ARTS Page 18
SPORTS Women deliver nine-point win 16
JACKIE CRUZ
FORUM Recognize failing infrastructure 11 The Independent Student Newspaper
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B r a n d e is U n i v e r sit y S i n c e 1 9 4 9
Justice
Volume LXVIII, Number 19
www.thejustice.org
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
INTERSECTIONALITY
campus speakers
Ford Hall 2015 hosts discussion on Flint water crisis
■ Ford Hall 2015 leaders
partnered with Brandeis Climate Justice to discuss environmental racism in Flint. By Abby patkin JUSTICE editoR
Students addressed the issues of race and environmentalism surrounding the Flint water crisis and how individuals might provide assistance to those in urban or underserved areas in a panel discussion on Wednesday. The event, titled “From Ford Hall to Flint: A Conversation On Environmental Racism and Activism,” was moderated
by Saren McAllister ’18 and Roger Perez MA-SID/MBA '16 and was sponsored by the Brandeis Pluralism Alliance and Brandeis Climate Justice. The event featured a panel of students and leading community members, including American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney Carl Williams, Brontë Velez ’16, vice president and chief program officer for the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee Rachel Gore Freed, Sophie Warren ’18 and Nicole H. McCauley (Heller). McAllister and Perez began the event with the screening of a student-made informational video on
See FLINT, 7 ☛
CAMPUS CLUBS
Univ. uses 30 percent more energy than peers ■ Clubs and administrators
talked about environmental efforts at the State of Sutainability. By Abby Patkin JUSTICE editoR
The University is behind its peer schools in energy reduction and recycling, Sustainability Manager Mary Fischer announced at the State of Sustainability conference on Tuesday night. The event also featured presentations from the various environmental groups on campus, including Students for Environmental Action and Brandeis Climate Justice. Class of 2017 Senator Matt Smetana ’17, chair of the Senate Sustainability Committee and member of the President’s Task Force on Sustainability, opened the event, calling the audience together in a moment of silence for Zimeng “Boots” Xue ’18, who passed away unexpectedly last week. Rachel Zhu ’18, the non-Senate chair of the Sustainability Committee and co-president of Students for Environmental Action, then gave a brief overview of the sustainability committee and its past initiatives, which include dual flush toilets, first-year hall environmental information ses-
sions and environmental literacy requirements. She also noted that the committee is in the process of making a series of educational videos on a variety of environmental topics. Fischer then addressed the audience, beginning her presentation by tasking all attendees with leading the sustainability charge on campus. “The people in this room are going to be leading the sustainability movement on our campus. Look to your left, look to your right; it’s us,” she said. She then touched upon the University’s overall energy usage as compared to peer universities. According to Fischer, most peer universities are using roughly 30 percent less energy than Brandeis, and when this comparison is narrowed to only peer research universities — which Fischer said use more energy due to lab equipment — the University still uses 16 percent more than the average. Lastly, she noted, when the comparison was narrowed down to only the most comparable universities in terms of size and structure, the University uses 24 percent more than the average. Fischer stated that these figures are especially disappointing, given the
See SOS, 7 ☛
HEATHER SCHILLER/the Justice
BETWEEN TWO LANDS: Jefferson described describes straddling reality and myth, black culture and white culture in "Negroland."
Margo Jefferson ’68 talks intersection of class, race ■ Jefferson spoke with
Prof. Jasmine Johnson (AAAS) about her memoir, entitled "Negroland." By Allison Yeh JUSTICE Contributing WRITER
Returning to campus on Thursday for the first time since her 1995 visit to the University for her acceptance of the Brandeis Alumni Achievement Award, Margo Jefferson ’68 led a discussion on the intersection of class, race and gender with Prof. Jasmine Johnson (AAAS), centering the event around Jefferson’s highly acclaimed memoir “Negroland.” Having worked as a critic for the New York Times, serving as a staff writer for Newsweek and debuting essays and criticism in New York Magazine, Grand Street, Vogue and Harper’s, among many others, Jefferson said she knew she wanted to keep writing but also knew she wanted her new work to differ in some way from her older work. She compared her memoir to her 2006 book “On Michael Jackson,” stating, “I really wanted to try things
in terms of writing techniques, in terms of subjects, in terms of challenges that I hadn’t done before.” She added: “I had been collecting material, and I knew that it was interesting sociologically, politically, emotionally, culturally.” As she noted in her talk, Jefferson defines the title and concept of “Negroland” as something “meant to convey a series of things moving from a particular time period to a kind of culture.” Starting in the thirties but continuing through the forties when Jefferson’s memoir begins, “‘Negro’ with a capital ‘N’ was a word that became the honorable, the sanctioned, the preferred word," according to Jefferson. "And it reigned until the mid 1960s when ‘Black’ took over.” In reference to the suffix “-land,” she added, “I also wanted ..., by calling it ‘land,’ to give a sense of this particular culture, this world I was part of that was real, but also almost mythological.” Essentially, Negroland “was poised between other lands — both white worlds and other white worlds and other black worlds.” Not only is “Negroland” different from Jefferson’s other works, but it also stands out as a unique memoir.
“Memoirs so often can have this very elegiac, melancholy tone,” Jefferson noted, “I really thought it was to do justice to the subject; I needed a lot of tones and a lot of shifts of perspective and point of view.” She described her memoir as “not an elegy, not a tragedy, not a defense” but instead explained how she views it with an openness as the narrator, focusing on “different stages and modes of consciousness.” With a Pulitzer Prize winning background in criticism as a book reviewer for the Times, experience in the theater industry and a career as a professor of writing at Columbia University, Jefferson had many experiences to influence her approach to her memoir. She explained that she embraced her previous work ethic throughout the project. “You never can, even if you want to, completely renounce or bury a kind of way you have been working. … As a critic, there were so many things I admire in novels, in plays, in all kinds of art forms.” Jefferson explained that her background as a critic helped to “facilitate her being able to look at other
See JEFFERSON, 7 ☛
Reflecting on history
Swing and a miss
Funding changes
Kerry Washington appeared with Prof. Anita Hill (Heller) at a talk in anticipation of the HBO film "Confirmation."
The men's baseball team got off to a bumpy season start with two losses to New York University and Case Western Reserve University.
The Senate passed a bylaws amendment that consolidates club funding marathons to one per semester.
FEATURES 9
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INDEX
SPORTS 16
ARTS SPORTS
17 13
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR FEATURES
10 OPINION 9 POLICE LOG
10 2
News 3
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