The Justice, March 1, 2016

ARTS Page 19

SPORTS Men fight hard in tough loss 16

POTTER'S WILL

FORUM Distinguish generational feminism 12 The Independent Student Newspaper

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Justice

Volume LXVIII, Number 18

www.thejustice.org

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

STANDING UP

campus speaker

Bill McKibben urges fossil fuel divestment in talk ■ The co-founder of

350.org preceded a panel on the virtues of divesting the University endowment.

By MAX MORAN JUSTICE editor

Bill McKibben, one of the co-founders of 350.org, told a crowd of about 30 students, faculty and administrators on Tuesday that divesting the University’s endowment from fossil fuels must go hand-in-hand with efforts to reduce campus energy consumption. His speech was followed by a discussion among three panelists about divestment at Brandeis.

McKibben, the author and climate activist who founded the 350.org movement which urges universities to divest from fossil fuel companies, spoke via Skype at the second of four

MAX MORAN/the Justice

RECLAIMING HISTORY: Demonstrators protested against the Harvard Law seal's slaveholding origins at the Gittler ceremony.

Protesters disrupt Gittler lecture for racial justice

■ Demonstrators from Reclaim Harvard Law joined forces with Ford Hall 2015 to protest at the annual Gittler ceremony.

By Abby Patkin JUSTICE editoR

Approximately 20 demonstrators interrupted the annual Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize presentation and lecture on Thursday to protest the recipient — Martha Minow, dean of Harvard Law School — because of her inaction toward the Reclaim Harvard Law movement at Harvard University. The demonstrators included members of both the Ford Hall 2015 movement and Reclaim Harvard Law, which has occupied Harvard’s Wasserstein Hall for 14 days demanding the school address racial injustice on the campus.

Minow — who has been the school’s dean since 2009, when her predecessor, Elena Kagan, was appointed to the Supreme Court — was recognized in the ceremony for her scholarship on race relations and legal issues.

The event featured introductory remarks from Interim University President Lisa Lynch and an introduction from Prof. Anita Hill (Heller).

Since Feb. 15, Harvard activists have occupied Wasserstein Hall, renaming it Belinda Hall after Belinda Royall, a slave owned by Isaac Royall Jr., a slaveholder whose donation was instrumental to the school’s founding. Reclaim Harvard Law’s occupation is ongoing and indefinite, according to a Feb. 22 Harvard Law Record article. The group, which formed in fall 2015, issued a list of eight demands in December that called for the Harvard Law administration to alter the curriculum to include narratives of marginalized racial groups, create a critical race theory program and provide more resources for minority students.

One notable demand calls for the removal of the school’s seal, which features the Royall family crest. Previously, a group of students calling their movement “Royall Must Fall” petitioned the school in October to remove the seal, and in November, Minow formed a committee to review the seal’s use. According to a Feb. 22 Harvard Crimson article, the com-

events being hosted this semester about the question of divestment.

Titled “Money Matters: Fossil Fuel Divestment as Political Power,” the event was sponsored by Brandeis Climate Justice, Faculty Against the Climate Threat and the Office of the President — Interim President Lisa Lynch and Senior Advisor to the President Peter Giumette attended the event, among other senior administrators.

Lynch told the Justice in an interview after the event that she felt the discourse on campus about divestment has been positive, but reiterated that the issue of divestment would be decided by incoming University President Ronald Liebowitz. During her time in office, Lynch has prioritized decreasing consumption and increasing recycling on campus in order to combat climate change. As president of Middlebury College, Li-

See DIVEST, 7 ☛

Administration

Lynch's pay undercuts average for presidents

mittee will likely release its report on the seal later this week.

Minow’s lecture, titled “Bystanders, Upstanders and Justice,” distinguished between individuals who remain silent when facing injustice and those who take action to right wrongs. She also addressed the issue of state rights in both public and private spaces, noting that there is a need for a term for the erosion of rights due to privatization. She argued that “upstanding” can be an effective tool in allowing the full scope of civil liberties to be present in private spaces, stating, “Seeing the patterns is a first step to becoming an upstander, and this is a topic in which I invite your help.”

While she noted that protest can be an “important tool” in sparking dialogue and change, she also argued that “understanding what lever of power works in addressing any kind of injustice is the first step to being an effective upstander. And not understanding what lever of power is relevant is a mistake and a diversion.

Who actually has the power to make the changes on any subject should be a critical step in any analysis.”

■ Board of Trustees Chair

Perry Traquina '78 disclosed executive compensation at the faculty meeting.

By rachel moore JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

Interim University President Lisa Lynch’s salary ranks in the lowest 7th percentile of comparable institutions, according to a presentation on executive compensation that Board of Trustees Chair Perry Traquina ’78 gave at Friday’s faculty meeting.

Traquina presented the Board Chair’s Annual Report to the Faculty on Executive Compensation, stating, “I’m unaware of any [other] private college or university that discloses this data so ahead of what is legally required.” The data in the report was provided by the executive compensation consulting firm F.W. Cook.

The University president’s compensation, Traquina said, is derived

See GITTLER, 4 ☛

from the University’s Compensation Philosophy, which emphasizes, along with other criteria, “internal equity,” according the University’s website.

To provide context, all of the information relevant to 2015 was compared alongside the same information from 2013 and 2014 and compared to the University’s peer group of 28 institutions, the Association of American Universities and AAU private institutions.

The estimated total compensation for Interim President Lisa Lynch was $587,621, based on an assumption that she had served for the entire calendar year instead of beginning Jul. 1. However, Brandeis spent $773,000 on the office of the University President in 2015; $492,000 went to former University President Frederick Lawrence and $281,000 went to Lynch. In 2014, Lawrence received $1,004,593 in total compensation, and in 2013, he received $992,726.

Compensation, according to Tra-

See SALARY, 7 ☛

Student debate

Pass-and-cut

Diversity update

 Members from the Brandeis Conservatives and Brandeis Democrats spoke on political issues.

 The women's basketball team came up short against a wellbalanced New York University squad.

Interim University President Lisa Lynch announced information on the search for the new chief diversity officer.

FEATURES 9

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Waltham, Mass.

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INDEX

SPORTS 16

ARTS SPORTS

17 13

EDITORIAL FEATURES

10 9

OPINION POLICE LOG

10 2

News 3

COPYRIGHT 2015 FREE AT BRANDEIS.

2

TUESDAY, March 1, 2016

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the justice

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news

NEWS SENATE LOG

Senators discuss proposed A-Board bylaw change on marathons The Senate convened for its weekly meeting this Sunday to discuss a bylaw amendment proposal to change the timing and process of Marathon sessions, approve a Senate Money Request to co-sponsor a craft night with Sodexo and decide which Senate account to charge for the Turkey Shuttle fundraiser earlier this year.

After taking a roll call and posing for a group photo, the Senate began its session with a debriefing from North Quad Senator Hannah Brown ’19 on her meeting with the Graduate Student Association regarding concerns about graduate dining options. The GSA expressed a desire for a meal plan for graduate students and an overall improvement in the quality of campus food. The Senate then moved on to Executive Officer Reports. Vice President David Herbstritt ’17 announced the schedule for spring Student Union elections — the first round of which will take place on March 17 — and explained that the E-Board is following up on a number of potential housing changes described in an earlier email to the student body.

Herbstritt then turned the floor over to Executive Senator Paul Sindberg ’18, who explained that the Senate had spent $4,000 on turkey shuttles and needed to decide retroactively whether the money should have been charged to the fundraising account or the discretionary account. The difference, Sindberg explained, is that if the money were charged to the discretionary fund, the additional money in the fundraising budget could essentially only be spent on turkey shuttles. If the money were instead charged to the fundraising budget but left in the discretionary fund, he continued, the Senate would have more flexibility on its spending this year but would not have access to the $4,000 after the end of the semester. The Senate then voted to move the charge over to fundraising account and leave money in the discretionary account.

Next, Herbstritt proposed a bylaw amendment that would move fundraising marathons to the end of one semester to fund the entirety of the following semester. This would make unexpected delays in fundraising less of an issue and would match the model used by most universities. The new marathons would be scheduled in the later part of the semester to avoid as best as possible the midterm crunch while preceding the stress of finals. Herbstritt also recommended implementing drop-in sessions for A-Board to replace the one-week rush before the marathon. He added a suggestion that the implementation of the new schedule begin in November. At this point, Brown introduced a Senate Money Request for a “brain break” event — a joint effort between Sodexo and the Senate Services and Outreach Committee and Senate Dining Committee involving food and crafts, including coloring books, origami and rock decoration, in honor of National Craft Month. The majority of the event would be funded by Sodexo, so the only cost to the Student Union would be crafts.

Finally, Charles River/567 Senator Valarie Timms ’16 brought up the idea of a Student Union Talent Show, which would feature various acts by Student Union members followed by a meet-and-greet.

POLICE LOG Medical Emergency

Feb. 21—University Police received a report of a party who had a cut on their foot. University Police transported the party to Urgent Care for further care.

Feb. 21—A party telephoned Police to report that a fellow student had requested BEMCo for a panic attack. The party was treated by BEMCo staff with a signed refusal for further care.

Feb. 22—A parent called in to report that their child was having an allergic reaction. The party was treated on the scene

by BEMCo staff with a signed refusal for further care.

Feb. 22—A party in Gerstenzang reported having stomach pains. BEMCo was called and the party was transported to Newton-Wellesley Hospital via Cataldo Ambulance.

Feb. 22—A party in Massell Quad reported not feeling well.

The party was transported to Newton-Wellesley Hospital for

further care.

Feb. 22—A party in Massell Quad reported having stomach pain. The party was transported via Cataldo Ambulance to Newton-Wellesley Hospital for further care.

Feb. 23—A staff member requested an ambulance for a party with a head injury in the Golding Judaica Center. The party was transported to Newton-Wellesley Hospital for further care.

Feb. 24—A staff member at the Rose Art Museum reported a party had fainted in the main lobby area. The party was conscious as of BEMCo and Police arrival and was treated on the scene by BEMCo staff. University Police transported the party to the Health Services building on campus for further care.

Feb. 25—Police received a report of a party in Pearlman Hall that had had their wisdom teeth pulled and was unable to open their mouth. BEMCo staff

responded and treated the party on scene with a signed refusal for further care.

Feb. 27—Police received a report of a party in the Usdan Student Center with a twisted ankle.

The party was treated by BEMCo staff and transported to NewtonWellesley Hospital by University Police for further care.

Disturbance

Feb. 24—A caller from Rosenthal Quad complained that a few people were outside the residence hall talking loudly. University Police spoke to two students who were going into the building,and advised them to quiet down without incident.

Drugs

Feb. 26—University Police were called to take a contraband substance into custody from the Charles River Apartments. Police compiled a report on the incident.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

The Justice welcomes submissions for errors that warrant correction or clarification. Email editor@ thejustice.org.

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Other

Feb. 21—Police compiled a report about a concerning email received by a staff member in the Sachar International Center.

Feb. 22—Police received a report of a person sleeping in a car off campus and identified the individual as a worker who was resting. Police took no further action.

Feb. 25—Police received a report of a vehicle parked near the Usen Castle with a person sitting in the vehicle for while. Police identified the party as an Uber car service driver waiting for a pickup. University Police cleared the party without further action.

— Compiled by Avi Gold.

DNC chooses alumnus for outreach program

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS

n The JustArts cover did not credit the source art used to Margot Field ’17 and Tova Weinberger ’18. (Feb. 2, page 17).

Feb. 26—A stack of chairs were thrown into a corner in OlinSang. University Police compiled a report on the incident.

BRIEF

—Carmi Rothberg

n A News article misquoted Queen White ’16 as saying, “The future depends on these marginalized people for transitions, authorship and work to enable this country to merit its most ugliest truth.” White actually said, “The future depends on these marginalized people for transitions, authorship and work to enable this country to mirror its most ugliest truth.” (Jan. 19, page 1). n A Features article stated that Gabriele Koch studies prostitution and observed the lives of Japanese prostitutes. Koch in fact studies sex work and observed the lives of Japanese sex workers; it falsely stated that Koch argued male clients visit sex workers to revitalize themselves and their productivity. In fact, Koch argued that this was merely what sex workers perceived as their clients’ motivation; it misstated that sex work in Japan is not recognized as a profession. In actuality, it is not recognized as a skilled profession; it stated that Japanese companies would reward productive employees by sending them on what Koch described as “national sex tours.” Koch in fact said, “international sex tours”; and it stated that Koch said “there’s a great deal of orientalization.” Koch in fact said, “there’s a great deal of exoticization.” (Feb. 2, page 8).

Vandalism

JOYCE YU/the Justice

In a guest speaker event on Thursday, Dr. Sharon Yu-Hsien Wu addressed a group of students on overcoming the hardships associated with being a student living in a different country.

Brandeis alumnus Aaron Weinberg BA/ MA’15 was named the Jewish outreach director of the Democratic National Committee last week.

As head of the Committee, Weinberg will lead Democratic campaigns in Jewish communities during this year’s presidential election campaign season. He will be responsible for managing a team which develops and executes strategies to reach Jewish voter communities and engage those communities in democratic electoral politics.

Weinberg, who studied Moroccan Judaism and Jewish education at Brandeis, also has extensive experience in the realm of Jewish-American politics. He spent a year on Kivunim, an Israel gap year program that studies Diaspora Jewish communities around the world, and participated in programs at Hebrew University, the Bronfman Youth Fellowships, the Shalom Hartman Institute and J Street. He was a recent delegate of the Reform movement’s Association of Reform Zionists of America to the World Zionist Congress. Last year, Weinberg earned his master’s degree at Brandeis’ Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership program.

In 2012, when he was 21, Weinberg worked with one of President Obama’s Jewish outreach campaigns, rallying Jewish support for the Obama-Biden ticket, particularly in Virginia.

Weinberg said in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he and his fellow campaigners infused Jewish ideals and traditions in their day-to-day work: “Before we would go on a canvassing trip, we would say ‘Tefillat HaDerech’ (the prayer for safe travels),” he said.

Weinberg told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he would focus on targeting Jewish communities in swing states, namely Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Colorado. He also said that he would communicate with Jewish members of Congress as part of his outreach strategy.

Weinberg will be in close collaboration with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, DFla., the DNC chairwoman and one of the prominent Jews in the Democratic Party.

—Arianna Unger

ANNOUNCEMENTS Louis Brandeis and American Zionism

This roundtable conversation will discuss how Louis Brandeis transformed, popularized and idealized American Zionism in line with his progressive social ideals.

This program is part of “Louis Brandeis 100: Then and Now.” Today from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in the Rapaporte Treasure Hall.

“Ready to Turn the World Upside Down”

Reconstructing the lost Jewishness of radical feminism, Professor Joyce Antler explains why the honor-roll of women’s liberation pioneers includes so many Jewish women.

As they have shaped other American social movements, Jewish women have also shaped modern feminism, both secular and religious.

Tomorrow from 12:30 to 2 p.m. in the Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall.

MakerLab: Intro to Soldering

Have you ever wondered how to join wires together, how to take them apart or how to tin stranded wire? If you’re interested in learning how to solder components, come to our event and learn from Tim, our resident MakerLab expert.

This event is a part of MakeMonth, a series of events occurring over the month of March to celebrate the scientists advancing innovation, computer science and engineering skills across campus and around the world. These workshops are designed to teach new skills and hone the ones already developed.

Tomorrow from 3 to 5 p.m. in the MakerLab, Farber Library.

A Conversation with Margo Jefferson ‘68

Join us for a conversation with Margo Jefferson ’68, author of the New York Times best seller “Negroland: A Memoir” (Pantheon 2015). Jefferson is a Pulitzer-

Prize-winning theater and book critic and former staff writer for the New York Times and Newsweek.

