The Justice, January 28, 2014 issue

ARTS Page 20

FORUM Ending the Congo mineral war 12

CRAFT FAIR

SPORTS Runners race against Division I opponents 13 The Independent Student Newspaper

the

of

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 LXVI, Number 17

www.thejustice.org

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Waltham, Mass.

ADMINISTRATION

FULL COURT PRESS

Board approves policy changes ■ The Board of Trustees

approved policies to improve transparency in executive compensation.

By MARISSA DITKOWSKY JUSTICE EDITOR

Last Thursday, the University announced in a BrandeisNOW press release that the Board of Trustees unanimously approved several changes to its executive compensation policies at its Jan. 22 meeting. Among the most significant changes were requirements for the University to release senior leadership compensation information promptly and allow for input.

The press release also revealed that University President Emeritus Jehuda Reinharz received $4.1 million in deferred compensation and $811,000 in untaken sabbatical payments as of Jan. 2.

The changes came after members of the Brandeis community expressed strong concerns about Reinharz’s “golden parachute” fol-

lowing a Nov. 18, 2013 Boston Globe article that publicized his fiscal year 2011 compensation and other benefits. The Justice first reported Reinharz’s compensation in a Sept.

24 article.

One new stipulation in the policy is that the entire Board will be involved in setting and approving executive compensation to the president and other senior administrators. The Board must be provided with all information on base salary, deferred compensation, incentives, benefits, perks and other components of a president’s contract prior to it being approved by the Board. There will also be an annual review of executive compensation by the Board.

Senior Representative to the Board of Trustees Jack Hait ’14 said at Sunday’s Student Union Senate meeting that the changes are a “major step forward.” Hait reiterated that all members of the Board, including student representatives, will now be able to vote on presidential compensation. “Very few other universities have such a

See TRUSTEES, 7 ☛

DINING SERVICES

University pushes changes to dining JOSH HOROWITZ/the Justice

■ Starting in fall 2016,

Alyssa Fenenbock ’15 looks for the open pass against two members of the staff team at the fifth annual Hoops for Haiti game. See Sports, page 14 for full coverage of the event.

all students living on campus will be required to purchase a meal plan.

ACADEMICS

Internship courses raise controversy ■ Students are weighing

the advantages and inconveniences of required courses to receive credit for internships.

By LYDIA EMMANOUILIDOU JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

In 2013, the legality of unpaid internships came under heavy scrutiny. However, colleges and universities such as Brandeis continue to promote and profit from unpaid internships by requiring that students

By ANDREW WINGENS JUSTICE EDITOR

All residential students at Brandeis University will be required to purchase a meal plan starting in fall 2016, according to an unsigned campus-wide email from “Campus Operations.” Currently, students living in apartment-style residences equipped with kitchens, such as the Foster Mods and Ridgewood Quad, are not required to be on a meal plan.

take courses in order to receive credit for their internships.

As February approaches, many students are starting to think about summer internship applications. According to the Hiatt Career Center’s website, the summer is the most popular term for internships among

See CREDIT, 5 ☛

See MEAL PLANS, 7 ☛

GMO advocate

Storming up the court

Ziv Quad fire

An alumna directed a grassroots movement for GMO labelling laws.

 The women’s basketball team took down both UAA opponents in games at home.

 Students had to evacute Ziv 129 at 4:15 a.m. last Tuesday.

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

Sodexo will also begin to implement other changes such as a renovation of Usdan Cafe and the elimination of meal equivalencies next year. Lower Usdan will become a second unlimited-dining location in the 2014 to 2015 academic year. Also in 2014-15, unlimited and flexible meal plan programs will be implemented and point-equivalency programs will be eliminated. Einstein Bros. Bagels will also expand that year.

Survey results collected by the Student Union suggest that the residential meal plan requirement could prove to be an unpopular change among students. However, of the students currently on campus, the new policy will only affect those in

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 9

OPINION POLICE LOG

10 2

News 3 COPYRIGHT 2014 FREE AT BRANDEIS. Email managing@thejustice.org for home delivery.

2

TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2014

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THE JUSTICE

NEWS SENATE LOG

Senate engages in tense debate

The Senate convened on Sunday to discuss several matters, including whether or not to recognize two clubs and charter one, in a tense atmosphere.

First, the Justice approached the Senate to ask to present a constitutional change that would allow the Justice to use its allotted $50,000 funds not only toward printing, but also toward its website, the provider of which recently began to charge a fee. Eleven senators signed to allow the student body to vote upon the constitutional amendment. The vote will occur after eight academic days have passed to give members of the Brandeis community time to submit pros and cons.

Next, members of the Finance Board addressed a proposed amendment to the responsibilities of F-Board proposed by Charles River/567 Senator Michael Stein ’14 that would require that all requested and allocated funds be open to the public in an effort to be more transparent. However, a provision that would require that F-Board members release a summary of each allocated fund was contested by the F-Board. F-Board members argued that they are students, and that drafting a summary for each and every allocated fund would be too time consuming for the F-Board to accomplish. Senate members suggested that either someone be hired to summarize these funds to the student body or that more positions be added to the F-Board with the purpose of handling summaries. The Senate ultimately agreed to table the amendment so that it could be discussed and assessed further.

The Kayaking Club approached the Senate seeking recognition. The club’s intent was to kayak recreationally on Charles River using rented boats once per week.

During off-seasons, the club said that it would hold training sessions. However, the Senate voted against recognizing the club as there was a duality of purpose with Mountain Club, which includes kayaking in its description and constitution. The Senate suggested that the Kayaking Club speak with the Mountain Club to either expand its kayaking program or have the Mountain Club remove kayaking from its constitution.

Next, Ripple Effect approached the Senate seeking charter. Ripple Effect members said that the club was limited in its ability to hold certain events due to its lack of funding, and expressed ideas for events such as laughter yoga, random acts of kindness and hosting guest speakers. The club was chartered, with 14 senators in favor, two opposed and two abstentions.

Women’s Incorporated, a club aimed to provide support for women in business and politics, then approached the Senate seeking recognition. Senators such as Class of 2015 Senator Anna Bessendorf supported the club, but Stein and Senator-at-Large Daniel Schwab ’14 suggested that the club’s recognition be tabled to ensure that the club had no duality of purpose with other clubs.

The Senate finally voted to recognize Women’s Incorporated after a lengthy series of objections by Stein which were supported by Schwab. After several objections preventing the Senate from voting to recognize the club, which previous straw polls suggested a majority of the senators wished to recognize, the Senate ultimately overruled Stein’s objections with a two-thirds vote and recognized Women’s Incorporated with 11 senators in favor, no oppositions and seven abstentions.

Class of 2017 Senator David Heaton delivered the committee chair report for the Dining Committee. He said that he and Student Union Vice President Charlotte Franco ’15 visited Bentley University last Friday to explore new franchises, and that Sodexo is looking into adding a Carido’s franchise in Upper Usdan. Sodexo is also looking into expanding Einstein’s Bros.

Bagels to include other items such as sandwiches and bagel dogs. Heaton said that he is working with Sodexo to get more shellfish and pork on campus through food trucks. Heaton is also working with one of the rabbis on campus to provide kosher pizza at The Stein when it opens.

Bessendorf, who chairs the Sustainability Committee, said that the committee is working on an education campaign for the new dual-flush toilets. She also announced that the green to-go containers will be available for use within the next two weeks.

POLICE LOG Medical Emergency

Jan. 21—University Police received a report of a student suffering from flu-like symptoms.

BEMCo responded and the student was transported to Urgent Care in Waltham for further treatment.

Jan. 21—A club leader in the Shapiro Campus Center reported the theft of photography equipment in the media coalition office. University Police compiled a report of the theft.

Jan. 22—University Police received a report that a student in Usdan Student Center felt faint in the cafeteria. BEMCo responded and transported the student to the Golding Health Center for further treatment.

Jan. 24—University Police received a report that a student in Hassenfeld-Krivoff Hall suffered a head injury. BEMCo responded and the student refused further care. The community development coordinator in the quad was notified.

Jan. 25—University Police received a report that an intoxicated female student remained unresponsive on the BranVan

shuttle. University Police and BEMCo awaited the shuttle, and after treating the student, transported her to Newton-Wellesley Hospital for further treatment.

Jan. 25—University Police received a report that a staff member suffered a potentially broken ankle on the basketball court during a charity fundraiser. BEMCo responded and transported the staff member to NewtonWellesley Hospital for further treatment.

Jan. 26 —University Police received a report of an intoxicated student on Usen Hall. BEMCo responded and the student refused further treatment.

Jan. 26—University Police received a report that a student in Hassenfeld-Krivoff Hall suffered a laceration to his head. University Police responded and transported the student to NewtonWellesley Hospital for further treatment.

Jan. 26—A student arrived at the Stoneman Building with a cut to his hand. BEMCo responded at the scene and treated the student.

No further care was needed.

Jan. 26—University Police re-

ceived a report of an intoxicated female in Cable Hall. University Police and BEMCo responded, and from there, transported the student to Newton-Wellesley Hospital for further treatment.

Jan. 26—University Police received a report of a male student vomiting on the ground floor of Renfield Hall. BEMCo responded and transported the student to Newton-Wellesley Hospital for further treatment.

Jan. 21—A student in the Heller School for Social Policy and Management reported past incidences of harassment via email.

University Police proceeded to compile a report of the incident.

Disturbance

Drugs

Harassment

Jan. 26—University Police received numerous calls regarding loud music in the Foster Mods and promptly dispersed students from both parties.

Larceny

Jan. 20—A student in Usen Castle reported to University

LEAH NEWMAN/the Justice

n A photograph in Arts should have been identified as a file photo. (Jan. 21 p. 20)

Students attended Waltham Group’s spring recruitment night in the Shapiro Campus Center Atrium to learn about all 21 volunteer clubs, including programs involving working with children and building homes.

n The Brandeis Talks photographs should have been attributed to Rachel Burkhoff ’14. Burkhoff’s name was also spelled incorrectly. (Jan. 21, p. 24)

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Justice

the

www.thejustice.org

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.

Editor News Forum Features Sports Arts Ads Photos Managing

editor@thejustice.org news@thejustice.org forum@thejustice.org features@thejustice.org sports@thejustice.org arts@thejustice.org ads@thejustice.org photos@thejustice.org managing@thejustice.org

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

This event will be a conversation with Masha Gessen, a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer activist and journalist from Russia, and Sergey Glebov, a professor of history from Smith College, about xenophobia and intolerance in contemporary Russia, and possible roots of the growing public sentiments.

Today from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the Mandel Center for the Humanities Forum.

’Deis Impact 2014 kickoff

Come see what ’Deis Impact is all about. Explore social justice in the ball pit organized by the Ripple Effect, meet the event proposers, find out which events best suit your interests, and more. See how far the world has come in the quest for social justice, and see how much more there is to achieve.

Friday from 1 to 3 p.m. in the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Campus Center Atrium.

Proactive interactive

What better way to present the virtuous

teachings of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela than by using their own words? MLK & Friends will exhibit incomplete quotes by King, Mandela and their esteemed relatives. Participants choose from a collection of words or phrases to complete the quote within a minute and win a prize. After the interactive activity, there are opportunities to learn more about how King, Mandela and Brandeis University have promoted social justice.

Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Campus Center Multipurpose Room.

Do justice and love kindness

—compiled by Adam Rabinowitz

Birthright policy changes

n A News article misspelled University nutritionist Carolyn Butterworth’s name. (Jan. 21, p. 3)

Spotlight on Russia

Jan. 25—University Police received a report from a student regarding a marijuana smell on 164 Charles River Road.

University Police attempted to trace the smell but could not localize the source.

BRIEF

VOLUNTEER RECRUITMENT

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS

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

Traffic

Jan. 24—University Police received a report that a student parked his car in the Athletics Lot, and upon returning, noticed damage to his rear bumper.

University Police compiled a report of the incident, determining it to be hit and run property damage.

—Marissa Ditkowsky

n A photograph in News incorrectly identified the photographer. The photograph was taken by Nathaniel Freedman, not Rafaella Schor. (Jan. 21, p. 5)

Police that her laptop was stolen from her unlocked room. University Police compiled a report of the theft.

Jan. 23—A student in Bassine Science Building left her iPad unattended in a classroom. When she returned, the iPad was missing. University Police compiled a report of the theft.

The Now Project promotes Jewish pluralism on campus and facilitates discussion about collaboration across boundaries in the world beyond Brandeis. Join The Now Project in exploring a diverse array of social action and charity philosophies in Jewish text and culture.

After an hour of interactive learning and exploration, we will venture off campus and engage in two very different social action projects. Discover the power of working together

Starting this summer, TaglitBirthright, a program that offers free 10-day trips to Israel for Jews between the ages of 18 and 25, will expand its eligibility requirements to include students who have been to Israel before they were 18 on peer-educational trips. Previously, participation in Birthright was limited to Jews who had not been to Israel on peer-educational trips after the age of 12.

Brandeis University has sponsored Birthright trips since the launch of Birthright in 1999.

According to Coordinator for Israel Engagement at Brandeis Jacob Markey in an email to the Justice, the change is significant as it opens up the trip to thousands of individuals who were previously ineligible to go on the trip.

“It will also likely change the dynamics of the trip. Instead of leading a group consisting primarily of first-timers to Israel, a group could now have veteran travelers mixed with these first-timers.” Markey wrote.

In an email to the Justice, Associate Director of Hillel at Brandeis Cindy Spungin, who has been involved with Birthright since its launch, wrote that she expects many more students to apply because of the change in policy.

However, Spungin wrote, “We do not yet know if we will receive an increased seat allocation to accommodate a greater applicant pool.”

Allison Marill ’17 told the Justice that she is considering participating in Birthright this summer even though she was previously ineligible to do so because she has been to Israel before.

“I think going to Israel a second time will build my relationship to Israel because I’ll be able to see it through a different lens,” she said in an interview with the Justice.

“Once you’re a college student, you’re more mature and there are more things you can take in.”

Registration for the University’s summer Birthright trip opens Feb. 19.

—Jay Feinstein

and embracing a variety of perspectives as we spend the afternoon making our community and the world a little better.

Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Hassenfeld Conference Center Lurias.

Can men be feMENists?

Do you like equality? What about social justice? Then you should consider being a feminist.

Contrary to popular belief, feminism cuts across identities, including gender. Whether you know what “intersectionality” means or are trying to understand how feminism applies to groups beyond women, this event is an opportunity to learn more about the philosophy of equality.

A diverse group of male feminists will discuss their experiences practicing feminism in their personal and professional lives. This event is for people of all genders who want to explore their relationship with feminism.

Monday from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Campus Center, Room 313.

THE JUSTICE

STUDENT LIFE

members of the Chaplaincy are working to establish a permanent prayer space.

By ZACHARY REID JUSTICE SENIOR WRITER

In a statement released last week, Rajan Zed, president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, asked the University for a permanent prayer room for Hindu students on campus.

Zed’s press release called on the University to respond to the “presence of a substantial number of Hindu students,” and provide a “designated prayer-meditation hall for rituals, quiet reflection, festivals and spiritual exercise.”

The University “needs to recognize the intersection of spirituality and education, which is important in Hinduism,” according to Zed. He further asked all American and Canadian universities to respond to the needs of their “considerable Hindu student bodies” and offer prayer spaces.

In an interview with the Justice, Sharada Sanduga ’14, president of Namaskar—a group established to promote Hindu, Jain and Sikh culture and spiritual heritage—said that she was comforted that “outside members of the Hindu community are invested in the community here at Brandeis.”

Vaishali Gupta, the newly hired Hindu chaplain, wrote in an email to the Justice that she agrees with Zed in that it is “important to meet the spiritual needs of the Hindu students on campus.”

Currently, Hindu services are held in the Harlan Chapel, which was originally built for Protestant services. Weekly services are held at 7 p.m. on Thursdays, according to Gupta.

When asked why the Harlan Chapel in particular was chosen, Rev. Walter Cuenin, coordinator of the Interfaith Chaplaincy, said in an interview with the Justice that after consulting with Protestant Chaplain Matt Carriker, the Chaplaincy chose the Protestant Chapel “because it is very plain” and that this made it “a more neutral space” as opposed to the Bethlehem or Berlin Chapels (which were built for Catholic and Jewish services respectively). Gupta also stated that the chapel is an adequate space and “can definitely be used for Hindu prayers.”

Sanduga stated that she believes the chapel to be an adequate space, both due to the lack of iconography

and because it gives Hindu students “the opportunity and space for services.”

Cuenin also told the Justice that a permanent prayer space for Hindu students is a work in progress.

