The Daily Gazette

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Swarthmore's only daily source for news, arts, and sports

Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Volume 9, Issue 69
http://daily.swarthmore.edu

The Gazette's exclusive compilation of campus events -- more complete than any other listing you can find. To submit your event drop the staff an email with the name of the event, the location, the time, the sponsoring organization, and any additional information you feel is relevant. Listings must be submitted by 9:00 p.m. the day before they are to be run.

The best location to find out when and where you can root for your fellow Swatties in their athletic endeavors. To submit an athletic event for inclusion in the listing, contact the Gazette staff with a short description of the event, the place, and the time. As with campus events, listings must be submitted by 9:00 p.m. the day before they are to be run.

Today: Mostly cloudy, snow likely. High in the mid-20s.
IÕve only been back at Swat for a few days, but I've already fallen into many of my old bad habits...

Tonight: Mostly cloudy. Low around 20.
The two main ones being napping and procrastinating.

Tomorrow: Mostly cloudy with a slight chance of flurries. High in lower 30s.
So much for those New Year's resolutions.

Lunch: French bread pizza, crinkle cut fries, stuffed zucchini, succotash, peas, Greek bar, nutty cookie bars

Dinner: Turkey London broil, stuffed potatoes, wild rice with cranberries, manicotti, asparagus, corn on the cob, pasta bar, vegan cakes

New semester brings changes to college email

by Lauren Janowitz
News Editor

       With the college getting back into full swing after winter break, mailboxes are once again filling up with various announcements, class assignments, and assorted chit-chat. Over break ITS has implemented a number of changes in order to reduce mailbox size and prevent the sluggishness that plagued the email server last semester.
       The most noticeable difference this semester is the change to the reserved students emails. Rather than receiving 10+ separate emails a day, the messages are now collected together and released in two daily digests, sent out around 9:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. More urgent announcements are still sent out instantly, with a [students] subject line.
       The reason for the switch was the large number of complaints from students, faculty, and staff about the excess of email, said ITS Direcctor Judy Downing. "It's been a drum beat that's gotten louder and louder over the last 10 years," she said. She also noted that since announcing the switch, she has received over a hundred positive responses.
       An additional benefit of the twice-daily digests will be to reduce the load on the email server, which has been suffering slowdowns since last September. Numerous changes have been made over break to improve this problem. According to ITS' Mark Dumic, the college recently brought in an engineer from their mail server vendor to upgrade the software. "With everyone back on campus recently, and normal volumes of e-mail being processed, we are not experiencing any sluggishness. So, it appears that this has helped," he noted.
       Dumic also mentioned two projects that ITS has planned for this semester to further improve server performance. The first plan is to convert all mailboxes into a new format that will store a large number of messages more efficiently. "By converting existing mailboxes to the newer format, we expect to see a significant order of magnitude improvement in performance," he said. The switch will be performed slowly over the course of the semester in order keep the server operational, but will likely be completed by spring break.
       The second project is looking to see whether there are any possible redesigns of the server that will enable it to better manage the growing number of campus email. After this semester ITS will upgrade the software and reconfigure the array of disks used to store the email, resulting in improved system performance.
       While ITS has been successful thus far in improving email speed, they still request that students help out by reducing the number of saved messages in their inbox and by using a dedicated email client, such as Mozilla's Thunderbird, instead of the web-based Swatmail.

Condoleeza Rice, former National Security Advisor and currently President Bush's nominee for Secretary of State, faced her first day of Senate confirmation hearings on Tuesday. During the hearings, Dr. Rice promised to work to strengthen American alliances with other countries. In particular, she worked to reassure other allies that America will not pursue a go-it-alone policy during President Bush's second term. Speaking of Germany, who has recently sent police to the United Arab Emirates for training and eventual assignment to Iraq, the nominee remarked "If they want to do more, they only have to say they can do more, and I can guarantee you we will want them to do more." At times the hearings turned into contentious exchanges between Dr. Rice and the Democrats on the panel, especially Sen. Biden of Delaware and Sen. Kerry of Massachusetts. Both of those senators questioned Dr. Rice about President Bush's decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein , with Sen. Kerry remarking "We went in to rescue Iraq from Saddam Hussein. Now I think we need to rescue our policy from ourselves." The Senator said that Rice's confirmation as Secretary of State was certain, but his own vote on the confirmation was not.

A Catholic archbishop, Basile Georges Casmoussa, was released without ransom on Tuesday in Iraq. The bishop had been kidnapped the day before by an unknown group in Mosul. Though a ransom of about $200,000 had initially been demanded, the bishop was released without payment after the pope pleaded for his release.

On Tuesday, Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers stood by his comments, made last week, that suggested that innate differences in sex accounted for disproportionate numbers of women in math and science. The comments had drawn immediate criticism from women engaged in such professions, including Denice D. Denton, the chancellor designate of the University of California Santa Cruz and Nancy Hopkins, a professor of biology at MIT. Dr. Summers said that his comments were intended to provoke discussion and debate. In particular, he hoped to move the debate from focusing solely on how the socialization of gender affected career choice, and more towards a biological view of the issue.

Open SQU Meeting
IC Big Room, 10:00 p.m.

Description: Interested in studying abroad and want to go somewhere LGBTQQ friendly? Already studied abroad and have insights on the place/program you went? Come to SQU's first meeting of the new semester. See everyone again and talk about your experiences or learn about others'.

Today:
Swimming at Rowan, 6:30 p.m.
Men's basketball at Muhlenberg, 8:00 p.m.

Tomorrow:
Women's basketball at Muhlenberg, 7:00 p.m.

"In heaven all of the interesting people are missing."

The Daily Gazette is published Monday through Friday by an independent group of Swarthmore College students. The Daily Gazette website is updated regularly, as news happens. Technical support from the Swarthmore College Computer Society is gratefully acknowledged.

Our world news roundup is compiled daily, using a variety of sources, most notably the Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, The Guardian, and The New York Times. Our campus sports summaries for games without live coverage are derived from information provided by the Swarthmore College Athletics Department.

The Daily Gazette Swarthmore's only daily source for news, arts, and sports	Wednesday, January 19, 2005 Volume 9, Issue 69 http://daily.swarthmore.edu