Jasmine Johnson, assistant professor in the Department of African and AfroAmerican Studies and the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, will interview Jefferson about her new book, which chronicles her life as a member of Chicago’s black elite and takes a critical look at the intersection of class and race.

Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m. in the Faculty Club.

Volunteer at Greater Boston Food Bank Sort and package food for those experiencing food insecurity. Contact Waltham Group Hunger & Homelessness to sign up for volunteering. Transportation to and from the Greater Boston Food Bank will be provided.

Friday from 12:30 to 4 p.m. at an off-campus location.

news

DIFFERENT MINDS

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the justice

By Abby patkin JUSTICE Editor

MIHIR KHANNA/the Justice

EXCHANGE OF IDEAS: Students share their different perspectives during one of the diversity conference’s workshops.

Diversity conference’s performances and workshops spark dialogue and action members and alumns turned out for the University’s first diversity conference.

CHRISTOF RINDLISBACHER JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

On Saturday, the Student Union, Dean’s Suite and the Intercultural Center sponsored the University’s first ever diversity conference. The event, which was held in locations across campus, featured workshops and artistic performances.

In an interview with the Justice, Student Union President Nyah Macklin ’16 — who also served as the event’s director of logistics and finance — stated that a “goal of mine for the attendees is that they both challenge and they … be challenged.” Coco Tirambulo ’16, one of three conference directors, said in an interview with the Justice that she hoped that participants would form “a network of people … to work together and [learn] what their vision of change is.”

The conference, which organizers said they hope to make an annual event, brought approximately 120 people to the Shapiro Campus Center and other locations on campus.

The conference was organized around three themes: recognize, empower and change. Throughout the day, participants could choose from a variety of workshops about topics ranging from housing policy to salary negotiation. The conference also featured a networking lunch, several artistic performances and a keynote speech by Justin Kang ’09, alumnus and executive director of City Awake.

An example of a typical workshop was Prof. Irina Dubinina’s (RUS) workshop titled, “Moving Borders/Moving Across Borders,” which drew about twenty participants and discussed linguistic identity and linguistic diversity.

As was the case for all workshops, the workshop was interactive and heavily involved audience partici-

3

Lynch issues diversity update search for the chief diversity officer will soon begin.

pation.

Dubinina began the workshop by asking participants to work in groups and formulate answers to questions such as, “What is linguistic identity?” Throughout this process, participants were encouraged to talk to and learn from each other. After hearing from attendees, Dubinina then used examples from current events to explain how the languages people speak form a crucial part of their identity.

A key feature of the conference was that attendance was not limited to just Brandeis students; participants ranged from alumni, to students at other universities, to industry experts, to scholars and professors.

The Brandeis administration was also well represented at the conference: participants included Interim University President Lisa Lynch, Vice President of Students and Enrollment Andrew Flagel, Dean of Students Jamele Adams and Assistant Dean of Students/Director of Student Activities Stephanie Grimes.

For Ron Glover ’73, former Chief Diversity Officer at IBM, the variety of perspectives was one of the reasons that he came to the conference. “Institutions have this propensity to listen to themselves,” he told the Justice in an interview.

“So if you put a group of people in industry together, they’ll … miss all the other perspectives that are necessary to get to the right solution, and academia is not different.

So I try to mix it up because then I learn things. I learn a point of view that I wouldn’t come to on my own because I’m not living the experience.”

Glover’s observation falls in line with the conference organizers’ primary goals: “One of the ways this conference [is] unique to campus is that it’s not just a student event, or an administrator event, it’s an event that everyone can participate and different voices could be heard. … So it’s a very conscious decision to incorporate those different [perspectives],” conference director

TUESDAY, March 1, 2016

ADMINISTRATION

■ Lynch wrote that the

■ Students, community

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Eric Lin ’16 said in an interview with the Justice.

According to Lin, the conference was intentionally designed to give participants as much time to learn from each other as possible. “Each workshop is designed as a discussion piece,” he said. The conference is a place where participants can “learn from each other, could empower each other, could support each other, and [become] the change they want to see,” he added.

Grimes, a member of the administration, said that she found the opportunity to learn from different perspectives useful. “I hoped to [learn] about diversity concepts from a theoretical and cognitive approach, but also to look more in depth and have communication with members of our community [with whom] I wouldn’t … interact on a normal basis,” she said. “And I think both of those occurred today.”

Despite the presence of the administration, conference organizers said they were cautious about the role the administration plays both within the conference and in promoting diversity at Brandeis.

“There’s always going to be this issue that diversity is marketable, that diversity is something that can make this university money,” Macklin said. “This conference, and we’re all fully aware, is something that is perfect for admissions, for Brandeis University. Which is also why … we are very careful to maintain our authority over the conference. Because all too easily it can become something that it is not. It could become disingenuous.”

The conference also appears to have fulfilled its purpose in inspiring students to change the world; “I wanted to [share] my story and actually empower people. I want to go from not being a leader to … being a leader and trying to help people understand what’s really important. I want to speak for those who don’t have a voice,” Kenneth Hong ’19 said in an interview with the Justice. “This is definitely personal for me.”

The University will begin its search for a new Chief Diversity Officer in the coming months, Interim University President Lisa Lynch announced in a Feb. 24 email to the community.

The email also included various other diversity and inclusion policy changes that have occurred in the months following the Ford Hall 2015 sit-in.

“Although there is still much to accomplish and our journey is ongoing, I would like to share with you some of the progress made thus far. Over the coming months, we will provide additional updates about this important work as our efforts continue,” Lynch wrote in her email.

In her email, Lynch noted that the University will soon launch its search for a Chief Diversity Officer and that Interim Provost Irving Epstein will lead the search committee. In an email to the Justice, Epstein wrote that while no committee members have been chosen yet, the committee will work with the search firm Witt/ Kieffer to identify possible candidates in the coming months.

The chief diversity officer position, he noted, will involve “coordinating, implementing and helping to shape the university’s plan for diversity and inclusion ... providing guidance for and having input into decisions about recruitment of faculty, staff and students; and strengthening access to all of our facilities for all of our community members.”

The search committee, Epstein added, will be comprised of four faculty members, four staff members, two undergraduate students, two graduate students and one trustee.

In terms of search criteria, he added, the committee will likely be looking for a “deep commitment to diversity and inclusion, relevant experience, understanding of Brandeis’s culture and mission, people skills, strength in management, leadership, innovation, collaboration and communication.”

He also wrote that the search will be conducted on a national scale and that Witt/Kieffer will do the initial screening of candidates. The search committee will then look at the candidates’ files and reduce the pool from 15 to 20 individuals to six to eight individuals. “We expect to receive a large number of applications — dozens, perhaps hundreds,” Epstein wrote.

“The search committee will then read the most promising applications.”

He added that the search committee members “will have the opportunity to look at all the files, but this may not be feasible if we get hundreds of applications.”

Once the pool of candidates is narrowed down, Epstein wrote, “We will then have an initial interview with the individuals on this shortlist, with a goal of identifying the 3 or 4 most promising candidates. These finalists will be invited to campus to meet both with the committee and with groups of interested faculty, students and staff.”

Once all the information on the position and the candidates is available, he concluded, the committee will make a suggestion — “not a ranking, but rather a detailed list of strengths and weaknesses” — to the president, who will then make the final choice after meeting with all the candidates.

Among the other updates, Lynch noted that the University will focus on improving faculty recruitment and retention and improving student recruitment. She wrote that the administration is in the process of finalizing a plan to appoint staff members whose focus is on diversity and inclusion and provide them with a stipend for their work. In terms of student recruitment, Lynch wrote that undergraduate applications have increased 8.2 percent this academic year, with a 14.8 percent increase in AfricanAmerican applicants and an 18 percent increase in “Latino/Hispanic” applicants. “Although the yield on admitted applicants remains a challenge, the university is dedicated to improving it. In the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, a new pilot program based on the Posse model will offer a full-tuition scholarship and a $10,000 stipend to as many as five students a year,” she wrote.

Additionally, she noted, three members from Academic Services — Erika Smith, Elena Lewis and Brian Koslowski — received professional training from the International Ombudsman Association and will serve as ombudsmen throughout the spring semester, allowing students to talk to them “in confidence about any campus-related concern.” All three declined to comment at press time.

Other updates include the announcement that a campus climate survey on diversity and inclusion will be released to students later in the spring, and a mention of the University’s attempts to further involve alumni, especially from the Alumni of Color group. Lynch noted that the University is already working on the latter, with a visit from Margo Jefferson ’68, author of “Negroland: A Memoir,” scheduled for Thursday.

BRIEF Students targeted in flashing, attempted robbery incidents Another Brandeis student was the victim of indecent exposure on South Street last Tuesday, marking the sixth such incident since November 2015. This incident came a few days after another student was the victim of an attempted robbery and assault, which also occurred on South Street.

In a Feb. 24 email to the Brandeis community, Department of Public Safety Director Ed Callahan wrote that the indecent exposure incident occurred as the student was walking away from campus, toward Highland Street. Callahan also wrote that the Waltham Police Department’s police report lists the suspect as approximately 5 feet 8 inches tall with a stocky build, wearing dark pants and a white hoodie.

He added that the Waltham PD is currently investigating the incident and the University is working with them to increase security measures in the area. He also cautioned, “As always, please be mindful of your surroundings,

walk without distracting headphones or ear buds, and please report any suspicious incident or activity to the Brandeis Police,” and reminded students that escort services are available through the Department of Public Safety.

This recent episode of indecent exposure came shortly after the Feb. 19 attempted robbery and assault. In an email to the Brandeis community on Feb. 20, Callahan wrote that the suspect grabbed a student from behind and fled the scene when the student shouted.

However, the police report’s description of the attempted robbery suspect as wearing a black ski mask differs from the previous descriptions of the indecent exposure suspects. “Students and staff are encouraged to travel in groups when possible and to always be aware of your surroundings,” Callahan ended his email.

Callahan did not return requests for comment at press time.

—Abby Patkin

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THE JUSTICE

STUDENT UNION

Senate reviews bylaw changes for Allocations Board marathons

■ The proposed changes

would decrease the number of marathon sessions and streamline the process.

By Hannah Wulkan JUSTICE EDITOR

The Senate is reviewing proposed changes to the Allocations Board procedure that determines club funding in the Student Union Bylaws, according to an email from Student Activities Specialist Robert Steinberg to club leaders on Sunday. The amendment to the bylaws would consolidate the number of funding marathons held each year to one per semester, determining the club funding for the entire next semester. The Senate will vote on the amendment on Sunday, and, if enacted, would go into effect next November, Student Union Vice President David Herbstritt ’17 said in an interview with the Justice.

The proposed amendment would reduce the number of marathons held to two per year, with one near the end of each semester, which would determine funding for the following semester. While the proposed system would require clubs to plan further in advance when seeking funding for events, it would simplify the process by consolidating steps and give the ABoard “more of a time cushion, so that if something does go wrong, God forbid, people aren’t going to be affected as severely,” explained Herbstritt in an interview with the Justice.

Herbstritt clarified in an email to the Justice that there would still be

an appeals process but that instead of holding an entire appeals marathon, “clubs will reach out to the A-Board right after decisions and schedule a time to meet with the Board, usually at a regular weekly time.”

“Currently, how marathon sessions work, they’re really kind of an inconvenience to everyone involved,” Herbstritt said regarding the four different types of marathon sessions each year. The current system consists of Early Marathon, held at the end of each semester for the following semester; Regular Marathon, held at the beginning of each semester for the current semester; Appeals Marathon, held to allow clubs to appeal decisions made during either Early or Regular marathons; and Emergency Requests, held throughout the semester to allow clubs to request last minute funds, as outlined in the current bylaws.

The other change to the system as it stands is that instead of scheduling time slots for each club to come in during marathon sessions, all A-Board sessions will now be run as drop-in hours, where clubs can come by to discuss their funding requests. “What we’re trying to do is, we’re trying to open up the idea of the marathon session to be much more accessible; we want people to be able to come talk to somebody and then leave if they’ve got a quick question, or if they have something more in depth, talk to somebody for a little bit longer,” Herbstritt said.

The amendment reads, “The Allocations Board shall hold at least six drop-in sessions in the month preceding the deadline for Mara-

thon requests. Members of the Allocations Board and a representative from the Department of Student Activities shall be present at each session. … These drop-in sessions shall allow Union Accredited Organizations the chance to ask questions about the intricacies of requesting funds and to provide additional justifications for any pending requests.”

In order to provide A-Board with all of the information it needs to make decisions, Herbstritt said that the Union plans to introduce a supplementary form for clubs to fill out about each event they want to host, in addition to the Student Union Management System that every club must use to request funding. Herbstritt explained that in SUMS, “You don’t really have enough room for everything you’d like to put, so they’re hoping that they can get more information and clearer information.”

He added that there will be some short-term drawbacks to the new plan, primarily that it will cause a very busy period of time next fall when regular marathons are happening and marathons for the next semester will also begin. However, Herbstritt said, “from then on it becomes the norm, there’s no real especially dense part of the year.”

This proposed amendment comes on the heels of a tumultuous allocations process in the fall semester, where many clubs received far less funding than they had hoped. This led to many clubs appealing the ABoard decisions, and eventually a constitutional amendment increasing the number of members and the length of their terms on A-Board.

●

News

●

TUESDAY, March 1, 2016

BRIEF Smoke prompts evacuation On Wednesday, reports of smoke in the Abelson-Bass-Yalem physics building led to the evacuation of the building, according to a community-wide email sent by Vice President for Operations Jim Gray.

The email stated that the physics building and the surrounding buildings were evacuated at approximately 9:30 on Wednesday morning. In an email to the Justice, Gray wrote that students on the third floor of the building noticed the smoke and called campus police to report it. Immediately after, the fire alarm was activated and the Waltham fire and police departments were called to campus to investigate. The departments reported that “a piece of equipment in a mechanical room serving the physics building” caused the smoke.

Gray detailed that the piece of equipment was an air-handling

unit and that “grease on one of the unit’s bearings over-heated” and caused the smoke. Because the problem occurred in an air unit, the smoke was quickly distributed throughout the building.

Gray wrote that the University is “sorry for the inconvenience this incident caused to many faculty, students and staff,” and noted that while nothing of this nature has occurred on campus recently, it is not an uncommon problem for mechanical parts to overheat. Gray reported that the bearing that overheated will be replaced, but the air unit itself remains in working condition and will not be removed or replaced.

According to the email sent out to the community, no one was injured during the incident and the fire department soon declared the building safe.

—Rachel Sharer

BRIEF DCL will not change policies The Brandeis student body voted against any changes to the Department of Community Living’s current system in a Feb. 9 poll, according to the Room Selection page on the DCL website. Their webpage states that “while we [DCL] thought the proposals put forth to the student body would have been beneficial, the students voted unanimously to make no changes to the room selection process.”

The announcement goes on to state that in accordance with the poll, DCL will be executing the room selection process as they have in the past. Room selection numbers will be released on March 11 for all students enrolled in housing for the next academic year.

The poll asked students to respond to two potential proposals for the housing selection process that were first released on Feb. 5 by DCL and the Student Union collaboratively.

According to the proposals’ accompanying email, they were put forward in striving for a less stressful system which would enable students to “have greater control of the system that decides [their] housing options.” DCL emailed out the poll on Feb. 9 allowing students to vote for either of the two proposals, to put forward their own proposals or to vote against any changes in the current system.

The poll remained open until Feb. 12.

—Mihir Khanna

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News

DIVEST: Panelists speak on divestment morals CONTINUED FROM 1 ebowitz also prioritized sustainability but ultimately did not divest the school’s endowment after significant community pressure to do so.