“Space on this campus is difficult,” he explained. Gupta stated that if she sees a large number of students gather to pray and meditate, she will “communicate that with the college.

“It would be ideal to have a separate space,” Sanduga told the Justice, “but it is great that steps are being taken toward that direction.”

Four months ago, a chaplain and prayer space were not a reality,” she added. “For that, I am grateful.”

In the past few years, the Chaplaincy has moved to expand the services it offers to Hindu students.

Last semester, the Chaplaincy welcomed Gupta onto the staff to serve as the University’s first Hindu Chaplain since the Chaplaincy’s founding in 1955, according to a Nov. 5 article in the Justice. Gupta works part time at the University and Wellesley College.

Previously, the position of imam, a Muslim cleric, was a part-time job like Gupta’s; after several years, according to Cuenin, the position was made a permanent part of the Chaplaincy. Cuenin also told the Justice that the Muslim suite at Brandeis had previously served another purpose, but had been renovated as a result of student demand.

While the University does not ask for information on each student’s religious affiliation, according to Cuenin, Sanduga said that she estimates there to be 250 members of the Hindu community at Brandeis, with five to 10 interested in weekly services.

When asked about the needs of the Hindu community, Sanduga told the Justice that while there was “extended discussion in the University to get where we are now,” she believes the community’s needs are being met in a “thorough and timely fashion.”

The Universal Society of Hinduism is an organization dedicated to bringing “people and organizations of all faiths, background and beliefs together to create understanding” and building “bridges between different beliefs and backgrounds,” according to its website. The society is headquartered in Reno, Nev. Zed was the driving force behind the creation of the society, according to its website. It states that his vision was to bring people together, represent Hindus across the world, and use Hindu tenants to “create a better world and leave a better world for the future generations.”

TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2014

3

A NEW ANGLE ON ISRAEL

Hindu students seek sanctuary ■ Hindu students and

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JOSHUA LINTON/the Justice

POLITICS OF DEBATE: Professor Gil Troy of McGill University examined the current political discourse surrounding Zionism.

bVIEW stages second conference ■ Student participants both

listened to keynote speakers and engaged each other in breakout sessions.

By SARA DEJENE JUSTICE EDITOR

Students and scholars came together to tackle the conversation about issues facing Israel and its future at the second annual Brandeis Visions for Israel in an Evolving World Conference this past Sunday. While a variety of issues were raised and discussed during panels, speeches and breakout discussions, both the opening and closing keynote speakers focused on conversations regarding Zionism.

BVIEW Co-founder and Public Relations and Media Director Chen Arad ’15 welcomed the attendees gathered in Levin Ballroom. “Thank you for being here, for caring, for all that you do,” he said.

University President Frederick Lawrence, who followed Arad and preceded the morning keynote address, discussed what he called “hopeful skepticism,” not giving up and not being cynical but also “not be[ing] naive.”

The conference’s opening keynote address, delivered by McGill University professor of history Gil Troy, was centered on how to “reframe” discussions on Zionism and Israel. Troy opened his remarks by praising the American Studies program’s decision to withdraw from the American Studies Association after it voted in favor of an academic boycott of Israel.

According to Troy, the conversation on Zionism has been derailed by language that delegitimizes one side, with labels such as “anti-Israel” and the portrayal of the Israeli-Palestinian

conflict as a racially motivated one.

Zionism, said Troy, is actually a more expansive term than Israel.

“Zionism is the aspirational piece of the conversation,” said Troy. “Zionism should be the way we build the big tent.”

As the conference began to wind down later in the evening, former Knesset member Einat Wilf gave the closing keynote address which was—as she described—“a complete retelling of Zionism’s history and, as a result, a complete rethinking of its future.”

Being included in Zionism, according to Wilf, did not necessarily mean being allowed into Israel or given citizenship, but rather being included “in the story,” or the Zionist narrative.

Wilf said that the inclusive nature of Zionism is not just finding what all groups have in common, leading to the “lowest common denominator,” but rather including everyone in a common aspiration.

Wilf referred to the ideas of Theodor Herzl, one of the early Zionist leaders.

His vision initially included only Central and Western European Jews, yet the populations who were most receptive to his ideas were actually Eastern European Jews. Wilf used this scenario as an example of how early on, Zionism shifted to include other groups in order for it to exist as an ideology.

According to its website, bVIEW aims to “bring together” college students from different campuses and political views, “united by their passion for Israel and the Middle East, to share their visions for Israel and lead a dynamic, innovative and effective discussion of the challenges facing Israel.”

According to Arad in an email to the Justice, 315 students from 23 different universities attended Sunday’s conference.

“[BVIEW] did a great job of providing a forum for speakers from a variety of perspectives,” wrote Daniel Mael ’15, president of Students for Accuracy about Israeli and Palestinian Affairs in an email to the Justice.

Ethan Stein ’15, former president of the Brandeis Orthodox Organization, wrote in an email to the Justice that he was “amazed to see the growth of this year’s conference.

“For a university with such a diverse population such as Brandeis, It goes without saying that multitudes of views and positions are had,” he wrote. “In order to properly discuss where we are coming from in a respectful setting a forum such as [bVIEW] is highly necessary.”

Campus Engagement Coordinator for SAIPA Dori Cohen ’16 wrote in an email to the Justice that while he thought the conference was “well organized and highly interesting,” he was “greatly disappointed to see that many of those in attendance ... failed to make use of the conference as a place for constructive, understanding dialogue and instead turned the conversation to be about what they wanted it to be, ridiculed speakers they disagreed with, and hypocritically criticized those who had different opinions.”

“I want to thank bVIEW for organizing a great conference and for bringing so many people of differing political opinions into one room. This is what makes bVIEW unique, and I hope to see more of that on campus this upcoming semester,” said J Street U Brandeis President Catie Stewart ’16 of the event.

BVIEW members will meet tonight at 8 p.m. to debrief and share their thoughts and feedback on the conference.

—Glen Chagi Chesir and Phil Gallagher contributed reporting.

RESIDENCE LIFE

Small fire in Ziv Quad leaves students stranded ■ The fire, which occurred

just after 4 a.m., led Senate members to question current fire safety and protocol.

By MARISSA DITKOWSKY JUSTICE EDITOR

When the fire alarm went off in Ziv 129 last Tuesday at about 4:15 a.m., Anna Bessendorf’s ’15 first thought was, “Oh, it’s probably something electrical. I don’t actually have to leave.”

However, the alarm was triggered by a small fire, which Director of Public Safety Ed Callahan confirmed in an email to the Justice was caused by a lamp in a room fell over igniting some papers on the floor.

The fire left one student injured.

The student was transported to Newton-Wellesley Hospital for possible smoke inhalation, but has since returned to campus, according to Callahan.

According to Callahan, the fire was contained. However, the fire alarm was activated and alerted occupants.

All occupants were evacuated and

were allowed to return once the fire was extinguished and the area was deemed safe, Callahan wrote.

When asked whether there were reports of students who remained in the dormitory despite the early-morning fire alarm, Callahan wrote that officers do their “best to evacuate a building and they rescued the student from the room.”

A lamp, several books and a rug were damaged in the fire. “They did a good job confining it and keep it in that area,” Waltham Fire Lt. Scott Perry said to the Waltham Patch in a Jan. 21 article.

Bessendorf, the Class of 2015 senator, raised concerns at Sunday’s Senate meeting regarding fire safety procedures and alarms in specific buildings on campus. She said she fears that many students have formed the same attitude, which she said in an interview with the Justice is “kind of a pervasive attitude on campus to not take fire alarms seriously because there have been so many glitchy buildings.”

Bessendorf said she lived in the Village last year, and recalled that the alarm would go off “basically once a week if not more frequently.

“There were a couple of incidents at

the end of the semester last year when it went off three times in one night during finals: once at midnight, once at 2 a.m., once at 4 a.m.” Bessendorf said. “By the time it went off at 4 a.m., I didn’t get out of bed. The cop came around and said, you know, ‘It’s fine.

It’s an electrical problem. You don’t have to actually leave the building.’”

Despite past issues, Bessendorf said that she has not encountered a fire alarm in her Ziv Quad building yet this year, and admitted that students should know that when they hear a fire alarm, the should leave the building.

When asked if any students remained in the building despite the fire alarm sounding, Callahan wrote, “When an alarm sounds all students should leave for their own safety.”

Manager of Environmental Health and Safety Andrew Finn wrote in an email to the Justice that Ziv 129 has both “fire detection,” or smoke detectors, and “fire suppression protection,” or sprinklers.

Bessendorf said that knowing what buildings are constructed of, whether or not that material is fireproof, when fire alarms are checked and what issues exists with the current fire

alarms will help, in addition to ensuring that students understand how to use available fire safety equipment and know where it can be found. Bessendorf said that she believes having all of this information is pertinent “so we could have more information as to what would be the best strategy for dealing with fires.”

Part of the issue that Bessendorf had with the process was that students waited several minutes before anyone knew what had occurred in the building. “I think that there should be a better contingency plan for what happens after we leave the building,” she said. “[A]ll the residents of the building were standing outside for a good three, four, even five minutes without knowing if there was a fire, where to go, what to do. … There should be more structure as to what happens once we leave the building: better communication, systems in place as to returning to the building.”

In addition, according to Bessendorf, students were unable to return into the building and had nowhere to go for over an hour. “We were standing outside for a good five minutes before people started to think about relocating. People started to take refuge in

other Ziv buildings, in the lobbies, and then once it became clear that this was a real fire and if we were going to be out of the building for longer than 10 minutes, people started to go into the Ridgewood [Quad] lobbies,” she said.

According to Callahan, when an alarm is received, the police respond and must go through a series of procedures before allowing students to return to the building. The officers determine the origin of the fire alarm. “[I] n the event that the officers determine that the incident is due to burnt food or a non life threatening situation, information will be provided to building occupants relative to re-entering a building,” Callahan wrote.

Officers work with community development coordinators and community advisors to provide communication and updates. However, when the fire department is called and arrives, “no re-entry into a building may be initiated until the Fire Department Deputy Chief determines the safety of the facility in question,” Callahan wrote.

Joseph Delisle of the University’s Facilities Administration was unable to be reached for comment by press time.

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TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2014

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THE JUSTICE

student union

MEET THE AUTHOR

Senate to hold elections

■ Students are running for

the positions of Rosenthal Quad, off-campus, Village and Class of 2017 senators.

By BRITTANY JOYCE JUSTICE EDITOR

An election will be held tomorrow, from midnight to midnight, to fill seven vacant seats in the Student Union. Up for vote are candidates for Finance Board member, associate justice, Rosenthal Quad senator, midyear senator, off-campus senator, Village senator and Class of 2017 senator.

The position of off-campus senator was left vacant following the election of abstain in the fall election, while the resignations of former Rosenthal Quad Senator Eden Zik ’16 and former Village Senator Bowen Li ’16 left those positions open.

F-Board

OLIVIA POBIEL/the Justice

Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit spoke yesterday about his latest book, which examines Israel’s history and future.

academics

Professors reflect on online courses ■ Out of the 30 Brandeis

students enrolled online, 11 are taking courses from other schools.

By sarah rontal JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

Brandeis Profs. Marc Brettler (NEJS) and Ellen Wright (PSYC) embraced an online course format this semester, each teaching one class through Semester Online.

This marked the University’s first venture into online course offerings, joining a consortium of nine other colleges who are also offer courses through Semester Online.

The consortium offers a total of 21 courses. Though both Brandeis courses were intended to attract Brandeis students as well as students from consortium schools, Wright’s “Psychological and Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Health” online course enrolled only Brandeis students. In total, 29 Brandeis students are enrolled in online courses, 18 enrolled in Wright’s class and 11 enrolled in courses offered by consortium partners, according to Senior Vice President of Communications Ellen de Graffenreid. Brettler’s course, “The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: Then and Now,” only enrolled students from consortium partner schools.

De Graffenreid wrote, “offering an academic strength at Brandeis to students at other top-ranked schools” is “exactly what was intended with Semester Online.”

In an email to the Justice, Brettler wrote that he wishes Brandeis students were also taking this course, “but there is something exciting about teaching students from other schools, and increasing the diversity of the students I am teaching.” Brettler’s course “explores the meaning of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in its original ancient Near Eastern context, and how this compares to the uses made of the Bible now,” according to a June 11, 2013 BrandeisNOW press release.

Both professors said they sought to teach online courses due to personal interest in the method. Brettler wrote that he liked to experiment with new educational models “especially because I think that the

standard model of three hours of classroom contact is arbitrary and not always best for the students.”

He expects online teaching to be “used widely in all colleges,” so he said that he was excited to get involved.

Wright wrote that she appreciates the online teaching method for its many resources. “Students get the opportunity to have guest lectures asynchronously, and also to watch and join in virtually with roundtables that feature experts in particular fields,” she wrote.

The online format includes first a “flipped class format (lecturing and some activities testing knowledge and understanding).” Beyond that, it “allows for ‘live’ discussion and activities that will help support the learning of the material in ways that we don’t have the time or resources to do with our regular course load,” Wright wrote. The live sessions allow students to divide into break out rooms for smaller discussions.

Wright’s course is “designed to survey areas of psychology, psychobiology, medical anthropology and medical sociology and was created to be helpful to pre-med students around the changes in MCATs.” Using the online format to her advantage, she noted that it allowed one unit of the course to feature a discussion about evaluating public service announcements around the Women, Infants and Children program between Monique Turner, an expert on persuasion and communications who has worked with [public service announcements], and Patricia McDade, a pediatric nurse practitioner.

Wright reported getting “a tremendous amount of help from faculty in all three departments” including Profs. Margie Lachman (PSYC), Nicolas Rohleder (PSYC), Anita Hannig (ANTH), Ph.D. candidate in Sociology Catherine Tan and recent Brandeis Ph.D. recipient Michael Polito.

Though Brettler showed no trepidation about the possible anonymity of online courses, Wright expressed that she still has “some concerns about how the Internet leaves us less connected rather than more connected.” However, she wrote, “I think the partners in this activity work hard to make the classes really great.”

Students running for a seat on FBoard focused their campaigns on the improving of club funding allocation.

Igor Berman ’17 wrote in an email to the Justice that he would like to have an instrumental role on campus. “If elected, I would do my best to make sure all interests of the student body get equal recognition,” he wrote.

Alex Mitchell ’17 said that, if elected, he wants to foster more inclusive club programming. “I hope that the promise of extra funding will encourage more clubs to have such events,” he wrote in an email to the Justice.

Judy Nam ’16 wrote in an email to the Justice that she wants to improve the accessibility of F-Board. Nam said she plans to announce marathon funding sessions in advance, claiming she has experienced problems with this during her past club involvement, streamline the food waiver process required of clubs not using Sodexo’s food at events, update online resources and change the new Student Union Management System website to display the amount of funds allocated to each club.

Daniel Yao ’16, another candidate for F-Board member, wrote he feels that money could be distributed more fairly, writing that often culture clubs receive more funds for events than other clubs.

“I know that the F-board has rules and regulations in how to disperse the money, but whether or not it’s the rules and regulations or just the people themselves on the F-board that are preventing fair circulation of funds, something has to be changed for a more even, and fair distribution of money,” he wrote in an email to the Justice.

Helen Stolyar ’14 did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

Associate Justice

Jacob Aronson ’15 wrote in an

email to the Justice that he looks to his participation in mock trials as a basis for his interest in law and courts.

“There’s no anticipating what case may come before the [Student] Judiciary,” he wrote. “So all I can promise is my utmost sincerity that I will remain committed to talking with the other justices and remaining impartial in all dealings, seeking a clean and just solution to any problems we may encounter.”

Johannes Fischer ’17 cited in an interview with the Justice his “passion for equal rights” as his reason for running for associate justice. He wrote in an email to the Justice about the importance of reforming and criticizing set rules. “[This role] would allow me to ensure that the student government and student organizations function well and with one another,” he wrote.

Linda Phiri ’16 wrote in an email to the Justice that over her time at Brandeis, she has interacted with different groups on campus, which “has given [her] the benefit of understanding the dynamics of our community through different lenses.” Phiri wrote that because of this understanding, she “can make decisions based on a community [she has] come to understand deeply.”

Rosenthal Quad Senator

The sole candidate for Rosenthal Quad senator, Jesse Ruth ’16, wrote in an email to the Justice that he is running because of the physical changes he hopes to bring to his quad. In particular, Ruth wrote that he would focus on improvement to laundry services and the cardio room in Rosenthal North. Ruth also wrote that he hopes to address the speed in which Facilities Services responds to work orders, and that he wants to host more events within the quad.

Midyear Senator

Mitchell Beers ’17 expressed concerns in an email to the Justice over the current transitional process for midyears. Beers wrote he would seek to improve communication, both before arrival and upon acceptance, so that future midyears do not feel the confusion or apprehension upon acceptance and arrival that Beers felt.

