Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Tuesday, April 5, 2011Daily Heraldthe Brown

Since 1891vol. cxlvi, no. 42

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City & State, 4

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Amidst changes, Med School to conduct self-studyBy Caroline Flanagan

Staff Writer

While settling into its new home at the Medical Education Build-ing downtown, the Alpert Medical School will also conduct a self-study over the next year to prepare for the upcoming Liaison Committee on Medical Education accreditation investigation in fall 2012. The com-mittee, which requires participating medical schools to undergo a year-long self-study before evaluation, oversees accreditation processes for medical schools and determines eligibility for grants.

The self-study coincides with the

Med School’s ongoing curricular overhaul and relocation to its new building in the Jewelry District. “We’ve had (the committee’s) ac-creditation standards in mind for every change we’ve made,” said Philip Gruppuso, associate dean for medical education.

The move to the Medical Edu-cation Building will be key to (the committee’s) approval, Guppuso said. “There are huge problems with medical students trying to find study space,” he said.

Class size will increase from 75 students in each graduating class to about 120 after the new building opens. As a result, the Med School is

introducing a new “academy model” for career and personal advising. Each class will be divided into three academies of 40 students.

“The new curriculum will focus on traditional clinical training in the core areas and expand to public health and medical ethics. There will also be a more robust program on advising students on what they should do in their fourth year, which is largely elective,” Gruppuso said.

The new building will also pro-vide more space for teaching, said Jeffrey Borkan, professor of family medicine, as well as group meeting rooms and simulation rooms, where students can work with simulated

patients. These changes have galvanized

interest in the Med School. Ap-plications increased more than 15 percent this year, Gruppuso said. He attributed the dramatic increase to the move to the new building and said he expects applications to continue to rise.

The Med School was “always known as an intimate medical school, so there was a concern that that familiarity and closeness might be lost” as the Med School expands, Borkan said.

The committee’s accreditation

One-third plan further education after graduationBy aparna Bansal

Senior Staff Writer

Just over 35 percent of undergradu-ates plan to attend medical, law, busi-ness or graduate school immediately following graduation, according to last month’s Herald poll. About one-fourth of current students — 23.9 percent — indicated they plan to

take up jobs after graduation, and 7.6 percent indicated they will be participating in service programs such as Teach for America and the Peace Corps. More than one-fourth of undergraduates are still unsure about their plans.

According to data collected by the Career Development Center, 56 percent of the class of 2009 were employed as of April 2010, while 27 percent of that class told the CDC they were enrolled in full-time edu-cation programs.

The Herald poll results for this question showed no statistically significant differences across grade

level.Because students usually join ser-

vice programs for a limited time, many plan to continue on to further education or employment after their one- or two-year commitments end.

Service programs provide “struc-tured opportunities that are attrac-tive to a lot of students,” said Andrew Simmons, director of the CDC, add-ing that these programs do not re-quire the same “amount of legwork” as looking for other employment opportunities and do not shoulder students with the burden of graduate school tuition.

Participating in service programs also helps students applying to medi-cal and law schools, he said.

“Law schools don’t take people straight out of college. They want to see more experienced people … so it’s a win-win situation,” said Har-rison Stark ’11, a BlogDailyHerald contributor who will be working for Teach for America this year.

According to data collected by the CDC, 306 Brown students applied to enter law school in fall 2009 and 264 were accepted. But of those accepted,

85.3 percent took one or more years off between college and law school.

Evelyn Limon ’11 will teach at the MATCH Charter Public School in Boston next year before attend-ing law school. She wanted to do something she was passionate about before beginning law school and

starting a career, she said.“I don’t know if, law school-wise,

it will be a benefit to my application,” she said. “It’s more an internal de-sire, feeling like I’m doing something worthwhile — especially because law

City schools hit with two more blowsBy Claire peraCChio

City & State editor

Calling for sweeping cuts to close a two-year $180 million budget gap, Providence Mayor Angel Taveras called the city’s finances a “category five” hurricane. But last Tuesday, that would have more aptly described the city’s embattled school system.

Still reeling from the mayor’s decision to fire all of Providence’s teachers and close four of the city’s schools to rein in the city’s deficit, the district suffered two additional blows as its top educa-tion official resigned, and four of its schools were singled out for

state intervention.The Rhode Island Department

of Education named five low-per-forming schools that will require

comprehensive reform under fed-eral guidelines. Providence Public School District Superintendent Tom Brady also announced he would be leaving his position this July, three years after taking the reins as the city’s leading school administrator. Brady’s resigna-tion begins a search for a replace-ment, adding a new uncertainty to ongoing negotiations with the Providence Teachers Union over

the fates of the 1,926 teachers the mayor fired this February.

The back-to-back announce-ments come as the district — which serves many of the most impoverished communities in the state — confronts the twin realities of failing schools and di-minishing resources available to fix them. Since education officials began naming the state’s worst schools last year, eight of the 10 schools announced have been in the Providence school district. And with education spending making up over half of the city’s budget, schools have come under

Rafael Chaiken / Herald

What are your plans immediately following graduation?

Voters give thumbs down to alums

By Ben KuTnerStaff Writer

Brown’s political alums are facing flagging support among Rhode Is-land voters, according to a new poll released by the Taubman Center for Public Policy.

Less than a third of voters approve of the way Gov. Lincoln Chafee ’75 P’14 and U.S. Rep. David Cicilline ’83 are doing their jobs, according to the poll, which found Chafee’s approval rating at 32 percent and Cicilline’s at 17 percent. Mayor Angel Taveras received a 52 percent approval rating.

The survey of 425 registered Rhode Island voters, which was released March 24, also measured public opinion on the firing of Provi-dence teachers and support for col-lective bargaining rights.

It showed voters split on Chafee’s proposed sales tax changes, which include lowering the tax from 7 to 6 percent and imposing a 1 percent sales tax on currently tax-exempt items like taxi fares, dry cleaning and heating fuel.

The poll also found 54 percent of the state’s registered voters oppose reducing the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions. The narrowing opinion on union bar-gaining rights among Rhode Island voters “reflects the more general trend across the country of declin-ing support for unions,” wrote Wendy Schiller, associate professor of politi-cal science and public policy, in an email to The Herald.

“Public figures have generally

U n d e r p r e s s U r e

Freddy Lu / HeraldThe conversion of the University’s boilers is scheduled for completion in May.

See full coverage on page 3.

continued on page 2

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continued on page 4

the herald poll

city & state

city & state

Debt obligations outweigh U.S. aid

oPinionS, 7

Bad deal

Ben Schreckinger, PresidentSydney Ember, Vice President

Matthew Burrows, TreasurerIsha Gulati, Secretary

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

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Campus news2 the Brown Daily heraldtuesday, April 5, 2011

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“An Alternative Strategy in

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has a lot of negative connotations.”Participation in such service pro-

grams has increased nationwide. Ac-cording to the New York Times, in light of the recent economic down-turn, the number of applicants for Teach for America has increased by 32 percent over the last year and AmeriCorps applications nearly tripled in 2009.

