The Justice, March 3, 2015

ARTS Page 19

FORUM Fair minimum wage thwarts poverty 12

ARTIST TALK

SPORTS Medals earned at UAA Championships 16 The Independent Student Newspaper

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Justice

Volume LXVII, Number 20

www.thejustice.org

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

ADDRESSING ISSUES

ADMINISTRATION

Guerard selected to replace Gendron ■ Kerry Guerard is now the

new director of the Dept. of Student Rights and Community Standards.

By ZACH REID JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

Kerry Guerard has been appointed as the new director of the Department of Student Rights and Community Standards, according to a Feb. 20 press release from the Office of Communications.

Guerard first came to Brandeis in late September to serve as an interim director for DSRCS after Dean Gendron left the University after ten years for a position at Amherst College.

After working in DSRCS for a couple of months, Guerard applied for the permanent director position and began the interview process.

In an email to the Justice, Guerard wrote that she was “thrilled to [have been] selected as the Director.”

“Kerry is a great fit for Brandeis, and our students will benefit from her experience … and her vision for how to best and fairly respond

to student conduct cases,” wrote Dean of Students Jamele Adams in the press release shared with the student body.

In her time as interim director, Guerard did not implement many direct changes in the department.

She did acknowledge that some changes occurred, writing that “everyone has their own style, [and] that has likely changed in the transition” since Gendron departed the University.

Now that she is the permanent director, Guerard wrote that she is looking to gather some feedback from the community before making any major changes to the Student Rights and Community Standards Department.

“It’s important when you start a new school that you spend time reviewing the trends of the conduct office, how the process works, and what people think about them before deciding if there are any changes that need to happen” she wrote.

Before making any changes, she told the Justice that she wanted to take feedback from a variety of sources into consideration, including the Department of Community Living, Brandeis Police and the

See GUERARD, 7 ☛

FACULTY

Lynch: I will not be in the running for pres.

■ The recent faculty

meeting addressed the upcoming presidential transition and other issues.

By RACHEL SHAW JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Provost Lisa Lynch announced at Thursday’s faculty meeting that she will not be considered for the position of University president, which she will hold on an interim basis starting on July 1.

Lynch said that she accepted the position of interim president “on the understanding to not be a candidate for president.” Once a new president is selected, she will become the provost again.

During her provost report, Lynch detailed the plan which will go into action until a new University president is selected. Lawrence will continue his presidential duties until July 1, when Lynch will become interim president. Lynch said that she plans to work with the Senate on choosing a temporary provost and that the Board of Trustees and four faculty representatives will work on selecting the new president.

Meanwhile, Lynch wishes “to focus on continuing to move forward” with “inviting the best graduate and undergraduate students” and “retaining faculty that make this university what it is.”

University President Lawrence and faculty members also discussed

See FACULTY, 9 ☛

TOMMY GAO/the Justice

ADVOCATING CHANGE: Renowned journalist and alumnus Thomas Friedman spoke on Monday about the threat of climate change

Thomas Friedman ’75 leads two discussions ■ Friedman discussed

threats facing world populations and his career as a columnist and author.

By SAM MINTZ and RACHEL SHAW Justice editor and JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Thomas Friedman ’75, an established journalist and Brandeis alumnus, visited campus on Sunday and Monday to speak on the topics of Israel and climate change, respectively.

The event on Sunday was titled “Get with the Times” and was hosted by Brandeis Visions for Israel in an Evolving World, a group that aims to discuss Israel and the Middle East in an open-minded and respectful way.

Friedman spoke about his opinions on Israel and shared experiences and advice from his long career as a journalist. Friedman was interviewed by BVIEW leaders Chen Arad ’15 and Rivka Cohen ’17.

“I’m a huge believer in the twostate solution. If you believe that,

you’re my friend, if you don’t, you’re not ... there’s no mystery about my views,” Friedman told the audience on Sunday.

“Israel as a modern state had three goals: to be a Jewish state, in the ancient homeland of the Jews, and to be democratic. The issue is that you can only have two out of three,” said Friedman, summarizing what he sees as one of the key problems in the region.

Another key problem, he told the audience, is Hamas: “To me, Hamas is a tragedy. It’s a tragedy for the Palestinian people.”

Toward the end of his talk, Friedman was asked about his career as a journalist and for advice for upand-coming journalists.

“The secret of journalism—actually, the secret of life—is being a good listener,” he told the crowd.

“Because truly listening to someone is a sign of respect.”

According to Arad, between 130 and 150 people attended the discussion on Sunday.

Yesterday, Prof. Sabine von Mering (GRALL and WGS) hosted a discussion with Friedman about

environmentalism and drought in the Middle East. Friedman is a noted proponent for environmentally efficient practices.

“How to be powerful? Clean, green, energy efficiency,” he said.

He said that a positive tone, making people want to take action instead of forcing them to stop behaving in a certain way, is the most effective way to convince people to be energy efficient.

On a global scale, Friedman said, making laws governing carbon use is an important option.

Friedman shared a clip from his documentary Years Of Living Dangerously, in which he interviewed several Syrian environmentalists— some of whom are now in prison— who suggested the possibility that drought in Syria was a cause for revolution.

“I can predict that clean energy and water will be the next great global initiative,” said Friedman.

Von Mering began the event with a list of climate problems in today›s society. “2014 was the hottest year on record since 1980,” she said. “Ice

See THREATS, 7 ☛

Social media abroad

Judges extend season

Title IX

 Kevin Dupont '16 received a national award to study social media in 10 different countries this summer.

 The women’s basketball team earned a bid to the ECAC tournament.

 The University hired Rebecca Tillar as the new Title IX investigator.

FEATURES 8

For tips or info email editor@thejustice.org

Waltham, Mass.

Let your voice be heard!

Submit letters to the editor online at www.thejustice.org

INDEX

SPORTS 16 ARTS SPORTS

17 16

EDITORIAL FEATURES

10 8

OPINION POLICE LOG

10 2

News 3 COPYRIGHT 2015 FREE AT BRANDEIS.

2

TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2015

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THE JUSTICE

NEWS SENATE LOG

Senate charters two new clubs and discusses upcoming elections On Sunday night, the Senate convened for its weekly meeting to continue the process of recognizing and chartering clubs and discuss upcoming elections and events.

They first went through the process of chartering and recognizing two different campus clubs. The group Brandeis Students for Disability Activism was approved for recognition with a vote of 10 in favor, three abstains and one against and was also officially chartered with a vote of eight in favor, one abstain and four against.

The Farmers Club also received both recognition and chartering, with a recognition vote of 11 in favor, one abstain and one against and a chartering vote of 11 in favor, two abstains and zero against.

The club SoUnique, one of the University’s step groups, requested to change its name to Platinum and was approved with a vote of 13 in favor, 0 abstains and 0 against.

The Union then discussed student communications and administrative communications.

After executive officer reports, the Executive Senator discussed the importance of attendance at committee meetings and the need to get out the Senate Money Resolutions, or SMRs, which indicate what events or causes the Senate allocates portions of their budget toward.

Vice President Charlotte Franco ’15 discussed Student Union E-Board and Allocations Board elections, to take place this Wednesday, and the upcoming Senate Elections on March 16.

She also discussed an upcoming event to be held on campus on the evening of March 19, titled “What Do You Want to See in our Next University President?”

This event will allow students and members of the community to share and discuss what qualities they would like to see in the next elected University president or in future candidates.

Next, the Senate heard brief reports and updates from Committee Chair leaders on future initiatives.

Sustainability Committee Chair Anna Bessendorf ’15 discussed the State of Sustainability Town Hall that took place last Thursday as part of the committee’s Eco Week. Bessendorf said that the town hall went well and that Eco Week initiatives were successful overall.

The Services and Outreach Committee discussed the Senate Money Resolution (SMR) that will fund the Midnight Buffet, an event held for the Brandeis community at the end of every semester to celebrate the end of classes.

The Campus Operations Working Group, headed

by Mitchell Beers ’17, discussed several renovations that will happen on campus this summer that were discussed with Vice President for Operations Jim Gray.

These renovations will include major renovations to Sherman Dining Hall, the Einstein Bros. Bagels in the Shapiro Campus Center and the on-campus bookstore. They will also include several smaller renovations to bathrooms and the replacement of furniture and carpets in Rosenthal Quad, Ziv Quad and North Quad.

The Social Justice and Diversity Committee discussed a social justice march they had planned to hold during the semester, stating that they decided to postpone it to next year. They also discussed an upcoming Social Justice Poetry Slam that needs increased advertising.

The meeting concluded with senator reports, in which various senators discussed ideas and new initiatives.

Class of 2018 Senator Skye Golann discussed the idea of Turkey Shuttle transportation for all mid-semester and general breaks and mentioned partnering with Volunteer Vacations.

Other senators discussed the upcoming underclassmen dance this Saturday, the idea of filling in potholes on campus, a Senate Money Resolution for gym equipment, Joseph’s Shuttle transportation and fire alarm drills.

POLICE LOG Medical Emergency

Feb. 17—University Police received a call from the Mailman House, requesting transport of a party to the hospital for a voluntary psych evaluation. Police assisted the ambulance crew with the transport without incident.

Feb. 24—University Police received a call from a party in the Charles River Residence that they were experiencing abdominal pains, vomiting and a sore throat. Police transported the party to Newton Wellesley Hospital with a BEMCo member on board.

Feb. 24—University Police received a report of a party in the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center suffering from an allergic reaction. BEMCo and University Police responded and treated the party on scene with a signed refusal for further care.

Feb. 24—University Police received a report of a party who may have fractured their wrist playing basketball in the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center. The party was treated

by BEMCo on the scene and transported to Newton Wellesley Hospital for further care by University Police.

Feb. 26—University Police received a report of a party in the Intercultural Center with a staple in their finger. The party was treated on site by BEMCo with a signed refusal for further care.

Feb. 28—University Police received a call from a party who reported they picked up an intoxicated party on the side of the road and brought them to Gosman. BEMCo treated the intoxicated party on site and Cataldo ambulance transported them to Newton Wellesley Hospital.

Mar. 1—University Police received a call of an unconscious party in North Quad. University police and BEMCo responded and the party was transported to Newton-Wellesley Hospital

by Cataldo ambulance.

Drugs

Feb. 24—University Police were requested to investigate a call of marijuana in Ziv Quad

Disturbance

Feb. 17—University Police received a call from the Foster Mods of a possible altercation in progress.

Police arrived on scene to find parties verbally arguing, and finding no physical fighting, took no further action.

Mar. 1—University Police received a call requesting the removal of disturbing patrons from the Stein. Police spoke with the patrons, who departed without incident.

Larceny

Feb. 20—University Police received a report of a banner taken from Levin Ballroom and compiled a report on the incident.

Feb. 26—A party in Goldfarb Library reported a credit card and iPad stolen. University Po-

TAKING ACTION

—Rachel Sharer

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS

and found nothing in the apartment. University Police cleared the area while the Community Development Coordinator spoke with the resident and took no further actions.

lice complied a report on the incident.

Other

Feb. 18—University Police received a call from a party in Shapiro quad that another person was banging on their door and trying to enter the room.

University Police checked the building and found it clear of pedestrians. The reporting party was satisfied after speaking with University Police.

Feb. 24—University Police received a report of a suspicious letter in the Rabb Graduate School and complied a report on the incident.

Feb. 27—University Police received a report of a party who received a strange package from a party known to them. Police compiled a report on the incident.

Feb. 28—University Police were notified of a suspicious party in the bathroom outside The Stein. Police found the party using the restrooms and took no further actions.

—compiled by Avi Gold

BRIEF

’Deis worst for free speech

MORGAN BRILL/the Justice

Students gather on the Rabb steps to make signs advocating fossil fuel divestment during the Global Divestment Day Rally. The event was organized by campus environmental group Brandeis Climate Justice.

Yesterday morning, Brandeis was named one of ten educational institutions on the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s list of the Ten Worst Colleges for Free Speech in 2014.

FIRE published the list in a Huffington Post article online and released it in a press release as well. Other institutions included in the list are California State University, Fullerton; Chicago State University; Georgetown University; University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign; University of Iowa; Marquette University; Modesto Junior College; Kansas Board of Regents and the U.S. Department of Education. This year’s list is the fourth that FIRE has released annually.

“More than half of America’s top colleges maintain speech codes that blatantly violate First Amendment standards,” the press release reads, claiming that FIRE “takes a closer look at the previous year’s incidents of college censorship to determine the nation’s 10 worst abusers of student and faculty free speech rights.”

The Huffington Post article, written

by FIRE’s President, Greg Lukianoff, lists the ten institutions and includes a short blurb about each, indicating why it made the list.

“You could be forgiven for assuming at first blush that Brandeis University is a haven for free speech, given its namesake’s contribution to First Amendment law,” the blurb about Brandeis reads “But beneath that façade is an environment that has been so hostile to free speech that Brandeis University’s reappearance on our list was a foregone conclusion.”

Lukianoff cites several episodes at the University that have made their way into the national media’s interest over the past year—including Prof. Donald Hindley’s (POL) retirement after comments he made on the “Concerned” listserv had been publicized, last spring’s rescinding of an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali and two episodes involving Daniel Mael ’15.

—Rachel Hughes

There were no corrections this week.

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

Justice

the

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The Justice is the independent student newspaper of Brandeis University. The Justice is published every Tuesday of the academic year with the exception of examination and vacation periods. Editor in chief office hours are held Mondays from 2 to 3 p.m. in the Justice office.

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The Justice Brandeis University Mailstop 214 P.O. Box 549110 Waltham, MA 02454-9110 Phone: (781) 736-3750

ANNOUNCEMENTS Was It Really Suicide? Dark Secrets of Domestic Femicide to Preserve Family Honor

Hundreds of women and girls become victims of honor killings in the Middle East, South Asia and around the world.

Most of the violent honor killings occur in the dark privacy of their homes and often are recorded as suicides in public records.

This talk will discuss honor killing cases in Pakistan and Turkey.

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

Albert Luthuli, Nelson Mandela and the Genealogies of Armed Struggle in Apartheid South Africa

This is the Department of African and Afro-American Studies’ Annual Ruth First Memorial Lecture. It will feature speaker Dr. Robert Trent Vinson. Dr. Vinson has written The Americans are Coming!: The Dream of African American Liberation in Segregationist South Africa.

Thursday from 12 to 1:30 p.m. in room 163 of the Heller-Brown Building. RSVP online through the Brandeis events page.

Effective Storytelling: Lessons from a Senior Washington Speechwriter

Steve Rabin ’00, director of speechwriting at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and former chief speechwriter for Governor Martin O’Malley, will cover the tactics he employs to be an effective storyteller. He will share lessons learned as a Washington, D.C. speechwriter and how students can apply them to professional interactions.

Thursday from 12 to 1 p.m. online.

Japanese Student Association’s Ramen Night

During Ramen Night, participants will be able to compete with one another to create the tastiest bowl of ramen. A set of judges eager to critique and relish the succulent

dishes will pit the student “chefs” against one another for the title of “JSA’s Top Ramen Chef.”

Friday from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in the Intercultural CenterSwig Lounge.

The Responsibility to Protect at 10: The Challenge of Protecting the World’s Most Vulnerable Populations

The Responsibility to Protect principle, adopted by leaders across the globe in 2005, recognizes that the international community has a role to play when sovereign states fail to protect their own populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

This conference is designed to bring together leading scholars and global actors to share ideas and experiences about both philosophical and practical aspects of the often-questioned R2P principle.

Monday from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in Levine Ross in the Hassenfield Conference Center.

THE JUSTICE

Committee makes report on sexual violence available

By Abby Patkin JUSTICE Editorial Assistant

The University Advisory Committee’s Subcommittee on Sexual Violence made their report on the University’s sexual violence policy available to the community via the Office of the Provost this month. The report was first released in June 2014, after 15 months of work. The committee added a supplementary addendum in Nov. 2014 as a response to the 2014-2015 Rights and Responsibilities handbook.

“Social justice, which is a pillar of Brandeis University’s identity, must begin at home. Violence of any type in our midst tears at the fabric of who we are as a community, but sexual violence is a particularly pernicious form, because it goes to the heart of a person’s being and can result in harms to students’ physical and mental health,” the report begins.

According to the report, in 2011, all 20 Women and Gender Studies core faculty members produced a letter to the Faculty Senate on sexual assault that prompted the Senate to hold hearings on sexual violence against students.

The letter noted the low reporting rate and the lack of training for professors despite the Office for Civil Rights’ requirement for such training, according to the report.

In response, former Provost Steven Goldstein ’78 appointed the committee at the recommendation of the Faculty Senate in 2011 with the intent that the committee would recommend policies that could reduce instances of sexual violence on campus, as well as ways the University could better implement these policies.

Committee co-chair Prof.

Bernadette Brooten (NEJS) wrote in a recent email to the Justice that the report is something she hopes will help implement change and not only help students who have been victims of sexual violence but also decrease the overall number of cases.

“I am very glad that Brandeis’s increased attention to sexual violence and better training are now resulting in more students seeking the help and justice that

they deserve,” she wrote.

According to the report, 19 percent of female college students and 6.1 percent of male college students nationally have experienced sexual assault or sexual assault attempts during their undergraduate years.

According to the report, this statistic would mean that 389 undergraduate women and 96 men at Brandeis would have had similar experiences while undergraduates, yet the report notes that in 2010 no students reported instances of sexual violence, and in the two subsequent years, only a total of three students reported cases.

While Brooten noted that most universities experience underreporting from students in sexual assault cases, she said the committee was more focused on the gap between the number of sexual violence reports at the University and the statistical number of cases that are likely happening.

Brooten also detailed the need for a better understanding of other cultures and communities, so as to improve resources available for international and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, intersex and queer students.

“I want all of our trainings and educational efforts to be imbued with an awareness of how sexual violence intersects with race, ethnicity, religion, disability, LGBTIQ concerns, nationality, and other forms of diversity,” she wrote.

“Sexual assault happens on all communities [sic], but differently in each. I fear particularly that students of color and international students may be hesitating to seek help.”

Additionally, Brooten noted the important role students have played—and will continue to play—in the process of finalizing the report and discussing its content in the coming months.

“Student activism, especially that of B.SASV has had a tremendous impact,” she wrote.

“I would like to see broad discussion among students on policies on sexual violence and their implementation, as this is a subject that affects the lives of many students.”

Brooten is also a member of the Task Force on Sexual Violence— comprised of faculty, staff and students—which will discuss the report and is currently creating a sexual misconduct policy and a sexual assault educational campaign for faculty and students.

TUESDAY, march 3, 2015

3

FUTURE-FOCUSED

STUDENT LIFE

■ The UAC Subcommittee on Sexual Violence proposed changes to the sexual assault policy in their report, which they made available online.

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MORGAN BRILL/the Justice

ADDRESSING CONCERNS: Students and administrators came together to discuss sexual assault policies and other issues.

Administrators discuss campus improvements ■ During Thursday’s

meeting, members of the administration discussed the idea of a sexual assault survey.

By ABBY PATKIN JUSTICE EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Last Thursday, students and administrators gathered in the Admissions Presentation Room for a round table discussion on the University’s on-campus initiatives. During the event, the group discussed an upcoming sexual assault climate survey and stressed the need for administrative transparency and complainant anonymity when the University handles student complaints.

The event was held by the Student Union executive board and featured input from Senior Vice President for Students and Enrollment Andrew Flagel, Vice President for Campus Operations Jim Gray, Sexual Assault Services and Prevention Specialist Sheila McMahon, Dean of Students Jamele Adams, Executive Director of Health and Wellness for the Psychological Counseling Center Michael LaFarr and Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Student Activities Stephanie Grimes.

