The Justice, October 29, 2019

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The Independent Student Newspaper Volume LXXII, Number 8

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B r a n d e is U n i v e r sit y S i n c e 1 9 4 9

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

GETTING INTO THE HALLOWEEN SPIRIT

OBITUARY

Philanthropist Morton Mandel P’73, H’89 dies ■ Morton Mandel’s donations

created several centers and established multiple faculty chairs and fellowships.

By JOCELYN GOULD JUSTICE EDITOR

Morton L. Mandel P’73, H’89, the chairman and CEO of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation and a major donor to the University, died at the age of 98 on Oct. 16.

The Foundation gave $45 million to Brandeis, including gifts that created the Mandel Center for the Humanities and the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education, according to an Oct. 17 Brandeis NOW article.

Mandel Foundation donations also established “three endowed faculty chairs, and numerous student fellowships,” University President Ron Liebowitz wrote in an Oct. 21 email to the Brandeis community.

Morton Mandel was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. Although he enrolled in Adelbert College, now Case Western Reserve University, in 1939, he left his studies to go into business with his brothers, per an Oct. 20 Cleveland Jewish News article. Shortly after, World War II began and he enlisted in the U.S. Army.

The Mandel brothers, Jack, Joseph and Morton, bought an automotive supply company from their uncle in 1940 for $900 and turned it into Premier Industrial Corporation, per a Mandel Foundation press release. The brothers created the Foundation in 1953, the same year they made their first donation to Brandeis, according to the BrandeisNOW article. In 1996, they sold PIC to Farnell Electronics for $3 billion, with the brothers receiving roughly $1.8 billion, per an Oct. 16 CJN article. Two years later, the brothers founded a private trust company, Parkwood LLC, of which Morton Mandel was the cofounder, chairman and CEO. The

See MORTON MANDEL, 7 ☛

Waltham, Mass.

JEN GELELR/the Justice

Brandeis Campus Activities Board hosted a Halloween Carnival in the Shapiro Campus Center Monday. Students enjoyed snacks, carnival games and a virtual reality experience.

STUDENT UNION

Union vice president resigns $84.7 million funding following judiciary hearing plan to go into effect UNIVERSITY FINANCES

■ After filing a complaint that

went to the Union Judiciary for a hearing, the Union vice president stepped down.

■ University President Ron

Liebowitz’s ‘Springboard Funding Plan’ will fill gaps in University operations.

By JEN GELLER JUSTICE EDITOR

University President Ron Liebowitz announced in a community-wide email on Thursday that his $84.7 million “Springboard Funding Plan” is ready to go into effect.

The proposal, originally valued at approximately $73 million, will “address gaps in University operations that must be filled before pursuing a major capital campaign,” according to a Jan. 22 Justice article.

Springboard initiatives will address “both day-to-day operational gaps and the larger strategic goals” of the University’s Framework for Our Future. For example, the University plans to hire a minimum of 15 new faculty members for the School of Arts and Sciences and the Brandeis International Business School on top of regular annual hiring. Ideally, the University would hire 35 to 40 new faculty members, Liebowitz said

during a joint interview on Monday with the Justice, The Brandeis Hoot and Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Stewart Uretsky. In his email, Liebowitz explained that this would help to better meet student needs, particularly in reducing the size of larger introductory courses.

With this, the Springboard plan will add more funding to provide faculty members with better benefits, the salary pool for staff and faculty will grow in size and there will be improved efforts to recruit and retain these faculty and staff.

In an Oct. 28 email to the Justice and The Brandeis Hoot, Director of Media Relations Julie Jette said that according to Uretsky, nearly 70% of the Springboard operating funds will go toward personnel on campus, including the faculty.

The University also plans to better meet the needs of students by hiring more therapists for the Brandeis Counseling Center and invest more into public safety. To do so, the school will be hiring a night lieutenant and another police officer. In addition to adding personnel, the University will be “updating our campus securitycamera network, and adding

See SPRINGBOARD, 7 ☛

By EMILY BLUMENTHAL and JEN GELLER JUSTICE EDITORS

Student Union Vice President Guillermo Caballero ’20 resigned from his position at Sunday’s Senate meeting, effective today at 4 p.m. He cited alleged exclusivity within the Union and conflicts with Union leadership as reason for his resignation.

The Union will hold a special election in the next two to three weeks to elect a new vice president. Until then, Executive Senator Jake Rong ’21 will serve as the interim vice president and Senator-at-Large Nancy Zhai ’21 will serve as the interim Executive Senator.

“I gave a lot of thought on whether I wanted to continue working for the Union to build the body I envisioned.

However, my work has been hindered by several obstacles, but especially by being under the supervision of people that do not share the same values of inclusion and visions as I do,” he said. He added that he felt judged by other Union members for his “lack of experience” with the Union.

Immediately after Caballero’s resignation, the Senate formally censured him for his actions described in the recent Judiciary case and called upon him to change his behavior in the future.

Period Day

 PERIOD, an organization dedicated to ending stigma surrounding menstruation, attended a rally on Oct. 19.

By SOFIA GONZALEZ and JOSH ALDWINCKLE-POVEY

Photo Courtesy of LINZY ROSEN

FEATURES 9 For tips or info email editor@thejustice.org

Caballero said during the Senate meeting that his vision for the Union included increasing unity among branches and empowering all members to be confident in their ability to carry out their duties and feel included.

Tatuskar told the Justice on Monday that she learned of Caballero’s resignation at the same time as the Senate, and that it came as a shock to her.

“There wasn’t much of a precursor to this and he didn’t really make his issues known. Obviously I would have preferred if he’d come and spoken to me before the resign[ation] so we could’ve worked out the problem together, but his decision to leave is his own, and he has every right to do it,” she said.

However, Tatuskar believes that the Union must move forward and continue to fulfill its prescribed role as a dedicated representative to the student body despite this setback.

The Senate passed a resolution during the Senate meeting mandating that Tatuskar issue a public apology to all parties involved in the recent Judiciary case brought by Caballero and Senior Representative to the Board of Trustees Zosia Busé ’20 and give an explanation to the student body of the Judiciary’s decision and the facts behind the case. Tatuskar told the Justice that she planned to follow through with the apology to allow the Union and the University community to move forward. “I’m here because I care,” she said.

In explaining his resignation dur-

ing the interview, Caballero cited a feeling of exclusivity in the Union that excluded people without prior Union experience. Responding to those accusations, Tatuskar said that she gave each applicant to the EBoard an equal chance, and that those chosen have shown their merits.

While Union experience was encouraged, she said, it was not required.

“If you look at my entire Student Union, upwards of half of them have no prior Union experience,” she said, adding that she held an “E-Board 101” meeting at the beginning of the year to teach all new E-Board members about the function of the E-Board and their individual responsibilities.

During the special election cycle, there will be two meet-the-candidates events and a candidate debate. Tatuskar said that there will be a 10-day election cycle, which is a change from the previous 7-day cycle. This is a trial to potentially make future election campaigns longer.

“I’m just going to sit down with each candidate and make sure that I understand where their intentions are, where they’re coming from and that they understand the magnitude of the role that they’re choosing to put themselves on the line to undertake,” Tatuskar said.

Tatuskar said that she hopes the next vice president “has the drive, the passion and just the overall commitment towards Student Union.

The way I see it, as long as an individual has passion, and cares, they can do amazing things in the Student Union.”

Family Weekend Variety Show

Union to subsidize late-night Lyft rides

 The student coordinator of the event spoke about the process of putting on the show.

Why Andrew Yang is the ideal candidate

By LUKE LIU HAVEN DAI/the Justice

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Submit letters to the editor to letters@thejustice.org

NEWS 2

By EMILY BLUMENTHAL

ARTS 19

FORUM 11

By TREVOR FILSETH

New Cordish Tennis Center is top notch

By MEGAN GELLER

COPYRIGHT 2019 FREE AT BRANDEIS.

SPORTS 15

2

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2019

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NEWS

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THE JUSTICE

NEWS POLICE LOG MEDICAL EMERGENCY Oct. 20 — A party in the Gosman Sports Complex had back pain. BEMCo staff were on standby and treated the party with a signed refusal for further care.

Oct. 20 — A party in the Gosman Sports Complex had ankle pain. BEMCo were on standby and treated the party with a signed refusal for further care.

Oct. 21 — BEMCo staff treated a party in the Charles River Apartments who was not feeling well. The party was transported to Newton-Wellesley Hospital for further care.

Oct. 21 — In Sherman Dining Hall, a party requested BEMCo for another party who was dizzy. The party was transported to Newton-Wellesley Hospital for further care.

Oct. 21 — Waltham Police received a call for a party possibly suffering from a heart attack in front of the Usdan Student Center. BEMCo staff and University Police arrived on scene, and the party was transported to Newton-Wellesley Hospital for further care.

Oct. 22 — University Police and BEMCo responded to Polaris Lounge for a student with a laceration on their left finger. The party was transported to Newton-Wellesley Hospital by University Police for further care.

Oct. 23 — A party was transported to Newton-Wellesley Hospital for further care as a voluntary transport from the Brandeis Counseling Center.

Oct. 23 — BEMCo treated a party with a shoulder injury in the Gosman Sports Complex on the club field with a signed refusal for further care.

Oct. 23 — A Shapiro Admissions Center employee slipped and fell walking from the parking lot. University Police compiled a report on the incident.

Oct. 24 — A party in the Skyline Residence Hall requested BEMCo for a kidney infection. The party was transported to Newton-Wellesley Hospital for further care, and the Area Coordinator on call was notified.

Oct. 25 — A non-student in the Golding Health Center was transported for an ankle injury to Doctors Express by University Police while accompanied by a staff member of the Office of Admissions.

Oct. 25 — University Police assisted BCC and Cataldo Ambulance staff for a transport to Newton-Wellesley Hospital. The Area Coordinator on call was notified.

Oct. 25 — A caller in the Usdan Student Center felt ill from something they ate. BEMCo treated the party with a signed refusal for further care.

Oct. 26 — BEMCo staff treated a party in the Gosman Sports Complex with an ankle injury with a signed refusal for further care.

Oct. 26 — A party with a facial injury from a past motor vehicle accident was treated by BEMCo staff at Public Safety and was transported to Newton-Wellesley Hospital

by University Police for further care.

Oct. 27 — University Police and BEMCo responded to the Hassenfeld Parking Lot to investigate a report of an intoxicated female called in by the Area Coordinator on call. BEMCo staff treated the party, and the party was transported to Newton-Wellesley Hospital for further care.

A Community Standards Report was filed on the incident.

DISTURBANCE Oct. 20 — Loud music was reported in Rosenthal Residence Quad. University Police shut down a karaoke event within an apartment.

Oct. 20 — A loud unregistered party in the Foster Mods spilled into the upper quad. There were calls reporting fighting in the quad. The Area Coordinator on call as well as the Foster Mod’s Area Coordinator who resides there was notified. The matter will be dealt with by the Department of Community Living. University Police reported no physical fight upon arrival, and the group was dispersed without incident.

Oct. 21 — There was a report of people making noise and driving a vehicle in circles in the Theater Lot. University Police checked the area but found nothing.

Oct. 27 — University Police responded to Chapel’s Field to investigate a report of people playing loudly on the field.

Upon arrival the parties were playing frisbee. They were advised to keep the noise down or they would have to leave the area. University Police cleared the scene without incident.

Oct. 27 — University Police responded to the Charles River Apartments to investigate a report of a loud noise.

Upon arrival, all was quiet.

LARCENY Oct. 25 — A staff member of the International Students and Scholars Office reported a student was a victim of fraud. The transaction occurred while living off-campus in Waltham back in August. The student was instructed to report the issue to the Waltham Police.

—Compiled by Jen Geller

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS n A News article was updated to clarify that dorms that do not have carbon monoxide detectors do not need those detectors because they use steam or electric heating, rather than fuel-burning appliances. (Oct. 15) n A News article incorrectly named Director of Advocacy and Accessibility Sasha Manus’ position. (Oct. 8, Page 4) The Justice welcomes submissions for errors that warrant correction or clarification. Send an email to editor@thejustice.org.

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ARTS @ DEIS

WALTHAM BRIEF Framingham school responds to anti-Semitism

NOAH ZEITLIN/the Justice

Parents enjoyed a tour of art on campus led by Prof. Nancy Scott (FA), which included the Light of Reason by the Rose Art Museum on Friday.

Two students at the Christa McAuliffe Charter School in Framingham, MA recently created a Snapchat group named “Kill the jews,” according to an Oct. 16 Boston Globe article.

Members of the group made anti-Semitic statements that included threats and slurs, per an Oct. 13 article in the Framingham Source.

In response, the school’s students and faculty “participated in grade-level safety meetings,” and “students learned about the incident, had a chance to ask questions, and began to consider ways to take a stand against hatred and build the most trusting, safe, and inclusive community that we can,” according to a statement the school released on Oct. 15.

Framingham Mayor Yvonne M. Spicer released a statement on Oct. 16 saying, “ENOUGH! I’ve had enough! You should be fed up too! I’m angry! I’m disappointed, and I’m exhausted with the constant attacks on our residents. We will not stand for this any longer!” Later in the statement, Spicer added, “We, as a community, need to stand together to combat this hate. We must call out those who wish to live in a world inhabited only by people who think and look like them.” She continued, “We are better than that in the City of Framingham. We must make unacceptable behavior unacceptable.”

The school later released a statement on Oct. 18 that said, “Following the antiSemitic social media communication that two of our students engaged in last weekend, the Christa McAuliffe Charter School has received countless messages of support from individuals in our immediate and extended communities.” The statement also said that the school is looking to start a conversation on how to prevent similar incidents in the future by examining “When, where, and how are we educating our public school students about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism prior to high school?”

—Jason Frank

TRANSPORTATION

Student Union and Lyft to subsidize late-night rides through Nov. 5 ■ The Student Union and Lyft

partnered to provide a $5 discount on rides between the hours of 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.

By EMILY BLUMENTHAL JUSTICE EDITOR

The Student Union and rideshare giant Lyft are partnering to subsidize late-night rides this week for students as part of a plan to educate on safe rideshare habits and eliminate critical gaps in transportation that often compromise student safety, Union President Simran Tatuskar ’21 announced in an email to the Brandeis community last Tuesday.

During the subsidy’s trial period, which began on Oct. 22 and lasts through Nov. 5, students can get a $5 discount on rides between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. by entering the code BRANDEIS19 in the Lyft app.

Students can travel to any location to or from campus during those hours using the subsidy, per the same email.

According to Tatuskar, the program is part of a larger Union focus on improving transportation and seeks to alleviate problems of students walking to off-campus housing late at night or waiting long periods of time for the Waltham BranVan. Other Union projects in this vein include the Market Basket Shuttle and the commuter rail subsidy.

Tatuskar, who spearheaded the project, told the Justice during an interview on Thursday that “transportation has always consistently been an issue on this campus. I know a lot of students [who live off campus] have complained if they miss the BranVan, they have to stay on campus for 30 minutes because there’s no other way to get home safely. … Sometimes you’ll see students walking

back really late at night on the weekends because they … can’t pay for a Lyft or for an Uber.”

Lyft will send the usage data to the Union after the conclusion of the trial period, which the Union will use to determine if the program should continue on a long-term basis.

The Union will receive a map with the general areas students travel to using the subsidy but will not see exact addresses due to privacy filters, Tatuskar said.

Lyft’s Senior Marketing Associate for New England declined to comment for this article because the parties have not yet negotiated a contract, and the Regional Director of New England did not respond to a request for comment.

“We’re gonna get the metrics sent to us afterwards, looking at the amount of usage, looking at where students have been using [it], during what hours and kind of planning on using that data to see if it’s more feasible to have a long-term discount that’s funded by the Student Union,” Tatuskar said.

Tatuskar said that the safety of off-campus students was at the forefront of her concerns when thinking about solutions to transportation gaps. Campus safety has recently come under increased scrutiny, especially after the stabbing of two graduate students near campus on Sept. 23. The incident provoked a heated discussion about the resources allocated by the University for off-campus safety and led to questions about how the University and off-campus students can shore up gaps in security measures.

Though the stabbing was a point of concern for Tatuskar, the timing of the program in relation to the incident was a coincidence, she said. The program is not meant to be a permanent solution to safety issues, but can help in the interim, she said. Chief of Public Safety Ed Callahan wrote in an email to the Justice

on Saturday that he did not know about the program.

Tatuskar said, “After looking at the instance of violence happening off campus, that made me more concerned about our off-campus students. We’ve been working with Ed Callahan and BranPo to have BranPo go off campus and talk to any concerned students about how they can make their homes safer, but I wanted to see if there was something more tangible that we could offer, and so this seemed like a good solution.”

Callahan did not comment on any plans to expand Brandeis Police services to off-campus locations.

Although extended BranVan hours could alleviate some of the transportation issues, Tatuskar said the potential for long waits and the fact that students “can’t really get dropped off from point A to point B” via the BranVan still showed a need for rideshare services.

Lyft is funding the $5 discount during the trial period, but any subsequent discount would be covered by the Union’s budget, she said. Tatuskar said she would speak with administrators about matching funding for the subsidy if it were to continue long-term. Any further discount code would be available later this semester or early next semester.

Tatuskar said that Lyft reached out to her at the end of September about the project. The subsidy was originally supposed to run from Oct. 1 through Oct. 15, but Tatuskar said she decided that having the subsidy during Halloween would be more helpful to students.