Shira Harary ’17 wrote in an email to the Justice that she wants to be a connection between the midyear community and the Union. She wrote that she wants to hold social events for the midyears, as well as defend their ideas. She also mentioned that she wished to help implement an electronic mailroom notification service.

Jamie Wong ’17 wrote in an email to the Justice that she wants to better the midyear experience, both for her and future classes. She cites improving the midyear orientation process, integrating midyears with the rest of their class and voicing any concerns

of midyears as topics she would like to tackle.

Off-Campus Senator

Michael Kosowsky ’14 is the sole candidate for off-campus senator. In an email to the Justice, Kosowsky wrote he hopes to fill this position that has long been vacant.

“I guarantee that I will do a better job than abstain has the past few semesters,” he wrote. Specifically, he wrote he hopes to extend some services to students who live close enough to Brandeis, and to create better dining plans for off-campus students.

Village Senator

The candidates for Village senator talked about making changes within the Village itself.

Daniel Jacobson ’16 wrote in an email to the Justice that he hopes to use simple changes to improve the University. Jacobson wrote that some of his ideas for change include: bringing water coolers to every floor in the Village, making frequent evaluations of laundry facilities, improving furniture and technology in Village lounges and keeping the Village open over breaks. For the larger campus community, he wrote he wants to put a tracker on the BranVan, allow the use of meals at Dunkin’ Donuts and provide more time in between move in and the beginning of classes.

Jeff Tan ’17 wrote in an email to the Justice that although he believes the Village is already a great place to live, he wants students there to have the best experience possible. Specifically, Tan wrote he wants to implement motion sensor lights in the Village to save energy. He wrote he also wants to get compost bins and vacuums for each floor.

Marshall Chang ’16 did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

Class of 2017 Senator

Benjamin Margolin wrote in an email to the Justice that he wants to help his peers, and he said he would do this by bringing more allergy-free food options and by creating more ways for students to bring their concerns to the administration. Margolin also wrote that he would like to better campus social events so that they can include more students.

Colin Warnes wrote in an email to the Justice that as a midyear, he would like to represent the entire Class of 2017 as a means to improve the relationship between all firstyears. Warnes also wrote that he would like to improve lounges in Massell Quad.

Emily Conrad and Tzlil Levy did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

—Marissa Ditkowsky conrtibuted reporting.

student life

University to address allergen issues ■ The Senate Dining

Committee received several complaints about allergy accommodations.

By samantha topper JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

Brandeis recently began initial stages of becoming involved with the Food Allergy Research and Education’s college program to improve food allergy awareness and accommodations, according Class of 2017 Senator and Chair of the Senate Dining Committee David Heaton. The program has begun research at other universities to evaluate the status of their preparedness for food allergies, according to Kate Moran, Brandeis Dining Services’ registered dietician, and will soon begin a second round of evaluations which will include Brandeis.

Though the details of these evaluations are unknown, according to Moran, the evaluations will help to create standards for food allergy accommodations at universities. After FARE sets these standards, Brandeis aims to conform its policies to meet these standards, should changes be necessary.

According to Heaton, last semester the Senate Dining Committee received concerns from several students regarding food allergy accommodations at Brandeis, prompting Dining Services to make changes. “This semester, we are striving [to] fix issues including, but not limited to, the allergen information being omitted in dining halls and the failure to restock the glutenfree sections for several months.” One of these changes, becoming involved with FARE, will allow Brandeis to receive official feedback on whether or not its food allergen policies properly meet the needs of students with food allergies, according to Moran.

In an interview with the Justice, Moran said that Dining Services makes changes every day in an effort to accommodate students with food allergies. According to Moran, these changes involve consistent updates to the menus, such as offering more vegetarian options at the allergen-free stations in Sherman Dining Hall and the Usdan Student Center, as well as a recent update to the inventory for Sherman’s MyZone area.

Brandeis currently has several places on campus where students with food allergies can find safe food to eat.

In Usdan Café and Sherman Dining

Hall, Simple Servings stations serve food free of gluten as well as seven of the top-eight allergens: milk, eggs, tree nuts, peanuts, soy, shellfish and wheat. The stations continue to serve non-shellfish seafood, the only common allergen allowed at Simple Servings. In Sherman Dining Hall, students can also visit the MyZone area, where students can prepare packaged, allergen-free foods, such as toast, in an allergen-safe environment. The Hoot Market has gluten-free sections for both frozen and packaged foods.

According to Moran, Brandeis offers assistance and advice for students with food allergies in addition to the allergen-free food options. Moran holds frequent office hours, during which students can visit her to talk about any difficulties they might have finding foods safe for them to eat.

For all students with food allergies, Moran recommends notifying the Golding Health Center so that Health Services and Dining Services can best accommodate any problems.

Editor’s Note: Marissa Ditkowsky ’16, news editor for the Justice, is the Non-Senate Chair and gluten-free representative to the Senate Dining Committee.

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TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2014

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CREDIT: Internship policies questioned CONTINUED FROM 1 Brandeis students, who typically complete 2.5 internships during their time at the University, according to the 2012 to 2013 Undergraduate Curriculum Committee report.

Trends in Academic Internships

According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, about 55 percent of the members of the Class of 2012 held an internship or co-op position during their college career. That figure soared to 63 percent among members of the Class of 2013. Of those internships, almost 48 percent were unpaid, according to the same report.

As unpaid internships are becoming increasingly widespread, public scrutiny of these unpaid positions is also increasing. This past year, a high-profile ruling involving Fox Searchlight Pictures brought the debate on the legality of unpaid internships to the forefront of the conversation. In this case a federal judge ruled that the media distribution company violated minimum wage laws by failing to pay interns on the set of the film Black Swan.

Since the June 2013 ruling, at least 17 other lawsuits have been filed by current or former interns against their employers, according to ProPublica, which launched an investigation last year to determine how many interns are being employed in violation of federal labor guidelines.

This year, ProPublica is extending its internship investigation and reporting, and placing a special focus on the trend of granting academic credit in exchange for unpaid work, as many employers now require that interns receive college credit in order to participate in an internship program.

Andrea Stern ’14, who has completed numerous unpaid internships during her time at Brandeis, said that employers often offer college credit as a form of compensation to unpaid interns.

“Since many companies do not want to pay their interns, they think that a ‘fair’ trade off is to require interns to receive academic credit,” wrote Stern in an email interview with the Justice.

ProPublica reports that 90 percent of schools nationwide offer credit for internships, although it is up to the college or university itself to decide how to grant that credit.

Some schools in the Boston area, like Boston College, automatically grant credits to students upon successful completion of an internship,

according to the college’s website.

However, Brandeis requires that students seeking academic credit for completing an internship also enroll in an internship course.

University Policies

At Brandeis, the most popular way to receive credit for an internship during the academic year is through a four-credit internship seminar, otherwise known as 89a or 89b courses. Students have the option of enrolling in an internship class during the course of their internship or completing an internship over the summer and enrolling in the course during the academic year. Students are expected to enroll in an internship course in a department or program that is closely related to the content of the internship. About 40 percent of Brandeis students complete credit-bearing internships during their time at the University, according to the UCC report.

Students seeking credit are expected to meet during designated class times, as well as complete additional readings and assignments, including papers and presentations.

While there are guidelines about the internships—for example, internships must be at least 100 hours over 10 weeks—the UCC grants faculty members the freedom to structure internship courses the way they see fit, according to Senior Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences for Undergraduate Education Elaine Wong. This is why some courses meet weekly, while others meet every other week. In addition, some courses have a heavier workload than others, according to Wong.

Last semester Brandeis offered 10 internship seminars in eight different departments, including Journalism, Business and Environmental Studies, among others. According to the Registrar’s website, 160 students were enrolled in these courses during the fall 2013 semester.

This semester, Brandeis is offering six internship courses, two of which—INT 89b and POL89a—are new. According to the Registrar’s website 70 students are currently enrolled in 89a/b internship courses, although that figure is subject to change as the semester proceeds.

As with any course, students have to pay the tuition fee in order to enroll in these courses. According to the University Registrar’s website, the fee for each semester course required for degree credit is $5,498 ($1,374.38 per credit, per term) for undergraduate students who entered the University before the

summer 2012 semester and $5,548 ($1,386.88 per credit, per term) for undergraduate students who entered the University after the spring 2012 semester.

According to these figures, the University has brought in over one million dollars this academic year from the 230 students enrolled in four-credit 89a/b internship courses alone. Given that the majority of instructors who teach these courses hold “lecturer,” rather than “professor” status, the revenue from these courses is even greater for the University, as instructors with a lecturer status receive a smaller salary. According to the Faculty Guide, four of the six internship courses being offered this semester are taught by lecturers, while only two are taught by associate professors.

The same fee applies for international students, who are required to receive academic credit in order to participate in an internship program in the United States.

Drawbacks to University system

While Brandeis’ method of granting academic credit for internships can be beneficial for students who want a structured learning experience in addition to their internship, it can be a burdensome time commitment for students who are required to receive college credit as a form of compensation for participating in an internship program.

Wajiha Chaudhry ’14 took BUS 89A: “Work in the Global Business Environment: Internship and Seminar” last semester in conjunction with her internship at a recruitment firm in Boston. In an email to the Justice, Chaudhry wrote that although she learned a lot from the course, she “would [have preferred] not to take it … just due to the time commitment.” However, because her internship required college credit, Chaudhry chose taking the internship course over giving up her internship.

Although some students said that they do not benefit as much from a structured class experience, Wong says the alternative option of automatically granting students credit upon successful completing their internships has never been an option.

“Automatic credit has never been considered. … It has never been accepted because the whole idea from faculty is, you’re not getting credit for [the] internship, you’re getting credit for the academic work that surround[s] the internship that makes the internship a better learn-

ing experience,” said Wong.

Wong says that taking a course in tandem with completing the internship to grant credit allows for a better learning experience than simply completing an internship.

“If you can structure [the internship] around a course with readings, with assignments, it will be a stronger, better learning experience for the students, and they will have a better sense of the institution, organizational behavior, better reflections, thinking about how to tie in one’s academic work with one’s actual hands on learning, perhaps even constructive thought about the career-building and career development aspects of it, and the personal and professional development aspects of it,” said Wong in an interview with the Justice.

Stern, who has taken JOUR 89a: “Contemporary Media Internship and Analysis” twice in order to receive credit for two different internships, said she agrees that taking an internship course can be a beneficial experience for students.

Stern said that one of the benefits of taking the class is that it grants students the opportunity to discuss their internships with their peers.

“Two people who intern in the television industry… can have vastly different experiences from each other. Therefore, discussing other student’s internships is a great learning opportunity because it allows students to hear what makes a good internship, what people liked and disliked about their internship, and more” wrote Stern in an email to the Justice.

Matthew Naturman ’14, who was enrolled in BUS 89a said he also benefited from the class discussions, and the class reading assignments.

But Naturman said he questioned whether a semester-long course was the best method to enhance his internship experience.

“Aside from the intimate discussion based setting, for the most part I feel Hiatt could have held a few classes to introduce me to the same information,” Naturman wrote in an email to the Justice.

Additionally, some students question the benefits of a semester-long course during the academic year for students who completed an internship over the summer.

Joseph DuPont, dean of Hiatt and instructor of one of the internship courses, addressed this issue in an email to the Justice.

When asked about the benefits of taking an internship course during the academic year for an internship completed over the summer,

DuPont wrote that students taking the course after completing an internship “have a context in which to analyze and reflect upon their experience, which contributes to their ability to develop and articulate their academic, professional, and personal goals. Dialogue with faculty and fellow students also helps individuals understand their personal experience within a larger ‘world of work’ context, and learn from others’ experiences.”

Gil Zamir ’15, a student who took BUS 89a during this past fall semester, agrees that there is some value in taking a course toward an internship completed over the summer.

“An internship course is not only meant to help someone in their internship, but also to reflect on it …

Reflection can really help students become better workers and market themselves better, which will get them a comparative advantage in this competitive job market,” wrote Zamir in an email interview with the Justice.

But Zamir also admitted that it may be “difficult to hold a class that will be relevant in the same way to people that already finished their internship, and people that just started theirs.”

For students completing a summer internship, a one-credit online option INT 92g: “Summer Internship” is available. In an email to the Justice, Stern wrote that she “considered taking an… internship class over the summer (but it only yielded one unit and cost around $400), which didn’t seem practical.”

Although there are drawbacks in Brandeis’ method for granting academic credit for internships, Stern says she does not believe the problem lies with the internship courses.

“The real issue that I have is not with the class, but with the companies that require interns receive academic credit instead of a stipend [or] salary… I think that all interns should be paid and if they want to either take a course to receive academic credit or need to take an internship course for their major and minor, then that should be the intern’s choice,” wrote Stern in an email to the Justice.

In the meantime, Wong says that Brandeis is working to improve the internship program in order to better serve students.

“Brandeis hasn’t worked out all of the kinks … We’re still trying to figure out what’s the best way to support all internship opportunities ...We’re never finished,” said Wong.

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7

TRUSTEES: Compensation reform adopted CONTINUED FROM 1 thing,” Hait said. Exit packages will also be reported so that there will be no more “surprises,” such as with Reinharz’s deferred compensation.

“Overall we view these changes as tremendously positive from a student standpoint. The amount of access and transparency that the students have been granted is very encouraging,” Hait wrote in an email to the Justice.

According to Faculty Senate Chair Prof. Eric Chasalow (MUS), the new policy states that practices will be reviewed every two years and revisions may be proposed. “That means that members of the community, and not just the [B]oard of Trustees may have an impact on policy because we are part of the conversation that will inform any revisions being considered,” he wrote in

an email to the Justice.

The University will now also have to disclose presidential compensation to faculty before legally required disclosure dates so that “the actual compensation packages of senior administrators will be open to scrutiny since they will now be made public without the previous multi-year delay,” according to Chasalow.

These changes were based upon recommendations of an Ad Hoc Committee charged with reviewing the executive compensation policies. According to the release, the committee included several board members and a faculty representative, and was co-chaired by Trustees Lawrence Kanarek ’76, and Adam Rifkin ’97, the president of the Brandeis University Alumni Association. The committee considered input from faculty, alumni and

other members of the Brandeis community, according to the release. In addition, the Faculty Senate and the student representatives provided proposals for the Board.

“Our new policies set very high standards,” said Board Chair Perry M. Traquina ’78 in a BrandeisNOW press release. “These governance changes turn a new page for the University and aim to make Brandeis a national leader in terms of best practices for executive compensation.”

Chasalow wrote that the result was a “compromise,” but that “there is now an open process with faculty and student representatives at the table. “[T]he board was very responsive to our concerns throughout the process and it is important to note that everyone views this as an open discussion—that things can evolve over time in the best interest

of the entire Brandeis community,” Chasalow wrote.

In addition to approving the change in policy, in an effort to be more transparent, the Board of Trustees announced details of deferred compensation and sabbatical payments Reinharz earned. According to the release, these amounts were set aside in previous years’ budgets and “will have no impact on the University’s current finances.”

Reinharz is part of a very small group of University presidents which are paid for sabbaticals, according to an April 5, 2006 Insider Higher Ed article. The article cited statistics compiled by the American Council on Education in 2001 that showed only 17 percent of all presidential contracts had provisions calling for sabbaticals. “[S]abbaticals in the middle of a president’s term are relatively uncommon, and

extremely rare outside a relatively small group of private liberal arts institutions,” the article stated.

Reinharz’s compensation came into the spotlight after a Globe article revealed that Reinharz has earned at least $1.2 million for parttime advisory work since stepping down as president at the end of 2010.

The article led to outrage and concern among students and faculty.

Nearly 1,600 alumni, students, faculty members and other people with ties to Brandeis signed a petition protesting Reinharz’s pay.

In the Justice’s efforts to contact Traquina for an interview, Senior Vice President for Communications Ellen de Graffenreid denied repeated requests and stated that Traquina would be able to comment “when we have substantive action by the Board of Trustees to share with you.”

MEAL PLANS: Rosen claims student views ignored CONTINUED FROM 1 the Class of 2017. In interviews with the Justice, Student Union leaders said they were concerned about the meal plan requirement, particularly because it may force cash-strapped students to move off campus and they felt the process lacked sufficient student input.

Student Union President Ricky Rosen ’14 said he worried the University prioritized administrative concerns over student well-being.

“The decisions we make have to have students’ interests in mind, and with this decision in particular, I’m not entirely sure that the best interests of students were the driving force behind the changes,” he said.