The group began by discussing the University’s current sexual assault policy, touching on the Faculty Report on Sexual Violence, which was recently made available to the public.

Flagel noted that the current pro-

cess for a student who wishes to lodge a harassment or assault complaint and have it investigated is not “the most effective” it could be and noted that the slow timing of the process has been “challenging.”

McMahon discussed the sexual assault climate survey, which will collect data from students on experiences “in terms of victimization and how students feel about the general climate” in terms of sexual assault on campus. According to McMahon, the survey will be sent to the student body in late March.

“This is intended to be a tool so our community can really see what’s going on,” Flagel added. “The more students that participate, the more robust the outcome will be and the more we’ll be able to understand.”

Flagel also added that the survey could give administrators ideas for potential improvements around campus.“[T]he reality is that some of the best ideas we’ve had since I’ve been here have come from students,” he said. “I have not had great ideas; [the good ideas] come from you.”

The group also discussed the University’s current psychological counseling service.

“Students take on a lot of responsibility ... and sometimes … people take on things that are actually dangerous and scary. If someone has a friend who is suicidal or who displays self-harming behavior, this person is still expected to be a high-performing student and do all the things they need to do, but they’re exhausted from trying to

support their friend,” McMahon said.

“What I would love to see for this community is connecting students who need more support.”

Flagel also discussed how the University is attempting to improve the way it interacts with students so as to facilitate change and open discussion.“What I hear from our students—even the most frustrated ones—is an increasing confidence that there is a good will and intent to make things better,” he said.

Additionally, Flagel touched on the University’s initiative to improve understanding of foreign cultures and methods of interacting with students from different countries. He also discussed what he wishes to see in President Frederick Lawrence’s successor.

“Brandeis is a place where change is the norm,” he said. “What I hope we’ll see in this next presidency is a maintenance of that trajectory.”

The group also discussed upcoming renovations to Sherman Dining Hall and the bookstore, which will take place over the summer.

According to Gray, the University will be turning the Einstein Bros. Bagels in the Shapiro Campus Center into a full service café with a more expanded menu.

Gray also discussed the ongoing renovations to Usen Castle, which will be open for housing in the upcoming year, but which Gray says may not be open in subsequent years.

Gray mentioned the possibility of building two new classrooms in the Gerstenzang Science Library.

Administration

University hires Rebecca Tillar as Title IX investigator

■ Tillar began her role as investigator, a position created in the 2014-2015 “Rights and Responsibilities.”

By marissa Ditkowsky JUSTICE staff writer

On Feb. 9, Rebecca Tillar began her role as Title IX investigator and compliance officer.

The University hired Tillar to take on the newly established position to help oversee Title IX investigations in December following a national search.

Tillar wrote in an email to the Justice that she will oversee investigations concerning behavior that may be in violation of Title IX. Title IX is a part of the 1972 United States Education Amendments that states “[n]o person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject-

ed to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

The principal objective of Title IX is to “avoid the use of federal money to support sex discrimination in education programs and to provide individual citizens effective protection against those practices. Title IX applies ... to all aspects of federally funded education programs or activities,” according to the Department of Justice.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, Title IX includes gender-based discrimination such as the “failure to provide equal opportunity in athletics, and discrimination based on pregnancy.”

Title IX also covers instances of sexual assault on college campuses, and as such, Tillar will be overseeing sexual misconduct investigations as well.

Tillar will conduct informal investigations when complainants do not wish to enter a formal process, such as the Special Examiner’s Pro-

cess for cases of sexual misconduct.

Additionally, Tillar will help to conduct formal Special Examiner’s Processes with an independent investigator from outside the University as a co-examiner.

Tillar will most often fill the role of co-examiner in the Special Examiner’s process, according to Associate Vice President for Health and Wellness Sheryl Sousa ’90 in an email to the Justice.

Sousa did not respond by press time to questions regarding who would take the role of the co-examiner otherwise and under what circumstances. The co-examiner role is a new feature, having been developed as part of the 2014-2015 Rights and Responsibilities handbook.

“The position of Title IX Investigator/Compliance Officer helps to ensure that all complaints of sexual misconduct are handled through consistent practices and standards,” Sousa wrote.

In addition to investigations, Tillar noted that she will also be assist-

ing with education and outreach regarding Title IX rights and responsibilities, as well as reviewing University policies and procedures to identify additional areas in need of improvement.

Tillar will report directly to Sousa and work within the Division of Students and Enrollment and in collaboration with Title IX Coordinator Linda Shinomoto.

According to Sousa, Shinomoto’s role will not change with the introduction of Tillar’s position.

“Linda [Shinomoto] is the University’s Chief Title IX Officer charged with assuring that the systems, personnel, and processes are in place to achieve overall compliance,” she wrote in the email.

According to Tillar, similar investigative positions already exist at other universities.

However, she wrote that a majority of the positions at colleges around the country were created due to recent recommendations of Title IX compliance made by the De-

partment of Education to encourage fair investigations for both the complainant and accused.

“By having its own investigator as well as multiple independent investigators, Brandeis will be able to conduct unbiased, thorough investigations and analysis on all reports of sexual misconduct and interpersonal violence,” Tillar wrote.

Tillar comes to Brandeis with vast legal knowledge as a licensed attorney and Army National Guard judge advocate.

Prior to beginning her role at Brandeis, she served as a lead investigator and judge advocate for National Guard Bureau in the Washington, D.C. area.

While in that position, she investigated a number of reports of sexual misconduct within the Army and Air National Guard.

Tillar received her Bachelor of Science in hospitality management and business from The Ohio State University and her J.D. from Seattle University School of Law.

4

TUESDAY, march 3, 2015

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THE JUSTICE

OBITUARY

PRESIDENTIAL PERSPECTIVE

Bob Simon ’62 dies in accident ■ Alumnus and 47-year

veteran CBS correspondent Bob Simon ’62 passed away in New York City from injuries sustained in a car crash.

By Abby Patkin JUSTICE Editorial Assistant

CBS News correspondent, 60 Minutes contributor and Brandeis alumnus Bob Simon ’62 died in a car crash in New York City on Feb. 11.

He was 73.

Simon joined CBS in 1967 as a reporter and editor and reported on both the Vietnam and Gulf Wars during his lengthy career.

While covering the Gulf War in 1991, Simon was captured by Iraqi forces and detained, an experience he detailed in his book Forty Days.

Simon is also known for his reporting on the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and his coverage of China’s Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, in addition to many other major overseas conflicts.

“It is such a tragedy, made worse because we lost him in a car accident, a man who has escaped more difficult situations than almost any journalist in modern times. Bob was a reporter’s reporter,” 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager said, according to CBS. Over the course of his 47-year career, Simon won over 40 major awards, including 27 Emmy Awards and four Peabody Awards.

In 2000, Simon won the highest honor for electronic journalism, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Univer-

sity Award, for “Shame of Srebrenica,” a 60 Minutes II report on the Bosnian War’s genocide.

“Bob was, for the last five decades, simply one of the best, in my opinion, ... at getting a Simon story, telling a story, writing a story and making it simply unforgettable,” Anderson Cooper, who worked with Simon at 60 Minutes, said, according to CNN. Simon graduated from Brandeis in 1962 with a degree in History, earning the distinction of Phi Beta Kappa. He was also a Woodrow Wilson scholar and spent time in France as a Fulbright scholar.

“What made Bob special was his ability to match the right words with the right pictures at the right moment,” remarked Brandeis alumnus Allen Alter ’71, according to a Feb. 12 BrandeisNOW article. “Curiosity is an essential ingredient for a good journalist like Bob Simon and is an essential ingredient for Brandeis students.” Alter is a senior producer at CBS News and a member of the University’s Board of Trustees. “[Simon] was driven by a natural curiosity that took him all over the world covering every kind of story imaginable. There is no one else like Bob Simon,” Fager said. “All of us at CBS News and particularly at 60 Minutes will miss him very much.”

Simon is survived by his wife of 49 years, Françoise, and his daughter Tanya, a producer for 60 Minutes.

Academics

Board approves degree programs, tenures profs ■ The Board of Trustees

approved the establishment of two degree programs.

By Rachel Sharer JUSTICE editorial Assistant

Last Sunday, the Board of Trustees approved the establishment of two new degree programs and also approved two faculty members from the International Business School for tenure.

According to a Feb. 13 BrandeisNOW article by Executive Director for Integrated Media Bill Schaller, the Board approved both the Executive Master of Business Administration for Physicians and the Graduate Program in Teacher Leadership.

The Executive MBA for Physicians is a 16-month long program that will be offered through the Heller School.

The program will “build on Heller’s longstanding MBA/MD program with the Tufts School of Medicine and on its executive education programs in the field of health care,” the BrandeisNOW article stated. According to the Heller School website, the new physicians program requires 63 credit hours taken over 16 months and focuses on a “hybrid” curriculum of both online and onsite coursework.

Dr. Jon Chilingerian Ph.D (HS), the director of the MD-MBA and Physician Executive programs, will direct the EMBA program.

The second new degree program is the Graduate Program in Teacher Leadership, which will be part of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

According to the article, the program will start in July and result in either an AGS program endorsement or the master’s of education degree.

Provost Lisa Lynch told BrandeisNOW that “the addition of these two degree programs complements and enhances Brandeis’ mission to benefit society by providing teachers and

physicians the knowledge and training they need to be more effective leaders in their organizations.”

The Board also approved two IBS faculty members for tenure at the meeting.

Prof. Aldo Musacchio (IBS) and Prof.

Anita Tucker (IBS) were both approved to become associate professors with tenure starting on July 1. Both professors were recruited from Harvard Business School last spring to work at IBS and bring different assets to the Business School—Musacchio to “enhance IBS’ Latin American Initiative,” particularly in Brazil, and Tucker to “strengthen its operations management curriculum,” according to the article.

Musacchio teaches the IBS course “Business Strategy in Emerging Markets” and holds a doctorate in Latin American history from Stanford University, while Tucker teaches “Operations Management and Supply Chain Management” at IBS and holds a doctorate in business administration from Harvard University.

While both professors are fairly new at the University, having started here only last spring, IBS Dean Bruce Magid is quoted in the Feb. 13 article as saying that both professors have made “notable contributions” to the Business School, “both for the high quality of their scholarship and for their commitment to our students.”

Musacchio wrote in an email to the Justice that he is excited to be joining IBS as a tenured professor. “Brandeis IBS is very special … the students are fantastic and incredibly diverse and international, and the faculty is just outstanding,” Musacchio wrote.

As he is now in charge of the Latin America and Brazil Initiatives at IBS, he wrote that he is “focused on increasing the ties the school has with Latin America” and creating “an ambitious program to radically increase the number of Latin American students in all of our programs.”

Prof. Tucker did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

ABIGAIL ROTHSTEIN/the Justice

FREE EXPRESSION: University President Frederick Lawrence speaks at a town hall meeting held before break. The meeting focused on issues of campus free speech that have generated media attention, including the “Concerned” listserv.

Lawrence discusses issues of free speech at University ■ President Lawrence

hosted a town hall meeting to address the recent issues with freedom of expression.

By RAchel Sharer JUSTICE Editorial Assistant

On Wednesday, Mar. 11, University President Frederick Lawrence held a town hall meeting on free expression, in which he addressed the issues of free speech that have recently put Brandeis in the national media spotlight.

The town hall began with a brief introduction from Provost Lisa Lynch, followed by a half-hour talk

by Lawrence and a half-hour question-and-answer session. Lynch said that advancing free speech and free expression “is at the heart of what we do” as a liberal arts University. Lawrence, she added, is “one of the country’s leading experts on issues of free expression, civil rights and hate crimes.”

The most important question to understand, Lawrence said, was “why … we protect free expression at all.” He compared the views of two Supreme Court Justices— Louis Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes—both experts on free speech who played a significant role in the way we think about free expression today.

Lawrence went on to discuss the importance of free speech on a University campus, stating that “a University exists for the very purpose” of having debates. The limits of free expression, Lawrence said, arise when debate reaches a level of extremity, such as verbal threats or assaults. However, he noted that it is hard to distinguish between act and expression, so a better approach is to “look at the intent of the speaker.”

“If the intent is to instill fear rather than debate,” Lawrence told the audience, then “the government should be involved in restricting expression.”

“To say that expression may not be prohibited doesn’t mean that it can’t be criticized,” Lawrence said.

He proposed that the University must engage in real debates and dialogues in order to find “respectful ways to disagree” with differing viewpoints. The process of learning to engage and debate respectfully is “a challenge we ought to set for ourselves and for each other,” Lawrence said.

As the floor was opened for questions from the audience, Prof.

Harry Mairson (COSI) was the first to stand up and address the “Concerned” listserv.

Mairson said that while he used to be “very active in academic politics,” he is no longer because he felt

as if “fear was instilled in [him] by the administration.”

Mairson asked Lawrence about his public response to the released listserv correspondence, in which Lawrence wrote that “remarks by an extremely small cohort of Brandeis faculty members are abhorrent.” Mairson said he emailed Lawrence asking which statements he was referring to, considering that the listserv has been around for years, but Lawrence had not clarified. He asked Lawrence during the question-and-answer session to cite which comments he was referring to. Mairson also noted that Lawrence had written in his recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that “Brandeis University embraces those who stand with Israel.” Mairson questioned why the Brandeis mission statement or the University website did not also say this.

Lawrence responded first to Mairson’s comments about the “Concerned” listserv, stating that he did not mention specific faculty names or comments so as not to call anyone out. Furthermore, he said he did not want anyone to be punished for certain statements, but “statements that had a kind of vulgarity to them did not represent us as a University ... in the best light.”

Lawrence said he received advice from many different sources on the best way to respond to the leaked comments, including those who said faculty members should be punished for the vulgar statements, but he believes his response was the most respectful way to express his views.

A senior student stood up to speak next and said that he had felt unwelcome at the University during the 2012 election because he supported a candidate that the majority of the school did not. In particular, the student noted, he felt uncomfortable in one of his classes when a professor criticized his political viewpoints. Lawrence responded that “no student should ever be made to feel unsafe to express their opinion” in the classroom or anywhere on campus. However, Lawrence noted that “part of the price of expressing opinions” is having people disagree with them, but that debate and respectful discussion in the classroom is the best way to solve these disagreements.

A second student addressed her concern with the school’s affiliation with conservative Jewish and Zionist donors, stating that she felt as if this “disrupts the mission of Brandeis” and limits the University’s commitment to social justice, as the school might try to placate donors and cater only to their views.

Lawrence responded that while it is the American Jewish community

that has in part made the University possible, he is also aware that it can be a cause of tension. However, Lawrence said that all views must be balanced and that one must push back against those who might try to “silence” views that are unlike their own. “Students have an obligation to express themselves, and we have an obligation to protect that,” Lawrence said, but community members can resolve issues through “respectful disagreement.”

Another audience member noted that, unlike many other schools, Brandeis is not only harshly criticized in the media, but is seen by outsiders as being responsible for the speech of its students and professors. Lawrence agreed that the University gets “a kind of public scrutiny that many other Universities do not.” Lawrence also said that the media and the outside world has an “unhealthy level of interest” in what is happening on campus, citing specifically the Khadijah Lynch ’16 and Daniel Mael ’15 controversy that occurred in late December. Lawrence said that while the University cannot force the media to lose interest in on-campus affairs, the school can protect each and every student, which the rest of the world does not have a role in.

Finally, another senior stood up and addressed the “Light of Reason” dedication ceremony in the beginning of the year, at which several students took the opportunity to protest the University’s sexual assault policies. The student said that Lawrence has often been quoted as saying “we are not here to protect you, we are here to prepare you for the real world,” asking Lawrence if this was taken out of context and what he meant by it.

Lawrence said that not only was the quote taken out of context, but it was misquoted—what he actually said was “we are not here to protect you from the world, we are here to prepare you for the world.”

Lawrence said that, at the dedication, he pointed at the gates of the University and said that they are not meant to keep the world out, but rather to take the issues of the world and bring them inside to prepare one for reality. “We are here to make you the kind of people who will change the world … you are being prepared not just for a job, but for a life,” Lawrence said.

Lawrence concluded by again discussing the importance of respectful debate. “Having this kind of a forum and context … and being able to talk about [these issues] is very important.” he said. “No one has the right to delegitimize anyone else’s views ... people aren’t going to agree with you...no one has the right to say you don’t have a right to express your opinion.”

THE JUSTICE

student union

Student Union secretary position remains available ■ Students elected two

new quad senators, but abstained from voting for the position of secretary.

By RACHEL SHARER JUSTICE EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

On Feb. 12, Brandeis students voted in the second round of elections this semester to fill three open Student Union positions: Secretary, Rosenthal Quad senator and Ziv Quad senator.

The first round of elections was held on Jan. 29 and filled the positions of vice president and midyear senator. The position of secretary was opened up when former Student Union Secretary Charlotte Franco ’15 won the position of vice president in this round.

The positions of Ziv Quad senator and Rosenthal Quad senator were not filled in the last election round because of voter abstention in the Ziv Quad election and a ballot error in the Rosenthal Quad senator election.

According to Student Union President Sneha Walia ’15, the Rosenthal Quad senator ballot unintentionally did not list one of the candidates, so a second round of voting was necessary.

Three students ran for the position of secretary, but the “abstain” option won. Abstain won with 121 votes total, which was 34 percent of the total votes cast.

Kris Labovitch ’17, who received 57 percent of the votes cast, was elected to the position of Rosenthal Quad senator.

“I ran because I consider myself lucky to be in Rosie Quad, I love the people in it and I hope to make

the rest of the semester as successful as possible,” wrote Labovitch in an email to the Justice.

His goals include installing more washers and dryers in Rosenthal Quad, introducing new sustainability initiatives and increasing budget transparency.

Ellen Parker ’16 was elected to the position of Ziv Quad senator.

Parker was the only candidate running for the position, and won with 70 percent of the vote.

Parker did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

According to Franco, elections for next year’s Student Union will be held in the upcoming weeks.

The first round of elections for the upcoming academic year will take place Thursday, March 12.

In the upcoming first round, students will be voting on the election of many positions, including president, vice president, secretary, treasurer and positions on several different boards.

The second round of elections will take place on Tuesday, March 24, according to Franco.

In this round, students will vote on all of the senator positions. This includes two senators-at-large, eight class senators (two per class) and one senator for racial minority students.

Additionally, students will vote on five associate justices of the Student Judiciary.

Elections will be held online for 24 hours on these dates. All candidates must attend mandatory elections meetings in order to be entered on the ballot.

All new Union members will start a formal training process when elected and will be officially sworn into their positions at the end of the spring semester.

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Student Life

PCC adds three student representatives to team ■ The Psychological

Counseling Center has hired student volunteers for the first time to improve outreach.

By MARISSA DITKOWSKY JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

The Psychological Counseling Center has added volunteer student representative positions to its team as a part of a greater initiative to improve outreach to the Brandeis community. Emily Kurtz ’15, Anna Grandis ’17 and Leah Friend ’17 are currently serving in these roles.

According to Senior Associate Director and Clinical Director of the PCC Joy Von Steiger, the student representatives will act as liaisons between Brandeis students and the PCC. She further wrote in an email to the Justice that both Kurtz and Grandis reached out to her to ask if they could volunteer at the PCC in the fall.

Kurtz said in an interview with the Justice that at the time, students were not allowed to work in the PCC for confidentiality reasons.

“I invited them in to meet with me and expected to talk to them about projects I had in mind and was surprised to be greeted by two young women who pitched a number of ideas about how they could promote the counseling center in new and innovative ways to the students,” wrote Von Steiger. “I was taken aback and thrilled.”