The subsidy is not part of a partnership program, but rather is negotiated between Lyft and individual universities. Discounted rideshare services are available at several institutions, including the University of Chicago, the University of Alabama and the Ohio State University, per Lyft’s press releases.

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THE JUSTICE

INTERVIEW

Prof. explains Sackler family’s involvement in U.S. opioid crisis ■ Prof. Andrew Kolodny

(Heller) described the history of the Sacklers’ role in the opioid crisis.

By LEEZA BARSTEIN JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

Institutions with large endowments should give back the donations they received from the Sackler family due to their substantial role in causing the opioid epidemic, according to Prof. Andrew Kolodny (Heller), who was an expert witness in the recent Johnson & Johnson court trial. In an interview with the Justice, he discussed the Sackler family’s role in the United States opioid crisis and their heavy involvement in funding various cultural and educational institutions. He detailed how the Sacklers, owners of Purdue Pharma, became so powerful in the United States and what this means for Brandeis students.

According to Kolodny, co-founder of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing and the co-director of Opioid Policy Research at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, doctors were aware of the addictive properties of opioids since the 1990s. They knew that patients should not be prescribed this type of medication for common, chronic pain, but once Purdue Pharmaceuticals launched their campaign, he said, the company overwhelmed the medical field with enticing sales practices. According to Kolodny, when trying to encourage physicians to begin prescribing opioids, Purdue planned everything down to the appearance of their sales representatives, sending attractive male representatives to female doctors, and vice versa.

The Sacklers, however, employed much more than just sales techniques. According to Kolodny, Purdue’s representatives told doctors that addiction rates in patients were extremely low and that physicians who denied patients opioids were simply allowing their patients to suffer.

“We were hearing it from pain specialists who were getting paid by Purdue Pharma and other drug companies. We were hearing it from addiction specialists who were getting paid by the drug companies,” Kolodny said. “We were hearing it from

our professional societies. We were hearing it from our hospitals, which were regulated by the joint commission which was taking money from Purdue Pharma.”

Kolodny was also quick to point out that the opioid crisis was not exclusively caused by the Sacklers and Purdue. Although Purdue led the movement to change the medical community’s view on the prescription of opioids, drug companies like Johnson & Johnson, Endo Pharmaceuticals and Mallinckrodt quickly followed in their footsteps. “As we responded to this brilliant, deceptive marketing campaign disguised as education, it led to a public health catastrophe,” Kolodny said.

While Purdue Pharma and other drug companies were further exacerbating the opioid crisis, the Sackler family immersed itself into the world of philanthropy. According to an Oct. 3 Los Angeles Times article, universities across the globe have accepted more than $60 million in donations from the Sackler family within the past five years. An Oct. 23, 2017 New Yorker article noted that the family built a substantial philanthropic reputation among the general public by “donating lavishly during their lifetime to an astounding range of institutions.” Today, the extent of these donations is seen across the globe — whether walking through Harvard University to see The Sackler Museum, at the Louvre’s Sackler Wing or at top universities like Oxford and Columbia where buildings are branded with the Sackler name, evidence of the Sackler family’s influence is prevalent, said The New Yorker.

Kolodny told the Justice that he strongly believes universities and museums who received donations from the Sackler family must return the gifts and refuse to accept further donations. “I think that this money should be thought of the same way one might think of blood diamonds or valuables taken from people who were killed in the Holocaust,” he said.

Kolodny emphasized that returning the money is a matter of ethics as Purdue and other pharmaceutical companies are responsible for a catastrophe that has resulted in nearly 500,000 deaths and millions of people addicted in the United States alone.

He said, “Anybody who takes questionable money … [is] always going to justify taking [it] by saying we are doing good things with that money

… And I don’t think that is really adequate here.”

The same LA Times article reported that Brandeis University is not one of the schools which received donations from the Sackler family.

Many of the schools that did, however, such as Oxford University, are affiliated with Brandeis through study abroad programs. When asked whether or not Brandeis should pressure these schools to return money, Kolodny told the Justice, “I wouldn’t say that Brandeis should pressure Oxford or have nothing to do with Oxford.”

He also acknowledged his understanding for small universities who cannot afford to give money back or who have already spent it. “But if you are an institution like Oxford or Yale with an enormous endowment,” Kolodny said, “I think then that you should give all the money back.”

According to a Sept. 15 New York Times article, Purdue has received more than 2,600 federal and state lawsuits. Under a settlement agreement, the company agreed to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, turn Purdue into a public benefit trust and provide plaintiffs with $3 billion from the Sacklers’ personal funds, along with the remaining profits from OxyContin sales.

Many states, including Massachusetts, refused to join the settlement, claiming it does not ask for sufficient accountability from the Sacklers and Purdue. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey wrote in a Sept. 16 opinion piece in The Washington Post, “The Sacklers would like us to believe that as part of the settlement they’re cutting a check for billions of dollars. They’re not,” referring to the settlement as a “ploy that’s offensive to families who have lost loved ones to this epidemic.”

Kolodny explained that he thought justice could be served in this case if the Sacklers offered financial compensation for their actions. “That money belongs to the communities that have been devastated by the opioid crisis,” he said. Kolodny also emphasized the urgency for criminal charges against not just the Sacklers, but other pharmaceutical companies and executives involved in the opioid crisis as well. “If we live in a world where a billionaire can write a check and walk away still a billionaire, that scares me,” he said. “That is why justice is important — it can serve as a deterrent.”

BRIEF

Thanksgiving ‘Turkey’ shuttles to Logan Airport discontinued Waltham Group will not run shuttles to Logan International Airport this Thanksgiving, as they have in previous years, due to short staffing, and past traffic and weather-related issues that have led to a number of students almost missing their flights, wrote Director of the Department of Community Service Lucas Malo in an email to the Justice on Monday.

Waltham Group’s withdrawal from the shuttle program leaves the service without a sponsor or a clear-cut way to continue the route. The Turkey Shuttles from the University to New York City and Newark, which are unaffiliated with Waltham Group, will be running as usual this Thanksgiving.

Waltham Group leadership and DCS jointly made the decision last year not to run the shuttles and informed the Student Union during the summer, Waltham Group President Theresa Weis ’20 wrote in an email to the Justice Monday. Student Union President Simran Tatuskar ’21 told the Justice on Thursday that Waltham Group reached out to her about the Logan shuttles, but she did not say whether the Union would take

over the route.

In recent years, DCS has been “unable to find certified drivers for the vans for all routes and in many instances, even with the limited number of staff in DCS we could not find enough drivers,” Malo wrote in his email.

The service is student-run, and Waltham Group has consistently struggled to find shuttle drivers because of students going home for the holiday, Weis wrote. She said DCS staff tried to fill the gap in previous years, but the department’s four staff members were not sufficient.

Malo wrote that DCS had offered to pay student drivers, but this still did not garner sufficient staff.

Malo said that student demand for the shuttles has also declined, most likely because of the increase in rideshare options. Some vans have only had three or four riders in recent years, he told the Justice.

Weather and traffic issues have plagued the shuttle service’s ability to run efficiently, with students often at risk of missing their flights. Other students’ flight departure and arrival times changed or were delayed, which made it more

difficult for Waltham Group to coordinate vans to bring them to and from campus. In one instance, traffic caused a van to take two hours to return to campus from the airport.

“In this case, we were unable to get the van back to campus in time to pick up the next batch of students for their flights and this driver was the only available driver to assist. We had to problem solve, but this situation almost cost students missing their flights and required staff members from outside of our department to respond to the situation,” Malo wrote. “When you have limited drivers and vans [it’s] a complicated puzzle.”

Additionally, financial difficulties forced Waltham Group to discontinue the service. The shuttles served as a fundraiser for Waltham Group, but lower interest rates rendered the service “ineffective” at bringing in a profit, Weis wrote.

Malo wrote, “It became very clear that we were offering a service that was best [run] by a professional company and that a student fundraiser was not the best option for this service.”

—Emily Blumenthal

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NEWS

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TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2019

3

ADDRESSING CLIMATE CHANGE

NOAH ZEITLIN/the Justice

SUSTAINABLE STRATEGIES: The Environmental Studies Program brought Deputy Director of the New England Forestry Foundation Frank Lowenstein and Bostonbased conservation consultant Henry Tepper to campus to speak about land trusts.

Speakers discuss land trusts, conservation ■ The event brought

awareness to a lesserknown aspect of addressing climate change.

By SAMANTHA GOLDMAN JUSTICE EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

The Environmental Studies Program hosted a talk last Tuesday with Deputy Director of the New England Forestry Foundation Frank Lowenstein as well as Boston-based conservation consultant Henry Tepper to discuss how land trusts can be used to address climate change. A land trust is a nonprofit organization that works to conserve the land through “acquiring land or conservation easements (or assisting with their acquisition) and/or stewarding/managing land or conservation easements,” per the Land Trust Alliance website.

Land trusts use a conservation easement, a “voluntary agreement in which a landowner voluntarily restricts development on their property but continues to own their property,” Tepper said. Land trusts are considered charitable contributions under the 170(c) IRS code and the landowner gets a tax deduction. There are 1,300 land trusts in the United States and over 100 land trusts in Massachusetts.

Tepper then turned to climate change, saying it is “so big an issue… that we sometimes throw up our hands and say, ‘What am I supposed to do about this?’” Land trusts are confronted with the issue of climate change and don’t know how to approach it because of the vastness of the issue, Tepper said.

Land trusts are “a pretty nonideological business. Land trusts really work with any landowner who is committed to protecting their land,” Tepper said. Because land trusts involve people of many different backgrounds, Tepper explained, the Land Trust Alliance created a document “to let land trusts step back, be less intimidated and feel more positive about the fact that there were specific things that they could do to make a difference about climate change through their day-to-day land protection work.”

Conservation on land through these trusts “can provide an important part of climate mitigation and adaptation,” Tepper explained in his presentation.

Lowenstein explained that climate change is “not a threat primarily to the natural world. It’s a threat to many species and it will

cause major disruption in the natural world, but it is really a threat to civilization.”

One of the main culprits of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels, which emits large amounts of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere, Lowenstein said. This leads to climate sensitivity, which Lowenstein defined as how much the temperature changes after an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Applying heat further impacts the climate, leading to higher temperatures and severe changes in weather, such as changes in precipitation and drought.

Lowenstein discussed the Paris Climate Accord, which aims to “strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.” Since the ratification of the Paris Accord in 2015, several studies have been published that have alarmed Lowenstein. One Oct. 2018 study examined climate sensitivity and found that “the oceans have actually absorbed a lot more heat than people thought” since the 1960s, which means that “climate sensitivity is greater than people thought,” Lowenstein said. Later in 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that warming should be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid severe consequences in the near future.

Lowenstein concluded the discussion by looking at natural climate solutions discussing a threepart climate solution that started with “ending forest conversion to maintain carbon dioxide already stored.” By converting forests to other things, “deforestation releases carbon already stored and eliminates future potential to store more,” Lowenstein said. The plan then moved to “exemplary forestry to remove and store more carbon dioxide,” which included better management of forests. The third part of the plan was building more “wood buildings to reduce emissions and store more carbon dioxide,” Lowenstein said, which would lower emissions and create a “different pattern of development.”

Lowenstein and Tepper will be teaching a course next semester, ENVS 108B, “Land Conservation in the United States: History and Practice.”

4

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2019

●

NEWS

●

THE JUSTICE

NEWS SENATE LOG

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Union vice president resigns, interim vice president appointed, special elections announced Student Union Vice President Guillermo Caballero ’20 announced at the Oct. 27 Senate meeting that he would resign from his position, effective today. Caballero explained that he did not feel other Union leadership shared his values and visions for the Student Union, but reassured the Senate that he would remain an outside resource for those who need it. According to Caballero, Executive Senator Jake Rong ’21 will be interim vice president until the special election, which will be held in the next two to three weeks. Rong told the Justice on Sunday that he will not be running for vice president.

The Senate elected Senator-atLarge Nancy Zhai ’22 as interim executive senator. The interim executive senator will sit on E-Board for the duration of her term, Caballero said.

“I love the Senate. Despite the fact that I’m resigning, the only reason why I [didn’t] like a month ago is for you guys,” Caballero told senators.

Later in the meeting, Chief Justice of the Judiciary Rachel Sterling ’21 read a proposal condemning Tatuskar’s actions. After an extensive executive session, the Senate passed

a resolution condemning Union President Simran Tatuskar ’21 for her actions discussed in the recent Judiciary case and mandating that she make a public apology. Only Senator-at-Large Josh Hoffman ’21 was opposed.

After Caballero’s resignation, Class of 2022 Senator Joseph Coles read a censure condemning Caballero’s lack of communication with his fellow Union members and asking that he work to change his behavior.

Deis Robotics

The Senate voted to recharter Deis Robotics, which was dechartered at the Oct. 8 Senate meeting due to turning in the anti-hazing form late.

Senate committee chair reports

Health and Safety Committee Chair Josh Hoffman ’21 reported that committee members reached out to representatives of the Prevention, Advocacy, and Resource Center, Facilities Services and the Department of Community Living to arrange meetings. Hoffman also said that the problem of alleged racism and ableism in the Chemistry De-

partment has been resolved. “There are probably going to be some new help-wanted ads on Indeed very soon,” he said. Hoffman confirmed with the Justice on Sunday that several individuals had been fired.

Social Justice and Diversity Committee Chair Joyce Huang ’22 reported that the committee would be holding an event to showcase applications for the Multicultural Council and to gauge interest in the council. The event will tentatively take place in the Shapiro Campus Center.

On Monday, Oct. 27 and Tuesday, Oct. 28 the Dining Committee will sponsor open forums to discuss the University’s new dining contract and to allow students to voice their opinions on the dining program.

Services and Outreach Committee Chair Alison Leibowitz ’20 reported that the committee is in the process of creating T-shirt designs for the Midnight Buffet. The committee will order T-shirts by Nov. 7, she said.

Sustainability Committee Chair Oliver Price ’20 said that there would be a Meatless Monday promotion event. He also said that the committee’s work has been “redundant” lately because of the work done by

JUSTICE JOURNALIST ABROAD

Environmental activist group occupies square in London

■ The organization, called

Extinction Rebellion, aimed to engage with tourists about climate change.

By JASON KWAN JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Millions of tourists flock annually to London’s Trafalgar Square for its impressive statues and fountains, but on Oct. 14, there was a new center of attention: a protest by Extinction Rebellion.

The international environmental group stages public protests to force governments to take significant action on climate change. For more than a week, Extinction Rebellion occupied Trafalgar Square in conjunction with the group’s “International Rebellion” occupations in more than 60 cities around the world. Protesters affiliated with the London branch of Extinction Rebellion did not block tourists from entering the square, but rather engaged with the public to explain the organization’s mission.

Two British environmental activists, Roger Hallam and Gail Bradbrook, founded Extinction Rebellion in October of 2018, and with support from academics, celebrities and environmental activists like school climate strike leader Greta Thunberg.

According to its website, Extinction Rebellion has expanded its movement to 56 countries, including Australia, Brazil and the United States.

The British government has opposed Extinction Rebellion. Attending a book launch, Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a public speech calling protestors “uncooperative crusties” who live in “hemp-smelling bivouacs.” The same day as the occupation, Oct. 14, the Metropolitan Police announced a ban on Extinction Rebellion protests in the capital, and arresting those who disregarded the ban. Despite police encounters and arrests, Extinction Rebellion claims it will continue demonstrations in London and other major cities around the world.

Dozens of tents and pop up stalls covered Trafalgar Square. Activists were identifiable by “the extinction symbol,” an hourglass in a circle, which they claim represents the lack of time left for many species due to destructive human activity. Aside from tourists, who attempted to photograph Nelson’s Column without including the tents in the shot, the only other witnesses of the occupation were policemen and paramedics. These officials stood to the side of the occupa-

tion area, occasionally engaging in brief conversations with the activists.

Some tourists congregated around a tri-fold cardboard poster, where one protester gave a “pop-up classroom” lesson on climate change. The instructor, named Ayliean, was a math teacher from Dundee, Scotland. She took a train to London the day before, joining the occupation of Trafalgar to educate passersby who wanted to understand climate change on a mathematical basis.

“People are receptive to maths,” Ayliean explained during an interview. “Those who I interacted with understand climate change, but they do not have the scientific literacy to articulate it. I’m trying to provide the tools. This is not from a political or emotional standpoint, but a purely scientific one.”

Ayliean also explained that a majority of interactions with the public had been positive, including some university graduates with science degrees who added to her poster and complimented its organization and clarity.

Later that day, Ayliean was asked to leave by police on threat of arrest, according to her Twitter account. She returned to Scotland.

Because some activists occupied Trafalgar Square for more than a week, they needed more than just a tent. A “washing up station” allowed protesters to wash their dishes and throw out any garbage into sorted bins for food waste, recyclables and general trash.

David, a former lighting technician, helped a fellow protester scrape his lunch into the food waste bin before handing the plate to the washing up crew.

“Some Londoners offered their homes and rooms to house the protesters,” David said. “The nearby church also accepted some.” He described 12 other occupations that occurred that week in London, with several receiving more severe police reactions. Still, David expressed a need for Extinction Rebellion members not to show hostility to the police, even when being removed from their occupation areas.

“There’s been an overall positive public reaction. We want to show that we’re peaceful,” David said. He also explained that the police have maintained a generally “professional” relationship with the protesters, saying that some were open to discussions and debates. Only once did he see a policeman physically handle a protester.