Student Union Vice President Charlotte Franco ’15 said she is “disappointed” with the way the decision to implement mandatory meal plans was made and the way it was communicated to the student body.

Franco said that the new structure of meal plans, such as the elimination of meal equivalencies and the renovation of Lower Usdan, is a significant improvement.

Senior Vice President for Students and Enrollment Andrew Flagel wrote in an email to the Justice that “all of the plan models include much larger portions of flexible funds that can be used at any retail (non dining hall) location, or to purchase additional ‘meals’ for those who do not opt for the unlimited plan.”

In 2015 to 2016, residential students who enrolled in fall 2013 or later will be required to purchase a meal plan.

By the following year, the requirement will apply to all residential students. The apartment plan option, according to the email, will be priced similarly to the current Village plan, which currently costs about $2,000 per semester. Regarding exact pricing of the plans, Flagel wrote the Board of Trustees will set tuition, fees and housing costs at its March board meeting.

Franco said the Student Union is advocating for less expensive meal plans so as not to add a prohibitive cost to students’ bills.

According to the email from Campus Operations, “both dining-services vendor finalists” in the bidding process that Brandeis undertook last year before hiring Sodexo “agreed that a residential requirement was essential if the university wanted to expand its offerings and bring in new franchises such as Dunkin’ Donuts.”

Students responding to a December 2013 Student Union survey were largely critical of mandatory meal

plans. In all, the survey garnered 877 responses.

Franco said the survey results have not yet been shared with either University administrators or Sodexo staff.

The majority of students surveyed responded that mandatory meal plans would affect their decision to live on campus. In response to the question, “If meal plans were required for all on campus living (with or without a kitchen), how would that affect your decision to live on campus?” 28 percent of respondents said, “I would choose to live off campus and not be on a meal plan,” while 36 percent said, “I would choose to live where it was most affordable to me.” Forty-three percent of students said mandatory meal plans would not affect their housing decision.

Rosen said affordability should be a top concern for the administration: “If we have mandatory, required meal plans for all on-campus housing … we want to make sure that all of these options are affordable for students. I think that that needs to be the number one concern going forward.”

According to the survey, 47 percent of respondents were satisfied with their meal plan, while 53 percent were not.

In a space reserved for additional anonymous comments, students overwhelmingly criticized the notion of mandatory meal plans.

“I think it would be an absolute disgrace if the university decided to coerce all students living on campus to get meal plans,” wrote one student. “Right now people choose to live in certain places because they literally cannot afford to purchase a meal plan or do not wish to take on additional debt for one. Going to this system would exacerbate class issues already at play at Brandeis.”

“I am extremely unhappy that the university is considering making everyone living in on campus housing get a meal plan,” wrote another student. “I don’t need one and I don’t want to pay for one.”

The Campus Operations email indicated that administrators were aware of concerns having been raised, and pointed to the fact that “the new requirement would phase in over four years.”

Rosen said Sodexo and University administrators presented some elements of their proposal to alter the meal plan structure to student representatives in a November meeting.

However, Rosen said, by the time the administration sought student input, decisions had already been made.

JOIN

the

“I have gotten the sense that this has been the trajectory for the last few years. … When we reached the point when we were in the room with them, to discuss the changes, a lot of the changes had been made already, which was a little worrisome.”

Franco said she, Rosen, Class of 2017 Senator David Heaton and Danny Novak ’15, met with Sodexo representatives, Flagel and Director of Strategic Procurement John Storti in the middle of last semester. That meeting consisted of discussions about the structure of meal plans, but the administrators did not provide a definite answer about mandatory meal plans.

The meeting “danced around” the topic of a meal plan mandate, said Franco. While Rosen regularly met with Flagel, that group never met again.

Regarding the email from Campus Operations announcing the meal plan changes, “When they’re referring to students I find it very ambiguous,” said Franco. “If they’re talking about students in the context of Ricky, or myself, or the four people, we were in that one meeting and then never again.”

“Our conversations, I would label as limited,” said Franco. “Not that we weren’t willing to have them, but it’s just that were weren’t involved.”

In an email to the Justice, Senior Vice President for Students and Enrollment Andrew Flagel wrote, “Discussions about these models began with the Student Union and Senate Dining Board when I arrived, and continued through the past 2 1/2 years, including the subject coming up at nearly every strategic planning town hall meeting.”

Storti wrote in an email to the Justice: “An effect of planning for construction, implementing dining venues and programming meal plan structures is that many decisions are made in consultation with students a year or more in advance of implementation of many efforts, which can often give students the false impression that this is a top down process.”

Flagel declined to provide the Justice with specifics on how much revenue would be raised by the new requirement. “The contract with Sodexo has confidentiality components, but I can share that the expanded participation that will be phased in over the next three years was included in the model for investment in dining facilities and expanded dining venues,” he wrote.

JUSTICE

—Phil Gallagher contributed reporting.

Sodexo’s proposed timeline for campus dining changes 2013-2014 • • • • • • •

No change in dining plans or equivalencies.

No change in residential dining requirements.

Dunkin’ Donuts opens.

Food trucks open.

Louis’ Kosher Deli opens.

Science Cafe opens.

The Stein’s initial renovation completed during spring.

2014-2015 • •

• •

No change in residential dining requirements.

Unlimited and flexible meal-plan programs implemented; point-equivalency program ceases; all meal plans include large increases in flex points.

Renovation of Lower Usdan complete; transition to meal-plan operation.

Einstein Bros. Bagels expanded.

2015-2016 • •

• •

Unlimited and flex programs continue.

Residential students who entered Brandeis in Fall 2013 or later required to be on some level of meal plan; a smaller, apartmentstyle meal-plan level available.

Renovation of Sherman Dining Hall complete.

Renovation of The Stein complete.

2016-2017 •

All residential students on some level of meal plan.

CONTACT TATE HERBERT AT EDITOR@THEJUSTICE.ORG

8

features

TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2014

just

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THE JUSTICE

A roundabout

success

VERBATIM | TIM MINCHIN Be hard on your beliefs. Take them out onto the verandah and beat them with a cricket bat. Be intellectually rigorous.

ON THIS DAY…

FUN FACT

In 1987, the world’s largest snowflakes were reported in Fort Keogh, Mont. They were 15 by eight inches.

About eight million pounds of guacamole are consumed on Super Bowl Sunday.

PSYCHOLOGY PIONEER: Judith Rich Harris received an award named for the Harvard professor that dismissed her from the school’s Ph.D. program.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JUDITH RICH HARRIS

Harris ’59 made psychology career from unusual origins Judith Rich Harris ’59 is widely regarded in the psychology community for her research into the factors that influence child development. In 1998, Harris published The Nurture Assumption, an outgrowth of a paper she published in the prestigious Psychological Review journal, a considerable feat at the time given that she was unaffiliated with a university and suffers from an autoimmune disease. In 2006, Harris went on to publish a second book that refined her previous conclusions

JustFeatures: Where does your passion for psychology stem from?

Judith Rich Harris: I probably could have developed a passion for just about any science. But what’s particularly interesting about psychology is that people have pre-existing opinions on its subject matter, and in many cases these pre-existing opinions are flat-out wrong! By nature, I’m a skeptic. I don’t accept conventional beliefs simply because I heard them from someone in authority—I want to see the data! As it happens, in my area of interest there’s plenty of data.

JF: How did your time at Brandeis prepare you for your career and your life of psychology research and publishing?

JRH: What I found out at Brandeis ... is that I love collecting and processing data. My thesis advisor was [Prof. Emeritus] Ricardo Morant (PSYC), and he set me a problem that involved testing people (my classmates) in a visual perception task. The experiment produced lots of data. After each testing session, I would rush back to my room in Renfield Hall in order to plot the latest batch of numbers on my graphs.

JF: What did you do upon graduating from Brandeis?

JRH: Became a graduate student in Harvard’s Department of Psychology. At that time the Department of Psychology was exclusively experimental; its most prominent professor was B. F. Skinner. The other kind of psychology—which includes social, clinical, developmental, and personality— was in a separate department called Social Relations. We grad students in Psychology looked down our noses at the “soft-headed” types in Soc Rel. They no doubt held us in equal disdain.

JF: Why did the psychology department at Harvard reject you from their Ph.D program?

JRH: The letter I got from George A. Miller, the acting chairman of the department, started out by saying that they had no doubt I was “capable of doing satisfactory work in lecture courses and in seminars.” The difficulty, he said, had to do with my “promise as an experimental scientist”—in particular, with what the department perceived as my lack of “originality and independence.”

JF: What did you do after you graduated from Harvard with a master’s degree?

JRH: I worked as a teaching assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then as a research assistant at Bolt Beranek and Newman. After 10 years as a full-time mother of two daughters, I became a research assistant again, this time at Bell

in The Nurture Assumption entitled No Two Alike.

She has become known in academic circles as one who has challenges many of the myths regarding parental involvement as a supreme factor in a child’s eventual personality, opting for a nuanced approach that takes into account environmental variables that extend beyond the household and genetic factors. In an email interview with the Justice, Harris reflected on her dynamic career as a research psychologist.

Labs. My younger daughter was in first grade when I developed intractable back trouble—the first sign of what turned out to be a serious and chronic autoimmune disorder. I was bedridden for a time—had to give up the job at Bell Labs—and was looking for something I could do in bed.

Then a friend at Rutgers University, Marilyn Shaw, gave me one of her papers—an experimental study of something called “visual search.” Marilyn hired me to edit it—to improve the writing style. But she also gave me the data from the experiment, which I found much more interesting. I spent more than a year happily playing with the data.

Then I heard that a textbook publishing company, Prentice Hall, was looking for someone to write two chapters of an introductory psychology book. I applied for the job and was hired. They liked the chapters I wrote so they asked me to co-author (with a professor at SUNY Stony-Brook) a textbook on developmental psychology—one of those fields that Harvard classified as Soc Rel, not Psychology. I didn’t know beans about developmental psychology but accepted the job—it was something I could do in bed.

By then I was tired of being a co-author, so I decided to start afresh and write a new development textbook on my own.

On a cold winter afternoon in 1994—I was alone in the house, reading a journal article on adolescent delinquency—I suddenly had an idea that led me to re-examine the foundations of developmental psychology.

JF: What was your initial motivation for writing the Psychological review article that would eventually become The Nurture Assumption?

JRH: One of the basic tenets of this field is the belief that the most important part of a child’s environment is the child’s parents— the belief that, if something goes wrong with the child, it was probably the parents’ fault. What I realized, after looking closely at the evidence, was that this belief is nothing more than a cultural myth.

At that point, it didn’t even occur to me to write a book aimed at a general audience.

How could a nobody like me, with no Ph.D. and no affiliation, expect to get an article into one of psychology’s most prestigious journals, which had an acceptance rate of 15 percent? It was sheer chutzpah, but I figured I’d give it a try. Amazingly, my paper was accepted. It appeared in the journal in July, 1995.

JF: What were the difficulties involved in writing and research at the same time you were struggling with illness?

Did you view your work as a way to distract yourself?

JRH: By the time I started work on the Psych Review paper, I was no longer bedridden, but I was (and still am) very limited in

my ability to do any kind of physical activity. Fortunately, there are work-arounds. I sent out many postcards and letters—in paper mail, remember that?—to researchers at universities, asking for copies of their papers.

JF: What did it mean to you to receive the George A. Miller Award, given that the psychology department at Harvard rejected you from their Ph.D program while George A. Miller was the chair of the Psychology department?

JRH: In my acceptance speech, I told the audience the story of having been kicked out of the Harvard Psychology Department by George A. Miller and added, “I don’t think you will ever have a recipient of the George A. Miller Award who is happier to receive it than I am!”

JF: What about the reaction in academia to your theory surprised you most? Did you anticipate that it would be as controversial as it was?

JRH: Yes, I anticipated that The Nurture Assumption would be controversial. But I didn’t anticipate the amount of media attention it would receive, or the fact that every periodical in the country would voice an opinion!

JF: What are some of the major points you communicate in The Nurture Assumption?

JRH: It’s not that “parents don’t matter”— of course they matter, though not in the all the ways you assumed! And it’s not that parents don’t influence their children’s behavior—they do influence their children’s behavior at home. The catch is that much of what children learn at home is of little or no use to them in the world outside the home.

Children are perfectly capable of adjusting their behavior to the setting in which they find themselves, so the behaviors that don’t work outside the home are quickly dropped and new ones acquired.

Parents are often surprised to discover that their children behave quite differently in school. I remember, when my children were young, going to Back-to-School Night at their school. Parents would talk to their children’s teacher and come away shaking their heads in disbelief. “Was she talking about my child?” they’d say.

JF: Some misunderstand your book as one that claims childhood development is strictly determined by “nature.” Can you explain in more detail what your

conclusions actually prove?

JRH: No one—certainly not me—thinks personality is entirely inherited! So the question is: What, besides genes, shapes an individual’s personality?

The problem is that genes tend to confuse the issue. If competent parents have competent children, is it nature or nurture? Do competent parents teach their children how to manage their lives, or do they pass on this trait in their genes? Because ordinary observation can’t distinguish between these alternatives, special research methods have been devised to disentangle them.

The use of these methods led to an unexpected conclusion: Most of the environmental factors that were thought to be important ... have no discernible effects on the offspring’s adult personality, once the effects of heredity are taken into account.

To be honest, I didn’t do a very good job of solving it in The Nurture Assumption, though that book does show that the conventional beliefs about childhood, and the conventional research methods used to back up these beliefs, don’t stand up to scrutiny.

I took another stab at solving the mystery in my second book, No Two Alike. The theory presented in N2A is an enhanced version of the one in TNA and fills in some of the gaps. It’s based in part on an idea that comes from the field of evolutionary psychology— namely, that different psychological functions are carried out by different mental organs, often called modules or systems (as in “the visual system”), which work more or less independently.

JF: Although of course your research is based on objective study, are there any subjective personal experiences you can recall that confirm your findings or inspire your work?

JRH: While I was at Harvard, I lived in a rooming house in Cambridge. It was owned by a Russian couple; they both spoke English with a heavy foreign accent. Even without hearing them speak, you could somehow tell they were foreigners. But their three young children, who ranged in age from five to nine, looked like perfectly ordinary Americans and spoke with no foreign accent at all.

I didn’t think of the Russian couple and their children for many years but they must have remained in a corner of my mind, ready to speak up again when the time came for them to be heard.

—Compiled by Jaime Kaiser and Casey Pearlman

THE JUSTICE

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TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2014

FOOD JUSTICE: Tara Cook-Littman ’97 will speak at a ’Deis Impact event about her social justice work with GMO Free CT, an organization she founded which advocates for national GMO labelling laws.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF TARA COOK-LITTMAN

HEALTH ALTERNATIVE: Cook-Littman became a certified health counselor after experiencing the positive effects of a healthy lifestyle firsthand.

Leading the label solution Cook-Littman ’97 directs movement for GMO transparency

By REBECCA HELLER JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

Improving the public health and the political system at the same time? Tara CookLittman ’97 is doing her best.

Cook-Littman, a New York City prosecutor-turned-health counselor-turned-food policy advocate is a director of a grassroots organization called GMO Free CT, CT referring to the state of Connecticut. Through GMO Free CT, she helped get the nation’s first GMO labeling law passed.

GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, have been controversial in recent years. GMO foods are foods in which DNA has been genetically engineered, in part “to withstand the application of toxic herbicide and chemicals, and so those foods are coated in chemicals,” Cook-Littman says.

Because of the modifications made to the food, activists have expressed concern about possible health risks. In Europe, GMO food is subjected to more stringent evaluations. Further, any food products that contain more than a certain percentage of GMO ingredients must be labeled as such. The United States, on the other hand, has not introduced such policy, in part because the science linking GMO foods to health problems has been debated.

Cook-Littman first became involved in the food policy movement eight years ago when she was not feeling well and her doctor suggested medication. “I just didn’t want to go on the medicine, and I thought there had to be a better way,” she says. So she did some research.

“Everything pointed to the food that I ate.

I went on an all-organic, mostly vegetarian diet and got better,” she says.

When she realized the change in what she ate could significantly affect her health, Cook-Littman decided to get her certification as a health counselor to share that knowledge with others.

Cook-Littman has been fighting to get GMO foods labeled ever since. If food was labeled, she argues, “we may choose not to eat it.” Because of this, she strives to pass laws in the U.S. that require GMO foods to be labeled.

Connecticut passed the first GMO labeling law in the nation 2013. “The problem, however, is that there’s a trigger clause, so that the law won’t go into effect until other states pass similar requirements,” CookLittman says. Specifically, four other states with an aggregate population of 20 million people have to pass a similar law, and at least one state that passes it must be adjacent to Connecticut.

