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The Brown Daily Herald

Commencement 2011
Daily Herald
the Brown

Commencement 2011 | May 29, 2011 | Serving the community daily since 1891

G raduation is a time for cliches, and in this mo-

ment of finality, we have decided to embrace
it. And indeed, oh, the places we’ll go!
commencement
2 Schedule of events
But as we reflect on our four years at Brown, it
3 Senior orators
is hard not to also look back on the places we’ve
gone. We’ve moved from Keeney to Keene Street, 5 Baccalaureate address and
from Convocation to Commencement. And as we honorary degree recipients
have grown and changed over the past four years,
Brown has, too.
“Out there things can happen and frequently cover story
do,” Dr. Seuss wrote. As we sat on our perch atop
10 Oh, the places Brown’s gone
College Hill and in our newsroom, things did hap-
pen. Brown spread across the world, recruiting the 13 Mingling cultures
best and brightest from around the globe in droves.
17 Closer to home: growing campus
The University turned old factories into a medical
school, gave the arts a new home and drastically 19 Where Brown didn’t go
expanded its physical footprint. Science took on 19 The consequences of expansion
new prominence with buildings, departments and
research programs. 21 Growth in science
In many ways, Brown is now a different school
than the one we entered in 2007. And with double
the applications for the class of 2015 than when we
features
applied, who’s to say if we would even make the cut 24 Richard Holbrooke ’62
today? But as we — the class of 2011 — walk out
the same gates we walked through four years ago, 28 Putting the “Blog” in Daily Herald
we will have changed, too.
So, Brown, we pass on the message to you that
Dr. Seuss has written to us: “You have brains in looking back 34
your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can
steer yourself in any direction you choose.” In four senior survey 38
years, you’ve gone many places, and yet there is still
growing to do. There are changes to be made and senior columns 44
new things to see. But everyone keeps telling us
that’s the fun part. class of 2011 by the numbers 48

— The 120th Editorial Board final thoughts 48

editors writers creative

Rebecca Ballhaus Brian Mastroianni Jonathan Bateman

Ben Hyman George Miller
David Chung Lindor Qunaj Gili Kliger
Sophia Li Seth Motel
Greg Jordan-Detamore Mark Raymond Anna Migliaccio
Emmy Liss Joanna Wohlmuth
Sarah Forman Anne Simons Hilary Rosenthal
Chaz Kelsh
Talia Kagan Emma Wohl Nick Sinnott-Armstrong
2 The Brown Daily Herald

C O M M E N C E M E N T 2 011
schedule of major events
Fr i d a y , M a y 27 Sunday, May 29
5:30 p.m. – 9 p.m. 9:45 a.m.
Brown Bear Buffet, Commencement Procession Starts
one of Brown’s oldest Faunce Arch, Main Green
traditions. A delicious
meal and entertainment by 10:15 a.m.
Brown a cappella groups. Graduate School Convocation
Sharpe Refectory, Main Ceremonial awarding of degrees.
Dining Room Lincoln Field

9 p.m. – 1 a.m. 10:30 a.m.

Campus Dance, The Medical School Convocation
sponsored by the Brown Ceremonial awarding of degrees.
Alumni Association. The First Unitarian Church
Main Green, Lincoln Field
12:10 p.m. estimated
College Ceremony
Saturday, May 28 Live video broadcast on the Main
Green and in Salomon Center, Sayles
9:30 a.m. – 2 p.m. report directly to the Hall and the Pizzitola Center. Live
Commencement First Baptist Church in audiocast into Manning Chapel and
Forums, a series of America at 1:45 p.m. Meehan Auditorium.
academic colloquia Main Green The Grounds of the First Baptist
by faculty, alums and Church in America
distinguished guests.2:30 p.m.
Baccalaureate Service 12:45 p.m. estimated
1:30 p.m. The multi-faith University Ceremony. Senior Orations
Baccalaureate ceremony will be video- and awarding of honorary degrees.
Procession Formation broadcast on the Main Main Green
Graduating seniors Green and in Salomon
assemble on Waterman Center and Sayles Hall. 2:15 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. estimated
Street, facing east The First Baptist Diploma Ceremonies for each
toward Thayer Street, Church in America department at assigned locations, as
with the line beginning listed in the Commencement program.
at Faunce Arch wearing 4 p.m. – 6 p.m.
cap and gown. In Brown Daily Herald In the event of a severe storm, the Commencement
procession will be cancelled and the storm plan will
case of heavy rain, Alumni Reunion go into effect. A message will be posted on the Brown
graduating seniors 195 Angell St. website and sent via text message to all seniors.
 Commencement 2011
3

SENIOR ORATORS
JACOB COMBS ’11
When Combs attended Brown’s Summer
Session after his sophomore year in high
school, he fell in love with the University.
He decided Brown was the place for him,
and he applied early decision.
An English concentrator from Los Ange-
les, Combs recently completed a thesis com-
paring the adolescent experiences of Juliet
from “Romeo and Juliet” and Maria from
“West Side Story.” He produced his own in-
terpretation, examining literary adaptations
and theoretical frameworks of adolescence
as well as the characters’ experiences in the
context of their families and ancestors.
Combs will speak about the effect Virginia
Woolf’s work has had on him. He first dis-
covered her work in a class last semester,
and he said Woolf taught him to read and
write in a new way and appreciate “what it
can do for us as people.”
“I really found myself responding to her
work,” he said. “It made my whole experi-
ence as an English concentrator come to-
gether.”
Combs has also been heavily involved in
the music scene at Brown. He has played
the piano through the Applied Music Pro-
gram, directed two shows, composed two
musicals, taken composition, theory and
history courses in the Department of Music
and more.
“I find music an amazing way to express
myself emotionally,” he said, “and I love
writing music because it’s so intangible, yet
it speaks so directly to us.”
Combs said he eventually hopes to be-
come a composer and a lyricist. He will be
teaching at Summerbridge San Francisco
this summer and plans to attend graduate
school in the future.

ELYSE VyVy TRINH ’11.5

Trinh, a student in the Program in
Liberal Medical Education, came to
Brown from Fremont, Calif., hoping
to eventually use her medical degree
for the betterment of the community.
She was drawn by the freedom of the
University’s curriculum and looked for-
ward to exploring various disciplines,
including history.
But, said Trinh, who will be graduat-
ing in December as a human biology
concentrator, “throughout my time at
Brown, I felt a lot of conflict between
art and science.” She initially focused
extensively on the humanities but be-
came worried that the classes would not
prepare her technically for health work
in the community. When she began to
explore human biology, she realized she
was losing sight of her original goals of
gaining a comprehensive education.
At Commencement, Trinh will speak
about the “tension” she experienced
between the humanities and the sci-
ences and the necessity of “finding the
balance.”
Trinh said her future is not yet set in
stone, but she plans to work within the
realm of medicine and public health. In
the fall, she will be traveling to South
Africa, China and India with the Interna-
tional Honors Program to study health
within the context of local communities,
and in the fall of 2012, she will begin
her medical education at Alpert Medi-
cal School.

— David Chung
photos by Hilary Rosenthal

Honorary degree recipients
At this year’s Commencement, Brown will
award honorar y degrees to 10 individuals
prominent in a variety of fields, including
film, public service and historical scholarship.
The recipients were selected by the Board of Fellows
Commencement 2011
5
of the Corporation, based on recommendations
from the Advisor y Committee on Honorar y
Degrees. The committee, which is composed of
faculty, staff and students, solicits nominations
from the campus community each spring.

Kenneth Roth ’77

Roth has served as the executive director of Human
Rights Watch since 1993, during which time the orga-
nization has grown substantially and now operates in
more than 90 countries, documenting war crimes in
the Balkans and working to convict Latin American
dictators, among many other accomplishments.
After graduating from Brown, Roth continued his
studies at Yale Law School and worked in the U.S. At-
torney’s Office in New York as a federal prosecutor.
Roth continues to write pieces on many human rights
issues for a wide range of newspapers and academic
journals.
Roth will be the speaker at this year’s Baccalaure-
ate Ser vice on Saturday, May 28, at 2:30 p.m. There
will be a live video broadcast of the ceremony on the
Main Green. He will be awarded an honorar y degree
along with the nine other chosen individuals during
Sunday’s University Ceremony.

Katie King Crowley ’97 Arianna Huffington

Currently the head
coach of the women’s
ice hockey team at
Boston College, King
Crowley won gold, sil-
ver and bronze medals
in the 1998, 2002 and
2006 Winter Olympics,
respectively. At Brown,
she was a star athlete,
excelling at both ice
hockey and softball. She
scored 123 goals on the
ice hockey team, setting
a still-unbeaten record
for the Brown team, and was also named the Ivy League
Player of the Year for ice hockey and softball. At the time
she retired from the Olympics, she held the record for most
goals — 23 — scored by an American in the games. Crowley
has also taught at various hockey development camps.
Co-founder of the widely
read news site the Huff-
ington Post, Huffington
is also an author, syndi-
cated columnist and host
of “Both Sides Now,” a
radio program focused
on political issues in the
United States. Originally
from Greece, Huffing-
ton moved to the United
Kingdom during her
teenage years and stud-
ied economics at Cam-
bridge University, where
she was also the president of the institution’s large
debating society. In 2009, Forbes magazine included
her in its list of the most influential women in media.
Huffington has also been involved in California politics,
running for governor against Arnold Schwarzenegger.
6 The Brown Daily Herald

Honorary degree recipients

David Mumford
Mumford, a professor emeri-
tus of applied mathematics
at Brown, joined the Univer-
sity’s faculty in 1996, where
he helped found the interdis-
ciplinary Brain Science Pro-
gram. A renowned mathema-
tician, Mumford has studied
and made advancements in
algebraic geometry, computer
vision and pattern theory, and
is best known for his invention
of geometric invariant theory.
In fall 2010, he was awarded
the National Medal of Science,
the nation’s highest scientific
honor, for the work he has
done throughout his career.
Though his last graduate stu-
dent advisee graduated last
spring, he still maintains ties to
the University and his former
collaborators.
Nicholas D. Kristof
Kristof, a two-time recipient
of the prestigious Pulitzer
Prize and a New York Times
op-ed columnist, has traveled
extensively to report on issues
such as human rights abuses,
global health and the environ-
ment. In the past seven years,
he has traveled to the Darfur
region nearly a dozen times
and written many columns on
the conflict. A 1981 graduate
of Harvard, Kristof also stud-
ied at Oxford University as a
Rhodes Scholar and has writ-
ten a number of books with
his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, in-
cluding the bestseller “Half
the Sky: Turning Oppression
into Opportunity for Women
Worldwide.” He was the New
York Times’ first blogger and
has a particular interest in on-
line journalism.

Zhenkai Zhao
Zhao, also known by his pseudonym Bei Dao,
is a Chinese poet of international fame, best
recognized for his poem “Answer.” Though
he was initially a member of the pro-Mao Red
Guards, he eventually grew critical of the
government and his poetry became popu-
lar among pro-democracy groups in China.
In the late 1980s, he was not permitted to
return to his home country and has written,
lived and taught throughout Europe and
the United States ever since. Zhao’s work
has been translated into many different lan-
guages and he has been nominated for the
Nobel Prize in Literature multiple times. Just
four years ago, Zhao moved back to Asia with
his family, accepting an offer as a professor
of humanities at the Chinese University of
Hong Kong. Some of his compilations of
poetry include “The August Sleepwalker,”
“Landscape Over Zero” and “The Rose of
Time.”
 Commencement 2011
7

Lynn Ida Nottage ’86

Nottage, a playwright who went
on to study at Yale’s School of
Drama and then work for the
international human rights or-
ganization Amnesty Interna-
tional after her time at Brown,
has written a number of plays
primarily on themes relating to
the experience of African-Amer-
icans and women. These very
popular shows, which include
“Intimate Apparel” and “Ru-
ined,” have been produced in
many theaters across the coun-
try and internationally. Nottage
has also received multiple prizes
recognizing her work, includ-
ing a Guggenheim Fellowship
in 2005, a MacArthur Genius
Award in 2007 and most recently,
a Pulitzer Prize in 2009.
Lisa Randall
Currently a professor at Har-
vard, Randall is one of the
most cited figures in the field
of theoretical physics. She pre-
viously taught at Princeton,
where she became the first
woman to receive tenure in the
school’s physics department.
Randall, who has been admit-
ted into the National Acad-
emy of Sciences and has won
numerous awards and prizes
for her work, researches el-
ementary particles and cos-
mology in an effort to refine
and expand understanding of
the interactions of matter and
the extra dimensions of space.
Her regular articles, TV and
radio appearances and lectures
have put her very much in the
public eye. In 2007, she was
named one of the most influen-
tial people of the year by Time
magazine.

David R. Scott Jack Nicholson P’12.5

Scott, a retired Air Force pilot who
studied at West Point and the Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology, has
been in outer space for more than 500
hours. A Gemini and Apollo astronaut,
Scott has been involved in numerous
missions, including three excursions
onto the moon. He also worked as an
executive at NASA and was awarded
three Distinguished Service Medals
for his work with the agency. Since
then, Scott has served as a consultant
for various TV shows and movies about
outer space flight, such as “Apollo 13.”
He is currently the president of Baron
Company Ltd., a company looking into
potential opportunities in the commer-
cial space sector.
Well-known throughout the world for
his roles in films such as “One Flew
Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Terms of
Endearment,” “A Few Good Men,”
and “The Departed,” Nicholson has
worked on more than 60 feature films.
He has won three Academy Awards
and has more nominations than any
other male actor in history and in
1999, was awarded a Golden Globe
lifetime achievement award. Aside
from acting, Nicholson has also been
involved in directing and producing
films, and is a prominent fan of the Los
Angeles Lakers, attending virtually all
of the NBA team’s home games.
— Lindor Qunaj
10 The Brown Daily Herald

Oh, the places

Brown’s gone:
The University’s bid to go global

BY SARAH FORMAN

Since 2006, when the youngest reunion class last passed through the Van
Wickle Gates, Brown has embarked on an internationalization process with more
fervor and coordination than ever before. Brown has more applicants and alums
living abroad, more rigorous requirements for International Relations concentrators
and more partnerships with research institutions around the world, making it, undeni-
ably, a more internationally focused school.