David said his main concern is not the police, but rather how Extinction Rebellion is presented in the media.

As David explained, some Extinction Rebellion members are homeless, having joined the group as a means

to have temporary lodging and to support the cause. These members are tasked with picking up litter and are asked to drink alcohol in a separate location to the occupation site using recyclable cups.

“They want to find the worst examples of protestors,” David said about media coverage. “Like when someone is drinking a can of beer and wearing the XR [Extinction Rebellion] logo.

That makes the media.”

He also explained that Extinction Rebellion had to pressure the BBC to ensure coverage. “If we didn’t lock ourselves to the BBC headquarters, then the BBC wouldn’t broadcast us.

Otherwise there’s a total media blackout.”

Extinction Rebellion has several smaller subgroups as well, including Animal Rebellion, which is concerned with meat consumption and the treatment of animals, and XR Grandparents. One member of XR Grandparents, Hazel, is a retired actress from Barnet, a borough of London. Hazel launched XR Grandparents’ Facebook page and expressed a particular calling for grandparents to join climate action protests based on their emotional instincts to protect children.

“There’s so much about grandparents that is helpful to XR,” Hazel said.

“They’re often retired, so bluntly that means they got the time to help out.

They’re prepared to be arrested as it does not impact their job or applications.”

Hazel also argued for the media to recognize the importance of Extinction Rebellion’s message. She said she was disappointed with the BBC’s coverage of the protests, claiming that British newspapers had better coverage. A lack of public interest, she explained, was the most significant threat to the group’s success.

Hazel acknowledged that her generation leans toward the Conservative Party and largely chooses not to act on climate change, having believed that it was not an issue when they were younger. “We lived in a time of consumerism and the greatest damage to the planet. We didn’t know what we were doing, everything seemed to be prospering.”

Hazel said that friends her age choose not to discuss her participation with Extinction Rebellion. “It’s like an elephant in the room. They are aware of climate change, but it’s too frightening for them to face up to.”

Two weeks after the occupation, there are no more tents in Trafalgar Square. Due to the public ban against Extinction Rebellion’s protests, despite legal challenges, the police gave the group the same ultimatum given to Ayliean: leave or be arrested.

Mary Fischer and the Brandeis Sustainability Ambassadors.

New business

Caballero appointed Joshua Feld ’22 as the co-chair of the Dining Committee.

The Senate voted by acclamation to confirm Kruti Jethwa ’22 to the position of Director of Community Involvement.

Coles discussed the proposal of a constitutional amendment that would allow the president and vice president to run together as a ticket in hopes of lessening the potential for conflict between the two officers. If nine senators co-sponsor the amendment, the amendment will go to a vote by the student body.

The position for the second Racial Minority Senator seat is open and will go to a vote during the upcoming special election.

—Emily Blumenthal and Leeza Barstein —Editor’s Note: Senator Rachel Sterling is an Arts Staff Writer and Senator Trevor Filseth is a Forum Staff Writer.

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CLIMATE PROTESTS ABROAD

JASON KWAN/the Justice

THE FIGHT FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE: An activist group called the Extinction Rebellion occupied Trafalgar Square in London on Oct. 14. This action was part of the “International Rebellion,” which took place in over 60 cities around the world.

GO JUDGES!

NOAH ZEITLIN/the Justice

Families visited their children at Brandeis for Family Weekend. The weekend, which kicked off with registration on Friday, was packed with family-friendly events.

THE JUSTICE

‘THE U.S. AND THE MIDDLE EAST IN THE AGE OF TRUMP’

●

NEWS

By HANNAH TAYLOR JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Expert discusses changes to U.S. foreign policy toward Middle East ■ The speaker, Steven

Simon, also read from his new book about U.S.-Middle East relations.

By ELLA RUSSELL JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

Steven Simon, a National Security Council director for the Middle East and North Africa during the Clinton and Obama administrations, gave a lecture called “The US and the Middle East in the Age of Trump” on Wednesday. In this lecture, Simon argued that President Donald Trump’s policy toward the Middle East reflects a deeper trend of disengagement that began under President Obama.

Simon read from his new book, “The Long Goodbye: The US and the Middle East from the Islamic Revolution to the Arab Spring.”

He explained that “the bloom was off the rose” of liberal interventionism: enthusiasm for interventionist policy has wilted due to declining U.S. reliance on the Middle East for oil, the chaos of the Arab Spring and the failures of U.S. interventionism in Iraq and Libya.

One clear example of changing U.S. policy toward the Middle East, Simon said, was when Obama endorsed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s removal from power but warned that “the United States cannot and will not impose this transition upon Syria. It is up to the Syrian people to choose their own leaders.” Simon observed that Obama’s policy regarding Syria was noticeably more cautious than that of President George H. W. Bush in 1991 toward Iraq — Bush actively encouraged the Iraqi people to overthrow then-President Saddam Hussein through international television channels and leaflets dropped by coalition aircraft.

Simon linked these examples to the current relationship between the United States and the Kurds in Syria, remarking that the Syrian Kurds are now “sipping from the same bitter chalice” of those who hoped for a “salvific America” and were ultimately disappointed. He explained that Syrian Kurdish forces assisted the United States with their fight against terrorist group Islamic State in exchange for U.S. support of an autonomous Kurdish region within Syria. On Oct. 13, however, Trump abruptly announced a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, abandoning the Kurds to an uncertain fate.

This decision seemed especially sudden due to a general “sort of confusion about the role and relevance of the West Wing” in their ability to coordinate policy,

Simon said. He explained that “on the one hand, Trump is seen as omnipotent, on the other, as a blowhard to be disregarded.”

Trump repeatedly expressed his desire to withdraw from Syria, but military officials, such as former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, had reassured the Kurdish forces that “the United States would never let them down.”

Despite this, Trump simply fired Mattis and moved forward with his announcement of withdrawal. “It turned out that Trump’s views actually mattered and that he can and does often get his way,” Simon remarked.

Simon said that aside from stopping extremist activity, the United States does not have any significant stake in Syria: the two countries lack affinity groups, they were on opposite sides of the Cold War and they share minimal economic connections.

“As dramatic as these developments are, they are just one half of a double feature,” Simon said.

He argued that the second factor in United States Middle Eastern policy, perhaps more relevant to U.S. interests, is the relationship between the U.S. and Iran.

According to Simon, there has been a pattern over the past few administrations where each president has come into office determined to humble an Iran that was “enriched and emboldened” by their immediate predecessor.

Ultimately, each president has somewhat softened their stance and attempted to establish a working relationship with Iran, such as the when the Obama administration joined the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, more commonly known as the Iran Nuclear Deal. Simon said that Trump appeared as though he might break that pattern.

Trump has certainly been tough on Iran, withdrawing from the Nuclear Deal and and carrying out a maximum pressure policy of reimposing harsh sanctions.

Simon pointed out that if “the United States decides to wreck a foreign economy, it is positioned to do so” due to its status as a “financial hegemon.” However, because the U.S. sanctions were unilateral, the impact on Iran’s economy was not as harsh as it could have been. Simon explained that the United States attempted to coerce other countries, including U.S. allies in Europe, to follow the sanctions by imposing secondary sanctions prohibiting trade with Iran. European countries, resenting the sanctions, established mechanisms to trade with Iran in a way that bypassed the U.S. banking system and made efforts to salvage the deal with a new round of negotiations. Iran reinforced international support for its posi-

tion by continuing to cooperate with the terms of the deal, while also making measured threats to reduce this cooperation.

Although Trump has reimposed sanctions on Iran, Simon remarked that Trump seems reluctant to go any further.

When Iranian fire shot down an expensive U.S. drone, the U.S. military threatened force. Many believed that the United States and Iran would soon be at war, but Trump refrained from retaliating against Iran. Simon explained that Trump was turning away from hardliners in his party, such as former National Security Advisor John Bolton, because Bolton would involve Trump in a war he had no desire to be in. Trump’s softening policy toward Iran was made clear when Iran allegedly attacked two Saudi Arabian oil fields. Trump again brushed off the attack as trivial, despite Saudi Arabia being an important U.S. ally. A few weeks after the attack, he even attempted to set up a meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, although that endeavor ultimately failed.

Simon observed that the changing U.S. policy in the region is “unsettling for Israel.”

He explained that Iran’s strategy against Israel has been to focus on a long-term erosion of Israeli capacity for self-defense.

The Islamic Revolution in 1979 reinforced support for this strategy, according to Simon. Iran supports Hezbollah, a Lebanese terrorist group, allowing Iran to effectively share a border with Israel and with Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist group. According to Simon, they also promote rhetoric remarking that Iran could survive as a country if it were attacked by a nuclear weapon, but that Israel would be wiped out with one hit. According to Simon, Israel follows a similar defense strategy. The Iran Nuclear Deal had promised to put a stop to this posturing, but U.S. withdrawal from the deal has disincentivized Israeli cooperation. Simon ended his reading on an ominous note, remarking that “when Israel feels alone, it is liable to act alone.”

One audience member brought up the upcoming 2020 elections, asking Simon how he believed a potential future Democratic president should approach policy regarding the Middle East. Simon stressed that climate change was a central factor influencing Middle Eastern politics as it affects food supply, leading to increased migration. Secondly, Simon argued that the Iran Nuclear Deal needed to be approached from scratch, as the deal is nearing the sunset clause and the political rhetoric is overwhelmingly against it.

5

Authors deliver Eleanor Roosevelt lecture on first Congresswoman of color Mink and Prof. Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, are working on a biography of former U.S. Rep. Patsy Takemoto Mink.

LAUREN BERK/the Justice

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2019

CAMPUS SPEAKERS

■ The speakers, Dr. Gwendolyn

HEARING FROM AN EXPERT: Former National Security Council Director for the Middle East and North Africa Steven Simon (right) gave a lecture about U.S. policy toward the Middle East across the past two presidencies.

●

Dr. Gwendolyn Mink and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, a professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California Irvine, delivered the 15th annual Eleanor Roosevelt lecture, entitled “First Woman of Color in Congress: Patsy Takemoto Mink’s Feminist Politics.”

Mink and Wu are collaborating on a biography of Mink’s mother, Patsy Takemoto Mink, a former Democratic representative from Hawaii who, in 1964, was elected the first woman of color to Congress, where she served for 24 years. Their lecture covered the story of Takemoto Mink’s involvement in politics, from her advocacy of equality and social justice to her policy changes.

Mink is an independent scholar in Washington, D.C. and the author and editor of several books, including award winning “Welfare’s End” and “The Wages of Motherhood.” For the past 29 years, she has taught United States equality law, poverty, policy, gender studies and American politics.

She was previously on the faculty of the University of California Santa Cruz, and later Smith College.

Wu is also an author, as well as a Chancellor’s Fellow and the director of the Humanities Institute at the University of California, Irvine. According to the introduction from Prof. Yuri Doolan (HIST, WGS), her research focuses on “analyzing interesting social hierarchies such as those based on race, gender, sexuality, and citizenship with a particular focus on how individuals form identities and navigate and protest social inequalities.”

Mink said her mother’s career was “spurred by her own life experience and by her strong sense of solidarity with struggles for peace, civil rights and social justice.” Wu later added that she believes the world view and experiences Takemoto Mink had gained from being from Hawaii contributed to her political visions, describing her advocacy as a “Pacific form of feminism.”

Wu explained how Takemoto Mink’s grandparents had immigrated to Hawaii from Japan in the 1890s to work on one of the plantations there. However, even with her grandfather having a college degree, her grandparents were subject to the hierarchical structure and contractual labor of the plantations, and they were treated unfairly for the work they did. Because of this, Wu said, “that system of labor racial inequality was very much embedded in Patsy Mink’s consciousness.”

Mink explained that 1972 was an important year for women in politics, particularly for her mother. “1972 was the first time feminists coalesced to try to gain a foothold in the Democractic Party and try to be a force to be reckoned with in the process of party decisions,” she said. Two women of color, Takemoto Mink and Shirley Chisholm, also ran for president that year. Mink then read from a vignette she wrote entitled “Fear and Loathing in Electoral Politics: Feminism in the Democratic Party 1972,” which discusses her mother’s experiences and values as a woman in politics.

Reading from her vignette, Mink said that during the early 1970s, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was working to increase accessibility and representation in the Democratic Party, and wanted to have, as Mink said, “full and equal electoral participation of people of color, young people and women of all ages and races.” Takemoto Mink was on one of the commissions created to promote that goal. In doing so, the Democratic Party reformed their rules to encourage groups within the party to be more representative, requesting they include members of color, young members and women. This “marked a victory for feminists.”

Discrimination was still an issue, however. Mink said that both she and

her mother experienced sexism because the Democratic Party was not open to the idea of “gender parity.”

For instance, Gwendolyn Mink served on the Democratic National Committee, but felt she was “a shortcut” to the group fulfilling these diversity requirements since she, alone, filled every demographic. She explained that the committee itself was also held at a Playboy hotel, showing a further lack of respect for women. Also, Takemoto Mink was one of only four women from the Hawaiian party to be chosen for the Miami Beach Convention and was only given a half vote. Furthermore, Mink described the dissapointement for feminists when then-Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern did not support reproductive rights, gay rights or a guaranteed adequate income in his campaign. Despite this, Mink explained, feminist advocates kept pushing for equality.

This advocacy led to the passage of the Equal Rights Act and the Equal Employment Opportunity Act in March 1972, as well as the ratification of Title IX three months later. Takemoto Mink spearheaded the Title IX law, which was later renamed in her honor.

Following Mink’s half of the lecture, Wu discussed Takemoto Mink’s relationship to Eleanor Roosevelt. She explained that Takemoto Mink and Roosevelt shared similar interests, and that Takemoto Mink appreciated how Roosevelt would advocate for issues such as racial and gender equality, describing her as “the people’s ombudsman.”

Wu also discussed intersectionality. In the instance of Prof. Anita Hill’s (WGS) allegations of sexual harassment against then-Judge Clarence Thomas during hearings about his nomination to the Supreme Court, Wu explained the intersectionality of Hill’s identity as an African American woman testifying about sexual harassment. She said Hill was discriminated against, but the courts did not have to rule the case as discrimination because the overlap of racial and gender issues meant there was not, technically, one specific aspect of discrimination. Takemoto Mink advocated against this and Wu said she believed “we need to think about women in complex identities.”

Wu said Takemoto Mink continued to advocate for women’s rights throughout her career: “She’s advocating for the right to vote, advocating for women to be elected and advocating for those issues most relevant to women to be heard.” Wu also explained different approaches to advocacy that Takemoto Mink participated in, such as “Capital Hill feminism” — the idea that women in politics would advocate for women’s rights, using their position as leverage — and “bridge feminism” — or the idea that women’s rights activists would also fight for other equality issues, bridging those issues and feminism together. Wu said Takemoto Mink later sponsored legislation funding the first women’s conference in 1977 and wanted representation for women from all 50 states and six territories.

The lecture concluded with a video entitled “Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority,” in which Takemoto Mink was quoted: “Life doesn’t have to be this unfair. It can be better. Maybe not for me, I can’t change the past, but I can certainly help somebody in the future so they don’t have to go through what I did.” The video also said of Takemoto Mink, “She had no patience for injustice and she had no patience for intolerance … and she wrote laws that overturned decades of discrimination against women.”

The Eleanor Roosevelt lecture series is presented by the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department and was co-sponsored this year by the Asian-American and Pacific Studies, History and Politics Departments.

According to the Brandeis website, the lecture series began in 2004 to “honor Eleanor Roosevelt’s commitment to social justice and her important place in women’s history.” Roosevelt served on the Brandeis Board of Trustees from 1949 to 1962, was the Visiting Lecturer of International Relations from 1959 to 1962, gave the first commencement address in 1952 and received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters in 1954.

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MORTON MANDEL: A ‘rags to riches’ story CONTINUED FROM 1 BrandeisNOW article described Mandel’s life as “a rags-to-riches tale crowned by remarkable generosity.”

In 2013, almost 75 years after beginning college at CWRU, Mandel completed his bachelor’s degree, the Oct. 20 CJN article explained.

His capstone project to earn the degree was co-authoring his book, “It's All About Who You Hire, How They Lead … and Other Essential Advice from a Self-Made Leader,” and defending his thesis in front of CWRU faculty. In an Oct. 18 CJN article, his son Thom Mandel recounted his father walking in the Class of 2013 commencement ceremony. “When he got his diploma, he got a standing ovation from the entire room. I think that could be as happy as I ever saw him,” he said.

University President Emeritus Jehuda Reinharz told the Justice on Oct. 25 that Morton Mandel was an “example of someone who relishes [in] education, respects education … formal and informal, in whatever area.” After serving as Brandeis’ president from 1994-2010, Reinharz became the president of the Mandel Foundation in 2011 and on Oct. 24, he was named the Foundation’s CEO. Reinharz’s personal relationship with Morton Mandel was one of the reasons the philanthropist was drawn to the University, Reinharz said, but he also believed in Brandeis' mission. Morton Mandel was also connected to the University because his daughter, Amy Mandel ’73, attended Brandeis, his wife Barbara Mandel P’73, H’19 is a trustee and the University awarded him an honorary degree in 1989.

“I never asked Mort for money, we only talked about ideas,” Reinharz recalled of his relationship with Morton Mandel during his time as Brandeis’ president. “And his interest was, ‘What idea can possibly contribute to raising the bar at Brandeis? What can be transformative at the institution?’”

