The tuition increase implemented this spring semester across the State University of New York system was an inevitable consequence of the fledgling economy. The subsequent disclosure that the state budget required 90 per- cent of the $310 collected per student would go towards balancing the budget kindled a statewide argument over if such measures were fair. Although not officially announced, the budget for 2009-2010 has implemented that ex- actly 90 percent be taken this spring and a reduced 80 percent be taken this fall with the remaining cash staying in the university system.

\u201cThe difference between 20 percent and 50 percent that we\u2019d hoped to nego- tiate is six million dollars a year,\u201d said Dan Melucci, Associate Vice President for Strategy, Planning and Analysis at Stony Brook University. \u201cIf we have got- ten 100 percent, which we should have gotten, that would mean 16 million dol- lars which would offset all the other cuts in the 2009-2010 budget.\u201d

SUNY New Paltz recently cut their nursing program as a result of a six mil- lion dollar deficit reduction plan. In contrast Stony Brook University has, so far according to Melucci, cut two \u201crela- tively small\u201d programs \u2013 the Center for Wine, Food and Culture and the Cy- totechnology from the Health Sciences. \u201cWe haven\u2019t cut any large programs and

I\u2019m not aware that there are any signifi- cant academic programs being elimi- nated at this point,\u201d said Melucci.

\u201cThe issue for me is that, as any re- spectful economist will tell you, you can\u2019t cut your way out of a recession \u2013 you have to invest your way out,\u201d said Prof. Norman Goodman, a Sociology professor at Stony Brook University who is deeply involved in the issue. \u201cCutting from the university, in a time where more and more people want to come to state universities, is simply lay- ing the foundation for extending the re- cession for a longer period of time.\u201d Prof. Goodman also spoke out against the Bundy Aid, a system in which money is taken from the state universi- ties and given to the private universities \u2013 in these times it has only incurred a minor cut.

\u201cYou\u2019re at Stony Brook for three years and then for your last year you go to Hofstra, they get a fee for you even though you\u2019ve been in here for three years and there for one year,\u201d said Goodman. \u201cIt\u2019s a political compromise that was established in the early days of the SUNY system.\u201d He maintained that it should be eliminated.

According to Stony Brook Director of Budget and Planning Mark Maciu- laitis, the cuts to Stony Brook have the potential to severely stunt its role as a major economic engine on Long Island. For every dollar spent on Stony Brook, he said, the amount of activities going on at the time will convert the initial in- vestment by three to four times. He said

SUNY is at a disadvan- tage because, simply put, it\u2019s in an area that is easier to cut in con- trast to the City Uni- versity of New York system. \u201cIt\u2019s not fair,\u201d he said.

Senator Kenneth P. Lavalle, former long- time chairman of the New York Higher Edu- cation Committee, is one of the driving forces to fight the cuts. A republican who is known to be a \u201cfriend\u201d to Stony Brook, and

the person the university stadium was named after, he claims to be especially aggravated by the way Governor Pater- son is handling the situation. \u201cThe re- publicans would have handled this one differently,\u201d he said. \u201cFor one, we would- n\u2019t be taxing the hardworking students and their families when it\u2019s painfully ob- vious that they will suffer the most.\u201d

\u201cThe governor has not wanted to implement this millionaire\u2019s tax because he thinks that all the millionaires will run out of New York but apparently he doesn\u2019t have a problem with taxing our students,\u201d said Maciulaitis. He said that although they\u2019ve now implemented a gradual tax for people earning over $200,000 a year that they were talking about taxing the students before. \u201cThere was a point where the millionaire\u2019s tax was not discussable, but this 80 percent

To offset the cuts, the university ad- ministration has looked to programs which Maciulaitis refers to as \u201cmoney- makers.\u201d \u201cCertain programs are more expensive to teach than others so the ac- ademic areas are looking at some of the more profitable ones.\u201d

It seems ironic that only two odd years ago, former Governor Eliot Spitzer was aptly speaking about mak- ing Stony Brook and the University of Buffalo the two flagship schools in the SUNY system with a lot of funding for both. \u201cHe probably wouldn\u2019t have been able to give as much as he said he would,\u201d said Maciulaitis \u2013 speaking on the situation if Spitzer had not resigned following his scandal. \u201cBut he certainly would have treated us a lot better than Paterson, to whom SUNY is not as high a priority.\u201d

Stony Brook University will have a new president this June: Samuel Stan- ley, Jr., Vice Chancellor for Research at Washington University. He will become the university\u2019s fifth official president when Shirley Strum Kenny resigns her position. The decision was announced in a press release last Thursday.