‘A whole higher level’
Of course, Brown has been building its
worldwide presence for the better part of the
last century, explained Vice President for
International Affairs Matthew Gutmann P’14.
“We’ve been a global university for a long,
long time,” he said, adding that for decades
Brown has worked to incorporate foreign per-
spectives into the classroom, offered study
abroad opportunities and encouraged faculty
to collaborate with their counterparts abroad.
The precursor to the Watson Institute for In-
ternational Studies — the Center for Foreign
Policy Development — had already been in
place for 25 years when the latest drive to
internationalize began.
“This is not new,” he said. “What’s new is
that we’re taking it to a whole higher level.”
It all started in 2006, when President Ruth
Simmons listed increasing Brown’s inter-
national profile as one of the top priorities
for the next academic year. At its October
meeting that fall, the Corporation — Brown’s
highest governing body — authorized a 30
percent increase in financial aid for inter-
national students and offered a series of
recommendations to strengthen the school’s
global reach.
As a result, newly appointed Provost Da-
vid Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98 took the helm of
an internationalization committee that tried
to “think deeply about how Brown could
become more of a world university,” he said.
In its 2007 report, the committee called for
more international research and educational
initiatives, better University-wide coordina-
tion of internationally focused coursework
and the creation of advisory councils to focus
on understudied world regions.
The report also identified the “distinct Eu-
ropean bias” to study abroad patterns, stating
that although 35 percent of the junior class
spent a semester or year abroad in 2005-06,
more students needed to be drawn to India,
China, Africa and other areas.
In the fall of 2007, University Hall unveiled
a new office dedicated entirely to fulfilling
these objectives, and David Kennedy ’76
stepped in to lead it, as Brown’s first-ever
vice president for international affairs.
Gutmann — who took over for Kennedy
in September 2009 — now directs the office
and manages many of the key aspects of
Brown’s internationalization: coordinating
funding for international projects, overseeing
the annual Brown International Advanced
Research Institutes conference and building
and maintaining meaningful partnerships
with foreign research universities.
“I think there’s a great deal of enthusiasm
from the faculty and students. There’s a lot of
support from the administration,” Gutmann
said. “The fact is that if you want to be a top
university in the world today, you’ve got to
be working with the top people, you’ve got
to be attracting the top students.” And that
means internationalizing.
Over 100 courses
Though Brown had an international focus
long before 2006, the University needed
an organizing body to coordinate all of its
resources and to “highlight those aspects
of Brown that are international already,”
Kertzer said.
For example, even before the Global
Health Initiative emerged in 2009 as an out-
growth of the internationalization process,
Brown boasted a wealth of global health
projects in over 30 countries involving more
than 100 faculty members. But these were
mostly run independently and without a
unifying focus.
“Nobody was minding the store,” said
Susan Cu-Uvin, professor of obstetrics, gyne-
cology and medicine at The Miriam Hospital
and the Warren Alpert Medical School, who
became director of the program. She said
it was so difficult to find information about
Brown’s international health programs that
the Consortium for Universities in Global
Health was not even sure whom to contact
when it tried to invite Brown to participate
in events.
Simply by building a website and sending
weekly emails, Cu-Uvin said, the Initiative
was able to better coordinate faculty efforts
and connect more people with resources. In
a particularly poignant example, the Initi-
atve put together a listing of all the courses
Brown already offered with relevance to
global health, and came up with over 100
classes spanning disciplines like Africana
Studies and Anthropology all the way to Po-
litical Science and Sociology. Pulling these
courses together not only alerts them to
each others’ existence and allows for col-
laboration, but it also means outsiders can
have a better picture of what global health
looks like at Brown, she said.
Furthermore, with a set of administra-
tors dedicated to supporting University-wide
global health initiatives, Brown has access
to more grant and fellowship opportunities
than it would with only the disconnected
efforts of individual research teams.
Many new funding opportunities require
that researchers combine multiple disci-
plines — like biomedicine and engineering or
anthropology and community health — and
a centralized office is well-poised to bring
those different specialties together, Cu-Uvin
said. The Initiative has been able to bring
in funding from the Framework in Global
Health, USAID and AIDS International.
Many of the area studies programs — like
Middle East Studies and the Center for Latin
American and Caribbean Studies — have
taken similar steps over the past few years,
expanding their online presence and their
Commencement 2011
11
listings of relevant coursework, research
opportunities, internships and job postings.
‘Year of’ series
Some of those area-studies programs have
also been heavily involved in the “Year of”
series, a new initiative that has brought two
semesters of University-wide focus to several
major world centers.
The Year of Latin America, Year of Africa
and Year of India were implemented for 2007-
08, 2008-09 and 2009-10 academic years,
respectively, and the upcoming year has al-
ready been established as the Year of China.
The months of lectures, video screenings,
conferences and discussions that compose
these endeavors bring energy and attention
to Brown’s efforts to expand its connections
to these parts of the world, said Dean of the
Faculty Rajiv Vohra P’07, who spearheaded
the Year of India.
With its 70 panel discussions, student
productions, lectures and more, the Year of
India provided a structure and framework for
a plethora of short-term programs that drew
immediate attention to India’s importance
on the global stage. Salman Rushdie’s talk
in February 2010 filled nearly every seat
in the Salomon Center, and the thousands
of attendees at last year’s Commencement
ceremonies saw President Ruth Simmons
present Indian historian Romila Thapar with
an honorary degree.
But the Year of India’s biggest success,
Vohra said, was in encouraging “long term
initiatives which have strengthened our re-
lationship to partners in India.”
“The real aim was to think of it as an in-
vestment in our future,” Vohra added. He
accompanied Simmons on a trip to Delhi
and Mumbai last March, as part of the Year
of India, and said her visit allowed Brown to
expand an existing exchange program with
St. Stephen’s College, an Indian university in
Delhi. While Brown students had travelled to
St. Stephen’s for study abroad in the past, the
program only became a full exchange when
they agreed to send a master’s student from
India to study at Brown.
“While that had been under discussion for
some time, we were able to use President
Simmons’ visit to St. Stephen’s College to
renew that agreement,” he said. The visit
also generated a lot of media attention in
India, making many more Indians aware
of Brown as a world-class academic center.
That media buzz, alongside longer-term ef-
forts by the Office for International Affairs
to increase Brown’s visibility, has lead to an
ever-growing alumni base and applicant pool
in India, Gutmann said.
In part to support alums and applicants,
Brown is now planning to build a new office
continued on next page
12 The Brown Daily Herald
Brown’s growing footprint
“Brown Plus One” at the University
of Edinburgh, begun 2011
Year of Latin America,
2007–08
in Delhi, India, he said.
Chung-I Tan, professor of physics and
past chair of the Faculty Executive Com-
mittee, said he hopes the upcoming Year of
China will be similarly beneficial for Brown’s
relationship to the most populous country
in the world.
“We certainly would like to leverage the
enthusiasm and activities we have now to
further Brown’s contacts and connections
with institutions abroad,” said Tan, who is
spearheading the initiative. Already, Tan is
working to involve the robust alumni base
in the area and faculty members from all
disciplines in the effort.
The program is a “very natural outgrowth
of this whole internationalization of Brown’s
curriculum,” Tan said, particularly because
it involves such a wide range of University
players. Every incoming first-year student
will be drawn in to the project, since Dean of
the College Katherine Bergeron chose Leslie
Chang’s “Factory Girls” as this year’s “First
Reading” to herald the Year of China, Tan
said. Because the year’s programming will
Joint business master’s
program, Instituto de
Empresa, begun 2010
Year of Africa,
Year of India,
2008–09
2009–10
address everything from traditional culture
and society to international perspectives
on China from the past century, Tan said
he hopes every discipline can find a way to
participate.
In March 2011, Tan told The Herald that
past “Year of” initiatives had not successfully
reached a large portion of the student body
and that he wanted to make sure the Year of
China was more successful with outreach.
Neither the Year of Africa nor the Year of
Latin America maintained much of a long-
term presence after they ended.
The Office for International Affairs is
supporting the Year of China, and it is also
working tirelessly to expand the long-term
connections that Tan hopes the year will
generate. Gutmann spent a week and a half
in the country this May meeting with repre-
sentatives from Chinese academic centers,
and he looked at offices opened in Beijing
and Shanghai by some of Brown’s peer in-
stitutions.
Gutmann said he would “love to see”
Brown open its own center in China — simi-
Year of China,
2011–12
“Brown Plus One” at the
Chinese University of Hong
Kong, begun 2011
lar to the one planned for India — and that
partnerships and exchanges between the
community at Brown and Chinese students
and faculty are continuing to grow. During
Simmons’ and Gutmann’s visit to China and
Hong Kong in November 2010, Brown repre-
sentatives signed two major memorandums
of understanding; one established a Nanjing-
Brown Forum in which social sciences and
humanities faculty at Nanjing University
and Brown will have annual exchanges, and
the other renewed the Zheijiang University-
Brown Medical School exchange program.
Other initiatives focused on environmental
research are also in the works.
What’s next?
“We have by no means achieved all of the
ambitious goals set for Brown as an interna-
tional University,” Simmons wrote in an email
to The Herald. “But we are well on our way.”
Because of the growing severity and
complexity of world problems and the in-
creasingly international nature of academia
and many professional occupations, Brown