One of the answers to that question came in the form of a $22.5 million gift in 2007, which created the Mandel Center for the Humanities, according to the Mandel Center website.

“It is no accident that his largest gift to Brandeis was to support the Humanities,” Liebowitz wrote in an Oct. 26 email to the Justice.

“Though a successful businessman, he believed the study of the Humanities was essential to appreciate and excel in whatever one did for a career.”

Morton Mandel believed that

the humanities are losing popularity among students and parents because people do not see humanities fields as leading to job opportunities, Reinharz explained. Reinharz called that doubt “a highly mistaken notion.”

“What Mort would have wanted to see at Brandeis, and other institutions, … is to ignite the passion … for interdisciplinary learning,” Reinharz said. “[Morton Mandel’s] belief in the humanities as the core to the liberal arts and to being a truly educated person is something our students should know, appreciate, and think about whenever they visit the Mandel Center for the Humanities on our campus,” Liebowitz wrote.

At Brandeis, Mandel Foundation gifts also established the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Professorship in Jewish Education; the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Professorship in Jewish Education Research; the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Professorship in Jewish Educational Thought; the Barbara and Morton Mandel Graduate Fellowships in the Humanities and the Barbara and Morton Mandel Graduate Fellowships in English and American Literature, according to the BrandeisNOW article.

Overall, the three Mandel brothers, with Foundation gifts and individual donations, have donated nearly $1 billion “to Jewish, educational and cultural causes,” per the Foundation press release. The Foundation’s mission is to “contribute to the flourishing of the United States and Israel as just, inclusive, compassionate and democratic societies, and to improve the quality of life in both countries.”

“If there is one thing that describes … the Foundation, it’s investment in leaders. We don’t believe that we create leaders, but we invest in leaders to try to improve their understanding of how to lead, how to think across disciplines, how to make a change for the better,” Reinharz explained.

Among Morton Mandel’s many awards and honors detailed in the Foundation press release was his induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011, along with receiving the 2019 Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy.

Morton Mandel survived his brothers, Jack and Joseph, who died earlier this decade at ages 99 and 102, respectively. The Foundation press release says that he is survived by his three children, eight grandchildren and two greatgrandchildren. A memorial service was held in Cleveland on Oct. 20.

●

NEWS

●

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2019

7

STORYTELLING OF AND WITH REFUGEES IN BERLIN

LAUREN BERK/the Justice

Britta Wilmsmeier shared her experience as a professional storyteller in Berlin, Germany at an event Wednesday, Oct. 16. Hosted by the Center for German and European Studies and the Minor in Creative Arts and Social Transformation, this lunch talk delved into how storytelling can serve as a way to cross language and cultural barriers. Wilmsmeier uses storytelling in her work with refugees, according to the Brandeis events website.

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SPRINGBOARD: Univ. president finalizes funding plan CONTINUED FROM 1 transportation shuttles to increase service and reduce wait times,” according to the email. During the interview, Uretsky said that improving public safety is a priority, and related projects include additional personnel, more security cameras, improved WiFi and expanded shuttle services. The priority for WiFi is in Gosman Sports and Convocation Center, because it is the University's evacuation center. Uretsky added that the University has also increased funding for the shuttle programs during evening hours, which will help students in need of safe transportation at one or two in the morning.

Additionally, according to Liebowitz’s email, the University will be hiring an additional academic advisor for Academic Services and intends to increase staffing of the International Students and Scholars Office by hiring an international student advisor.

Liebowitz said that the University would also use the money to increase the amount of emergency funding that exists for both graduate and undergraduate students and would be constructing laboratories

for new science faculty members.

Buildings with the most-needed maintenance will be modernized to address the issue of code-compliance. Edison-Lecks Science Building, which houses the Chemistry Department, is high on the list for renovation because of “practical reasons in terms of the age of the building and the condition, safety issues, but also in order to have success in our science program,” Liebowitz said in the interview.

The email also addresses modernizing technology for better ways for students to look at their grades and to research classes to register for.

During the joint interview, Uretsky confirmed that the University will be working toward decommissioning Sage within the next two years, which is phase two of a two-part transition project in the University’s Information and Technology Services. Phase one involved the transition from Peoplesoft to Workday for the University’s Office of Human Resources’ payroll and finance operations. According to Liebowitz’s email, they are looking for ways to use a cloud-based, secure system to help students monitor their academic tracks.

Some of the funding will be go-

ing towards the upcoming Request for Dining proposal and improving campus dining, but the cost for dining would likely increase as meal plan options become more flexible, Liebowitz and Uretsky said during the interview. The University will not necessarily choose the least expensive vendor. Rather, they will decide by determining a balance between the school's needs and community feedback received at the Request for Proposal open forums.

He added in his email that more resources would be added to support diversity, equity and inclusion in the forms of education, development and training. He also said he plans to add more staff resources for the University Ombuds program.

During the joint interview, Liebowitz commented on the success of the Ombuds office from the staff perspective, saying he had heard positive feedback from “faculty and staff for sure. Students I am not so sure about … I have not heard much from student’s feedback.” He said the reason for this disconnect could be staff being more outspoken about the office than students.

The plan also includes increasing funding for the staff in the Office of Communications, Marketing and

External Relations in order to “enhance our strategic marketing and internal communications capacity and effectiveness,” according to his email. More money will be added to the president’s discretionary fund, which he said will go toward the recommendations made from all four of the Framework task forces.

The Springboard funding has two parts, both of which are now underway. The first is $40.7 million that will be going toward the operational budget. Of this, $21.6 million was raised from the trustees. The rest of the money is coming from “an increase in unrestricted bequests and annual fund contributions, and a temporary increase in the spend rate on a portion of our endowment.” The second part is $44 million that came from Brandeis’ recent bond refinancing.

During the joint interview, Liebowitz and Uretsky said that the University’s bonds have become competitive and have increased in demand. “The bonds the day that they went to market were six times oversubscribed from the amount of bonds that we were issuing, and so the greater demand means that the ultimate price that we have to pay in terms of the interest rate was

lower,” Uretsky said.

He added that there was a “roadshow” for the community of investors where the University described its plans on what to do with the debt issuance. They described the University's financial health to the potential investors, as well as the trajectory of the institution. “Folks were very pleased,” Uretsky said.

Extra money was raised on top of the initially projected $26 million because there was high investor demand and favorable interest-rate market conditions, according to Liebowitz in his email. The extra money was obtained without increasing the University’s debt.

Despite the number of initiatives outlined in his email, Liebowitz said there is still not enough funding to achieve what he called his “vision” of the University. He wrote, “Springboard is just the first step, providing an essential boost in our efforts to better support the Brandeis community, match our capacity to demand, and revitalize outdated infrastructure.” The next step is a major fundraising campaign, which he addresses in his Springboard plan, saying the University will hire more staff dedicated to alumni engagement.

8

features

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2019 ● FEATURES ● THE JUSTICE

just

VERBATIM | KARL MARX From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

ON THIS DAY…

FUN FACT

On Oct. 29, 1929, the New York Stock Exchange crashed in a day known as “Black Tuesday.”

Rhinoceros in Dutch is “neushoorn,” which literally translates to “nosehorn.”

Photo Courtesy of LINZY ROSEN

PROTEST SIGNS: At the National Period Day rally, students held signs that used memes and slogans to protest taxes on menstrual products.

That’s it. Period!

By SOFIA GONZALEZ and JOSHUA ALDWINCKLE-POVEY JUSTICE STAFF WRITERS

Members of the Brandeis PERIOD club traveled to Boston City Hall Plaza to join other PERIOD chapters in celebrating National Period Day on Oct. 19. In an interview with the Justice, Linzy Rosen ’22, founder and current president of the Brandeis PERIOD chapter, stated that the group wanted to achieve two goals at the downtown Boston celebration: to “bring attention to a highly stigmatized issue” — menstruation and associated struggles — and to rally in support of the ‘I AM’ bill, which Rosen said “would provide funding, if passed, for period products to be available in public schools, prisons and homeless shelters.”

According to a Mass Now survey, 56% of school nurses “reported observing students missing class to obtain period products” and 25% of all shelters revealed that they do not provide menstrual products. Even those shelters and schools that are able to provide such products, the study concluded, do not have enough resources to “meet the needs of menstruators they serve” — menstruators being men, women and non-binary people who menstruate. Rosen said that bringing “menstrual equity to the conversation about social justice” and addressing the problem of period poverty in Massachusetts were some of the reasons why she founded the club last year. Upon Rosen’s arrival to Brandeis, she realized that menstruation was a “big missing portion of the conversation and activism” on campus, and she became determined to “engage students in an issue … that is really taboo in society,” with the hopes of empowering

Design: Shinji Rho/the Justice

both menstruators and nonmenstruators to openly discuss periods.

Another club member, Sydney Carim ’23, mentioned that she “joined the club because it intrigued [her] that people were talking about periods and being so open about it,” which she said she had not been used to before starting Brandeis. She added that, so far, being a part of the club has been incredibly empowering and that she’s been able to change her mindset about menstruation, coming to “see it as something that more than half of the population goes through,” and thus shouldn’t be treated as a taboo.

The club members who attended the rally regarded it as a success. Pallavi Goel ’21 said that the presence of several Massachusetts legislators was “surprising” and felt “really powerful” because it conveyed an overarching support for the cause. The speeches, she said, made her feel like “people actually cared about this issue” and inspired her to “want to get more involved and dedicated to this cause.” Rosen found the age diversity at the rally incredibly

significant, recounting that in the midst of the rally, she saw a six year old child wearing a PERIOD t-shirt. To her, this proved that the impacts of menstruation are distributed among a large range of people, and showed her that many people “care about this issue.”

And they do care about this issue — greatly. Brandeis students who attended the rally told the Justice they were angry at the lack of discussion surrounding the struggles that both menstruators and non-menstruators go through; struggles that are often not discussed because of the stigma surrounding periods.

Carim added that she really enjoyed the presence of nonmenstruators. She discussed the common tendency to “look at [menstruation] as an issue that only menstruators have to deal with,” and argued that “in the end, if we are going to make any difference, we need everyone to ally together and work toward a solution.”

The rally was one of the largest in the country, and the group told the Justice they felt its gravity. Cassidy Addams ’22

said she hadn’t “seen activism on this scale before,” adding that the rally was “very impressive.”

Her fellow PERIOD member Savannah Jackson ’22 agreed: “To be in downtown Boston with a microphone shouting about what’s going on and talking about people’s bodies means a lot. To have Linzy so involved and having such an emotional part in this.” Both are excited about the potential for PERIOD@Brandeis going forward, looking fondly on their successes like their recent menstrual product drive, but with determination to battle the stigma they feel has hurt them previously. In Jackson’s words, “Everyone here is angry, everyone is tired of being pushed aside.”

“It’s really important as a menstruator to fight for my right to products and to battle against the stigma. It needs to be eradicated,” Carim said.

Her main desire from this movement was understanding.

She said, “The thing that makes me [angriest] is that the blood from a period is essentially the blood of life, but that is seen to be dirtier

than the blood of violence and of death. That bothers me, and I don’t think I understand how others don’t get that.”

Now that this year’s National Period Day has ended, the members of the PERIOD club are working on developing new activities and events to promote discussion about menstruation for the rest of the academic year.

Rosen encourages everyone — she stipulated that this extends to those who identify as a menstruator and those who don’t — to attend the club meetings and become involved in supporting and discussing an issue that “affects the entire community.” Carim quickly added that PERIOD is one of the most “enthusiastic clubs” that she’s ever been a part of, and that there’s an unmatchable energy among the club members that makes discussing a “heavy issue” a more empowering and “fun” experience. PERIOD@ Brandeis member Madison Leifer ’22 reiterated that “the best way to break a stigma is to talk about it, and that is exactly what PERIOD enables.”

Photo Courtesy of LINZY ROSEN

SOLIDARITY: At the rally, PERIOD members and other student attendees met with other activists who shared their passion for menstrual justice!

THE JUSTICE ● FEATURES ● TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2019

9

Brandeis for ... ?!

The Justice spoke with Brandeis for Bernie and Brandeis for Warren about each club’s goals, ideals and actions.

By HAVEN DAI JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

Brandeis’ mission statement claims that the University prepares students for “full participation in a changing society,” and with over 20 political and activist student organizations, a political event on campus is not a rare sight.

Some of these groups and events laud specific candidates, while others focus on exchanging ideas. In the first part of this two-part exploration of politics on campus, the Justice spoke with representatives of Brandeis for Bernie and Brandeis for Warren about their organizing for the 2020 campaign.

Addie Morang ’20, one of the core organizers of Brandeis for Bernie, sat down for an interview, while Alison Hagani ’22, a coordinator for Brandeis for Warren, answered the Justice’s questions through email. Both clubs were asked the same questions, so that each club had an equal forum to express ideas and so that readers can understand the differences and similarities between them.

What events have you organized on campus so far? What kind of events are you planning to do?

Morang: We had our kick-off meeting which [was] really cool; a lot of people came to that. We’ve done a little bit of canvassing as well. We did tabling in Usdan, which is giving out stickers and stuff. Also, we also did a dorm storm for the first time, and basically just knocked on people’s doors and see if they would like to talk about Bernie.

We will also have one canvassing event on Nov. 2 in New Hampshire. … I think this is another cool part about [working on] Bernie’s campaign — because you can see so many different groups working in the Boston area.

Hagani: Brandeis for Warren has directed most of our efforts towards providing Brandeis students with opportunities to get involved and stay engaged. For example, our Instagram educates individuals on Elizabeth Warren’s policies while promoting our events. So far, we have organized a canvassing Day of Action in New Hampshire every month. For these days of action, Brandeis for Warren has provided students with the transportation and the means to collectively go to New Hampshire and canvass for Elizabeth Warren. For both of these opportunities, members were able to make a difference by informing voters in a crucial primary state and meeting other Warren supporters in the process. We also have organized a Debate Watching Party so that members have a place to watch and discuss the debate. We had our first General Meeting on October 28 at 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., and have our second one on November 7 from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. in Skyline’s Multipurpose Room.

Anyone is welcome.

What is the reason for choosing your candidate in 2020 election? Please elaborate on the significance of it.

Morang: I mostly chose Bernie because he is the most consistent candidate and he is the most progressive candidate. He’s been saying stuff other candidates in the field haven’t really been on the top of. He has been saying them for a long time. On Twitter, there are so many videos of him saying the same stuff that he is saying in the election now. He is the most progressive candidate and he would be the hardest on the top one percent. I think he truly believes that there are policies like Medicare For All and a Green Deal that we don’t have to compromise for, whereas a lot of other candidates are sort of making micro steps towards the goal, Bernie is just like all in. For example, Bernie has probably the most comprehensive Green Deal and is unapologetic about that. I mean, this is a trillion dollars over a ten-year period. Other candidates can’t even get close to that. He also has this great workplace democracy plan, which does a lot to allow workers to unionize. He’s also putting a lot of money into rehabilitation programs for people incarcerated for minor marijuanarelated crimes.

One of the reasons why he appeals to so many people, especially young people, is because the two-party system has shown that it is not effective at all. So him coming in as sort of an outsider from both parties is something I think that will help his campaign in the end.

I think someone really be-

lieves in progressive value and the value Brandeis advocates. A lot of people would ask, “Why not a woman?

Why not a person of color?” but I think it comes down to who really has the policies to affect these communities.

Hagani: I think everyone has their own reasons for supporting Elizabeth Warren and especially for choosing her over the mass of other Democratic candidates vying for the primary nomination. Personally, I think Elizabeth Warren is the most impressive candidate in the race and the candidate most equipped to take on Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

In addition to her consistent increase in the polls, Elizabeth Warren is a candidate who inspires involvement and who fights for the values and needs of all Americans. Her consistent stream of plans exemplify why many individuals, including myself, are drawn to her: not only her plans [are] numerous, but each plan is extensive, detailed, and intersectional. Furthermore, her plans cover issues pertinent to a wide array of Americans, demonstrating how her presidency would benefit so many individuals in so many different ways. In retrospect, it’s surprising that such an impressive, clear stream of plans has not been the presidential norm or more common in campaigns before. It’s inspiring and amazing that Elizabeth Warren is positively shaping the presidential standard; not only is she redefining what a president can look like and be, but she is setting a bar on the caliber of specific and positive plans, priorities, and passion needed to have to be considered for President of the United States.

New Deal, and also tax billionaires.

These things don’t really happen unless we are organized and mobilized. In terms of Brandeis, I really hope to see, if Bernie Sanders wins, some mobilization, organization and action from students on campus.

Hagani: Our current president is someone who has promoted and encouraged hate that, in various ways and in varying degrees, affects so many members of the Brandeis community. Having a woman president with progressive policies would make it so that schools like Brandeis are less subject to hateful rhetoric, harness greater empathy, and are more inclusive and safer for various marginalized individuals.

Furthermore, Elizabeth Warren advocates for tuition free public college so that college is more accessible and affordable. If public colleges become free and thus greatly more accessible and convenient for students, Brandeis might have to lower their tuition to compete.

In this way, free public tuition may inevitably lower private college costs. Lower college costs not only benefit students on an individual level, but also allow for more diversity How would you envision Brandeis’ fu- within Brandeis as a community. ture if your candidate gets elected? In other words, in what way do you think How would you describe the students in Brandeis will be influenced? the club?