Cook-Littman explains that some of the differences between GMO food policy in the United States and in Europe stems from cultural differences. The GMO industry, including powerful corporations like Kellogg and Nestle, have “a foothold in [the United States] because there’s too much money in our politics. These companies have a lot of power and a lot of money,” Cook-Littman says, and use these resources to lobby politicians to protect the industry.

Cook-Littman says that her time at Brandeis helped push her in the direction of advocacy. “I always found that Brandeis

PASSED PROMISE: GMO Free CT was instrumental in prompting Governor Dannel Malloy to pass the nation’s first GMO labelling law.

encouraged people to fight for social justice. That was at the root of what Brandeis was about, so it really fostered people who wanted to go out and make a difference and fight for what they believed in,” she says. In particular, the Women’s Studies program “made her realize that [she] could pursue a career and be a mom and be a powerful woman without being afraid of that.”

To that end, Cook-Littman and GMO Free CT, which was founded in 2012, are working with activists in states throughout the Northeast, including Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New Hampshire. They have also been working with other farther-away states including Florida, Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan.

The organization aims to pass legislation and to educate people about what is in their food and what the relevant environmental and ethical issues are. The states that are closest to achieving labeling laws, CookLittman says, are New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Vermont.

One of the major obstacles when founding GMO Free CT was that it is difficult to organize a grassroots effort. “You don’t have a lot of funding, you’re just people trying to use your voice,” she says. This differs starkly from the wealthy companies GMO Free CT is lobbying against.

The organization was able to overcome these challenges, though, by mobilizing people. Firstly, “if you don’t have a lot of money, using social media is a way to get the word out to a lot of people at one time … so we really harnessed social media on

Facebook and Twitter,” Cook-Littman says.

GMO Free CT also “held very big rallies in Hartford where the people came out and showed up in support to let their legislators know what they wanted.”

Individuals who would like to get involved have a number of options. CookLittman advises interested students to “educate [them]selves, avoid bad food as much as [they] can, and educate [their] friends and family about them.” Further, “everybody should be calling state legislators, state representatives, state senators, federal representatives, federal senators and letting them know that we have a right to know what’s in our food, we need to know what’s in our food, and that we want GMO labeling,” she says. Ultimately, though, the battle over GMO foods is only partly about the foods themselves. Certainly the content of the food is important, and GMO Free CT will continue working in other states to get labeling laws passed so that the Connecticut bill will trigger.

But Cook-Littman frames the issue another way as well. “The problem is that in this country, the way politics is set up is such that corporate interests consistently trump personal rights, and that’s what’s happening here,” she says. It has thus become a bigger issue: “The legacy of what we did here in Connecticut is really not just about GMO labeling. It’s about using your voice, taking back our government, and making sure that the people are heard, our interests are not trumped by corporations trying to protect their bottom line.”

9

10 TUESDAY, january 28, 2014 ● THE JUSTICE

Justice Justice

the the

Established 1949, Brandeis University

Brandeis University

Established 1949

Tate Herbert, Editor in Chief Andrew Wingens, Senior Editor Adam Rabinowitz, Managing Editor Phil Gallagher, Deputy Editor Rachel Burkhoff, Glen Chagi Chesir, Sara Dejene, Shafaq Hasan, Joshua Linton, Jessie Miller and Olivia Pobiel, Associate Editors Marissa Ditkowsky, News Editor Jaime Kaiser, Features Editor Max Moran, Acting Forum Editor Avi Gold, Sports Editor Rachel Hughes and Emily Wishingrad, Arts Editors Josh Horowitz and Morgan Brill, Photography Editors Rebecca Lantner, Layout Editor Celine Hacobian, Online Editor Brittany Joyce, Copy Editor Schuyler Brass, Advertising Editor

Mandatory meal plans are unjust Recently, stuents recived an email from campus operations that announced new changes to dining policy for future years, addressing desired shifts such as making Usdan Café into an all-you-can-eat buffet and instituting an unlimited swipe system, allowing infinite meals throughout the semester. However, while this board praises these attempts at improvement, we find ethical and practical issues with the new financial demands being placed on students.

Starting in the 2015 to 2016 academic year, students in the Classes of 2017 and upwards will be mandated to purchase meal plans if they live on campus. The Class of 2017, this year’s first-year class, was unaware of this additional financial burden when they chose to enroll at the University. These new regulations should have been implemented with the Class of 2018, who would have been aware of the mandated meal plans upon applying.

The email stated that a lower cost meal plan will be offered “for apartment residents who may not wish to follow a full meal plan,” which will be similar to the current Village plan. The Village plan currently costs almost $2,000, and the price of meal plans has only been rising for the past several years. This is not an insignificant amount of money. For students already dependent on scholarships, work-study programs or loans to pay for their education, the added cost of an unnecessary meal plan may make college prohibitively expensive.

While the Student Union had conducted a survey on the new dining policies, the mandatory meal plan decision seems to have been made well before the survey was even distributed. The question on requiring meal plans—a question whose response proved to have no impact on the

Delay implementation administration’s decision—was controversial: 28 percent of students said they would rather live off campus than be on a meal plan, while 36 percent said they would simply choose to live “where it was most affordable.” In an interview with the Justice, Student Union president Ricky Rosen ’14 said of the mandatory meal plan decision, “I’m not entirely sure that the best interests of students were the driving force behind the changes.”

Forcing students who live on campus to purchase meal plans will drive many students off campus, effectively making oncampus living a luxury commodity available to purchase. This threatens to undo a critical connection the University shares with its student body: according to the University’s admissions website, 85 percent of students currently live on campus. Demanding several thousand dollars extra to live on campus has the potential to create a culture in which even fewer students can afford to live in dorms, driving more financially constrained students off campus and directly contradicting the University’s social justice values.

This board recognizes that these changes have already been approved but still decries these unfair impositions. Forcing additional costs on the first-year class who, having no experience with the prior meal plan options, are less likely to protest when the new costs go into effect, is highly unethical. Looking toward the future, we ask for the continuation of voluntary meal plans, which is significantly less expensive than the Village plan. This board demands that the University respect the needs of the students, not the financial bottom line.

New policy marks a step forward This past week, the University revamped its procedures for determining executive compensation and released details about the compensation package of University President Emeritus Jehuda Reinharz. The new procedures require the University’s full Board of Trustees to be aware of the compensation of administrators and permits faculty participation on the compensation committee. Although this board is concerned by the long-term commitment the University has made to Reinharz’s personal finances, we applaud the new compensation procedures, and their strides toward improved transparency.

We appreciate the new initiatives to involve the entire Board of Trustees, including faculty and student representatives, in determining the University president’s compensation and to report the compensation to faculty and staff before legally-required deadlines. It is refreshing to see the Board take concrete action and go beyond the standards set by peer institutions to address a concern of the University community. The inclusion of student and faculty representatives to the Board is vital to this new policy. Previously, students and faculty were left in the dark until executive compensation was published years later in the University’s 990 tax forms as required by law. By including these voices in the decision-making process, the Board will have a more informed understanding of the community’s concerns when deciding future compensation packages.

Although we welcome the release of

Look closer at Reinharz’s pay new details regarding Reinharz’s postpresidency compensation, we are troubled by what those details indicate. Reinharz will receive $180,000 annually as a halftime professor until 2024 and a payment for unused sabbaticals of $811,000. Besides the fact that $180,000 is significantly more than $131,400, the reported average salary of full-time professors at Brandeis, it is alarming that Reinharz will earn this salary until 2024. We must hope that he makes substantive contributions to the University for the next decade. The $811,000 compensation in untaken sabbatical leaves is baffling. Few presidents actually take sabbatical during their tenures, which makes this stipulation in Reinharz’s contract look like a back-door to additional pay.

The decision to award Reinharz such a large compensation package after his presidency seems misguided. The University is a mission-driven not-for-profit organization with a $6.5 million deficit and few options to increase its revenue. We appreciate the achievements that Reinharz made during his tenure as president. However, compensating him should not shatter the University’s financial dignity. Rather, it should be done with an eye to the financial condition of the University, its students, faculty and staff. Although the damage has already been done with Reinharz’s pay, we hope that the new policy for determining executive compensation will ameliorate this problem in the future.

TZIPORAH THOMSON /the Justice

Views the News on

Bill Gates, the founder of both Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest nonprofit organization which specializes in reducing world poverty, wrote in his most recent annual letter on the foundation’s work that he believes “there will be almost no poor countries left in the world” by 2035. Citing the tremendous leaps in average personal incomes in Turkey, Chile, China and Malaysia, as well as the fact that seven of the 10 fastest-growing economies of the world are in Africa, Gates argued that “the terms ‘developing countries’ and ‘developed countries’ have outlived their usefulness.” Do you agree with Gates’ assertion? Why or why not?

Prof. Jasmine Waddell (Heller) I think that this aspirational statement is a bit misguided. Gates celebrates the successes of the Millennium Development Goal approach which distinguishes between completion and performance for the eight discrete goals. In his statement there is no attention to sustainable development, a concept which importantly connects economic, social and environmental dimensions of development and assesses development more holistically.

Countering Gates, I argue that there is still the need to distinguish between communities which are either striving for or sustaining stability, inclusion and freedom. For, although there are higher personal incomes in the countries he names, there is also differential progress toward the aspirational end Nobel Prize-winning economist, Amartya Sen, terms “flourishing,” in those same countries. For example, the human rights abuses in China and Malaysia are mitigating factors for development, promulgating unequal economic progress and hindering freedom-enhancing development in the long run. Inequality is often the result, and always the enemy of economic development, and the counter opposite of sustainable flourishing.

Prof. Jasmine Waddell (Heller) is on the faculty of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and a visiting scholar in the Heller School.

Prof. Michael Coiner (ECON) It is correct that more societies are experiencing rapid rates of growth that are raising per capita incomes and reducing the number of desperately poor people. By 2035, it is very likely that the number of “poor” nations will have decreased, but it is not clear that it will be close to zero (some nations in Africa and in central Asia still have a long way to go). We can all look forward to the day when the phrase “developing countries” can be retired, but that day may be a bit further off than Gates believes. It is also good to remember that the developed nations have not eliminated poverty within their societies. There is a lot more work to do.

Prof. Michael Coiner (ECON) teaches ECON 8b: “The Global Economy.”

Si-Si Hensley ’14 I think Bill Gates assertion is definitely a bit premature. For one, we have to realize that the term “poor” is completely relative. There will always be poor and rich countries, neighborhoods or people irrespective of time.

With this in mind, it is difficult to say that poor countries will not exist in the next 20 years. Although certain developing countries have seen a rise in average personal income, there is still immense poverty on the personal level that may never be mitigated or entirely fixed. In all the countries mentioned by Gates, many people still live well under the poverty line—barely able to feed themselves or their families. I do agree, however, that the terms “developing” and “developed” countries may have outlived their usefulness. I believe these terms are not only a Western construction, but also greatly undervalue the modernity and significance of what we consider “developing” countries. I think too often we focus largely on economic factors to define and cordon off countries, creating an arbitrary hierarchy that inevitably finds its way into social atmospheres.

Si-Si Hensley ’14 is an Anthropology major and Legal Studies minor.

Shikha Chandarana ’17 I wish I could agree with Gates’ assertion, but developing and underdeveloped nations will continue to exist as long as there is a large disparity in the wealth of the rich and the poor of the nations. As a citizen of India, one of the fastest growing economies of the world, I can definitely say that the development of industry in my country hasn’t done much to improve economic conditions of the “poor.” A nation’s progress is judged strictly on numbers put up in markets and economic times, but my experience working with charities in India, a few of them run by Gates himself, has made me understand the bureaucratic mess that come with elevating the economic position of the people most affected by the “underdeveloped” tag, most of whom remain in a terrible position even after the “help” they get. My country is developing quickly. Our rich are getting richer by the day, the cities are getting bigger, the buildings taller; but the country will remain poor, because, like Gates, most of us forget to include the troubled population in our fancy calculations.

Shikha Chandarana ’17 worked for a year with the Helping Hands charity, which is part of the Gates Foundation. She is a potential Biology and English major.

THE JUSTICE

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TUESDAY, January 28, 2014

11

Keep standards toward academic boycotts consistent Glen

Chesir Chagi’s chop

The legal-rational system of power is decidedly based in laws and reason—whether it is in a government, power system or private entity. As coined by political scientist Max Weber, the legal-rational system promotes a specific long-term trend: consistency and predictability. Brandeis University, like most of higher education, is by and large a legal-rational entity. Yet upon further analysis, two recent University decisions regarding outside relationships, appear to lack consistency and predictability.

Over the past few months, Brandeis has made media waves with its decisions related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On Nov. 18, the University formally ceased its partnership with Al-Quds University, a Palestinian University in East Jerusalem, after a Jihadist-style rally occurred on campus, followed by a contentious public statement by Al-Quds President Sari Nusseibeh.

Exactly one month later, Brandeis’ American Studies program suspended its relationship with the American Studies Association, after the ASA voted to enact an academic boycott as part of the “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions” campaign against the State of Israel.

Yet, when one looks at these two decisions side-by-side, inconsistencies in academic standards become apparent. In fact, the basic and tenable standards set for one decision were completely overlooked for the other.

The Brandeis American Studies program’s statement reads, “We view the recent vote by the membership to affirm an academic boycott of Israel as a politicization of the discipline and a rebuke to the kind of open inquiry that a scholarly association should foster… we can no longer support an organization

that has rejected two of the core principles of American culture—freedom of association and expression.”

The Brandeis American studies program placed the open exchange of scholarly thought between educational leaders above political disagreements. The ASA’s blockade of this academic freedom is what caused Brandeis’ program to cease its relationship with the American Studies Association.

However, the Brandeis statement that suspended the University’s partnership with Al-Quds reads that the University is “obliged to recognize intolerance when we see it, and we cannot—and will not—turn a blind eye to intolerance.” Many were offended by the Nusseibeh statement University President Frederick Lawrence deemed “offensive and inflammatory”—so much so that it most likely became the underlying reason for the suspension in the first place.

What happened to the freedoms of association and expression emphasized in our statement to the ASA? Why is a blockade of academic freedom a reason to cease membership in the ASA, yet necessary to put in place after the Al-Quds protest? The University is lacking consistency.

Ideally, yes, Brandeis should never have suspended the relationship with Al-Quds just as ideally the extremist rally should never have occurred. However, the Al-Quds campus rally and the subsequent statement by Nusseibeh forced Brandeis to choose between two values: the fight against anti-Semitism versus the beauty of free academic discourse. At the time, arguments for and against a suspension from Al-Quds were sound. If ties were severed, those striving for academic purity would cry foul.

Many claimed Nusseibeh’s statement was poorly translated, and lacked context about recent events in both the region and on campus (despite the fact that Al-Quds itself translated the speech, and Nusseibeh has the opportunity to clarify these events to Lawrence in their previous conversations).

Many argued that this event was simply not large enough to throw all the positive at-

tributes of the program out the metaphorical window. Free academic discourse must persevere.

On the other hand, the staunch fighters against anti-Semitism and bigotry unequivocally called for action on Brandeis’ part. They argued that Brandeis could not allow this kind of offensive behavior to go without repercussions. If not at Al-Quds where a student rally depicted the death of an Israeli Soldier at the hands of militants, then where do we draw the line? How can we have a partnership with a university president who refers to the “vilification campaigns by Jewish extremists” in the first sentence of his statement?

“

We must work to strengthen the moderate voices that have helped form this relationship in the first place.

I was, and continue to be, in full support of the nullification of our relationship with the American Studies Association. Israel is the only country in the world that has affirmative action programs for Palestinian students and has awrguably a higher amount of academic dissent from the government than any other country in the world. Israel is not China which imprisons dissenting academics, or Iran who has publicly executed their dissenters yet Israel is the only country being targeted by the ASA. When asked why the ASA chose to target Israel for their boycott as opposed to other countries whose human rights violations far exceed Israel, the ASA President Curtis Marez responded, “One has to start somewhere.” This boycott is clearly absurd— nearly two months after blocking Israel the

ASA has not gone on to boycott anywhere else. Even Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, has publicly condemned the movement against academia in Israel proper. Academic discourse with Israel should not be blocked, and hence Brandeis’ removal from the association is the correct response.

But we must apply this same standard to our relationship with Al-Quds. I agreed at the time with the decision to suspend the Al-Quds relationship because of the nature of the rally and the subsequent Nusseibeh statement.

But now the message has been sent to the world that Brandeis will not tolerate bigotry and hatred. In fact, because of the suspension, President Nusseibeh has made multiple public and universal condemnations of the rally, such as an interview with Times of Israel.

