College of William and Mary law professor Christie Warren has returned to Williamsburg after a one-year term assisting the United Nations.

Warren served as the senior mediation expert in constitutional issues for the UN Mediation Support Standby Team, a five-person team that deploys members to assist UN mediators, provides short-order advice and analysis, serves peacekeeping missions, and functions as a resource for the UN.

While in Darfur, Warren helped a Sudanese rebel faction unite in their struggle against the government. By the end of her time in the region, Warren was able to see the rebel group and the government come together to sign a ceasefire agreement.

During her term, Warren was deployed to Qatar, Kyrgyzstan, Kenya, and Moldova, among other locations.
Upon receiving an assignment from the U.N., Warren had to be on a flight abroad within 48 hours.

“This past summer I was on vacation with my family in France, and I got a phone call that I was needed in Kyrgyzstan,” Warren said. “They take the 48-hour deadline pretty seriously. I had to leave right away.” In order to complete the program, Warren had to take a year-long leave of absence from her position as a professor at the Marshall-Wythe School of Law.

“I thought about it very carefully before I accepted, because of the lifestyle,” Warren said. “It was very stressful, but at the same time it was the most rewarding work I’ve ever done.”

As the senior expert on constitutional issues, she aided countries in the process of drafting new constitutions and amending current ones.

Warren and her team provided neutral guidance to the countries and tried to remain as unbiased as possible as they aided leaders in writing their constitutions.

“Because we are neutral, short-term experts whose job is to provide specific technical assistance, we are able to offer credible expertise that can contribute to peace processes,” Warren said in a press release.

“I am currently teaching post-conflict justice and the rule of law, and I would say that every experience that I had this past year is being put into good use in my classes,” Warren said. “Everything I experienced abroad and everything I’m teaching go hand-in-glove together.”

On Friday, while most College of William and Mary students were enjoying a well-deserved break from school, five students were experiencing the effects of an 8.9 magnitude earthquake. The quake was the fifth-largest in the world since 1900 and the largest in Japan on record.

The College currently has student exchange programs with Keio University and Akita University, as well as two study abroad programs in Japan. In total, five students are studying abroad in Japan, and 14 Japanese students are in Williamsburg through the Wendy and Emery Reves Center for International Studies.

Saori Masumoto ’10, a former tutor of the College’s Japanese House, was in Tokyo during the earthquake. After graduating from the College, she moved to Tokyo to work as an instructor in the Tokyo Language School.

“As the days went by, I came to realize that the earthquake was something that many of us had never experienced, and that it caused a huge amount of damage to our lives,” Masumoto said. “I am just glad to have my house and family safe, because there are a lot of people who lost everything.”
The death toll is currently around 2000 confirmed, but somepolice and news organizations in Japan estimate the number to be in the tens of thousands.

“Every time I turn on the TV, I am shocked to see the number of lives lost go up,” Masumoto said. “It is getting to the point for me that it is too sad to even watch TV.”

The earthquake devastated the city of Sendai in northeastern Japan, as well as most of the surrounding area, causing nearly $60 billion in damages and triggering a massive tsunami. Cars, ships and buildings were swept away by a wall of water after the tremor, which struck about 250 miles northeast of Tokyo. The tsunami caused whirlpools, hundreds of yards wide, to appear off of the coast.

A hydrogen explosion at the Fukushima nuclear power plant followed the earthquake. The blast could be felt up to 25 miles away and sent a huge column of smoke into the air. The fuel rods inside one of the reactors at the plant have been fully exposed on two separate occasions, raising fears of a nuclear meltdown. Seawater is being pumped into the reactor to try to prevent overheating.

According to the Japanese news agency Kyodo, more than 500,000 people have been displaced by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear emergency. The natural disaster has sparked a huge rescue operation.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan said that Japan is experiencing its greatest challenge since World War II as it struggles through the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami and growing nuclear crisis.

“It is a very difficult time for all Japanese, but we will get through this. And I really appreciate the help and rescue from many countries,” Masumoto said.

The Virginia General Assembly adjourned its annual legislative meeting Feb. 27 after finalizing revisions to the commonwealth’s 2010-2012 budget. This has made changes in salaries, retirement funds and in-state student requirements that will impact the College of William and Mary.

“This year marked a change for the General Assembly, which did not impose further cuts on higher education funding for the first time since 2008, although it left a $10 million reduction in place from last year,” College President Taylor Reveley said in an email to the College community. “This cut has yet to be distributed among the state schools. We do not know when the cut will come or what our share might be.”

Most notable among the changes are revisions to the salaries and retirement funds of state employees to contribute five percent of their salary to their retirement funds in exchange for a five percent pay increase.