\u201cWe are extremely pleased and ex- cited that Dr. Stanley will serve as Stony Brook\u2019s next president,\u201d said Richard Nasti, chair of the Stony Brook Council and of the Presidential search commit- tee. \u201cHe is a dynamic leader with a proven track record of success at one of the nation\u2019s premier academic institu- tions,\u201d Nasti said in last week\u2019s an- nouncement.

The Stony Brook presidential search committee recommended to the SUNY Board of Trustees that Stanley be

named the next president of Stony Brook University. A decision is ex- pected to be made soon.

Stanley\u2019s background is firmly in medical research. Besides having three patents to his name, he is now serving as the Vice Chancellor of Research at Washington University, which is ranked third in the nation for its School of Medicine. His duties as chancellor in- clude overseeing a research portfolio of $548 million.

He is also a professor of medicine and molecular biology at the university. His medical knowledge is exciting to some faculty members. Nasti said, in the same press release, \u201cHis depth of ex- perience in attracting research funding will benefit Stony Brook tremendously as we climb in the ranks of major re- search AAU universities.\u201d

Stanley received his B.A. from the University of Chicago and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He soon became a fellow in infectious diseases at

In 2003, Dr. Stanley was appointed as the Director of the Midwest Regional Center for Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Re- search, a multidisciplinary research center.

Search committee member and chairman emeritus of the Stony Brook Foundation, James Simons, said of Stan- ley, \u201cI found him to be a highly person-

able individual and an enthusiastic communicator. I am certain he will be a favorite among both students and fac- ulty as he leads the university in the years to come.\u201d

Dr. Stanley responded to the deci- sion. \u201cI am honored to have been se- lected as Stony Brook\u2019s next president. In its short life, Stony Brook has ac- complished some remarkable things. I look forward to working with my new colleagues on the faculty, staff and stu- dents in a collective and strategic way to continue Stony Brook\u2019s remarkable tra- jectory of increased excellence, and to position the university to take its place among the truly great research univer- sities of the nation.\u201d

The 55-year-old is married to Dr. Ellen Li, with whom he has co-written several medical papers. Li received her M.D. and Ph.D. from the Washington University School of Medicine. The couple has four children.

On April 21, Stony Brook Univer- sity\u2019s Staller Center played host to the Seventh Annual Human Evolution Symposium, hosted by the Turkana Basin Institute. Paleoanthropologists from around the world came to present the case that homo floresiensis is a new species. Also on public display for the first time was a cast of the remains of homo floresiensis.

could such a small creature cause such a large controversy. Homo floresiensis, nicknamed \u201cthe hob- bit,\u201d stood at an estimated 3\u20196\u201d tall, weighed only 66 to 77 lbs, and in- habited the island of Flores, In- donesia as recently as 17,000 years ago, and ever since the discovery they have become\u2013through no wish of their own\u2013both important and renowned, and have troubled the councils of the Wise and the Great.

Since the discovery paleoan- thropologists have been divided over whether homo floresiensis constitutes a new species. Skeptics have argued that homo floresien- sis is a human skeleton afflicted with a disease. Others have said this small creature resembles a human pygmy. However several features of homo floresiensis seem to suggest that it is not human but a new pre-hominid species.

Dean Falk, who has a Ph.D. in primate and human brain evolu- tion and is a professor of anthro- pology at Florida State University,

spoke about the hobbit brain. Falk par- took in a study that compared the brain of LB1, the scientific label for the first hobbit skull discovered, to micro- cephalic brains. Microcephaly is a dis- ease that causes skull size to be very small and skeptics claim that the skull size of LB1 was abnormally small for a hominid. Falk herself acknowledged that the brain of homo floresiensis was unusually small for a hominid at only 1/8 of the size of its body. However, the study showed that the brain of LBI did not resemble a microcephalic brain. Microcephalic brains are narrow and pointed in the frontal lobe while the brain of LB1 was wide in the frontal lobe.

Other remarkable traits of homo floresiensis include its jaw, wrists and shoulders. Peter Brown, a professor of anthropology at University of New Eng-

land in Australia, said that the jaw and teeth of homo floresiensis show that it is not a human, but a pre-hominid species. The premolar tooth is elon- gated resembling a more primitive con- dition of development.