Philip Wight, Ph.D., who is part of Lynch’s Presidential Task Force on Sustainability and a member of Brandeis Climate Justice, introduced McKibben and interviewed him throughout the Skype call. Wight first asked about McKibben’s 2012 Rolling Stone article “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math,” which reported that humanity must keep 80 percent of earth’s fossil fuels in the ground to maintain what scientists call a “carbon budget,” which would prevent catastrophic climate change.

“Had we only been so lucky as to run out of fossil fuel 10 or 20 years ago, we’d be fine now,” McKibben said.

“We would long since have made the technological transition to something else … The problem is we didn’t run out. There’s more than enough coal, gas and oil left beneath the crust of the earth to overwhelm the planet’s climate systems.” McKibben said he got the data in his article from the Carbon Tracker Initiatives.

McKibben said he arrived at divestment as the best strategy to stopping fossil fuel companies from overconsuming because “it’s not that there’s a flaw in the business plan of some company that needs fixing. The flaw is the business plan. And so the need is to break the political power of those companies right away.”

Wight then asked McKibben about recent revelations from the Los Angeles Times and Inside Climate News that Exxon Mobil executives had been aware of the climatic effects of burning fossil fuel since the 1980s, and in fact leased Arctic territories in part because climate change would make the areas more accessible for drilling. Wight’s question to McKibben was, “How do these revelations influence arguments for divestment, and what message do universities send if they continue to own stocks in firms like Exxon?”

McKibben, who has called Exxon’s inaction “the crime of the millenium,” said he had “no idea” why anyone would continue to own ExxonMobil stocks and said, “The problem is not just that Exxon knew about all this; it’s that they studiously avoided saying [anything] about it.”

According to McKibben, divestment works to stigmatize fossil fuel corporations in order to prevent politicians from accepting donations from these firms.

He said that since politicians still accept money from oil and gas companies, particularly congressional Republicans, the firms are not stigmatized enough.

Wight then asked about the criticism that it is hypocritical to urge divestment while one still consumes fossil fuel, and whether the inverse criticism was true — that it is hypocritical to reduce one’s carbon usage and not divest. “I think it’s a good idea to be reducing one’s carbon imprint, and at the same time, it’s a very good idea to be divesting.

Colleges sometimes say ‘oh we’re working hard, we’re getting the cafeteria green,’ or ‘we’re reducing the amount of heat in the dining halls.’

That’s good, that’s smart, and that’s something we should all be doing.

The endowment’s just another part of the campus. … it makes no sense to have a filthy endowment and an otherwise clean campus,” McKibben responded.

Wight also asked if moderates might be a greater roadblock to progress than climate deniers, due to believing they are doing their part without taking stringent enough actions. McKibben responded that slow change is not an option in the climate debate and that divestment was the least of the strong actions one could take.

Wight then opened the conversation to the three panelists in the room as McKibben ended his call. The speakers were Craig Altemose, the co-founder and executive director of the Better Future project, a climate

advocacy group that opposes fossil fuels; Prof. Dan Perlman (BIOL), the University’s associate provost of innovation in education and a member of the Presidential Task Force on Sustainability; and Abbie Goldberg ’16, a member of Brandeis Climate Justice.

All three panelists voiced their support for divestment, but Perlman said he was concerned that divestment had become a goal in and of itself at Brandeis rather than just one means of addressing climate change, which he called “the greatest issue facing humanity today.” He argued that saying that it is immoral to invest in fossil fuel corporations and also saying that one loses money from investing in fossil fuels — he cited that stocks in Peabody Energy and Exxon-Mobil have deteriorated in market value over the last few years — are mutually exclusive arguments. “So what I’m seeing here is if we feel it’s amoral to invest in fossil fuel companies, fine, that can be our position. But then to turn around and say ‘and we should divest because we’re going to lose money,’ now all of a sudden divestment has become an end in and of itself rather than a means to do what Abbie, Craig and I want to achieve. … If that’s the only venue, or the primary venue for improving our world, we’re missing out on some important things.”

Goldberg countered that BCJ activists agree that there is no “silver bullet strategy,” and that divestment is just one action to fight against climate change. She felt that it was not contradictory for moral and economic arguments against climate change to coexist, and that most of the growth in the Brandeis endowment came from donations, not investment. Goldberg did not respond to a request for her source.

Altemose called the fossil fuel industry “not only the wealthiest industry in human history but the most deadly in human history,” and said that it was fallacious to say that divestment would reduce funds for financial aid.

SALARY: University's salaries and staff size fall short

CONTINUED FROM 1

quina, is considered “salary, whether or not he or she received a bonus, cost of benefits … and any deferred compensation that may have occurred.”

Compared to the Peer Group, the president’s total compensation ranks in the 7th percentile for 2015, which was attributed to Lynch’s interim status. In 2014 and 2013, Brandeis ranked in the 46th and 59th percentile, respectively, compared to the Peer Group, and finished in the 37th and 25th percentiles compared to AAU private institutions for those same years. The median value of total compensation for the Peer Group was $949,000 in 2015, $1.037 million in 2014 and $908,000 in 2013.

One faculty member commented on Lynch’s comparatively low salary, saying, “Even when you’re an interim president, you’re a president, and I am shocked at the gap between 40th and 46th percentile and 7th.” Traquina countered, saying “That was, in all honesty, a number [Lynch] wanted, and we agreed to pay her.”

The Senior Executive Team consists of 15 offices, including Provost, Dean of Arts and Sciences, Dean of the Heller School and Senior Vice President of Students and Enrollment. For the academic year of 2014 to 2015, Senior Executive compensation was totaled at $4,978,000, or 1.55 percent of the University’s $326 million of expenses.

This is compared to $4,947,000 (1.57 percent) for 2013 to 2014, and $4,885,000 (1.58 percent) for 2012 to 2013. For the current academic year of 2015 to 2016, the University is spending 1.47 percent of its total $339 million expenses on Se-

nior Executive Compensation.

Full-time equivalent staff per 1,000 students was the next statistic Traquina presented. Brandeis has 211 staff members, compared to the Peer Group’s 364, AAU’s 73 and AAU private institutions’ 574.

Regarding the size of Brandeis’ staff in comparison to the staff of comparable institutions, Prof. Susan Lanser (ENG) commented, “It’s nice to say we’re lean, but sometimes we’re not lean in good ways, so this is a faculty issue and a staff issue. I really am sorry if the Board is getting excited that we have a lower number of staff where we need staff.”

Traquina reported that the Peer Group of 28 institutions is subject to change for next year, due to concern that the University does not compare fairly to schools such as Boston University, adding, “I’m guessing some of those bigger schools are coming off the list, and the overall size of the budgets, if you were to aggregate them all up, would be lower going forward than what is showing here, which would tend to push comp. data down — and, all other things being equal, it would push our percentile numbers higher if the data were not to change,” he said.

The faculty then briefly discussed the need for data breakdowns for salary by gender, as well as a comparison between senior executives and faculty and staff in terms of the percentage of expenses given to total compensation.

“You would think there needs to be a slide on how everybody else is paid, from the bottom up. … I don’t think you can say that only [the executive team’s] work needs to be compensated in comparable ways,” Prof. Sabine von

Mering (GRALL) commented. There was a call for a livable wage — $15.05 per hour — for all employees, including those who do not work directly for Brandeis but who are contracted with Sodexo, for example.

Traquina later responded by saying, “The Board has discussed that staff compensation is not where we want it to be. … The Board is concerned about lack of equity.” He commented that “the Board doesn’t look at what janitors make [and] maybe we should,” adding, “What if the data showed that our janitors were paid at market value?” Von Mering replied: “Our values are more than what the market does.”

Traquina ended his presentation by saying, “The highest priorities for the Board today are financial aid and faculty salaries … [and] endowment for both.”

Other pieces of the agenda included memorial awards for two former Brandeis professors, Prof. Emeritus of Chemistry Myron Rosenblum and Prof. Emeritus of Fine Arts Robert Maeda. Both were lauded for their success as scholars and professors of their respective fields, as well as their strong senses for social justice.

The Provost’s Report from Interim Provost Irving Epstein highlighted recent senior administration training sessions for Title IX issues and investigation, including trauma and sexual assault, as well as a faculty training session for emergency response.

Prof. Susan Curnan (Heller) delivered the Senate Report, discussing primarily the Faculty Senate’s meeting with Ron Liebowitz in which the next University president emphasized the need to “rebuild trust” with faculty.

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THE JUSTICE

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TUESDAY, March 1, 2016

7

UPSTANDING

ETHAN SAAL/the Justice

STAND UP, SPEAK UP: In her lecture, Dean of Harvard Law Martha Minow distinguished between the roles of "upstanders" and "bystanders" in social justice conflicts.

GITTLER: Minow delivers talk on “upstanding” CONTINUED FROM 1 She also advised audience members to listen and “engage constructively with views with which you disagree” to further support conversations about difference.

Shortly after the ceremony began on Thursday, approximately 20 student protesters from Reclaim Harvard Law and Ford Hall 2015 entered Rapaporte with signs and banners that featured slogans like “#Reclaim Harvard Law” and “Racial Justice Lives at Belinda Hall,” as well as some that showed a revised version of the Harvard seal with black silhouettes carrying sheaves of wheat on their backs. The Harvard seal features three sheaves of wheat.

In an email to the Justice, Ford Hall 2015 organizers specified that 15 Ford Hall activists and five Reclaim Harvard Law activists participated in the event. According to the Ford Hall leaders, Ford Hall 2015 served as an inspiration to the Harvard Law students when they began their occupation. Ford Hall 2015 stated that they stand in solidarity “with Reclaim Harvard Law and the students who are putting their bodies on the line in the name of justice in Belinda Hall. Together we are moving our people toward a liberation that has been long denied.”

Student Union President Nyah Macklin ’15, who participated in the demonstration, wrote in an email to the Justice, “The protest today occurred, (from my understanding,) because the students at Harvard Law School are fed up with [racial] injustice [on their campus] and the complacency their administration has with the status quo. And we as a community must understand that and welcome such frustration with a system that has continuously harmed Black and brown bodies on their campus and even on ours. These students are standing up for their right to be heard. And we as a community must not criticize that frustration.

We must listen to the frustration, and react in a way that does not demean their work.” Macklin stated that she did not directly organize the demonstration on Thursday but did participate as a member of Ford Hall 2015.

The protesters began a call-and-repeat directed at Minow shortly after entering Rapaporte, chanting, “Your school is racist. Your school is not inclusive. Harvard Law School does not teach justice; Belinda Hall teaches justice. Belinda Hall is inclusive.

Belinda Hall is anti-racist, and Belinda Hall stands with Ford Hall against administrations that talk justice but do injustice. Today we upstand, we speak out in public, we face danger; we build anti-racism while you bystand.” They ended their chant by re-

iterating a quote from Black Panther activist Assata Shakur that had been widely used during the Ford Hall 2015 occupation in November and December: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

Minow responded, “It’s thrilling to see students engage in upstanding, and it’s delightful to have a chance to talk about work I and others have been doing for some time. And it’s an honor to be here with Brandeis that shows such a meaningful commitment to this kind of engagement.”

After Minow’s lecture, Hill also took a moment to discuss the protest, reflecting, “I would just add that I am really moved by the idea of encouraging upstanders, and I think we have some examples of upstanders here today, and we’re thankful for that. I also am very thankful for the ideas of engaging in dialogue. We have made great progress, I believe, in a lot of different fronts. … But clearly, clearly, we have a long ways to go. And so dialogue is still important, as well as standing up, and again, the violations and exclusions that continue to exist today.”

Hill then opened the floor to audience members for a question-andanswer session, and some of the protesters began asking Minow about her response to and involvement in the Reclaim Harvard Law protests.

One student stated Minow has failed to engage with the Harvard activists and not listened to their demands.

Minow responded by saying, “I am very honored by your upstanding, and I’ve been in many conversations with many of you, and so it’s interesting for you to say I don’t listen.

Sometimes when I’ve invited you to have more meetings — indeed every time — I’ve never gotten a response,” she said, addressing the protesters.

“The really interesting question, I think, for all of us at this moment, is, ‘What does it take to have meaningful, face-to-face conversation in the digital age, when it’s appealing and attractive to post things on websites, take photographs and go to the media before actually talking to the people you’re actually trying to convince?’”

“You are comfortable with the status quo,” one protester, a Harvard Law student responded, adding, “You are constantly condescending, like you know what’s best for us.”

The protesters then silently filed out of the room, and a few other audience members asked Minow various questions about her legal philosophy and views on prevalent social issues before the event came to a close.

— Max Moran contributed reporting. Ben Feshbach contributed audio recording.

8

features

TUESDAY, MARch 1, 2016 ● Features ● The Justice

just

VERBATIM | W. H. MURRAY Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

ON THIS DAY…

FUN FACT

In 1692, the Massachusetts Bay Colony held the first Salem witch trial.

J.K Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, shares the same birthday as the titular character.

EXPLORING ARCHIVES: Ray combs through the Sekondi regional branch of Ghana’s national archives while studying abroad.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CARINA RAY

Brandeis Bound Prof. Carina Ray (AAAS) joins the University’s African and Afro-American studies department IMAGE COURTESY OF CARINA RAY

By Brianna majsiak and Daisy Chen JUSTICE editor and justice STAFF WRITER

While studying abroad in Ghana as an undergraduate student at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Prof. Carina Ray (AAAS) wanted to understand more about her own heritage as well as figure out why race seemed to operate differently in various places. She was particularly interested in how what it means to be black is different in a place like Ghana than in a place like the United States.

Questions like these have continued to inspire her to pursue the research topics that she now writes about as a historian of Africa. This fall, Ray will begin teaching courses as an associate professor of African and Afro-American Studies at Brandeis.

In an interview with the Justice, Ray explained that she was first exposed to questions about African self-perceptions while taking African history courses as an undergraduate student.

She majored in American Studies with a pathway, or focus, in ethnic studies. The pathway in ethnic studies created a “tailored [and personalized] way [of] undergraduate study which blended West African Studies with U.S. Ethnic Studies,” Ray said.

Ironically, while a student at UC Santa Cruz, Ray took several courses instructed by Brandeis alum Angela Davis ’65 in the “History of Consciousness” program.

“Those were … very important courses that would impact my thinking.” Ray explained. “All of the questions that I became interested in, I have continued to pursue [throughout my career.]”

Ray spent her junior year studying abroad in Ghana pursuing answers to questions that were both personally and intellectually interesting to her.

For example, she was interested in learning more about her Puerto Rican family’s African roots, while at the same time was curious about what it means to be black in a place like Ghana in comparison to a place like the United States.

“What you realize is [that] the U.S. is very particular in the way that race operates especially because of the history of slavery and racial segregation in the United States ... In the context of the U.S., black is a very all-encompassing category … incredibly diverse … and I think that is a very positive thing in so many ways.”

Comparatively, Ray learned that race is more narrowly defined in Ghana and found it “hard to be of African ancestry but be seen as white.” This feeling motivated her to look closely at the differences. “This has been my

career — trying that question: why it is different … [and] to understand it in a really unique and meaningful way. So whatever I initially considered personally challenging has ended up being the most intellectually stimulating pathway that I have been on over the past 20 years.”

While pursuing her doctorate degree in African History at Cornell University, Ray wrote a dissertation that later would become the inspiration for her first book, “Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana.”

The book focuses on interracial sexual relations in colonial Ghana and how those relationships changed throughout the late pre-colonial period through the colonial period and then into the period of independence.