Half of last year’s graduating class who took up jobs went into the non-profit or government sec-tor, Simmons said, adding that the percentage was significantly higher at Brown than at most other institu-tions. Education was the most popu-lar field that students entered and was the second most popular field for graduate study, after engineering.

The number of students who re-ported they will be working after graduation increased this year, and employment numbers for the classes of 2008 and 2009, who graduated during the recession period, were also “pretty consistent,” Simmons said.

Roger Nozaki MAT’89, direc-tor of the Swearer Center for Public Service and associate dean of the College, credited the interest in ser-vice programs to the philanthropic culture at Brown. Last academic year, 55 percent of students were engaged in some form of community service, he said.

“National service was a big part of (President Barack Obama’s) cam-paign. He talked about making it cool again,” Nozaki said.

Service programs are valuable, because students are “thrown into work” and have to “get on their feet and learn a lot in a short period of time,” he added. The Swearer Center has been working with the CDC and the Curricular Resource Center to promote “careers in the common good,” he said.

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a continuing resolu-tion that includes cuts in all funding for the Corporation for National and Community Service, which includes

AmeriCorps. If passed by the Senate, these cuts would have a “tremendous impact” on students’ decisions to join such programs, Nozaki said. But Simmons said such reductions are unlikely to be made.

According to the Herald poll, 4.5 percent of males stated they plan to join service programs compared to 10 percent of females. The Herald poll also showed gender divides among students who plan to work after graduation — 26.3 percent of males compared to 21.8 percent of females — and students who are un-sure — 25.1 percent of males and 29.9 percent of females.

staying in schoolArune Gulati ’11 will be attending

Penn’s School of Medicine this fall. “I personally felt I would lose my track, my drive” by not continuing directly to medical school, he said. “I need to keep myself motivated and interested and a university setting would do that for me.”

Of the class of 2009, 167 under-graduates applied to medical school and 132 were accepted, according to data collected by the CDC. Thirty percent of students from the classes of 2005 to 2009 who matriculated to medical school went straight to medical school, while 37 percent took one year off and 33 percent took two or more years off.

Jeremy Feigenbaum ’11, who will be attending Harvard Law School upon graduation, said it was not worth the time and effort to enter the job application process.

“The benefit to taking a year in between is additional work experi-ence. … But Brown prepared me well for law school,” he said.

“From what I’ve seen of the law school process, they definitely favor people who have taken time off and done real world experience — the Harvard dean that interviewed me even said that to me,” said Sara Lux-enberg ’11, a former Herald features editor who will also be attending Harvard Law School next year. “But there are definitely some people who go straight.”

“It’s a privilege to be able to study something — I couldn’t turn that opportunity down,” said Miriam Jo-elson ’11, who plans to earn a mas-ter’s degree in education at Oxford University. She said while she recog-nizes the importance of getting out of the “academic bubble” and gaining work experience, she would rather do so after earning her degree, as the available job opportunities would be more interesting.

But Simmons said it is not sur-prising most students are still unsure about their post-graduation plans, as seniors are “still working it out until graduation.”

MethodologyWritten questionnaires were ad-

ministered to 972 undergraduates March 14–16 in the lobby of J. Walter Wilson and the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center during the day and the Sciences Library at night. The poll has a 2.9 percent margin of er-ror with 95 percent confidence. The margin of error is 4.4 percent for the subset of males, 3.8 percent for females, 12.9 percent for transfer stu-dents, 3.0 percent for non-transfers, 6.1 percent for seniors, 3.4 percent for non-seniors, 5.6 percent for first-year students and 3.4 percent for non-first-years.

The sample polled was demo-graphically similar to the Brown un-dergraduate population as a whole. The sample was 44.3 percent male and 55.7 percent female. First-years made up 26.6 percent of the sample, 26.2 percent were sophomores, 24.1 percent were juniors and 23.1 per-cent were seniors. Of those polled, 5.2 percent of respondents identi-fied themselves as being transfer students. Statistical significance was established at the 0.05 level.

Senior Editor Julien Ouellet ’12, News Editors Alex Bell ’13 and Ni-cole Boucher ’13 and Senior Staff Writers Greg Jordan-Detamore ’14 and Lindor Qunaj ’13 coordinated the poll. Herald section editors, senior staff writers and other staff members conducted the poll.

Plans after graduation vary, poll showscontinued from page 1

been getting dismal ratings all across the country,” said Victor Profughi, Rhode Island College professor emeritus of political science and director of the polling firm Quest Research. Profughi has been con-

ducting polls in Rhode Island for approximately 35 years.

He pointed out that the poll is not as useful for measuring Cicil-line’s electoral prospects because it measures his popularity statewide and not just in the district that will decide whether to re-elect him in

2012. In recent weeks, Cicilline has fended off accusations that he failed to fully disclose the state of the city’s finances while he was mayor.

Both Cicilline and Chafee have no immediate reason to panic, Schiller wrote. But because Cicilline faces an earlier re-election contest, “he should work to focus any federal aid he can to the city of Providence to help dis-pel some of the residual unhappiness about his record as mayor,” she wrote.

Voters were most closely divided on the tax increases and the Provi-dence teacher firings. Fifty-one per-cent of surveyed voters supported Taveras’ decision to fire all Provi-dence teachers, while 45 percent op-posed it. The difference in opinion on the issue was nearly within the poll’s margin of error.

Those surveyed also gave Presi-dent Barack Obama a 44 percent ap-proval rating in the Taubman survey, slightly below the 48 percent rating he received in the latest Rasmussen Reports poll.

Voters divided on teacher firingscontinued from page 1

Campus news 3the Brown Daily heraldtuesday, April 5, 2011

Foundation awards grant to Alpert Medical SchoolBy aMY rasMussen

Senior Staff Writer

The Rhode Island Foundation re-cently awarded a grant of $87,631 to the Alpert Medical School to promote primary health care careers in Rhode Island.

The nation currently faces a severe shortage of primary care physicians. According to Neil Steinberg ’75, pres-ident and CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation, 66,000 Rhode Islanders are currently without stable primary health care.

Stable mentoring is one of the best ways to encourage students to become primary care physicians, said Philip Gruppuso, associate dean for medical education, who is respon-sible for orchestrating the medical education portion of the grant.

Though about 50 percent — close to the national average — of the Uni-versity’s Med School students choose a residency defined as primary care, many of them will go on to specialize within their fields, Gruppuso said. The reasons are often fiscal — on average, primary care physicians are

paid significantly less than their spe-cialist colleagues.