Homo floresiensis\u2019 teeth also had multiple roots, whereas humans have just one root. The more complex root system combined with the elongated premolar tooth proves to Brown that homo flore- siensis is not a human afflicted with a disease, but a new species.

human would involve several evolu- tionary reversals,\u201d he said, a remark that would be echoed by the litany of pre- senters who followed him.

Matthew Torcheri, a paleoanthro- pologist in the Human Origins Program of the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution\u2019s National Museum of Natural History, said that the wrist of homo floresiensis resembles a primitive wrist and is less sophisti- cated than the wrist of a modern human. The trapezoidal bone in a primitive wrist is thinner resulting in a thinner wrist. The thinner trapezoidal bone results in a less effective thumb that cannot extend as far as a modern human\u2019s thumb. Though this seems like a small detail it has a great impact on the ability to make tools and hunt.

the Australian Research Council and is an expert on ancient tools, noted that homo floresiensis made tools that were more primitive than those made by later humans. He said that this was due to a combination of things, including the less effective thumb, but also because homo floresiensis \u201clacked hierarchical thinking.\u201d Tool making, in ancient times, consisted of knocking two rocks together to create sharp flakes that could be used for a variety of purposes. Hierarchical thinking, in the context

Moore described, is the ability to antic- ipate the shape that you\u2019re going to make when you bang two rocks together. The lack of hier- archical thinking in hobbits can be attributed to their small brain size, however Moore believes that hob- bits had relatively advanced cogni- tive thinking abil- ities. They used fire, though not as extensively

as modern humans, and developed tools that were very similar to human tools of the time. He said that this supports the hypothesis that humans co- existed with hob- bits.Susan Lar-

son, a professor of anthropology at Stony Brook University, said that the shoulders of homo floresiensis show an important intermediate step between the shoulders of primitive hominids and modern humans.

\u201cWhen I saw the shoulder of the homo floresiensis I was shocked,\u201d she said.There is a significant difference be-

tween a primitive shoulder structure and a modern one was the lengthening of the clavicle. Primitive apes have nearly vertical clavicles, resulting in the appearance of not having necks, while humans have nearly horizontal clavi- cles. A shorter clavicle means that prim- itive apes had a scapula that sat on the side of their ribcage, because the clavi- cle did not extend as far as it does in a modern human. Modern humans have scapulas on the back of their ribcage.

Modern humans, because of their elon- gated scapulas, have a much wider range of arm motion than apes and thus are more versatile. Homo floresiensis, though it has a scapula that rests on its side, had a slightly longer clavicle than primitive apes. Its arms, though not having the wide range of motion of modern humans\u2019, had a range of motion wider than a primitive ape. This means that homo floresiensis was more ad- vanced than a modern ape but it was not a modern human. She said this fur- ther supports the hypothesis that homo floresiensis is a new species, somewhere between apes and humans.

And so the presentations went, from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m., a litany of pa- leoanthropologists presenting evidence that homo floresiensis was a new species. Hobbits could not be pygmies because the brain size of pygmies is much larger. Hobbits were not humans with Laron Syndrome because hobbits had brow ridges, while Laron Syndrome patients do not. Hobbits were not vic- tims of island dwarfing because island dwarfing only results in smaller height, not smaller brain size.

Curiously absent were the skeptics. Though the presenters tried to counter the criticism of skeptics, they had the opportunity to pick and choose the cri- tiques they countered in advance, mak- ing their case seem very strong in front of the Stony Brook audience.

Richard Leaky, renowned hominid fossil hunter and head of the Turkana Basin Institute at Stony Brook Univer- sity, professed that he is still not entirely convinced that homo floresiensis is a new species but that the recent research presented at the symposium \u201cgreatly strengthened the possibility\u201d that homo floresiensis is a new species.

President Shirley Strum Kenny gave a short speech at the symposium prais- ing the participants and noting the ex- traordinary nature of the event, one of her last acts as president of the univer- sity.

\u201cWe\u2019ve had 6 symposiums before this but I think this is one of the most interesting ones we\u2019ve had,\u201d she said after her speech.

Based on tickets sold, the Anthro- pology Department estimates that about

400 people attended the event in- cluding journalists from several major news organizations.

President Kenny stared as if mysti- fied into the glass containing the hobbit skeleton cast.