Kurtz said that the team met for the first time in December before winter break.

“The idea is that we will be similar to Undergraduate Department Representatives for academic departments, but all information between the students and the therapists, counselors [and/or] psychia-

trists they see will still be completely confidential,” Grandis wrote in an email to the Justice.

“We can answer questions about the different groups offered, the types of therapy that the therapists are trained in, how many sessions are free, etc.”

Friend joined the team as well, and the three new representatives created a new Facebook page for the PCC. The representatives, according to Von Steiger, will be putting their contact information on the Facebook page.

Kurtz mentioned that students cannot message or comment on the page for concerns regarding student confidentiality, but that students can feel free to reach out to the student representatives in order to ask them questions about the PCC. “[E]verybody knows about the PCC, but [the PCC] found that a lot of students aren’t using it, and so … the idea behind the student representatives is to kind of promote the PCC,” said Kurtz.

The representatives are currently helping to plan an event aimed to reduce stress, which Kurtz said would potentially take place around mid-March.

This event will feature therapy dogs, which are trained to comfort specific groups of individuals, namely those going through difficult periods, those who are rehabilitating or those who have emotional disorders.

Kurtz shared further plans to hand out flyers and to table in the Usdan Student Center to promote the PCC and to share what the student representatives have been working on.

She also noted potential plans to create a survey to find out why more students are not using the PCC services.

Von Steiger did not respond with the number of students who currently use the PCC by press time.

Part of the representative role, according to Kurtz, is to reduce the perceived stigma associated with using PCC services that may keep many students from seeking help.

“I think [people do not use the PCC because] Brandeis is such a small school, and people are afraid of other people seeing them,” Kurtz wrote in the email.

“Because there’s a stigma behind mental health in general, I think that makes people more self-conscious to go there, and I guess part of our position is to eradicate that and to make people feel more comfortable using the PCC services.”

Both Grandis and Kurtz noted that they are Psychology majors.

Friend did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

The representatives have also been advertising a number of new therapy groups on the Facebook page as well.

These new groups include support for individuals with eating disorders, support for sexual assault survivors and a cognitive-behavioral therapy group, among others.

According to Von Steiger, however, the PCC is still providing about the same number of clinical hours as this time last year.

Von Steiger also noted some other upcoming initiatives, including a March 16 workshop regarding panic disorders, as well as an effort to collaborate more closely with the Department of Community Living.

PCC staff will be visiting residence halls as a part of this initiative, potentially holding workshops and meet and greets.

Additionally, the PCC is hoping to partner with Hillel in order “to respond locally to terrorism and anti-Semitism abroad,” Von Steiger wrote.

PANEL

Administrators discuss future campus sustainability goals ■ The State of Sustainability

Town Hall last week focused on new initiatives to decrease energy usage across campus.

By RACHEL SHARER JUSTICE EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Last Thursday, the Senate Sustainability Committee hosted its second annual State of Sustainability Town Hall, in which students questioned administrators on the progress of sustainability initiatives on campus.

The administrators discussed several sustainability improvements the University has made, including the hiring of a new sustainability manager, the large reduction in natural gas usage and an initiative to use more solar energy on campus.

The event was held as a part of the Sustainability Committee’s EcoWeek. It consisted of presentations from various on-campus groups committed to sustainability and environmental issues, as well as a panel of administrators, who responded to students’ questions about sustainability on campus. Founder and Chair of the Student Union Senate Sustainability Committee Anna Bessendorf ’15 moderated the panel, which also included Vice President of Operations Jim Gray, Energy Manager Bill Bushey and Associate Director of the Environmental Studies Program Prof.

Laura Goldin (ENVS).

Bushey discussed the cost of energy usage on campus, stating that the University spends about $12 million annually on energy, mostly on electricity and natural gas. He said that while the University has “made great strides” in reducing the energy usage on campus, conservation measures are costly and the addition of many new buildings has made it harder to cut back.

However, according to Bushey, there has been a 25 percent reduction in natural gas usage over the past nine years, which he said is a big decrease.

Bushey also said that both electric usage meters and condensation meters have been added in many buildings across campus to monitor the usage of electricity and natural gas respectively.

In discussing sustainability changes over the years, Goldin said that many of the changes made in the 15 years she has been with the University have been “mainly due to student interest in sustainability.” The increase in environmental groups across campus and the push from students for greener initiatives has led to both more sustainable efforts and the idea to hire a new sustainability manager on campus. According to Goldin, the manager will be “focusing 100 percent of their time on making campus more sustainable.”

According to its website, Brandeis began an Energy Savings Program in 2004, resulting in financial savings and energy use reduction. In 2012, the University implemented the Brandeis Sustainable Energy Program, which was a five million dollar investment toward energy efficiency. “Energy reduction is a very slow process,” Bushey said, mentioning that many of the annual goals the University sets are very ambitious. However, he also mentioned that the University’s commitment to sustainability is very real and that immense progress has been made in just the past few years.

The panelists also discussed the University’s goals and future plans for sustainability on campus. The goals include an increase in composting waste, a move toward LED light bulbs, and sustainable renovations in Sherman Dining Hall, such as improvements to the ventilation systems and the replacement of older equipment.

Gray mentioned that another big step the University is trying to take is increasing its use of solar energy over time.

Solar power is already used to heat water in the Charles River Apartments, offsetting the burning of oil that is typically used, and a solar power system on the roof of Gosman

Sports and Convocation Center is used for energy in both the gym and in the Foster Mods.

The panelists concluded by mentioning the many ways students can contribute to sustainability and energy reduction on campus. Changing some daily habits, Gray told the crowd, can lead to large reductions in student energy usage; closing windows, decreasing the heat in dorm rooms, turning lights off and unplugging chargers can all help.

“It’s not just conservation initiatives by the University, or the altering of fuel usage that will change things,” Goldin said. “It’s student and faculty behavior and understanding that…it’s something all of us can do.”

Student groups also discussed the progress that they have made to increase sustainability on campus. Students for Environmental Action, the largest environmental group on campus, discussed the group’s ongoing commitment to environmental service as well as several initiatives they plan to implement in the spring, such as a reusable shopping bag program, tree plantings across campus and continued electronic waste collections.

Michael Abrams ’15, the head of the recently chartered club Brandeis Climate Justice, discussed his club’s commitment to divestment on campus. The group has been urging the University to divest from fossil fuel companies and put the money toward investments in companies that use cleaner energy. Earlier this month, Brandeis Climate Justice held a Global Divestment Day Rally on campus, in which many students and faculty members participated.

Finally, Stephanie Weinstein ’17 from the Brandeis Sustainability Fund discussed contributions that the fund has made toward increased sustainability, including dual-flush toilets across campus and “Tap Brandeis,” an effort to increase the usage of reusable water bottles. She said that BSF will continue to fund important sustainability projects throughout the semester and the next few years.

MORGAN BRILL/the Justice

A CALL FOR CHANGE: Philip Wight (Ph.D.) spoke about the importance of fossil fuel divestment during the Divestment Day Rally held on campus on Feb. 12.

THE JUSTICE

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TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2015

7

THREATS: The events focused on Israel and climate action

FACULTY FREEDOM

CONTINUED FROM 1 is melting in the arctic, and setting wildfires is becoming the norm in many parts of the world.”

She added an example that Brandeis students have personally experienced: “On this side of the continent,” she said, “we are seeing extreme winter storms.”

At both events, audiences were

suggested to Tweet questions at #AskTomFriedman and he answered some of them at the end of both talks.

The head sponsor of yesterday’s event was Faculty Against the Climate Threat.

Several academic departments and student groups were co-sponsors, along with the Brandeis Alumni Association.

MORGAN BRILL/the Justice

ADRESSING EXPRESSION: Prof. Harry Mairson (COSI) and other professors discussed freedom of speech concerns at the faculty meeting last Thursday—in particular, the issues surrounding the "Concerned" listserv and President Lawrence's response.

FACULTY: Debates about

free speech continue concerns about freedom of speech, as well as the transition process to a new University president and the number of snow days.

The discussion of freedom of speech addressed Lawrence’s email response to the "Concerned" listserv, a restricted email listserv on which faculty voiced their opinions on political issues, and the contents of which were partially released last July by student journalist Daniel Mael ’15.

In response to several controversial comments in the listserv, Lawrence wrote in an email to the faculty that “some remarks by an extremely small cohort of Brandeis faculty members are abhorrent.” This email was also posted to the University 's website, and it was also discussed at a town hall meeting about free speech this week.

At the faculty meeting, Prof. John Plotz (ENG) asserted that Lawrence should share the specific individuals mentioned in the email because “people worry about being quieted

by … authority.” In response, Lawrence explained that the letter was “not meant to punish but to comment.” During the discussion, Prof.

Elizabeth Ferry (ANTH) directed her concern that “both civil and uncivil comments were being lumped together” when the leaked comments of the listserv members were “re-blogged.”

The discussion branched with additional topics involved in general academic discourse. For instance, professors shared their views on the need to prepare students on “possible objections” that arise during debates and the real issues involved in climate change in terms of global warming. Several professors expressed that they find it difficult to share their opinions in the “current climate” of the University. One professor recognized that the Internet has changed the “rules of discourse.”

Before the discussion, the meeting covered several reports by staff leaders. In his presidential report, Lawrence explained that this is his

last academic year as president. He expressed gratitude to Lynch for her hard work and for the staff’s support through letters and phone calls. He ended the report with a remark that he “still believes the best days are yet to come.”

Lynch said in her report that there would be a “national search” for a Vice Provost for Research. The past few months, Prof. Irv Epstein (CHEM) held this position on an interim basis. She also detailed how the University planned to accommodate recent snow days, stating that if there is one more snow day, there will be an extra class on April 29, one of the final exam study days. If there are two more snow days, there will be class on an undetermined Sunday.

In his Senate report, Prof. Thomas Pochapsky (CHEM) said that there will be an upcoming meeting on Thursday, March 5, called “the faculty against climate threat” and that the next Faculty Senate meeting will be the upcoming Monday.

GUERARD: To work on changes within community CONTINUED FROM 1 Student Conduct Board.

Guerard mentioned that the Student Conduct Board—an organization that allows undergraduates to participate in the University’s judicial system—has not changed in her time here. She also wrote that the conduct process has not undergone any changes in the past few months.

Guerard’s main responsibilities on campus will include “adjudicating disciplinary cases as well as managing education and outreach to the community regarding the conduct process,” according to the press release.

She will also join the Title IX Committee and the Care Team, which will “make decisions about a course of action for supporting the students who are brought to the attention of the teams,” according to Guerard.

let’s eat grandma Let’s eat, Grandma!

Join Copy.

Save lives.

Contact Carmi Rothberg at copy@thejustice.org

After serving as a member of the Student Conduct Board at Fitchburg State College while studying there, Guerard began to explore student affairs as a potential career option.

She went on to earn her Master’s of Education degree in Higher Education Leadership and Administration from Jones International University.

Before coming to the University and joining as interim director after Gendron's departure, Guerard served as the interim Assistant Dean of Students at Suffolk University for 10 months.

After working at Suffolk, Guerard then served as the Assistant Director of the Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities at North Carolina Central University for one-and -a-half years and then as the Director of Judicial Affairs and Orientation at Muskingum University for 10 years.

8

features

TUESDAY, March 3, 2015 ● THE JUSTICE

just

VERBATIM | LAO TZU A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.

ON THIS DAY…

FUN FACT

In 1908, the U.S. government declared open war on U.S. anarchists.

The African continent is the world’s oldest populated area.

World traveler: 10 countries in 10 weeks Kevin Dupont ’16 receives a national award to study social media abroad

PHOTOS COURTESY OF KEVIN DUPONT

PROFILE PICTURE: Kevin Dupont ’16 was inspired by his independent travels to pursue the study of different countries and social media abroad this summer.

By Mira Mcmahon Justice contrIBUTING WRITER

Travelling for 10 weeks through 10 countries on three continents may seem like a dream trip to some, but for Kevin Dupont ’16, it has become a reality. Dupont will be traveling this summer to research how social media influences and responds to social unrest.

At the beginning of this semester, Dupont, an Anthropology and International and Global Studies double major with a minor in Business received the Circumnavigators Club Foundation’s national Circumnavigators Award, a $9,000 grant that allows business students to conduct research abroad on the subjects of their choice.

Circumnavigators Club Foundation Scholars travel-study grant is awarded to five students across the U.S. each year. Madeline List ’15 became the first Circumnavigators Club Foundation Scholar at Brandeis last year. List’s research explored international attitudes toward disability.

Dupont is no stranger to international travel. He has traveled independently to the Caribbean, Spain, France, England and Poland.

He also studied abroad in Geneva, Switzerland, last semester,

taking classes and interning with a nongovernmental humanitarian aid organization. There he had direct access to the United Nations Office in Geneva.

“I got to go to U.N. meetings and meet with some really interesting people from all over the world, including even a Brandeis professor,” he said.

“

I started unpacking it all and social media and social unrest is what came up

Dupont’s experience abroad shaped his choice to study how different countries use social media to organize social change. “[Studying abroad] definitely influenced my topic choice, because I used Facebook and Twitter to keep my friends and family updated on what I was doing,” Dupont said.

“Then I started thinking if I use it for telling people where I am, then

STATUS UPDATE: Dupont looks above at the Swiss national flag while on the top of a castle in Gruyere Switzerland during his semester abroad last fall.

it could be used for so many other things. I started unpacking it all and social media and social unrest is what came up.”

Dupont will depart from Boston in May and visit Brazil, Tunisia, Greece, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Thailand, Singapore, China and Japan before returning in August. He will be comparing his findings in each country to form his thesis for the Circumnavigators Club.

“What I’m really trying to research is what social media can do in society. Even though the everyday person may think that one tweet or one Facebook post is really nothing or has no complications, that isn’t always true,” Dupont said.

Although social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook exist on the Internet, Dupont wants to explore the root causes of social unrest by talking to people across the world about their involvement in and reaction to different social media movements.

“You can make an assumption from a computer, but you can’t make an assumption from actually being there and having the tangible evidence of someone’s words or someone’s actions,” Dupont said.

He chose each country on his itinerary based on its current or past involvement in social mediabased social change. “I’m kind of going location-specific with every place I go. So, Brazil will be more of how social media affected the less fortunate. There’s a pretty large equality gap there,” Dupont explained. “I will be trying to talk to people on the ground to see what made them protest and rebel against the government.”

Dupont applied for the Circumnavigators Award at the recommendation of his former Business Anthropology professor, Mrinalini Tankha Ph.D. ’13, who serves as the faculty liaison for the foundation’s award. Dupont submitted his proposal to a board of three Brandeis Faculty members and was notified in December that he had received the award.

In the months leading up to his trip, Dupont has been researching his destination countries. He has planned out his itinerary and is working on making contacts in each country.

The professors at the International Business School are helping Dupont make contacts in several countries, he said.

Dupont is most looking forward to exploring new regions of the world. He is especially excited to visit Thailand and Hong Kong.

“Southeast Asia I don’t know much about in terms of what the culture is like, what the food is like. That’s really interesting, that it’s an un-

BRANDEIS PRIDE: Dupont shows school spirit by wearing a Brandeis sweatshirt while traveling abroad in Vienna Austria. known,” Dupont said.

He understands, though, that he may face challenges during his long trip.

He feels that one of the most difficult aspects of the trip will be making meaningful connections despite language barriers.

“I’m traveling alone for two-anda-half months across the globe to countries where I don’t speak the language,” he explained.

He also anticipates challenges will arise during his work in the field. “I’m expecting things to be a little tough with my research. I don’t expect every day to be finding a new discovery. I expect some days to be quieter than others,” Dupont said.

However, Dupont remains optimistic about his research. He believes that it is essential to research how social media is currently affecting the world. He stresses the importance of keeping up with the fast pace at which social media is evolving.

“Social media is being used differently now. And that’s why I

think it’s something that should be researched right now, while it’s still being used, instead of after, when it wouldn’t mean the same,” Dupont said.

Dupont hopes that his research will benefit the Brandeis community by providing students with more information on how social media may be used.

Since most Brandeis students use social media, Dupont said that he is interested in seeing how his peers will react to the way social media is being utilized across the world.

As for Dupont’s personal social media use, he plans on cataloguing his experiences on a blog so that he may share his thoughts and findings in real time.

He used a video blog to update his friends and family while he was studying abroad in Switzerland, but he wants to try a new outlet.

“I might actually do my own personal blog instead of a video blog just because I feel it’s a lot easier to write things out than to speak them,” Dupont mused.

Bringing awareness to Brandeis

THE JUSTICE

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TUESDAY, March 3, 2015

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In light of National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, people on campus came together to focus on health resources By bRIANNA mAJSIAK JUSTICE editor

Over the past few days, you may have seen the NEDAwareness hashtags online and body-positive messages, or even participated in a social media campaign to raise awareness for Eating Disorder Awareness Week (EDAW). EDAW is a national movement sponsored and organized by the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) on the last week of every February. This year, it was held from Feb. 23 through March 1 and focused on improving the public understanding of eating disorders through various themes on social media.

Eating disorders are largely considered one of the most dangerous mental illnesses and according to NEDA’s website, “In the United States alone, 30 million people will be impacted by an eating disorder at some point in their lifetime.” These eating disorders include anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating and aeating disorders not otherwise specified.

Several events took place on campus to promote EDAW. On Wednesday evening, Walden Behavioral Care, a local eating disorder center, came to campus and screened a film to generate discussion on how men’s masculinity is influenced by the media.

On Thursday, Amy Scobie-Carroll spoke on a panel with a recovered individual and they both discussed eating disorder signs, symptoms and causes.

The new student-run organization Active Minds hosted the events. According to their club webpage, Active

Minds aims to educate the Brandeis population about mental health and dispel the misconceptions associated with mental health disorders.

Despite impacting millions of people in the U.S., eating disorders are widely stigmatized and not fully recognized as a potentially life-threatening mental illness.

The lack of awareness for such an alarming illness is what inspired Amy Scobie-Carroll to take on her position as the eating disorder specialist at Brandeis’s Psychological Counseling Center (PCC) this past fall. ScobieCarroll works with students who are struggling with eating disorders, disordered eating or body image issues.

In an interview with the Justice, Scobie-Carroll touched on why eating disorder awareness became important to her.

“I want to help move eating disorders from the old sort of view that they are somehow ‘a choice or that they’re not a real illness’ into helping them be truly appreciated as illnesses that really [need] and [deserve] research and help,” she explained.

Scobie-Caroll is not alone in her work at Brandeis to promote eating disorder awareness. Carly Rosenbaum ’16 has worked closely with Brandeis’ chapter of Delta Phi Epsilon, as vice president of programming to promote awareness. Through their philanthropy, the sorority is officially partnered with the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD).

Although unrecognized at Brandeis,

Delta Phi Epsilon works to spread awareness about eating disorders among their sorority and to the general Brandeis community. Each semester, they hold an ANAD vigil, and for the first time, this year they had a virtual campaign for ANAD to promote Eating Disorder Awareness week.

The vigil is an intimate experience for the sorority. “It’s a candlelight vigil, and we talk about what an eating disorder is—people share their personal stories. It’s very emotional and personal. Every vigil we have is different, depending on who speaks and who runs it,” Rosenbaum said.

Their virtual campaign for ANAD this past week consisted of several hash-tags and posts on the sororities Facebook and Instagram accounts that promoted themes like “makeup-less Monday” to encourage affirmative body messages.

As seen in the virtual campaign on social media, a crucial aspect of Eating Disorder Awareness Week is promoting positive body image. Negative body image and dissatisfaction is a common cause of eating disorders because extreme and frequent dieting can act as the trigger that sets off an eating disorder.