Moreover, with the heightened scrutiny on the Al-Quds campus, other disturbing notes of bigotry have come to life, many of which are enumerated by Jewish Press columnist Lori Lowenthal Marcus.

For example, a museum on campus is named after the terrorist Khalil Al-Wazir, known by the alias Abu Jihad, most infamous for his connection to the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Nusseibeh’s positive statements since the suspension, as well as the heightened scrutiny around the campus, are both exemplary proofs for why the initial suspension was the correct decision at the time.

But now the time has come to work toward the academic freedom noted by the American Studies program, the academic freedom we should always strive toward. Moving toward the reinstatement of the relationship is the only way Brandeis can take an active hand in deconstructing the bigotry on the Al-Quds campus. We must work to strengthen the moderate voices that have helped form this relationship in the first place.

Its time for Brandeis to work with Al-Quds to change their practices, and upon the corrections and removal of these various flaws, reignite the shining light we once fostered for the Israeli- Palestinian conversation.

Expanding firearm rights allows citizens to defend themselves By mark gimelstein JUSTICE contributing WRITER

On Tuesday, Jan. 21, an armed assailant shot a teaching assistant to death inside a classroom at Indiana’s Purdue University. As the facts trickle in on this horrific incident, one thing is certain: far too often, universities, public buildings and governments follow zero-tolerance gun control policies that are fundamentally flawed. To find real solutions to shootings and gun deaths, we must not let emotions cloud our judgment. In the wise words of former United States Secret Service agent Dan Bongino, “In a society of wolves, you do not fight back by creating more sheep.”

The facts are undeniable: as a whole, the United States has become safer and less violent each succeeding year. Crime data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation has found that nationwide violent crime rates are approaching historic lows, with the rate of U.S. violent crime declining by 72 percent from 1993 to 2011.

Another study by the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan research group funded

by Congress, found that from 1994 until 2009, nationwide gun ownership skyrocketed from 194 million to 310 million, while crime dramatically decreased. The study found that “firearm-related murder and non-negligent homicide” fell from 6.6 per 100,000 Americans in 1993 to 3.2 per 100,000 Americans in 2011, meaning that gun murder actually fell as arms ownership rose.

Yet, with all the evidence, gun control advocates still insist that mandatory, strict laws banning assault rifles, limiting the number of ammunition magazines one can own, instituting universal background checks with governmental databases and more must be put in place to deal with guns and violence after tragedies like those in Newtown, Conn. and Aurora, Colo.

However, the truth is that knee-jerk legislation passed by the state governments of Colorado, Connecticut and New York, and which almost passed in the United States Senate in light of these incidents, misses the mark in addressing the reasons behind and solutions for the fewer “firearm-related murder(s)” still occurring in

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the country. These laws fail to solve the problem, and strip the overwhelming majority of law-abiding Americans of their Second Amendment rights at the same time.

The reasons behind persistent gun violence and mass shootings are simple: governments and individual institutions that prohibit gun ownership for upstanding citizens inadvertently help criminals to prey on the defenseless. Criminals, by definition, don’t follow laws; law-abiding citizens do. The most damning evidence to support this truth is that, as per the findings of economist and gun rights advocate John Lott, every public mass shooting in the United States since 1950, with one anomaly, has occurred in a gun-free zone.

Meanwhile, Europe, which houses some of the world’s most draconian gun-control laws, has had three of the six most deadly school shootings. Quite simply, law enforcement is not omnipresent, meaning that victims of gun-related crimes have no way to defend themselves when armed officials aren’t there. It’s evident, then, that gun-free zones and zero-tolerance gun control haven’t been able to keep the most dangerous in our society from attacking the most vulnerable.

America needs to begin effectively addressing the epidemic of gun deaths still occurring in some areas in the country.

A good place to start is to uphold gun laws already on the books that keep firearms out of the hands of criminals and the mentally unstable.

Indeed, according to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, in 2010, a paltry 44 illegal gun purchase cases were prosecuted by federal prosecutors out of 48,321 total instances. Moreover, under President Barack Obama’s administration, gun law violation prosecution fell to a decade low, with a 30 percent drop from a 2004 record peak under the George W. Bush administration, as seen in Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse Project study. There has been no explanation from anyone as to why these numbers are so low.

If we cannot depend on incompetent governments to enforce the laws already on the books, how can we ask them to enforce even more gun

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regulations than before? We must restore the rule of law.

Another positive step legislators across the country can take is to promote, support, and expand concealed carry gun licenses for lawabiding Americans. States that choose this alternative, constitutional path to dealing with guns have seen dramatic results: an 8.5 percent decrease in murders, five percent decrease in rapes, seven percent decrease in aggravated assaults and a three percent decrease in robberies, according to FBI crime statistics.

Moreover, while cities plagued with high crime rates continue to see mass murders on their streets, some city residents have passed through the piles of anti-gun governmental regulations to obtain concealed carry licenses.

This has had a positive impact and should be expanded. In fact, James Craig, the police chief of the crime-riddled city of Detroit, recently came out in support of the expansion of concealed carry on the radio program “The Paul

The Staff

For information on joining the Justice, write to editor@ thejustice.org.

W. Smith Show,” stating: “There’s a number of [concealed pistol license] holders running around the city of Detroit. I think it acts as a deterrent. Good Americans with CPLs translates into crime reduction.”

Statistics support Craig’s claim: a 1985 Department of Justice survey confirmed that three in five felons wouldn’t want to confront a victim with a firearm. An armed populace is a danger to the criminal, not the other way around.

While well-intentioned, the emotional rhetoric of gun control advocates must be checked by a logical, thought-out and constitutional approach. The facts show that bad policy fixated on nearsighted, emotional appeals ends up hurting more people than it helps.

Politicians and gun control advocates must look to Benjamin Franklin’s timeless advice that “they that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Staff

Copy: Aliza Braverman, Kathryn Brody, Melanie Cytron, Mara

Senior Writers: Jacob Moskowitz, Henry Loughlin, Zachary Reid

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News: Jay Feinstein, Danielle Gross, Luke Hayslip, Ilana Kruger,

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TUESDAY, january 28, 2014

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THE JUSTICE

FORUM

Millennials can become the pro-choice generation

By Hailey Magee Special to the justice

Jan. 22 was the 41st anniversary of Roe v.

Wade, the Supreme Court case that solidified women’s right to choose abortion. On that day, I spent two hours in the bitter cold counter-protesting the March for Life on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The March for Life, the largest anti-choice demonstration in the world, takes place every year on the anniversary of Roe to challenge the Supreme Court ruling’s pro-choice premise. I, along with a friend and a group of about 20 other protesters, donned our “Keep Abortion Legal” signs and “I Trust Women” pins and assembled in front of the Supreme Court to show the anti-choice marchers that a strong pro-choice voice exists in our nation.

At the march, I had some intense revelations that I want to share with you all. After the march, I used Facebook to post photos from my experience, and some friends and acquaintances subsequently asked me to explain or justify my pro-choice stance. I realized that although I do a lot of work in reproductive justice, I’ve never taken the time to pause and explain why I fight for what I fight for.

So here it goes.

I am staunchly, proudly and unapologetically pro-choice. Abortion is a medical procedure, one of the safest in the world when performed by a trained medical professional, that allows women the right to decide when and if to have children. It gives women the chance to plan their families, and, as such, to secure educational opportunities, economic stability and autonomy.

That being said, I recognize that not everyone agrees with me. According to the New York Times, abortion is one of the most divisive issues of the 2014 election cycle. The contention, hatred and venom that exist on both sides of the aisle of the abortion debate are baffling to me. At the protest, my friend and I linked arms and an anti-choice man attempted to physically plow through and disrupt our peaceful demonstration. A woman carrying an anti-choice sign began screaming in the face of the counter-protesters from the National Organization for Women.

We were scoffed at, yelled at and physically intimidated—not to mention outnumbered, obviously—by our anti-choice counterparts.

These interactions are not productive. They do not create useful dialogue or a sense of understanding among the different factions. They foster hatred, violence and demonization of the “other side”—an “other side” that is composed of people, people like you and me, who are just as convinced that what they are fighting for is as righteous as what we are fighting for.

At the end of the day, we are each fighting for what we believe is moral and just. This is a democracy, where we are free to voice our opinions openly, proudly and encounter the support and opposition that subsequently follow.

I do not “hate” people who are anti-choice. I respect the staunchness with which they support their beliefs, and I respect their right to do so.

But I demand that they respect my right to do so as well. I will continue to fight this fight— peacefully, respectfully, and fiercely—until a woman’s right and ability to choose are secure nationwide.

MARISA RUBEL/the Justice

I’d like now to speak directly to those of you who may be fiercely pro-choice, moderately prochoice or undecided: According to NARAL Pro-Choice America’s Choice Out Loud Campus Toolkit, 61 percent of millennials, our generation, are pro-choice.

But only 21 percent think the issue is important.

Meanwhile, 44 percent of anti-choice millennials believe the issue is important.

That means that the modern pro-choice voice is being outspoken by the voice of the antichoice movement. We, the pro-choice folks, are the majority, but not enough of us are willing to take a stand, vocally express our support and take action to secure women’s right to choose.

At the March for Life demonstration, the marchers kept chanting; “We. Are. The Pro-Life Generation!” If we as pro-choice millennials do not raise our voices, mobilize and stand in support of a woman’s right to choose, our generation will become the pro-life generation. In 2013, three states attempted to ban abortion at varying points throughout the pregnancy; five states attempted to ban insurance coverage of abortion; and eight states attempted to close abor-

tion providers through anti-choice restrictions.

We can protect Roe, and secure women’s right to reproductive health. But we have to make a dedicated effort, and we have to spread our passion and dedication to our friends, our families and everyone who is willing to listen.

Some people won’t fight because they don’t believe abortion affects them. To those people, I offer this: Stop and think, just for a minute. Think of every female-bodied person you know. Every individual that may, at some point, experience an unplanned pregnancy—whether it’s you, your mother, your friends, or your role models.

According to the non profit organization Advocates for Youth, about one in three women will get an abortion by the time she turns 45.

Odds are, you know more than one person who has had an abortion. Odds are, one third of the women at the March for Life had received abortions. We cannot forget the regularity with which abortion occurs, nor can we forget that women will continue to get abortions even if the procedure is legally outlawed. We cannot forget the alarming number of women who have died, or become seriously ill, from botched abortions

performed in back alleys because the procedure was not legal.

And, most importantly, we cannot forget the power of a story. These issues seem vague and distant until we realize that we know someone who has experienced them firsthand. The best way—the very best way—we can shift public opinion to become more pro-choice is to share our stories. To say, “I had an abortion.”

Whether you had one and regretted it, or had one and never looked back, or had two, or more: at the end of the day, you had the ability to choose your future.

Expressing that you have had an abortion—a procedure so stigmatized in our society—is not easy. But the rewards of doing so will be enormous. Be brave, take a stand and share your story. You will be shocked by how many people have been waiting for the right moment to share theirs. You will be shocked by the support and understanding you receive as a result.

I am pro-choice. I am proud. And I am dedicated to making sure that 2014 is a year in which the pro-choice voice becomes louder and stronger than ever before.

Embrace technology to stop the Congo’s conflict mineral war By jessica goldstein justice contributing writer

Throughout history, men of all ages, nationalities and ethnicities have traveled far and wide in search of the most lucrative item to possess. Time and time again, these men have found themselves wandering into the famed Heart of Darkness, the Democratic Republic of the Congo—a land of natural beauty and terrible suffering. The Congolese sit atop a cache of great mineral wealth. African Business Magazine estimates that the Congo has $24 trillion of untapped mineral wealth in the ground. Ever since the Europeans were able to survive Congo’s harsh jungles, there has never been a time when the Congolese weren’t being exploited.

This is the reality of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and its reality links directly to our own world.

Our society belongs to the innovators, those who pursue change despite all odds, those who alter the universal perception of reality. Time and time again, these brilliant men and women have given amazing gifts, from the printing press to the typewriter to the personal computer. However, as the years have progressed, an unspeakable atrocity has been concealed along with the release of each new gadget.

What many of us aren’t aware of is that these electronics that we all know and love are funding what the Enough Project calls “the deadliest conflict since World War II.” Our hands are not bloodied by the wielding of a gun, but by our consumerism.

Since the conflict began in the Democratic

Republic of Congo in 1996, the International Rescue Committee estimates the death toll in the Congo at 5.4 million due to war-related causes. Today, brutal militia groups fight to remain in control of the Congo’s lucrative mineral wealth. In a seemingly anarchic state, there is no clear distinction as to where the government’s power ends and the militias’ begins.

There are four conflict minerals that come from the Eastern Congo that find their way into all of our electronics: tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold. According to the Enough Project, militias control these mines in order to have power over the local population. Rape is used as their worse weapon of war. This in turn makes the Congo “the worst place to be a woman in the world,” according to the Enough Project.

After learning about our direct connection to this conflict, we may begin to believe that technology is the enemy. This simply is not true. One of the greatest aspects of our modern electronics is their ability to spread awareness about great causes, leading to a social impetus for change. If we didn’t live in such a hyper-globalized world, hardly any of us would be aware of the conflict in the DRC. Nonprofit organizations such as Raise Hope for Congo have made it easy to voice your opinion through sending a quick email to your representatives or your favorite tech companies. Other organizations ask their followers to show their support in very public ways like Falling Whistles, which encourages you to wear a whistle as a conversation piece to teach others about the atrocities occurring in Congo.

In the last several years, there has been a vi-

tal shift in the way we view advocacy for peace in the Congo.

Organizations such as the Enough Project and Raise Hope for Congo helped to start the movement to understand the role of the electronics industry in the trade of these minerals.

This was furthered by the passage of Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. According to the Enough Project, this bill requires electronics manufacturers to report on whether or not their products contain conflict minerals. If their products do, then companies must take the proper measures to track their minerals.

Today, the Congo has received remarkable media coverage based largely on consumer action. Universities all around the world like Brandeis University, the University of California, Berkeley, Emory University, St. Andrews University and the University of Ghana, have become part of Raise Hope for Congo’s Conflict-Free Campus Initiative—an organization that encourages university officials to push electronic companies to invest responsibly in Congo’s mining sector. According to Brian Krzanich, the CEO of the Intel Corporation, his company released the first conflict-free microprocessor this month, leading the industry in a positive direction. In fact, Raise Hope for Congo considers Intel Corporation and HewlettPackard as “Industry Leaders” in the effort to produce conflict-free minerals from the DRC. Great progress has been made on the ground as well. This past November, Falling Whistles updated their campaign titled “Stop M23” to “We Stopped M23.” A United Nations-backed

Congolese army defeated the March 23 Movement, a rebel group that has haunted the DRC for many years. According to Raise Hope for Congo, M23 was responsible for the displacement of 800,000 civilians, the rape of hundreds of women, the abduction of children and the execution of civilians.

Additionally, M23 played a pivotal role in the conflict gold trade in eastern Congo, according to a report by the Enough Project. Hopefully, this political action will have a ripple effect in ending the presence of militias in Congo.

Even though the M23 has been disbanded and a peace treaty has been signed, there remains the threat of resurgence according to the head of UN peacekeeping operation in Congo. Perhaps it would be in the best interests of international justice for the lead commanders of M23 to be held accountable for their actions in the International Criminal Court.

The exploitation the Congolese people have faced is unimaginable. That has been the history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Now, it is our opportunity to change the social reality. We should thank Intel for their commitment to the conflict-free movement and encourage all others to follow suit. We should support jewelry retailers in investigating their gold mines. We can achieve peace by changing our leaders’ attitudes toward the cause of human rights in Congo and ultimately the world over.

Eliminating the conflict caused by Congo’s mineral wealth is one of the fundamental steps in changing the lives of the Congolese people.

Then comes the development of a beautiful country.

THE JUSTICE

WBBALL: Team gains key wins at home games CONTINUED FROM 16 team over the course of the year, including in the Emory victory.

“I think over the past couple years each team has gotten better and better. There is a lot of talent and they have stepped up in some big games, so they will also have experience and confidence next year,” she said.

The Judges had momentum for the contest against Emory after a gritty win against the Rochester Yellowjackets just two days prior.

It was Brandeis’ first UAA win of the season and it could not have come at a better time.

In a game very similar to their second of the weekend, Brandeis scraped by the Yellowjackets with a 58-57 victory on Friday.

However, this game was much more tumultuous in nature, featuring seven ties and five lead changes.

The Judges had to stave off a late buzzer-beating attempt by Rochester senior forward Danielle McNabb, the Yellowjackets’ leading scorer with 18 points over the course of the game.

This time, it was forward Nicolina Vi-

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January 28, 2014

SPLITTING THE DEFENSE

tale ’14 and guard Janelle Rodriguez ’14 who made clutch shots late in the game to extend Brandeis’s lead and put the Judges in a position to hold on to a lead.

