Webdriver Check if Checkbox is Set and Set it if Not

I am learning Webdriver with JUnit by going through Alan Richardson's Selenium Simplified book and taking translating the exercises/tests from Selenium RC to Webdriver. So far, this has proven to be an excellent learning experience. But recently I have hit an issue, and cannot solve it despite extensive searching. In Selenium RC there is a selenium.check command which will check a box if it is emp