must continue to intensify and expand its
internationalization efforts, Simmons wrote.
Among the many specific programs Brown
will start and expand over the next few years
is the Brown International Advanced Re-
search Institutes, a summer conference that
brings together hundreds of young faculty
members from around the world for colloqui-
ums and presentations, and sends them back
to their home countries with new professional
connections and scholarly understandings
coordinated by Brown, Gutmann said.
There is also a particularly strong focus
on bringing together international scholars
to address climate change, a discussion of
noting language expertise on students’ tran-
scripts and work being done to create more
English-language study abroad opportuni-
ties for engineering and science students,
he added.
A few of the more recently established
partnerships and study abroad opportuni-
ties — particularly for graduate students
— will also demand continued support from
the University. For the first time this year,
sophomores could apply to the “Brown Plus
Mingling cultures: Brown’s international student body
BY REBECCA BALLHAUS
Blair Cameron ’13 of New Zealand never
imagined that fraternities were really like
in the movies. But when he arrived in the
United States for the first time, he was in for
a surprise — “Oh, it’s actually like that,” he
remembered thinking.
For Sumitha Raman ’13, CVS was a fasci-
nating discovery. “It’s a pharmacy, but you
get basically anything and everything that
you could ever imagine,” she marveled.
Angela Wu ’11 found Americans’ personal
space boundaries stricter than in her home
country of Paraguay. “I always took it for
granted — it’s so normal to hug someone
when greeting them,” she said, “but I real-
ized that people get very uncomfortable.”
Whether it is the party scene or Thayer
Street’s many offerings, international stu-
dents arriving at Brown face a distinctly
different lifestyle that many label a “culture
shock.”
But this shock has not stopped Brown’s
ever-growing international student popu-
lation. Though the University’s admission
website boasts that about 10 percent of the
student population hails from abroad, “the
percentage is actually larger” when taking
into account students who are schooled
abroad but have American passports, and
other such technicalities, said Panetha Ott,
director of international admissions.
One” program — a new initiative where they
will graduate with a bachelor’s degree from
Brown and a master’s from either the Univer-
sity of Edinburgh in England or the Chinese
University of Hong Kong. These students
will spend an undergraduate semester or two
and a post-baccalaureate year at the partner
school, so they earn nearly two full years of
international experience with their degrees.
This year also marked the start of a joint
business master’s program with the Insti-
tuto de Empresa in Spain. The 24 students
in the inaugural class ­— representing 12
different industries and a dozen nationali-
ties — will have a chance to combine liberal
arts learning and international focus with
conventional business skills, The Herald
reported in March.
The Brown Plus One and joint business
master’s programs join the study abroad
programs in 10 countries Brown already of-
fers to undergraduates. Brown operates its
program under a consortia model — where
it uses partnerships with other universities
— rather than building campuses in other
countries. At the end of May, Gutmann is
Compared to similar institutions, Brown
is “slightly on the healthier side” in terms
of percentage of international students, Ott
added.
The Office of Admission does not strive to
consciously increase that number, though the
University will occasionally set a certain rate.
“There’s talent all over the world,” Ott
said. “We’re just getting the best students.”
“Historically, universities have thrived
when there have been people from all over
the world coming to the table to share their
ideas and share their cultures,” she added.
“Very often what (students) remember the
most is that the people next door to them
or down the hall from them came from a
very different background and that really
changed their lives.”
Brown receives the most international
applications from China, Canada, the United
Kingdom, Singapore, India and Korea, in
that order. Because the European Union al-
lows citizens of member countries to study
anywhere in the union for free or at very low
cost, applications from European countries
are relatively low, Ott said.
Foreign student admission is not need-
blind.
‘Freedom to explore’
Students choose to come to Brown from
Commencement 2011
13
meeting with the Council for Advanced Stud-
ies Abroad to discuss coordinating with other
American universities to start new consor-
tium programs in Turkey, Argentina, China
and other countries.
These sorts of new initiatives all take time
and money, and not everything has been
easy. Even after years of effort, the Office
for International Affairs has yet to create a
system that lets Brown researchers know that
their peers in other fields are doing research
in the same countries, Gutmann said. Brown
is still not as well known as some of its peer
institutions in countries like China and India,
and it needs to continue to build its presence
before it will be fully competitive.
But administrators agree that despite the
financial burden and immense challenge
of working on an international stage, the
University will continue to focus its efforts
on building its global profile.
“It’s really the entire administration that
is permeated with these international goals,”
Kertzer said. It all comes down to making
Brown “better known as one of the greatest
universities in the world.”
abroad for a wide variety of reasons. Sofia
Ruiz ’14, from Mexico, said going to school
in her home country was not a good idea
“for safety reasons.”
Ana Bermudez ’12, from Bogota, Colom-
bia, was attracted to the idea of living on
campus. At Brown, “there’s a lot of space to
do extracurricular activities and community
service projects,” she said. “At home, it’s
much more the academic college experi-
ence.”
But most students offered the same
answer that American students give when
asked why they chose Brown — the open
curriculum. “At the time I graduated from
high school, I was not quite certain what I
wanted to study,” said Marco Sanchez Junco
’11, who hails from Mexico and is one of
the four coordinators of the International
Mentoring Program, a peer support group
attached to the Office of Campus Life. “I
knew coming to the U.S. and even more so
coming to Brown would give me the freedom
to explore more areas.”
Katharina Windemuth ’15, who was born
in Paris and has since moved around Europe,
will come to the United States in September
because she wants a “more exciting” edu-
cation. “The American approach to educa-
continued on next page
14 The Brown Daily Herald
tion seems to be more liberal and open than
that of any country I’ve lived in so far,” she
wrote in an email to The Herald.
Before coming to campus, international
students are assigned a mentor through
the student-run International Mentoring
Program. Students can communicate with
their mentors over the summer and meet
with them throughout the year. The program
was “important in terms of getting me used
to Brown,” Raman said. “The mentors and
everyone really stay with you for the rest
of the year and even after that, because you
end up forming relationships with people
that don’t really go away.”
New challenges
When international students arrive on
campus for the first time, they go through
an orientation process during which they
meet other international students and are
provided with “critical information about aca-
demic expectations, campus life and student
immigration and visa policies,” according to
the Office of Student Life’s website.
In recent years, orientation has lasted for
three days, but this year it will be a day lon-
ger. The International Mentoring Program
will pair up with the Writing Center and
Excellence at Brown — an optional orienta-
tion process that introduces students to aca-
demics at Brown — to orient international
students to writing and “provide support to
people who feel they need a helping hand
with regards to their English,” Junco said.
As the trend in students’ countries of
origin shifts, the international community
is in increasing need of English as a second
language support, Junco said.
Even for students who do come to Brown
with English proficiency, the academic envi-
ronment provides new challenges. “There’s
a particular American style that professors
look for here,” said Bermudez, who found
the Writing Center helpful in her first se-
mester.
The University also offers an Office of
International Student and Scholar Services,
which helps students integrate themselves
into the community by offering help with
issues such as visas and work permission.
There are also a number of student or-
ganizations dedicated to providing support
for international students. The Brown Inter-
national Organization is made up of about
20 to 30 members — in addition to a fixed
board of 12 students — and is open both to
internationals and to Americans.
“It’s essentially a platform to throw ac-
tivities, lectures, events which have an in-
ternational aspect to them,” said Artemis
Stamatiadis ’11, co-president of BRIO. “The
idea is that international students can come
and bring traditions and holidays from back
home and all those traditions will be known
Shifting trends: Where do
international students come from?
International applicants,
Class of 2010
Canada 240 applicants
Singapore 162 applicants
United 129 applicants
Kingdom
Korea 112 applicants
People’s 100 applicants
Republic of
China
Data from the Office of Admission
to other (cultures).”
Buxton International House is a program
house also open to both international and
American students. “Often I see students
from the same country sticking to others
from the same country and I think I would
be opposed to that,” Buxton resident Stama-
tiadis said. But, she added, “Buxton is a
great place because you have the oppor-
tunity to go into a house that students are
chosen to go in.”
Lloyd Rajoo ’13, who is from Singapore,
agreed that it can be tempting to associate
with people from similar backgrounds. But,
he said, “I think the best thing for me was
living with a local (from Rhode Island). It
was a lot of fun and really important.”
For some, the idea of adapting to the
American lifestyle can seem intimidating.
“I guess feeling a little helpless at first is
part of the freshman experience, but I’d like
to avoid being the awkward European kid
next year,” Windemuth wrote. “It sounds
silly, but the prospect of Americanizing my
habits seems a little daunting right now.”
Ruiz said she felt welcomed by the com-
munity when she arrived. “I think people
really are fascinated when you’re interna-
tional so it actually makes it really easy,”
she explained.
“American students are very receptive
to hearing about other people’s experiences
and perspectives on issues that we talk about
inside and outside the classroom,” said Mi-
noo Ramanathan ’11, who was born in India
and attended school in Oman. “I realized it
was actually a big advantage to have that per-
spective as long as you were open minded
International applicants,
Class of 2015
People’s 785 applicants
Republic of
China
Canada 489 applicants
United 353 applicants
Kingdom
Singapore 341 applicants
India 317 applicants
… (having grown up abroad) was a great
way to start a conversation with people.”
Finding support
Internationals’ need for extra advising
when they first arrive varies. Wu did not feel
the need to seek advising when she arrived
at Brown her freshman year.
“I didn’t think the culture shock or any-
thing we had to go through was that bad,”
she said.
Internationals agreed that advising is
there if students want it — but “it’s not forc-
ing anyone to do anything,” Wu said.
But some said they wished international
advising would take a more proactive stance.
“When I came here, I wished there had
been (events) I could go to that explained
Social Security numbers and things like that
straight away,” Cameron said. “I had to go
get the help … it’s pretty obvious that most
international kids who go to Brown are go-
ing to need those things, so having things
like that straight away would be great.”
International students can also be “more
hesitant” to reach out for help, a feature
that is “very characteristic about the way
resources are set up at Brown,” Junco said.
“Faculty needs to step in” and offer help
more actively, he added.
One of the main concerns for interna-
tional students currently is offering more
financial help to students from abroad, ac-
cording to Wu. As a member of the Brown
International Scholarship Committee, Wu
has been working with the committee and
the Brown Annual Fund for two years to
create a tradition where graduating interna-

tional students will create a scholarship for
an incoming student from abroad.
Other students expressed concern about
life after Brown. “I think that is something
that a lot of colleges, including Brown, don’t
really think about,” Raman said. “But it’s
really hard to consider the fact that when
international students are coming to Brown,
most often they’re not going to just be able
to go back to their home countries … be-
cause forms of education vary so much.”
Raman, a pre-medical student, said it
is her “dream” to go to medical school in
the United States, especially at Brown. But
since acceptance to medical schools for
international students is based on “com-
plete ability to pay,” she said, it would be
impossible for her to achieve that dream.
“I really wish that, as in all the other ways
that Brown redefines norms, that it would
Commencement 2011
15
also redefine this norm.”
Ultimately, though students have found
a strong support system in the interna-
tional community, “it’s very hard to make a
clear distinction between students who are
American and those who are not,” Junco
said. “There’s just such a variety.”
“In so many ways Brown is about bring-
ing Brown to the world,” Raman added. “But
it’s also about bringing the world to Brown.”

Oh, the places brown’s gone
Closer to home:
Growing Brown’s campus
 A
    nyone who has been on campus
in the past few years has seen
the ubiquitous “Building Brown”
fences circling construction projects. This
effort to build — or in some cases rebuild
— Brown has been a part of President Ruth
Simmons’ Plan for Academic Enrichment,
a course of action for the University she
established in 2002.
Most recently, the University unveiled the
completed Perry and Marty Granoff Center
for the Creative Arts, a facility dedicated
to bringing together students and faculty
around the arts. This follows a number of
other large projects on campus, including
the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center at
Faunce House, the renovation of the J. Walter
Wilson building and the construction of the
new campus pathway called The Walk.
This summer the new Medical Education
Building will open in Providence’s Jewelry
District, followed by the new Aquatics and
Fitness Center in the winter.
Not all the “Building Brown” projects
are entirely new buildings. In light of the
economic crisis, the University chose to
renovate many buildings rather than build
from scratch.
With the exception of the soon-to-be-com-
plete renovation of the Metcalf Laboratories,
these projects are now finished and in use
BY MARK RAYMOND
by students.
Medical Education Building
The University is moving off College Hill
for the new Medical Education Building,
which will be home to the Alpert Medical
School. The $45 million facility, a renovated
factory in the Jewelry District of Providence,
will open this summer to medical students
and faculty.
“This is a huge deal for the medical stu-
dents,” said Ed Wing, dean of medicine and
biological sciences. “They felt that they’ve
never really had a home.”
Wing added that medical students are
“wildly enthusiastic” about the new facility
and that it will provide them with three times
the amount of space they currently have.
The project has received much attention
due to its location in the Jewelry District,
an area the city is trying to re-brand as the
Knowledge District.
“This is really symbolic,” Wing said. “This
is Brown moving off the hill.”
Wing said the medical school project is
“rejuvenating the whole Jewelry District”
and also providing hundreds of jobs to local
unionized workers.
He said that in addition to providing
around 350 construction and 200 related
jobs, the district will see an uptick in eco-
Commencement 2011
17
nomic activity as more businesses move into
the area surrounding the medical school.
In addition to improving the economy
of the Jewelry District, the move will allow
for more “synergy” between Brown medical
students and students from other institu-
tions, Wing said.
Brown will be much closer to Johnson
and Wales University, and the University of
Rhode Island is considering moving their
nursing school closer to the area, he said.
Though the medical school is currently
the only project underway off the main Col-
lege Hill campus, the University will likely
expand beyond the Hill in the coming years,
said Dick Spies, executive vice president for
planning and senior adviser to the president.
“Our capacity to grow on the existing
campus, particularly in the sciences, is pretty
limited,” he said. “We will inevitably grow
over time.”
Construction for the Medical Education
Building is slated to complete July 12, with
a grand opening taking place Aug. 15.
Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center
Faunce House went through a $20 million
renovation, completed last year, and now
houses the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Cen-
continued on next page
18 The Brown Daily Herald

ter. The new facility is home to the new Blue

Room cafe, study spaces and offices for stu-
dent organizations, among other amenities.
Spies said providing places for students
to interact and share ideas with one another
was one of the main goals for the building.
“What makes a place like Brown so spe-
cial is the opportunity to interact on a 24/7
basis with other students and faculty,” he
said. “The best spaces at Brown are those
spaces where people can come together in
informal, unplanned ways.”
Spies added that the campus center, as
well as all the new facilities on campus, are
part of the larger mission by the University
to enhance student life and foster a greater
level of dialogue among students.
“I think overall what it represents is a
broader, stronger academic and residential
educational program that enables students
to push the Brown envelope further than
they could before,” he said.
The project was completed last summer
and has been open to students for the past
academic year.
Aquatics and Fitness Center
The new Aquatics and Fitness Center
is set to open next March at a cost of $48.1
million. The complex, located next to the
Olney-Margolies Athletic Center on Hope
Street, is “really three buildings in one,”
according to Michael Goldberger, director
of athletics.
The building will include the Katherine
Moran Coleman Aquatics Center, the Nelson
Fitness Center and the David J. Zucconi ’55
Varsity Strength and Conditioning Center.
Goldberger said the recreation center
will provide students with state-of-the-art
equipment for workouts, as well as dance
and other recreational rooms.
The swimming pool will allow for rec-
reational swimming and varsity practices
to occur simultaneously, something that
wasn’t possible in the previous pool or the
temporary Aquatics Bubble currently in
use, he said.
“It’s going to offer the quality of life that
students want,” he said. “It’s going to be a
beautiful building and a beautiful space.”
The new building is expected to be a sig-
nificant draw for both current students and
prospective students, many of whom view
athletics as a critical component in their col-
lege experience, Goldberger said.
“People are just more health-conscious
now,” he said. “It’s going to be important
for students trying to decide where they’re
going to go to college.”
Creative Arts Center
The most recent project to be completed
was the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for
the Creative Arts, located on Angell Street
adjacent to The Walk.
A $20 million renovation transformed Faunce House into the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus
Center.
$60 million was raised for the project in
total, with $38 million going toward con-
struction, $2 million going toward program
development and $12 million for an operating
endowment.
The building, which opened to classes in
January, includes an auditorium, production
studios, an art gallery, a multimedia lab and
a recording studio.
Richard Fishman P’89, director of the
Creative Arts Council and professor of visual
art, said seven academic courses and around
40 events have been held in the building.
“It has become a sought-after venue,”
Fishman said. “Half of the events have been
for things not necessarily related to the arts.”
One of the most prominent aspects of the
Granoff Center is its unique design, devised
by Diller Scofidio and Renfro, an architec-
tural firm from New York.
“The dynamic architecture is symbolic of
Brown thinking in new directions and mak-
ing a statement that the arts are important
to the University and society,” Fishman said.
Fishman added that the building is made
to broaden the appeal of the arts and en-
courage collaboration between different
disciplines.
“One of the goals is to integrate different
attitudes and ideas about art and reach out
to the greater community,” he said. “Art with
science and technology is an area we have
been having many conversations about.”
Spies shared Fishman’s sentiments about
the center’s purpose.
“The Granoff Center is a place where
students and faculty with different interests
Herald file photos
and different perspectives in the arts come
together and try new things,” Spies said.
Fishman said he hopes that, in addition to
reaching out to a diverse group of students
and faculty at Brown, the Granoff will allow
for collaboration with artists who aren’t as-
sociated with the University.
Other projects
The Peter Green House previously stood
in the way of what is now The Walk, the
pathway connecting Pembroke and main
campus. The house, home to the history de-
partment, now rests at the corner of Brown
and Angell streets.
Pembroke Hall underwent renovations
in 2008 and became home to the Cogut Hu-
manities Center and the Pembroke Center
for Teaching and Research on Women.
Rhode Island Hall was transformed to
house the Joukowsky Institute at a cost of
$12 million. The renovation, which was com-
pleted in fall 2009, included a restoration
of skylights, a new classroom, conference
rooms and study space.
The Metcalf complex is currently being
renovated into the home of the newly cre-
ated Department of Cognitive, Linguistic
and Psychological Sciences. The $42 million
project is slated to be completed in the fall.
The J. Walter Wilson building was reno-
vated in 2008 to house the mail room and
four floors of student services, including
academic advising, the Writing Center, the
Office of International Programs and Psy-
chological Services. The project cost the
University $18 million.

