using it as much.”

Banush said SciLi attendance figures from the last academic year were some of the highest ever. “We could probably sell seats at auction during exam period.”

There will be seating for 96 people on the fourth floor of the SciLi, Banush said. New chairs are scheduled to arrive soon.

The fourth floor of the SciLi will be open the same hours as the rest of the building — until 2 a.m. Sunday through Thursday

and until 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.

“I’m just anxious to see how students like it,” said Lavallee.

“We will certainly try to make our facilities more friendly to stu-dent needs,” Banush said.

While the fourth floor of the SciLi was renovated primarily due to student requests, the renova-tions at the Rock had more practi-cal reasons.

The renovated space on Level A is right near the art books, many of which are large and on reserve for use in the library only. The tables near the books will allow people to look at them with more ease, Banush said, although he added that students had requested more comfortable study spaces in the

Rock. The new area will seat 15 to 20 students, and a new L-shaped rug has been ordered for the space.

The lobby of the Rock has also undergone renovations — the re-ception desk where visitors previ-ously presented their identification for entry has been replaced with a set of electronic doors that open automatically when the proper identification card is swiped.

Banush said he wasn’t sure where the money for the reno-vations came from, but that “the money from these sorts of things typically comes from donations.”

Raman said it was her second time in the space, adding that she thought she would probably return to the fourth floor. “It’s always a good thing to have more space.”

Libraries get improved study spaces

Evan Thomas / HeraldRenovations to parts of the Sciences Library and Rockefeller Library have created increased study space for students.

By JUlIa lonGorIaContributing Writer

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Jessaca Leinaweaver won the 2010 Margaret Mead Award for her first published book, “The Circulation of Children: Kinship, Adoption, and Morality in Andean Peru.” The award, given each year by the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology, will be formally presented in April.

“It’s the most prestigious award for a junior scholar in anthropol-ogy,” said Professor of Anthropology Catherine Lutz, chair of the depart-ment. Leinaweaver has “a very acute sensibility as to the lives of other people,” Lutz added. “She has a real ear for how people think and experi-ence the world in different ways and a very strong ability to write what she’s learned.”

The award bears the name of an-thropologist Margaret Mead, who had a “knack for communicating her findings to the public,” Leinaweaver said. According to the association’s website, winners “interpret anthro-pological data and principles” in a way that is accessible to a world audience, not just anthropologists. Leinaweaver, who joined the faculty in 2008, is the second member of Brown’s anthropology department to receive this award. Professor of Anthropology Dan Smith accepted it in 2008.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Leinaweav-er said. “To me, it says I was suc-cessful in writing a book that can be read by many people. So it’s not just for my anthropological colleagues with extensive training in theory and methods of the discipline. For example, my husband’s grandmother read it.”

Her book opens, “This child is abandoned.” Leinaweaver brings readers along on the journey she took from 2001 to 2003 as a PhD student in Ayacucho, Peru. The book examines a phenomenon she calls “child circulation,” where Peruvian children live away from home, often with an aunt or a friend of the family. Peruvian government and adoption officials would sometimes view these children as abandoned.

“I was interested in finding out why that was so common,” Lein-aweaver said. “I saw it as a sort of adoption, even though sometimes kids would only move temporarily, like for a year or two.”

The book compares this phenom-enon to another method of relocat-ing children: legal adoption. Ulti-mately, Leinaweaver was interested in “how the government and Que-chua-speaking people thought dif-ferently about where people should be and who should take care of their children,” she said. She gathered a wealth of perspectives, interview-ing social workers, parents of the children, receiving families and the kids themselves.

Prof’s book wins 2010 Mead award

By Ben kUtnerStaff Writer

From the author of “The Pentagram Integrals for Inscribed Polygons” and “Spherical CR Geometry and Dehn Surgery” comes “You Can Count on Monsters,” a colorful picture book featuring 100 math-themed monsters. Professor of Mathematics Richard Schwartz’s first children’s book offers young children a unique math experience.

The book, recently featured on National Public Radio, is filled with colorful graphics of monsters that correspond with the numbers one to 100, presenting young children with a unique and exciting way to learn about concepts like prime numbers and factoring. The graphic of each monster is related to the number it represents — the number five mon-ster, for example, is a five-sided star.

The project originally took the form of a poster of the 100 monsters, which Schwartz said he had made for one of his daughters.

“I wanted to just make some-thing for her,” he said.

Schwartz said he made several comic books when he was in his 20s and that creating graphics is a hobby of his. He created the pictures of the

monsters using X Fig, a program used by many mathematicians that brings up shapes and geometrical patterns, he said.

The book contains three sec-tions — an introduction explain-ing the concepts in the book, the

actual graphics of the 100 monsters and two appendices at the end of the book containing the Sieve of Eratosthenes and Euclid’s proof for prime numbers.

“I kind of did it in bursts,” Schwartz said. “I’d estimate the

whole book took a thousand hours.” After receiving coverage Jan.

22 from Keith Devlin on NPR, the book leapt to the number-one posi-tion on Amazon for the children’s math book category for over a day, Schwartz said, one year after the book was published.

The NPR coverage was “essen-tially a four-minute glowing ad-vertisement,” Schwartz said. “It was on a Saturday morning, I actually overslept.”

Schwartz published the children’s book with A K Peters, Ltd., a pub-lishing company that focuses on books related to computer science and mathematics. Schwartz had sev-eral previous publications with the company, but he said they were very mathematically complex.

“You Can Count on Monsters” is the first book for very young chil-dren published by A K Peters, said Klaus Peters, a co-founder of the company and a former professor of mathematics at the University of Erlangen in Nuremberg, Ger-many. The company had previously published other books for middle-school children, but this book is intended for children six and up,

Math and monsters add up in children’s book

Courtesy of Richard SchwartzMonsters, like this one representing a factoring tree, fill Schwartz’s book.

continued on page 5continued on page 5