Scobie-Caroll recommends— in terms of helping people— that “if you suspect that a friend or someone you love has an eating disorder, it’s a really good idea to express your concern.

A lot of times people dance around it or they don’t confront the person. It is a good idea to express your concern from a very supportive standpoint.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF AMY SCOBIE-CARROLL

PROVIDING SUPPORT: Amy Scobie-Carroll, the eating disorder specialist at the Psychological Counseling Center, runs the Living in Recovery support group in the PCC. In addition to her own private practice in Brookline, Scobie-Caroll runs the Living In Recovery support group in the PCC. Recovery can be one of the most difficult parts for many people struggle with an eating disorder. The process is a long one that can involve relapses and requires consistent professional and familial support.

“I really enjoy helping people recover, because it is really wonderful to see people be able to shift their belief systems and improve their ability to cope with emotion and change their behaviors and love their bodies more. It’s a very rewarding field for that reason,” Scobie-Carroll said.

Eating disorders are an especially concerning issue on college campuses because, according to NEDA’s website, eating disorders are most prevalent in young adults. Eating disorders don’t discriminate and can affect people of all genders, races and socioeconomic backgrounds.

It’s difficult to estimate just how many college and university students are impacted by eating disorders because many individuals do not admit to having them.

“If people on campus make an effort to talk about eating disorders and re-

duce the stigma around it, ... then that will become part of the fabric of the Brandeis community. That it’s okay and important to talk about because it’s about staying well. It’s really part of the philosophy or the general feeling of the community at Brandeis that we want to promote talking about difficult topics and bringing things into our consciousness,” Scobie-Caroll explained.

Rosenbaum also feels that more needs to be done on college campuses to promote this issue and dispel the stigma surrounding it. “I don’t think there could ever be enough. Until the stigma is gone, there will never be enough done and there’s no way to tell what is enough.”

There are many resources available on campus to students, faculty and staff who need information about eating disorders.

In addition to the PCC, the Health Center offers professional care and treatment of eating disorders. There is also a nutritionist available on campus to the Brandeis community.

“I think that Brandeis does this very well, and I hope it’s true on other campuses-that there are treatment providers available for help,” Scobie-Caroll explained.

CREATIVE COMMONS

ONLINE CAMPAIGN: Each year, NEDA creates a national online campaign using Facebook and Instagram to raise awareness.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CARLY ROSENBAUM

SEEKING SOLACE: Members of the Delta Phi Epsilon sorority hold a candlelight vigil to talk about eating disorders and share personal stories to spread awareness in their partnership with The National Association for Anorexia and Associated Disorders.

MORGAN BRILL/the Justice

CAMPAIGN TRAIL: DiPhiE Brandeis’ Vice President of Programing Carly Rosenbaum ’16 worked on a virtual campaign to promote Eating Disorder Awareness

10 TUESDAY, March 3, 2015 ● THE JUSTICE

the

Justice Established 1949

Brandeis University

Rachel Hughes, Editor in Chief Tate Herbert, Senior Editor Glen Chagi Chesir, Managing Editor Jessie Miller, Deputy Editor Avi Gold, Associate Editor Sam Mintz, Senior News Editor Brianna Majsiak, Acting Features Editor Max Moran, Forum Editor Noah Hessdorf, Acting Sports Editor Emily Wishingrad, Arts Editor and Brooke Granovsky, Acting Arts Editor Morgan Brill and Grace Kwon, Photography Editors Brittany Joyce, Online Editor Carmi Rothberg, Acting Copy Editor Aliza Kahn and Talia Zapinsky, Advertising Editors

EDITORIALS

Deny claims of free speech suppression Over the course of the past two academic years, the University has seen a large number of media scandals, many of which have been classified as violations of academic freedom of speech. In an editorial on the rescinding of an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Wall Street Journal proclaimed, “Brandeis … might also ask if its ‘core values’ now include intolerance and the illiberal suppression of ideas. Our answer would be yes.” A letter responding to University President Frederick Lawrence’s stance on statements made on the “Concerned” Listserv, signed by the entire English Department, called on Lawrence to “swiftly and publicly clarify the right of professors to express opinions and explore ideas without fear of reprisal,” implying that such a stance needed to be clarified.

Just yesterday, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education named Brandeis as one of its “10 worst offenders of Free Speech on Campus,” namely for rescinding Hirsi Ali’s degree and for “charging outspoken student Daniel Mael [’15] with ‘bullying, harassment, and religious discrimination,’” according to a Mar. 2 Huffington Post article.

Reading these reports, one would be led to believe that Brandeis is suppressing speech at a high rate. Yet this board holds that a closer look at these events highlights the clear flaws in this analysis.

Note that in the exact same statement that rescinded Hirsi Ali’s degree, she was invited to campus to speak “in the spirit of free expression” to the Brandeis community at large. Instead of engaging in our robust academic environment, Hirsi Ali has instead chosen to question the environment of critical thinking at Brandeis from a distance. This board maintains that the only person stopping Hirsi Ali from speaking on campus is Hirsi Ali. The invitation remains open.

In response to the publication of many email exchanges among faculty on the “Concerned” Listserv, Lawrence sent an email in which he stated “some remarks by an extremely small cohort of Brandeis Faculty members are abhorrent.” Professors, in the aforementioned letter, faculty meetings and elsewhere have raised their fears of being quieted by the administration. This board ponders the root of such a fear. Although Lawrence expressed his dissatisfaction with some of the comments made by the professors—expressing his own right to an opinion—never has the University made a public statement on the matter. Lawrence’s letter was sent to the Brandeis community from his personal email, not the generic and often used “Office of Communications” email address.

Recognize true violations

Throughout the email, Lawrence differentiated his view from that of the University: speaking in first person, he “repudiate[d]” the supposedly offensive statements. Yet when speaking from the perspective of the University, Lawrence only noted that the statements “do not represent the Brandeis community.” Perhaps more significant, no members of the faculty were fired or penalized or saw any sort of University repercussion for statements made on the Listserv. The only faculty member whose “Concerned” emails were leaked left the University did so of his own volition.

In addition to the Hirsi Ali degree rescindment, the FIRE ranking notes Brandeis’ handling of a community standard report filed by Eli Philip ’15 against Mael. FIRE holds the University accountable for filing the charges brought by Philip. This board wonders what FIRE would have had the University do instead.

Would an organization whose mission is to protect free speech on campus rather the University silence the accuser instead of allowing all sides of the case to be heard in a public forum? How could this be construed as a better protection of speech than allowing the case to be heard? Ultimately, the case was dropped by Philip, neither student faced any sort of repercussion and both continue to thrive on campus as vocal students.

Notably, the FIRE ranking omits the suspension of the academic exchange between Al-Quds University and Brandeis, officially announced on Nov. 18, 2013.

Here, an academic exchange between universities was suspended due to what some saw as offensive actions—one would think it a clear violation of academic freedom and free speech. Yet the only true termination that occurred was the formality of the relationship. Since the suspension, a great exchange of ideas has occurred between Brandeis students and Al-Quds students through the Brandeis University & AlQuds University Student Dialogue Initiative. Brandeis students now participate in greater discourse with Al-Quds students than before the suspension.

This board affirms that erroneous claims of freedom of speech violation lessen the true power of that right. In all of these cases, the parties lodging such accusations seemingly confuse suppression of free speech with being unhappy with the University’s decision.

Just because a scandal occurs, does not make it inherently an issue of academic freedom. And to all those who disagree with our assessment, we invite you to campus to talk about it.

Deepest sympathies to Cox’s family

Last month, the Brandeis community lost one of its most adored athletic administrators, Vanessa Cox. On Feb. 12, Cox passed away from injuries sustained in a car accident. This board extends our condolences to Cox’s family and asks the University community to honor her memory.

Cox left an indelible mark on the Athletics department at Brandeis through her work as the coach of the women’s club lacrosse team and with the Friends of Brandeis Athletic Hall of Fame. Many both on campus and off knew her and have reflected fondly on their time with her.

“If something was difficult for me or my mother, she would pick us up and help us

Celebrate Cox’s spirit

plow through it, while at the same time being a high-quality competitor on the field and off the field,” said Cox’s brother Brandon in a Feb. 18 Boston Globe article.

Cox embodied these same qualities in her work, where she was dedicated to the success of the Athletics program and its individual students. In announcing the memorial service, the Athletics department hoped to “celebrate the vibrant and radiant spirit that Vanessa exuded every day.”

Cox is survived by her parents and brother, who reside in the greater Boston area, and her paternal grandparents.

GABY YESHUA/the Justiice

Views the News on

A new issue of Adolf Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto, Mein Kampf, or “My Struggle,” is due to be released early next year. While the state of Bavaria, which owns the German copyright to the book, has not reissued Mein Kampf in years, its copyright is set to expire in December. The new edition will be in its original German and is heavily annotated. The Munich-based Institute of Contemporary History, the organization putting out the new edition, believes that the new edition will serve as a purposeful academic tool rather than one for inciting fascism and anti-Semitism.

Critics of the publication feel that its release comes at an inopportune time. Anti-Semitism in Europe is rising, especially after the deaths of four shoppers at a kosher supermarket in Paris in January. The Community Security Trust, a British charity which ensures the safety of the U.K.’s Jewish community, anticipates that reports from 2014 will show a sharp increase in anti-Semitic attacks. Do you believe it is appropriate to reprint Mein Kampf?

Prof. Paul Jankowski (HIST) Mein Kampf is an awful book—false, turgid, bursting with the effrontery of the half-learned. Once Hitler was in power, innumerable editions of the book he had dictated in Landsberg prison in 1924 came out, with the grammatical errors cleaned up but little else changed. The violent racial project in the east with its vista of conquest, the fusion of domestic with foreign war, the rapture with publicity techniques, propaganda, lies and violence, the anti-Semitism—a farrago of lies, half-truths and delusions spills from its pages. If only more statesmen of the 1930s had read Mein Kampf and taken it seriously, they might have grasped whom and what they were dealing with, before it was too late. As for today, no one who isn’t an anti-Semite already is going to become one after reading it, and the rest of us can only learn from it. After all, it’s there. Yes, let them re-publish it.

Prof. Paul Jankowski (HIST) is the Raymond Ginger professor of History.

Prof. Steve Dowden (GRALL) The republication of Mein Kampf is necessary and overdue. In order for Germans and Austrians to confront the past, the past must not be suppressed or censored—or represented by the circulation of unreliable, underground editions. We all need to know and understand what was in that book. We need to know why and how it was able to exercise its venomous influence in its day. Its day is now long past, but our need to understand is not. That Mein Kampf should appear now in a critical edition is a positive development.

Prof. Steve Dowden (GRALL) is a professor of German. He has expertise in modern German literature and culture.

Erica Evans ’15 I do believe it is important to reprint Mein Kampf, so that it can be used as a reminder of the power of hate. Refusing to reprint Mein Kampf would be an effort to forget history. When I studied abroad in Berlin, I would walk past a synagogue on my way to school. What sticks out strongest in my memory is the sign on the synagogue, explaining that it was set on fire during Kristallnacht. The last line of the sign simply said, “Never forget” By reprinting Mein Kampf, Germany is ensuring that the tragic history remains alive and recorded so it can never be repeated. With the disturbing increase of anti-Semitic attacks in Europe, there has never been a more relevant time. Just because something is objectionable, it does not mean it should be discarded; instead, it is important that it be kept preserved.

Erica Evans ’15 is an undergraduate departmental representative for the German language and literature program.

Zach Cardin ’15 Evelyn Beatrice Hall, Voltaire’s biographer, summed up his beliefs about free speech: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Barring any book from publication because of the ideas expressed is inappropriate. It is easy to allow speech that one agrees with, but the true test of democracy is how it treats the most distasteful speech. It is unreasonable to suspect that the reprinting of Mein Kampf will put European Jews in immediate danger. It would also be unethical for the Munich-based Institute of Contemporary History to make a profit off this hateful book. They should donate the revenue to reinvigorate Europe’s Holocaust education program.

Those concerned about the rising anti-Semitism in Europe should redouble their efforts to expose the dangers of racial bigotry in the marketplace of ideas. Hitler burnt books, we should respond to them.

Zach Cardin ’15 is an undergraduate departmental representative for the History department.

THE JUSTICE

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Use Nemtsov assassination to reexamine Russian power Max MORAN

THE BOTTOM BUNK

“I’m jealous, Viktor. You don’t answer to anyone. You have no real opposition, you know exactly how every election is going to turn out.” So says Frank Underwood to the fictionalized Russian president Viktor Petrov in the new third season of House of Cards, which premiered on Friday. Petrov, a not-so-subtle stand-in for Vladimir Putin, makes no pretense of viewing other nations as anything but pieces in a chess game. And he plays the game well; Petrov quickly presents himself as the only character this season who’s just as ambitious and ruthless as Underwood himself.

Yet the issue most critics have leveraged at the character is that he’s too soft. In the third episode (Spoiler Alert), Petrov attends a dinner at the White House, to which the band Pussy Riot—playing themselves—is also invited. Petrov takes photos with the band, tells them he’s “considering” their activism and even offers a toast in their honor. The magazine Foreign Policy pointed out that if Petrov is supposed to be Putin, then “Petrov is uncharacteristically concerned about the opinions and well-being of Pussy Riot, two of whose members in real life were imprisoned for nearly two years for protesting against the Russian Orthodox Church and Putin himself.”

In an interview with the New Times, Pussy Riot’s Masha Alyokhina herself added “Petrov is more of a little Tsar. He is too jolly for Putin, of course.”

Any Netflix binge-watchers who took a break on Friday night to check the news would only have had this criticism reinforced. In what the New York Times called “the highestprofile political assassination in Russia in a decade,” Boris Y. Nemtsov was shot to death mere feet from the Kremlin. Nemtsov, a prominent and outspoken critic of the real world’s Russian president, was out on a walk with his girlfriend when he was shot four times by unknown assailants.

Many are questioning exactly how such a violent crime could be perpetrated steps away from one of Russia’s most heavily surveilled landmarks, a question which is itself secondary to the greater debate of who was behind the shooting. Most doubt this question will ever be answered. Russian police have a history of finding the man who pulled the trigger but never the man behind the man, especially so in political killings.

Of course, a wide range of theories have emerged as to why Nemtsov was gunned down.

The most ridiculous is the one proposed by Russian police officials on Saturday, who said that Nemtsov may have been a “sacrificial victim” killed by his own supporters in an act of martyrdom. The most prominent in the Western media—if not explicitly stated, certainly implicit in almost all coverage—is that Putin himself is behind the attack.

Articles repeatedly reference an interview Nemtsov gave a week before his death, in which he coincidentally gave an offhand remark that he was worried Putin would kill him. There are also frequent interviews with Nemtsov’s opposition allies who all hurl the blame at Putin, and even though the lack of balancing interviews may just be the administration’s unwillingness to talk to the press, this is all the more suspicious to the burgeoning conspiracy theorist.

Proponents of this theory point to the startling track record of Putin critics being hushed up: though Nemtsov is certainly the most highprofile case, similar hits by gunmen silenced lawyer Stanislav Markelov, journalist Anna Politkovskaya and human rights activist Natalia Estemirova. Additionally, the investigative committee looking into the crime will answer to Putin personally, even though he himself is a prime suspect. This fits with a Western narrative that is more and more antagonistic to Putin: a Feb. 16 Gallup poll found that 18 percent of Americans now view Russia as the nation posing the greatest threat to the United States, beating out both China and North Korea. Gallup found that Russia’s annexation of Crimea

and belligerence to Ukraine and the United States were the reasons for this shift—both of which can be squarely blamed on Putin.

So is the president of Russia behind an assassination on the steps of the country’s most famous monument? Much as it would make a good House of Cards twist, there’s no way to know anything about why Nemtsov was killed until more evidence is gathered, and any accusations against the government are based on circumstance and politics. What’s sad is that, in all likelihood, that evidence will not be gathered and whoever did hire the hitmen will remain unprosecuted.

But of all the conspiracy theories and speculation, I find the comments of Vladimir Milov, who collaborated with Nemtsov on a series of pamphlets alleging corruption within Putin’s administration, most believable. “There is ever less doubt that the state is behind the murder of Boris Nemtsov. The motive was to sow fear.”

Regardless of why Nemtsov was murdered, the end result is the same. In a country where one man holds ever-growing autocratic power, which has massive military capability and which has committed the most globally significant land-grab in recent political history, one of the only true contenders is now dead.Putin’s internal poll numbers continue to swell, and the United States and its allies are still trapped in a position where meaningful action against him would lead to refrozen Cold War. While President Obama bragged that the Russian economy was “in tatters” at this

MARGOT FIELD/the Justice

year’s State of the Union, the country’s foreign debts are declining alongside its reserves, and the Gaidar Institute estimates that Russian gross domestic product will shrink by only 2.7 percent this year, despite falling oil prices.

Russian standard of living is dropping, but internal public opinion is that this is due to Western sanctions and that continued trust in Putin will hold the country together. Meanwhile, those sanctions aren’t even that strong: the Gaidar Institute estimates that 6 percent of Russia’s industrial enterprises are affected

by U.S. sanctions, which, though significant, is not enough to utterly cripple the country’s economy as Obama implied.

There is no denying that Putin plays hardball and plays like a bully. And there isn’t much that the U.S. can do about him. Hostile behavior will only be matched by more hostility, slowly escalating toward nuclear standoff.

Negotiating would require sacrifices the U.S. likely isn’t willing to make—and which Russia isn’t willing to give up on, knowing that the U.S. will back down from a meaningful military standoff against them.

So as much as the response to Nemtsov’s shooting likes to imply a story about a grand conspiracy spearheaded by a madman politician, the factual Putin is much scarier. He’s calculating and efficient, and he uses his lack of meaningful internal checks against his power to great consequence in the international community. So let’s not get hung up on the drama of an assassination and instead look long and hard at the Russia situation writ large.

Prevent Tsarnaev death penalty to uphold moral values

By CHRISTA CAGGIANO SPECIAL TO THE JUSTICE

Barely 24 hours after I had returned home from Brandeis Admitted Student’s Day, the Boston Marathon bombing happened. As the story and subsequent manhunt unfolded, I followed the news not as a concerned American but as a concerned Brandeisian and perhaps Bostonian. This episode was the new association I had with my new identity as a Brandesian, as I feared for the safety of the place I had recently decided upon as my new home.

It seems fitting that now, as part of the community whose safety and identity I had once so feared for, the case of Dzhokhar Tzarnaev again becomes centrally important nearly two years later. Now victims of the violence will see their attacker brought to justice, but at what cost?

Last week, Tzarnaev was once again denied an appeal to have his trial held outside the Boston area. Set to be tried under federal law, the death penalty looms over his head, despite Massachusetts being a death penalty-free state. The combination of these facts primes this trial to be one of the most significant human rights questions we will all face while at Brandeis. Tzarnaev’s innocence is not really the question that we are confronted with. According to the New York Times, the prosecution has provided the court with 590 law enforcement witnesses and 142 civilian witnesses, including an eight-year old boy.

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Many legal experts believe that the trial will be an easy victory based on the overwhelming amount of first-hand accounts, photographic evidence and erstwhile confessions.

Of course, it goes against the fiber of our legal system to assume guilt, and I do not think we should speculate on the innocence of Dzhokhar. Currently, Tsarnaev and his attorneys must decide whether or not he should change his plea to guilty. The trial inevitably won’t be about assigning guilt, but instead it will be about about sentencing.