The Med School has enough primary care mentors to fill current needs, but the mentors are often “slammed by work,” Gruppuso said. The University already has partner-ships with around 75 community practices whose doctors volunteer to mentor Med School students. The grant will provide the Med School with a way to compensate communi-ty doctors, as well as allow it to show appreciation for the mentors’ time.

For the moment, community doc-tors will be paid “a modest amount” for their mentoring efforts, Grup-puso said. In coming years, the Med School hopes to dramatically increase the sum through its own funding.

In 2010, the Rhode Island Foun-dation upgraded both primary care and public educational reform to the level of a signature initiative. For the next five years, the foundation will work to devote increased resources and attention to these movements.

The Med School and the founda-tion have already taken a number of steps to promote the primary career

path. First- and second-years are en-rolled in a course called “Doctor-ing,” which exposes students to the world of primary care from their first semester of school onwards, Grup-puso said.

In 2009, the foundation teamed with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island and the Rhode Is-land Medical Society to create the RI Primary Care Loan Forgiveness Program. This initiative encourages medical residents to continue their practice in Rhode Island, awarding up to $20,000 of loan forgiveness annually for four years. Steinberg said he feels the two programs will complement each other “quite nicely.”

Both Steinberg and Gruppuso said the initial response from the primary care community has been extremely positive, but it is still too early to draw any definitive conclu-sions about the success of the pro-gram.

In the future, the foundation will work closely with the Med School as

it gains stable footing in the primary care arena, Steinberg said. “We’re an early supporter,” he added. “We get programs and projects off the ground.”

The foundation has supported other University efforts in recent years. During the first few years of the Campaign for Academic En-richment, the foundation granted various awards to the school totaling approximately $3.8 million, Steinberg said. About $600,000 of that money was directed toward the Med School.

“The Rhode Island Foundation is a community foundation, designed

to meet the needs of the people,” Steinberg added. The group does not award money to the University as a whole, but rather more specifically to “programs where we can draw on the expertise of Brown.”

The foundation has also previ-ously awarded grants to the Educa-tion Alliance, the Swearer Center for Public Service and the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, among others.

“There’s a good partnership,” he said. “This was an opportunity for mutual benefit for the foundation and for the University.”

Heating plant upgrade in final phaseBy KYle MCnaMara

Contributing Writer

A nearly $30 million upgrade to Brown’s central heating plant is well underway, part of a three-phase series of renovations totaling approximately $100 million. The upgrades began in 2005 with a phase that involved replacing seven miles of underground piping below the University and cost about $40 million, according to Ste-phen Maiorisi, vice president for Facilities Management. The second phase included an additional $35 million in upgrades and was com-pleted in 2009.

The third phase is a long-term project that will span the next 10 to 15 years, Maiorisi said.

The current work in the third phase, which costs about $3.5 mil-lion, involves converting the two high pressure boilers at the plant into low pressure boilers and changing the

switch gear in the Prince Engineering Laboratory. One boiler has already been converted, and the conver-sion of the second boiler is slated to be completed in May. The work in Prince Lab is also on schedule. Conversion of the boilers will save the University between $50,000 and $75,000 per year once complete.

The long-term portion of the third phase, which will cost approxi-mately $25 million, involves replac-ing the remaining underground pip-ing throughout campus. Many of the University’s pipes are still functional and do not yet need to be replaced, which prolongs the project, Maiorisi said.

Originally, the Department of Fa-

cilities Management had planned for the third phase to involve the installation of black start capabili-ties for power outages, which would have enabled generators to kick on automatically. But the University discovered that converting the boil-ers would accomplish the same goal in a faster and more cost-effective manner, saving about $1.6 million, Maiorisi said.

The high pressure boilers required two employees at the plant at all times, while the low pressure boilers only require one employee, Maiorisi said, allowing for more employees to go out in the field and improving efficiency for Facilities Management workers.

standards are broad but ultimately determine the Med School’s license, Borkan said. “As a first step, Brown tries to create innovation and ad-vance medical education into an area of excitement and utilize the resources Rhode Island has to of-fer,” he said.

Gruppuso said he is confident about the evaluation. “One of our responsibilities to our students and the institution is that we retain our accreditation, and I think we’re in a good position to maintain (the committee’s) accreditation for the next two years,” he said.

Med School to undergo accreditation investigation

continued from page 1

city & state

fire for cuts that have left parents, students and teachers unsure of where they will end up once the storm of school closings and teacher firings subsides.

Feeling the strainThe four Providence schools

that the Rhode Island Depart-ment of Education designated as “persistently low-achieving” are Dr. Jorge Alvarez High School, Hope Information Technology School, Mount Pleasant High School and Mary E. Fogarty El-ementary School. Hope Informa-tion Technology School is part of the Hope High School complex, which has comprised three sub-schools since 2003.

The fifth school named by the department — the Rhode Island School for the Deaf — is operated by the state.

The announcement places “a tremendous strain on a district with already low morale,” particu-larly for teachers still wondering whether they will lose their jobs, said Steve Smith, president of the Providence Teachers Union.

The department must target the worst 5 percent of its schools for state intervention to receive Title I federal grant funds allo-cated for schools serving low-income students, according to Elliot Krieger, the department’s spokesman. The schools were selected based on a formula that factors in standardized test per-formance, graduation rates and other criteria laid out by the No Child Left Behind act.

Given the district’s demo-graphics, it could be expected that the vast majority of the schools named as the state’s lowest-per-forming in the past two years are in the Providence school district, according to Krieger. “Most of the high-poverty schools would be in Providence, so it isn’t surpris-ing that eight of the 10 would be

Providence schools,” he said.Under the department’s proto-

col, the leadership of the schools designated for intervention have 45 days from the date of the an-nouncement to solicit feedback from their communities and select from among four reform options. If the schools fail to make suffi-

cient improvement, they can be taken over by the state Depart-ment of Education and Board of Regents for Elementary and Sec-ondary Education.

a tough road aheadThe experiences of the six

schools singled out last January show that the road to reform for this year’s schools will not be easy. Of those named last year, five schools were run by the Provi-dence school district. One, Fein-stein High School, was already slated for closure due to declining enrollment when it was named.

The sixth, Central Falls High School, garnered national atten-tion after Central Falls Superin-tendent Frances Gallo fired all of

the school’s teachers when their union refused to agree to conces-sions like working longer hours and undergoing tougher evalu-ations.

The state Department of Edu-cation also announced March 29 that it had approved the reform plans of four of the Providence

schools named last year. By green-lighting the plans, Educa-tion Commissioner Deborah Gist also gave the schools $600,000 in federal funds to implement them between April and September of this year.

The biggest challenge these troubled schools face is finding the resources to make necessary improvements, according to War-ren Simmons, director of Brown’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Schools also confront the difficult tasks of securing stable leadership and generating community support to succeed in their reform efforts, Simmons said.