Morang: First of all, I think a lot of student Morang: It’s honestly a really fun club. We debts will be cancelled. All of it, actually, will always talk about Bernie-related stuff. They be cancelled, which will allow students to not are super motivated and willing to put in the have to work a ton. … A lot of students cur- work. Because at the end of the day, the elecrently are working either on a part-time job tion depends on us. You would expect there to or their federal work study, and [debt cancel- be a lot of Politics majors, but we have a good ation] will help students to focus on education array of students — some are in Politics and instead of worrying about making the next some are in different sciences. For example, I payment due. Also, for his Green New Deal, I am a Computer Science major myself. So it is really want students to be involved with im- really great to meet with these motivated and plementing it. The thing about Bernie Sand- fun people. ers is that he is real about the amount of work Hagani: I don’t like to generalize the stuit takes to enact the policy. He doesn’t say, “If dents involved with Brandeis for Warren or you elect me, I will get this, this and this done.” to generalize Warren supporters, but I will He’s actually making a call upon the people in say that we all share the same passion to unite America to rally together and organize so that for a candidate who we believe will not only we can get things through Congress, get the beat Donald Trump, but will do the most for amount of money that will preserve a Green our country.

Illustration by LILY SCHMIDT-SWARTZ/the Justice

ACTIVISM ON CAMPUS: Students can be seen and heard advocating for each candidate throughout campus and on social media.

Design: Yael Hanadari-Levy/the Justice

10 TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2019 ● FORUM ● THE JUSTICE

Justice

the

Established 1949

Brandeis University

Jocelyn Gould, Editor in Chief Jen Geller, Managing Editor Avraham Penso and Natalia Wiater, Senior Editors Andrew Baxter, Hannah Kressel, Yvette Sei, Judah Weinerman and Maya Zanger-Nadis, Associate Editors Emily Blumenthal and Gilda Geist, News Editors Eliana Padwa, Interim Features Editor Gabriel Frank, Forum Editor, Megan Geller, Sports Editor Luke Liu, Arts & Culture Editor, Noah Zeitlin, Photography Editor Yael Hanadari-Levy, Layout Editor River Hayes, Copy Editor, Lily Schmidt-Swartz, Interim Copy Editor

EDITORIALS

Campus-Lyft partnership is a welcome development On Oct. 22, Student Union President Simran Tatuskar sent an email to the Brandeis student community announcing a potential partnership between the Student Union and the ridesharing application Lyft.

For the two weeks around Halloween, from Oct. 22 to Nov. 5, students will be able to use a one-time use code to get up to $5 off of a ride to or from campus between the hours of 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.

This board commends Tatuskar for taking action to make this high-risk time of year safer for the Brandeis community.

Making it easier and more affordable to access safe transportation to and from campus will keep students safe and reduce the danger of drunk driving accidents, as well as other situations in which it could be unsafe to walk or drive back to campus. This board appreciates the energy that Tatuskar is putting into objectives like this, which will directly contribute to student safety and wellbeing.

The coupon code ensures that any Lyft ride under $10 will be a flat $5 rate, and all rides over $10 will be capped at $5 off the total cost. Riders must either be picked up or dropped off within the designated “coverage area,” which is a circle bordered by Route 117 north of campus, crossing I-95 in the west and encompassing the Charles River to the southeast.

This ensures that all students living on campus are covered — including

those housed in the Charles River Apartments — as well as a number of off campus residents.

This board urges students to redeem the code ahead of time, in order to make it easier to use and therefore more effective when it is actually needed.

Students should also be aware that the discount can only be used one time per user, and only during these two weeks.

Safety must be a priority at all times, and students should make sure they and others are being safe and responsible even when they do not have access to an opportunity like this to make it easier.

If this test program is as successful as expected, this board encourages Tatuskar and the Student Union to work towards continuing and potentially expanding this type of partnership with Lyft.

Making the discount available again at other times of the school year when it may be less safe for students to travel to or from campus would help encourage consistent standards of safe behavior on and around campus.

Overall, this is a commendable action

by Tatuskar and the Union that shows that they have the power to serve their constituents and make students’ experiences better, and this board hopes to see more work like it in the future.

This is what Union members should be focusing on, especially in times of turmoil behind the scenes: they should be reminding students that their Union is still working for them.

Thanking facilities services and custodial staff Last Tuesday, Scott Berozi and the Kindness Day team sent out an email to the University community asking students on campus with meal plans to donate a meal swipe in order to host a lunch to “thank our Facilities and Custodial staff for all that they do in our residence halls.” This board commends the efforts of the Kindness Day team to honor the commitment of our facilities and custodial staff, and we encourage students to participate in this event — without them, our college experiences would not be the same. It is important to appreciate them, whether it is by donating a meal swipe or thanking them in person. This event has been hosted annually since 2015, with approximately 100 facilities members in attendance at the lunch in Ridgewood Commons, and with food left over afterward, according to Berozi in an email to the Justice. This event has taken place with the same meal-swipe donation logistics for the past few years.

This board acknowledges that there are some logistical difficulties that would hinder a student’s likelihood of donating their swipe. Donations will be in the form of removing one meal swipe from the 11 a.m. to 2 p.m meal period, which means students will not be able to swipe into any dining hall during that time, or must use a guest swipe or points if they would like to eat lunch between those hours on Thursday, Nov. 14. Taking the swipe away from students at one of the most popular meal times on campus complicates students’ lunch plans, especially if they have a meal plan that doesn’t include a lot of points.

This unfortunate timing would deter

some students who want to give back from donating their meal swipe to the luncheon.

Some clubs ask for donations of guest meal swipes or any leftover swipes at the end of the week. This board recommends one of these options, since students rarely run out of guest swipes and plenty of students have leftover weekly swipes they would be happy to donate to programs like this. Choosing a less popular time, such as 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., may also cause more students to want to donate. In an email to the Justice, Scott Berozi explained that “the time frame is chosen to give Sodexo the time to remove the meal from the specific student meal plans who have donated. These can only be removed the day of and the actual time of lunch. Students are welcome to use points or WhoCash for meals on the day of the lunch.” The Kindness Day team did not choose the time — Soxedo did. This board encourages Sodexo to be more flexible with the logistics and timing of students donating their meal swipe, so that more students will take part in this important event.

Finally, this board encourages those involved in planning this event to think about the capacity of people in Upper Usdan as a result of more people using points on that Thursday — using a less popular meal time would address this issue. This board commends the team’s desire to make a special day to commemorate the efforts of our facilities and custodial staff. With the money funded by students, the Department of Community Living and Sodexo can provide a nice meal to the facilities staff and custodians.

Views the News on

On Oct. 23, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify before Congress on Libra, or Facebook’s version of a global cryptocurrency. Zuckerberg states that Libra will help millions of people who don’t have access to banks complete financial transactions worldwide, and a coalition of companies called the Libra Association — consisting of 21 members including Spotify, Uber and Lyft — have signed on to use the currency.

Zuckerberg’s critics, however, state that Facebook should not be the face of the currency, and call in to question Facebook’s ability to securely handle transactions of cryptocurrency, given its mishandling of private information in the past. What do you make of the potential risks and benefits of Libra currency in comparison to other cryptocurrencies? Should Facebook be the organization to represent it?

Prof. Stephen Cecchetti (IBS) The stated objectives of creating Libra are to improve the efficiency of payments, reducing costs and speeding transfers; and to improve financial access. While these are laudable goals, it is essential that we achieve them without facilitating criminal exploitation of the payments system or reducing the ability of authorities to monitor and mitigate threats to the financial system. In addition, any broad-based financial innovation should help consumer smooth consumption when income fluctuates. On these criteria, Libra fails. Libra could facilitate criminal uses of finance and could itself threaten financial disruption. Not only that, but for those in advanced economies who use it, Libra will likely add uncertainty to the purchasing power of savings. And, for the countries whose currencies are excluded from the Libra portfolio, it will diminish the government’s seignorage revenue, while enabling capital outflows and, in periods of stress, accelerating capital flight.

Stehen Cecchetti is the Rosen Family Chair in International Finance at the Brandeis International Business School.

Prof. Anna Scherbina (IBS) I covered cryptocurrencies as part of my portfolio at the Council of Economic Advisers. Important concerns were illicit transactions enabled by the perceived anonymity, fraudulent investment schemes, and frequent hacking of cryptocurrency exchanges that resulted in millions of dollars in theft. Facebook’s libra looks like an improvement on the existing cryptocurrencies. By relying on the proof-of-stake rather than the proof-of-work design, it can substantially reduce electricity usage and, more importantly for the wide adoption, reduce transaction costs. Since libra will be pegged to fiat currency, it will be less volatile than other cryptocurrencies, thereby discouraging speculation and fraud. As for concerns about transaction security, policy makers should have similar worries about credit card companies, which are also an attractive target for hackers. Moreover, unlike Amazon, which collects information on an overwhelming number of transactions and has been accused of using these data to directly compete with product manufacturers, Facebook does not currently aspire to enter the product market. And because libra is not going to be perceived to be as anonymous as other cryptocurrencies, it is unlikely to attract as many illicit transactions as bitcoin, monero and Zcash. Finally, if the regulators stop the libra project, someone else around the world will develop an alternative for which the U.S. regulators will have little say.

Anna Scherbina is an associate professor of Finance at the Brandeis International Business School.

Prof. Lynn Browne (IBS)

The problem with Libra is not Facebook per se, but the existence of any widely used private currency that would challenge governments’ primacy in this area. Governments, understandably, want to preserve the integrity of their countries’ currency, control the money supply, and prevent tax evasion and the financing of crime and terrorism. A large, global private monetary system would undermine these capabilities. At the same time, the problems identified in the Libra white paper are genuine. Financial transfers among countries are cumbersome and high cost. Within countries, fees for credit and debit cards and other payments services are also high. Many people remain “unbanked.” And there certainly is a demand for anonymity in financial transactions — for legitimate, as well as illegitimate reasons. Thus, there will continue to be proposals for new crypto currencies and digital monies, including proposals from governments and their central banks. But private initiatives, particularly ones as big and bold as Libra, will be resisted.

Lynn Browne is an adjunct professor at the Brandeis International Business School.

Prof. Adam Towvim (IBS)

Facebook’s Libra raises a number of unique data issues related to its historical use of Personal Information, not just because of high profile cases (Cambridge Analytica) but also because of their dominant role in the Advertising ecosystem.

First, Privacy/Data Ownership concerns create a headwind for Facebook’s Libra stewardship: Consumers and Regulators will have a hard time trusting Facebook to touch critical payment data given the vast amount of Personal Information Facebook already holds on billions of identities. In addition, how will the Libra consortium ensure proper governance of the Personal Information that is shared between Libra consortium members? New Data Privacy regimes like GDPR and CCPA will undoubtedly play a role in addition to the usual Financial Sector regulation. On the other hand, any experienced Marketer will tell you that Facebook is unusually well-positioned to make a cryptocurrency easy for the average consumer to understand and use — to date, cryptocurrencies have not been as easily accessible to the average consumer. Facebook already understands many levels of a mobile user experience (UX) and their app touches our lives throughout our day. Even if they will not pull all of our Facebook Personal Information into Libra, Facebook is skilled at using our behavior and biases to drive a clean and intuitive UX. A cause for hope that it will be easy to use, also another cause for concern on how they touch even more aspects of our personal life.

Adam Towvim is an adjunct professor at the Brandeis International Business School.

Photos: Noah Zeitlin/the Justice; Brandeis University

THE JUSTICE ● FORUM ● TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2019

Supporting Andrew Yang, the Democratic underdog Trevor FILSETH

SANITY The more you learn about most of the candidates seeking the Democratic nomination, the more objectionable things you find. With Andrew Yang, however, the more I learned, the more fascinating his bid for the presidency became.

Yang started off as a fairly obscure, niche candidate. In a field crowded with well-known senators and governors, he’s unique for having no prior political experience and very little name recognition. Despite this hurdle, Yang has successfully established a solid base of support; he currently floats between fourth and sixth place in national polls. He also amassed $10 million in the last fundraising quarter, putting him on competitive footing with big names like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. His online following, the “Yang Gang,” has been widely described as the most enthusiastic group supporting any Democratic candidate.

What sets Yang apart from the rest of the field is his focus on the future, and his almost laserguided determination to fix what he diagnoses as the problem that gave Donald Trump the presidency: job losses due to automation in Rust Belt states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.

Voters in those areas bought Donald Trump’s message about bringing jobs back from Mexico and China, and they played a critical role in destroying the so-called “Blue Wall” in the 2016 election. But Trump’s solutions haven’t worked, and as Yang points out, job losses are going to become more severe as technology improves.

Take for instance, the most common occupation in 29 states (and, probably not coincidentally, the example that Yang most often cites): driving a truck. So far, computers don’t know how to drive trucks, but no one doubts that they will eventually learn, and when they do, humans won’t be able to compete with them.

This is not a bad thing. Robots will be better drivers than their human counterparts. They won’t need to eat or sleep and can drive 24 hours a day. They’ll probably be more fuel-efficient.

Critically, beyond the cost of purchasing the software, they won’t need to be paid. All of this will make transportation safer, faster and cheaper, which will be good for consumers.

Moreover, it’s not clear to me that, as a society, we should be trying to preserve the institution of people driving trucks, which is by most accounts a pretty miserable job. But it’s still a job that over three million people have, and the advent of autonomous trucks will eventually put all of them, and those who provide services to them, out of work.

This trend isn’t going to stop with truck drivers.

Self-service kiosks and automated registers are already present in many stores, and their use will inevitably expand, crowding out human workers.

Any job that a computer can do, a computer will eventually do at a worker’s expense. Again, this isn’t necessarily bad — it’ll increase efficiency and lower prices — but it’s going to decimate millions of low- and semi-skilled jobs for which it won’t be easy to find replacements. This might not happen as soon as Yang believes it will, but it will happen sooner or later, and when it does, it’s going to have huge consequences for society.

There’s no perfect solution to this problem, but Yang is alone among the Democratic candidates in recognizing it and proposing a workable response. His proposal is a universal basic income program called the “Freedom Dividend,” which would soften the blow somewhat and give people time to transition by giving them $1000 per month.

The beauty of UBI is that it’s simultaneously progressive and libertarian in different ways.

Imagine for a moment that a government official showed up on your doorstep and demanded you give him $1000 in cash immediately. To a Wall Street banker, that’s nothing — that’s the cost of dinner in some Manhattan restaurants. To a carpenter, plumber, garbage collector or starving college student, the prospect is a lot more grim.

Four out of five American workers are living paycheck to paycheck; they don’t have thousands of dollars to spare, and if they needed to pay the bill immediately, it would likely come as part of some larger sacrifice. This is what’s called a “regressive tax,” and almost everyone hates it because it blatantly favors the rich.

Now imagine the precise opposite — the government turning up on your doorstep and giving you $1000 in cash with no strings attached.

Andrew Yang’s Freedom Dividend does precisely that, once a month for the rest of your life. It makes no distinction between rich and poor, but a thousand dollars is worth a lot more to a handyman than it is to a tech executive.

“But that’s socialism,” I hear you cry. Except it isn’t. A universal basic income recognizes the principle that the average person knows how to better spend his or her own money than the government does. Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and ideological godfather of the libertarian right, was supportive of UBI because he saw it as a viable alternative to welfare benefits, which are tied to poverty and unemployment. To some degree, these programs disincentivize success, since success means losing the security they provide. A UBI, paid out regardless of wealth or job status, doesn’t.

And where UBI has been tried on a smaller scale, it’s often been successful. A highly regarded example is the Alaska Permanent Fund, an annual dividend of around $1000 paid to every Alaskan in exchange for allowing oil companies to ravage their state’s natural beauty. It’s one of the most popular programs in Alaska, a deep red state; in 1999, a whopping 83% of voters were in

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AMANDA PYUN/the Justice

favor of keeping it.

The key question, then, is how to pay for the Dividend. Yang argues that the extra spending would stimulate the economy, and some amount of money would be saved by people that no longer collect other government benefits. But the cost will still be several trillion dollars, which he proposes to raise by implementing a European-style “valueadded tax,” charging tech companies like Amazon and Uber a small amount per transaction.

This seems eminently fair to me. Amazon, altogether worth almost a trillion dollars, continues to insist that it makes no profit, and hence pays nothing in federal taxes. A valueadded tax would change that. Yang has over 150 other policy proposals listed on his website, some important (Medicare for All), some unimportant (eliminating the penny) and some odd (rankedchoice voting). But perhaps the most attractive thing about Yang is his personal charisma.

It’s very clear that he’s not a politician; he doesn’t spend his time boasting of his legislative accomplishments and vowing to fight for the common man. He understands that the economics of technology isn’t that interesting, and often cracks jokes about it. Rather than blame tech executives for economic woes, as Trump blames immigrants, Yang focuses on a solution. Above all, he strikes me as a fundamentally decent person.

Case in point: in September, Saturday Night Live fired comedian Shane Gillis for making racist and

homophobic jokes about several minority figures, including Yang. Yang’s response to the incident was remarkably nuanced. He immediately made it clear that he thought Gillis’ comments were unacceptable, but he disagreed with his firing, suggesting that people need a chance to learn from their mistakes. He also offered to sit down with Gillis in the future and discuss the implications of racist humor. You might very reasonably disagree with Yang and believe that firing Gillis was the right decision. But for just a moment, isn’t his frame of mind just a little bit refreshing? Here’s someone who’s willing to call a truce in the endless culture war; someone who doesn’t mindlessly seek to punish the offender, but wants them (and society) to understand their error and learn from it. It’s a mindset that isn’t very common in today’s outrage-oriented politics, and we would all benefit from having a national leader who thinks that way.