Where Brown didn’t go
A number of building projects have trans-
formed campus in recent years, including
the renovations of J. Walter Wilson, Faunce
House, Rhode Island Hall and Pembroke
Hall, as well as the recently completed con-
struction of the Perry and Marty Granoff
Center for the Creative Arts. But not all plans
have reached such a smooth completion. The
2008 financial collapse and recession have
impacted the University’s finances, and other
circumstances have delayed some projects.
When the University began developing
the Plan for Academic Enrichment in 2002,
the initiatives it laid out required physical
growth and building projects. So in June of
that year, the University hired architectural
firm Kliment Halsband to draft such a plan,
which became the Strategic Framework for
Physical Planning. This plan outlined general
principles to guide future growth, laid out
possibilities for repurposing existing build-
ings and identified locations for potential
new buildings. It also established a vision of
expansion into Providence’s Jewelry District.
Also envisioned in the framework was
a new pathway, called “The Walk,” linking
Brown’s main and Pembroke campuses, with
green space and new buildings fronting it.
While construction of The Walk is com-
plete — aside from a long-term vision of
connecting it to Lincoln Field — plans for
an adjoining “Mind Brain Behavior Center”
never came to fruition. In 2007, the Corpora-
tion approved a location on the south side
The consequences of expansion
Brown’s expansion on and off College Hill
has been met with some resistance from
the city of Providence, especially as the state
capital teeters on the brink of an economic
meltdown. Currently faced with what Mayor
Angel Taveras has characterized as an un-
precedented financial crisis, the Rhode Is-
land state legislature entertained a proposal
in May to levy property taxes on nonprofit
institutions such as private universities and
hospitals.
The bill, proposed by Rep. John Car-
nevale, D-Providence and Johnston, would
allow communities to tax nonprofits up to 25
percent of what they would pay if they were
not tax-exempt. Upon introduction of his bill,
Carnevale specifically targeted Brown, telling
the legislature that the University “is literally
gobbling up whole city blocks,” according to
the Providence Journal. Brown’s physical
footprint has nearly doubled in the last 20
years, the Journal reported.
Beginning in 2003, Brown has contributed
to the city in the form of voluntary payments
of Angell Street, between J. Walter Wilson
and The Walk, to construct a home for the
departments of Cognitive and Linguistic
Sciences and Psychology, which ultimately
merged in 2010. But the recession put the
brakes on the project. Struggles to raise the
approximately $70 million needed forced
administrators to think twice about the new
building.
The location of the proposed Mind Brain
Behavior building also met resistance from
students and faculty because it would have
required removing the Urban Environmental
Lab from its current location and either find-
ing it a new site or scrapping it altogether.
With few other suitable sites and without
the money for new construction, adminis-
trators took a new look at an old building:
Metcalf Chemistry and Research Labora-
tory. The building housed the Department
of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences and
was partially vacant following the move of
the Department of Neuroscience to Sidney
Frank Hall for Life Sciences. Metcalf is cur-
rently undergoing a $42 million renovation to
be completed in October, and will house the
growing cognitive, linguistic and psychologi-
cal sciences faculty.
Similarly, a new building had been planned
for the Alpert Medical School. But financial
troubles also transformed that project into a
renovation. The Medical Education Building,
which is a renovation of a former industrial
building in the Jewelry District, will open in
in lieu of taxes. These contributions are in-
tended to “be a steady stream of funding
for the city that would enable growth of the
nonprofit sector,” and will contribute $50
million to the city over 20 years, said Marisa
Quinn, vice president of public affairs and
University relations.
But since 2003, the city’s financial situa-
tion has become more precarious. Taveras,
who took office in January, has stated he
is willing to keep all options for bringing in
revenue on the table, according to an April
28 article in The Herald.
A number of other universities make volun-
tary payments to their home cities. Princeton
makes payments equaling about $1.7 million
to the Borough and Township of Princeton,
according to a May 11 article in the New York
Times. But when local officials tried to stop a
major university building project, university
officials suggested that they would have to
rethink the voluntary payments.
In Boston, where tax-exempt property
takes up more than half the land, Mayor
Commencement 2011
19
By Greg Jordan-Detamore
August for the start of Med School classes.
Administrators offer an upbeat take on
the decision to renovate existing buildings,
promoting historic preservation and envi-
ronmental friendliness as benefits of the
more cost-effective projects. “We can still
achieve almost 99 percent of what we had
intended to do,” Richard Spies, executive
vice president for planning told The Herald
in 2009. And Stephen Maiorisi, vice president
for facilities management, called renovations
a “very green thing to do.”
Though these renovation projects are all
moving ahead, one building project is miss-
ing from campus — new residence halls.
University officials, including President Ruth
Simmons, have been discussing the need
for new dorms for years. At the Oct. 2006
Corporation meeting, officials evaluated dif-
ferent building sites and looked at financial
models. But as of 2007, the planning seemed
to have been put on hold.
Since then, the Corporation has discussed
building and renovating dorms at its meet-
ings, and its members approved funding
in Oct. 2010 for the 32-bed building at 315
Thayer St. to be converted into an expanded
residence hall. Simmons also told the Un-
dergraduate Council of Students at a March
2010 meeting that she envisioned a large new
dorm project. Currently, administrators say
they are working on plans for dorm construc-
tion and renovation, but no other specific
projects are in the works yet.
By Emma Wohl
Thomas Menino has sent requests to the
city’s largest nonprofits asking them to begin
making annual payments that would rise to
25 percent of the tax value on their property.
In Rhode Island, the two sides have yet to
reach an agreement. “We have told Mayor
Taveras that we understand the difficult
situation,” Quinn said. “There are ways for
colleges and universities to engage with the
city and state that … will provide for long-
term growth.”
“But efforts to tax universities are simply
counterproductive,” she added.
Taveras has called the proposed bill key
to closing the city’s $110 million budget defi-
cit. But the University remains reluctant to
entertain discussion of the bill.
“There’s a question of whether or not this
is even constitutional,” Quinn said, adding
that nonprofit status is protected at a state
and federal level.
Carnevale’s bill has been held for further
study by the House Finance Committee since
May 11.

Oh, the places brown’s gone
Research catalyzes
growth in science
By Talia Kagan
A 
bout half a decade ago, the Office
of Admission realized that while
Brown was well-respected in
some areas, prospective applicants remained
unaware of its other academic strengths.
“It became pretty clear that people didn’t
think about Brown and science in the same
thought,” said Jim Miller ’73, dean of admis-
sion.
The office started talking up science-
related resources at Brown to prospective
students. Since then, the office has seen
a steady increase in applicants interested
in pursuing the life and physical sciences,
Miller said. When the class of 2011 applied
to Brown, 45 percent of students indicated
an interest in those fields, compared to 53
percent of next year’s freshmen, according
to data provided by the admission office.
The recruitment effort is part of a larger
push to bolster the sciences at Brown. In
recent years, the University has made growth
in the sciences an academic priority, investing
millions of dollars in new buildings and plan-
ning an extension of the campus dedicated to
the sciences in the Jewelry District.
Such changes are closely related to the
University’s evolution into a research-driven
institution. Research at Brown occurs in all
disciplines, but last year the life and physi-
cal sciences received roughly 80 percent
of research funding from sources outside
the University, excluding funding from the
federal stimulus, according to Clyde Briant,
vice president for research.
Culturing change
Brown is deliberately cultivating growth
in specific fields. It is significantly expanding
existing academic programs in engineering
and public health and fostering interdisciplin-
ary collaboration among scientific fields.
The faculty voted last year to convert the
University’s Division of Engineering into a
School of Engineering, a move that has im-
proved the program’s visibility, according to
Interim Dean of Engineering Rodney Clifton.
The increase in applicants interested in the
sciences has been even more pronounced
in engineering — in the last three years,
the number of applicants planning to pursue
engineering rose by 43 percent, compared
to an overall increase in applicants of 24 per-
cent, according to data from the Office of
Admission.
The new school is an attempt by Brown
to catch up to its Ivy League peers, who all
already had schools of engineering. Clifton’s
colleagues have jokingly told him, “It’s about
time,” he said.
But engineering won’t be the only new
school on the block. The Division of Biology
and Medicine is currently “putting the finish-
ing touches” on a similar proposal: “We hope
that next spring we will be able to declare a
school of public health,” said Edward Wing,
Commencement 2011
21
dean of medicine and biological sciences.
The school, which has been in the works
for roughly a decade, will be an important
complement to the Alpert Medical School,
which has an emphasis on primary care and
the social determinants of health, he said.
The planned creation of a new school has
been accompanied by an increase in BioMed
faculty. There has been a net increase of 32
campus-based BioMed faculty members since
2002, according to data provided by the office.
The establishment of the School of En-
gineering mandates an increase in faculty:
a first wave of three new positions in the
school’s first three years, with the possibility
of six additional new positions, depending on
the school’s fundraising success, Clifton said.
There is also a separate proposal for the
expansion of Brown’s offerings in “brain sci-
ence” over the next five years, Wing said. The
expansion will “form what we think will be
a world-class institute on brain science,” he
said. The University is currently renovating
Metcalf Chemistry and Research Laboratory,
which will open next October as the home of
the newly consolidated Department of Cogni-
tive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences.
Physical growth
A jaunt around campus and across the
river reveals Brown’s brick-and-mortar in-
vestment in the sciences.
Since 2002, the University has “put over
$270 million into buildings for BioMed,”
Wing said. These buildings include the Sid-
ney Frank Hall for Life Sciences, laboratory
space at 70 Ship Street, a building for public
health and the Medical Education Building,
which opens this summer, for a total of almost
500,000 square feet of new space for the life
sciences and public health, he said. “That’s
a big statement about where the University’s
going.”
The new Medical Education Building in
the Jewelry District will provide a center with
an anatomy lab, classrooms and a coffee bar
to the 108 medical students who will attend
their first classes there when the building
opens Aug. 15.
A decade ago, each medical school class
included about 70 students, according to
data provided by the BioMed website. Next
year’s incoming class will have roughly 120
students, a size that will remain consistent
in the foreseeable future, Wing said.
Other departments in the sciences, such
as engineering and neuroscience, may fol-
low BioMed down the hill, Wing said. The
University plans to transform the Jewelry
District into an area of collaboration between
Brown, local hospitals and other Rhode Island
schools.
continued on next page
22 The Brown Daily Herald

A close lens on research

Seeking more dollars for research has
become a priority for Brown. The past de-
cade has seen a steady increase in these
research dollars, according to Briant. In
2001, the University pulled in approximately
$102 million in external research funding.
Last year, the University received $152.7
from federal agencies and private sources,
excluding stimulus funds.
The latest University Resources Com-
mittee report recommended additions to
current research support in order to “in-
crease and strengthen research activity as
a central part of Brown’s institutional mis-
sion.” Recommendations included increased
staff resources for multi-investigator grant
proposals and increased seed funding for
research.
The University also recently created the
position of director for scientific outreach in
an effort to make Brown faculty’s grant pro- Herald file photo
posals more attractive to federal funders. Sci- The new Medical Education building, which opens this summer, may provide an anchor for
entific outreach is “important for researchers other Brown science departments to migrate to the Jewelry District as expansion continues.
who are looking for (federal) grants” because already grown by six to eight people in the suspicion by those who worry about the
it helps show funding agents evidence of the last five years and may soon hire an addi- implications of private partnership.
required “broader impact” of the proposal, tional staff member, Briant said. “We much prefer federal funding,” Wing
said Oludurotimi Adetunji, the new director The federal government provides most said. “Drug company funding is always a
of scientific outreach. of the external money that goes toward re- problem.”
But research funded by external sources search, but the University is “trying very But even corporate-funded research must
often requires additional funding from the significantly to build our corporate sponsor- follow University research guidelines, Briant
University to cover facilities and adminis- ship and research,” Briant said. In 2009, said. “We watch this very, very carefully.”
trative costs that are not fully funded by the federal stimulus package boosted re- The University has also invested in ad-
federal grants. search funding — ­ but as those funds run vanced equipment for computing and genet-
“Research is not a money-making proposi- dry, the University is turning to corporate ics research. Its most notable purchase has
tion in and of itself,” Briant said, adding that sponsors as another potential source of re- been a multimillion-dollar supercomputer
it requires investment by the University. The search money. — the most powerful in the state — housed
office of the vice president for research has Corporate funding is still viewed with in the Center for Computation and Visualiza-