Nonetheless, I think it is not only acceptable but, rather morally imperative to speculate on the punishment of Tsarnaev. We are confronted with the unjustness of the death penalty and whether it is an appropriate punishment for the magnitude of his act. Obviously, he is complicit in the deaths of three people and the injury of 260 others. But how does setting a precedent of cancelling out violence by committing more violence provide a solution to this problem?

As American citizens, how we punish those who break the law reflects directly upon us.

It is an indication of our collective values about some of the most primordial emotions: fear and retribution. It is a cliché of rom-coms and mothers alike to say that hard times reveal a lot about the character of a person. The Dzhokhar Tzarnaev case is not different.

According to a 2012 Amnesty International report, over two thirds of countries have outlawed capital punishment. However, as

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of 2010, the United States had company with countries like China, Iran, North Korea and Yemen in practicing these executions. The United States isn’t keeping good company.

Also, the death penalty is expensive. A Seattle University study found that a case seeking the death penalty cost the state about $3 million, a million more than a non-death penalty case.

Not to mention, the death penalty is also racially biased and ineffectual. A 2007 study by Yale Law school found that African-American defendants receive the death penalty at three times the rate of white defendants when the victims are white. Additionally, a 2009 National Research Council study found that 88 percent of criminologists believe that the death penalty is not a deterrent to murder. Nondeath penalty states consistently have lower rates of homicide according to FBI crime statistics.

Yet, despite these arguments, I believe we should be indignant about the choice to pursue the death penalty not out of pragmatism but out of passion.

As a Massachusetts transplant, I am proud to be a part of a state that adheres to its convictions. Massachusetts has not executed anyone in 67 years. Boston is a vibrant and educated city, where 43 percent of residents have at least a bachelor’s degree, the fifth ranking city in the nation. Many Bostonians are aware of the nuances of the death penalty and familiar with the arguments against it, as the Boston Globe finds that only 33 percent of

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Boston residents support capital punishment.

In short, Massachusetts is a just and principled state. We know better, believe better and should act better than our most basic instincts when pursuing a punishment for Dzhokhar Tzarnaev.

I understand the fervent desire for closure.

What Tsarnaev did to his many victims is inexcusable, and he should be held accountable.

The choice to hold Tsarnaev’s trial in Boston is an overtly political one—Boston deserves to finish what it started. While that choice is questionable at best and unfair at worst, it is essential to remember that closure and retribution are not the same.

The word “amnesty” comes from the Greek amnestia, or forgetfulness. And, of course, in popular usage, it does mean to forget, but pushing something out of our immediate consciousness does not mean we condone it. At its core, the idea of amnesty is not weakness, but rather, the strength to recognize universal human dignity. The tribulations of the Boston Marathon proved to a pre-Brandeis me that Boston has that strength and that it was a community worth being a part of. I hope in the months to come, Boston calls upon that strength to make the decision that the city, at its core, knows is the just one. The death penalty is never justified, even in the worst of times.

—Christa Caggiano ’15 is the co-president of Amnesty International.

Editorial Assistants

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News: Rachel Sharer, Abby Patkin

Heather Schiller

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THE JUSTICE

FORUM

Reevaluate minimum wage to prevent homelessness

By Kathryn Semerau JUSTICE contributing WRITER

Today, over 610,000 U.S. citizens are living without a roof over their head, according to a 2012 report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Three million more suffer from homelessness at least a few nights a year. Even more telling than these staggering statistics is the idea that the American dream is clouded by such suffering: one homeless person can remind us of the egregious wealth gap that persists in America. Narrowing this socioeconomic gap will require a large effort by the national government, one that must make homelessness prevention a priority, not an option.

Recent trends charted by the National Alliance to End Homelessness show that the number of homeless individuals is increasing in certain states despite a decrease in homelessness nationwide. Furthermore, the problem is becoming more perverse as many Americans rise into the upper echelons of society, separating themselves from the impoverished. Nowhere is this more apparent than in San Francisco, where entrepreneurs who work for multimillion-dollar companies walk on sidewalks littered with dog and human excrement alike. The irony here highlights a shameful truth: in America, some people live like dogs and others like kings, and this is unacceptable. In delving into capitalism and political jamboree, America has left some of our own out on the street without two dimes to rub together.

To put this chronic problem into perspective, one only has to look so far as Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters. During the hurricane season of 2005, the city of New Orleans was flooded with ten feet of seawater.

People were stranded on their roofs for days with limited access to food, water and other necessary resources.

Delayed response by the New Orleans mayor and the Bush Administration sparked national outrage as images of survivors streamed through the media. This strong reaction shed light on the plight of living without a home. What was not translated was that the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina—being stranded—is a reality the homeless face every day.

Some may argue that homelessness is selfinflicted, whereas the victims of Hurricane Katrina were innocent in their misfortunes.

However, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reports that onethird of homeless people have severe mental disabilities. Others suffer from domestic violence, family disputes and depression.

If such skeptics still insist that the two cases are different, they have a serious misunderstanding of mental health. The bottom line is that in addressing human suffering, one cannot be biased.

Unfortunately, the local government’s response has been guided by the idea that

BEN JARRE/The Justice

homelessness is self-inflicted and blameworthy. In fact, many cities are even making homelessness a crime. According to the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, “In Orlando, Florida, 34% of homeless people are without shelter beds, yet the city restricts or prohibits camping, sleeping, begging and food sharing.” Similar laws can be found in 187 cities nationwide, a trend that is growing as more and more people congregate in search of jobs. Many of these cities, including Orlando, have large wealth gaps, making the contradiction flagrant.

Our laws define who the homeless are, while simultaneously making their existence illegal. Such cities’ obsession with shielding the wealthy from the poor has had dire effects.

Many volunteer organizations have been shut down, and individuals have been fined just for giving food to the homeless. Rather than break the cycle of homelessness—which is already plagued with adversity—many of our states are perpetuating the problem by criminalizing it.

Even more unsatisfactory is the nation’s response to homelessness. What social programs are federally funded, such as food banks and shelters, are insufficient to meet high demand—for some, this means bearing insufferable cold and hunger for the night. According to a 2014 Wall Street Journal report, limited shelter availability in cold areas like North Dakota and Boston have led shelters to rent motel rooms for the homeless or simply turn them away. Despite good intentions, the

reactionary approach to solving homelessness is bound to fail anyway. Funding social services which assist the homeless rather than targeting those in extreme poverty will never stop people from becoming homeless in the first place.

The Obama administration recognized this process and attempted to respond to the crux of the issue. A provision of the 2009 HEARTH act allowed state bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages in an effort to help people keep their homes. Foreclosures were at an all-time high during this period, leading to mass unemployment and a stagnant economy. However, the provision was defeated in the Senate later that year, and the local economies, no doubt, continued to plummet.

Other policies aimed at making low-rent housing available have failed as well. As a result, low-rent housing has been eliminated in lieu of a recovering economy.

According to a 2012 study conducted by the National Low Income Housing Commission, “In 86% of counties studied nationwide, the housing wage (the estimated full-time hourly wage a household must earn to afford a decent rental unit) exceeds the average hourly wage earned by renters.”

The homeless seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. Living on the streets involves camping places and receiving food— which is now being made illegal—yet rent is still unaffordable with a minimum wage job.

This response is reversing the work of hundreds of organizations by making homeless-

ness extremely difficult to overcome. It is cast with chains.

A more comprehensive solution is needed if the burden of homelessness is to be alleviated. First and foremost, the government needs to change its approach. Rather than have law enforcement take punitive measures against the homeless, social services should be expanded to rehabilitate those without a home and situate people living in extreme poverty. Moreover, minimum wage should be increased nationwide so that Americans can afford low-rent housing.

The problem must also be addressed locally. Businesses need to open their doors to the homeless when the weather is bad. Individuals need to pressure Congress to decriminalize offering food to the homeless.

And people need to dedicate time to volunteering at organizations that assist the homeless. Many of these organizations are understaffed, a sign of Americans’ apathy toward the issue of homelessness.

The homeless have been rejected by their families, the law, the economy and society.

Rather than waiting for such superstructures to fix themselves, people need to reach out to the homeless, if not because of their own excessive wealth then out of the desire to be a decent human being. Access to basic shelter is necessary, because the homeless are just as human as everyone else. And any human will wonder what will the Statue of Liberty symbolizes in an America that lets its citizens slip through the cracks.

Afford equal employment opportunities for ex-convicts Kahlil OPPENHEIMER

UNEDITED JUSTICE

Employers must stop discriminating against people with criminal records. According to the National Employment Law Project, 70 million Americans have some sort of criminal record, which is one out of every four American adults. In 36 states, these Americans are required to check a box on written job applications to indicate that they have criminal records. These applicants’ chances of getting a job callback or offer are cut in half, according to the NELP’s report “65 Million ‘Need Not Apply’: The Case for Reforming Criminal Background Checks for Employment.” 70 million Americans in 36 states are discriminated against because of a mistake they already paid for.

The “Ban the Box” movement seeks to eradicate the use of this criminal record checkbox to screen applicants before receiving an interview. 14 states have “Banned the Box” for state institutions. Six of those—Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Rhode Island and New Jersey—have also “Banned the Box” for private institutions, according to the Washington Post. Each state, however, has different legislation about when employers can inquire about applicants’ criminal records. Some legislate that employers can check anytime after the first written application, others during the interview. Hawaii does not allow employers to check criminal

records until after they extend a conditional offer of employment.

Applicants are often denied jobs for crimes they committed in the distant past or that are unrelated to the job they are applying for. Chicago resident Darrell Langdon struggled with addiction in his youth and was charged with cocaine possession.

Langdon maintained a clean record for over two decades. But when Langdon applied for a job as a boiler room engineer in the Chicago Public Schools, he was denied because of his drug conviction from over 25 years ago. His drug conviction said nothing about the person he was or the experience he had. He was unjustly denied a job opportunity. The Chicago Tribune reported the event. Once Langdon’s case gained enough attention, Chicago Public Schools decided to offer Langdon the job it had formerly denied him. But not everyone is so lucky.

The NELP argues in “65 Million ‘Need Not Apply’: The Case for Reforming Criminal Background Checks for Employment” that “major companies as well as smaller employers routinely deny people with criminal records any opportunity to establish their job qualifications.” Some notable companies are Bank of America, Aramark, Lowe’s, Domino’s Pizza, RadioShack and Omni Hotels. The NELP also notes that “imposing a background check that denies any type of employment for people with criminal records is not only unreasonable, but it can also be illegal under civil rights laws.”

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in employment based on race, gender, national origin and other protected categories. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission stated, “an absolute bar to employment based on the mere fact

that an individual has a conviction record is unlawful under Title VII” in its “Policy Statement on the Issue of Conviction Records” from 1987. Background checks that solely rely on a criminal record are, therefore, in direct violation of Title VII. We cannot continue to scrutinize one out of every four American adults. Every single person who has served time for a crime has already faced the repercussions of their actions. We label them criminals, convicts and offenders. But they are human. They are capable of reflecting on past mistakes and changing. If they are willing to work, they should be considered for jobs based on their merits.

It is better for them. It is better for society.

It is better for us. We need to reintegrate our struggling citizens back into society, not cast them out permanently. We need every state to “Ban the Box,” in both public and private institutions.

Unemployment directly increases the likelihood of future crime. The National Institute of Justice noted in 2013 that “[b]eing employed substantially reduced the risk of all recidivism outcomes.” If employment helps formerly incarcerated persons stay out of prison, then we should help formerly incarcerated persons find jobs, not impede their progress.

Maintaining a cycle of unemployment and incarceration hurts the economy. The average prisoner costs $31,286 annually in taxpayer dollars, according to a study in 2012 from the Vera Institute of Justice. The United States has the highest prison population and second highest incarceration rate in the world. We are spending a lot of money to provide for people who could instead be providing for themselves, their families and their communities.

Anyone who committed a crime made a

mistake, but not every mistake should determine the life of whoever made it. People with criminal records have already faced the criminal justice system and have already served their punishment.

Even crimes related to the job position should not disqualify candidates from being given an interview. For example, if someone robbed a convenience store and served a full sentence, he should be still able to apply to work as a cashier. Double penalizing in the job market is inhumane and illegal under Title VII. We are all human, and we all make mistakes.

College students, for instance, make mistakes at alarming rates. The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse found in 2007 that “49% (3.8 million) of full time college students binge drink and/or abuse prescription and illegal drugs.” But we do not hesitate to hire clean record college graduates. Why? Because they worked harder or are more qualified?

Convicted applicants are half as likely to even be given a job interview to demonstrate their qualifications, according to NELP. Both a clean-record college graduate and person with a substance conviction have likely abused substances. The only difference is that we forgive the college student and stigmatize the “criminal.”

We cannot uphold this double standard. We cannot discriminate against those of us unfortunate enough to make a mistake and get caught, while others walk away just as guilty.

We must give everyone a second chance, as we give ourselves second chances. We all make mistakes and learn from them. We can reflect, adapt and continue to contribute. But right now we are telling 70 million Americans in 36 states that they “need not apply.”

THE JUSTICE

●

Tuesday, march 3, 2015

13

TRACK: Judges capture medals at conference meet

LOOKING TO NEXT SEASON

CONTINUED FROM 16 Liam Garvey ’18, who set a personal best in the 5000-meter race with a time of 15:33.33. Teammate Adam Berger ’15 improved his personal record in the long jump by registering a distance of 6.13 meters.

Berger’s leap claimed a 10thplace finish at the event and was less than one hundredth of a meter behind the ninth-place jump.

Jarret Harrigan ’15 took home an 11th-place finish in the 3000-meter race, one of three Judges to run the event. Harrigan crossed the line at the 8:55.65 mark, less than five seconds behind the race’s 10thplace runner from Emory.

Both squads took home seventhplace overall finishes at the event, with the women’s team earning 13 points and the men's team earning 12 points.

“I saw talent, focus, and drive from our underclassmen. Haliana was more of an athlete than we ever could have asked of her; Ashley was also a trooper, giving her all even though she was hiding tissues up her sleeve on our warm up because of her cold. Kelsey's an unbelievable runner, and I'm glad she's got one more year ahead of her, because she's already at such an impressive placer.”

The Judges will continue the indoor championship season this weekend with the Eastern Conference Athletic Association Championships in New York, a two-day event this Friday and Saturday.

Brandeis also looks to send a number of competitors to the NCAA Championships, scheduled to take place on March 13 and 14 in Winston-Salem, N.C., hosted by Roanoke College.

WBBALL: Squad earns ECAC bid as sixth seed MIHIR KHANNA/Justice File Photo

CLOSING TIME: Guard Nate Meehan ’18 takes a free throw in the Judges’ 65-51 loss against Emory University on Jan. 30.

MBBALL: Men lose to NYU to complete year CONTINUED FROM 16 game with two blocked shots and two steals.

The men were let down, especially because of their lack of clinical basketball. They had a conversion rate of 40.6 percent, compared to NYU’s 52.5. They also had almost half of NYU’s rebound numbers, with 26 compared to NYU’s 48.

The team took 17 turnovers from NYU but only managed to convert that to 22 points. NYU seemed to be playing a sloppy game; however, Brandeis could not take advantage of their carelessness.

On the season, Meehan remarked, “Overall, I would say the season was definitely a frustrating experience for all of us. Only getting 9 wins and losing several really close games is

tough [for us].”

He added that he thinks the team gained “a lot of experience though considering we are such a young team and that is important.”

The Judges finished the season a disappointing seven games under .500. The year did not look to go this poorly, as it started out promising for the young squad.

After initially losing their first four opening games, the Judges went on a tear, winning five of the next six games.

This included an incredible 20-point road victory against the then No. 2 team in Division III, Amherst College.

The team played solidly in the beginning of conference play, going 2-2 in the first four games.

From there it would turn ugly

when the Judges would lose five straight UAA contests. The worst being a 28-point home defeat to a then struggling Rochester University team. The Judges were set back by injuries, particularly to center John Powell ’17. Before getting hurt, Powell led the squad in both the scoring and rebounding categories.

The rest of the team failed to step up and fill the void left by his injury after he went down.

The team will now prepare itself for next season, where it will only be without one current player, guard Connor Arnold ’14, M.A. ’15.

With so many close games this season and almost every player on the team being a first-year or sophomore, the team will look forward to having more experience the upcoming season.

CONTINUED FROM 16 boards ourselves.”

She added that “the great thing about our team is how deep our bench goes. If one girl is having an off game, there is always someone who can step up and fill in the gap.

When all of 12 of us are able to produce ... we are a very good team.”

Last night, the Judges earned the sixth seed in the eight-team ECAC Tournament after qualifying as the eighth seed last year.

The squad went 8-3 in non-conference play after beginning the year by claiming victories in four of their first five games, including a victory over Endicott College— the ECAC's second seed this year.

During the early part of the season. the squad managed to record two huge blowouts, 85-36 against Mount Ida College and 77-39 over Salve Regina University.

The team struggled after hitting UAA play, going just 5-9 over the season’s 14 UAA games and end the season in the middle of the pack in UAA conference standings, sitting in fifth place.

With the sixth seed in ECAC Tournament, the Judges will go on the road against Roger Williams University on Wednesday at 6 p.m.

The Judges and the Hawks previously met this year in Rhode Island in the Judges' third game of the season on Nov. 19, during which the Judges pulled out a late 73-71

victory over the hosts.

In the victory over Roger Williams the Judges put four of their five starters in double figures, led by guard Nikki Laskaris’s ’16 15 points and pair of rebounds. Guard Frankie Pinto ’17 added 13 points, three assists and two steals. Jackson and guard Sydney Sodine ’17 both contributed 10 points for the Judges. Guard Hannah Cain ’15 had eight points, three rebounds, four assists and five steals to round out the effort from the starters.

Forward Tori Dobson ’16 recorded 10 points off of the bench along with five rebounds.

Roger Williams ended its regular season with a 19-7 record and boasts a 10-3 record at home, including the loss to Brandeis.

In the matchup against Roger Williams, the Judges will focus in on junior Hawks guard Angelica Ariola, who leads the team with 15.8 points a game.

Jackson commented that she thinks the team needs to concentrate on playing to their athleticism during the tournament. “[We need to] focus on playing our game,” she said.

“We are quick and athletic, and we need to use that to our advantage ... If we stay calm, play big in the post, be a shooting and diving threat from the guards and limit turnovers, we will go far in the ECACs [this week].”

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Tuesday, MARCH 3, 2015

15

CLUB SPORTS

jUDGES BY THE NUMBERS Men’s BASKETBALL UAA STANDINGS

TEAM STATS

Points Per Game

Not including Monday’s games

Jordan Cooper ’18 leads scorers UAA Conference Overall with 12.4 points per game.

W L W L Pct. Player PPG Emory 10 4 20 5 .813 Jordan Cooper 12.4 WashU 9 5 20 5 .875 John Powell 11.1 NYU 8 6 17 8 .813 Robinson Vilmont 10.1 Chicago 8 6 16 9 .750 Tim Reale 7.1 Case 6 8 15 10 .688 Rochester 6 8 10 15 .438 Rebounds Per Game Carnegie 5 9 14 11 .625 John Powell ’17 leads the team JUDGES 4 10 9 16 .313 with 5.5 rebounds per game.

Player RPG John Powell 5.5 EDITOR’S NOTE: Robinson Vilmont 4.5 The Judges concluded their Colby Smith 4.0 season on Saturday with a 90-75 Tim Reale 3.7 defeat to NYU.

WOMen’s basketball UAA STANDINGS

TEAM STATS

Not including Monday’s games

Points Per Game

UAA Conference

W L W WashU 12 2 23 Chicago 12 2 18 NYU

10 4 21 Rochester 7 7 15 JUDGES 5 9 13 Emory 4 10 12 Carnegie 3 11 12 Case 3 11 9

Hannah Cain ’15 leads the team with 9.6 points per game.