There are other considerations for selecting a commander-in-chief, of course. Is Andrew Yang the person you want to shake awake at three in the morning to respond to an international crisis?

This is where Yang falls short — as someone who’s never served in public office before, it’s no secret that he lacks political experience.

In my mind, though, that’s not as important as his platform. As president, he’ll be surrounded with capable, skilled advisers, and unlike the Oval Office’s current occupant, he might actually listen to them.

My conflicted view of RateMyProfessor and its problems Gabriel FRANK

RETROSPECTIVE I have been at Brandeis for over a year now, and I’ve taken my fair share of good and bad classes.

I’ve sat in lecture halls that felt electrified by passionate professors and students, with subject matters more interesting and entertaining than some of my favorite movies. The opposite has also been true, and I’ve found myself thinking that going to certain classes wasn’t even necessary.

I have thought to myself, “maybe I should have consulted other students’ opinions and thoughts on said classes and professors before enrolling, or at least shop it before spending hundreds of dollars on used, rented textbooks.” I became wary of which classes I signed up for, almost to the point of paranoia; what if a class is required for my major or University requirement, and I’m unable to pass it due to either a teaching style that I can’t follow, or some incomprehensible, poorly-explained material?

At the end of my first semester, a friend of mine showed me the popular academic rating website, ratemyprofessors.com. On this website, you can search almost any institution and affiliated faculty, and you can find other students’ opinions on particular professors and the course they

teach and have taught in the past. Generally, most professors and the difficulty of their classes are rated on a scale of zero to five, and students can attach comments or thoughts to these ratings. Out of curiosity, I searched up a class that I took my first semester at Brandeis that I didn’t particularly enjoy, and to my surprise, I saw numerous negative comments not about the course or the way it was taught, but personal attacks directed towards the professor himself, with hundreds of negative ratings that were nothing more than what seemed like a group of disgruntled students seeking retribution for a bad grade on a paper.

Following this experience, I began to see RateMyProfessor as a way to vet professors and classes before I took them, to the point where if I even just glanced upon a course whose subject matter seemed interesting, I would immediately go onto RateMyProfessor to see what other students had to say. However, I only really paid attention to the numbers as opposed to the comments. Looking back, I can see how unhealthy this was, as I was viewing many hardworking individuals who have likely accomplished more than I will in my entire lifetime as nothing more than mere numerical constructs of quality and difficulty.

Rating an instructor with only cursory secondary comments, as the name of the website implies, is not only highly dehumanizing, but outright Orwellian. We are hard-wired to pay

extra attention to scorn and negativity; this trait is exacerbated when gazing upon a series of negative ratings.

We tend to be quick to form judgements about an entire person, turning a blind eye to actual real-world experience and the reasoning behind said classifications.

Furthermore, students might be far less likely to take a class taught by a professor with a low rating, even if they are glancing at nothing other than just a number. It is this lack of observation that particularly concerns me about the ethical implications of being able to rate a professor.

One can simply issue a negative rating for reasons as simple as receiving a bad grade in class or on one specific assignment and mask the rating as a referendum on the instructor as both an educator and as a person.

To anyone with a well-oriented moral compass in our highly digitized, impersonal society, this is highly disconcerting. Moreover, this system can be used and abused to spite professors with whom students may have had a disagreement with and as a means of petty sabotage. One low rating can influence the way a prospective student sees a class going into the course, causing them to develop a confirmation bias and form unrealistic judgements of what could otherwise be a unique experience — positive or negative.

Interestingly, any professors on the website who have high difficulty ratings often have lower quality ratings. To me, this implies an

unfavorable view of professors who seek to challenge their students — and not for the better.

How can one who innocently seeks to look at ratings tell the difference between a genuinely unfavorable view of a professor or class and a vengeful, unlucky student? Here, it is easy to see the destructiveness of RateMyProfessor on not only the reputations of hardworking professors, but potential students and the entire college experience. Websites of any sort that reduce individual and the classes they teach to nothing more than mere numbers almost begin to resemble controversial aggregators such as Rotten Tomatoes, which reduces movies to numbers in a similar fashion.

I would even go as far as to say that the ratings on ratemyprofessor resemble product reviews akin to those one would see on Amazon, leading to what chillingly begins to resemble China’s social credit system, where people are given numerical values that translate to self-worth in response to how they go about their lives.

In the end, RateMyProfessor may be used as a tool for good, one that allows its users to better inform the decisions they make about which classes to take. On the other hand, one should be wary in their use for it; it is one thing to look at a negative rating, and it is another to actually attend the class, attempt to learn a thing or two and listen to viewpoints and speech beyond one’s own. Experience is something no rating website can replace.

The opinions expressed on this page are those of each article’s respective author and do not reflect the viewpoint of the Justice.

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TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2019● FORUM ● THE JUSTICE

FORUM

Pete Buttigeg is Facebook’s final stand against regulators Judah

WEINERMAN CHATTERBOX

There’s a tweet I’ve been thinking about far too much. On Oct. 21, writer and columnist for The Intercept Kate Aronoff sent out a rather strange-looking picture of Facebook CEO and possible lizard-man Mark Zuckerberg and presidential candidate Pete Buttegieg doing their best at mimicking human emotions while driving a car, captioned with the statement, “when you see a peasant being naughty.” It’s a combination of a singularly strange image and a perfect caption for the moment, and I really can’t get it out of my head.

For reference, this photo is from Zuckerberg’s incredibly ill-thought out 2017 attempt to wander around America like Forrest Gump, meeting all the smalltown people he usually forgets about while ensconced in the bubble of Silicon Valley.

One of those lucky country bumpkins blessed with God-King Mark’s presence was a small town college mayor who wanted to show the Facebook boss around, none other than his “new friend, Pete.” They were not in fact “new friends,” and had known each other while both attended Harvard. Sure, only one of them is played by Jesse Eisenberg in an Oscar-winning David Fincher movie about how awful they are, but presenting the Oxfordeducated Buttegieg as a simple country mouse is about as honest as Zuckerberg during a Congressional hearing.

Anyway, the connection between the two goes beyond their overlap at Harvard, where Buttegieg was one of the first several hundred users of “thefacebook,” and a poorly thought out promotional car ride. Earlier this year, Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan sent a detailed list of hiring recommendations of former Facebook staffers to the Buttegieg campaign, which went on to employ at least two of the people mentioned. This kind of direct corporate involvement in a presidential campaign should be raising all sorts of alarm bells.

Being open to such a nakedly opportunistic relationship is unsurprising, given that Buttegieg’s eye-popping fundraising numbers have come in no small part from a healthy relationship with Silicon Valley. The South Bend mayor’s campaign has cultivated careful relationships with tech giants, often appearing in person at $5,000-a-head fundraisers populated by employees from Uber, Google and Apple. He has made it clear to his millionaire donors that he doesn’t see tech as an “us vs them” issue, and is willing to grant them the same leeway the Obama administration did.

Clearly, there’s room for these two Harvard boys to get along, but why is Zuckerberg so urgently boosting Buttegieg as of late? It’s

QIYU HU/ the Justice

got nothing to do with any fond memories of their time spent in Cambridge cafes together or a shared love for blue silk ties, and has instead everything to do with a certain former economics professor residing in Massachusetts.

Fellow Democratic candidate and current front-runner Senator Elizabeth Warren has all but declared war upon Facebook, promising to use anti-trust regulations to break Facebook into pieces. If it was up to Warren, Facebook would have to spin off its prize aqquisitions like Instagram and WhatsApp into different companies, comply with new privacy and harmful content regulations, and pay its fair share in taxes.

According to a leaked audio recording released by the Verge on Oct. 1, Zuckerberg isn’t taking the news of Warren’s marching orders well, telling employees, “If she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge.”

“Does that still suck for us? Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to have a major lawsuit against our own government. That’s not like the position we want to be in.

We care about our country and want to work with our government to do good things,” he added. “But look, at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight.”

Zuckerberg, clearly spooked by the specter of regulation and Warren’s increasingly strong position in the Democratic primary, is looking for an out.

Besides wining and dining prominent conservative conspiracy theorists and talking heads like Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson, who might just help throw the country into another tailspin and take the heat off of corporate America, it appears that Facebook and its friends in the Valley are desperately looking for a presidential candidate to support.

Either they fully throw their weight behind Donald Trump, who is hardly a friend to Big Tech to begin with and would likely lead to many tech employees quitting their companies overnight, or they try to find a dark horse in order to prevent Warren from running away with the Democratic nomination. Certainly, Bernie Sanders — possibly the only candidate more antagonistic to Silicon Valley than Warren — is not going to be their pick. So who’s left?

Joe Biden is still not entirely sure what a smartphone is, given that his major educational initiative is trying to get parents to leave record players on at night so kids hear more words, and he lacks any sort of connection with the industry’s major players.

Longtime tech ally Kamala Harris’ poll numbers keep on slumping, and her quixotic campaign to get Twitter and Facebook to delete

President Trump’s social media accounts has used up a lot of the tech goodwill she earned playing footstool to Silicon Valley as California attorney general. Amy Klobuchar is the kind of pro-business candidate that would put the kid gloves on for big tech, but Democratic voters seem to like the caustic Minnesota senator as much as her staffers, like a binder to the face.

As for everyone else, it’s likely the rest of the Democratic field won’t even make the debate stage, let alone have anywhere of a shot at taking down Warren in the critical Iowa caucus or New Hampshire primary. If you really think that Andrew Yang is going to be the Democratic techno-savior, I have some fine real estate to sell you on Elon Musk’s Mars colony.

Unless the corporate set throws out Michael Bloomberg or the skeleton of Hillary Clinton as a last-ditch “anyone but Bernie or Warren” candidate, it appears that Buttegieg is the last viable hope in Facebook’s ability to influence electoral politics with their money. For the time being, Buttegieg is doing just fine, but he’s hardly breaking through to the top tier of candidates.

As Warren continues to gain ground on Biden, it’ll be interesting to see how Zuckerberg and his pals react. It appears that those naughty peasants might just make life quite a bit harder for the Facebook CEO and his new best friend.

Reevaluate judgements surrounding fashion, clothing choices

By VANDITA MALVIYA WILSON JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

Recently, I, along with a classmate, formed a club at the International Business School called the Retail and Fashion Club. For this initiative to exist, I had to collect a number of signatures from IBS classmates. I thought to myself: what better an opportunity to see how the perceptions of retail and fashion have changed over the years? Unfortunately people still think that retail and fashion are superficial. The looks on some of the students’ faces told me how disdainful they

MAYA ZANGER-NADIS/ the Justice

were toward my idea.

Some students, not understanding that signing a petition does not force them to play an active role in the club, did not even want to lend their names to the signature sheet — which no one sees except the Office of Student Experiences. It was anathema to them to even be seen signing this form.

In the creation of this club, my co-founder impressed upon me the idea that we should play up the analytics portion, and de-emphasize the “fashion” part. This would certainly highlight the use of data in retail — and it is a data-driven business — but the goal of this club was to encourage students to attend our events who might otherwise be turned off by the idea of attending an event hosted by a club with “retail” and “fashion” in the name.

This led me to the larger thoughts of the landscape of superficiality that pervades us all, even though we act like we are better than that.

The same people who don’t believe in brands are the ones who wear the non-conformist brands like Converse (now owned by Nike) or Vans (owned by the Vanity Fair Corporation). ‘Vanity’ is in their name! Incidentally, VF Corporation also owns The North Face, Timberland and Smartwool, and also manufactures private label clothing for other well-known companies like L Brands, Nordstrom and Macy’s.

When I was an undergrad, many students simply rolled out of bed and showed up to class,

which represented the “I’m too smart to be bothered with thinking about bathing and how I appear to others.” This aesthetic then made me, who showered every day, seem superficial in comparison. The trend continued in the workplace, where colleagues who seemed more “put together” were somehow perceived as less competent than those who dressed more casually.

In my opinion, that implies that the ones who dressed more casually were deliberately dressing down to appear more competent. These co-workers used their clothing as the unspoken language by which they communicated that they were able to do the job. It was reverse superficiality.

I try to choose my clothes based on what I am doing for the day, but too often comfort comes first — or other trivial things such as weather considerations. Fully aware that I am sending the wrong signals by wearing the wrong brand of running shoes and non-branded yoga pants, comfort is my king. Still, we are what we wear as much as we are what we eat.

What I wear can impact how I feel on that day.

For example, if I wear my “lucky” baseball cap, I think I might do better on an exam because I “feel” better about myself. And on those days I wear sweats, I do indeed feel a bit more tired.

But retail encompasses more than just clothing. It surrounds us constantly. Did you get a cold recently? Perhaps you bought some cough

The opinions expressed on this page are those of each article’s respective author and do not reflect the viewpoint of the Justice.

drops at CVS, which is a retail purveyor of cough and cold medicine, among other things. If you wear glasses and bought them at LensCrafters or Warby Parker, you just went to a retail store.

Getting groceries delivered by Amazon? It’s still considered a retail company. Most every little thing surrounding us has the imprint of retail.

Sure, some of the choices we make are for fashion or style, such as how we dress for Halloween.

This holiday is more retail-oriented than in previous years. According to the National Retail Federation, it’s the second largest commercial holiday, with Christmas being the first. The National Retail Federation goes on to say that the average spending per consumer will be about $86, and that the spending has been inspired by social media posts by friends, celebrities and even neighbors on Pinterest, YouTube and Instagram.

In the end, I’m reminded of a scene from The Devil Wears Prada. Miranda Priestly explains to Andrea Sachs how her blue sweater is cerulean, not just blue, and that Andrea’s sweater selection, which Andrea thinks is her choice to opt out of the fashion industry, is the result of the fashion industry carefully selecting that color, and how the color filtered down the rungs of fashion from the runways to a strip mall clothing store to then be purchased by Andrea.

Whether we like it or not, fashion and retail matter, and they matter in a big way.

THE JUSTICE ● SPORTS ● TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2019

DEFENSE, LET’S ROLL

MSOCCER: Team defeats Springfield CONTINUED FROM 16

Season Summary Brandeis is now 6–1–3 over their last 10 games, having conceded two goals in their most recent 670 minutes of action. The Judges are now averaging 1.5 goals and 15 shots per game over the course of the season. Now 2–1–1 and in third place in the UAA, they will likely

13

need to win all three remaining games to have an outside chance at a conference title, and most likely will hope for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.

With only conference games left, the Judges head to Atlanta on Friday to take on Emory University before a trip to the University of Rochester on Sunday. The regular season will conclude at home against New York University on Nov. 9.

Meeting: Wednesdays at 6 p.m.

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IVY DALI/Justice File Photo

KICKIN’ IT: Brandeis’ Willa Molho ’21 blocks her offensive opponent in a game against the University of Chicago on Oct. 18.

WSOCCER: Team brings home a victory this week CONTINUED FROM 16

their prior two games.

the Judges had 14 more attempted shots on goal. While 13 of them did not result in any points, one did. In the very last minute of the game, Carreiro was assisted by Hayes to score the Judges’ second game goal.

While the Warriors were shown to have a strong defense, as Tyrrell was able to block so many of the Judges ’ attempted shots, the Judges showed a strong offense. They were persistent in the pursuit of winning and were able to overcome the Warrior’s strong defense to clinch the victory and put the Judges back on their winning ways after losing

Next up Next, the Judges will face the Emory University Eagles on Nov. 1. Facing this University Athletic Association rival, the Judges will need to use their momentum from this game to power them into victory. Currently, the Judges have a losing conference record of 1–3.

Player Interview In an email to the Justice, Miller shined some light on what has made the Judges so successful this season.

She said, “I think this group is the perfect combination of hardwork

and talent. We always fight until the final whistle blows and I think the character of the team is what has made us so successful this season.” Miller added that because conference games are so essential in determining postseason play, the last few games of the season against their competitive UAA competition are incredibly important to win.

However, she said, several players have had to “step up into new roles or positions that they're not necessarily comfortable in” this season, and they have adapted well to make sure that the level of soccer the Judges have been playing atremains high.

VOLLEYBALL: 22 matches into the season, Judges are now 4–18 overall, 1–6 in conference CONTINUED FROM 16 service aces. Scott followed with 12 kills, 12 digs and one service ace, while Borgert finished with 29 assists, three kills, five digs and five assists, and Kaitlyn Oh ’22 finished with 17 digs, five assists and one service ace. The Brandeis team had

a hitting percentage of .121, which is lower than Emerson’s .224. The Judges finished with an impressive 64 digs and seven aces, but it just wasn’t enough to win the match.

Coaches In recent years, the team is led by head coach Alesia Bennett who is in

her sixth season coaching the Judges and her ninth total as a coach. Prior to her time at Brandeis, Bennett was the head coach of Simmons College since 2011. In 2012, Coach Bennett was awarded the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) Thirty Under Thirty Award.

In addition to Bennet, the team’s

two assistant coaches, Kayla Gromen and Cailyn Straubel, help lead the team toward success. Gromen is in her second year coaching the Brandeis team, having graduating from Ithaca College in 2018. Straubel is also in her second year coaching the Judges having graduating from Connecticut College in 2016.

Upcoming games The Judges approach their final matches this season, including the UAA championships in Chicago, Illinois at the University of Chicago on Nov. 9 and 10.

Next up for Brandeis is Wellesley College on Oct. 31 at home. Game time is 7 p.m.

Meeting: Sundays at 3:30 p.m.