In her book, Ray focused on two sets of relationships: those between African women and European men in Ghana and those between African men and European women in Britain.

“In a narrow sense, the book is about these interracial relationships. But what I was really interested in and trying to do was to paint a picture of everyday race relations: how did Africans and Europeans relate to one another during this colonial period in Ghana? So using the starting point of these intimate relationships, you actually begin to see [that] they

are part of a much wider grid of social relations and that bigger picture was also something that I wanted people to understand,” Ray explained.

In order to write her first book, Ray spent several years intensively researching in the national archives of Ghana. Her book follows primary resources established through her research.

She also spent considerable time in Britain and traveling to find people who are descendants of those particular relationships and those who lived during the time period.

“I really privileged the primary sources, and in part in many ways because not so much has been written about the particular subject so there are fewer secondary sources to draw on but in my own way I really tend to privilege the [Ghanian] archive and the primary sources.”

Ray explained that her first book is also “very narrative driven. I really pay attention to the stories and I try and center those [in my writing] and then we find analysis into them.”

Currently, Ray is writing her second book, “Somatic Blackness: A History of the Body and RaceMaking in Ghana.” In this book, she plans to explore “how people [in Ghana] historically conceptualize ideas around blackness, the body and human difference.”

“We know that ideas about the

body and human difference develop in moments of encounter with other kinds of bodies … We know a lot about how Europeans responded to these encounters, but I’m interested in asking how West Africans responded to these encounters and produced their own ideas about the body, how they came to understand their own bodies ... and ...to develop their own somatic norms,” Ray said.

She plans to incorporate her research in Ghana into her courses at Brandeis. Next academic year, she will teach “Introduction to African History” as well as “20th Century African Icons,” “Race, Sex, and Colonialism,” and “Assassination: A Political History of Post-Independence Africa.”

Ray was drawn to Brandeis through the recent cluster-hire initiative and the growth of the AAAS department. She is one of 14 new tenure and tenure-track faculty to join Brandeis this year.

Last fall, Ray came to give a lecture in one of Prof. Jasmine Johnson’s (AAAS) courses. She explained that she was taken aback by the excitement and the preparedness of Brandeis students to ask difficult questions.

“I’ve never really seen so much enthusiasm in a student body for this kind of knowledge. The students just seem so ready and hungry for this curriculum in African and Afro-American Studies and it’s really exciting.”

the justice ● Features ● TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 2016

YOU BE THE JUDGE: Students gathered in Schwartz auditorium to hear a debate moderated by Prof. Daniel Breen (LGLS).

Discussions of Democracy

AMANDA NGUYEN/the Justice

Students from the Brandeis Conservatives and the Brandeis Democrats spoke on political issues from the 2016 election

By SAGIE TVISER JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

As the 2016 Presidential elections approach, politics are at the forefront of many people’s minds. Brandeis is no different: on Wednesday evening, students crowded the Schwartz auditorium to observe a moderated public debate between representatives from the Brandeis Conservatives and Brandeis Democrats clubs. Prof.

Daniel Breen (LGLS) moderated the event titled which was titled “You Be the Judge: A Debate on the Issues of the 2016 Presidential Race” and was hosted by the Politics department.

The debate was designed with a focus on key issues in the 2016 presidential primary. As such, the participating organizations decided which topics would be discussed prior to the debate and prepared through relevant research.

The president of Brandeis Conservatives, Dor Cohen ’16, came up with the idea for the event and arranged preparation between the campus Conservatives and Democrats. He said in an interview with the Justice that the debate was intended to “be informative” and to allow students to “hear about both sides.”

The debaters included Ben Feshbach ’19 and Catherine Rosch ’16 representing the Brandeis Democrats and Matthew Cooper ’17 and Mark Gimelstein ’17 representing the Brandeis Conservatives.

Topics for the evening included interpreting taxation, raising the minimum wage, addressing the water crisis in Flint, Michigan

and accepting Syrian refugees. National attention has been given to Flint recently because of a water contamination problem due to high concentrations of lead.

On taxation, the Democrats discussed reducing economic inequality and risky financial behavior through taxation. The Democrats also deliberated on notions of creating a fair market through social services, like education. They also spoke on the benefits of organizations like Planned Parenthood, which, though not entirely government funded, they felt were of benefit to the public.

In response, the Conservatives proposed a thought experiment of an apple picker having their apples taken from them. They challenged the incentive structure in place when the fruits of your labor are not your own.

The debaters also considered the ability of the very rich to hide vast sums of money in offshore accounts to avoid taxes. They felt this was ineffectual regarding the tax collection their liberal counterparts proposed.

The Conservative debaters, Cooper and Gimelstein, finished their speeches by pointing out the immense government revenue that was generated following the Bush and Reagan tax cuts.

To prove equal economic opportunity exists in America, they provided examples of economic data which lent itself to a understanding the fluidity of individual economic standing.

The minimum wage was also a major focus of the debate. The Conservatives’ opening stance that

CONSERVATIVE RHETORIC: Matthew Cooper ’17 (right) and Mark Gimelstein ’17 (left) spoke for the Brandeis Conservatives.

AMANDA NGUYEN/the Justice

employees and employers should come to an agreement regarding fair compensation was met with heated opposition from the Democrats. With this in mind, the Conservatives provided examples of how regions with higher minimum wages often have fewer available jobs.

In response, the Democrats cited a Supreme Court ruling that indicates that the relationship between workers and their corporate employers exists with an inherent imbalance of power, countering the Conservatives’ desire to relinquish decision-making to the free market. Moreover, the Democrats argued that there is a stagnation in overall unemployment between counties and regions with varying minimum wages.

The next focus of the debate was the recent water contamination problems in Flint. The Democrats contended that the water crisis was preventable and racially driven. They cited the disproportionate harms experienced by racial minority groups during this crisis as an example of how the crisis may have been racially motivated.

On the other hand, the Conservatives presented this crisis as a function of systematic mismanagement of resources by elected Democrats in Flint. They suggested that no purposeful racial bias had influenced the decision to use water from the Flint river.

Their liberal counterparts protested that Rick Snyder, the Republican governor of Michigan, had not done anything to help the largely black Flint community.

Ultimately, the Conservatives re-

sponded by noting Environmental Protection Agency negligence in white communities located in Colorado, as a way of proving this situation was not unique.

The last topic of debate, which focused on the Syrian refugee crisis, tied arguments to personal narratives, as some of the debaters discussed family histories of immigration to America.

The Conservatives focused their arguments on security concerns and the necessity of prioritizing the wellbeing of American citizens.

They cited evidence, such as a statement from the head of the FBI that addressed the inability of the United States government to adequately vet potential refugees, as well as the likelihood of anti-American sentiment among these individuals. In contrast, the Democrats identified the existence of eight organizations which currently vet refugees and argued there is miniscule chance of terrorists seeking to disguise themselves as refugees.

Breen concluded the debate and asked both sides a question to answer, “Why should we have a conservative/liberal future?”

The Brandeis Conservatives attested that belief in the individual would lead to success. The Brandeis Democrats stated that a liberal future would focus on equality of opportunity. Arguments like these deviated from those of leading presidential candidates vying for party nomination in both rhetoric and presentation.

After the event, Breen spoke to the Justice about his experience moderating, “I felt as if things were occurring to me as they were talk-

LIBERAL LEANINGS: Ben Feshbach ’19 (right) and Catherine Rosch ’16 (left) argued on behalf of the Brandeis Democrats.

AMANDA NGUYEN/the Justice

ing that maybe I hadn’t thought of before, so it was actually something that kept me on my toes. I really enjoyed it,” he said.

Given the liberal tendencies of many university campuses, Brandeis included, and the controversial aspects of many of the topics discussed, Breen told the Justice he feels, “It’s important to sharpen the differences between the two points of view [because] very often, we’re lost in verbiage.”

Moreover, Cohen, who spoke with the Justice, explained that he wanted to have the debate “both to be informative for the students to either hear about the issues if they haven’t done so before — especially the conservative side which they don’t hear that often on campus — and just for fun so that the two groups themselves could tackle the issues and their differences.”

As such, it would seem the moderator’s questions hold even more weight. Breen often asked questions which clarified or complicated the statements which had just been made by the debaters.

Both Breen and Cohen described the event as a success. Cohen told the Justice “the turnout was high” and “we hope to turn this debate into a series of events through which Brandeis students can be more informed and get more involved in the political process.”

Editor’s Note: Catherine Rosch is an Associate Editor for the Justice and a columnist for the Justice’s Forum secion and Ben Feshbach, Dor Cohen and Mark Gimelstein are columnists for the Justice’s Forum section.

9

10 TUESDAY, March 1, 2016 ● THE JUSTICE ● forum

the

Justice Established 1949

Brandeis University

Max Moran, Editor in Chief Avi Gold, Managing Editor Hannah Wulkan and Carmi Rothberg, Deputy Editors Rebecca Lantner, Catherine Rosch, Jaime Kaiser and Grace Kwon, Associate Editors Abby Patkin, News Editor, Brianna Majsiak, Features Editor Jessica Goldstein, Forum Editor, Jerry Miller, Acting Sports Editor Lizzie Grossman, Acting Arts Editor Michelle Banayan and Mihir Khanna, Photography Editors Emily Wishingrad, Online Editor Sabrina Sung, Acting Copy Editor

EDITORIALS

Rubio and Clinton offer strong education policies Super Tuesday, the day when the single most votes and delegates are on the line for presidential primary candidates, has arrived. Included within it is the Massachusetts primary, where students, faculty, staff and administrators are expected to vote in high numbers in the 2016 presidential race.

As a college newspaper that covers issues within and related to University life, this board has based its analysis of the primary candidates on their proposals related to college issues. These issues primarily revolve around making higher education more affordable and accessible to as many people as possible. Importantly, the following recommendations are not full endorsements — many members of this board have reservations about other proposals and qualities of the selected candidates, and responsible voters should consider all aspects of those running before making a decision.

But on the issue most directly related to the readers of this newspaper, this board applauds the proposals of Republcian Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) and Democratic candidate Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D).

For an endorsement of a Republican presidential candidate, this board initially considered Rubio as well as Ohio Governor John Kasich because out of all Republican candidates, Rubio and Kasich have the most definitive plans for higher education.

In addition to his stated desire to change the accreditation system of college acceptance, Rubio’s platform calls to “establish income-based repayment as the universal repayment method for federal student loans,” according to his website.

This Board prefers this plan to other Republican candidates’ proposals because an income-based repayment system lowers the annual average cost needed to repay student loans in exchange for a longer term, according to the Federal Student Aid website.

Rubio’s plan would make studentloan repayment proportional to the earnings of college graduates and “give graduates the option of consolidating existing loans into the new, simplified IBR system.” This plan is best suited for students already in college who are focused on repaying college debt after graduation.

Conversely, Kasich has a plan to keep college affordable by allowing highschool students to take college classes in high school, according to his website.

Rubio’s plan has more practical applications for students already in college, and this board endorses him as a result.

However, we have reservations with Rubio’s “Student Investment Plans,” which allow students to borrow money from “approved investors to help Americans finance postsecondary education without taking on the burden of student loans.” This plan takes the broken student-loan system and transfers it to the private sector without addressing the fundamental flaws inherent to the system and the issues that make student loans necessary.

Both candidates in the tight Democratic primary race have proposed thorough higher education reform that would allow any admitted student to afford a public university.

Senator Bernie Sanders promises to abolish tuition costs for public univer-

Vote in primary elections sities entirely, instead funding college through a tax on Wall Street speculation and asking states to greatly increase their contributions to their schools.

Clinton, on the other hand, aims to keep students from needing to borrow money for school.

Her campaign calculations assume students work approximately 10 hours at a part-time job through college and that their parents have saved up a college fund, but she plans to supplement state spending with federal grants, cut interest rates on loans, simplify refinancing and offer debt relief to an estimated 25 million borrowers.

Our choice of Clinton is not based on which candidate offers the ideal plan — obviously, attending college for free is better than paying — but rather on which offers the more feasible one. Almost no prominent economists have endorsed the Sanders ‘ education plan as being economically viable, due to potentially overestimating the returns on his Wall Street tax and inevitably fierce protestations from states who are asked to massively reallocate toward education when they already can barely make ends meet.

While it’s unlikely that either proposal in its current form will end up being passed, when faced with the single least productive and most partisan Congresses in history, Clinton’s proven political record and more moderate starting point make her more likely to succeed in passing some sort of reform, and in the end, this board holds that even gradual progress under a Clinton administration is better than no potential progress under a Sanders administration.

Undoubtedly, Sanders’ self-described democratic socialism would turn into an attack line for the next four years of GOP activism, and hard-line Republican congressmen would fiercely block almost any of Sanders’ costly proposals, regardless of their quality. While the ideals of Sanders’ college platform are deeply appealing, Clinton’s plan — essentially a continuation of the Obama platform — offers the best chance at actually seeing enaction.

The Clinton campaign must note going forward that many college students may not have the time to work — even at a part-time job — while excelling in school, that the earnings from such part-time work rarely make a dent in college expenses and that low-income families can rarely afford to save a college fund large enough to impact costs.

If elected, Clinton would need to consider these concerns.

Regardless of which primary candidates voters select and on what issues they base their decision, this board urges all American citizens to get out and vote — if not in the primary, then certainly in the general election. More so than most, this may become a crucial election for the character and future of the United States, and all Americans have both a duty and an honor to influence what that future will be.

—Editor’s Note: Catherine Rosch, an associate editor of the Justice, is an active campaigner for the Sanders’ administration. Rosch recused herself from conversations and writing for the Democrat segment of this editorial.

GRACE KWON/the Justice

Views the News on

On Feb. 20, thousands across the country protested the manslaughter conviction of former N.Y.P.D. officer Peter Liang. Last November, Liang shot and killed 28-year-old black man Akai Gurley, and on Feb. 11, a jury convicted Liang of manslaughter – serving the first conviction of an N.Y.P.D. officer in a line-of-duty shooting in over a decade. Protesters of the “Coalition of Justice for Liang” argue that Liang, an Asian American man, has become the “scapegoat” of white officers, offered up to appease those seeking justice for the numerous shootings of unarmed African American males. In response to these protests, some black activists have staged small counterprotests where they argue that the jury served justice, according to a Feb. 23 New York Times article. What do you think of Liang’s conviction?

Marlharrissa Lagardare ’16 To understand the Black Lives Matter Movement, one must simply understand what the activists are fighting for, which is for justice to be served whenever there is a wrongdoing against the Black community.

Some argue that the BLM does not advocate for justice in regards to Black on Black crimes and solely targets cross-racial injustices, but what one must also understand is that when a Black male commits a crime, even against his own race, he is convicted — with little to no evidence.

Yet, in major recent killings of police officers and unarmed Black victims, the justice systems has consistently failed in regards to persecuting the police department. Peter Liang shot and killed an unarmed suspect.

Regardless of if Officer Liang was Asian, White, Hispanic, or even Black, he was rightfully convicted for his wrongdoing and that is exactly what the BLM works for.

Marlharrissa Lagardere ’16 is the Vice-President of the Brandeis Black Student Organization. She is also on the chair committee of Culture X.

Queen White ’16 Though there has been a dominant narrative of White officers murdering Black people we should not exclude the countless amount of officers who reflect the deeply embedded racism that is the United States justice system. Despite Peter Liang’s claims that shooting Akai Gurley was a mishap, he still shot an unarmed Black person and then failed to follow protocol to seek immediate care, which arguably lead to his death. This country can not afford to claim another murder as a mistake when there are a countless amount of Black deaths that have been conveniently dismissed under mysterious circumstance. Liang’s community’s concerns present important issues on accountability and racial bias. And though it is their right to convey how his Asian identity has lead to his verdict, it is also important to include how officers are required and often trained to target minorities, despite the color and identity of who holds the badge.