Guard Frankie Pinto ’17 provided strength from the bench, shooting four-of-six from the field with one three pointer made and nine critical points that the starters had struggled to find. Mancinelli added six rebounds of her own. While the Judges were outrebounded significantly in the first half, they bounced back to close the gap a bit in the second.

The Judges will continue their UAA play with away games at Case Western Reserve University and Carnegie Mellon University over the weekend before returning home for a four-game home stand.

Dean is confident in the Judges’ ability to play well on the road.

“Traveling can be very hard sometimes, but it isn't an issue with our team," she said.

“We will prepare mentally and physically the same as we always do, but we definitely have some extra motivation after this weekend.”

FENCING: Judges top assorted foes at Boston College MBBALL: Late-game rally falls

MORGAN BRILL/the Justice

LIFT OFF: Ben Bartoldus ’14 weaves his way between two University of Rochester defenders on his way to the hoop in Friday’s win.

CONTINUED FROM 16

BC and Vassar.

The women saberists sliced the competition, gaining victories over five out of the six teams they competed against, most notably winning against Dartmouth 9-0.

Saberist Nina Sayles,’17 proved to be a beneficial addition to the competition, especially impressing Mandel.

“Nina went on the strip with a very positive attitude and executed a variety of smart actions against each of the [BC saberists], giving her three underdog victories,” he said.

The women’s team earlier in the week played host to the Wellesley College Blue last Wednesday.

Saberists Jaclyn Hammond ’17, Deborah Abiri ’16 and Sayles led the way for the Judges, each going undefeated on the evening.

The synergetic Brandeis team won their first seven bouts on the evening

en route to an 8-1 victory.

The foilists, led by Caroline Mattos ’16, Emilia Dwyer ’16, and Vikki Nunley ’14, each won their first bout.

The Wellesley Blue eagerly fought back, taking the next two out of three bouts for their team to make the score 4-2 by the end of the second round.

Annie Kim ’16 played the role of savior for the Judges, successfully winning her first bout and providing Brandeis with its fifth victory.

The épée team, which also had a strong start to the match, could not pull off a final win.

Brandeis will next compete in the Eric Sollee Invitational on Saturday.

The Judges welcome competitors from New York University, Hunter College, Stevens Institute of Technology and Haverford College in a meet that begins at 9 a.m.

—Editor's note: Annie Kim ’16 is a staff photographer for the Justice

just short in conference defeat CONTINUED FROM 16

Vilmont said that Brandeis lost the game the usual way.

“We had too many turnovers, and we didn’t finish on open shot opportunities,” he reasoned.

On Friday, the Judges managed to come away with the victory at home in a convincing manner.

Despite employing a smaller lineup in that game as well, Brandeis was able to use stifling defense to hold Rochester to just 66 points on 44 percent shooting, and only allowed seven offensive rebounds.

The first half was a back-and-forth

affair, as neither team managed to take a significant lead. The Judges took a 36-32 lead into halftime, led by Moton’s 15 points.

The offense took over for Brandeis in the second half, led by Retos, who lit it up from beyond the arc, knocking down all three of his attempts.

He is now shooting 44.2 percent from three-point range this season, an incredibly high percentage.

The Judges extended the lead to 10 points, 60-50, on a Retos three-pointer at the 10:55 mark.

This was during a run where Retos scored eight out of 10 Judges points in less than two minutes.

From there, the Judges never looked back, extending the lead to as much as 19.

Moton led all scorers with 21 efficient points. Guard Ben Bartoldus ’14 added 17, including an emphatic put-back dunk in the early going that got the packed arena onto its feet.

Retos added 11 off the bench. He now has 201 three pointers in his career, second on the all-time list.

The Judges take to the road for their upcoming games, traveling to Case Western Reserve University on Friday, then heading to Carnegie Mellon University to take on the Tartans on Sunday.

Track and field

Squads finish with strong day at tournament against top foes ■ The men’s and women’s

track and field teams ran against top competitors in a weekend meet.

By Daniel kanovich JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

The men’s and women’s track and field teams traveled to Boston University to compete in the John Thomas Terrier Invitational over the weekend.

The squads secured modest results, squaring off against Division I, II and III runners from a variety of schools from around the Northeast.

Vincent Asante ’14—the men’s team’s top sprinter—sat out the

weekend’s competition after straining his hamstring a week ago at Harvard University’s Greater Boston Track Club Invitational.

The rest of the men’s team stepped up to the challenge with a few highranking finishes in the day’s events.

In the 400-meter dash, captain Mohamed Sidique ’15 finished second in his heat with a time of 52.75 seconds. Sidique also placed 28th in the men’s long jump event with a jump of 6.14 meters.

Teammates Nick Wactor ’17 and Trevor Tuplin ’16 also raced well in the 400-meter dash, finishing third and fourth, respectively, in their heats with times of 53.47 seconds and 54.34 seconds.

Asante, watching from the sidelines, was impressed with his team’s

performance on the day.

“I was very excited about the team’s performance overall, as everyone has been working hard,” Asante said.

Matthew Becker ’16 finished third in the 800-meter run in his heat.

The team had a stronger showing, though, in the one-mile run.

Grady Ward ’16 led the pack, finishing ninth in his heat with a time of 4 minutes, 25.55 seconds and placing 90th overall in the race. Matt Doran ’17 placed fifth in his heat and 128th overall with a time of 4:35.08 while Daniel Leon ’17 placed 10th in his heat and 155th overall with a time of 4:45.44. Based on their strong performances, the trio of distance runners displayed their future potential in the meet.

As a senior, Asante recognized that he is part of the group that will leave the team in the hands of the younger members as they try to grow the program.

“My number one piece of advice is usually that each one should recognize that to be great you have to be aware of your limitations and practice good habits and with time you will see the results,” he commented.

The women’s team also had a strong showing in distance running, starting off with the 1000-meter run.

Kelsey Whitaker ’16 and Ashley Piccirillo-Horan ’17 both finished in the top 25. Whitaker finished 11th with a time of 2:59.56 while PiccirilloHoran finished 23rd with a time of 3:06.15. Whitaker’s time was the best among all Division III women while

Piccirillo-Horan’s was third.

In the one-mile run, the women had two runners place again. Victoria Sanford ’14 set another personal best in the race with a time of 5:05.33, currently fourth-best among Division III runners. Molly Paris ’16 also posted a new personal best time in the race, shaving more than four seconds off of her previous best and finishing with a time of 5:46.27.

Maddie Dolins ’17 ran to the fourth-fastest time among Division III runners in the 3000-meter run, setting a personal best with a time of 10:09.22 and continuing the string of successes the younger members of the women’s team had on the day.

Both teams will travel to Tufts University to compete at the Tufts Stampede on Saturday.

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TUESDAY, january 28, 2014

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THE JUSTICE

Free throws fundraising

&

CLOSE QUARTERS: Curtis Zunyu He ’17 (middle) tries to get around Prof. Chad Williams (AAAS), while Solanny Sanchez ’15 (left) looks to score a jump-shot.

PHOTOS BY JOSH HOROWITZ/the Justice

Fifth annual “Hoops for Haiti” provides cause for celebration

By Adam rabinowitz JUSTICE editor

CONTESTED SHOT: Liban Aden ’16 attempts a shot from the field over Jay MacDuffie, the community development coordinator for the Charles River Apartments and the Foster Mods.

On April 15, 2010, a vision came to fruition.

Shaina Gilbert ’10 watched from the sidelines as students squared off against staff for a novel fundraising event known as “Hoops for Haiti.”

The Brandeis Haiti Relief Effort, now known as the Brandeis Haiti Initiative, staged the friendly basketball exhibition between staff and students to fundraise for relief efforts for a disaster-ravaged Haiti.

The Haiti Relief Effort that year focused on support for three organizations, one of which proved to be Gilbert’s Empowering Through Education camp.

Founded in 2009, and based in Hinche, Haiti—the hometown of Gilbert’s mother—the summer program sought to serve and educate 100 children in at-risk communities.

Fast-forward to Saturday.

Hoops for Haiti received an added boost in publicity this year from its affiliation with Brandeis’ inaugural HOOPcoming week. Led

by Stacy Finley ’16 and Terry Shaipitisiri ’16, the committee planned a series of spirit-based events, revolving around the Judges’ two critical University Athletic Association games this past weekend, to rally the student body.

Gilbert reflected on the sustained success of this event, a fundraising initiative that, each year, has continued to take Red Auerbach Arena by storm.

“Even four years later, I am so glad that Hoops for Haiti is alive and kicking,” she said about the event.

Her words resonated as Dean of Student Life Jamele Adams led the student squad onto the court against a staff team coached by men’s basketball guard Ruben Kanya ’14.

While Kanya had a fifth straight victory in mind for the faculty, he also expressed his appreciation for having the opportunity to participate in such a great cause.

“It was an amazing experience to have the opportunity to coach the staff and faculty team in an environment raising money for a great cause,” he said.

“It was fun to see the different faces from all departments unite as one community.”

Kanya looked like he would have his way, though, in the first 10 minutes of the game.

The students did not earn their first basket until the five minute, 42 second mark in the first half. Prof. Chad Williams (AAAS) drained a statement three-pointer from the right corner. Meanwhile, Cary Weir Lytle, associate director of employer relations at the

Hiatt Career Center, and Darryl David ’08, from the Office of Student Activities, continued to lead the charge, pacing the faculty to a 19-6 lead.

The students would not be deterred. After a 6-0 run, the students found themselves down by just six points at the half.

Adams’ squad continued to claw back from seemingly insurmountable deficits in the second half, pulling to 25-16 and 29-24 margins.

The staff, though, seemed to have the game in hand, boasting a 35-29 lead in the closing minute of the game.

The students then benefited from a helping hand at the scorer’s table. With the click of a button, the score suddenly stood at 35-35 and the outcome of the game hinged on the next basket scored.

Vincent Asante ’14, who has shined in countless meets on the track during his fouryear career with the Judges, then took his talents to the basketball court.

He drained the game-winning basket from inside the paint to clinch the 37-35 victory. The students, accompanied by Adams, stormed the court to the tune of “We Are the Champions.”

David, even while on the losing side, alluded to the enriching opportunity that Hoops for Haiti provides for both students and faculty.

“As an alum and staff member, I am ecstatic every time I get to participate in the Hoops for Haiti initiative,” he said.

“Not only does it bring attention to a great cause in Haiti but also creates relationships among staff and the student body. As long as my body permits I will continue to support this event and aid in any way possible.”

While the students rejoiced, the true champions that night proved to be the 250-plus children in Gilbert’s ETE camp who stood to benefit from the fundraising efforts.

Their mission is now more pressing than ever. KIND Snacks, a major multinational food provider, is currently offering $10,000— as a part of the “Do the Kind Thing Initiative”—to support a project aligned with the ideals of social justice.

ETE is a front-runner for the grant, and as the month-long voting period continues to pass, Gilbert elaborated on her program’s ability to enrich and inspire children from throughout Haiti.

“We have many eight to 12 year olds enrolled in our program and encourage them to make our nation better,” she said. “We hope one day that they will be fearless leaders.”

Each year, as students and staff square off for the annual Hoops for Haiti title, that aspiration continues to become more of a reality.

THE JUSTICE

●

Tuesday, JANUARY 28, 2014

15

ATHLETE PROFILE

jUDGES BY THE NUMBERS Men’s BASKETBALL UAA STANDINGS

TEAM STATS

Points Per Game

Not including Monday’s games UAA Conference

W L W WashU 5 0 14 Emory 4 1 12 Chicago 3 2 10 NYU 2 3 12 Case 2 3 10 Carnegie 2 3 9 JUDGES 1 4 9 Rochester 1 4 7

Gabe Moton ’14 leads scorers with 18.6 points per game.

Player PPG Gabe Moton 18.6 Ben Bartoldus 13.1 Derek Retos 10.1 Alex Stoyle 8.1

Overall L Pct. 2 .875 4 .750 6 .625 4 .750 6 .625 7 .562 Rebounds Per Game 7 .562 Gabe Moton ’14 leads the team 9 .438 with 6.1 rebounds per game.

Player RPG Gabe Moton 6.1 Ben Bartoldus 4.1 Youri Dascy 3.7 Alex Stoyle 3.7

UPCOMING GAMES: Friday at Case Sunday at Carnegie Friday, Feb. 7 vs. Case

WOMen’s basketball UAA STANDINGS

TEAM STATS

Not including Monday’s games UAA Conference

W L W WashU 5 0 15 NYU 3 0 15 Emory 3 2 14 Chicago 3 2 9 JUDGES 2 3 8 Carnegie 1 4 10 Case 1 4 7 Rochester 1 4 7

Points Per Game

Overall L Pct. 1 .938 1 .938 2 .875 7 .562 8 .500 6 .625 9 .438 9 .438

UPCOMING GAMES: Friday at Case Sunday at Carnegie Friday, Feb. 7 vs. Case

Nicolina Vitale ’14 leads the team with 10.9 points per game.

Player PPG Nicolina Vitale 10.9 Niki Laskaris 10.8 Kasey Dean 9.8 Maria Jackson 8.5

Rebounds Per Game Nicolina Vitale ’14 leads with 5.1 rebounds per game.

Player RPG Nicolina Vitale 5.1 Paris Hodges 4.9 Maria Jackson 4.6 Angela Miller 4.3

FENCING Results from the Northeast Conference Meet #2 on Saturday

TOP PERFORMERS (Men’s)

TOP PERFORMERS (Women’s)

SABER Adam Mandel

RECORD 10-1

SABER Ashley Jean

RECORD 13-4

ÉPÉE Ari Feingersch

RECORD 8-4

ÉPÉE Sonya Glickman

RECORD 9-5

FOIL Noah Berman

RECORD 6-2

FOIL Caroline Mattos

RECORD 13-2

UPCOMING MEETS: Saturday at Eric Sollee Invitational at Brandeis University Friday, Feb. 8 at Duke Invitational at Durham, N.C. Wednesday, Feb. 12 at Beanpot Tournament at Cambridge, Mass

TRACK AND FIELD Results from the Terrier Invitational at Boston University on Saturday

TOP FINISHERS (Men’s)

400-Meter Run RUNNER TIME Mohamed Sidique 52.75 Nick Wactor 53.47 Trevor Tuplin 54.34 Jeremy Wilson 54.56

UPCOMING MEETS:

TOP FINISHERS (Women’s)

1000-Meter Run RUNNER TIME 2:59.56 Kelsey Whitaker Ashley Piccirillo-Horan 3:06.15

1-Mile Run RUNNER TIME Victoria Sanford 5:05.33 Molly Paris 5:46.27

Saturday at the Tufts Stampede at Tufts University Feb. 7 at the Valentine Classic at Boston University Feb. 15 at the Tufts Cupid Challenge at Tufts University

MORGAN BRILL/the Justice

CARVING OUT A LANE: Robinson Vilmont ’17 tries to brush off a University of Rochester defender in the Judges’ win on Friday.

Judges’ guard Vilmont stands out in first year ■ Robinson Vilmont ’17 has grown into his own as a firstyear while playing with an experienced core of seniors.

By avi gold Justice editor

In a team full of seniors, it can be hard for a first-year player to shine.

That has not been the case for guard Robinson Vilmont ’17.

In his first year as a member of the men’s basketball team, Vilmont has appeared in all 16 games this season and has impressed for the Judges, averaging 7.1 points per game on 45 percent shooting from the field. Vilmont averages 18.6 minutes per game, easily the most minutes per game of all first-years, ranking fifth on the team behind four seniors.

No other first-year player averages more than 12 minutes, 3.3 points or 1.9 rebounds per game. Vilmont leads in all three categories for first-year players on the Judges.

He has grown into his spot on the team, culminating in a season-high six assists in Sunday’s 94-88 loss to Emory University.

“My goal was to get 10 assists [on Sunday], but I couldn’t get it,” he

remarked about the game.

On the team’s final possession, and down by just two points, Vilmont found himself at the top of the key. He then drove into the lane in the hopes of drawing a foul and obtaining a chance to tie the game.

Although he did not get the foul call he was looking for, the confidence his teammates have in him has been well earned.

Vilmont began the year with a personal-best 13 points in the team’s home-opening win in November.

However, he saw his playing time—and his point totals—dwindle as the competition got increasingly more difficult. Coach Brian Meehan has shifted his starting lineup throughout the season based on matchups, and ultimately, Vilmont’s time on the court has been reflective of the coach’s strategy.