Everyone has a story.

Help us find it.

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Contact Eliana Padwa at features@thejustice.org for more information.

Illustration by MORGAN MAYBACK/the JUSTICE; Photos by ANDREW BAXTER/the Justice, ADAM PANN/the Justice, CLEMENTS PARK/the Justice, MORGAN BRILL/the Justice; NADIA ALAWA, IRA BORNSTEIN, CREATIVE COMMONS.

Meeting: Tuesdays at 6:00 p.m.

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Illustration by MORGAN MAYBACK/the Justice; Photos by YVETTE SEI/the Justice, CHELSEA MADERA/the Justice, NATALIA WIATER/the Justice, ANDREW BAXTER/the Justice, HEATHER SCHILLER/the Justice, SARAH KATZ/the Justice.

THE JUSTICE

JUDGES BY THE NUMBERS

● SPORTS ●

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29 , 2019

15

TENNIS

MEN’S SOCCER UAA STANDINGS

Chicago NYU JUDGES Carnegie Emory Rochester WashU Case

TEAM STATS Goals

Overall W L D 8 1 5 7 5 1 9 3 4 6 6 1 7 5 2 9 5 0 6 5 1 5 5 4

UAA Conf.

W L D 4 0 0 3 1 0 2 1 1 2 2 0 1 2 1 1 3 0 1 3 0 0 2 2

UPCOMING GAMES: Friday at Emory University Sunday at University of Rochester

Max Breiter ’20 and Will DeNight ’23 lead with six goals.

Player Goals Pct. 6 .750 Max Breiter 6 .577 Will DeNight 3 .5688 Noah Gans .500 .571 Assists .643 Noah Gans ’21 and Dylan Hen.545 nesy ’20 tie with 4 assists. .500 Player Assists Noah Gans 4 Dylan Hennesy 4 Jared Panson 2

WOMEN’S SOCCER UAA STANDINGS

TEAM STATS Goals

WashU Chicago Carnegie Emory Case JUDGES NYU Rochester

Overall W L D 13 1 1 11 1 2 9 3 1 9 4 0 12 3 0 10 1 0 10 5 0 8 4 2

UAA Conf.

W L D 4 0 0 3 0 1 3 1 0 2 2 0 1 3 0 1 3 0 1 3 0 0 3 1

Pct. .900 .857 .731 .692 .800 .667 .667 .643

UPCOMING GAMES: Friday at Emory University Sunday at University of Rochester

Juliette Carreiro ’22 leads the team with 8 goals.

Player Goals Juliette Carreiro 8 Makenna Hunt 7 Daria Bakhtiarti 4

Assists Juliette Carreiro ’22 leads the team with 5 assists.

Player Assists Juliette Carreiro 5 Makenna Hunt 4 Caroline Swan 4

VOLLEYBALL UAA STANDINGS

TEAM STATS Kills

UAA Conf.

W L Chicago 7 0 Emory 6 1 WashU 5 2 Carnegie 4 3 NYU 3 4 Case 2 5 JUDGES 1 6

Overall W L 24 1 22 2 20 6 17 5 20 5 9 15 4 18

Pct. .960 .917 .769 .773 .769 .375 .182

UPCOMING GAMES: Thursday vs Wellesley College Saturday at University of Massachusetts Boston

Emma Bartlett ’20 leads the team with 234 kills.

Player Kills Emma Bartlett 234 Belle Scott 203 Amelia Oppenheimer 152

Digs Kaitlyn Oh ’22 leads the team with 276 digs.

Player Digs Kaitlyn Oh 276 Amelia Oppenheimer 191 Belle Scott 189

CROSS COUNTRY Results from the Connecticut College Invitational on Oct. 19.

TOP FINISHERS (Men’s)

TOP FINISHERS (Women’s)

8-Kilometer Run RUNNER TIME Mark Murdy 25:56.2 Josh Lombardo 26:33.3 Dan Curley 26:46.0

6-Kilometer Run RUNNER TIME Danielle Bertaux 22:41.4 Niamh Kenny 22:42.0 Andrea Bolduc 22:43.3

Nov. 2 at UAA Championships at Carnegie Mellon University

Data Courtesy of THE OFFICIAL SITE OF THE UNIVERSITY ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION and the BRANDEIS ATHLETICS WEBSITE.

SARAH KATZ/the Justice

READY TO SERVE: Jon and Melissa Cordish and other community members contributed to new courts for the Brandeis tennis team.

Judges get renovated outdoor tennis courts ■ The Brandeis tennis team, alumni and friends dedicated the new Cordish Tennis courts on Homecoming Weekend.

By MEGAN GELLER JUSTICE EDITOR

The twelve outdoor tennis courts behind the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center have a new name and a new look. The new Cordish Tennis Center was funded as the result of an alumni game played

by Jonathan Cordish ’90, who was nationally ranked throughout the course of his Brandeis tennis career and helped the Judges advance to the NCAA Division III National Championships in 1989. During his alumni match two years ago, a fast serve to Cordish hit a crack in the court and careened wildly the wrong way, causing Cordish to mishit his return. He commented that this bad bounce was going to cost him a lot of money — and it did.

Soon after the match, Cordish and his wife, Melissa Cordish ’90, made a lead gift to establish the Cordish Tennis Center. The project involved a complete overhaul of the outdoor courts and the development of a new outdoor facility.

This was not the first time that the Cordish’s had donated money to update the Brandeis tennis courts.

In 2016, the couple also made the lead gift for a project that refurbished the indoor tennis courts at the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center.

Ben Lamanna, former coach of both men’s and women’s Brandeis tennis teams credits that effort as being a major reason that the team has developed into a bigger threat as an opponent. Last year was the first time that both the Brandeis men’s and women’s teams, had earned Top 10 positions in the NCAA Division III rankings, according to the Brandeis Alumni and Friends News Website.

The last time the outdoor courts were redone was in 2004, and after

weathering the Boston climate for many years, the courts had started to break down. The cracks were starting to affect play, and as a result, the ability of Brandeis to recruit top high school players who wanted to play on high quality courts. The Cordish gift, along with gifts from other community members, made it possible for a new tennis complex along with a new scoreboard to be built.

Activitas, Inc. was responsible for the design, Murray Construction did the excavating and landscaping and Cape and Island Tennis & Track did the courts. In an interview with the Justice, Pauri Pandian, the new head coach of the University men’s and women’s tennis teams, noted that the new outdoor courts have credited excitement among potential new recruits as they have been touring Brandeis, which should help the Brandeis tennis teams develop into a stronger and more dominant team in the NCAA Division III.

PRO SPORTS BRIEF

National Basketball Association season kicks off with some surpises and let-downs With the NBA season finally kicking off, I can finally not feel like a bum for only writing about the NBA in the pro sports section of this paper.

As I write this on Saturday morning, there have been few games playes and I want to speak about some of the biggest surprises and letdowns of the NBA season.

LeBron James! He had a very passive first game where he deferred to his teammates and they expectedly lost to a Los Angeles Clippers team that knew this was the biggest game they had ever played in their franchise’s history. After the “totally surprising” loss, the Los Angeles Lakers rallied, and LeBron had 32 points, ten rebounds and seven assists,in a game that served as a reminder that LeBron is not washed and is still the best player in the league.

The Suite Life of Zack and Coby!

Quite possibly the best backcourt nickname in NBA history belongs to Zach LaVine and Coby White. This Chicago Bulls duo has been amazing this season, combining for 62 points, 12 rebounds and six assists in a great win against the Memphis Grizzlies. They also lost a crazy game 126–125 against

the Charlotte Hornets where rookie PJ Washington hit seven 3-pointer shots.

If the Bulls keep this up, they might make a run at the eighth seed.

Kyrie Irving! Irving had 50 points in the first game of the season and still lost to the Minnesota Timberwolves. If you haven’t seen his final shot in that game you should Google it because it was insane. The Brooklyn Nets would win their second game against the New York Knicks by a margin that was too close for comfort. The Nets are not looking as good as expected, though Kyrie is looking like one of the best players in the league. This team will figure it out, especially once Durant comes back and Kyrie figures out his shooters better. Also a pleasant surprise for the Nets has been Taurean Prince, playing some great defense and hitting his 3-point shots at an above 40% clip.

The Houston Rockets! This team has had a rocky start, but I can’t even be sarcastic about it. They have probably the hardest adjustment of any team in the league right now, it’s not surprising they are losing games; it’s not surprising Russell Westbrook and James Harden are arguing on

the court a bit; it’s not surprising that the team isn’t in their groove.

Westbrook and Harden both posted the only seasons in NBA history with usage percentage of over 40%. Usage percentage measures how many plays end with the observed player shooting the ball or turning it over. Having two of the most ball-dominant superstars in their prime, on the same team is going to take some adjusting. Let’s all calm down and wait a bit before we proclaim that the sky is falling.

The Phoenix Suns! The Suns surprisingly don’t suck. They beat the Sacramento Kings by 30 points, and lost in overtime to the Denver Nuggets by one point, without first overall draft pick DeAndre Ayton. Ricky Rubio has made a huge difference, averaging ten points, ten assists and seven rebounds a game so far, as he’s helped pickup a lot of the slack from Devin Booker’s rusty start. A big positive from Booker’s rough start is he is averaging 8.5 assists per game so far, much more than his career average of 4.3. This season can be really interesting in Phoenix if this winds up being more than a hot streak.

Patrick Beverly! Beverly is still a

total bum. A Golden State Warriors Beat reporter tweeted that Beverly was bullying the janitors at Chase Arena, home of the Golden State Warriors, about Kevin Durant leaving.

These janitors are just trying to make a living, stop being a bum. At least he hasn’t injured Russell Westbrook for a third time yet…

Double Dirks! Luka Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis of the Dallas Mavericks have been going off.

Combining to average over 50 points per game, both look like they haven’t lost a step since last playing on the NBA stage and intend to make their names heard this year. Sunday, they play the Portland Trailblazers, which will be their first real test of the season.

While we’re talking about the Blazers, I want to give a quick shoutout to my guy Anfernee Simons. He’s been a real solid guy off the Blazers’ bench and looks like he’ll be a big part of their rotation this year. More life and more blessings.

Clippers! This team has been really, really good: They already look like a well oiled machine. The effects of the continuity of this team was underrated before the season

by many, myself included. Kawhi Leonard fits in perfectly and everyone else continues to just do their job.

Also, Patrick Patterson just scored 20 points last game, I didn’t even realize he was in the league until I opened up the box score and saw it with my own eyes. I still feel like it must have been a mistake, maybe someone in a Patrick Patterson costume.

SPEED ROUND! Toronto Raptors! Doing worse than last season but Pascal Siakam looks to be worth every bit of the max contract he just signed. Sacramento Kings!

Plummeting, and Luke Walton’s coaching ability is still totally in question. Firing Joerger looks like a mistake. Young guards! Trae Young and Shai Gilgous-Alexander both are looking absolutely amazing, with the former looking more and more like a superstar by the game. Mike Conley!

Is actually playing badly which is weird because he’s always been so consistent. I imagine he’ll get better later, for now he’s not doing well.

—Jonathan Sochaczevski

just Sports Page 16

NBA SEASON KICKS OFF National Basketball Association season began with some suprises and let-downs, p. 15.

Waltham, Mass.

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

WOMEN’S SOCCER

DAZZLING DRIBBLE

Judges cruise to victory in this week’s only game ■ The Brandeis women’s soccer team defeated Eastern Connecticut State University on Saturday, ending with a score of 2–1.

By JEN GELLER JUSTICE EDITOR

Continuing their strong season, the women’s soccer team won their only game of the week: an away game against the Eastern Connecticut State University Warriors on Saturday.

The Judges did not just squeak out their victory either. The team scored multiple points against the Warriors, ending with a final score of 2–0. The Judges’ season is now at an overall record of 10–5 as they enter the month of November.

First half The first goal of the game was scored almost as quickly as the it began. Katie Hayes ’20 was assisted by Caroline Swan ’23 to score only 2:27 into the game. The Judges started off strong and this momentum carried them through the rest of the game. Just under five minutes later, Hayes had another attempt at the goal; however, the

kick was wide and ultimately unsuccessful.

The first half of this game saw a large number of shots attempted by the Judges. In the first 27 minutes of the game, the Judges attempted 13 shots. While only the first by Hayes resulted in a goal, this shows the team’s drive. Nine shots were saved by the Warrior’s Alexis Tyrrell, which and kept the Warriors in the game, although throughout the first 27 minutes, the Warriors were unable to take any attempts at the goal against the Judges’ goalie, Victoria Richardson ’20. The rest of the first half was more quiet in terms of shots taken. Both teams proceeded to have fouls against them instead.

However, the half ended with a shot by Kerin Miller ’20 that was saved by Tyrrell, keeping the score at 1–0.

Second half The second half brought much action like the first, including the Warrior’s first attempt at goal at 48:02, which was blocked. Within a minute, the Judges responded with a shot from Juliette Carreiro ’22 that was saved by Tyrrell.

Throughout the rest of the game,

See WSOCCER, 13

☛

VOLLEYBALL

Brandeis volleyball team loses to Emerson College ■ The team ends this week 4–10 after falling to

Emerson College in the TriState match on Saturday.

By MEGAN GELLER JUSTICE EDITOR

The Emerson College Lions defeated the Judges by a score of 3–1 in the Tri-State match on Oct. 26. Their second match against Manhattanville College was cancelled. The Judges’ starters were Marissa Borgert ’21, Emma Bartlett ’20, Emily Morrison ’23, Avery Donovan ’21, Belle Scott ’21 and Amelia Oppenheimer ’23.

First set The first set started with a pair of runs by both teams. The Lions started with a five-point run to take the lead with a score of 9–3. Next, the Judges followed with their own fivepoint run to close the gap to 9–8. The Lions came back with another run and the score was soon 17–11, but the Judges would not give up and brought the score back to 19 all. The Lions and Judges then traded points before the Lions finally amassed a four-point run to win the set with a score of 25–21.

Second Set In the second set, the Lions took and early lead on a five-point run to make the score 13–8. However, the Judges rallied to cut the Lions lead to only two points with a score of 15–13. The Judges then kept the set close until the Lions increased their lead with four straight points to take a commanding lead of 22–16.

The Lions then finished the set at 25–18.

Third Set In the third set, the Judges changed up their game. After allowing the Lions to take a 7–4 lead, they turned on the heat and responded to take a huge lead of 18–12. The Lions were unable to come back, and on a kill from Talia Freud ’23, the Judges won the third set 25–10.

Fourth Set However, in the fourth set, the Lions came back from their loss in the third with a 8–1 run to start the set. Though the Judges tried, the Lions kept their eight-point lead most of the set and finished out with a 25–16 result.

The Judges’ Bartlett led the team with 13 kills, 11 digs and three

See VOLLEYBALL, 13 ☛

NOAH ZEITLIN/Justice File Photo

FAST FEET: Brandeis’ Evan Glass ’21 dribbles the ball in a game against Carnegie Mellon University on Oct. 5.

Men’s soccer outscored opponents 5–0 twice ■ Two wins, two more clean sheets for the team over the two matches, with senior forward Max Breiter on target three times.

By JONAH WHITE JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

The Judges’ men’s soccer team won at home on Sunday against Washington University in Saint Louis before hitting the road to beat Springfield College on Wednesday afternoon.

Judges 3, WashU 0 Last Sunday, the Judges got off to a fast start, going two goals up inside the opening five minutes before sealing the match with a third late in the second half.

Despite the victory, Brandeis was outshot by the WashU Bears 20–12 and only had three of the game’s nine corners. Still, they were on the more clinical side, putting five shots on target while WashU only managed to aim four of their efforts on frame, all saved by Greg Irwin ’20. WashU was caught offside five times to only one for the Judges,

and committed 15 fouls while the hosts were whistled for eight. Each team picked up one yellow card late in the second half.

In the third minute of play, Max Breiter ’20 was the only target for a Dylan Henessy ’20 cross, but still managed to send a looping header just over the goalkeeper and under the crossbar. Shortly after, a poor clearance by the Bears set up Will DeNight ’23 just outside the 18-yard box. DeNight put the ball onto his right foot and fired into the back of the net to the goalkeeper’s left. The freshman striker now has the most goals and points in the University Athletic Association, according to the Brandeis Athletics Website.

The two goals came at exactly 2:22 and 4:44 of the first half, respectively.

Two goals down, WashU had a good response and were the more attacking team for the rest of the first half and into the second, and threatened to create an exciting finish before a superb individual goal by Elias Norris ‘23.

Norris was first to a loose pass by the visitors, before making a run from the left side of defense all the way to the edge of the opposite penalty box, unleashing a curling strike just inside the post and

sealing the result for the home side.

Judges 2, Springfield 0 On Wednesday, two quickfire goals from Breiter would be the difference, as goalkeeper Irwin made nine saves. Despite entering the contest at 4–9–1 for the season, the Springfield College Pride held a slight statistical edge over the course of the match. Shots were even at 15 apiece while the hosts had a 9-–8 advantage in shots on goal. Springfield had four corners while the Judges only had one, and the Pride was guilty on all four occasions when the offside flag was raised. Brandeis committed six fouls and was on the receiving end of 10 by their opponents in a game that was free of yellow cards.

Breiter scored unassisted in the 22nd minute of play before completing his brace three minutes later, this time helped on by DeNight, with whom Breiter is now tied for the UAA lead in goals and points. Despite Springfield keeping Irwin busy, that would be all the scoring for the afternoon, as the Judges improved to 9–3–4 for the season.