Queen White ’16 is a member of the Woman of Color Alliance and a African And Afro-American Studies major. She also participated in Ford Hall 2015 occupation.

Nia Lyn ’19 Officer Peter Liang killed Akai Gurley. Whether it was influenced by the dark staircase, the unsavory part of Brooklyn he was in or his lack of experience with the NYPD, it was still a murder. In regard to those that feel as if Liang is being used as a scapegoat, do they feel this way because he isn’t getting off scot-free like one of his white counterparts would have? Since so many officers have gotten away with similar crimes, finally seeing justice served is a foreign concept. Liang’s conviction isn’t the problem; the problem is that so many others have gone without indictment that when someone finally gets a penalty befitting of their crime, it seems like they are being victimized. Liang isn’t a victim, and he isn’t being used as a scapegoat. He’s just not receiving the honorary white privilege that his supporters feel he is entitled to.

Nia Lyn ’19 is a Justice contributing writer.

Grace Kwon ’16 I think it’s absurd Peter Liang was convicted even though so many white NYPD cops haven’t been convicted of similar crimes. The reaction of black activists shows hypocrisy because they focus only on their group rather than other minority groups. Chris Rock at the Oscars on Sunday night showed this hypocrisy too. He brought three little Asian kids out on the stage and gave them the most stereotypical Asian names, but no one is calling him racist. This is ridiculous. I think it’s fine for people to point out racial issues, but they need to include all minority groups. Assuming that there is hatred only against black people is wrong. All minority groups experience discrimination. If Liang deserved to be convicted, so did white cops.

Grace Kwon is an Associate Editor for the Justice.

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TUESDAY, March 1, 2016

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Criticize ignorance and dishonesty in the Republican party

By AMBER MILES JUSTICE Editorial Assistant

On Thursday, according to a Feb. 26 Huffington Post article, Rep. Pete Nielsen (R) of the Idaho state legislature attended a state House committee hearing regarding new abortion legislation and decided to give his two cents: “Now, I’m of the understanding that in many cases of rape, it does not involve any pregnancy because of the trauma of the incident.”

Apparently, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson isn’t the only prominent doctorturned-politician in the GOP anymore; Nielsen seems to consider himself a medical professional — an obstetrician-gynecologist to be more precise — even though he has no medical degree. At some point between his bid for a seat in the state House and his statement on Thursday, Nielsen must have attended medical school. Otherwise, he would have absolutely no business making such a claim.

Now, this all feels too eerily familiar. In some time-traveling twist of fate, America must have reverted back four years because, surely, no one could make the same error as former U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin (R-Mo.) did in 2012. Could yet another Republican legislator make the same ludicrous, insulting and impossibly false claim about rape?

Akin, if you’ll recall, used his own imaginary medical degree to inform his opinion about pregnancy when, in an August 2012 interview, he told KTVI-TV, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.”

To make the situation perfectly clear — since apparently Nielsen didn’t get the memo in 2012 — such claims have absolutely no fact or scientific merit backing them. An Aug. 20, 2012 Scientific American article examines the science in depth and reports that “rape and consensual sex have the same pregnancy rate.”

Nielsen’s similarities to Akin don’t end at a lack of medical degree, lack of sensitivity to sexual assault survivors or lack of basic common sense; like Akin, rather than apologizing for or attempting to retract his statement, Nielsen stood

by what he said. In fact, he dug himself deeper.

According to the same Huffington Post article, when questioned about his statement, Nielsen asserted, “That’s information that I’ve had through the years. Whether it’s totally accurate or not, I don’t know. … I read a lot of information. I have read it several times. … Being a father of five girls, I’ve explored this a lot.”

Whether or not Nielsen intended this to serve as defense for his first statement remains to be seen — because it almost seems as if he is trying to undermine himself. Here he admits to propagating a view of which he himself questioned the accuracy. All this second statement does is show the longevity of his woeful ignorance and introduce a confusing, tangential connection to his daughters.

While Akin’s and Nielsen’s statements could simply be an indictment of sex education in Missouri and Idaho, Nielsen’s confession that he didn’t know whether his own statement was true could reflect a disturbing trend in the GOP: When they lack real evidence for their stance, many Republicans choose to fabricate their own evidence.

In Nielsen’s case, his statement served as an attempt to prop up new abortion legislation that lacks exceptions for sexual assault.

And Republican presidential candidates reflect this trend, too. Ben Carson, for example, claimed in November 2015 that raising the minimum wage invariably increases unemployment.

This statement, made as an attempt to support his stance on the minimum wage, lacked fact, as raising minimum wage correlated with reduced unemployment rates almost as often as increased unemployment rates, according to a Nov. 10, 2015 Politifact article.

In a slanderous attack on Hillary Clinton during the GOP primary debate in New Hampshire, Marco Rubio claimed that Clinton supports duedate abortions, but according to a Feb. 10 Politifact article, Clinton has only voiced support for third-trimester abortions when the mother’s life is at risk — but over the course of 15 years, she has never said anything endorsing due-date abortions.

Ted Cruz, for his part, sought to tear down op-

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ponents by speaking falsely about their healthcare stances. On Jan 31, he claimed that Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders “have the identical position on health care, which is they want to put the government in charge of you and your doctor,” but all three candidates he mentioned have separate plans for healthcare, according to a Jan. 31 Politifact article.

Worst of all, of course, is Republican front-runner Donald Trump with falsehoods too numerous to mention. During the Houston GOP debate, for instance, Trump claimed that he had never discussed Libya despite Cruz’s claims otherwise — but in this case, Cruz actually spoke honestly. A Feb. 25 Politifact article reports that Trump discussed Libya at length in a 2011 video blog. The lies don’t end there. Perhaps the most prominent example of Trump’s dishonesty would be his attempt to incite fear with his infamous claim that

he observed in Jersey City, N.J., that “thousands and thousands of people were cheering” the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Politifact debunked this claim too.

While all politicians lie, GOP leaders do so with significantly higher frequency: Regarding all fact-checked statements from 2007 to 2015, Carson, Rubio, Cruz and Trump had dishonesty rates of 84, 40, 66 and 76 percent, respectively, compared to Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders’s tie of 28 percent, according to a Dec. 11, 2015 New York Times article by political fact-checker Angie Drobnic Holan.

As such, Nielsen’s statement on Thursday reveals more than his staggering ignorance and insensitivity. If examined in conjunction with statements by other Republicans, Nielsen’s claim reflects a troubling lack of honesty and factual support within the GOP.

Reject ideological uniformity on college campuses and at Brandeis

By Andrew Jacobson JUSTICE Contributing WRITER

Last semester, protests and rallies against racial inequity pervaded university campuses across the nation. At Brandeis, the Ford Hall 2015 movement demanded — among other things — that the University admit more students of color, hire more faculty of color and require yearly diversity and inclusion workshops for all members of the staff and faculty.

Brandeis addressed diversity once more this past weekend at a student-organized University conference entitled “Diversity: America from Within,” which “aim[ed] to foster multifaceted discussions that incorporate[d] but [were] not limited to the influence of race, gender, and background,” according to its mission statement.

Not a single one of the conference’s 21 workshops, however, discussed one of the most important strands of diversity: ideological diversity. How can Brandeis, a campus dominated by one side of the ideological spectrum, pride itself on its commitment to true diversity if it ignores this critical facet?

In theory, diversity of race and background should engender diversity of ideas. According to the Brandeis website, as of Fall 2014, 18 percent of undergraduates were international students and 51 percent self-identified as non-white. Yet regardless of diversification efforts at other universities and here at Brandeis, students of higher education and Brandeis remain overwhelmingly liberal.

In the Panetta Institute for Public Policy’s 2015 spring survey, forty-nine percent of students enrolled in four-year colleges and universities in the United States identify as Democrats or leaning Democratic, while just 26 percent describe themselves as Republicans.

A similar rigidity exists in the ideological leanings of faculty members, a phenomenon that has worsened in recent years. The professoriate of higher education has been shifting dramatically left for decades, according to a 2004 New York Times article. One survey revealed that the current average ratio of Democratic faculty to their Republican counterparts of 7 to 1 is more than twice what it was three decades ago. The American Enterprise Institute also reported that in humanities and social science departments, conservative professors constitute only

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five percent of faculty.

As a liberal arts institution in arguably the most liberal state in the country, it’s no secret that the political left also dominates Brandeis.

A cursory glance around the library at students’ computer stickers or a discussion in any politics class corroborates this campus’ glaring political leaning.

Brandeis celebrates and promulgates social justice, an ideology predicated on the belief that left-wing policies are needed to rectify perceived societal inequities. Whether more liberals selfselect Brandeis due to this emphasis on social justice, grow liberal once arriving on campus, or choose Brandeis based on a variety of other considerations is inconsequential; Brandeis promotes its liberal leanings as a means of attracting new students.

Brandeis should not fundamentally transform its character, but the combination of these factors artificially creates a campus community dominated by liberal students, which leads to problems down the road.

By allowing a particular set of views to dominate, Brandeis fails to actualize its “belie[f] that diverse backgrounds and ideas are crucial to academic excellence” — as the Brandeis Diversity Statement puts it — and as a result, students are being provided a tremendous disservice.

Being exposed to various world-views and critically examining pre-existing notions are fundamental tenets of a genuinely first-rate education. Simply put, ideological diversity, in addition to other types, is paramount to our pursuit of objective truth and justice.

Furthermore, a well-rounded education is the antidote to the rise of rabble-rousers, such as current presidential candidate Donald Trump.

As a Feb. 1 Stanford Review article put it, “a rigorous understanding of all truths,” which we attain only through ideological diversity and challenging debate, “prevents the rise of demagogues who leverage the disillusioned to seek political power.”

At Brandeis, there is a history of ignoring ideological diversity while promoting its other forms. For example, an April 8, 2014 Justice editorial exhorted the University to rescind the honorary degree of author and women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Hirsi Ali, a Somaliborn woman named to Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2005, was previThe opinions stated in the editorial(s) under the masthead on the opposing page represent the opinion of a majority of the voting members of the editorial board; all other articles, columns, comics and advertisements do not necessarily. For the Brandeis Talks feature on the last page of the newspaper, staff interview four randomly selected students each week and print only those four answers.

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ously Muslim and suffered from female genital mutilation as a child.

The editorial contended that the degree should be rescinded because Hirsi Ali “ignore[d] the fact that there are multiple views of Islam, insist[ed] that violence is inherent in Islam and that one culture is fundamentally better than another.”

A petition created by Sarah Fahmy ’14 garnered upwards of 6,800 signatures urging the “degree [to be] rescinded immediately.”

Instead of perhaps debating the merit of her contentions, a large portion of University faculty was also quick to react with contempt.

According to an April 11, 2014 Brandeis Hoot article, 87 faculty members even wrote a letter to then-President Fred Lawrence, urging him “to rescind immediately the invitation to Ms. Ayaan Hirsi Ali … a decision about which we are shocked and dismayed.”

By revoking her degree, the University effectively sheltered our “open” community from her views and corroded the very values of free expression, diversity and inclusivity that Brandeis has cherished since its founding.

Lawrence did, however, tell Hirsi Ali she “is welcome to join us on campus in the future to engage in a dialogue,” according to an April 8, 2014 New York Times article.

The University motto is “truth, even unto its innermost parts.” How are students expected to strive for truth when the feelings of some students are prioritized over the value and potential truth of Hirsi Ali’s views? Refusing to engage with potentially painful ideas stifles our lasting commitment to open inquiry and threatens to destroy even our dedication to social justice and progress.

Worst of all, this lack of ideological diversity encourages conformity. A society rife with conformity, where dissenting opinions are ostracized or forbidden, is no longer a free society.

Mercifully, Brandeis is far from this reality, but the threat that one consistently dominating world-view — in this case, liberalism — poses should not be dismissed heedlessly.

Then, on March 17, 2015, this newspaper’s editorial board once again published an opinion on the University’s honorary degree process. They urged the administration to choose a “diverse group,” of awardees who “reflect the values of social justice.”

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Under these qualifications, who is better suited to receive the award than Hirsi Ali herself, a woman of color advocating for women’s rights?

The Board’s hypocrisy is apparent. Shortly after urging the administration to rescind Hirsi Ali’s award, this paper’s editorial board called for more awardees of color. These actions evince the unfortunate truth that when Brandeis students — and liberals in general — demand “diversity,” they are almost always referring to physical diversity, not ideological diversity.

They desire and prioritize the feel-good, “visible” diversity, while simultaneously disregarding, or even deliberately neglecting “invisible” diversity, that of ideas, religious beliefs and much more, among the student body, faculty and awardees.

In other words, they want people who look different but think the same.

In an increasingly polarized campus climate, our definition of diversity must surpass the superficial qualities of race and gender. Higher education must encompass all ideas, thereby enabling students to become successful critical thinkers. For instance, professors should examine all sides of an issue in class in lieu of injecting their personal opinions, a tendency too prevalent at Brandeis.

In a Dec. 12, 2015 New York Times article, Frank Bruni writes that universities should “unveil the complexity and splendor of the world, and prepare students to be thoughtful citizens of it.” Moreover, one of higher education’s goals is surely to “challenge ingrained assumptions, disrupt entrenched thinking, [and] broaden [students’] frame of reference.” A campus dominated by one side of the political spectrum debilitates such an ideal.

According to that same New York Times piece, true diversity will only be achieved when we “insist that colleges be more aggressive in countering identity politics, tamping down partisan fury, pulling students further outside of themselves and establishing common ground,” rather than only demanding racial and other “visible” varieties of diversity.

As Brandeis’ namesake, Supreme Court Associate Justice Louis D. Brandeis, once stated, “America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress.”

The issue of diversity extends far beyond race and should be addressed as such.

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Recognize generational differences in feminist ideas Catherine

ROSCH Cynical Idealist

A few years ago, someone asked me when I started identifying as a feminist, and I struggled to answer. Since childhood, I’ve always believed in — to quote author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — “the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.” Part of the reason I’ve identified as a feminist, even if I didn’t always understand that label, is my mother.

Thanks to her, I’ve always felt confident in myself and my abilities despite living in a society that can often belittle or doubt women, and I’ve always felt comfortable speaking up in the classroom regardless of how male-dominated it is. Better still, with her support and keen eye for editing cover letters, I found a dream internship at Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. My mother and I have always tended to agree on most political issues, and when we’ve had our disagreements, like all mothers and daughters do, it’s over small things — like how I dye my hair liberally with blue streaks or my stubborn insistence on only studying dead languages. However, the 2016 primaries has triggered a larger disagreement over politics, progressivism and how to judge whether a candidate is feminist and whose feminism should be used as that metric.

I support Bernie Sanders, and my mother supports Hillary Clinton; we perfectly mirror the generational divide that pollsters have found among white, female Democrats in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. There have been plenty of think pieces and op-eds about why young women simply are not voting for Hillary Clinton, be it because younger people generally tend to be more to the left than their parents or because of splits in feminist theory or because young women haven’t lived as long as older women and therefore haven’t experienced as much sexism. My former idol Gloria Steinem would claim it is because young feminists like me only care about getting boys’ attention — never mind that many young Bernie supporters like myself tend to loathe the socalled “Bernie Bros.”

My mother and I disagree on who we support because we disagree on who the more feminist candidate in the election is. This disagreement, I believe, stems from the differences in the feminist waves to which we belong.