thanks
for
reading

tion. But while the University has invested in
research, its endowment pales in comparison
to those of many of the top-level research
institutions.
“We’ve got to set our goals high,” Briant
said. For its size, Brown is “highly competi-
tive” in its areas of focus, he said.
Balancing the scales
The increased focus on the “university”
in “university-college” has some worried.
While administrators have an eye on
Brown’s movements in national university
rankings, others view the administration’s
emphasis on research with suspicion. Sev-
eral community members have expressed
worries that moving toward a research in-
stitution would displace attention from the
primary role of a college: teaching.
Observers also point out that focusing
on externally-funded research privileges
the natural and physical sciences over the
humanities and social sciences, which typi-
cally do not receive as much outside funding.
But while the sciences have benefited from
much of Brown’s recent physical growth,
they are not alone: The Perry and Marty
Granoff Center for the Creative Arts and the
expanding Cogut Center for Humanities are
two examples of projects dedicated to the
arts and humanities.
Faculty and administrators are also quick
to point out that undergraduates benefit from
well-funded research labs. The more funding
for faculty research, the more opportuni-
ties for undergraduates and the better the
experience.
“Good instruction and good research go
together,” Clifton said, citing the “sense of
discovery, sense of creativity” in both.
The University’s encouragement of re-
search is also not a top-down mandate, he
said — it supports faculty’s own interests.
“Faculty members aren’t forced to do re-
search,” he said. “That’s how they got their
PhDs.”
The fossil record
This debate is hardly new. The nature
of a university is prone to tide-like ebb and
flow. In the early 1980s, about 45 percent
of undergraduates concentrated in the sci-
ences, Miller said — compared to 32 percent
of last year’s graduating class, according to
the Office of Institutional Research.
The admission office does not have any
particular demographic target for the future,
but it does want to “bring science up to the
same level” as other disciplines, he said.
“I think it’s pretty clear to everyone that
Brown’s sciences profile has to equal its
humanities profile,” Miller said.
Commencement 2011
23
Perhaps today’s developments represent
the growth that one English professor pre-
dicted decades ago.
In 1971, the chair of the Department of
English, Mark Spilka, gained campuswide
attention for insisting that funding for expan-
sion of the humanities equal financing for
Brown’s new medical school, The Herald
reported.
The long-term results of creating a medi-
cal school would be a “change in the nature
of the university, an imbalance in favor of the
sciences, which will perpetuate and increase
present tensions and resentments and will
drive faculty away from Brown in subor-
dinate fields,” Spilka said forty years ago.
During the height of the Cold War, many
universities expanded their scientific offer-
ings in a rush to compete with the Soviets,
according to Associate Professor of History
Naoko Shibusawa.
We are currently in a similar historical
moment. After all, President Ruth Simmons
is not the only president calling for increased
focus on the sciences — science and math
education was a major topic in President
Barack Obama’s last State of the Union ad-
dress. As Brown fills in the Jewelry District
with research labs and expanding science
programs, the University’s cyclical changes
may be part of a broader national trend.
24 The Brown Daily Herald
From The Herald to the UN
Memories of Richard Holbrooke ’62 at Brown
T 
“ he room allocated to the Russians for
press conferences was full,” wrote
then-Herald staff writer Richard Hol-
brooke ’62 in an Oct. 9, 1960 supplement to
The Herald. “Reporters flowed out into the
hall as Mikhail A. Kharlamov, Soviet press
secretary, began speaking ... then we walked
across the lobby — crossing an invisible Iron
Curtain somewhere on the way.”
As a Brown sophomore, Holbrooke was
in an enviable position for many young jour-
nalists, as he accompanied New York Times
correspondents to a press conference at the
1960 Paris Peace Summit. Held between the
“big four” global powers — the United States,
the Soviet Union, Germany and France —
the summit was ultimately a failed attempt
to reach diplomatic understanding between
nations immersed in Cold War politics. On
May 1, a United States U-2 spy plane was shot
down in Soviet airspace. The event poisoned
the tenor of the summit’s peace talks, and
Holbrooke was there, right in the thick of it,
watching history unfold before his very eyes.
Crossing through that “Iron Curtain”
would not be the last time Holbrooke would
find himself caught up in the tumult and
excitement of history being made. During
his life after Brown, he would often play the
role of history maker.
While he is remembered as one of the
nation’s leading diplomats, the Holbrooke
who wrote that piece for The Herald was
BY BRIAN MASTROIANNI
Courtesy of the University Archives
far removed from the future deal maker
and player on the international stage he
would later become. Known simply as Dick
to his friends, the undergrad Holbrooke
was a young man staring at diplomats from
the outside, wanting to use his skills as a
writer and communicator for journalism,
not foreign policy.
While most Brown students focused on
coursework and exams in Providence, Hol-
brooke was sent by The Herald to cover
the summit in a seven-part series. Only a
sophomore at the time, Holbrooke was sent
as part of an initiative geared to expand “cov-
erage of significant extra-campus events,”
as described in a short April 28, 1960 press
release in The Herald.
He ended up doing much more. Two
days before the summit’s opening session,
Holbrooke met Clifton Daniel, assistant man-
aging editor of the Times, who asked him
to help the newspaper’s staff during their
coverage of the event.
Holbrooke was there for Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushchev’s press conference in
front of television camera crews and nearly
3,000 correspondents from various media
outlets. In the supplement — which de-
scribes his experience working with the
Times’ reporters — Holbrooke writes in a
perceptive, detailed way, often tinged with
slight humor.
“There was a short silence, and then, sud-
denly, unexpectedly, the round, bald head
of Premier (Khrushchev) rose from behind
the podium,” Holbrooke wrote.
He continued by describing the jour-
nalists’ reactions to Khrushchev’s appear-
ance. “The Palais de Chaillot went berserk.
Journalists who are expected to present to
a person conducting a press conference a
certain minimum objectivity, were scream-
ing, yelling, booing, hissing, and cheering.”
Holbrooke’s piece for The Herald offers
a fascinating snapshot of history written
by a man who himself would eventually be
the subject of countless articles and news
reports. After Brown, he would grow into one
of the most influential diplomats in United
States history. His accomplishments are too
many to list. They include brokering the
1995 Dayton Peace Accords that effectively
ended the Bosnian War, serving as Assistant
Secretary of State for both Asia and Europe,
and in his last public position, serving as
special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan
under the Obama administration — just a
few in a storied career.
On Dec. 13, 2010, Holbrooke died sud-
denly from a ruptured aorta. He was 69 years
old, and he had seen the world, living at the
heart of some of the most momentous events
in modern history.
The college sweetheart
For those who knew him at Brown, Hol-
brooke is remembered as a friend and leader
before he was a diplomat.
“We met at the very beginning of his ju-
nior year, my sophomore year,” said Litty
Holbrooke ’63, Holbrooke’s first wife and
college girlfriend.
They met on a blind date arranged by a
mutual friend, and Litty — whose last name
was Sullivan at the time — said the two of
them got along immediately. “I thought he
was cute,” she said, adding that “we hit it
off and we started dating, and that was just
it. We immediately fell in together and we
continued that way.”
It was the beginning of a relationship
that would continue long after they both left
College Hill. The pair married in June 1964
when Holbrooke was working in Saigon for
the State Department, and spent most of
the years of their marriage traveling to the
different places where he was stationed for
work, having two sons along the way.
In college, Holbrooke’s professional as-
pirations were always balanced between
foreign service and journalism.
“I think at Brown, he kind of half-jokingly,
half-sincerely used to say that what he as-
pired to be would be either Secretary of
State or Managing Editor of the New York
Times,” Litty said.
After Brown, Holbrooke applied to, and
was rejected by, the Times. He then decided

to work for the State Department, a choice
that would pave the way for his later work
as a diplomat.
Despite moving up the ranks of foreign
policy makers, Holbrooke never moved too
far from his love of journalism. During the
early years of their marriage when Holbrooke
was stationed in Saigon, Litty lived in Bang-
kok and welcomed visits from some of her
husband’s journalist friends.
“He would tell his friends to come and
visit me and take me out to dinner, so I had
a nice succession of journalists who would
come through Bangkok for visits,” she said.
A mind ‘like a sponge’
This interest in journalism began at
Brown, where Holbrooke’s work at The
Herald led him to move up the ranks from a
staff writer to editor-in-chief.
“The BDH was very important to him,”
Litty said. “The BDH was the most important
of his extracurriculars at Brown.”
Bob Ebin ’62, a former Herald business
manager, remained a close friend of Hol-
brooke’s over the past 50 years. Ebin and
Holbrooke even lived in the same apartment
house in New York for a little over a decade.
“In college, we would prowl around with
our girlfriends,” Ebin said. “He was a very
interesting guy.”
“He did not drink, which was unusual for
the time, and he had an incredible, search-
ing mind.”
Both history majors, Ebin and Holbrooke
took several classes together. It was in these
classes where Ebin was able to observe first-
hand the ways in which “Dick’s mind was like
a sponge — it would soak up everything and
anything,” he said.
Litty agreed. “He was very interested in
history, and I think that is something that
hasn’t really been written about a lot,” she
said.
“That was a lifelong interest for him, and
he was genuinely interested in it. He loved
history so much so that he always loved hang-
ing out with men who had lived it,” she added.
Making history
As a man who lived history, Holbrooke
made some of his own while at Brown. During
his time as Herald editor-in-chief, Holbrooke
found the paper facing a writer shortage. In
order to increase recruitment, Holbrooke
decided to seek out writers at Pembroke
College, Brown’s all-female sister college.
With separate campus activities, dormi-
tories and curfews, Pembroke and Brown
stood as two sides of the same College Hill
campus community. While The Herald was
an all-male daily publication, the Pembroke
Record offered a weekly equivalent for the
sister campus.
Susanna Opper ’62 answered Holbrooke’s
Commencement 2011
25
ad looking for new writers.
“I liked to break down barriers and I said,
‘OK,’ ” Opper said. “My first article assigned
was a review of a dance program.”
Opper said that while the concept of hav-
ing female staff members on a male college
newspaper does not seem that radical now,
at the time, it caused some controversy at
Pembroke.
“It was a pretty radical step, and the Re-
cord was very upset with me,” Opper said.
The following summer, Opper was given
the opportunity to work on a more complex
piece for Holbrooke. She was in Germany
when Lyndon Johnson came to speak to the
people of Berlin to address the building of the
Courtesy of the University Archives
Berlin Wall. Opper wrote an article about the Holbrooke, here in an undated photo from
speech, a topic that immediately appealed to his time at The Herald, phased out the
Holbrooke. paper’s gender barrier as editor-in-chief.
“He was at Brown what he was to become
later on — no-nonsense, get the job done,”
she said. “He was someone of the philosophy
of, take the tough stand if you need to.”
“You want women on the paper? He need-
ed to do it, and then he did it,” she said. “He
was very conscientious about the paper. If
you had a deadline, you met the deadline.”
Another history-making move by Hol-
brooke was his initiative to bring Malcolm X
to speak on campus. At the height of his fame,
Malcolm X brought an air of controversy to
campus, Litty said.
“Dick arranged it, and The Brown Daily
Herald and some other organization invited
him to speak. Brown was quite unhappy about Herald file photo
it because this guy was controversial and also Even as diplomacy became his career,
a little scary in the sense that he always trav- Holbrooke remained close to journalism.
eled with all of these bodyguards,” Litty said.
Litty said she remembered the packed for news was unquenchable. Working the
room and the excitement that spread around night shift at the Times, Holbrooke would
campus. “It was all quite tense and exciting. come home to the apartment each morning
It was a major event on campus at that point with copies of the Times, in addition to all of
and Dick organized it.” the other New York papers, and read every
one, Chase wrote.
‘Deadly serious and seriously playful’ Holbrooke’s appetite extended beyond
Underneath the hard work and dedication news. Chase wrote that it was a summer of
to the paper, Holbrooke’s friends knew his eating hot dogs for dinner, with Chase buying
lighter and gentler side, too. packages of eight. While he would eat two
“Dick was an odd but thoroughly engag- hot dogs, “Dick would eat the other six at a
ing mixture of deadly serious and seriously single sitting.”
playful,” wrote Larry Chase ’62 in an email It was this playful side that extended to
to The Herald. nights working on The Herald. “He — and the
A former Herald editorial chairman, Chase rest of the BDHers — enjoyed poking fun at
spent a summer sharing a Greenwich Vil- the administration in the paper, finding ways
lage apartment in New York with Holbrooke. to work around Pembroke’s nightly curfew,
Holbrooke was a “copy boy” at the New York etc.,” Chase wrote.
Times, while Chase had a job with the New “Once I found him in the BDH office
York Telephone Company. tightly wrapping a BDH colleague in a long
Within a month of his employment, Hol- strip of that spooled yellow wire-service paper
brooke managed to have a piece published in that used to spit out (Associated Press) and
the Times. It was an editorial piece on graffiti, (United Press International) reports,” Chase
and even though Holbrooke did not receive a wrote. “The victim needed help to escape.”
byline, “it was a three-to-five paragraph piece
that he was proud to get published,” Litty said.
According to Chase, Holbrooke’s appetite continued on next page
26 The Brown Daily Herald

‘The beginnings of it all’
Through the lighter college years, Litty
said that there were clear signs of the man
Holbrooke would become.
“Obviously we were very different people
then, and he was a very different person then,”
she said. “He wasn’t at the prime of his career,
but you could see the beginnings of it all.”
“After Bosnia and Milosevic, he became
much tougher, and he wasn’t that way at
Brown or in the earlier years,” she added.
Though Holbrooke and his friends would
joke about his ambitions to be a star journalist
or Secretary of State, for Chase it was clear
that Dick was on a unique path.
“I suspect not one of us was ever the least
bit surprised to read about him in the papers
over the years,” he wrote.
When he died, the United States mourned
the loss of a national champion who defended
diplomacy abroad. But for those who knew
him at Brown, he was something a bit more
human than the larger-than-life image that
developed.
“I felt there was a hole in my heart,” Ebin
said. “He had a relationship with a lot of people
close to him who felt an enormous loss.”
In reading Holbrooke’s piece in The Herald
supplement about his time at the summit, one
can sense the young man’s intense excitement
at observing a piece of history.
“The summit was over. We all knew we
had witnessed a terrible turning-point in the
Cold War,” Holbrooke wrote.
There he was, standing with a crowd of
seasoned journalists, a young man present
at the breakdown of diplomacy. Little did he
know, he would end up being one of diplo-
macy’s most prominent champions.

Thanks to the members of the class of 2011

who spent countless hours writing, reporting,
editing, photographing, designing, illustrating
and blogging each day at Brown.

You will always be a member of

the Brown Daily Herald Alumni Association.

— 120
 Justin,
From the day you were born you
have given us endless moments of
happiness, pride and joy.