Once failing schools are named, they face four options

— turnaround, restart, transfor-mation and closure. Under the turnaround model, the school must replace its leadership, re-hire at most 50 percent of its staff, restructure its governance and improve professional develop-ment. Restart requires the school to reopen as a charter school, a

regional collaborative or a joint management-labor compact.

Of the schools announced last year, all chose transformation — an intensive process in which schools must replace principals hired before the transformation process began, subject staff to evaluation, use data to improve outcomes and implement new incentives to recruit and retain effective teachers.

Mission not accomplishedThe Providence Public School

District faces a $40 million budget deficit — only part of the litany of projected structural deficits and retiree pension and health care liabilities contributing to the city’s fiscal woes. In the span of little

over a month, Taveras’ efforts to target the school system for aus-terity have roiled the city’s teach-ers union and kept community members guessing about where students will be enrolled next year.

Now, the man in charge of Providence public schools since July 2008 is stepping down.

Given that the average tenure for superintendents in urban dis-tricts is 2.8 years, Brady narrowly beats the average, Simmons said. Superintendents’ short terms in office stem from the challenges of satisfying competing political and community interests, he said.

Brady’s departure is “absolutely a setback,” Smith said, adding that no less than the collaborative re-lationship praised by Education Secretary Arne Duncan is at stake.

“We’ve embarked on a labor-management partnership that was receiving national recognition and now, within really a couple of months, what was being rec-ognized by Secretary Duncan has now been eliminated,” Smith said.

Under Brady, the district ad-opted for the first time a stan-dard curriculum in accordance with state requirements and worked with the city’s teachers union to develop teacher evalu-ation standards and a model for turning around failing schools. At a March 20 forum on the an-nounced school closings, Brady told audience members that his two grandchildren in Providence public schools represent a person-al stake in the district’s success.

At a press conference last Tues-day, Brady said his resignation was completely his own choice. He said he wants to “take a different approach,” perhaps as a teacher or consultant.

Previous Providence school su-perintendents had departed to ac-cept higher-profile offers in larger cities. This would not have been the case with Brady, Smith said.

“You had a guy who wanted to complete the mission,” he said.

City & State4 the Brown Daily heraldtuesday, April 5, 2011

Bill proposes recovery schools to tackle youth substance abuseBy elizaBeTh Carr

Staff Writer

Of the almost 135,000 residents aged 12 to 20 in Rhode Island, it is estimated that over 12 percent have serious problems with alco-hol consumption, according to a survey conducted by the Center for Integrated Behavioral Health Policy, part of the Department of Health Policy at the George Washington University Medical Center. Less than 3,000 seek treat-ment annually, it found.

Statistics such as these have pushed state Sen. John Tassoni Jr., D-Smithfield and North Smith-field, to introduce legislation that would create recovery schools to provide students treatment for substance abuse while they work toward a high school diploma.

“We want to help these children right now before they end up on a bad road where they’re dependent on social services,” Tassoni said.

The startup costs of the bill are estimated between half a million and $1 million. Tassoni called the funds “money well-spent upfront,” as opposed to spending more later on under-educated people with long-term substance dependen-cies. He said the cost to the state of schooling, classes pertaining to drug and alcohol dependen-cies and counseling for people with substance abuse problems is $60,000 to $90,000 per person annually.

“I don’t think there’s going to be any opposition,” Tassoni said. “I think there’s going to be denial that we don’t have a problem.”

Rhode Island has some of the nation’s highest rates of illicit substance use — particularly for marijuana and cocaine — and binge drinking, especially in the 12 to 17 age group, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services

Administration. For the past few years, Tassoni

has been working with the Provi-dence Center, a local nonprofit focused on providing health care to people with behavioral issues, including psychiatric illnesses and substance addictions, to launch Rhode Island’s first recovery high school.

According to Ian Lang, chief strategy officer at the Providence Center, the school will open in September and will accept its first students in January 2012, with an initial capacity of 10 to 15, regard-less of whether the bill passes.

“Our goal is to get something open in Rhode Island to dem-onstrate the effectiveness of this model,” Lang said.

The recovery high school will be established within the Provi-dence Center School, which currently helps students with behavioral issues not related to ad-dictions. “If we can do it this way,

we can lower our cost to make this feasible in the short-term,” Lang said, adding that any state funding will initially be minimally available.

Currently, after young people seek treatment they are sent back to their original high schools, Lang said. Ninety percent of students are offered substances on their first day back to school following treatment, and within months 50 percent are using at or above pre-treatment levels, he added.

“You’re trying to change the peer environment from peer pres-sure to use to peer pressure not to use,” Lang said. He added that to ensure a controlled environment, recovery schools should not enroll more than 40 students.

The Northshore Recovery High School in Beverly, Mass. enrolls 50 students in “all phases of their recovery,” said Director Michelle Lipinski. In larger schools, indi-

cators of substance dependencies — such as truancy and declining grades — are harder to address, she said. At the recovery school, students sign a contract that they will be “honest and communica-tive,” she said. Over 80 percent of the school’s graduates enroll in college.

“Even if we can only provide the service to 10 or 15 kids, it makes a difference for those kids,” Lang said. “It’s a life-changer at a low cost.”

“For too long, the education community has said this isn’t an education issue, this is a medical issue, and the medical community has said this isn’t a medical issue, it’s an educational issue,” he said.

“If you don’t provide these things for these kids, their future is basically over,” Lang said. “We need to look at this investment not as another program, another pot of money, but a much smarter uti-lization of resources in this state.”

Budget woes rock school district

The Rhode Island department of education announces the original six low-achieving schools

Rhode Island wins $75 million in Race to the Top funds

Mayor Angel Taveras convenes the Municipal Finances Review Panel to audit the city’s finances

Taveras fires all 1,926 of the district’s teachers, citing the city’s fiscal woes

Providence School Board votes 4-3 to approve the firings

Taveras announces panel findings, $180 million two-year budget deficit

Taveras and Providence Public School district Superintendent Tom Brady announce four school closings

Brady resigns and the Rhode Island department of education announces five more schools targeted for intervention

Jan. 11, 2010

Aug. 24, 2010

Jan. 10

Feb. 22

Feb. 24

march 3

march 14

march 29

Five Providence schools targeted for comprehensive reformcontinued from page 1

Sports tuesday 5the Brown Daily heraldtuesday, April 5, 2011

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Dot Comic | eshan Mitra and Brendan Hainline

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to improve and be better prepared for the challenges to come.

“All this is building to a cre-scendo with the Ivy League Cham-pionship,” he said. “We played better the second day (in Santa Barbara) than we did the first, and when we played in Arizona, we played better than we did in Santa Barbara. If you’re not going forwards, you’re going backwards.”