My mother is of the second-wave generation of the 1960s to 1980s, a feminist movement that largely focused on legal barriers to equality, such as abortion rights and the Equal Rights

EMILY WISHINGRAD/the Justice

Amendment. On the other hand, I am a thirdwave feminist, interested in how issues like race, gender identity, sexuality and class intersect with each other in terms of oppression and privilege. Second-wave feminism focuses on legal and political equality while thirdwave feminism is more concerned about the intersections of identity and combatting structural inequality. That is not to say my mother does not care about racism or homophobia or that equal pay is not something I’m passionate about, but we express those concerns in different ways and through different lenses.

As a result of our different focuses and understandings of feminism, the two of us disagree on what makes a candidate better for women.

There are many reasons that my mother supports Hillary Clinton just as there are many reasons why I support Bernie Sanders, but for her, a big political issue is abortion access. It’s a big issue for me as well; I didn’t spend a summer in Planned Parenthood’s communications department for nothing. For my mother, Hillary Clinton is the preferred feminist candidate because she has a very good record on both protecting abortion rights and leading consistently on the issue — while Bernie Sanders, despite being pro-choice, just does not have the same enthusiasm on the issue because abortion access is not his top priority. There’s a sense as well that the ultimate end-game for second-wave feminism, the full realization of

legal and political equality, rests with a woman in the White House. For many second-wave feminists, perhaps the act of choosing a male candidate over the qualified female is an act of betrayal for what feminism is supposed to be about.

I have a lot of sympathy for second-wave feminists. I can only imagine their frustration; many second-wave feminists fought for abortion access — only to see it eroded away — and dealt with workplace discrimination in the hopes that one day they too would have a chance in the White House.

To watch young women, the vanguard of the feminist movement, reject that ideology must feel like a slap in the face. Prominent female politicians, like former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, have been plenty critical of young women who do not measure up to their second-wave aspirations. At a rally in New Hampshire, Albright told the crowd that “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other,” apparently in reference to women who did not support Hillary, and Wasserman-Schultz told the New York Times in a Jan. 6 interview that there is “a complacency among the generation of young women whose entire lives have been lived after Roe v.

Wade was decided.”

However, for young women like me, this knee-jerk support for Hillary Clinton and

statements decrying our feminist credentials can feel like a slap in the face, especially as so many of us have been active in organizing for issues like reproductive health access and equal pay. Third-wave and second-wave feminism are different, and feminists from these two schools of thought are also going to be different. Assuming that all feminists have the same perspective ignores our individual experiences and when and how we came of age. My experiences and my mother’s experiences are different, and even though we both are frustrated with each other — my mother because she thinks I’m being impractical and idealistic; myself because I think my mother tends to ignore unsavory aspects of Hillary Clinton’s record, like her hawkish foreign policy or tendency to flip-flop on issues like LGBTQ rights and racial justice — both of our perspectives are valid because they come from our own experiences.

In a Feb. 11 New York Times op-ed, Gail Collins said it best: “If the younger voters who are flocking to Bernie Sanders don’t share their elders’ intense feelings about needing to elect a woman president right now, it’s partly because Hillary Clinton helped create a different world. So no matter what comes next, everybody’s a winner.” Supporting Sanders does not make someone a bad feminist compared to Clinton supporters. It just indicates different ideologies and experiences.

Reevaluate AAAS Ford Hall response in light of school history

By Martin Gross ’72 SPECIAL TO THE JUSTICE

As a Trustee, adjunct associate professor at the International Business School, alumnus, parent of alumnae and donor, I watched with interest the events on campus in the late fall when students took over the Bernstein-Marcus Administration Center as part of a concerted effort to make and negotiate for a set of demands.

I must admit to a bit of déjà vu being a graduate of the class of 1972 during which time students also occupied Ford Hall, Pearlman Hall and others as part of the campus protests at the time. Then, as now, a portion of the faculty supported the actions of the students. What seems to me to be a significant difference between then and now is that back then students were trying to avoid going to fight in Vietnam where a serious aggression might constitute being killed or killing another in a southeast Asian jungle. Today’s feared aggressions appear more micro by comparison. That said, no one can deny that protests, controversy and activism in their many forms constitute part of the fabric of a student’s college years, with the nature and content of those activities a reflection of the culture of the time.

Nevertheless, what I found most disturbing with the recent protests, which in my mind also clearly distinguishes them from those in the late ’60s, is that this time I see faculty issuing statements which, intentionally or not, constitute a clear distortion of history of the very University where they teach. I am referring to the statement by the African and Afro-American Studies faculty in their letter of support for the students they issued to the effect that Brandeis “aggressively confront its own history of white supremacy.”

The AAAS statement left unanswered whether only “the students” believed this and not the AAAS faculty or whether the AAAS faculty also believed this. One is led to infer that the AAAS signatories also believed this, since they did not

take the opportunity to support the students, yet correct the false statement at the same time.

While other contents of their statement were also troubling, this particular allegation left me shocked and saddened, especially since there is so much to be said in favor of Brandeis on this score. The fact that this statement’s allegation about Brandeis’s history could be put forward without proffering the slightest evidence for its veracity — and without balancing it with any contrary evidence — struck me as a most unfortunate departure from the basic principles of scholarly inquiry which demand examining all sides of an argument.

But universities are supposed to be thought laboratories. So like a good Cartesian, I proceeded to question my own assumptions and review the evidence.

I reread “A Host At Last,” Abraham Sachar’s history of Brandeis. Then, I contacted the Brandeis archives to see if there was any historical evidence in support of Brandeis’ white supremacist past.

For starters, the pictures in Sachar’s history contain, early on, many examples of African Americans — male and female — including an African-American Trustee.

Not what I would have expected of a white supremacist institution.

The founders behind Brandeis were, by and large, Eastern European Jewish immigrants in the shoe business, corrugated box business, real estate business, clothing business and other like trades.

Brandeis was founded to combat quotas on Jews, women, people of color and other discriminated groups.

Describing this goal as in any way “white supremacist” requires a serious explanation and supporting documentation.

I then came upon a lot of instances of Brandeis behavior inconsistent with a “white supremacist” history.

In 1960, for instance, Oluwatope Mabogunje

came to Brandeis from Nigeria. He majored in biology, graduated magna cum laude with Phi Beta Kappa honors and went to Harvard Medical School. After an illustrious career, he became president of the Nigerian Surgical Research Society in 1987. Brandeis awarded him an honorary degree in 1991.

Further, in 1952, Brandeis’ first group of honorary-degree recipients included Ralph Bunche, an African-American diplomat who won a Nobel Prize. Sacher’s book notes that a hotel in Boston would only give him a room on condition he not take his meals in the hotel and relates how the University’s public affairs manager told the hotel manager to “go to hell.”

Better still, Brandeis established the Wien International Scholarship Program in 1958 to bring international students — including Africans — to Brandeis. As for the impact of the Wien program, Sachar describes the program as bringing “a delightfully diverse quality to the campus. They were not isolated as foreign students had been in the early years of the Rockefeller International Houses at the University of Chicago and at Columbia. They lived and ate with the American students, attended classes and social functions with them, and were frequent visitors in the homes.” Sachar makes the point that Kenyans played on Brandeis soccer teams. This is not what I would expect from a white supremacist institution in those days.

For domestic students, Brandeis encourages racial diversity and inclusion with the Myra Kraft Transitional Year Program — established in 1968 — and the Brandeis Posse Program. According to the TYP website, around 200 students apply to the program each year, and 20 are admitted, totaling in more than 1000 students admitted to the school since its inception.

When it came to sports, Brandeis again led the way in merit over prejudice when, in 1966, it hired Boston Celtics player K.C. Jones as head coach of Brandeis’s basketball team. Sachar remarks that this gave Brandeis the honor of

being the first college in the country to name a black head coach of a major sport.

Perhaps most probative of Brandeis’ early history, the archives contain an article from the February, 1952 issue of Ebony Magazine.

It states, “America’s newest University — so young it has never issued a diploma because it has never had a graduating class — operates on a set of democratic principles which could easily serve as the goals for every other university in the United States. There are no quotas limiting students of any religion and no racial barriers at Brandeis University. Brandeis school records, including the admissions application, have no place on them for race or religion and it is only by physical count that school authorities are able to tell that there are eight negro students now enrolled. On the faculty there is one Negro professor, Dr. Robert A. Thornton, a former University of Chicago scientist hired by Brandeis not because he is a Negro but because he is an outstanding physicist and an inspiring teacher.”

Amazingly, the Ebony article, which contains 12 pictures testifying to Brandeis’ inclusiveness, including white students and African-American students eating alongside one another in the cafeteria, also notes that Brandeis was generally criticized for “going too far.” But in so doing, Ebony attests to Brandeis’ founders not backing down from being pioneers in inclusiveness and fighting discrimination.

At a time when discrimination was a daily fact of life at American universities, what greater testament can a university ask for?

When viewed in a mature context, if any university can lay claim to a legacy of inclusiveness and fighting racial discrimination, Brandeis surely has a great case to make. Unsupported allegations of a white supremacist past are inconsistent with Brandeis’ proud record.

— Martin Gross ’72 is a member of the Brandeis Board of Trustees.

SPORTS ● THE JUSTICE ● TUESDAY, March 1, 2016

WBBALL: Squad unable to stop prolific offense

DRIVING HARD

CONTINUED FROM 16 led the judges with 12 points, eight rebounds and three assists, and forward Sydney Sodine ’17 contributed with 10 points, four rebounds and one assist. The Maroons shot 48.9 percent from the field and limited the Judges to just 29.1 percent shooting. Although Brandeis outrebounded Chicago 39-28, the Maroons led in points in the paint 24-14.

The Judges finished the season with an overall record of 12-13, a slight decline from their previous season's record of 16-12. However, their mediocre conference record of 5-9 matched that of last year's regular season conference record.

Brandeis took charge in the first weeks of February, winning three games in a row. In that span, the Judges were able to close out a tough contest against a formidable Rochester University squad.

Yet the team was unable to close out their season, falling in their last

MIHIR KHANNA/the Justice

POSTING INSIDE: Forward Jordan Cooper ’18 drove hard into the key in a disappointing loss against New York University on Saturday.

MBBALL: Defensive lapse leads to season-finale loss CONTINUED FROM 16 handful for a meager total of nine points off turnovers.

The inside paint proved to be difficult to master, with the Judges allowing 34 of NYU's 71 points from within the paint. The Judges were also boxedout in the paint, giving up 32 rebounds and posting 20 rebounds themselves.

Cooper led the team in points, contributing 15 to the Judges’ total of 50. He also led the team with six rebounds, while Reale and guard Carlin Haymon ’18 tied for two assists each.

In the final collegiate game of his career, Colby Smith ’16 scored all four of his points in the second half, along with three rebounds and one assist

during the game.

Brandeis honored Smith before the game as the only senior on the Judges' squad. Smith concluded the season averaging five points per game and an almost equal 3.6 rebounds per contest.

Smith’s off-court contributions heavily outweighed his on-court performances, helping mentor the Judges and lead the next wave of incoming firts-years to the team.

The Judges finished last in the University Athletic Association Conference, tied with Carnegie Mellon University for a 3-11 conference record.

They equaled their record from the 2014 to 2015 season, posting an overall record of 9-16 on the season.

While Judges looked poised for

13

improvement, they were unable to close out their season, losing their last seven conference games and going winless in the month of February.

The Judges came within two points of Case University but were unable to secure a win.

Ultimately, Emory University took the UAA crown with an 11-3 conference record and the deciding win over Rochester University.

The Judges will need to step up their game in the offseason in order to bolster their offensive play. One of the Judges’ fatal flaws throughout the regular season was consistency. If the Judges can find a way to create a more balanced and unified team, consistency will surely follow in time.

four games by double-digits in each.

After the game, Gabriel lamented on the team's loss and overall season, saying, "Overall, I think we had a positive season. Unfortunately, a few early losses and injuries hurt us. I am excited to see how we grow next season. I think we will be a formidable team, but we have some big shoes to fill!"

The Judges will look to fill the shoes of Laskaris and Cain, both top scorers for the team. Cain averaged 9.2 per contest this year, while Laskaris poured in another 6.2 points per game.

Cain also contributed a solid 3.7 rebounds per game to help the Judges gain ground inside the paint.

Forwards Emma Curnin ’19 and Joelle MarkAnthony ’19 will vie for the secondary forward position once McNamara leaves after the regular season.

The first-years will have to prove their strength and increase efficiency on the court in order to have an meaningful impact come next sea-

TRACK: Both teams fall to seventh place despite solid showing CONTINUED FROM 16 place in the race.

Kate Farrell ’17 and Maddie Dolins ’16 took seventh and eighth places, respectively, in the 5,000-meter run as Farrell crossed the line at the 18:04.28 mark. Dolins stopped the timer at the 18:14.29 mark to solidify a well-deserved top-10 finish.

The squad got successful runs in the relay events, taking sixth place in the 4x400-meter relay and an All-UAA finish of third place in the distance medley relay.

The quartet of Tove Freeman ’16, Ogundoyin Ogundiran ’18, Kelsey Whitaker ’16 and Haliana Burhans ’18 took sixth in the 4x400-meter relay in a combined 4:01.14, a little

over a second out of what would have been a top-five finish.

Whitaker, Burhans, Freeman and Emily Bryson ran to third place in the distance medley relay in a combined time of 12:06.92, just two seconds off of second place.

The Judges closed the day out in the field events, led by Maegann Stafford ’19, who set a personalbest with a solid 9.11 meters in the triple jump.

Jordin Carter ’17 and Ashley Klein ’18 took 10th and 11th places in the shot put, turning in efforts of 9.64 and 9.45 meters, respectively.

The squads will return to the track this weekend to compete in the Eastern Conference Athletic Association Championships in Staten Island, N.Y.

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SPORTS ● THE JUSTICE ● Tuesday, March 1, 2016

15

FENCING

jUDGES BY THE NUMBERS Men’s BASKETBALL TEAM STATS

UAA STANDINGS

Points Per Game

UAA Conference

W L Emory 11 3 Rochester 10 4 NYU 9 5 Chicago 8 6 WashU 7 7 Case 5 9 Carnegie 3 11 JUDGES 3 11

Overall W L Pct. 18 7 .720 17 8 .680 20 5 .800 17 8 .680 15 10 .600 12 13 .480 10 15 .400 9 16 .360

UPCOMING GAMES: Editor’s Note: The Judges concluded their season with a 70-51 loss at home against NYU

Jordan Cooper ’18 leads the squad with 15.3 points per game.

Player PPG Jordan Cooper 15.3 Robinson Vilmont 13.7 John Powell 9.0 Tim Reale 7.0

Rebounds Per Game John Powell ’17 leads the team with 6.7 rebounds per game.

Player RPG John Powell 6.7 Jordan Cooper 4.6 Robinson Vilmont 4.0 Colby Smith 3.6

WOMen’s basketball UAA STANDINGS

TEAM STATS Points Per Game

UAA Conference

WashU Rochester Carnegie Chicago NYU JUDGES Emory Case

W L 11 3 10 4 8 6 8 6 7 7 5 9 4 10 3 11

Overall

W 20 20 19 16 18 12 13 8

L 5 5 6 9 7 13 12 17

Pct. .800 .800 .760 .640 .720 .480 .520 .320

UPCOMING GAMES: Editor’s Note: The Judges concluded their season with a 70-56 loss at home against NYU.

Maria Jackson ’17 leads the team with 9.9 points per game.

Player PPG Maria Jackson 9.9 Sydney Sodine 9.3 Paris Hodges 9.2 Heather Cain 8.9

Rebounds Per Game Maria Jackson ’17 leads with 7.9 rebounds per game.

Player RPG Maria Jackson 7.9 Sydney Sodline 5.6 Paris Hodges 4.9 Kyla Gabriel 4.1

track and field

One-Mile Run Results from the Division lll New England’s Invitational on Feb. 20.