Your accomplishments are many

and your positive attitude is an
inspiration to us all.
Never lose sight of your goals, and
may all of your dreams come true!
We love you,
Mom, Dad and Anthony
28 The Brown Daily Herald
Putting the ‘Blog’ in Daily Herald
T he first step to running a successful
publication is to stop referring to it
as “the bastard stepchild of (other
more successful publication).”
When we were first handed the reins to
BlogDailyHerald from former Herald Senior
Editor and blog manager Ellen Cushing ’10
last spring, there was no doubt in either of
our minds that we had signed up for a year’s
worth of blank stares when we told friends
and professors that we ran “the Herald blog.”
The fundamental problem with the blog from
the start was that The Herald already had a
website. And so for most of the 2009-10 school
year, the only reason the blog seemed to exist
was to act as a dumping ground for Brown-
related news that didn’t quite meet the paper’s
standards of professionalism and relevancy.
Our first semester on the job was some-
thing of a mess. Joined at the helm by Anne
Simons ’11 and four day editors, our editorial
board meetings consisted mostly of run-ins
on the street and in the Ratty. Our new writer
“recruitment strategy” was simple: We told
freshmen, “If you write for the blog, you won’t
have to do any work!” We had set an initial end-
of-semester goal of at least 2,000 daily hits by
December. By the time exams rolled around,
our meager 1,000 visits per day weren’t even
close to that number.
So, we changed things up. We completely
restructured the editorial board around a risky,
but ultimately much more tenable, scheme:
We reduced the number of editors to five (one
editor in chief, one managing editor and three
deputy managing editors). We began to have
weekly Sunday staff meetings. We created an
email address to send out staff-wide emails (it’s
still hard to believe that we went without one
for an entire semester). We created a posting
calendar. We embraced our electronic roots
and got a staff Dropbox account.
Our goal was simple: We wanted to both
demand more from our writers and build a
community of bloggers who had formerly
By Matt Klimerman and David Winer
only been connected by a disorganized web
of emails and blog posts. The weekly meetings
were incredibly important to achieving this
goal — we didn’t frame them as optional, and
we told each of our writers they had to come
prepared with two post ideas to present to the
staff. We even had a meeting on the Sunday
of Spring Weekend. (Note: Given the level of
inebriation at that meeting, only David still
thinks that was a good idea.)
But, our — and our staff’s — hard work
ultimately paid off. By the end of the spring
semester, the site regularly had upward of
2,500 hits a day. Those blank stares we used
to get when we told people we worked for
BlogDailyHerald? We have finally said goodbye
to them forever.
At some point this year, we realized that just
because we couldn’t cover the same news as
The Herald, it didn’t mean there was nothing
substantive for us to write about. After several
semesters of trying to define what we do in
contrast to The Herald, the only concrete dif-
ference we’ve been able to come up with is,
“We don’t take ourselves quite as seriously.”
Certainly, the writing on the blog tends to be
quippier and more playful than in The Herald,
and we use our medium to our advantage to
make posts more engaging by including hy-
perlinks, photos and videos. The content on
the blog is still meant to be informative and
serve as a resource for students. We just have
a different idea of what Brunonians are looking
for as far as information goes.
Every day, for example, we post a “time-
waster”: a site or video that is meant to en-
hance Brown students’ procrastination abilities,
along with a comparison of the Ratty and V-Dub
menus and a rundown of free food around
campus. We have also developed recurring
series that range from area restaurant reviews
to Frosh-cessities (necessities for freshmen) to
a weekly sex column that has covered press-
ing issues like the best places to have sex on
campus — and get caught.
This year, the blog also took the lead in
covering and investigating some of the biggest
news stories affecting the student body, includ-
ing the collapse of POLS 1510: “Great Powers
and Empires,” the Fish Co. shut-down fiasco
and the Crusaders for Traditional Marriage
rally. We broke the Spring Weekend acts and
extensively covered Spring Week happenings
in our “12 Days of Spring Weekend” series,
which, of course, included the details about the
adventures of the blog’s Spring Week Furby. We
jumped outside of your browser with our viral
Spring Weekend wardrobe campaign “White
Out for Diddy.” We even got Diddy to join in
the fun (though we couldn’t get photographic
evidence to that effect, due to pesky BCA agree-
ments with Diddy-Dirty Money).
The biggest aim we have for next semester
is to make BlogDailyHerald a central part of
student life. Too lofty a goal? We don’t think so.
Brown is sorely in need of a cohesive online
community. Student startup sites like BrownU.
Me, Spotted@Brown and BrownFML haven’t
managed to fill this gaping void (but eduHook-
ups sure seems promising!). We’ve seen what
low-budget (and, in our case, no-budget) col-
lege blogs can do for college campuses, like
at NYU and Wesleyan, with NYULocal and
Wesleying, respectively. We envision BlogDaily-
Herald having this same sort of unifying effect.
Looking back, it’s hard to say our main goal
was ever to get other people to stop making fun
of us when we talked about the blog and how
excited we were. They still do — after all, we
both still spend way too much time on it. Our
aim was just to get everyone else to join in on
the conversation.
Matt Klimerman ’13, managing editor of
BlogDailyHerald, is afraid of sand. David
Winer ’13, editor-in-chief, does not have
irrational fears. See all the places they’ve
gone this year at blogdailyherald.com.
34 The Brown Daily Herald

Looking Back
Dec. 27, 2007
In the midst of her campaign to
Oct. 20, 2007 become the Prime Minister of
Republican Bobby Pakistan for a third time, Benazir
Jindal ’91.5 is elected Bhutto is killed in a suicide attack at
as governor of Louisi- a political rally.
ana with 54 percent of
the vote in a four-way
race. March 17, 2008
Jan. 2, 2008 In a stunning deal, JPMorgan
Oil prices rise to $100 per barrel in the Chase agrees to buy rival
wake of a weak U.S. dollar and violence investment bank Bear Stearns for
Oct. 12, 2007 in oil-producing countries. $2 a share. Only a year before,
Former Vice President Al Gore shares the 2007 Bear’s shares had sold for $170.
Nobel Peace Prize with the UN’s Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change for “efforts to build up Feb. 3, 2008
and disseminate greater knowledge about man- The New England Patriots lose Super Bowl
made climate change.” XLII to the New York Giants (with Zak
DeOssie ’07) after starting the season 18-0.

july
World
august september
2007
october november december january february
Feb. 24, 2008
81-year-old Fidel Castro is replaced by his
brother, Raul, as president of Cuba.

march april may june

Dec. 5, 2007
Dean of Medicine Eli Adashi
announces resignation,
2008 March 15, 2008
Brown
Two Molotov cocktails are thrown at the
surprising colleagues. off-campus apartment of Brown/RISD Hillel
employee and Israeli emissary Yossi Knafo.

Weekend of April 12, 2008

Lupe Fiasco, Vampire Weekend, Um-
Oct. 13, 2007 phrey’s McGee, Girl Talk and M.I.A. play
Spring Weekend shows in Meehan.
Soapbox cars December 2007
race down Col- President Ruth Simmons is
lege Hill in Red named a Glamour Woman of
Bull-sponsored the Year.
competition.
April 22,
2008
A pair of students
throw pies at
New York Times
columnist Thomas
Friedman during
a lecture in
Salomon 101.
 Commencement 2011
35

Oct. 3, 2008
Amid widespread panic in financial markets Feb. 5, 2009
and in response to swiftly declining stock Cell phone pictures of Michael Phelps
prices, former President Bush enacts a $700 inhaling from a marijuana pipe surface
billion bailout package for unstable financial and the Olympic gold medalist swim-
institutions. mer is suspended from the sport for
three months.
Nov. 4, 2008
Aug. 27, 2008 Over 131 million
Then-Sen. Barack Obama, Americans go to the polls. Feb. 17, 2009
D-Ill., officially receives the Barack Obama is elected President Barack Obama signs the American
nomination to be the Dem- president in a landslide, Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, com-
ocratic Party’s presidential besting John McCain by monly known as the stimulus package, alloting
candidate at the Demo- 10 million votes. $787 billion to states to revive the economy.
cratic National Convention
in Denver, Colo.
April 2009
Jan. 20, 2009 Mexican officials confirm cases

2008
Barack Obama is inaugurated of H1N1 influenza referred to
as president. Almost two million as swine flu. Several thousand

World
people travel to the National Mall cases are soon confirmed world-
to watch. wide as the disease spreads.

july august september october november december january february march april may june

Oct. 30, 2008

Former Republican presidential
candidate Mike Huckabee
2009 April 1, 2009
Administrators announce
Brown
that two students did not
tells a full Salomon 101 that return to campus from their
the presidential race lacked spring break trip to Trinidad.
substantial policy debate. Jan. 27, 2009 The students are later found
President Ruth Simmons announces and a parent says no foul
that the University is assuming that play was involved.
Oct. 18, 2008 the endowment will lose nearly
Members of Students for a Democratic 30 percent by the end of June.
Society attempt to enter the Corporation’s Administrators later say the loss Weekend of April 18, 2009
meeting in University Hall. Seven are occurred by the end of 2008. Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Nas,
eventually given probation after a Santigold and Of Montreal play Spring
disciplinary hearing. Weekend concerts on the Main Green.

Nov. 24, 2008

Brown football ties April 7, 2009
Harvard for the Ivy League The faculty vote to rename
championship. the Columbus Day holiday
to Fall Weekend on the aca-
demic calendar. Providence
Nov. 4, 2008 mayor David Cicilline ’83
Students storm the Main
and radio personality Rush
Green after Barack Obama
Limbaugh are among those
is elected president.
who decry the change.

March 10,
2009
Former Senator
John Edwards
emphasizes
the nation’s
responsibility
to end poverty
during a lecture
in Salomon 101.

Events that shaped life, on campus and beyond

36 The Brown Daily Herald

Looking Back
September 10,
2009 February 2010
The Large Hadron The XXI Winter Olympic Games
Collider, the world’s are held in Vancouver. Host nation
largest and most Canada sets an Olympic record
powerful particle with 14 gold medals, and American
accelerator, success- snowboarder Shaun White unveils the
fully circulates proton Double McTwist 1260.
beams for the first
time.

January 12, 2010

July 28, 2009 A 7.0 magnitude earthquake devastates
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is the Caribbean nation of Haiti. 230,000
confirmed by the United States Senate by lives are lost, and 1,000,000 are left March 23, 2010
a vote of 68 to 31. Sotomayor becomes

2009
without homes By a vote of 220-211, the U.S. House of
the first Hispanic justice on the court. Representatives passes the Health Care
and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010,
extending health care coverage to millions

World of uninsured Americans

july august september october november december january february march april may june

2010 Brown
October 2009
After escaping from
the Taliban in June, February 2010
New York Times As the investment banking
reporter David Rohde and securities firm Gold-
’90 publishes five man Sachs faces allegations
front-page stories in of financial wrongdoing,
the Times detailing his President Ruth Simmons opts
capture and escape. not to stand for re-election to
its Board of Directors.

Weekend of April 23, 2010

Snoop Dogg, MGMT, Major Lazer,
the Black Keys and Wale play the
50th Spring Weekend concerts on
the Main Green.
Oct. 12, 2009
The University observes its first
Fall Weekend as Providence and
the rest of the country celebrates
Columbus Day. DPS officers
arrest one protestor at an anti-Fall
Weekend rally on campus.

October 2009
After tense negotiations and
protests, Brown Dining Services
employees and the University
sign a new contract, avoiding the
possibility of a strike.
 Commencement 2011
37

December 22, 2010 March 11, 2011

President Obama signs the Don’t
Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act, which
ends a Clinton-era policy that
required gay Americans serving in
the military to hide their sexuality.
Eastern Japan is struck by a 9.1-mag-
nitude earthquake and a resulting
tsunami. The events caused thousands
of deaths and created crises at several
nuclear power plants.

March 2011
The United States, along with United Na-
tions allies, conducts air strikes on Libya,
November 2, 2010 which had seen weeks of violence between
Americans head to the polls for midterm those who want to depost dictator Muam-
elections. The Democrats lose six seats mar Gaddafi and pro-Gadaffi forces.
in the Senate, although they retain their
majority. The lose control of the House of May 2, 2011
Representatives. Presaident Obama an-
nounces United States

2010
special operations
February 11, 2011 forces had killed Osama
Embattled Egyptian President Hosni bin Laden in a raid at
Mubarak resigns after weeks of large- his safe house in Abbot-
scale protests in Cairo and other cities. tabad, Pakistan.

World
july august september october november december january february march april may june

January 2011
The Fish Company, long-time
popular Wednesday night
destination for students, an-
nounces it will close down.
2011 B r o w n
Weekend of April 15, 2011
Diddy Dirty Money, Wyclef Jean, TV on the Radio,
Das Racist, Lee Fields and the Expressions and
August 16, 2010 Rebirth Brass Band play Spring Weekend concerts in
Faunce House reopens after a year Meehan.
of extensive renovations, featuring a
revamped Blue Room and new study
spaces
March 14, 2011
The Office of the Provost pub-
lished a report revealing the
University will offer profession-
ally oriented master’s programs
as early as fall 2012.
Sept. 25, 2010
Brown football beats Harvard in May 29, 2011
its first night game in the history January 26, 2011 Brown University’s 243rd gradu-
of Brown stadium. The Marty and Perry Granoff ating class marches through the
Center for the Creative Arts, Van Wickle Gates.
Brown’s newest fixture of
modern architecture, opens
for classes.

April 29, 2011

President Simmons announces there will be no
immediate decision on the future of the varsity wrestling,
fencing, skiing teams. Student athletes and supporters
had protested the suddent elimination of these teams
recommended by the Athletics Review Committee.

Events that shaped life, on campus and beyond

38 The Brown Daily Herald

the senior survey

The Herald’s highly unscientific senior survey was conducted online through MyCourses, from May 3 to May 13.
621 seniors completed the survey.

What are your plans for after

If you could do it all over again, would you… What are your plans after graduation?
graduation?
...choose Brown?
Yes: 94%
No: 6% I don’t know Corporate
Other 17% employment
...still pick your chosen concentration(s)? 3% 19%

Yes: 73%
No: 27% Another job
Graduate or
15%
professional school
If Brown calculated class rank based on GPA, 30%
where in the graduating class do you think you
Government Nonprofit
would fall? employment employment
4% 12%
34%
33%

Do you think you’re selling out?

Yes: 5%
27%

No: 95%

Do you think Brown culture has changed in

the four years that you’ve been on campus?
Yes, for better: 11%
6%

1%

Yes, for worse: 17%

Top Second Middle Fourth Bottom It’s pretty much the same: 72%
20% 20% 20% 20% 20%

What is your favorite memory of college?

Too many to count • Going to watch shooting stars with my friends during a meteor shower and then grabbing Loui’s followed by class with
no sleep • Getting into the Brown Derbies • Leading a BOLT trip • Finding 164 solo cups full of alcohol in the basement freshman year on
a Tuesday night • Spring Weekend • Mario Kart Wii/Pandemic with suitemates • Foam party, junior year • The Rock • cooking • Smoking
weed • Hanging out outside with the cast of the last play I was in • My friends’ conversations all over the damn place • spring emergence •
my first Interfaith House party • the Barefoot Boogie • Climbing rooftops and walking through private gardens • Audition for AAArcapella •
Spagfest • going to office hours • Every day I spent at Brown • Snowy evening, sitting around a piano with some friends singing Christmas
carols with a fire going in the fireplace • Unplanned, random nights with my friends • All of college is my favorite memory, except sopho-
more year • Being on Molly at the MGMT concert junior year • making lots of spaghetti while high in the Caswell kitchen • Dancing around
with friends drinking good-tasting beer • Throwing a party at my off-campus house, concluding with sex with a girl at the party • Campus
Dance • Reenacting the Battle of Qadesh! • Table tennis nationals • before Xmas break my sophomore year, I drank so much, and played
one-on-one Beirut with my best bro. Yeah, I threw up • Indy Banquet • deciding at Spats karaoke to drive to Foxwoods, gamble, start a
bubble bath dance party only to get security called on us for a noise complaint and make it home for my 10 a.m. Italian class • Sucking
at intramural sports • staying up all night making a paper • Leaving • I have no idea • naked run around Patriots Court with two of my
best friends • Wiffle ball in the rain with a professor • Late-night bonding over problem sets • meeting my boyfriend • scavenger hunts •
Streaking through the Main Green for Obama on election night • the rugby team • Being a freshman • just hanging out with my friends on
the Main Green in nice weather • Freshman Orientation • staying up late to discuss the most random logical/philosophical topics with my
closest friends • Playing tag in the dark in the Andrews Dining Hall • I can’t remember my best moments • chatting with friends about life
goals and personal values • Everything • the wonderful diverse friends I have made • having friends with brains • Spring daytime parties
 How satisfied were you with...
Commencement 2011
39
Have you ever…
...housing?