See MSOCCER, 13

☛

October 29, 2019

Vol. LXXII #8 Vol. LXX #2

September 12, 2017

just

Waltham, Mass.

Images: Haven Dai/the Justice, Creative Commons, OpenSource Vectors. Design: Noah Zeitlin/the Justice.

18

TUESDAY, THE JUSTICE OCTOBER | ARTS 29, 2019 | TUESDAY, I ARTSJANUARY & CULTURE 31,I2017 THE JUSTICE

CULTURE CLUB

Food, fun and friends at ‘Saigon after Midnight’

By BRIANNA CUMMINGS JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

If you are looking for a fun vacation, there is no need to hop on SkyScanner — the Vietnamese Student Association has you covered.

On Friday Oct. 24, the VSA hosted “Saigon after Midnight.”

According to the group’s Facebook page, the goal of the VSA is “to preserve and enrich the unique traditions and heritage of Vietnam.” The club wants to inform students about Vietnamese culture using engaging events, many of which offer delicious food.

They also collaborate with other culture clubs to create interethnic cultural events.

Topics that VSA focuses on range from politics to social life. Throughout the year, VSA hosts multiple events to engage the Brandeis student body and teach them about Vietnamese culture.

From the moment students walked into the Ridgewood Commons, the vibrant atmosphere entranced them. With the colorful strobe lights sprinkling pops of red, green, purple and blue, students felt like VSA transported them to an authentic nightclub. The large “Chè Pong” tables were the most noticeable features

ART SHOW

in the room. Three large tables held ten cups on the right and left side. The name was a misnomer because the cups were filled with water and not Chè, the Vietnamese pudding.

Students were given a ball to throw in the cups and eliminate as many of their opponents’ cups as possible. Even though there was no alcohol involved, Chè Pong proved to be just as difficult as Beer Pong because it was played in the dark room. In the back of the room, the VSA E-board prepared a table with a variety of Vietnamese snacks. Guests trickled in and either flocked to the sidelines to talk to people or started playing the game.

Once the guests came, the E-board of VSA gave a presentation about life in Vietnam.

They spoke about Ho Chi Minh City and its nightlife, informing the crowd about Vietnamese culture. They also announced upcoming events, like their Hot Pot Night on Nov. 21. After the presentation, the E-board invited everyone to taste their appetizers. Among these were Chè, Cha Gao, commonly known as Spring Rolls, and Vietnamese fish balls. The food was delicious.

The Chè that was offered came in multiple flavors like

VERA SHANG/the Justice

SWEETS AND DESSERTS: Chè comes in different flavors, and they were all loved by attendees.

lychee and almond milk.

People enjoyed their food as they played games, chatted with friends and danced. At one point in the evening, a trio of students took to the center of the room and danced as everyone crowded them. The atmosphere was cheerful, creating an air of carefree

JUSTICE EDITOR

Photos Courtey of ICA BOSTON

PRECIOUS OPPORTUNITY: This Kusama INFINITY ROOM is the largest museum-owned Room in North America.”

Design: Yael Hanadari-Levy/the Justice

took photographs of students enjoying themselves.

The event definitely entertained. The food and the liveliness placed people in an upbeat mood. As the night went on, some stayed and some trickled out slowly, but it was undeniable that everyone who came had a great time.

Yayoi and her dream land

By HANNAH KRESSEL

ARTIST HERSELF: Yayoi Kusama, wearing one of her signature denselypatterned dresses, sits in the Infinity Room that is now on-view at the ICA.

fun in the midst of midterms.

If you were unfamiliar with Vietnamese pop culture, you could still differentiate between the songs that were popular and the songs that were not because students would sing along to the lyrics of popular Vietnamese songs. People from the club and other campus groups

You’ve seen the photos on Instagram: selfies framed by a bastion of mirrored globes, oblong balloons alight with polka dots, maybe a giant pumpkin whose bulging folds are a garish yellow — Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Rooms have become ubiquitous across the art and social media worlds.

In its most recent iteration, “Yayoi Kusama: LOVE IS CALLING” (open through Feb. 27, by advance ticket only), sits in one of the main galleries at the waterfront space of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, accompanied by another show, “Beyond Infinity” (also open through February).

The Infinity Room at the ICA Boston, the largest museumowned exhibition of its kind in North America, is a dark purple forest of softly whirring tentacle-shaped balloons.

To enter the InfinityRoom, you not only need to wait in line inside the gallery, but also in line out the door of the museum itself. Kusama’s

reputation truly precedes her, and this new exhibition is no exception. Once in the Infinity Room, viewers have two minutes to experience all that Kusama’s kaleidoscopic space offers. The mirror-padded cube is a quiet save for Kusama’s voice, reciting a poem over a loudspeaker. This poem, spoken in Kusama’s native Japanese, is a love song (lyrics are written on the wall outside of the Room). Her monotone recitation, however, would leave a visitor wondering.

The installation begets a near-religious rumination.

As viewers explore the forestlike space, Kusama’s projected voice gives guiding clarity in the onslaught of sensory experiences.

Kusama’s Infinity Rooms create an interesting sense of primordial importance in the age of smartphones and social media. They transcend the technology that has awarded them fame. Although the experience of an Infinity Room is undoubtedly influenced by social media — as all the selfietakers in each Infinity Room remind even the most obtuse of visitors — the work is

impossible to capture without a firsthand view. Kusama creates a space that beckons the naivete and vulnerability of childhood. Her physical creations require a childlike sense of exploration, which, coupled with her poetic recitation, leaves viewers charged with emotion long after they exit the space.

In addition to this magnetic room — which I am sure I don’t need to tell you to see, just look at the way these rooms have been deified on social media — I urge you to explore the accompanying exhibition, “Beyond Infinity.” The show is a broad look at the legacy Kusama’s work has left on the contemporary art world. Many contemporary artists who employ a variety of media are on display. Specific highlights include one of Nick Cave’s soundsuits, work by Ellen Gallagher and Kusama’s “Blue Coat” (1965), which is actually on loan from Brandeis’ own Rose Art Museum. So stop scrolling through everyone else’s Infinity Room posts, and go see it for yourself. After all, the favorable lighting just begs for a selfie.

DREAM LAND: Kusama’s voice plays in the background of the “LOVE IS CALLING” (2013) Infinity Room.

THE JUSTICE I ARTS & CULTURE I TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2019

19

CAMPUS PERFORMANCE

Live from Brandeis, it’s the Family Weekend Variety Show!

By LUKE LIU JUSTICE EDITOR

For a lot of students at Brandeis University, college is the first time they leave their homes and the friends they grew up with, and move into a brand new environment.

They try out different classes and clubs and participate in all kinds of activities. To showcase the lives of the Brandeis students, the 2019 Family Weekend Variety Show hosted 13 student groups to perform for the community and visiting parents. A combination of improv, music, a cappella, dance and more were showcased last Saturday night, at the event hosted by Dean

“We never really have incorporated themes within the variety shows in the past. I thought it would be cool to make it have a theme this year, and since it’s on a Saturday night, I thought, what [would] better draw people in than ‘Saturday Night Live?’” Similar to “Saturday Night Live,” the show started with a cold open sketch from the improv group Crowd Control, and two pieces of funky music from the Mad Band.

After that, five a cappella and four dance groups took turns to present the fruit of what they worked on this semester: a two hour talent show with nonstop excitement.

With this many performers, keeping a good pace was

SHOW YOUR PARENTS: Two months into college, many of the students have already found their new passions.

of Students Jamele Adams, Maryam Chishti ’20 and Arial Nieberding ’20.

The Justice had the chance to talk to Rebecca Goldfarb ’21, the student coordinator of the event, about the process of putting on such a massive show and what she learned from being an organizer.

When deciding the theme of the show, Goldfarb drew inspiration from one of the most famous late night variety shows, “Saturday Night Live.” She told the Justice,

particularly important to keep the audience engaged the whole time and stay until the finale. After the last performance by the Kaos Kids, a confetti explosion turned the set into a birthday celebration for Adams.

“I did not just want this to be an ordinary variety show; I wanted it to be more extraordinary than it was last year and really surprise people with an experiential finale,” said Goldfarb to the Justice.

Being a member of the Campus

Activity Board and the Family Weekend chair from the previous year, Goldfarb had experience putting on major events around campus. “I was really excited when I was offered [this year’s program] because it went really well last year, and it just made me so happy to see such an overwhelming amount of success from the show.”

However, while the Campus Activities Board was in charge of the Variety Show last year, it was sponsored by the Department of Student Activities this year, which means that aside from the support of the Director of Student Activities Dennis Hicks, Goldfarb was doing almost all of the work by herself this year. While it was certainly a challenge, Goldfarb was very happy about being the coordinator of the event. “I like how I can put my own vision, my creative choice on it … I love working with other people, but I like that this project is mine and only belongs to me…

I thought that was very cool that I got to decide everything that goes into it.”

At the same time, the event wouldn’t be as successful without the support of the performing groups. “They understand what I am doing and they are very supportive … and I appreciate their work.” And the appreciation goes both ways. President of Crowd Control and emcee Maryam Chishti ’20 told the Justice that “[the group] was really excited to perform this year because of the comedy theme around family weekend, and that we were challenged by being asked to create a cold open sketch for the show … obviously we mainly do improv so having the chance to create a skit that was scripted (loosely, a lot of improv moments were added) was an exciting opportunity for us.” MAD Band’s Community Outreach Liaison Alex Bender ’21 also mentioned that it

Photos by HAVEN DAI/the Justice

COLD OPEN: Crowd Control opened the show with a hilarious sketch, which is a new and exciting project for the improv group.

was a useful learning opportunity to “figure out the logistics of where we fit in with the show (behind the curtain was cool) and how to get off stage quickly and efficiently.”

Clearly, it was not just a great show for the audience, but also a valuable experience for the performers.

As someone who planned the Variety Show for the second year in a row, planning is still an exciting experience for Goldfarb. It might be hard to put in so much effort,

but the feeling of fulfillment made everything worth it. “Every year I get nervous for this. What if something goes wrong, what if something runs over … But once it’s over, you just feel so fulfilled … It’s so surreal that I can plan something so big.” she told the Justice. “Planning the show overall helped me learn a lot about myself with what am I capable of …

I have never felt like I was ever in charge before until I did something like this.”

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT: The Variety Show was a great opportunity for the clubs to showcase what they been practicing for over the past two months.

ART SHOW

Multitalented faculty and staff exhibit artistic creations Photos by NOAH ZEITLIN/the Justice

By HANNAH KRESSEL JUSTICE EDITOR

From Oct. 24 to Nov. 17, the Spingold Theater Center will be hosting the JustArts Faculty/Staff Art Exhibition, where faculty and staff are invited to showcase their artworks.

This piece by Dennis Hicks, recently appointed director of Student Activities, is a set of small canvases. The green and blue waves of paint bubble over both canvas, suggestive of the ocean’s dramatic swell.

“I like to challenge myself,” Sheldon Gilden, a staff member of the University Service Department who has been making wire animals for decades, told the Justice. During the conversation, he made a wire bird and gave it to Justice reporter.

Prof. Rebecca Gieseking (CHEM) enjoys origami sculpture because of its place at the intersection of art and science.

She began creating origami bowls in the summer of 2011. Although she explores making art outside of the strict aesthetic constraints of origami, these pieces are all made out of one sheet of paper.

Jess Quirk, the production manager for the Office of Communications, has three works featured in this show. One work, hung vertically between the two others, is a small piece of stained glass. The blue and purple tones from this work continue into her painted canvas, which feature undulating spills of color.

Design: Sara Fulton/the Justice

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THE JUSTICE I ARTS & CULTURE I TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2019

INTERVIEW

JUSTARTS SPOTLIGHT ON THE ROSE

By Luke Liu JUSTICE EDITOR Of all the works by Gordon MattaClark that are displayed in the Rose Art Museum, one of the pieces that stood out the most to me was a documentary film about FOOD, a restaurant located in SoHo, New York between 1971 and 1974. While it does not involve deconstructing architecture or creating graffiti on the Berlin Wall, it may very well be one of the finest representations of the values that Matta-Clark believed in.

As an artist who deeply cared about the individuals who occupy space in an urban environment, Matta-Clark saw food as something that could break barriers and bring both the underprivileged and the privileged together. In 1971, for the opening of a gallery, he and his friends roasted an entire pig and invited everyone nearby to join and celebrate. After that, the idea of starting a restaurant began to grow. Later that year, the restaurant, FOOD, was opened.

While SoHo is considered the center of the world of creative arts today, in the 1960s it was merely a failed industrial neighborhood with many struggling businesses. The empty spaces left by those business gave artists the opportunity to use them as studios and homes. A central aim of FOOD was to offer a space for artists to meet and share their ideas. While the menu did not offer a lot of dishes, they were all affordable and often unusual, such as sushi and wasabi sauce. It was the first restaurant in New York to offer sushi. Experimental dishes were also offered there, such as the famous “Matta-Bones,” which allows customers to use the leftover bones to create necklaces.

What made FOOD an important project was its relationship with the art community. It not only provided a space for artists to interact, but also offered temporary income for new members of the community.

For many artists who had just arrived in New York City, FOOD was somewhere that they could get a job while launching their artistic career.

In the documentary, we see people washing dishes, making food and playing music. This is exactly what Matta-Clark believed an urban space should be: a place where individuals help others by incorporating those people into their communities.

There is no way to do justice to a documentary film with a photo.

If you’re interested, check out the exhibition “Gordon Matta Clark: Anarchist” at the Rose Art Museum.

Alysa Noda-Hines SARAH KATZ/the Justice

Gordon Matta-Clark, Food, 1974 © The Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Courtesy The Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark and David Zwirner Photo Courtesy of the ROSE ART MUSEUM

JAC: What’s the process of putting together the haunted house?

VICENTE CAYUELA/the Justice

ANH: Every year the theme changes and we try to make it as authentically Japnaese as we can. Last year our theme was lab. The year before that was hospital, which are typical haunted house themes. But this year we really wanted to make it Japanese.…This year’s theme was Japanese Horror Stories and Urban Legends. We couldn’t give a very specific role to all of our members but a lot of us had a specific character or entity.

So the first area of the participants would walk through in the haunted house was the bathroom, and in Japan there’s a really famous story about this girl called Hanako-san that lives in the bathroom … She’s in the third stall. It was really perfect because there’s only one stall in the male bathroom but three stalls in the female bathroom exactly. So we had one of our members, Lisa acts as Hanako-san and she hid in the third stall. We had another member wear a mask and hide behind one of the shower curtains and jump up once the participants trying [sic] to go out.

JAC: Haunted House has been an annual event for JSA. What is special about haunted houses in Japanese Culture?

NOAH ZEITLIN/the Justice

To be continued...

EMILY RIORDAN/the Justice

SUDOKU

ANH: So back about two hundred fifty years ago, back in the Edo period of Japan, the commoners’ lives were thriving and they wanted entertainment somehow. And it gets really hot in the summer in Japan, so I guess that was part of the reason for why this trend was started.The commoners telling each other scary stories at night became the trend. Originally I think it was like you get together one night and light one candle, and each one goes around and tells the story. After you tell a hundred stories something was actually supposed to happen. That was the start of it, but in recent years, since it’s getting hotter and hotter every year, people want to go to haunted houses because like if you’re scared you start shaking and you think you’re cold.

JAC: How was the turnout of the event?

ANH: It was really good actually. It really exceeded our expectations. We put up the sign-up sheet two weeks in advance. We posted it at night and we went back in the morning and it was already almost completely full. I don’t think it ever filled up that fast. So it was a really happy moment. And there were some cancellations so we have a waitlist for people who could just like sign up and add what time work for them. And we will call them when we find an open spot for them.

Top 10 favourite World Series games of the 2000s

By Hannah O’ Koon JUSTICE EDITOR

Game 7 of the 2016 World Series was the greatest baseball game ever played, though the rest of these aren’t far behind.

1. 2016 G7, Cubs beat Indians 2. 2001 G7, Diamondbacks beat Yankees 3. 2011 G6, Cardinals beat Rangers 4. 2004 G4, Red Sox beat Cardinals 5. 2005 G2, White Sox beat Astros 6. 2017 G5, Astros beat Dodgers 7. 2016 G5, Cubs beat the Indians 8. 2001 G4, Yankees beat Diamondbacks 9. 2014 G7, Giants beat Royals 10. 2013 G4, Red Sox beat Cardinals

JustArts&Culture: What was your role in putting together this event?

Alysa Noda-Hines: I am the president of JSA, which is the Japanese Student Association. For this event specifically, I was taking charge of the basic layout of the haunted house, the theme and just like the general planning of the entire event.

— Editor’s Note: Editor Hannah Kressel works at the Rose Art Museum

STAFF’S Top Ten

This week, justArts&Culture spoke with Alysa Noda-Hines, the president of the Japanese Student Association, about the club’s Haunted House event on Oct. 26.

JAC: Anything else you want to add?

ANH: I do want to say that our haunted house event, is like, every year it seems like this is when all the members bond…

Every year it brings people together because it’s such an exhausting event,... and it takes hours and hours to prep.

So by the end of it, you went through so much together. Every year after it, you just feel close with everyone else. It’s my favorite event of the year.

— Luke Liu Sudoku Courtesy of OPENSKY SUDOKU GENERATOR

Solution Courtesy of OPENSKY SUDOKU GENERATOR