TOP FINISHERS (Men’s)

TOP FINISHERS (Women’s)

200-Meter Dash RUNNER TIME Regan Charie 23.02 Henry McDonald 23.26 Adam Beckwith 24.16

200-Meter Dash RUNNER Haliana Burhans Kanya Brown Ramani Dayon

TIME 26.20 27.21 28.53

HEATHER SCHILLER/Justice File Photo

LONG STRIDES: Saberist Eric Shen ’16 lunged for an opening attack at the Eric Sollee Invitational at home on Jan. 30.

Fencing teams produce commendable effort ■ The women’s foil squad took sixth place after battling in a narrow 45-42 loss against Vassar College.

By DAN ROZEL Justice STAFF WRITER

UPCOMING MEETS: Mar. 4 at Eastern College Athletic Conference Mar. 5 at Eastern College Athletic Conference Mar. 11 at Grinell College

SWIMMING AND DIVING Results from a meet at home against Clark University last Saturday.

TOP FINISHERS (Men’s) 200-Yard IM

SWIMMER Edan Zitelny David Lazarovich Adib Milani

TOP FINISHERS (Women’s) TIME 2:00.44 2:08.23 2:10.64

50-yard freestyle

SWIMMER TIME Amy Sheinhait 25.34 Sherry Tu 26.52 Arianna Traub 26.33

UPCOMING MEETS:

Editor’s Note: The swimming and diving team concluded their season last Saturday at the UAA Championships at Rochester University.

This weekend, the Judges’ fencing team participated in the 2016 United States Collegiate Squad Championships in Princeton, N.J. The Judges faced some tough competition on all fronts, with the best squad finish being a fifth-place finish for women’s foils.

Starting on the men’s side, the men’s foil team of Guillermo Narvaez ’18, Elishua Litle ’19 and Toby Gray ’16 finished in eighth place, losing their opening round matchup against the University of Pennsylvania by a cumulative score of 45-33.

In the bottom table, they narrowly fell to New York University’s first team, losing with a score of 45-37. All three foils scored victories in that matchup but could not hold NYU, despite a back-and-forth battle.

The men’s epee team of Ari Feingersch ’16, Tom Hearne ’16, Albert Reiss ’17 and Hunter

Stusnick ’18 finished sixth overall.

They defeated Yale with a score of 45-40 in the first round but fell to top-seeded Penn in the second, 4531. After narrowly edging Vassar College with a score of 45-44 in the secondary bracket, they were defeated 6-3 by University of the Incarnate Word to end with a sixthplace finish.

The men’s saber team finished eighth in their pool. Eric Shen ’16, Kyle Berney ’18, Curtis Wilson ’18 and Yaotian Zhang ’19 propelled the Judges to a first-round win against NYU’s second team by a score of 45-36, but again, they ran into top-seeded Penn and fell 4519. They were narrowly edged out

by Vassar for seventh place with a score of 45-42.

For the women, the foilists finished sixth overall. Joanne Carminucci ’19, Emilia Dwyer ’16 and Caroline Mattos ’16 had a bye to proceed to the second round, where they lost to Yale University’s first team with a score of 45-39.

In subsequent bracket play, they defeated Johns Hopkins University 45-24 and lost to NYU’s first team to finish sixth. The epee squad of Liz Feller ’18, Sonya Glickman ’16, Gwen Mowell ’16 and Rosa Zhang ’16 also took sixth place in their pool. The Judges faced Johns

Hopkins again after a first-round bye and were narrowly beat by a score of 45-42 before defeating Vassar with an identical score and subsequently falling to Yale’s first team to finish in sixth.

Finally, the saber team of Deb Abiri ’16, Laura Broffman ’18 and Nina Sayles ’17 matched the feats of their teammates, and they placed sixth in their pool. This time, the Judges defeated Farleigh Dickinson University with a score of 45-24 to reach the second round where they ran into second-seeded Columbia University and fell 4534. They defeated NYU’s first team wth a score of 45-38 before losing to Yale’s first team 45-27 to end with a sixth-place finish.

The Judges will be back in action on March 13 at Vassar College as they will participate in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Regional Championships in preparation to host the NCAA Championships at home from March 24 to March 27.

Last season, the Judges posted a third-place finish at the Vassar event and a twelfth-place finish in the NCAA championships.

The Judges will look to replicate their play from last year’s Vassar Regional event in this year’s tournament event.

PRO SPORTS BRIEF Stephen Curry defies logic in his quest for Most Valuable Player and second straight championship Throughout the decades, a fair share of superstars have electrified the NBA. Some elicit dropped jaws, some attract zealous fandom and some perform on such a level that their accolades appear to transcend reality. All of these are applicable for Stephen Curry. The Golden State Warriors guard and reigning Most Valuable Player is performing at such a level that he has many wondering how such historic greatness is even possible.

Curry is leading the league in scoring, averaging 30.7 points per game, while shooting a remarkably efficient 51.5 percent from the field. What’s more, Curry is knocking down 3-pointers at an impressive 46.8 percent clip, while hitting 90.8 percent of his free throws.

Any analyst would be remiss,

however, to dwindle Curry’s greatness down to just a few statistics.

It is the manner in which Curry has dominated the league that has cast him into superstardom comparable to all-time greats LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and the like.

During the 2012 to 2013 season, Curry claimed his hard-earned title as the game’s best shooter, setting a new NBA record for three-point field goals made in a season, finishing the year with 272. That record would not stand for long, however, as Curry went on to break his own record last season, finishing the year with 286 made three-point field goals.

Remarkably, Curry has yet again upended himself, already breaking the 286 mark while still being approximately two months away from the end of the 2015 to 2016 regular season.

As of Sunday, Curry had knocked down 288 3-pointers and has proven time and again the consistent touch that will inevitably result in his sure obliteration of the three-point record by the season’s completion. What is more, in a recent matchup against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Curry tied the NBA record for most completed three-point field goals in a game finishing the night with twelve made triples. The twelfth three came in incredible fashion, as Curry sunk the Thunder with a buzzer-beating, game-winning, half-court 3-pointer, knocking it down with apparent ease.

Said ease is what makes Curry more than just a superstar. Curry has served as the catalyst for the best offense in the league and has scored at the shocking volume he has, all while dishing out 6.6 assists

per-game and playing sufficiently hard-nosed defense, ensuring his game has no exploitable holes.

Beyond his transcendent shooting and passing abilities, Curry is one of the league’s most competent ball-handlers, exhibiting moves that seem to indicate he has the basketball on a string when he dribbles down the court.

No, Curry is no ordinary superstar. Curry appears to be playing in a world of his own, reaching heights to which no legend before him has come close. Curry, however, appears more concerned with the Warriors’ chances of repeating as champions in a league that is getting better with each passing year.

As of Sunday, the Warriors were 53-5 and showing all signs of being poised to not only capture a second

straight title but to break the all-time record for most wins in a regular season as well. According to a recently published statistical analysis

by Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, the Warriors have a 45 percent chance of tying the 1996 to 1997 Chicago Bulls record of 72 wins and a 31 percent chance of claiming what would be the record-breaking 73rd win this season.

Whether the Warriors break the record or not, Curry’s head-scratching brilliance has many wondering if he is in the midst of the greatest individual season of all time. Though such a debate is a lofty one, it may be time to acknowledge the very real possibility that Curry’s dominance is entirely unprecedented.

—Gabriel Goldstien

just

Sports

Page 16

COUNTER-PARRY The fencing teams suffered tough losses at the hands of top competitors in the USCS Championship, p. 15.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Waltham, Mass.

Men’s basketball

SPIN DRIBBLE

Judges unable to avenge narrow loss against NYU ■ Colby Smith ’16 notched

four points and two rebounds against NYU in his last collegiate game.

By JERRY MILLER JUSTICE EDITOR

The men’s basketball team lost to New York University in their final game of the regular season, solidifying their overall season record at 9-16.

The team battled hard, fighting to stay alive against the top-three team, but ultimately fell 71-50.

The Judges went into the game hoping to avenge their two-point loss against NYU in January. The Violets were able to pull away and win the game with two late layups from junior center Costis Gontikas.

This Saturday, the Violets picked up where they left off, shooting out of the box with a 9-2 lead after a mere six minutes of play.

Yet the Judges were not deterred, sealing the first half with a cool 10-0 run to bring the Violet’s lead down to 11.

Forward Jordan Cooper ’18 poured in five of the 10 points, while guard Tim Reale ’17 went the length of the court for two crucial layups.

The Judges stat box reflected their bleak first-half play with the team shooting a disappointing 25 percent

and going 2-for-11 from beyond the three-point arc.

The Violets capitalized on each of their foul calls, hitting an incredible 71 percent from the free-throw line and shooting an above-average 52 percent from the field.

The Judges did not fare much better in the second half, allowing NYU to shoot a whopping 64 percent.

The Judges tried to claw their way back into the game only to be met with a barrage of 3-pointers from the Violet’s squad.

The Judges gave their maximum effort but were down by nearly 30 points at the three-minute mark. In the end, the Judges worked their way back to finish the game 71-50.

With only 38 percent shooting, the Judges lost their flare from the previous matchup in which they outshot NYU 50 percent to 42 percent. This proved to be the Judges’ downfall, allowing NYU to shoot an even 60 percent over the course of the game.

The Judges were also outpaced in almost every category, ranging from rebounds to points in the paint. However, the Judges’ bench outscored that of NYU’s by a modest four points.

Brandeis had trouble finding open men, creating only nine assists versus NYU's 17. Furthermore, while NYU had over 15 turnovers, the Judges were inefficient, converting only a

See MBBALL, 13 ☛

track and field

MIHIR KHANNA/Justice File Photo

CHARGING THE PAINT : Guard Heather Cain ’16 looked for the spin move to the inside agasint Carnegie Mellon University on Jan. 31.

Women lose fourth straight to finish season ■ Forward Sydney Sodine

’17 contributed with 10 points, four rebounds, and one assist.

By ELAN KANE Justice STAFF WRITER

The women’s basketball team ended their season on Saturday losing to New York University 70-56 at home, after losing to the University of Chicago 63-50 last Sunday. With the loss on Saturday, the Judges finish the season with a 12-13 record overall and 5-9 record in University Athletic Association play.

Judges 56, NYU 70 Before the game, the team honored the three seniors on the team: guard Heather Cain ’16, guard Niki Laskaris ’16 and forward Ceara McNamara ’16.

Both teams stayed relatively even with one another in the first quarter. Brandeis led for most of the quarter, thanks to six points from forward Maria Jackson ’17. Jack-

son also added four rebounds and one steal in the quarter. The Judges led 12-7 late in the quarter but NYU went on a 9-3 run to lead 16-15 at the end of the first quarter after a pair of free throws from sophomore guard Riley Wurtz.

In the second quarter, Laskaris led the way for the Judges, scoring the team’s first nine points. NYU led 35-31 late in the quarter, but a layup from guard Kyla Gabriel ’17 with three seconds left in the quarter cut the deficit to two points at 35-33.

The Violets took control of the game in the third quarter, scoring 20 points and holding the Judges to just 12 points. The Judges made only one field goal in the final 6:16 of the third quarter, and NYU went on an 11-0 run to take a 57-45 lead into the fourth quarter.

Despite five fourth-quarter points from guard Noel Hodges ’18, the Judges could only get to within 10 points in the final period.

For the game, the Judges shot 44.2 percent from the field, while NYU shot 49.1 percent.

Laskaris led the Judges with a team-high 15 points to go along with

four rebounds and two assists. Jackson tallied a double-double, scoring 14 points and grabbing 11 rebounds.

The bench for Brandeis outscored NYU’s bench 25-10 but the Judges committed 24 turnovers compared to 15 for the Violets.

Judges 50, Chicago 63 Brandeis fell behind early in this game, shooting 1-of-10 from the field in the first quarter, and trailed 14-4 at the end of the period.

They got back on track in the second quarter, starting off the quarter on a 7-0 run to cut the deficit to 1411. The Maroons then increased the lead to 20-13, but the Judges followed suit with a 7-1 run highlighted by a crucial and-one from guard Frankie Pinto ’17. Chicago led at halftime, though, 28-22.

The Maroons led by as much as 13 points in the third quarter with 3:13 remaining in the period and held a 49-38 lead heading into the fourth.

The Judges started off the quarter on a quick 4-0 run to get to within seven points of the Maroons but could not get closer than that. Cain-

See WBBALL, 13 ☛

Squads hold their ground in tough meet ■ Adam Berger ’16 set a

personal best in the long jump with a total distance of 6.61 meters.

By AVI GOLD JUSTICE EDITOR

The men's and women’s track and field teams continued their indoor season last weekend, taking matching seventh-place finishes at the University Athletic Association Championships.

Men’s squad (26 points — 7th place) Ryan Stender ’18 took the 3000-meter run with an 8:33.52 finish — a second faster than the second-place runner. Mitchell Hutton ’17 ran to an 8:44.99 time in the race to earn an eighth-place finish for the squad. Quinton Hoey ’17 took home a top-15 finish in the race, turning in a time of 8:56.39.

The Judges sent three competitors to the one-mile run, where Grady Ward ’16, Russell Santos ’17 and Matthew Doran ’18 finished in succession. Ward turned in a time of 4:33.42 while Santos finished the race at the 4:34.23 mark and Doran stopped the timer at 4:35.23.

Brian Sheppard ’18 took the course in the 5000-meter run, managing a 16:05.69 finish.

Adam Berger ’16 set a personal best in the long jump with a distance of 6.61 meters, earning a

fourth-place finish in the process.

His distance was a mere .11 meters out of third place and a slim half meter in front of the fifth-place competitor. Henry McDonald ’18 grabbed a 13th-place finish for the squad, topping out at a respectable 6.08 meters.

Berger also picked up a fifthplace finish in the triple jump with a cumulative total of 13.11 meters, his second personal best of the meet. His distance was threetenths of a meter off the podium and a tenth of a meter in front of sixth place. McDonald missed out on a top-10 finish by nine-hundredths of a meter, turning in a total of 12.50 meters.

Evan Scott ’17 and Mark Franklin ’16 finished in third and fourth place in the high jump, topping out at 1.90 and 1.85 meters, respectively. Scott was unable to clear the 1.95-meter jump and fell to third as a result of tiebreakers but made the cut for the All-UAA team as a result of his finish.

Women’s squad (9 points — 7th place) Emily Bryson ’18 turned in a topfive finish in the 3,000-meter run to help pace the Judges, running to a 10:05.91 finish. Her time was sixthtenths of a second out of fourth place and just under three seconds off of the podium. Julia Bryson ’18 took a top-15 finish in the race with a time of 10:31.76, earning 14th

See TRACK, 13 ☛

just

ARTS v

Waltham, MA.

s o e R E xhibi w e N ÂťP.19 ts

Vol. LXVIII #18 March 1, 2016

Images: Amanda Nguyen/the Justice. Design: Amanda Nguyen, Abby Grinberg/the Justice. Source Art By Rosalyn Drexler

18

TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 2016 | THE JUSTICE

ROSE ART MUSEUM

R th se h sp

1

“#FordHall2015”

By MAX MORAN justice EDitor

Ever since the Ford Hall 2015 movement was launched last semester when students occupied the Bernstein-Marcus Administration Center for 14 days, the whole Brandeis campus has been called upon to think long and hard about its role in systemic racism — on campus, in American society and in history at large. In response, the Rose has decided to designate their Lee Gallery to reflect on the Ford Hall 2015 movement.