Player PPG Hannah Cain 9.6 Maria Jackson 8.3 Niki Laskaris 8.3 Paris Hodges 8.2

Overall L Pct. 2 .938 7 .938 4 .625 10 .625 12 .625 13 .625 13 .563 16 .438

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Judges concluded their season on Saturday with a 71-62 defeat to NYU.

Rebounds Per Game Sydney Sodine ’17 leads with 6.1 rebounds per game.

Player RPG Sydney Sodine 6.1 Maria Jackson 6.1 Hannah Cain 4.9 Olivia Shaw 4.4

SWIMMING Results from the UAA Championships at Emory University on Feb. 14.

TOP PERFORMERS (Men’s) 200-yard individual

SWIMMER David Lazarovich Adib Milani

50-yard freestyle

SWIMMER Abu Batjargal Danny Icaza

TIME 2:12.26 2:08.12 TIME 23.21 24.46

TOP PERFORMERS (Women’s) 200-yard individual

SWIMMER Sam Greenberg Gabby Drillich

50-yard freestyle

SWIMMER Sherry Tu Ariana Traub

TIME 2:27.46 2:35.03 TIME 26.42 27.44

UPCOMING SCHEDULE: Mar. 18 NCAA Championships at Shenandoah, TX

Track and field Results from the UAA Championships from this past Saturday.

TOP FINISHERS (Men’s)

TOP FINISHERS (Women’s)

200-Meter Run RUNNER TIME Nick Wactor 23.82 Adam Berger 24.54 Adam Beckwith 24.71

800-Meter Run RUNNER TIME Kyra Shreeve 2:26.17 Maggie Hensel 2:34.20 Hannah Kilcoyne 2:38.05

UPCOMING MEETS: Mar. 6 at the ECAC championship at The Armory in New York, New York Mar. 13 at the NCAA Championships at Winston-Salem State University Mar. 21 at the Bridgewater State Invitational at Bridgewater State University

PHOTO COURTESY OF ROHAN LAL

HITTING THE COURTS: Squash players Michael Jiang ’18 (left) and Rie Ota ’18 (right) play during a team practice last month.

Squash team completes inaugural club season ■ The competition from the club’s first year included visits to Harvard University and Vassar College.

By Noah hessdorf Justice editor

Each Tuesday and Thursday night for the last two years, a group of students have gotten together at the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center to take some time off from homework and exercise.

What began as a few friends relaxing developed into the squash club, an informal group of people who enjoyed the sport. After finding other students who had just as much fun playing the sport, Rohan Lal ’17 and Wit Gan ’16, the president and vice president of the club, respectively, decided to take it up a notch.

Squash is the newest club sports team at Brandeis. This year was the team’s first in competitive play and it played in five matches as part of the College Squash Association.

As part of the conference the team was able to play against some tough competition, including Harvard University, Tufts University and Colby College.

The squash season runs from

October through February, and the squad just finished its preliminary season with losses to Bard College and Vassar College at a tournament hosted at Vassar on Jan. 31.

The squad faces big challenges as the CSA features varsity teams from Division I and Division III, as well as club teams like Brandeis.

Additionally, there are not yet enough players to fill both an entire men’s and women’s roster, so both men and women play for Brandeis in the men’s division, but their opponents’ teams are made up entirely of men.

An even bigger obstacle facing the new team is that some of the schools in the region actively recruit high school players onto their teams.

Most of the best players come from countries outside of America, and schools are aggressively reaching out to these players.

The top teams in the nation are the ones that are naturally most effective at recruiting.

The popularity of the sport has grown nationally and globally, as well as within the Brandeis community.

Gan remarked, “Squash is an up-and-coming sport. It almost even made the Olympics ... It is also such a healthy sport, you can burn thousands of calories in only an hour of playing.”

The team has made great strides

since last year, when it was a simply a club of students who got together twice a week to play a game and hang out. Last spring, it hired its own coach, Joe McManus, who comes with an established pedigree as the coach at Tufts.

The team’s roster has also doubled in size, with about 20 players coming to practice every week.

While the squad was content with its debut season, it still has a lot to improve on in the coming years. It is focused on gaining more players in order to be more competitive. On his future goals, Lal remarked that the goal for next season is to “be able to make it to nationals.”

To qualify, the team would have had to play at least eight matches, which was difficult with their small roster and lack of experience.

Gan hopes that next season the team will be able to play at an annual tournament at the University of Minnesota which would give it further exposure.

The team is optimistic that it will be able to accomplish its goals for the coming years.

Its determination will not quit with the competitive portion of the season now being complete. Even though the competitive portion of the season has concluded, the team still practices year round.

pro sports BRIEF Chelsea F.C. remains on top of standings of the Barclays Premier League after busy weekend Last week’s action in the Barclays Premier League did not feature a game from the squad currently at the top of the table but still provided entertainment for soccer fans.

Swansea, Manchester United, Newcastle, Stoke, West Brom and Crystal Palace were weekend winners, with West Brom in particular pulling off an impressive victory against the surprising Southampton squad.

However, the main attractions came on Sunday, as Arsenal maintained their grip on the third spot on the table with a 2-0 win against Everton while Liverpool got a character 2-1 win at home against a tough team in Manchester City.

Olivier Giroud and Tomas Rosicky converted for Arsenal as Mesut Ozil continued to be exceptionally present in the Gunners’ midfield.

Goals from Jordan Henderson and Phillippe Coutinho helped Liverpool continue their excellent recent form in the BPL after a very slow start.

Liverpool has not lost a BPL game since the beginning of the New Year, and while they face an uphill climb to get to the top four, their recent play is quite promising.

Manchester City had an opportunity to close the gap on leaders Chelsea as Chelsea had a matchup against Tottenham in the Capital One Cup Final later in the day, but City failed to capitalize.

Despite a goal from Edin Dzeko, City could not salvage a point as Coutinho mirrored his game winner from last year in this same fixture.

Manchester City remains five points back of Chelsea in the race for the top spot while Arsenal is nine off the lead.

Chelsea would have played Leicester City this weekend but now have a game in hand on the chase squads instead. Chelsea overwhelmed Tottenham 2-0 in Wembley Stadium to take the first trophy of the campaign in the Capital One Cup. Perhaps as revenge for their shocking 5-3 loss in December to Spurs, Chelsea carried the flow of the game from the outset, eventually having their efforts rewarded toward the end of the first half. Center back John Terry had a deflected shot fly past Tottenham goalkeeper Hugo Lloris, and Diego Costa matched that with a deflected shot of his own in the second half as Chelsea refused to sit back on the lead.

It was a dominant performance from the top team in the flight after last week’s setback draw against a

relatively weak team in Burnley.

Within the next month, Chelsea, Arsenal and Man City will continue their Champions League campaigns as well, so it is especially impressive that these teams occupy the top spots in the BPL. Chelsea has a winner-take-all matchup against Paris Saint-German at home in Stamford Bridge, Arsenal looks to bounce back from a disappointing 3-1 defeat at home against Monaco, and Manchester City aims to pull off the upset against Barcelona at Camp Nou. Expect to see some stumbles from these teams, as their schedules and opponents become more and more rigorous with mounting pressure to perform in Europe and domestically. Last year, Man City was able to overcome Liverpool’s lead, but with

both fixtures against Chelsea already completed City find themselves in a tough spot to catch up from following a streak of only two wins in their last six BPL matches.

Liverpool, Arsenal, West Brom, Aston Villa and Manchester United remain the only top flight teams active in the FA Cup, which is also back in action this weekend.

Liverpool will be up against Rovers in a Sunday afternoon matchup, while Aston Villa and West Brom will face off against one another on Saturday. The other all-BPL matchup will take place on Sunday, with Manchester United playing Arsenal. This will add a new wrinkle into the conference rivalry, as they will be playing in an out-of-conference match.

— Dan Rozel

just

Sports

Page 16

CROSSCOURT STRIKE The squash team, the newest club sport, played five matches this year against regional competition in their first season, p. 15.

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Waltham, Mass.

MEN’s Basketball

POSTSEASON BOUND

Team completes season on road ■ Forward Jordan Cooper

’18 scored 18 points in the Judges’ defeat to New York University 90-75.

By Colin warnes JUSTICE staff writer

This weekend, the men’s basketball team traveled to New York University for their final University Athletic Association conference game. The team went in hoping to finish its season on a high while also putting a dent in NYU’s NCAA Tournament hopes.

The team ended up losing 75-90, bringing this season to a mark of 9-16, with a 4-10 record in the UAA. This loss also gave them a split in the season series with NYU. Regarding the matchup, guard Nate Meehan ’18 said, “The game on Saturday was really tough. We had beat them earlier in the year, and we were looking forward to hope-

fully sweeping the series against a really talented UAA team."

Throughout the game, the Judges struggled to try to impose themselves, with the team never able to get a hold of the lead. The team had three of its starters end the game with double figures.

Forward Jordan Cooper ’18 led the point’s board for the team with a total of 18.

He managed to make 7-of-8 from the free-throw line, 1-of-4 from past the three point line, and 5-of-18 shots overall. His lead was followed by forward Tim Reale ’17, who contributed 14 points with five of his 10 attempts being converted and 4-of-7 from the free-throw line.

Guard Robinson Vilmont ’17 was the final player to get into double digits with points, finishing with 10 points. The team’s leader in assists was guard Colby Smith ’16 with four while Cooper and Vilmont tied the team for rebounds with five. Cooper also finished his very impressive

See MBBALL, 13 ☛

TRACK & fIELD

MIHIR KHANNA/Justice File Photo

UPCOURT: Guard Heather Cain ’16 brings the ball up court in a 65-38 victory against Anna Maria College on Dec. 2.

Women fall short in final conference game ■ The squad earned an

invivation to the Eastern College Athletic Conference tournament on Monday for the second straight season.

By Avi gold JUSTICE editor

The women’s basketball team entered halftime of Saturday’s season-ending contest at 19th-ranked New York University tied with the hosts at 36 points apiece.

This was after holding a 29-23 lead with less than five minutes remaining in the half.

A late 10-2 run by the home team sealed a 71-62 victory for the Violets, leaving the Judges with a 13-12 record overall on the year and a 5-9 record in University Athletic Association competition.

Even with the loss, the Judges qualified for the postseason Monday evening for the second-straight year and ninth time under head coach Carol Simon.

Brandeis will enter this week's Eastern Conference Athletic College Tournament in the hopes of its third-ever title after winning backto-back championships in the 2003 to 2004 and the 2004 to 2005 seasons.

The two teams exchanged three lead changes over the second half’s first five minutes, but the hosts turned the game into a blowout with just over 10 minutes remaining, embarking on a 10-2 run over

five minutes that pushed their lead to 56-48.

The Judges were unable to recover and could not pull within five points of the hosts over the game’s final six minutes.

Forward Heather Cain ’17 led the squad with 17 points off the bench, contributing five rebounds and three assists in 23 minutes.

Brandeis put only one other player in double figures—guard Hannah Cain ’15, who netted 10 points and pulled down seven rebounds in just 20 minutes on the court.

Heather Cain went 4-of-6 from beyond the arc and was a perfect 5-for-5 from the charity stripe. She finished the regular season second on the team shooting 34.2 percent on three-point attempts.

Atop in that statistic is guard Noel Hodges ’18, who shot 44.1 percent this season.

The Judges were hampered by 31.6 percent shooting from the field—their second-lowest of the season—a far cry from NYU’s 42.9 percent on 21-of-49 shooting.

Though the visitors were able to convert 14 NYU turnovers into five points, the hosts won the battle down low, scoring 18 points in the paint to the Judges’ 16.

Forward Maria Jackson ’17 contributed nine points, five rebounds, a pair of blocks, two steals and an assist in the losing effort, shooting 4-of-9 from the field.

Guard Paris Hodges ’17 added six points and five boards in 25 minutes off the bench.

Jackson noted that the team is

almost always able to overcome its smaller stature in matchups. “[We overcome] the size that other teams do have but we make up for that with quickness and effort.”

Though the Judges jumped out to a 40-37 lead with under three minutes into the second half, a sevenpoint outburst by the Violets put them ahead 44-41.

Brandeis clawed back, using a Heather Cain three pointer to tie the game at 46 with 12:28 remaining in the contest.

NYU used the key 10-2 run at that point to spoil the possible upset, putting the game far out of the Judges’ reach. Brandeis did manage to end the contest on an 8-7 run over the final three minutes, though it was not nearly enough to erase a double-digit deficit.

The squad struggled on the offensive glass, pulling down just seven offensive rebounds, one of only three times this season the team has been held to fewer than 10 offensive boards.

In their first matchup against the Violets on Jan. 10, the Judges managed 14 offensive rebounds but fell 68-49.

Jackson remarked that the team was able to play more efficiently against NYU after its previous experience with them. “Our second time playing NYU was much better than the first. Our game plan, however, was pretty simple ... We had to limit their second chance opportunities while getting some offensive

See WBBALL, 13 ☛

Squads travel west for UAA Championships ■ Mohamed Sidique ’15

finished second in the men’s triple jump to score his third UAA medal of his career.

By avi gold JUSTICE editoR

The men and women’s track and field teams traveled to the University of Chicago for the University Athletic Association championships last weekend and picked up a pair of medals in the process.

Mohamed Sidique ’15 earned a silver medal in the men’s triple jump–the third UAA medal of his collegiate career in the event.

The Judges also got a third-place finish in the women’s distance medley from the quartet of Kristi Pisarik ’15, Halina Burhans ’18, Ashley Picirillo-Horan ’17 and Kelsey Whitaker ’16.

The group ran a combined time of 12 minutes, 22.72 seconds, a little under three seconds faster than the fourth-place squad from Carnegie Mellon University but well behind the second-place Washington University in St. Louis.

Pisarik explained that the four relied on the experience of their teammates to earn the third-place finish at the event.

“Knowing that I had the other girls relying on me to give us a good placement in the race, I made sure to not let myself get pushed back by the other competitors. It was actually an aggressive race so I had to fight to keep my place in the front, and then once it cleared out, I was just running with any fuel that I had left.”

Whitaker just missed All-UAA honors in the one-mile race after earning All-UAA honors in the distance medley running the same distance. Her time of 5:01.77 earned her a fourth-place finish in the onemile race, just under two seconds out of third place.

Burhans continued her strong year in the sprints, picking up a fifth-place finish in the 200-me-

ter dash by stopping the clock at 26.53 seconds, improving on her time from the heats by seven hundredths of a second.

Whittaker, Burhans and Picirillo-Horan joined Kyra Shreeve ’18 in the 1600-meter relay, racing to a time of 4:11.04, good for sixth place.

Lydia McCaleb ’17 and Kate Farrell ’17 rounded out the squad by setting respective collegiate bests with times of 10:33.37 and 10:37.00 in the 3000-meter run.

The Judges also sent Pisarik and Picirillo-Horan to the one-mile run where they picked up eighth and 13th-place finishes, respectively.

Pisairk crossed the line at 5:15.79, an improvement of almost a full second on her time from the preliminary race.

Picirillo-Horan stopped the timer at the 5:22.25 mark, a step behind her preliminary race and fewer than three seconds out of a top-10 spot in the race.

On the men’s side, Sidique’s distance of 13.78 meters earned him his third-career All-UAA honors.

Although he was unable to defend his triple jump title from a year ago, Sidique’s leap was not far behind Emory junior Max Hoberman’s title-clincher of 14.49 meters.

The men got a top-10 finish in the 400-meter relay, where Marcello Brociner ’18, Jeremy Wilson ’17, Omar Scruggs ’17 and Nick Wactor ’17 combined for a sixth-place finish in a combined time of 3:35.13.

Grady Ward ’16 won the first heat of the one-mile run, stopping the clock at 4:26.15.

Although his final time was just under two seconds slower than his time in the preliminary race, he earned an eighth-place finish in the race, just under a second faster than the next competitor.

On the first day of competition, Mark Franklin ’17 earned a top-six finish at the high jump for the second year in a row, improving on his sixth-place jump from last year by registering a fifth-place jump of 1.86 meters.

Also running for the Judges was

See TRACK, 13 ☛

JustArts Volume LXVII, Number 20

Your weekly guide to arts, movies, music and everything cultural at Brandeis and beyond

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Waltham, Mass.

Rose Art Museum’s spring exhibits » 20 -21

Art talk- Artist Jennie C. Jones discusses themes in her modern art work, emphasizing her work with sound » 19

INSIDE

Focus review The action movie, starring Will Smith, aimed for high-stakes tension but did not hold the audience’s attention » 23

Brandeis Cares The variety show used song, skits and comedy to raise money for Broadway Cares: Equity Fights AIDS » 23

Solar Winds Quintet The ensemble presented a concert of wind quintets composed entirely by women, whose compositions varied in style and quality » 19

18

justARTS

TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2015 | THE JUSTICE

CALENDAR

INTERVIEW

$

What’s happening in Arts on and off campus this week

ON-CAMPUS EVENTS ‘For Colored Girls Considered Suicide Rainbow is Enuf’

Who have When the

This Obie Award-winning play describes one woman’s experience in dealing with adversity as a black female in the twentieth century.

Playwright Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem play is known for its unusual format: the play describes 20 interconnected stories through 20 different poems, each one accompanied by music and movement. All 20 stories are told by just seven different characters.

Showing Thursday through Sunday at various times in the Shapiro Campus Center Theater. Tickets are available at the Brandeis Ticket office in the Shapiro Campus Center, and student tickets are $3. The play is sponsored by Brandeis Ensemble Theater and Brandeis Players.

Bethany Adam ’15

Student discusses organizing Brandeis Cares

Alumni Panel: Careers in Theater

Brandeis alumni working in the performing arts field as actors, educators, stage managers, and technicians will discuss their careers.

The panel is geared towards theater majors, but all students are invited to attend. Light refreshments will be served. For additional information, please contact the Hiatt Career Center at hiattcenter@brandeis.edu.

Friday from 2:30 to 4 p.m. in the Merrick Theater at Spingold Theater Center. The event is co-sponsored

by Brandeis Theater Department, the Hiatt Career Center and the Department of Student Activities.

Students can RSVP to the event online through the Hiatt Career Center’s B.hired service.

EMILY WISHINGRAD/the Justice

This week justArts spoke with Bethany Adam ’15 about Tympanium Euphorium’s Brandeis Cares, a charity event that raises money for HIV/AIDS. Adam is the vice president of Tymp and coordinated the show. justArts: Can you tell me about Brandeis Cares?

Bethany Adam: At Brandeis specifically, it is a show that focuses on theater talent and music to raise money for HIV/ AIDS awareness. And we work through a company called Broadway Cares, which does the same thing, except using star talent from Broadway.

JA: How did you choose to get involved in Brandeis Cares?

BA: I’m on the [executive board] for the [Tympanium Euphorium] musical theater group. And it’s part of the role as vice president. So it’s either my job to plan it or to delegate it to someone to plan, and I just figured, Why not?

UTC Panel: Race, Gender, Sexuality and Class Onstage

JA: What was your favorite part of the show this year?

BA: That’s a tough call. I have two answers. … I really like when we see glimpses of the musicals that are coming up because I think it’s a really great way to see how the rehearsal process is going and everything like that. But honestly, my favorite part of the show this year [was] that there were a lot of people that came together to really help out, very willingly and very last-minute to just be supportive, and I really appreciate that.

JA: What do you think the Brandeis community can gain from seeing the performance?