However, the change impacts only participants of the Virginia Retirement System, while those participating in the Optional Retirement Plan are left unaffected. According to Reveley, employees of the College are divided almost equally between the two plans.

“When it comes to salaries, this means that only some people at the College are in line for a raise,” Reveley said. “The fact that William & Mary employees as a whole have not received salary increases for three years makes any inequities, real or perceived, especially painful. We will work hard to ameliorate this situation if we can.”

Despite efforts by some representatives of the General Assembly, the College will not have to reduce its number of out-of-state undergraduates this coming year.

The Assembly’s plan originally called for a legislative reduction of the percentage of out-of-state students from 35 to 25 percent, but schools like the College and the University of Virginia softened the blow by agreeing to take on more in-state students in the next few years.

The General Assembly also approved an additional $900,000 to be used for projects at the College’s main campus and another $550,000 for the College’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science campus.

“This helps, though it may be reduced by William & Mary’s share of the yet undistributed $10 million cut to higher education just noted,” Reveley said.

According to Reveley, these budget revisions will not result in major change for the College as a whole.

“On balance, the General Assembly’s budget does little to change the basic calculus for next year,” he said.

“Like other state institutions, William & Mary must still close a funding gap in FY 2012 that was covered this fiscal year by one-time federal stimulus dollars. For the main campus, this gap is $6.8 million.”

Additionally, the BOV made three appointments to the College’s professional faculty. Linda Schaffner, a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, was named an associate dean of academic studies.

Andrew Schneider ’98 became the Washington, D.C. area alumni relationship manager for the Mason School of Business, and Kenton Towner was appointed as emergency management coordinator for the Office of Administration.

Hiring freezes existed in Sept. 2007 and Oct. 2008.

Research conducted by a team of national and international researchers including Virginia Institute of Marine Science professor Emmett Duffett suggests that diverse plant communities are more integral in sustaining Earth’s ecosystems than are less diverse plant communities.

“The idea that declining diversity compromises the functioning of ecosystems was controversial for many years,” Duffy said in a press release. “This paper should be the final nail in the coffin of that controversy. It is the most rigorous and comprehensive analysis yet, and it clearly shows that extinction of plant species compromises the productivity that supports Earth’s ecosystems.”

According to 574 field and laboratory studies, which were conducted across five continents, plant communities with a variety of species were 1.5 times more productive than those with only one species. In addition, the generation of oxygen and the capturing of carbon dioxide were more than twice as fast in diverse communities.

“Low diversity means there is often no one else to take their place and the effects can ripple out through the community of animals, potentially up to fishery species,” Duffy said.

The research suggested a tipping point model to frame biodiversity loss in a community. Ecosystem production will show a dramatic drop at a certain point after a continuing period of species loss.

“[We are] in a position to calculate the number of species needed to support the variety of processes required to sustain life in real ecosystems,” the leader of the team of scientists, University of California at Santa Barbara professor of ecology, evolution and marine biology Bradley Cardinale, said. “And we do not mean ‘need’ in an ethical or an aesthetic way. We mean an actual concrete number of species required to sustain basic life-support processes.”

The small-scale experiments of the researchers only proved biodiversity loss to be more threatening to Earth’s ecosystems.

“Data are generally consistent with the idea that the strength of diversity effects are stronger in experiments that run longer, and in experiments performed at larger spatial scales.”

These findings, which apply to land as well as fresh and saltwater communities, were deemed by the researchers to be specially significant for the Chesapeake Bay.

Professor Duffett has recently received a grant from the National Science Foundation to continue biodiversity study in seagrass beds.

The College Delly reopened Feb. 27 under the same name, but with a new atmosphere.

The family owned business came under new management approximately one month ago when its original owners offered George Tsipas, owner of Paul’s Deli, ownership of the Delly.

“We did two months of construction and renovation in less than three weeks,” Tsipas said. “The construction beat us up.”

The renovation included the addition of a non-smoking patio, new paint, new patio furniture, new roof tiling and an expanded menu.

“Students who have come into the Delly once it reopened had been mostly shocked by the renovation,” Tsipas said.

Tsipas noted that the lack of renovation at the Delly over the years has prevented customers from enjoying more of the restaurant.

“The Delly has been known for just drinking, but we have made changes to make it more of a full-dining experience,” Tsipas said.

According to Tsipas, people are eating at the Delly more than ever before. In addition to sandwiches, the menu now includes pastas, salads and seafood. Tsipas said the College Delly is known for its sandwiches, a staple he wanted to keep intact.

Another staple Tsipas retained was the Delly’s name.

“The student reaction to changing the name of the College Delly was so great that we decided against it.
Plus, we wanted to keep that tradition of the College Delly,” Tsipas said.

The Delly has been in operation since 1969 and was originally called the Gas Station.

Tsipas said he is not planning any further changes to the Delly.