…had breakfast at Loui’s at 5 a.m.? How satisfied were you with…

...meal plan? Yes: 70%
Somewhat
No: 30% ...housing? Somewhat
59% Not very
Not
at all
59% 19% 5%

...UCS?
…attended Sex Power God? Extremely 17%

Yes: 38% Not

...meal plan? Somewhat Not very
at all
No: 62% 54% 27%
6%
...campus safety? Extremely 12%
…attended a naked party?
Not
Somewhat Not very
...UCS? at all
Yes: 31% Not
52% 29%
13%
...Providence? No: 69% very
7% Extremely 7%

…attended a Brown football game? ...campus safety? Extremely Somewhat

Not
very
54% 40% 6%
Yes: 71%
No: 29%
Not Not
…had sex in a Brown library? ...Providence? Extremely
45%
Somewhat
46%
very at all
7% 2%

Not at all

...advising? Yes: 14%
23%
No: 86% Not very
Somewhat Not at all
...advising? 40% 26% 23%
…hooked up with a teaching assistant?
...teaching?
Extremely 10%
Yes: 9% Not
Extremely Somewhat very

...University No: 91% ...teaching? 55% 41% 2%
libraries?
…gone to Fish Co.?

...tuition? Yes: 65% ...libraries? Extremely Somewhat
Not
very
56% 40%
No: 35% 4%

…completed
...Banner?
the SciLi Challenge?
Somewhat Not very Not at all
...tuition? 34% 41% 19%
Yes: 16%
No: 84% Extremely 6%

Not
…had a one-night stand? ...Banner? Extremely
16%
Somewhat
51%
Not very
23% at all
10%
Yes: 54%
No: 46%
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2
Organizing sexuality events • Going abroad to Australia • my first kiss with my now fiancee on a roof top • Staying up until 5 a.m. at a cast
party singing random musical theatre pieces • Winning Ivy League championship • Rooftop climbing, especially Faunce when it was under
construction • being with my significant other (cheesy, I know) • Freshman year Eighties Party • Covering the Brown bear statue on the Main
Green with sparkles and colorful fabric as part of the Ultimate Frisbee program’s pump up traditions • Late night, drunken rants about
every pretentious topic under the sun • Nothing appropriate enough for this survey comes to mind • Coming back after every summer and
realizing everything I had idealized about Brown during the break was actually true • the SciLi • Varsity Athletics • Freshman year cuddle
puddles • Quiet Green • Snoop Dogg • The changing seasons • Meeting my best friends freshman year who are still my best friends today
• Late night at Thete • Spring Weekend sophomore year • The entire experience — late nights with friends, conversations with professors,
being in my fraternity • Having our own SexPowerGod party • Kiva Ball • Swaying in a circle of love with all my best girls • listening to
MGMT at Spring Weekend and staring at the green • green leaves on the trees • Having a threesome during a naked party • Walking into
a class on metaphysics and hearing, “Oh, do come in. We were just talking about space and time” • Losing my virginity • Late night NCIS
marathons • Ultimate frisbee • Breaking into the pool at 3 a.m. during finals last year with about 15 of my best friends and being chased
out by Brown Police in our underwear • Binder • Dinner at the Ratty • Every small seminar I’ve had, every scintillating section that spilled
over after class • Meeting my best friend • Gala • My sophomore roommate experience • going to drinks with my professor at the bar • Walk-
ing through the gates • Away football games with the Brown University Band • Completing the SciLi challenge and then impulsively going
to a naked party with some of my closest friends • Beer pong tournaments • Fish Co. Wednesdays • Late nights early mornings • Doing
Mande outside in the sunshine in the spring • Rewiring the Champlin elevator for April Fool’s Day • Drinking champagne on the roof of The
Rock • Beating UConn in the NCAA tournament • Mud sliding on Lincoln Field • Going abroad • sledding on Ratty trays • my varsity team
40 The Brown Daily Herald

How many sexual partners have How many classes did you choose to
you had during college? take satisfactory/no credit?
(not including classes that were mandatory S/NC)

18%
17%

16% 16%

13% 13% 13%

11%
10% 10%
9%
8%
7% 6%
6%
4% 4%
4% 4% 3% 3%
3%
2% 1%

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11+ 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 More
than 10

Who was the best professor you had at Brown?

22 votes 15 10 9
Mark Blyth
8
Deak Nabers
7
Arnold Weinstein
6
Barrett Hazeltine James Morone Richard Bungiro Barbara Tannenbaum
Jan Tullis Minh Luong Laurel Bestock Matthew Harrison

5
Amy Remensnyder, Anani Dzidzienyo, Dietrich Gary Wessel Wendy Schiller Peter Saval Rashid Zia
Neumann, John Stein, Luther Spoehr, Patricia
Joseph Pucci
Sobral, Tricia Rose

4
Gregory Elliott, Heather Leslie, James Egan, John Tomasi, Josef Mittle-
mann, Kym Moore, Lundy Braun, Mary Flynn, Meera Viswanathan,
Rebecca Molholt, Robert Hurt, Ruth Adler Ben Yehuda, Timothy Harris
2 Akio Yasuhara, Ashutosh Varshney, Beth Zielinski, Bianca Dahl,
Brian Hayden, Carrie Spearin, Catherine Imbriglio, Claudia Elliott,
Corey Walker, Cornel Ban, Courtney Cahill, David Josephson, David
Sheinberg, Derek Stein, Harold Roth, Jack Wright, James Doll, James
Russell, Kenneth Chay, Kevin Gee, Kiri Miller, Mark Johnson, Mark

3
Andy van Dam, Ann Dill, Bruce Becker, Cristina Abbona-Sneider, David
Berson, Ethan Pollock, Gail Cohee, James Green, Kaivan Munshi,
Karl Jacoby, Kenneth Sacks, Lynne Joyrich, Manher Jariwala, Maria
Carkovic, Michael Paradiso, Nicholas Townsend, Onesimo Almeida,
Patrick Malone, Peter Andreas, Ralph Rodriguez, Ravit Reichman, Rick
Benjamin, Ross Levine, Susan Harvey
Zervas, Matthew Garcia, Matthew Zimmt, Michael Vorenberg, Pascal
van Hentenryck, Patricia Symonds, Patrick Heller, Patrick Sylvain,
Peter Shank, Philip Gould, Rebecca Weitz-Shapiro, Richard Stratt,
Robert Self, Sarah Delaney, Seth Rockman, Shriram Krishnamurthi,
Stephanie Merrim, Stephanie Ravillon, Stephen McGarvey, Stephen
Porder, Stephen Smith, Thalia Field, Ulrich Krotz, Wendy Edwards

1 162 others received one vote

Describe Brown culture in a few words.

inspiring • solid • open • socially engaged • cooperative • progressive • compassionate • hilarious • intelligent • Britney Spears meets Foucault
• liberal bubble • work hard play hard • cliques • chic and snobby • driven • down to party • assertive • crazy • dynamic • diverse • studious
• accepting • love community deep thought • pretty laid-back • relaxed • beautiful • maturing • disciplined • hipster • nerdy • hippie • pro-
vocative • very open yet very politically correct • tolerant • quirky • globally minded • not competitive • independent • beautifully different
and crazy • like a delicious organic stew of creativity and also drama • needless competition • a little bit of fakeness • awesome gays •
self-conscious • hip • eager beavers • crunchy • takes themselves a bit too seriously at times • anti-establishment • cooperative • drug use  •
choice • relaxed and safe • magical • artificial and immature • socially adept • awesome • apolitical content uncompetitive overachievers
• self-directed • self-motivated • free • naive • homogenous • awkward • bizarre • sometimes hypocritical • nonprofit go-getters • insane •
overabundant • eclectic • caring • a tad too many hippies with a rich daddy • race is a social construction • comfortable if you’re liberal and
queer • intentional • inquisitive • compassionate • energetic • green • slightly contrived • self-congratulatory • collaborative • nakedness •
questioning for the sake of questions • a libertarian paradise • invigorating • welcoming • radically independent and flexible • becoming a
little too pre-professional for my tastes • unconstrained • organic • veganista • aware • study hard relax hard • party party party • theoretical •
cheap • light-hearted and free-spirited • funky • dorky • independent, but with a superficial sense of activism • esoteric • more intellectual
than radical • intelligentsia • generally nice people • intellectually stimulating • creative • curious • so hip it hurts • stuck up • socialite
• happy • confident • a bit elitist • not the hippy paradise I had assumed • entitled kids protesting meaningless causes • self-important
students • very few “well-rounded people” • inexplicably happy • super bro • funky • stoner chic • quietly snobby • good-looking enough •
world-conscious • a bit of everything • stagnant • there are so many factions • segregated based on race and class • passionate to a fault •
obsessed with being alternative/quirky • sense of community • meh but a good meh • sporty • sexy • self-knowingly intellectual • soulfully
bougie • baller • overextended in every capacity • intellectually rigourous • more naked • narcissistic and psychotic • anything goes • decon-
structed • everything is optional • a little too liberal • irreverent • friendly, but not too friendly • embracing • magical • go hip or go home •
mix of everyone and everything • fashionable • too cool for school • not as hip as TV says • mainline aspirational • pretty f—ing awesome
44 The Brown Daily Herald
SEnior COLUMNS
An economic approach to college
Claire Kiely
E conomics uses a term
called utility to refer to an
individual’s satisfaction or
happiness at a given point in time.
An individual’s utility is expressed
by a model or function that dem-
onstrates how and from where a
person derives their happiness. An
individual actively “maximizes” the
variables of this function where he
or she derives the most happiness.
For example, hot chocolate and a
popsicle both make me happy, but
in order to have the most satisfac-
concentration
+ exercise
professor
notoriety
U = A( +
electives
+ activities
research
+
thesis
Looking back on my four years,
as a freshman, the future pros-
pects component, F, was not even
on my radar and my overall health
consisted of maximizing my ratty-
cerealbar time. My utility or happi-
ness was derived principally from
maximizing the Social component
of this function, most importantly
friendships and activities, and fol-
lowing the advice of my Meiklejohn
and focusing on electiveclasses
rather than concentration in the
Academic component. In sopho-
more and junior years, my maxi-
mization was spread more evenly
across all parts. There was a no-
ticeable spike in the GCBfishco-
SpatsHouseParties variable from
my 21st birthday when entrance
to the beloved nonprofit basement
bar was possible and a substantial
tion at a certain time, I would want
to maximize my consumption of
hot chocolate during the winter
and popsicles during the summer.
As graduation nears and I begin
to think about signing an apart-
ment lease and working long hours
at a job that isn’t grading papers
or holding office hours as a T.A., I
have begun to reflect on the past
four years. I am very proud of my
accomplishments during my time
at Brown and would not change
any major components of it, aca-
friendships
+
GCB, Fish Co.,
Spats, house
parties
+ graduate
) + S( lazy dorm time
+ ) + H(
+ +
what do you
call it, is it a
relationship?
increase in academic and social
activities with my role as a co-head
of The Herald’s business staff.
Senior year mirrored freshman
year with maximization around the
Social components of the utility
function as well as electiveclasses
such as Persuasive Communica-
tion and Mande.
This is the general maximization
path of my four years at Brown,
and for me, this resulted in a very
high level of happiness and satis-
faction. Yet, if I asked 15 different
students to chart their path, none
would have the same pattern of
maximization and composition of
their happiness across the same
four years. Their individual utility
functions may touch on variables
that I didn’t maximize, such as
research or thesis, and could even
demic, social or otherwise. But I
was curious as to how my experi-
ences as a student at Brown could
be mapped using this economic
concept.
Were I to create a utility func-
tion that modeled the potential
components of a Brown student’s
happiness, it would include a por-
tion on the academic experience
(A), social experience (S), overall
health (H), future prospects for
after graduation (F). And it would
look something like this:
job
+
+
Ratty
school
cereal bar
+ ) + F( +
salary
)
beer, wine,
vodka, tequila
satisfaction
include an entirely different set of
variables all together.
Attempting to model a universal
Brown experience does exactly
what Brown attempts not to do
— normalize student life. There
is not one prescribed path to get
the Brown experience “correct.”
My hope is that when we walk out
through the Van Wickle Gates,
each of us can reflect positively
on our time at Brown with as few
regrets as I have.
Claire Kiely was general manager of
The Herald in 2010. In the fall, she
will start work at Bain & Company
in New York.