For both the men’s and women’s squads, playing in sunny Califor-nia and Arizona weather was a nice change of pace after a long winter.

“We got to play in great weath-er, which was our primary goal,”

Hughes said. “It’s meant to reward the kids for putting in a long, ardu-ous winter here, but at the same time, it’s a means to an end to get better for the Ivy League Cham-pionship.”

Over the winter break, the teams’ indoor practice facility was damaged in harsh weather con-ditions, leaving the squads with limited practice time.

“The amount of time that we’ve actually been able to play golf and chip and putt is pretty minimal coming off of the winter,” said Women’s Head Coach Danielle Griffiths. “We’ve hit golf balls day after day, but that’s all we’ve been able to do. That’s probably the one thing here in the Northeast — it

takes a while for the greens to come back after the winter. Now we just need to focus on getting the ball in the hole.”

Both teams return home for their next tournament, as the women host the first-ever Brown Invitational at the Rhode Island Country Club April 10-11 and the men compete in the New England

Division 1 Championship at the Newport National Golf Course April 9-10.

“It’s going to be nice to be just 20 minutes from the golf course,” Griffiths said. “We’re going to get to play it Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday before the tournament, so those four rounds will be very helpful in getting pre-

pared.”“We feel like we have a little bit

of an advantage because it’s more like a home game for us,” Hughes said. “We played the Adams Cup there in the fall, so all of the guys have seen the course before. If we can continue to improve like we did in the last tournament and at Arizona, I think we’ll be okay.”

Golf teams look ahead to tournaments near homecontinued from page 8

2 and No. 4 singles, respectively. “All of us had to grind out a

match,” Aboubakare said. “They were the underdog, but they were fighting hard.”

Unlike the women, the men’s team started out its season with a five-match winning streak. The men’s squad lost once at the ECAC Indoor Championship, then went on a six-match win streak before its Ivy opener.

Facing Princeton Friday, the Bears were in the lead after the doubles matches, where co-captain Kendrick Au ’11 and Tom Deigh-ton ’13 pulled out a close victory 9-7 at the No. 2 doubles match. The Tigers quickly caught up after the first singles match and set the

determining match at the No. 4 spot, where Princeton took a 3-2 lead. Despite a win by Soufiane Azargui ’14, the Tigers prevailed 4-3.

The Bears were up again after the doubles section of the day Saturday with wins against the Quakers at the No. 1 and No. 3 spots. After three hard-fought sets in the No. 2 singles match, the Bears ceded to the Quakers and walked away with their second Ivy League loss.

Both the men’s and women’s teams face two more Ivy oppo-nents this weekend. While the men hit the road to challenge Cornell and Columbia, the women are set to host the Big Red and the Lions at home at the Pizzitola April 9-10.

continued from page 8

Men’s tennis loses first two Ivy matches

editorial & Letter6 the Brown Daily heraldtuesday, April 5, 2011

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

Over the last several months, you may have heard unsettling stories of the ongoing political skirmishes in far-off states like Wisconsin and Ohio. Particularly in Wisconsin, whose capital is home to a large university, students have played large roles on both sides of the ongo-ing protests.

There are many similarities between these states’ situations and that in Rhode Island — including the firing of Providence teachers and the ubiquitous budget battles that form the undercurrent of political debate in most places. But the petty partisan wrangling in those states differs significantly from the relatively calm, civil and adult discussions going on here. Naturally, then, we wrote the dispute off as a national issue that had little direct relevance to students and professors at Brown.

So we were shocked and disappointed to read a report by the Milwau-kee Journal Sentinel last week that the Republican Party in Wisconsin was trying to access emails sent by William Cronon, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Apparently, the party suspected the professor had violated university policy by using his official email to conduct political activities, though the key terms they were looking for — “Scott Walker,” “recall” and “union,” for example — highlight the contemporary, political nature of their curiosity. Invoking Wisconsin’s robust freedom of information act, Wisconsin Republicans sought permission to root through every email Cronon had sent thus far in 2011. When asked why the party was making such inquiries, Mark Jefferson, its executive director, said simply “I don’t have to give a reason,” according to a March 26 New York Times article.

We were even more disturbed to discover this was not an isolated incident. According to a March 29 New York Times article, a partisan research group made similarly broad inquiries of numerous professors at several universities in Michigan. The group also refused to discuss its motives for filing the requests.

Because the groups seeking access to professors’ emails have not explained in detail their reasoning for filing such requests, we cannot be sure of their exact rationale. Nevertheless, it does not seem far-fetched that this is “an attempt to intimidate or embarrass professors who are sympathetic to organized labor,” a concern the New York Times reported hearing from several of the targeted professors.

We do not condone the inappropriate use of university resources by professors. If an individual thinks university policy is being broken, he or she should bring it up with the university, which can resolve the issue according to its usual, internal procedures. Seeking to exploit public record laws to trawl through a professor’s emails is a gross violation of personal privacy and academic integrity. Happily, the University of Wisconsin refused to release many of Cronon’s emails, citing these concerns. But it did read through the rest of his correspondence to determine that he had not violated any university policies, striking a balance between the public’s right to know and the weighty, counter-vailing concerns.

We hope other universities confronted with a situation like this act in a similarly professional manner. We condemn any attempts to bully, harass or embarrass professors for partisan purposes. As a private insti-tution, Brown should be exempt from most public requests for records. Still, we call on the University to remain vigilant. Academic freedom and personal privacy should yield only in the direst of circumstances.

editorials are written by The herald’s editorial page board. Send com-ments to [email protected].

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Academics trump politics

An article in Monday’s Herald (“Columbia votes to reinstate ROTC,” April 4) incorrectly referred to Columbia student Sean Udell as a member of the Columbia University Senate. In fact, Udell is the senior class president and president of the Columbia Queer Alliance but is not a Senate member. The Herald regrets the error.

CO R R e C T I O N

L e T T e R TO T H e e d I TO RReaction to yesterday’s advertisementTo the Editor:

I was frankly appalled by yesterday’s advertisement sponsored by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, which attempted to question the rhetoric of Israeli apartheid by displaying pictures of four Arabs and one Druze who have attained some prominence in Israel. Just as the election of President Barack Obama has led some to deny the continued reality of systemic racism in America, Horowitz’s advertisement attempts to argue that on the basis of the success of these few faces, Israel cannot possibly be engaged in a brutal military occupation, appropriation of Palestinian land and resources and systematic denial of basic rights — most notably the right of self-determination — to the Palestinian people. Contrary to what Horowitz would have us believe, the success of these individuals does not mean that the system is working, but rather that these individuals have managed to effectively navigate an extremely discriminatory system.