The Lee Gallery often displays works from the Rose’s permanent collection,

2

but as the wall text leading into the gallery explains, the Rose chose to install this specific exhibit because “as mediators of culture, museums have a role to play in responding to critical social issues.” The Rose hopes the gallery will be used for “teach-ins, workshops and close looking sessions related to injustice and inequality.” Several different works from the Rose’s permanent collection have been placed in the space, meant to elicit conversations about race, cultural bias and activism.

As one would expect and hope from art dealing with systemic oppression, few of the pieces are easy to look at.

Kara Walker’s vivid 1998 piece “Kind of a Study of My Staged Suicide” is a mural drawn in pencil that has a sketched feel, as though it were drawn quickly. Yet the complexity of the work’s themes and Walker’s treatment of them show the piece was nothing if not carefully made.

The mural depicts a series of violent acts against black women in the antebellum South, including rape and abuse. The disturbing imagery is juxtaposed with a cartoonish style, and it highlights how the black female body has been treated as a sexual commodity in American culture for centuries. The piece’s accompanying text further explains that “the

title of the drawing suggests that it is an introspective study, lending the work a distinctly personal note by alluding to Walker’s own subjectivity.”

Less intense but no less powerful is Annette Lemieux’s 1995 “Left Right Left Right,” which is a series of picket signs depicting fists of all races raised in the classic protest sign. The images come from news photographs from the 1930s to 1970s and are taken from photos encompassing a range of subjects: Martin Luther King Jr., Richard Nixon and Jane Fonda are a few of the people whose fists appear in the work, though one cannot tell whose hand belongs to

“ AMANDA NGUYEN/the Justice

CARPETS AND DANCERS: Sharon Lockhart has compiled videos of dancers performing Israeli dance composer Noa Eshkol’s choreography.

“Sharon Lockhart/Noa Eshkol”

By Lizzie Grossman justice editor

The Lois Foster Gallery currently gives a much different vibe than many of the past exhibits at the Rose. Walking into the gallery, it is completely dark, and rather than paintings, sculptures, or photos embellishing the walls, there are five videos, each portraying a group of dancers performing choreography.

They are not dancing to music — the only sounds that can be heard in the room are the beating of the video reel, and the counting to four in Hebrew — “achat, shtayim, shalosh, arba” — before the start of each dance combination. Rather than wearing flamboyant costumes, they are dressed in simple black leggings and shirts. The environments they are dancing in are very simple as well, with white walls and shiny gray floors that mirror the movements of the dancers. The only colors that appear in the videos come

whom.

Ultima interesti are, they The Ros for discu that the Curatori elaborat Justice: an ongo iteration blossom tion and many vo bers.”

from complexly-crafted quilts hanging in the background.

This piece, “Five Dances and Nine Wall Carpets by Noa Eshkol” (2011), is the work of Los Angeles-based artist Sharon Lockhart, in which she explores the art of Noa Eshkol (19242007), an Israeli dance composer, theorist and textile artist. Lockhart filmed seven dancers performing five of Eshkol’s compositions, setting them in spaces that are adorned with nothing but Eshkol’s wall carpets — effortlessly blending elements of both Eshkol’s choreography and textile work into one installation.

The choreography that the dancers perform is very simple. Rather than performing leaps, jumps, turns or acrobatic moves, they make use of subtle movements such as arm circles, small steps and head rolls. The beauty of the choreography lies in how the movements of each individual dancer work together. For example, in one piece, two women face in opposite directions

and essentially mirror each other with their movements, which mostly consist of bends and intricate footsteps, almost never looking at each other throughout the course of the choreography. Another piece portrays two women and a man performing slow, heavy movements and many instances of the dancers looking around and at one another. The wall carpets in the background add a striking contrast to the simplicity of the dance movements.

Lockhart does an extraordinary job of not only combining elements from Eshkol’s very different works of art together but also blending the bulk of Eshkol’s art with her own composition.

According to the description of the exhibit, “Although the artists never met, Lockhart considers the project a twoperson exhibition.” Lockhart’s film installation proves that collaboration does not have to occur between two people who have met face-to-face, but it can occur through a shared interest and love for one another’s work.

AMANDA NGUEYN/the Justice

POP GOES DREXLER: Visitors to the Rose Art Museum view a documentary on display, detailing Pop artist Rosalyn Drexler’s career.

T seum ist, exh She T of mul D due one her scio T on l Am “Lo wor back The coll view two side U the stra love D fens cate feat of c ter

THE JUSTICE | ARTS | TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 2016

RACE RELATIONS: In response to he #FordHall2015 protests last emester, the Rose Art Museum has dedicated the Lee Gallery as a pace to reflect on racial issues.

AMANDA NGUYEN/the Justice

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SPRING 2016

@ROSE THE

mately, though, as powerful and ing as the works in the gallery y are not the point of the exhibit. se hopes the space will be used ussions about the social issues e art reflects on, a theme which ial Assistant Caitlin Rubin ted on in an interview with the “ Really this is just the start of oing conversation. It’s the first n of something that we hope will m into a deeper, richer conversad a conversation that’s offered by oices, not just Rose staff mem-

This semester, the Rose boasts four new and diverse exhibits, featuring artists Ben Hagari, Sharon Lockhart and Roslyn Drexler, among others.

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CERAMIC ARRAY: “Potter’s Will” (2015) combines a jarring video of a man being baked in a kiln with a moving element that resembles a giant potter’s wheel.

MIHIR KHANNA/the Justice

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“Rosalyn Drexler: Who Does She Think She Is?”

By JESSICA GOLDSTEIN justice EDITOR

This semester, the Rose Art Mum welcomes American Pop ArtRosalyn Drexler’s work with the hibit “Rosalyn Drexler: Who Does e Think She Is?” The exhibit highlights the breadth Drexler’s work, spanning from lti-media pieces to novels.

Drexler stands out in the Pop world e to the fact that she was among e of the only women in Pop art, and work had a strong political conousness.

The exhibit demonstrates a focus love and violence as well as crime. mong the most notable pieces is overs” (1963). The mixed-media rk features a monochrome red kground very reminiscent of Pop. e combination of acrylic and paper lage creates a visual appeal for the wer with the collaged image of the o lovers on the bottom left-hand e of the painting.

Unlike many of her other works in exhibit, this Drexler piece demonates the very apolitical message of e.

Dissimilarly, her works “Self-Dese” (1963) and “Rape” (1962) indie a different narrative. The former tures a woman fending off a man color, fighting for a gun. The latshows the image of a black man

on top of a woman. Both images use bold colors and their subjects are in the corner of the frame. Their compositions create strong focal points for the viewer.

Unfortunately, these paintings perpetuate racial stereotypes and change the narrative of Drexler’s political activism regarding race. While not part of this exhibit, Drexler’s “Is It True What They Say About Dixie” (1966), featuring men in black suits on an entirely white background, was inspired by an image of Bull Connor, the brutal police chief in Birmingham, Alabama.

In “The Syndicate” (1964), Drexler reveals the ambiguity between traditional notions of the “good” guys and the “bad” guys.

Set on a monochrome background, the image dissociates identities such as ‘gangster,’ ‘private eye’ and ‘law enforcement official’. It instead shows the mirrored image of the men at two different tables —―they possess the same interests as businessmen but pursue them in different ways.

Drexler exists as a visionary in the art world, championing the mediums of painting, writing and filmmaking. The exhibit delivered the artist’s unique perspective on the Pop art movement, a perspective charged with political discourse.

Drexler has certainly made her mark on American culture.

“Rose Video 08 | Ben Hagari”

By ALLISON YEH

justice CONTRIBUTING writer

Ben Hagari’s “Potter’s Will” (2015) is both a visual and literal spinning experience. Located in the video gallery, the piece includes a video portion of a potter molding a lump of clay on his wheel, as well as a real-life installation of the potter’s rotating studio.

The on-screen potter’s studio resembles a dance; the camera rotates with the spinning pot while the potter mends the clay with a deliberate yet elegant touch. The sounds from the smoothing, scraping and molding of moist clay tickle the ears, adding viscerally to the idea that a pot is being created.

Similar sounds of molding wet clay carry over into the next scene of the video, which conveys a clay man — played by Hagari himself

— slowly standing and walking toward the kiln. The lens focuses on the figure’s lumpy, ambiguous body parts. However, as the figure moves closer to the fire, he becomes more human, his parts becoming more defined.

Complementing the on-screen production is a real-life depiction of the potter’s studio. Rotating around the potter’s wheel, the moving set mimics the cinematography of the video art. However, there is something more eerie about the physical potter’s studio than the projected one, as no hands smooth, scrape, or mold the clay — the pot is already made.

In his installation, Hagari uses the art of pottery to represent primordial myths of creation and creativity. He seems to reference an Adam-like figure through the emergance of the clay man, and

portrays the serpent of Genesis with a cane that transforms into a snake. Additionally, the potter at his wheel mending wet clay hints at the Egyptian god Khnum, the water god and the potter god of creation. The piece incorporates other Egyptian references too. When the clay man, with the tail-biting snake Uroboros wrapped around his neck, poses peripherally to the camera and places one harm in front of him and the other behind, he mirrors Egyptian art’s popular frontalism — the showing of a drawing’s profile. Lastly, Hagari touches on all of earth’s elements from the wind in the spinning wheel, the water in the slimy clay, the air in the drying clay and the fire of the burning kiln. Hagari’s incorporation of all of these symbols works to further his thought-provoking rendition of the beginning “of man”.

Design by REBECCA LANTNER/the Justice

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TUESDAY, march 1, 2016 | Arts | THE JUSTIce

Brandeis TALKS

INTERVIEW

If you could create a category for the Oscars, what would it be and who would you give it to?

Raphael Stigliano ’18 MIHIR KHANNA/theJustice

This week, the Justice spoke with Raphael Stigliano ’18 who is directing a play for Brandeis Ensemble Theater this spring, “The Zoo Story” by Edward Albee.

Evelyn Beard ’17

“I would create a category including best actor and best actress [...] I would give it to Rachel McAdams.”

justArts: How did you come across this opportunity?

ILLUSTRATION BY ALI SANTANA/the Justice.

Cely De Barros ’18

“I would choose to go with best actor or actress from a minority group with probably Denzel Washington.”

Emily Glovin ’19

“I would choose most captivating plot. I would say ‘The Big Short’ because I don’t think it won a lot of awards, but it should have, and it kept me interested for two hours.”

Valarie Timms ’16 “I would create an Oscar for Best Animal Performance and I would give it to the dog in ‘Fuller House.’”

—Compiled and photographed by Amanda Nguyen/the Justice.

STAFF’S Top Ten

Yoga Poses

By Abby Grinberg

CROSSWORD ACROSS: 1 Like some small cars, for short 5 CIA predecessor 8 It might be straight 13 Buttocks, to the British 14 Tiny scrap 15 Make up (for) 16 Movie inspired by a board game 18 Lack of mirth 19 Active ingredient in Tylenol, for short 20 It often comes after 4G, in cell phone ads 22 Give it a go 23 Word often confused with its two homonyms 24 Solo vocal piece related to an aria 27 He was preceded by Winston Churchill 32 Piece of legislation nicknamed Obamacare (abbr.)

35 Firing 36 A bit sour 37 Beachfront shelter found near luxury resorts 39 Titillating 41 Clapton of rock n’ roll fame 42 Type of radiation 45 Rank below Lt. 46 Made a lot of noise 50 Things that cause people to gag 51 Brotha’s counterpart 55 Recording device 58 Slimy fish 59 _____ Space 60 Movie starring Sigourney Weaver as Ripley 62 They can be found in certain addresses, or three times in this crossword 65 Épée alternative 66 “Not a chance!”

67 Burns, in Spanish 68 Mold clay, say 69 ____-la-la 70 Tackle box component DOWN: 1 Morocco’s capital 2 Crib 3 First name in makeup 4 Relating to the 4th Greek letter 5 Awed exclamation 6 Syphilis, e.g. (abbr.)

7 Small tree 8 Chews out, say 9 World’s busiest airport, for short 10 Type of suit

JA: Can you give us a short summary of what “The Zoo Story” is about?

CROSSWORD COURTESY OF EVAN MAHNKEN

11 “______ off?”

12 ______ Martin (cognac brand) 14 Mode of thought 17 Lobe, anatomically speaking 21 Little kid 24 Friend, to Pierre 25 Kylo ____ (Star Wars villain) 26 Bus driver on The Simpsons 28 Old-timey camera brand 29 Past due 30 Brockovich who was played by Julia Roberts 31 List enders, for short 32 Mimic 33 Gold qualifier 34 Landed (on) 38 Org. that filed an Amicus Curiae brief in Brown v. Board 39 Ostrich relative 40 Price for a person, perhaps 42 Chivalrous 43 Southern constellation 44 A stooge 47 _____ the odds (made it fair) 48 Owed 49 Exclude 52 Shop 53 It’s found in niño 54 Photographer Adams 55 Enjoy the sunlight 56 ____ Bator 57 Jeer at 59 Cleaning solution 61 Historical period 63 Rocky peak 64 Place to get a mani/pedi 70 Functionality

RS: Absolutely. So “The Zoo Story” is a pretty short play in itself, and it takes place entirely on a park bench.

There are two characters — Peter is a middle-aged textbook publisher, happily married, family — he’s sitting on a bench reading and Jerry comes along. Jerry doesn’t have anything Peter has; he isn’t married, he doesn’t have a family, he lives in a shitty apartment — I just hope to see a fun show that a lot of people show up to and have fun watching and remember for a while. he comes in and begins talking to Peter, and their conversation is what makes up the entire play. These people who should be polar opposites discover connections between each other in totally unpredictable and surprising ways.

JA: What creative licenses are you taking in directing the play?

SOLUTION COURTESY OF EVAN MAHNKEN

justice EDITORial Assistant

If the stress of midterms is getting to you, I would highly recommend doing some yoga. Consistently practicing yoga has been proven to relieve stress and improve overall mental health. Not to mention, it’s secretly a great workout. Here are my top 10 favorite yoga poses: 1. Crow 2. Tree 3. Child’s Pose 4. Warrior 2 5. Side crow 6. Headstand 7. Triangle Pose 8. Dancer’s Pose 9. Downward Facing Dog 10. Shavasana (Final-resting)

Raphael Stigliano: The opportunity itself was just through the [Undergraduate Theater Company,] producing my own show through it, which I was really excited to find how easy that actually was. But the play itself I’ve been looking at for years now. I discovered it sometime in high school. I went on an Edward Albee kick — he has some great plays — and I read as many of them as I could, including “The Zoo Story,” and from the first moment I read it, I knew I would love to do this someday, and I never knew I would actually get the chance to. I tried to do it in high school, but it’s not high school appropriate, at least for the high school I went to, but I was just so excited as soon as I got to college and realized I would have this opportunity to do it, I knew I had to take it.

SUDOKU INSTRUCTIONS: Place a number in the empty boxes in such a way that each row across, each column down and each small 9-box square contains all of the numbers from one to nine.

RS: I directed a scene from this for a directing class I took last semester, and one of the things I explored there is something I also want to pursue in directing it now, which is exploring the discrepancy between what takes place in the scene and what takes place in the theater, because those are really two separate places. When you’re in a theater, you always know you’re in a theater, you can’t get past the idea that you’re in a theater. So as much as you believe the scene that you see before you, you know it’s just people acting.

So I really want to explore the ability to have one character fully in the scene and one character fully in the theater, and what happens when those two areas clash.

JA: What do you hope to see in the final result?

RS: I just hope to see a fun show that a lot of people show up to and have fun watching and remember for a while.

Solution to last issue’s sudoku

Sudoku Copyright 2014 Tribune News Service, Inc.

—Lizzie Grossman