BA: One of the great things about Brandeis Cares—and kind of about benefit concerts in general—is that it gives you a chance to give art a greater meaning or a greater space. I mean, honestly, all the people who performed are incredibly talented and will be seen performing in many things at Brandeis. But the fact that they were kind of willing to use their talent in order to help other people, in order to help find a cure that affects so many Americans and people worldwide, I think is really powerful that they are able to use their art to do that.

JA: Did you have any challenges putting together the show?

BA: Yes. So, last year it was a much larger-scale production … because I had a lot more time. Being a second semester senior makes it kind of tricky. But basically, this year, there were the typical run-of-the-mill challenges, but I was really fortunate to be surrounded by a team of people who were really supportive and, as I said, were really willing to step up and work really hard last-minute to pull those strings together.

JA: What did you personally get out of your experience in Brandeis Cares?

BA: Throughout the three shows—well I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of event planning for theater—the theater crowd is a very different type of crowd than other groups that I’ve planned for. But I’m really fortunate to have gotten to know and work with so many different types of actors and actresses and performers at Brandeis. Because as a performer, I mostly just did musical theater at Brandeis so with Brandeis Cares, I got to work really closely with people who do tech, people who do behind the scenes work, people who work simply on productions and work with the crowd and things like that. So, I think that was a really great learning experience for me.

JA: Can you talk a little more about how art and social justice comes together in Brandeis Cares?

BA: I’m a huge proponent of theater—all art forms but especially theater—being used to either educate the audience or being used to bring a message home that might not normally be talked about. And the great thing about Brandeis Cares is that not every musical necessarily does that ... Sometimes art is just art to be appreciated. And I love going to really cheeky musicals and singing fun songs, and I think that’s really powerful in and of itself. But when you can kind of combine the two aspects—the really fun, outgoing, laugh-your-socks-off songs with the deeper meaning of creating a purpose for the art and working with other people towards a common goal, I think that that’s really theater at its finest.

—Emily Wishingrad

The panel will provide an open discussion among Brandeis students and faculty about the progress and

possibilities of representation in student theater.

Saturday from 2 to 3:30 p.m. in the Shapiro Campus Center Theater.

This event is sponsored by the Undergraduate Theater Collective.

MusicUnitesUs: Fargana Qasimova and Ensemble

Vocalist Fargana Qasimova will perform songs in her distinctive style, which draws from her experiences listening to the Sufi and bardic ashiq songs from her childhood.

Accompanied by a quartet of young musicians, Qasimova will offer an example of tradition-based music that defies the constraints of boundaries and time. The concert will be the culmination of Qasimova’s week-long residency at the University, and will be prefaced by a lecture.

Saturday from 8 to 10 p.m. at the Slosberg Music Center. Student tickets are available for $5 from the Brandeis Ticket office in the Shapiro Campus Center. This event is sponsored by the Aga Khan Music Initiative, MusicUnitesUs and the Music department.

‘Traitors’ film screening

In this film, a Moroccan punk-rock singer is forced to make a challenging decision in order to help her family.

After this decision, she inadvertently becomes a heroine. Directed and written by Sean Gullette, the film was one of only 22 films selected for the Viewpoints series at Tribeca.

Traitors also opened in Stockholm, Dubai, Marrakesh, and won the Audience Award at Gijon (Spain).

Traitors is in Arabic and French, with English subtitles.

Sunday at 6 p.m. in the Wasserman Cinematheque. This event is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the Women’s Studies Research Center, the International Students and Scholars, the Gender Working Group, Peacebuilding and the Arts, the Feminist Majority Leadership Association and the National

Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League’s (NARAL) on-campus branch.

David Russell and Geoffrey Burleson: New Music for Cello and Piano from Brandeis

As part of the New Music Brandeis concert series, musicians David Russell and Geoffrey Burleson will perform new works for cello and piano from undergraduate and graduate composers. A reception will follow the performances.

Sunday from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Slosberg Music Center. The concert is free and open to the public and is sponsored by New Music Brandeis and the Music department.

OFF-CAMPUS EVENTS MFA: ‘Rothschild Family Treasures’

This exhibition showcases recent gifts to the Museum of Fine Arts that tell a story of a great European collection, which was looted during the Nazi era and later returned to its rightful owners. The exhibition features nearly 80 objects that were personally meaningful to the Rothschild family, including a portrait of Clarice de Rothschild (1925) by Philip de László and much of her jewelry.

On view through June 21 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Admission is free with a student ID.

ICA: Sundance Film Animated Shorts

Festival

of

As part of the Sundance Film Festival, the Institute of Contemporary Art will host a series of animation programs. The 90-minute festival will feature handdrawings, paintings and puppetry, with stories of love, art, bubbles, nudism, the creation of the universe and what it all means.

Thursday at 7 p.m. at the museum.

Tickets are available at icaboston.org.

POP CULTURE n !

ww 87th Academy Awards were held The on Sunday, Feb. 22. The show is one of the most highly anticipated events of the year in Hollywood, and this year was no exception.

The 2015 Oscars were full of unexpected highlights that dominated the Internet in the days after the event.

Neil Patrick Harris, also known as NPH, was a wonderful host. He opened with a joke—“We are here to celebrate the best and whitest—I mean brightest.”

NPH’s running gag (an attempt to involve the audience at home) was a magic trick of sorts. He put an envelope of his Oscar show predictions from “three days ago” in a locked box at the top of the show and all of it—wow—came true. It was a good attempt, but clearly planned.

The most memorable parts of the show were the acceptance speeches. This year’s acceptance speech Most Valuable Players were Best Supporting Actress for Boyhood Patricia Arquette and Best Song “Glory” from Selma winners John Legend and rapper Common.

Arquette preached about women’s wage equality, which in turn, caused Meryl Streep and J-Lo to give an enthusiastic standing ovation in agreement, causing the Internet to run wild with moving pictures of their reaction. John Legend and Common’s speech came right after the powerful performance of their song “Glory.” They discussed the spirit of the Edmund Pettus Bridge that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King marched on, how it transcends all people across the world and how the struggle for change still continues today, even after Dr. Martin Luther King’s march on that bridge 50 years ago.

Legend commented that America has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. The best way to sum up the influence of this speech was that Oprah Winfrey was speechless.

The other memorable performance of the evening honored another influential event 50 years ago. The Sound of Music premiered on March 2, 1965 and proceeded to win Oscars for Best

By Anna Stern

CREATIVE COMMONS

THE HILLS ARE ALIVE: Lady Gaga performed a Sound of Music compilation at the Oscars.

Picture, Best Director, Best Editing and Best Adapted Score. Lady Gaga sang a Sound of Music tribute that blew me and every other viewer away. She sang with heart, passion, grace and purity. She channeled the essence of Julie Andrews throughout the entire performance. It was completely unexpected.

The question surrounding my mind during that performance was whether Julie Andrews would be at the Oscars to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of her Oscar win. During Lady Gaga’s standing ovation, Dame Julie Andrews herself walked on stage (causing me to hyperventilate) and gave a long, emotional, tearful hug to Lady Gaga mouthing the words, “You were spectacular.”

Imagine if Julie Andrews complimented you on your rendition of her song. I, along with the entire audience, was brought to tears. After this performance, there wasn’t much excitement left in the show. Even the presentations of the final awards were underwhelming.

So it seems that the best part of the Oscars this year weren’t even the awards themselves. This was a relatively low-key year for film as many of the movies nominated were under the radar despite how amazing the performances were. However, as always, the most memorable Oscar moments were the ones that were spontaneous and created Internet conversation for the rest of the year, or just the rest of the evening.

ARTS COVER IMAGES: MORGAN BRILL and AMANDA NGUYEN/the Justice. DESIGN: MORGAN BRILL, MIHIR KHANNA and MICHELLE BANAYAN/the Justice.

ON CAMPUS

THE JUSTICE | TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2015

MUSIC

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MICHELLE BANAYAN/the Justice

WHO RUNS THE WORLD? GIRLS: The Solar Winds Quartet performed this weekend in a concert featuring works solely composed by female composers at the Slosberg Music Center.

Group plays music composed by women

By LINDA MALEH

justice CONTRIBUTING writer

Saturday night in Slosberg Music Center, the Brandeis Concert Series hosted a recital by the Solar Winds Quintet. The quintet performed pieces all composed by women, which is the theme for the concert series this year.

The quintet was composed of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and French horn, and guest pianist John Kramer joined for the last piece.

The crowd in the Slosberg Recital Hall, not even half full, was a mostly older crowd with very few students.

But the audience eagerly gave applause when the musicians walked on stage.

Five pieces were played, with an intermission after the third. After the first piece, Neil Fairbairn, who played the bassoon in the quintet, got up to introduce the group.

Fairbairn said that every year the concert series always chooses a theme. Last year’s was French com-

posers, and this year the quartet had already chosen three pieces by female composers, so they decided to make the entire concert consist of pieces by female artists.

Many of the women whose pieces were played, particularly Amy Beach, Claude Arrieu and Louise Farrenc, were outlying leaders in their male-dominated musical fields during the 19th and 20th centuries. One student in the audience, Cheryl Burns ’15, a flutist, said that she thought it was “cool that they were [playing pieces composed by] all women,” and that the musicians “seem very skilled, not that a lot of students aren’t skilled, but this was like next level.”

Some of the pieces were slower than others and didn’t leave much of an impression. There were also times when the pieces seemed out of sync, and the resulting sound was not pleasing to the ear.

The third piece, called “Quintette en Ut,” by Arrieu, was perhaps the most diverse piece the quintet

played.

This piece was composed of five movements, which strategically switched between lighter, quicker paced music and slower more melodic music.

Oboist harlyn Bethell introduced this piece as having “many surprises” and advised the audience that they would hear “many new sounds.” Both Bethell and Burns referred to the piece as having an incredible amount of dissonance.

It was certainly difficult to grow bored during this piece.

The fourth piece was introduced

by Bethell as “a traditional wind quintet … filled with violent forward drive … dissonance … and beauty.” It certainly was violent, and not in a good way. The piece was jarringly loud and, at times, even screechy.

The program called the piece, “a percussive, sometimes violent work that combines the idiom of Eliot Carter with the attitude of heavy metal.” The heavy metal did not

sound good mixed with the classical style. It was the fifth and last piece that clearly took the cake for the performance.

It was obvious with the fifth piece, “Sextet in c-mole op. 40” by Farrenc, that the quintet had saved the best for last.

The last piece was supplemented

by Kramer, and altogether it created a much fuller, more complete sound.

French hornist Neil Godwin introduced the piece as belonging to a composer with “a very romantic, early romantic style, somewhere between Beethoven and Schuman.”

He went on to say that this piece is “one of her great masterpieces” and that the popularity of Farrenc’s pieces was “lost after her lifetime, but she was certainly very respected during her lifetime.”

According to the program, Farrenc “was arguably the greatest woman composer of the nineteenth century [and] the only female professor at the Paris Conservatory.”

This certainly showed in the performance. The piece was by far the most moving of all the pieces and incredibly beautiful.

Composed of three movements, the first movement takes the listener on an adventure with a grand and heartfelt sound.

The second movement has a much more romantic sound—slower and deeper. The third, a very dramatic piece, ended the concert with a bang.

If the whole concert had been as engaging and beautifully played as the last piece, it would have ended on a much more satisfying note.

“I don’t usually go to events on campus,” said Burns, “but this one looked interesting.”

In many ways, the performance measured up. It was interesting to learn about these different female composers, the struggles that they went through to become leaders in their fields and to hear such a variety of different styles in one performance.

ART TALK

Jones outlines jazz’s role in modern art

By BROOKE GRANOVSKY justice Editor

The Rose Art Museum’s newest Collection in Focus features pieces from artist Jennie C. Jones, who visited Brandeis on Thursday. Jones is known for her work in modern art, in which she incorporates multimedia to create canvas paintings, sculptures and other instrumental works.

Her work “Vertical Into Decrescendo (2014)” is hanging in the Mildred S. Lee Gallery along with pieces from the Rose’s collection and the Robert D. Farber Archives & Special Collections.

Much of Jones’ work revolves around the history of black artists in jazz music and jazz’s evolving role in the context of music history. Jones’ work has come to prominence over the past 10 years; most recently, her piece “Five Point One Surround” (2014) was aquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In her art talk, Jones presented a slideshow featuring excerpts of her work and commented on the thought processes behind the pieces. Before the talk began, students and staff piled into the lecture hall, filling the seats, sitting on the steps leading down podium and standing in rows at the back of the room after all of the seats had been filled.

Jones opened her talk by explaining how a walk with her dog inspired her work with cassettes and memorializing. Walking in Brooklyn, New York, Jones stumbled upon a group of discarded cassettes and began to think about the meaning such a group of cassettes could convey. Later, she bought a bulk set of jazz cassettes, which hap-

pened to include a lot of saxophonist Kenny G’s music.

Jones noted that Kenny G was part of the movement that turned jazz from a radical counter-culture act into elevator music, and decided to express this shift in Breathless. Breathless is a series of drawings that uses repurposed audiotapes to make a larger statement about the future of jazz music.

Jones’ Breathless series takes the audiotapes from Kenny G’s cassettes and repurposes them in what Jones characterize as a reclaiming measure.

The series takes its name from Kenny G’s 1985 Breathless album.

The pieces consist of the black audiotapes arranged in different ways over 16 by 20 inch white canvases, pressed under class panes. Jones explained that the flowing shapes and structures of the tapes are meant to juxtapose jazz’s organic roots with Kenny G’s more commoditized sound.

Jones mentioned that the series— which began in 2008—is ongoing, but that the audiotapes of Kenny G’s album that she bought have almost run out.

Groups of tangled ear buds dipped in white latex accompany the canvases in the series. In her talk, Jones called these pieces “clusterf*cks,” noting that the materials and metaphors are liberating and do not need long, didactic reasoning to be understood. She also mentioned that the record industry itself is somewhat of a “clusterf*ck,” and the ear buds help express that sentiment.

Another one of Jones’ series, Absorb/Diffuse (2011), dealt more with acoustics and sound. The series, which hung in the Kitchen, a New

GRACE KWON/the Justice

ART, MUSIC AND HISTORY: Jones noted that her work incorporates black history, jazz history and acoustic and architectural principles in her drawing installations and ‘acoustic paintings’—works that combine sound modifying devices and art.

York art gallery, played off of how sounds interact with recording spaces. The piece consists of large black acoustic absorber panels, which Jones called “acoustic paintings.”

Jones talked about how there is physicality in the way sound reverberates and how acoustic panels can bounce sound back at the listener.

With this in mind, she composed a jazz score, “From the Low (2011),” and had the score play alongside the paintings. This interplay helped change the quality of the score and create an immersive experience for attendees at the gallery.

Jones also commented on the sig-

nificance of the echoes, highlighting “what it means for blackness”—in the form of black artists’ music and music inspired by these artists—“to be pushed back at you in this way.”

Jones said that she was surprised when her work started gaining notoriety and works of hers like “Long, Low, Rest (semibreve)” started to show up among the top Google search results for the music term “musical rest.”

“Long, Low, Rest (semibreve)” displays a musical rest symbol that spans five white canvases.

The paintings were hung somewhat low on their walls, as if they were part of a musical composition whose other

bars were missing. The painting was on view at the Kitchen along with Absorb/Diffuse and “From the Low” in 2011.

Jones ended her talk with a question and answer session, and many of the questions were geared to themes of social justice. One particularly challenging question was whether Jones thinks that she creates art in a black feminist fashion. With a laugh, she said, “I should…sure.” In any event, Jones’ work highlights prominent themes in jazz and black history, and her paintings are sure to make people question their assumptions about music for years to come.

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THE JUSTICE | TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2015

TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2015 | THE JUSTICE

‘Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler’

AMANDA NGUYEN/the Justice

A FRESH START: Pretty Raw highlights women artists in the modernist movement, a movement that is usually focused on male artists.

By emily wishingrad justice editor

Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler, an exhibit that spans the entire Lois Foster Gallery, encompasses many artists and a vast number of pieces.

The phrase “after and around” in the name of the exhibit is certainly not meant lightly—the pieces on view represent works from anyone who has ever had anything to do with artist Frankenthaler, who influenced or was connected to art movements related to her work in any way.

“The history of modernist painting is usually told either as a chain of male masters or a series of anonymous formal inventions,” reads the wall text at the entrance to the exhibit. So this exhibit attempts to imagine how conceptions of modernist painting might change if a woman—Frankenthaler—and her female colleagues, were highlighted as key figures in the movement.

Pretty Raw is broken up into five sec-

Spring at the

21

By emily wishingrad justice editor

New Acquisitions in the Gerald S. and Sandra Feinberg Gallery strives to highlight African American artists who have historically been left out of the Abstract Art conversation. The exhibit showcases six works—all by African-American artists—that the Rose Art Museum has acquired during the past 18 months.

New Acquisitions holds a few very recognizable pieces for any viewer who has visited the Rose in the past couple years.

The exhibit features Mark Bradford’s “Father You Have Murdered Me” (2012) from last semester’s exhibit in the same gallery: Mark Bradford: Sea Monsters.

It also features Jack Whitten’s “The Pariah Way” (1973) from fall 2013’s exhibit Light Years: Jack Whitten, 1971 to 1973 and “Self Portrait #23” (1973) by Alvin Loving, also on view in the fall of 2013 in the Mildred S. Lee Gallery.

One of the pieces in the exhibit, Howardena Pindell’s “Untitled #18” (1977), looks like a giant slice of confetti cake from far away.

The yellowy-white canvas is spotted with tiny specks of color. Looking closer, the spots come into focus

Rose Art Museum

The Rose’s new exhibits showcase fresh themes

“Untitled” (1994) by Felix Gonzalez-Torres separates the two distinctly different rooms. While “Feminism” was slightly cluttered with multiple works, many of them dull and pastel colors, “The Men’s Room” presents a sparser vision. The paintings lining the walls and the two pieces sitting in the middle of the room present a stoic contrast.

Finally, “Contemporary” presents very recent works of art that play and riff on the earlier modernist works.

“Miniatures” (2011-2014) by Ulrike Müllers, for example, is a set of small necklaces—the pendants of which are small, square designs created with enamel on metal. The note says that Müller was trying to subvert the large-scale format of earlier modernists and make works that were more portable and personal.

The exhibit gave what it promised— insight into “after and around” artist Helen Frankenthaler. But in doing so, the exhibit drew very pertinent comparisons between different time periods, different media and themes in the works.

By VANESSA ALAMO justice Staff writer

The Rose Art Museum is hosting Rose Projects 1C: Painting Blind, an exhibit which highlights pieces by four visual artists­Willem de Kooning, Maria Lassnig, Frank Auerbach and Georg Baselitz.

The paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures demonstrate each artist’s manipulation of touch and vision.

The exhibit also emphasizes the artists’ rejection of the limiting conventions within abstract art and representation.

Frank Auerbach uses the idea of blindness to challenge the viewer’s other senses. He incorporates texture and harsh color schemes to draw one’s eyes closer to the canvas and prompt the viewer to analyze the idea of feeling rather than seeing.

The method of combining texture and stroke thickness is seen in his famous painting, “J.Y.M Seated No. 1” (1966).

Unlike Auerbach, however, Lassnig took the idea of blindness literally by creating paintings with her eyes closed.

In “Figur mit blauem Hals (Figure with blue Throat)” (1961), Lassnig captures the feeling of having

a body rather than displaying the aesthetics of it.

Her work focuses on the aspects of the physical world that are most difficult to depict. In her diary, a quote that is noted in the wall post, Lassnig mentions that “the only things that are truly real are the feelings that occur within [her] physical shell.”

In comparison to Lassnig, de Kooning utilizes the notion of blindness in a metaphorical manner. De Kooning interrupts the concept of space by distorting his drawings and placing them in unusual spots on the canvas.