In their attempts to succeed, many of them have made concessions to the racist system that they navi-gate, choosing to endorse or at least refuse to contest, policies of systematic discrimination. Consider, for example, Mira Awad’s decision to compete to represent Israel in the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest, which was met with a letter signed by a large and prominent contingent of Palestinian artists and intellectuals, urg-

ing her not to participate. The letter noted, “Whether you like it or not, your performance will be used to help Israel whitewash its atrocities in the Gaza Strip.”

In cases such as this, in fact, it could be argued that the success of a small cadre of oppressed peoples who are willing to express their support for the actions of the Israeli government is actually an important component of the entire colonial project, for it allows Israel to claim the mantle of “democratic state,” while continuing its exploitative business as usual. Any ex-amination of concrete facts, rather than celebrity photo shoots, reveals a sobering picture of the situation of the Palestinians and Druze in Israel and the occupied territories. Consider, for example, that Palestinians in the Occupied Territories live under Israeli military law, while Israeli settlers live under civil law. Over half of Palestinians live in poverty, 45.7 percent in the West Bank and 79.4 percent in Gaza, compared to just 23.6 percent of Israelis. This discrimination also continues inside the 1967 borders of Israel, where, for example, Palestinian citizens of Israel are educated in a completely separate and underfunded school system from Jewish Israeli citizens. However, this advertise-ment conveniently omits such facts, as they would only serve to reinforce the reality of Israel’s egregious violations of international law.

michael Becker ’13

opinions 7the Brown Daily heraldtuesday, April 5, 2011

The American education system is in trou-ble. International assessments reporting that the U.S. is falling behind other devel-oped countries have become so common that we have become almost indifferent. At a time when, in absolute terms, Ameri-cans with only a high school education are earning less than their counterparts did thirty years ago, high school graduation rates have actually fallen. The high school graduation rate reached its peak in 1969 at 77 percent — since then, it has declined to 68.8 percent today. If, as many have argued, the U.S. really is moving towards a high-tech service economy, and a bachelor’s de-gree is the new baseline for middle-class living, then we are leaving a growing pro-portion of the population behind.

Our schools are failing our nation’s chil-dren. As President Barack Obama said in his State of the Union address, we need to fix our education system so that we may “out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world.” And like most peo-ple, I always assumed that the American education system was failing because no-body cared.

Actually, as it turns out, people do care. Since the 1970s, per pupil spending on education has more than doubled, from

$4,328 in 1970 to $9,276 in 2005. The re-sults have been just as dismal as reported above. Not only has the graduation rate fallen, but, by all the assessments available to us — domestic test scores, internation-al scores and reports on incoming college freshmen — American educational attain-ment flat-lined even as spending doubled.

Maybe the expenditures are just mis-placed? In 2001, California began a $1.3 billion per year initiative — 6 percent of the state’s direct education budget — to reduce class sizes to below 20 students across the

state. Years later, assessments revealed that changing class size did not have a statisti-cally significant effect on test scores at all, and perverse incentives created by the pro-gram actually caused test scores across the state to drop.

What about other factors? Neither teachers with master’s degrees nor those from competitive colleges had statistically significant impacts on test scores. Reduc-ing class size has also been a dud, even out-side of California. As might be expected, all of these factors have greatly increased

since the aforementioned 1970s. The pupil-teacher ratio has fallen from 25.8 to 16.0. The percentage of teachers with a master’s degree has risen from 23.5 to 56.2 percent and the median number of years of teach-ing experience has risen from 11 to 15 years.

Even more significantly, in the mod-ern day, per-pupil spending in inner-city schools is often higher than per-pupil spending in suburban schools. The U.S. General Accounting Office has a break-down of the statistics. Around Chicago, av-

erage per-pupil expenditures in the inner city are $4,482, but in the suburbs, schools receive $3,216 per student. In the Boston area, the lowest-spending urban school still spent more per pupil than the highest spending suburban school. And the gap is just as large as ever.

Maybe it is time to accept that more money is not what makes better schools.

So much for my juvenile dreams of mak-ing people care. People do care about edu-cation — and maybe they care too much, to the extent where they are flushing money

down the drain.Education is such an easy political topic.

It is the foundation of our meritocracy, the engine that can propel anyone out of pov-erty and into the upper class. Indirectly, it is the justification for countless policies that benefit the upper class on the assumption that anyone can become upper class. Ev-eryone, on both sides of the aisle, wants to chip in for education. President George W. Bush created “No Child Left Behind,” and in 2007 funded it to the tune of $24.4 bil-lion. Obama rolled out “Race to the Top,” offering an additional $5 billion in grants to schools across the country.

In comparison with welfare, Planned Parenthood and taxes on the rich, educa-tion is politically benign, which is probably why spending just builds and builds while evidence shows little to no impact.

As austerity measures kick in across the states, maybe it’s time to start looking to improve education by spending outside of the classroom. Parents’ age, education lev-el and income may have a larger influence on a child’s academic performance than we can ever hope to achieve through direct education spending. The political reflex to slash benefits and family planning to pro-tect education may, ironically, not be what is best for America’s children.

Michelle Uhrick ‘11 is an international relations and economics concentrator

from Connecticut. She can be contacted at [email protected].

Education spending

As global economic recovery remains a subject of uncertainty and scrutiny in the wake of the financial crisis, it is high time to remember some actors whose perennial crises are now all the more severe. Despite predictions that the economies of the poor-est nations would be insulated from the global recession by their lack of integra-tion, in reality, these economies have been profoundly shaken.

Even as foreign aid levels have declined, there are growing fears that poor countries with unsustainable debts will find them-selves under increasing pressure to pay, re-gardless of the consequences. For countries like the United States, which have the re-sources to counteract this debt crisis, the time to act is now.

But why should the U.S. do so? Does America not pay billions to these countries already?

The image of the U.S. as a generous do-nor of global aid is deeply ingrained for many Americans. In a WorldPublicO-pinion.org survey last year, a majority of Americans estimated that median U.S. aid contributions made up 25 percent of the national budget and felt that this number should ideally be 10 percent.

In reality, U.S. aid commitments make up less than 1 percent of annual govern-ment expenditure. Promises of aid made by U.S. politicians, such as Bush’s extrava-gant President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, often go far beyond actual commit-

ments.But situated amongst media dialogues

that cast the U.S. as the “leader of the free world,” and other exceptionalist notions, this discrepancy is not surprising. Through-out the American media and the rhetoric of American politicians, the assumption that the U.S. is and should be a generous source of positive input is ubiquitous.

Unfortunately, these assumptions glaze over the extent to which loans from the U.S. and institutions over which the U.S. holds power now entangle many low-in-

come countries. The burden of these loans — loans that are, in the words of former World Bank chief economist Joseph Sti-glitz, undemocratically imposed on gov-ernments — is truly astonishing.

The roughly $13 billion in debt servicing paid on a yearly basis by African countries alone is greater than the value of aid com-ing in to those countries. This high price of debt comes at the expense of government services, including health care and educa-tion, thus only exacerbating problems that aid supposedly addresses.