Proud songsters
Ben Hyman
T o the rain gods: Why? When
the Class of 2011 had got-
ten used to warm, blue-
skied Providence springtimes, why
bid us farewell with a chilly, rain-
soaked April and an even more
depressing May? — More depress-
ing, that is, because we were even
more painfully aware of what we
were missing.
It’s probably for the best that
our senior spring was so drab.
For me, at least, it felt like Brown
was letting us down easy, driving
in that wedge of resentment that
comes before the breakup. Had
it been a gorgeous, lounge-on-
the-Main-Green-type spring, how
much more reluctant would I be to
march out through the gates this
Commencement weekend?
Obviously, when it comes to the
things that will keep me tied to this
place, the weather is the least of
it. Simply put, I love Brown. I love
the faculty’s combination of fierce
intelligence and commitment to
teaching. I love the way the Main
Green looks like something out
of a Gainsborough painting, even
on the rainiest days. Most of all,
I love the ambition and maturity
and kindness of the students I’ve
been lucky enough to spend the
last four years with here.
Those 17- and 18-year-olds
we were when we applied to this
school: Did we know what we were
getting ourselves into? Through the
New Curriculum, Brown presents
its students with a daunting chal-
lenge, the responsibility to form
our own educations out of an over-
whelming variety of options. We
are encouraged to invent interdis-
ciplinary combinations, design our
own courses and, with the help of
the S/NC option, study subjects
outside our comfort zones. The
New Curriculum isn’t a program,
but rather an aspiration, an ideal.
Perhaps because it has become
obsessed with building and re-
building things recently, the Uni-
versity likes to say we are the “ar-
chitects of our own educations.”
But, as a musician, I think com-
position is an equally appropriate
metaphor. Like architects, com-
posers weave together different
themes and materials to create a
coherent whole. Both architects
and composers will pay attention
to form, structure and ornamenta-
tion, and the designs they produce
on the page (or, increasingly, on
the screen) will not be complete
until they are, respectively, built
and performed.
The first crucial difference is
repetition. The architect’s creation,
the building, will stand until it
rots. It will be strong, and though
over time the building’s many oc-
cupants may put it to different
uses, it’s not really in the nature
of buildings to move around or be
reproduced.
The composer’s song is differ-
ent. You hope its first performance
won’t be its last. It can still be
repeated, endlessly. A song is
less a space that we move in, and
more something that comes alive
through us as we sing it, or hum
it, or listen and press “repeat.” In
a similar way, we will spend the
rest of our lives singing the educa-
tions we composed for ourselves
at Brown. Because our learning
will inform our actions, our educa-
tion will never simply exist, but will
constantly be coming into being.
The other difference is time.
Whether they fade out or stop bru-
tally, songs end. Temporality is the
mystery of music, the thing that
gives the sound value. Whereas
buildings outlast the people who
build them, the song’s perfor-
mance will die, as we will. In that
sense, Commencement is one of
our first tastes of the finite, and
the knowledge of its approach
Commencement 2011
45
works wonders on our sense of
time. When people say “College
is the best four years of your life”
it’s not as if it’s true, but rather
that the brevity of college makes
it feel true.
As you can see, Commence-
ment has made me a little mor-
bid, and since lately I’ve been
thinking a lot about death and
time (and, come to think of it,
rain), I’ve gone back to Thomas
Hardy’s poetry. I’ve been re-
reading one of the last poems
he published before his death,
“Proud Songsters”:
The thrushes sing as the sun is
going,
And the finches whistle in ones
and pairs,
And as it gets dark loud
nightingales
In bushes
Pipe, as they can when April
wears,
As if all Time were theirs.
These are brand-new birds of
twelve months’ growing,
Which a year ago, or less than
twain,
No finches were, nor
nightingales,
Nor thrushes,
But only particles of grain.
And earth, and air, and rain.
Not so long ago, we were just
particles, but Brown formed
us and taught us to sing our
knowledge in the world. To all
the proud songsters of the Class
of 2011, I wish you the best of
luck. Do great things. Sing as if
all Time were yours. For the mo-
ment, at least, it is.
Ben Hyman was senior editor of The
Herald in fall 2010.
46 The Brown Daily Herald
SEnior COLUMNS
Learning to swim
Chaz Kelsh
F or the last four years, I
have had the privilege of
telling friends and family
back home that I went to school
with the happiest students in
America. Of the many things that
have been great about Brown,
that has been by far the best, and
I think it’s something we take for
granted. We’re beyond lucky to
have been part of such a vibrant,
excited community, and it can be
difficult while here to maintain
that perspective.
It’s also easy to forget — or to
deny — that most of us are even-
tually going to have to enter the
real world. After leaving College
Hill, many of us will work in an of-
fice, and our employers are likely
to ask us to wake up at a single-
digit hour. We’ll have to pay bills
and make sure there’s money in
the bank to cover them. When
we go places, we won’t recognize
the majority of people around us
from that section freshman year.
We’ll have to provide for our own
gustatory needs, and when the
oven decides to make that dif-
ficult, we’ll have to get the name
of a good repairman. In short,
we’ll need to quickly develop a
host of real-world skills.
Rather than call for Brown to
help educate us in these areas,
though, I would suggest that we
as Brown students already have
opportunities available to us that
help develop the kind of problem-
solving skills that will be impor-
tant for life after Brown. Brown
is doing a terrific job at lots of
things — not least educating us
in academic disciplines — and
it’s unfair and unrealistic to ex-
pect the University to also impart
these practical skills, especially
because they’re better learned
on the ground.
It’s tough to imagine how such
training would work, anyway.
Would ECON 0820: “Principles of
a Balanced Checkbook” be man-
datory S/NC? And what would be
the final project in LITR 1790:
“Effective Email Habits”? These
kinds of things are better taught
in a trial-by-fire situation.
Fortunately, there are already
plenty of ways for us to gain
practical training. Every student-
managed extracurricular — yes,
that happens to include The
Brown Daily Herald — puts stu-
dents in the kind of sink-or-swim
situation that is preparation for
the brutality of the real world.
In the case of The Herald,
those situations are common-
place. What questions should
I ask in this interview? If I ask
the wrong ones, the newspaper
won’t have a story about this.
How can The Herald grow rev-
enue in a world that’s moving
away from print journalism? If
we don’t, there might not be a
Herald someday. These kinds
of questions — and finding and
applying their answers — make
great training for the real world.
There are plenty of other ways
for students to get these experi-
ences, too, through other extra-
curriculars, student employment
and some independent research.
Even studying abroad takes you
outside your comfort zone and
forces you to fend for yourself to
some degree. All of these things
build skills that will come in very
handy, and we should take ad-
vantage of them while we have
the chance.
The education that Brown does
provide us is incredibly valuable,
and nothing I write here is intend-
ed to disparage it. I’ve learned
invaluable critical thinking skills,
honed my writing, and gained
plenty of subject-area knowledge
that will help me both in my job
and in the rest of my life. And tak-
ing a breadth of classes across
all disciplines, as Brown allows
us to do, definitely helps us on
the road to the happiest students
title. There is incredible value to
a liberal arts degree.
For me, running The Herald
was also much more than a prac-
tical experience. It was by far the
most fulfilling part of my Brown
experience. I made the closest
friends I’ve ever had, learned
skills I never could have learned
in a classroom and laughed much
more than could possibly be
healthy. Even when the going got
tough, it was still engaging and
challenging in a new and differ-
ent way. It’s exactly that feeling, I
think, that drives Brown students
to be the happiest in the nation.
We should keep it that way.
Chaz Kelsh was managing editor of
The Herald in 2010. In the fall, he
will start work at Bain & Company
in Boston.

You are what you do
Emmy Liss
S o, Emmy, what do you do
at Brown?”
I have been asked this
question countless times. Once
the first-semester freshman year
question of “Where are you from?”
gets tiring, and people realize the
“What are you studying?” question
is not quite relevant or perma-
nent, the inquiry about what you
do takes precedence. And here I
was, a second-semester senior,
and I suddenly found myself fal-
tering.
When I first arrived at Brown
as an overeager freshman, I was
desperate to find something to do.
The stereotype of an overachieving
high school student, I had par-
ticipated in every extracurricular
activity imaginable. And so, at the
freshman activities fair, I picked up
stacks of flyers and signed up for
countless email lists. I attended
introductory meetings and talked
to upperclassmen. And then, one
day, while trying to fill in the cross-
word puzzle, I noticed an ad in The
Herald for an info session. No ex-
perience was required, which was
good — I had next to none — and
the meeting was that night. So I
added it to my planner, amid the
thirteen other things I was deter-
mined to try out, and I went.
I was instantly impressed by the
people I met and the organization
itself, and promptly took on my
first article. I wrote throughout the
semester, but remained unsure of
how much to commit myself. I was
scared to so quickly wed myself
to one activity, and so I kept trying
out several of the groups I had
discovered at the fair. Jumping
from meeting to meeting, I felt
like I was back in high school with
a schedule full of different com-
mitments. I was back to playing
activity roulette.
Midway through the fall, I had
coffee with an older Herald editor.
She asked if I had aspirations of
rising through the paper’s ranks,
and I found myself without a clear
answer. I liked being a part of the
group, but wasn’t that a big time
commitment? What about all those
other things I could be doing? She
told me I would never feel like I
was part of an organization until
I became deeply involved. And if I
had even the slightest inclination
that The Herald was an activity I
enjoyed and wanted to spend more
time on, I should give it a shot.
Taking her advice, I went from
an only partially committed, oc-
casional writer to a round-the-
clock reporter. After a few weeks
of production nights, last-minute
articles, Herald social events and
just coming to the office for no rea-
son at all, something clicked. The
more time I spent at The Herald,
the more I wanted to be there. At
the end of freshman year, I unsub-
scribed from about fifteen listservs
and never looked back.
The Herald was my activity,
but it also became my identity at
Brown. In a class of 1,500 and an
undergraduate body of 6,000, it
is impossible to know everyone.
And so we carve out little niches
for ourselves, and identify every-
one else by theirs. For better or
for worse, we assume everything
based on the team you play for, the
house you live in or the newspaper
you edit. College can be scary and
lonely, and so we find and build
communities we can rely upon.
When I returned from studying
abroad in the fall of junior year,
I was overwhelmed by the degree
to which my friends and my life at
Brown had evolved. My semester
away had been a perfect change,
but the readjustment to life on
College Hill was far more difficult
than I expected. And yet, when I
Commencement 2011
47
returned to the Herald office, the
transition suddenly became easier.
These were my people, and this
was my home.
This column may be my per-
sonal love letter to The Herald,
but it is not a recruitment pitch.
(If you’ve come to an activities fair
in the last three years, I’ve prob-
ably already given you one.) This
is a more broad-reaching directive.
Go find an activity you love so
much you can stay there till 2 a.m.
Look for the people you want to
work with for five days straight,
and then spend the whole week-
end with. Spend your time wisely
and make it count. Rather than
spreading yourself thinly across
the entire University, concentrate
on what matters most to you.
Not everyone has to agree with
the activities you pick, and your
friends may never understand why
you choose to be proofreading at
midnight on a Thursday. Craft
your own identity and discover the
people you want to share it with.
My position on The Herald’s edi-
torial board ended in December,
and for the last six months, I’ve
been without the activity I came
to use as my identity. At first it
was strange and unnerving, but
the truth is, certain things stick
with you forever. Even as a second-
semester senior, quickly moving
away from my undergraduate ca-
reer, I realized I could still answer
a simple question about who I am
at Brown and what I do: “I was a
Herald editor.”
Emmy Liss was deputy managing
editor of The Herald in 2010. In the
fall, she will start work at McKinsey
& Company in New York.
48 The Brown Daily Herald

FInal thoughts
from The Herald’s senior survey

This is the best place on earth • Brown is the s— • 4-year-long orgasm • four years well-spent • I don’t want to leave
• The Open Curriculum is the best part of Brown — don’t let it die • I don’t want to grow up • Part of me is very sad
to be leaving because I feel that there are many aspects of the Brown experience that I did not participate in fully • I
never realized until I was filling out this survey just how much of the “typical college experience” I skipped by never
going to class drunk or having sex in the library • I think the Brown bubble has insulated a lot of people • I met so many
amazing people and I like to think most people who met me feel I fall into that category for them • I am happy with
what I’ve learned about myself at Brown • You can only go to Spats so many times in a week • It’s been so real • I feel
like I’ve just climbed Mt. Everest after breaking out of Alcatraz • I’ll miss the comfortableness and expressiveness of
Brown • I love Brown, but it wasn’t the place for me, so to speak • I wish I could do it all again • Life only goes downhill
after • I want more • Will miss college. Will not miss Brown • Nerds are the coolest part of Brown • In Deo Speramus •
All these people reminding me it’s the end, and I’d rather think of it as the beginning • If only we could relocate Brown
to SoCal • Wish I had one more year • Ever true • I’ll even miss the SciLi • Where am I going to get laid free and easy
after college? • I wish I didn’t have to have final thoughts • Brown should hook up its seniors with jobs • F—, this made
me sad • Brown was a massive disappointment in some ways, but was still probably the best 4 years of my life • The
small size of the endowment seemed to put a damper on opportunities for student activities • This school allows you
to Rock and Roll • Thank you Josiah • I think these years have set us up for even better years • People are lying on this
survey • work doesn’t sound like fun • I hope my little brother has a better time at Brown than I did • Good Stuff • I
really don’t know how people can stay at Brown for four years • I transferred here, and I am pretty darn glad I did •
The Brown experience has very little to do with school and academics and a whole lot to do with the wonderful people
in this community • When and where is the last one of these naked parties, and why was I the only one not to see the
naked donut run? • I’ve had my ups and downs, but senior year has been a blast • Every year here was so different • I
came to Brown before the financial crisis hit, and I wish that my family had some of my tuition money now • The key
is finding the secrets — whether they be classes, rooftops, or funding sources • Four years went by in a flash • Ruth
hugged me once. It made my life • Work like an engineer, party like a frat brother • This place is amazing but it could
be so much better • I wish more people were into dating than this stupid effing hook-up scene • I can’t wait to get my
diploma • haven’t thought all semester • reinstate the donkey mural on the side of the SciLi • Chicken Finger Friday
kept me at Brown • The people are the best part • The name on the degree is the only thing that I found truly invaluable
about Brown, but what a name • D— this place is awesome • I used to be frustrated that people at Brown weren’t as
“politically/socially active” but I think I’m fine with that now • “Don’t ever look back, don’t ever look back.” • There is a
sad lack of school spirit but most know it and accept it as normal • Brown is the most amazing thing that could have
happened to me • The general atmosphere hasn’t changed but the weather’s gotten worse • I learned that I can question
anything and I can dare to do anything as long as I think I can • Not everyone is looking to hook up with you so don’t go
into it with that mind set • Why couldn’t my Brown degree get me a job? • It has been an amazing 4 years. • Time’s up

class of 2011 by the numbers data from dining services, health services and the university library

Libraries Health services

Total number of items checked out by the class of 2011: 16,172 office visits
90,035 2,120 flu shots
Mean number of items checked out by each student:
9,716 lab tests
828 X-rays
Median: 35.5
Mode: 2
56
Number of students who checked out 100+ items: 258 Dining SERVICES
Number of those who checked out 400+ items: 8
37,000 cups of coffee at the Blue Room
Number of students who checked out 10 or fewer items: 330
Number of those who checked out zero: 20 22,000 iced coffees at the Blue Room
Most checked out by a student: 962
100,500 slices of pizza at the Gate
Items not returned as of May 19: 3,645
Number of students with items not returned as of May 19: 647 49,300 spicy chicken sandwiches at Jo’s