Inspired by Kooning’s work, Baselitz took the element of freedom and incorporated it into a selfportrait.

Not only did he manipulate the concept of space on the canvas, Baselitz also emphasized certain parts of his face by using different pressures on the paintbrush to create thick and slim strokes.

The artists in this project reveal the battle between abstraction and representation.

Through their works, they inspire all viewers to live with tensions of unreconciled realities and to break beyond all confining spaces in order to discover the world for themselves.

and resemble paper hole-punches.

In the note next to the piece, Pindell describes her inspiration.

She recalls that as a child, when she would go with her father to a root beer stand in southern Ohio or northern Kentucky, there would be red circles on the bottom of the cups to mark the ones designated for use by a person of color.

“I see that as the reason I have been obsessed with the circle, using it in a way that would be positive instead of negative,” she writes.

Melvin Edwards has two pieces on view—“Nigerian Diamond” (1978) and “Loving Spiral” (2005), both made out of welded steel.

The pieces pop out of the white wall on which they are mounted, starkly contrasting the wall with their deep, burnt tones of brown.

The works are created of many different objects, welded together to create very complex and multifaceted pieces.

Individual objects are visible— such as nails in “Nigerian Diamond”—but the pieces seem cohesive as well as deconstructed.

Although it features just a few works, New Acquisitions is very compelling, showing a diverse set of works but, more importantly, bringing these extremely talented artists into the conversation.

MORGAN BRILL/ the Justice

“WIDE NARROW” (1972): Sam Gilliam created this vibrant and colorful piece by folding the canvas before the paint dried.

‘Collection in Focus’

‘Painting Blind’

MORGAN BRILL/ the Justice

eventually transitioned to film.

The next section, “Color Field,” is filled with vibrant, neon and rainbowcolored large canvases. The section, as the title suggests, exhibits Color Field artists—artists who use large-scale fields of color spreading across the canvas.

“Feminism” presents a diverse array of media highlighting the female experience. In the middle of the floor is what looks like a blue and gray rug. “Blue Haired Nirvana” (1997) turns out to be made of overlapping circles of dyed velvet.

Miriam Schapiro’s “Curtains” (1972) is a multi-media work created using both paint and fabric. The piece is kitschy and cute, and that seems to be the point. The note beside the piece states that it is part of a movement to bridge modernism and feminism in a way that openly celebrates decoration.

“The Men’s Room” is directly across the way. The visitor walks through a curtain of green and silver hanging beads to enter the exhibit. The curtain,

‘New Acquisitions’

2015

“EIN HUND ABWARTS (A DOG DOWNWARDS)” 1968: Georg Baselitz’s work typifies the exhibit’s relation to space.

tions, each revolving around a theme.

“A Debut” commences the exhibit, presenting works from the early 1950s by artists who were on view at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York, one of the earliest modern galleries that opened in 1950. Frankenthaler’s own work makes up just a small fraction of the pieces shown in “A Debut,” as is true of all the sections in the exhibit.

In “A Debut,” Frankenthaler’s “Happy Birthday” is small but visually exciting. Created using plaster, oil and coffee grounds, the work is joyful and dark at once—making use of both vibrantly colored oil paint and blackened, rustic coffee grounds. The work perhaps suggests the bittersweet phenomenon of a birthday—jubilant and yet always suggesting mortality.

“Glimpse of the Garden” (1957) by Marie Menken is a video that focuses on small details of flowers and leaves. The isolated details of the plants resemble some of the abstract works in the exhibit. The note says that Menken initially showed paintings at Tibor de Nagy but

By brooke granovsky justice editor

MORGAN BRILL/ the Justice

“VERTICAL INTO DECRESCENDO” (2014): Jennie C. Jones’ piece absorbs sound, giving viewers a new way to interact with the painting.

The Rose Art Museum’s new Collection in Focus profiles artist Jennie C. Jones’ work, and Jones partnered with the museum in the creation of the exhibit.

The central piece of the exhibit is Jones’ “Decrescendo with Ledger Tone” (2014), which is accompanied by pieces from the Rose’s collection that fit the theme of music and jazz.

“Decrescendo with Ledger Tone” (2014) consists of a black acoustic absorber panel layered over two black canvases. The panel and the bottom canvas are separated by a horizontal pink stripe.

Decrescendo is an Italian word meaning decreasing; in music, the term is used to denote moments when the sound should gradually reduce in loudness and volume.

Jones’ piece manipulates acoustics so that the closer a person is to the work, the quieter their voice sounds.

In the description accompanying the exhibit, a quote from Jones describes the relationship between her work and the pieces from the Rose’s collection. “The pieces selected from the Rose’s collection were chosen mainly from a formalist standpoint: color, spatial ten-

sion, proportion and weight are all factors that unite the group,” she writes. Jones elaborated: “These works are punctuated with photographs of prominent American musicians, an addendum that weaves a narrative into these otherwise abstract relationships.”

This statement references Carl Van Vechten’s photos of W.C. Handy, a musician known as the “father of the blues,” and of Dizzy Gillespie, a trumpeter who helped popularize bebop jazz in the 1940s.

The photos are titled “W.C. Handy, July 17, 1941” and “Dizzy Gillespie, December 2, 1955,” respectively.

Both photos feature the men holding trumpets, poised to play their songs.

Vechten’s photos of the two musicians form a border for a large abstract painting, “Rising” (1962)

by Adolph Gottlieb. Black splotches streak the bottom of the oil on canvas painting, covering a large bronze rectangle and a red circle at top of the canvas.

Despite the centrality of the painting, Jones’s “Decrescendo with Ledger Tone” (2014) is by far the most exciting of the works. In her artist talk this week at Brandeis, Jones said that her work seeks to combine sound and visual arts, which the exhibit certainly accomplished.

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23

TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2015 | THE JUSTICE

THEATER

Tymp fundraises for AIDS/HIV awareness

By JAIME GROPPER JUSTICE EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

This past Friday in the Shapiro Campus Center Theater, Tympanium Euphorium presented a musical theater spectacular to raise money to fight AIDS and HIV. Brandeis Cares displayed students’ vast musical theater talent with performances from student singers, a cappella groups and even the cast of Tymp’s upcoming musical, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. The nights’ two emcees, Bethany Adam ’15 and Danielle Frankel ’17, opened the show on a comedic note.

Referencing past Oscar hosts Neil Patrick Harris and Ellen DeGeneres, they joked, “by the end, one of us will take a selfie, and one of us will be singing in our underwear.”

Changing tone, however, they reminded the audience of the true purpose of the show, which was to raise money for AIDS and HIV research and awareness in America.

All of the money raised from the show, including the proceeds from a silent auction held just before the performance, will be donated to the charity Broadway Cares: Equity Fights Aids—the inspiration for Brandeis Cares.

Broadway Cares’ mission is to use exceptional Broadway talent to

raise the funds and awareness, and so, fittingly, the night was filled with musical theater.

The opening act was Rodrigo Granados ’18 singing a medley from Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Granados did not simply sing pieces “Origin of Love,” “Wig in a Box” and “Wicked Little Town,” but he also performed the songs as the character Hedwig, complete with a blue kimono and bright white go-go style boots.

The performance was a highlight of the night when Granados dramatically leaped off of the stage in the middle of his medley to recover his fallen microphone.

The third act of the evening was a glimpse into the upcoming musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which Tymp will perform from Mar. 19 to 22.

The cast performed the song “The Twenty-fifth Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” which introduces the essence of the spelling bee, as well as the unique participants of this particular spelling bee.

The performance had lively choreography that utilized the whole stage and kept the audience attentive. When the preview ended, I wished they would continue on with the rest of show.

Fittingly, the a cappella group that performed was Brandeis’ mu-

sical theater a cappella group, Proscenium. Out of the three songs they sung, the most memorable was “If You Were Gay” from the musical Avenue Q in which the group nailed the comedic timing of the song.

Sarah Brodsky ’15, who will be starring as Elle in Hillel Theater Group’s upcoming production of Legally Blonde: The Musical, sang “Surabaya-Santa” from the musical Songs For a New World.

The song has intricate, creative lyrics that center on Mrs. Claus commenting on her life as Santa’s wife and getting more and more aggravated with him as the song develops.

The comedic song was sang with a dedication to the lyrics that made the performance one of the best of the night.

Sarah Steiker ’17 beautifully sang an original piece from Charlie Madison’s ’15 senior thesis musical Grace.

The song, “How Nice,” was a heartfelt ballad about the difficulties of high school life.

The closing number featured powerhouses Nicole Wittels ’15 and Isadora Filipovic ’18 singing the heartfelt classic “For Good” from the musical Wicked.

Their strong performance was a perfect ending to a night showcasing musical theater talent for a great cause.

HEATHER SCHILLER/the Justice

FOR A GOOD CAUSE: Gabi Nail ’18 (left) and Jason Theoharis ’17 sang excerpts from Tymp’s upcoming performance of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

BRIEF FILM

‘Focus’ fails to maintain tension

By JESSIE MILLER JUSTICE EDITOR

Focus, the latest Will Smith action film, may have pulled in $19.1 million in its opening weekend, but the film’s reception better represented by its 55 percent critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Focus will attract plenty of moviegoers to the theater due to its leading man and sexy tagline, but the film ultimately slows halfway through and fails to leave a positive impression on the viewer.

Similar to many other action movies, Focus details a remarkable and cunning con artist circle led by Nicky Spurgeon (Will Smith). Nicky and his cohorts schemes are flawless and certainly the most entertaining part of the movie, as we see slick distractions and complex set ups (such as faking heartache as a distraction).

Nicky’s crew goes for quantity over quality, meaning they steal small targets, such as a camera lens or expensive watch or wallet, versus

larger plans.

Like in any decent action movie, Nicky is accompanied—by Jess Barret (Margot Robbie), who works her way into Nicky’s inner circle of cons by scamming him herself.

Robbie fills the necessary requirement of a female love interest—beautiful—but also proves that she is worth the hype from her last starring role in The Wolf of Wall Street. While Smith may be considered a fading star after recent box office flops (read: After Earth), Robbie steals the film, and we will certainly see more of her.

I’ll also point out that Smith, at 46, is nearly twice Robbie’s age, so I ask, Has Smith finally reached the point of no return? He’s clearly past his Bad Boys, Men In Black and even I Am Legend days.

Like I said, the first part of the film—when the cons are pulling off heists at a football championship game in New Orleans—far surpasses the rest of the feeble plot and action.

In New Orleans, Nicky meets up

with fellow partner-in-crime Farhad (Adrian Martinez), who is a hilarious sidekick. Fardhad brings a bit of comic relief to the otherwise dry action movie with his general appearance and witty lines.

The other much needed comic relief comes from Liyuan Tse, played

by B.D. Wong—yes, that guy from Law and Order: SVU. Tse is the target of one of Nicky’s larger mentally manipulative schemes that results in a windfall of millions of dollars.

In a series of bets at the championship football game, Nicky swindles Tse, a wealthy Chinese businessman, out of a briefcase full of money through a series of bets. This scene of dueling, high-tension and bets is the best scene of the film and is probably the only reason the film is worth watching.

Ironically, the film’s tagline, “Never Lose Focus,” is exactly what occurs halfway through the film, when. after three years, Nicky and Jess unexpectantly reunite in Buenos Aires.

The duo concocts a complex scheme against billionaire racecar owner Rafael Garriga (Rodrigo Santoro), who is the perfect combination of sex appeal and power.

However, you can never really know if Nicky and Jess are on the same team or scheming against each other—are they part of a perfect love story or an ultimate mistake?

Thankfully, the film only runs 105 minutes, but its ending is just another disappointment that seems to insinuate a possible sequel.

Ultimately, all the double crosses and scheming get mixed up in a confusing web of deceit, and the film fails to achieve any air of notoriety.

A February article in The Guardian describes the film best, saying Focus “passes in a blur of dullness” and lacks “the charm of Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven or the steel of Mamet’s House of Games.”

Overall, the film could have been much more intense, but, realistically, how exciting can a film about stealing watches be?

Warner Bros./TNS

UP AND COMING ACTRESS: Actress Margot Robbie, who plays love-interest Jess, proves in Focus that her acting skills extend beyond her last role in The Wolf of Wall Street.

Rose acquires 41 new works In a press statement released yesterday, the Rose Art Museum announced the acquisition of 41 contemporary works. Peter Norton, a computer programmer and philanthropist who founded the Peter Norton Family Foundation in 1989, is donating the works. According to the press release, the artwork is from Norton’s personal collection and the donation aims to “deepen the integration of the visual arts in higher education, foster creative museum practice, and engage audiences with contemporary art.”

The Director of the Rose Art Museum, Chris Bedford, explained in the press release that the additions would grow the museum’s interaction with the academics and public discourse. As well, because the pieces are drawn from Norton’s own collection, they reflect themes of “racial and sexual identity and [push] the boundaries between media and genres.”

The contemporary collection contains works from different mediums, including films, prints, paintings and sculpture, from 33 artists. According to the press release, highlights of the gift include a permanent installation

by Mark Dion called “Treasure Chest” that will open in the fall of 2015, three mixed-media works by Jason Rhoades that will be shown in a solo exhibition in the fall of 2015 and five figures sculpted by Lisa Yuskavage named The Bad Habits: Asspicking, Foodeating, Headshrinking, Socialclimbing, Motherfucker, 1996. The gift also includes two films: a video installation by Omer Fast and a fiveminute film, My Favourite Track, from Gillian Wearing. Fast’s film previously played in an exhibit by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, while Wearing’s film Bully is already on display at the Rose.

Other notable artists include Kara Walker, who is known for her exploration of themes of race, sexuality and identity. Walker is also known for her installations of black silhouettes in various poses that emobolize slavery and racism in America. Other artists, including Tim Hawkinson, Robert Gober and Mike Kelley, have had their works displayed at major museums across the world such as the Whitney, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, Tate Modern and the Museum of Modern Art. —Jessie Miller

24

TUESDAY, March 3, 2015 | THE JUSTICE

TOPof the

PHOTOS CORNER

Brandeis TALKS

CHARTS for the week ending Mar. 1

Quote of the week “The secret of journalism, actually the secret of life, is being a good listener, because truly listening to someone is a sign of respect.”

BOX OFFICE

1. Focus 2. Kingsman: The Secret Service 3. The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water 4. Fifty Shades of Grey 5. The Lazarus Effect 6. McFarland, U.S.A. 7. American Sniper 8. The Duff 9. Still Alice 10. Hot Tub Time Machine 2

—Journalist and Brandeis alumnus Thomas Friedman ’75 (News, p. 1)

What color was the dress?

NYT BESTSELLERS

GRACE KWON/Justice File Photo

SUN DOWN: Justice editor Grace Kwon ’16 took this photo on her way down Rabb steps at sundown. The photo captures the top of the Goldfarb Library and the surrounding trees and snow.

Calvin Wang ’16 “Both! It keeps changing every time I look at it.”

Featuring creative photos from our staff This new feature will showcase our photographers’ work on campus, but off the beaten path

CROSSWORD

Linda Maleh ’16 “I’m so not answering this question! I don’t understand why this became a thing.”

Eliza Powell ’15 “The dress is gold and white, because if you look at the light source, there is like a bright light in the back so the dress is in a shadow. But honestly, it’s just a very bad photo.”

Roubing Zhang ’16 “What do you mean? What dress?”

ACROSS 1 Toast spreads 5 Head-and-shoulders statuette 9 Charitable sort 14 Cain’s victim 15 Lotion additive 16 “Drab” color 17 Ashram authority 18 Agent Scully on “The X-Files” 19 Rubber tree product used in paint 20 “What is our flatware made of, Lone Ranger?”

23 Pea container 24 “Sonic the Hedgehog” developer 25 NFL scores 28 Red, White or Black 30 Reddish-yellow 35 Toward the ship’s rear 36 “What does it take to succeed in Hollywood, Tonto?”

39 Quahog, for one 41 In the past 42 Write with acid 43 “What makes up my mane, Roy Rogers?”

48 Environmental prefix 49 Meryl who played Julia Child 50 Nine-digitnumber issuing org.

51 Bad-mouth 52 Rock concert gear 55 CBS forensic drama 57 Start of the “Mister Ed” theme song, and hint to who is asking 20-, 36and 43-Across 64 North Carolina fort 26 C sharp equivalent 65 “It’s a __!”: “Easy!”

27 Step in a flight 66 Abound 29 Jai __ 67 Quotable Yogi 31 Blackjack half 68 “Canterbury” story 32 Pre-eminent 69 Eve’s mate 33 Designer Aldo 34 Spirit of a culture 70 Bakery array 37 With 38-Down, yuletide quaffs 71 Google find 38 See 37-Down 72 VAIO PC maker 40 G.I. field ration 44 Riot squad’s supply DOWN 45 Readings on 25- Down: Abbr.

1 Sporty English autos 46 Bloodhound’s quarry 2 Lie against 47 Unthinking 3 Nothing more than 53 Orkin targets 4 Drink inelegantly 54 Mount in Exodus 5 “I wouldn’t do that if I were you” 56 Greek i’s 6 __ Bator 57 Field of expertise 7 Top 40 numbers 58 Quaint “Listen!”

8 Poke fun at 59 Fairy tale baddie 9 Cents partner 60 Crystals in a shaker 10 One of five Norwegian kings 61 Change the decor of 11 Evening, in ads 62 Actor Connery 12 Above 63 Television award 13 Tyrannosaurus __ 64 “Doctor Who” network 21 ABC drama about a missing plane Solution to last issue’s crossword 22 “__ Rhythm” 25 Dials next to speedometers, for short Crossword Copyright 2014 Tribune News Service,

Fiction 1. The Girl on the Train—Paula Hawkins 2. All the Light We Cannot See— Anthony Doerr 3. A Spool of Blue Thread—Anne Tyler 4. The Nightingale—Kristin Hannah 5. The Whites—Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt Nonfiction 1. Being Mortal—Atul Gawande 2. Believer—David Axelrod 3. Killing Patton—Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard 4. Yes Please—Amy Poehler 5. What If?—Randall Munroe

iTUNES

1. Mark Ronson—“Uptown Funk (feat. Bruno Mars)” 2. Ed Sheeran—“Thinking Out Loud” 3. Ellie Goulding—“Love Me Like You Do” 4. Rihanna and Kanye West— “FourFiveSeconds” 5. The Weekend—“Earned It”

BILLBOARD

1. Imagine Dragons—Smoke + Mirrors 2. Drake—If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late 3. Soundtrack—50 Shades of Grey 4. Taylor Swift—1989 5. Ed Sheeran—X 6. Sam Smith—In The Only Hour 7. Maroon 5—V 8. Meghan Trainor—Title 9. Nicki Minaj—The Pinkprint 10. Hoizer— Hoizer Top of the Charts information provided by Fandango, the New York Times, Billboard. com and Apple.com.

STAFF’S Top Ten

SPORTS FILMS

By NOAH HESSDORF justice EDITOR

Inc.

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

As the sports editor at the Justice, naturally I love sports.

Another passion of mine is movies. There is nothing I love more to do on a rainy day than stay inside and watch a sports movie classic. Most of these films listed below I watched with my father and hold a special place with me.

Here are some of my favorite sports movies

Amy Zhang ’18 “White and gold.”

—Compiled and photographed

by Michelle Banayan and Mihir Khanna/the Justice.

Solution to last issue’s sudoku

Sudoku Copyright 2014 Tribune News Service, Inc.

1. Hoosiers 2. Remember the Titans 3. Space Jam 4. Little Giants 5. Field of Dreams 6. Rocky 7. Glory Road 8. Coach Carter 9. Major League 10. 42