To be sure, much has been said about this and little has been done. In 1999 under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries pro-

gram, and again in 2005 under the Multi-lateral Debt Relief Initiative program, the G-8 countries, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank wrote up a list of 40 countries with what it deemed to be un-sustainable debts, or national debts greater than 150 percent of gross domestic prod-uct. Yet even this debt forgiveness came with strings attached, including require-ments that heavily indebted countries can-cel or privatize social services and further liberalize markets to qualify for debt for-giveness.

Unsurprisingly, even of the most heav-ily indebted countries that qualified for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries and Mul-tilateral Debt Relief Initiative programs, many refused to do so. For these countries, it is not clear that the costs associated with IMF-mandated structural adjustment — a strategy that has already failed them — are worth the benefits of freedom from debt.

While it may seem that this issue is far beyond our power as students, administra-tors, staff or faculty, the collective political will of informed people is not insignificant. Since the early 2000s, the Jubilee Move-ment, an international coalition of mostly faith-based organizations, has been advo-

cating debt cancellation without regressive demands for structural adjustment. The U.S. wing of this movement has been sup-porting legislation in Congress that would effectively engage the U.S. in ending abu-sive debt relationships.

Specifically, the Jubilee Act — which became mired in the Senate when it last came up for a vote in 2008 — calls upon the Treasury to facilitate debt cancellation of heavily indebted countries. In contrast with past debt-forgiveness regimes, the Ju-bilee Act requires only that funds diverted from debt servicing go to poverty-allevia-tion programs.

Witnessing the cuts now being pushed by Republicans in Congress and by state and local governments across the county, it may seem untimely to call on the U.S. to cancel debt or divert limited financial re-sources towards developing countries. But researchers from the global Jubilee Move-ment have demonstrated that debt relief does not need to come out of the reserves of the wealthiest countries. Rather, the IMF, which bears responsibility for push-ing many of the problem loans in the first place, could sell portions of its gold reserves to cover much of the cost of debt relief.

While the Jubilee Act enjoys biparti-san support from 26 Senate and 53 House co-sponsors, Rhode Island’s legislators are conspicuously absent. In the midst of a Congressional session that may wreak hav-oc on U.S. government programs and com-mitments at home and abroad, it would be a great relief to see this bill back on its feet.

Ian Trupin ’13 is a COe concentrator who just learned how to ride a

tandem bicycle.

An abusive relationship

The roughly $13 billion in debt servicing paid on a yearly basis by African countries alone is greater than the value

of aid coming in to those countries.

As austerity measures kick in across the states, maybe it’s time to start looking to improve

education by spending outside of the classroom.

By IAN TRUPINopinions Columnist

By MICHeLLe UHRICkopinions Columnist

By MaDeleine WensTrupSportS Staff Writer

A week and a half before the sea-son began in January, the men’s and women’s tennis teams hit a setback. A monstrous winter storm took down a part of the Paul Bailey Pizzitola Memorial Sports Center’s membrane roof, and a large patch of snow landed in the middle of the tennis courts. But the teams took it in stride and moved practices and home games to the Centre Court Tennis Club in Riverside for a month while their home court was repaired.

“We had to play late at night, and we were already tired from classes,” Bianca Aboubakare ’11 said. “It was pretty bad for team morale.”

Despite this difficulty, the women’s team (13-6, 2-0 Ivy League) rocketed into its Ivy sea-son over the weekend, picking up a win against Princeton (9-8, 2-1 Ivy) in the conference opener Fri-day and then defeating Penn (6-11, 0-3 Ivy) Saturday afternoon.

The men’s team (13-4, 0-2 Ivy) did not have the same success against its first Ivy challengers. The Tigers (10-6, 3-0 Ivy) and Quakers (11-3, 1-2 Ivy) both edged out the Bears 4-3 in close matches over the opening weekend.

The women’s team took a while to get on its feet. After four losses, the team picked up its first win

against Boston College Feb. 10, followed by a big victory and re-cord-breaking day against David-son College. The Bears swept the doubles points, giving away only five games, and took five out of six singles matches in straight sets.

Aboubakare broke the record for career wins in both singles and doubles, with 85 and 72 wins, re-spectively.

The game against Davidson propelled the Bears into what has so far been a succesful sea-son. Bruno has gone 11-2 since then, losing only to Princeton and William and Mary.

But the Bears sought to avenge their loss to Princeton, last year’s Ivy champions. When Bruno took on the Tigers in February, the team lost 5-2. But this Friday at Princeton, the Bears gave up only the No. 2 singles and the No. 1 doubles matches.

“This was our greatest achieve-ment this season,” Women’s Head Coach Paul Wardlaw said. “We were relaxed, very comfortable, and the freshmen dealt with the pressure well. (Princeton) may have underestimated us from our loss earlier this season.”

The Bears won four of five singles matches in straight sets. The exception, Misia Krasowski ’13, came back from losing her first set of the No. 1 singles match to take the next two sets for the win. Krasowski also paired with Julie Flanzer ’12 for an 8-2 win at No. 3 doubles.

“It was exciting — it was the first win against Princeton in my career, and in my coach’s as well,” Aboubakare said.

Bruno continued its Ivy tour in Philadelphia Saturday. The Bears gave up the No. 1 match in both singles and doubles but powered through to sweep the rest of the matches and take the win 6-1. Aboubakare and rookie Jessica Harrow ’14 both overcame early deficits to win their matches at No.

Daily Heraldthe Brown

Sports tuesdaytuesday, April 5, 2011

Women shine, men drop to last place

By saM ruBinroiTSportS Staff Writer

The men’s and women’s golf teams enjoyed some much needed sun-shine as they spent their spring breaks competing in tournaments out West.

The women’s team played in the second tournament of its spring season as it competed in the Lady Otter Spring Invitational hosted by California State University at Monterey Bay March 28-29. The team clinched eighth place in the 22-team field with a two-day score of 636. Megan Tuohy ’12 led the Bears with rounds of 79 and 73 to earn 11th place individually. Sarah Guarascio ’11 also turned in a strong performance with a two-day score of 156 to earn 18th place individually.

Meanwhile, the men’s squad opened its spring schedule in the OGIO-Santa Barbara Invitational hosted by the University of Cali-fornia at Santa Barbara March 28-29. Despite the team’s last place finish in a field of 16, J.D. Ardell ’13 said he was glad to be back on the course after the five-month layoff following the conclusion of the fall season.

“I think we could have played better, but at the same time, it was nice to shake off the rust and get

everything going,” he said. “Once you get the winter rust off, ev-eryone can start working on the things they were lacking in the fall.”

The team carded a three-round 937, highlighted by a score of 227 by Michael Amato ’11 and Ardell’s 231, which earned indi-vidual finishes of 29th and 47th, respectively.

Men’s Head Coach Michael Hughes said because the field was strong and it was Bruno’s first tournament, the finish was not disheartening.

“It’s not an event where we are going to go out and compete, simply because we haven’t played since the end of October,” he said. “It’s hard to get out and compete against teams like the University of Oregon, which is a top-10 team. For most of these teams, this was their sixth or seventh event, so in that regard it was not surprising that we had the results we did.”

After the finish in Santa Bar-bara, the men’s squad traveled to Tucson, Ariz., for a face-off against the University of Arizona, a team to which Hughes said the Bears “paled in comparison.” He said by facing more talented teams early in the season, the Bears will continue

Squads post mixed results in Ivy opening

In early test, Bruno runs, jumps, throws to victory

By JaMes BluMSportS Staff Writer

The men’s and women’s track and field teams turned in strong per-formances this past weekend at the Bryant University Invitational in Smithfield. The meet was a test in the early stages of Brown’s outdoor track season.

“I think that it was a very solid competition for us,” said Michelle Eisenreich, director of men’s and women’s track and field. “Every-body did what they were supposed to do, and that is exactly what we wanted to have happen.”

John Spooney ’14 claimed first place in the 100-meter dash in 10.93 seconds. In addition, the men’s 4x100-meter relay team sprinted to a first place finish in 42.21.

“The men’s four-by-one showed some promise,” Eisenreich said. “Their big goal is to break the school record” of 40.90.

In field events, Jonathan Dieu-juste ’14 leaped 21-09 1/2 to finish first in the long jump, and Nick Keeling ’14 threw the javelin 222-00, which also earned him a first-place finish. According to Eisen-reich, Keeling is now ranked 24th nationally in the javelin.

The women also had a strong showing at Bryant. Niina Al-

Hassan ’14 led the squad, winning the javelin throw and earning the school record with a toss of 145-10.

“We did really well in the throwing events,” Eisenreich said. “Overall, a really solid meet for this time of year.”

Victoria Buhr ’13 threw the dis-cus 159-09 to capture first place. Brynn Smith ’11 earned two sec-ond-place finishes in the shot put and hammer throw with heaves of 47-06 1/2 and 187-04, respectively.

On the track, Susan Scavone ’12 placed second in the 100-me-ter hurdles in 14.80, and Colby Lubman ’14 finished third in the 100-meter dash with a time of 12.51.

Though neither the men’s nor the women’s distance squads com-peted at Bryant, the team sent Matt Duffy ’12, Dan Lowry ’12 and Christian Escareno ’11 to the Sam Howell Invitational at Princ-eton to race in the 5000-meter run and Brendan Boyle ’14 to compete in the 3000-meter steeplechase.

Bruno will compete April 9 at the UConn Alumni Invite hosted by the University of Connecticut.

“Starting next week at UConn and at Brown, we’ll have the ma-jority of people competing,” Eisen-reich said. “For the most part, now we’re going to be at full strength.”

Bears swept on West Coast tripBy leWis pollisContributing Writer

It was a disappointing week for the baseball team, as the Bears lost all six games of their West Coast road trip before dropping three of their first four conference games of the season against Princeton and Cornell.

“We didn’t pitch it great, and we didn’t hit very well at all,” said Head Coach Marek Drabinski. “If you don’t pitch and you’re not hit-ting, you’re not going to win many games.”

“I don’t know how much worse we can play, so for us to go 1-3, we’re pretty fortunate,” he added. “We’ve got some work to do. There’s no question.”

The Santa Clara University Broncos (12-13) swept the Bears (3-15, 1-3 Ivy League) in the first four-game series of their West Coast stretch March 26-28. Brown was outscored 48-10 in the series.

Catcher Matt Colantonio ’11 doubled and scored on an RBI single by first baseman Pete Greskoff ’11 in the fourth inning of game one. Greskoff, in turn, scored on a double by third baseman Ryan Zrenda ’11, making the score 2-0.

In the fifth inning, shortstop Graham Tyler ’12 doubled then scored after a sacrifice bunt by sec-ond baseman J.J. Franco ’14 and an RBI single by center fielder Matt DeRenzi ’14, giving Bruno a 3-0

lead. It was the only time the Bears had a lead in the series.

The Broncos rallied for five runs in the sixth inning and went on to win 8-3.

Game two was closer, as the Broncos led by just one run until a three-run rally in the bottom of the eighth inning put them on top 5-1. But Santa Clara took all the Bears’ hopes of winning away in the last two games. The Broncos scored 11 and 12 times before Brown got on the board en route to 18-3 and 17-3 blowouts, respectively.

The Bears continued on to play a two-game set against San Jose State University March 29-30. Bruno started off well in the first game, as center fielder John Sheridan ’13 hit a leadoff double and scored on Col-antonio’s RBI double to give Brown a 1-0 lead in the first inning. The Spartans tied the game in the bot-tom of the inning, but Greskoff ’s bases-loaded walk in the fourth gave the Bears a 2-1 lead.

But things fell apart for Brown af-ter that, and the Bears lost 9-4. They then lost 11-4 in the second game.

After being swept in California, the Bears headed to Princeton for the beginning of the Ivy League conference season.

The team got off to a poor start in game one of the two-game series April 2, as the Tigers scored six runs on nine hits in the first two innings to jump out to an early 6-0 lead.

Clutch hits from designated hitter Mike DiBiase ’12, Zrenda, Tyler and third baseman Cody Slaughter ’13 fueled a three-run Bruno rally in the seventh inning, but it was not enough and the Bears fell 7-4.

The Tigers gained an 8-0 lead in the second inning of game two and had stretched their lead to 11-1 by the fourth. Bruno managed only two runs the entire game, losing 12-2.

The Bears picked up their first Ivy League victory of the season against Cornell in the first game of a doubleheader April 3. A pair of Cornell throwing errors helped Bruno produce two runs in the third inning, and right fielder Josh Feit ’11 hit a clutch three-run home run in the seventh inning. Starting pitcher Heath Mayo ’13 secured the win after allowing just one earned run on five hits in six innings, while Feit notched his second save of the season after shutting down the Big Red in the bottom of the seventh to secure the 5-2 victory.

“It was a relief,” Drabinski said. “It was nice to get that first (win).”

Bruno took a commanding 6-2 lead in the fifth inning of game two after Greskoff ’s three-run homer, but Cornell gained the lead after an eight-run rally in the sixth. The Big Red went on to win 13-8.

Bruno is next in action when it hosts Quinnipiac University at 3:30 p.m. today in its home opener at Murray Stadium.

emily Gilbert / HeraldBrandon Burke ’14 won two matches and lost two as men’s tennis suffered two successive Ivy defeats to Princeton and Penn, 4-3.

BASEBALLTRACk & FIELD

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GOLFTENNIS