The guard saw a season-high 30 minutes against Lasell College in November, but then, entered the game for just one minute in the team’s loss to Washington University in St. Louis on Jan. 17 and only five minutes in a loss to New York University six days prior to that.

Since the loss to WashU, Vilmont has averaged nearly 20 minutes per game, adding eight points and four assists for the Judges in the team’s previous three games.

“My confidence has been going through the ceiling because of how much trust coach has on me now,” he said.

Even amid his changing role, Vilmont looks to contribute to the overall success of the team.

“Since coach switches the lineup depending on matchup just means that when your number is called you need to be ready to perform and work hard,” he explained.

Vilmont has found a different way of contributing in each game, registering a game-high four assists in the Judges’ win over Rochester on Friday and a team-high four rebounds on Sunday.

The guard, who spent last year in the Myra Kraft Transitional Year Program, is proud of his contributions so far to the team but has his sights set on pushing himself to be the most complete player possible.

“My first semester as being a Judge is going really well,” Vilmont said.

“I am doing well in all my classes thanks to [TYP] for preparing me.

My personal goal for the future is to be in the best shape of my life and soon become an All-American.”

A team with a core of experienced players may just have to step aside as Vilmont continues to develop as a key member of the Judges.

Pro sports BRIEF Australian Open features two first-time winners in Wawrinka and Li as top-seeds falter in late rounds First-time winners proved to prevail at the 2014 Australian Open at Melbourne Park.

Stanislas Wawrinka, who entered the tournament as the eighth-ranked player in the world, and Li Na, who entered ranked fourth in the world, won the men’s and women’s singles titles, respectively.

Wawrinka had never taken a set against world number-one Rafael Nadal entering their match in the Australian Open finals on Sunday.

That made no difference to the 8th-ranked Wawrinka, who cruised past the top-ranked Nadal in the final, 6-3, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3, to earn his first Grand Slam title ever. In fact, Nadal nearly retired from the match due to a back injury during the second set, down 0-2, but he elected to continue playing through the pain. He took

a medical time-out after dropping the third set and giving up a breakpoint in the fourth, but ultimately returned after a seven-minute delay to a round of booing from the crowd.

Nadal, seemingly rejuvenated from the injury delay, took the fourth set 6-3, but his fate seemed to already have been sealed on the day against a healthier foe.

Nadal failed to consistently recover his serve speed and Wawrinka triumphed with a fourth-set victory over the world’s top player.

While Nadal’s serve began at 87 miles per hour, it eventually fell to 70 miles per hour after his injury— before climbing back near the 90 mile per hour mark in the fourth-set.

However, Nadal was not the only obstacle for Wawrinka to overcome.

The Swiss won his first major title

after 36 career events, the secondlongest drought to begin an individual’s career.

Wawrinka squared off in the quarterfinals against second-ranked Novak Djokovic, to whom he had previously dropped a five-set classic in the 2013 semifinals.

The two again faced off at the 2013 United States Open. Djokovic prevailed again, topping Wawrinka in five sets.

Wawrinka entered his quarterfinal match against Djokovic with 14 consecutive losses to the world number-two, but this time came out victorious in five sets over his Serbian opponent.

Li, who took the title with a win over Dominika Cibulkova in two sets, became the oldest player to ever win the Australian Open. Na

will turn 32 years old in just under one month.

After requiring a first-set tiebreaker, Li sped through the second set in just 27 minutes to take the final by a score of 7-6 (3), 6-0.

She also became the first Chinese tennis player to win the Australian Open after having twice lost in the finals match—losing to Kim Clijsters in 2011 and Victoria Azarenka last year.

Li was able to avoid most other top-ranked players, though, as upsets littered the tournament on the women’s side of the draw. Na did not face a single competitor ranked above 15 during the tournament.

World number one Serena Williams dropped her fourth-round matchup to former world numberone Ana Ivanovic despite taking

the first set. Fifth-seeded Agnieszka Radwanska bounced second-seeded Azarenka from the tournament in the quarterfinals. Radwanska later fell in the semifinals to Cibulkova.

Third-ranked Maria Sharapova also fell in the fourth round, dropping her match to Cibulkova in three sets.

None of that mattered to Li, who cruised past Cibulkova in the finals en route to just her second major ever, and the first Australian Open title ever won by a female Chinese tennis player.

As the world’s top tennis players look forward to the French Open in May, two players have solidified their place among the world’s best at the Australian Open.

—Avi Gold

just

Sports

Page 16

FIRST IMPRESSION Guard Robinson Vilmont ’17 makes the most of his playing time as a first-year starter on an experienced squad, p. 15.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

TOP OF THE ARC

FENCING

Judges secure big wins at meetings ■ The men’s and women’s

fencing teams kept their second-place ranking with wins at a weekend meet.

By abigail rothstein JUSTICE contributing WRITER

The men’s and women’s fencing squads competed at the Northeast Conference Meet #2 on Saturday, hosted by Boston College, with the hopes of maintaining a top-three ranking in their conference.

Both teams performed strongly against Vassar College, Dartmouth College, BC and Tufts University. The Judges, in fact, lost only to Brown University men’s and women’s squads, ranked ninth and 11th in the nation, respectively.

The men’s side showed great tenacity and determination, securing wins in four out of their five matches.

The Judges’ foil team was particularly impressive, topping Vassar’s squad 8-1 and sweeping the Tufts foilists 9-0.

The épée team from Brandeis won 7-2 against BC while narrowly defeating the Tufts squad 5-4. However, the squads dropped decisions to both Dartmouth, 4-5, and Brown, 7-2.

The saberists, meanwhile, secured a series of victories over their

Waltham, Mass.

opponents. The squad dominated with their weaponry, defeating Dartmouth, 8-1, Vassar, 8-1, and BC, 7-2.

Saberist Adam Mandel ’15 approached the competition with a level-headed mentality.

This was incredibly important, according to Mandel, who stressed the need for focus when asked about his fencing against Brown.

“The goal is to win no matter whom we fence,” he said. “Coach Shipman once told us, ‘You shouldn't fence the name; You should fence the fencer.’”

Mandel also spoke in high regard of his fellow teammates’ success.

“I was especially impressed by… [fellow saberist] Jess Ochs-Willard’s [’15]…performance,” he said. “Jess was fencing very intelligently throughout the entire day, using his mental and physical resources to outmaneuver and outthink the majority of his opponents.”

Likewise, the women’s squads represented Brandeis well as they challenged and beat most of their fellow Northeast Conference competitors.

The foilists defeated Tufts 9-0, Vassar 7-2 and BC 5-4. The Brandeis team even clinched a 5-4 victory over the Brown foilists.

The épéeists, though, were not as triumphant as their foil teammates.

The team fell to squads from Brown,

See FENCING, 13 ☛

MEN’S BASKETBALL

Team splits weekend versus UAA opponents ■ The men’s basketball

team won Friday’s game versus Rochester but could not defeat Emory on Sunday.

By jacob moskowitz JUSTICE Senior WRITER

HOOPcoming and Alumni Family Day brought two exciting men’s basketball games to Red Auerbach Arena this weekend, though Brandeis could only come away with a single victory. The Judges defeated the visiting University of Rochester Yellowjackets, 83-66, on Friday night, and then lost to the Emory University Eagles, 94-88, on Sunday afternoon. The weekend split gives the Judges a 9-7 record, 1-4 in University Athletic Association play.

On Sunday, the game was fastpaced throughout. Emory took an early lead, but Brandeis was able to make its own run and keep the game close at the half.

Despite Brandeis’ ability to seemingly score at will, the defense could not corral the Eagles, leading to a 5552 deficit at halftime.

Brandeis’ first half scoring-explosion was led by 19 points from guard Gabriel Moton ’14, as he connected on six out of 11 shots he attempted from the field and five of six from the free throw line.

The second half started out with more of the same, as both teams were getting up and down the court.

Moton and Emory senior guard Michael Florin traded baskets, as neither team could stop the opposing guard. Moton added another 13 points in the second half to finish with a game-high 32 points. Florin finished with 26 as the Judges just

couldn’t stop him from getting into the paint at will.

Florin’s penetration was key to the Eagles’ victory. Guard Robinson Vilmont ’17 tried to explain why the Judges couldn’t keep him out of the paint during the game.

“We picked him up too early,” he said. “We should have picked him up from half court and gave him space because he can’t shoot. All of his points were blow-past layups.”

Despite the spotty defense, the Judges were able to keep the game close throughout the second half.

With 10 minutes left the Judges actually led 75-73 after guard Derek Retos ’14 nailed a pull-up jumper.

From there, Emory went on its run, pulling out to a 90-84 lead with 4:34 remaining.

But Brandeis wouldn’t give up.

The Judges cut the lead to two, 90-88, and got a stop with 44 seconds left. On the ensuing possession, coach Brian Meehan elected not to call a time-out. This resulted in Vilmont driving down the lane and tossing up an erratic shot, looking for the foul. Unfortunately for the Judges, the referees did not make a call and Emory knocked down their free throws to edge out the victory.

Retos added 16 points and knocked down four more three-pointers. He also made two free throws, making him the current leader in free throw percentage in Brandeis history.

Emory senior forward Jake Davis added 20 points in the win.

Meehan never put two big men in the game at once, and perhaps Brandeis’ defense was subpar because of that. Emory also outrebounded Brandeis 40-27, which could also be a consequence of the small lineup.

See MBBALL, 13 ☛

RAFAELLA SCHOR/the Justice

JUMP IN HER STEP: Julia Scanlon ’14 tries to cut in on an Emory University defender in Sunday’s victory over the No. 7 Eagles.

Squad sweeps contests in conference matchups ■ The women’s basketball

team won both of their weekend home games versus UAA competition.

By DAN ROZEL JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

HOOPcoming weekend proved to be a rousing success for the women’s basketball team. The Judges scored back-to-back victories on their home court in Red Auerbach Arena, defeating the No. 7 Emory University 65-61 on Alumni Family Day on Sunday and the University of Rochester 58-57 on Friday night.

Sunday’s victory did not come easily. The Judges had to fight through a 58-48 second-half deficit and hit several clutch shots at the end of the game to come away with the 65-61 win.

Guards Samantha Mancinelli ’16 and Kasey Dean ’14 hit two huge shots down the stretch to ice the win for the Judges. Brandeis improved to 2-3 in University Athletic Association play and 8-8 overall while handing Emory their second loss all season.

Dean, the team’s captain, never

doubted the team’s ability to overcome both the halftime deficit and a strong team.

“Honestly, I don't even think most of us really saw it as a comeback because even when we were behind it never felt like we lost control of the game,” she explained. “Everyone just believed we could do it and chipped away one possession at a time.”

The game against Emory took place on Alumni Family Day, as the host Judges took the opportunity to show their fans both their drive and perseverance in the win.

Emory senior guard Selena Castillo dominated the offensive tempo of the game early on, ending up with 20 points on the night.

From there, though, Brandeis adeptly contained the spread offense of the seventh-ranked team in the nation. The Judges ended the game on a 17-3 run while Emory could not manage to make a field goal, missing 13 of their last 14 attempts.

The comeback was sparked by guard Paris Hodges ’17 on a tough jump shot with seven minutes, 25 seconds left to play. Emory then responded with their last field goal of the game. From there, the Eagles could

not connect on a shot and committed several crucial turnovers that led to a string of successful offensive possessions. The combination of Hodges and her fellow rookie, forward Maria Jackson ’17, led to an equalizing basket with 1:52 left in the game, a mark that had not been reached since the start of the game.

Emory senior guard Savannah Morgan managed to grab an offensive rebound at a crucial late juncture of the game, but the Eagles could not capitalize. Dean made them pay on the next offensive possession, giving the Judges their first lead in the game since early in the first half. Castillo could then only make one of two free throws for the Eagles. Brandeis proceeded to get the ball to Mancinelli, who hit a three-point shot with two seconds remaining on the shot clock and about eight seconds left on the game clock.

This had been the second game in which Brandeis had four players score in double figures. Dean and Jackson led the charge with 19 and 14 points, respectively. Hodges added eight points and six assists as well to help lead the Judges to victory.

Dean saw a real improvement in the

See WBBALL, 13 ☛

JustArts Volume LXVI, Number 17

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

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Waltham, Mass.

First-ever Vendor Fair shows off students’ handmade artwork

>> 20

ROSE INTERNSHIPS - In a Q & A, student interns discuss their experiences » 20

INSIDE

‘BLOOD MEMORY’ Women’s Studies Research Center Exhibit » 19

ICA EXHIBIT Artist tackles interpretations of femininity » 23

POP CULTURE Bieber arrested on charges including driving under the influence, drag racing and resisting arrest » 18

18

justARTS

TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2014 | THE JUSTICE

CALENDAR

INTERVIEW

$

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

ON-CAMPUS EVENTS Rock Me Amadeus

In celebration of the famed composer’s birthday, students in the Brandeis University Chorus invite all music-lovers to join in a sing-along of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s greatest hits in Slosberg Music Center.

Mozart composed over six hundred works which rank among the pinnacles of symphonic, operatic and choral music.

Today from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in the Slosberg Music Center Lobby. This event is free and open to the public.

Film screening: ‘Six Million and One’

The program in Film, Television and Interactive Media, the Edie and Lew Wasserman Fund and the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies invite you to a special screening of Six Million and One on Thursday, Jan. 30 at 7 p.m. in the Wasserman Cinematheque, Sachar International Center.

A question-and-answer session with the director David Fisher, a distinguished figure in Israeli documentary filmmaking, will follow. Tickets are not needed for this screening. For more information contact Dona DeLorenzo.

Thursday from 7 to 9:30 p.m. in Wasserman Cinematheque. This event is free and open to the public.

Naomi DePina ’16 Senator speaks about Union slam poetry contest RACHEL HUGHES/the Justice

This week, JustArts spoke with Naomi DePina ’16—who is a senator at large on the Student Union and the chair of the Union Social Justice who Diversity committee—is coordinating the slam poetry event this Friday.

JustArts: Would you tell us a little bit about how the idea for the slam event came together and how long the Student Union has been planning it?

Create a Social Justice Song!

Naomi DePina: So I when I was running for Social Justice and Diversity chair, we were first thinking about having a speaker come and then talk to us but that’s a little boring and no one would actually show up. But I realized that a lot of the people at Brandeis are very artsy. And who doesn’t love poetry? I mean our [Dean of Students is Jamele] Adams. So we came up with a committee of five to six people—five right now—and we talked about it and I said “guys, do you want to have a poetry slam or would you rather have a speaker come?”

But we’re also doing a speaker at the end of this month.

So we’re doing the poetry slam and we have a lot of performers coming.

JA: So I read that there are five performances and 12 poets lined up to participate. What type of performances can we expect?

ND: Our first performance is Crowd Control. Our second performance is Mac and Alexandria Campbell ’16, doing a duet. Our third performance is Osaze Akerejah ’14… he’s rapping. Another performance is also another rapper, Joel Burt-Miller ’16. They’re all very well known on campus. And Dean Adams will also be performing.

JA: How do you think the event will raise awareness about the importance of social justice and diversity on campus?

ND: What other better way is there for people to actually take away something about social justice and diversity than having their peers express what social justice and diversity means to them?

So I feel like we can try to define, “this is social justice.

This is diversity. Social Justice is equality,” but it’s so much more than that. And people have their own experiences [which] develops their own opinion which I like to call a narrative. Everyone has [his or her] own narrative.

JA: How did Adams get involved and do you know what he will be slamming?

ND: I talked to him towards the end of last semester and he was very excited about the poetry slam, obviously.

And he’s going to be the host. Also he will be doing his own poem on diversity and social justice and it’s what he wrote and he does a lot [of slam poetry] about social justice and diversity.

JA: How will the competition work and will there be winners placing and prizes given?

ND: There will be prizes. I can’t tell you what the prizes are. We will have a first, second and third place prize.

And we have certificates for each of our poets for contributing. It takes a lot of time. People don’t realize it’s a lot of work to write a poem and it means a lot when someone expresses what social justice and diversity is.

So everyone is getting a certificate.

The first three winners are going to get a prize. And we’re going to have three judges—hopefully one faculty [member]. I’m still working on it. We have one judge from the Student Union. So we have a senator. We have one of the people from my committee—so from the Social Justice committee—we have non-social justice chairs too so they’re not going to be all senators. And then we’re going to have a faculty member.

JA: Do you hope that this will be a tradition to continue at Brandeis?

ND: Yes, well hopefully I run for senator but even if it’s not me next year in this position [as] diversity chair, I would want the next person to carry this on. So it has to be a success.

—Emily Wishingrad and Rachel Hughes

Create a disc jockey mix that represents what social justice means to you. This event is sponsored by the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life Sunday from 1 to 3 p.m. in Shapiro Campus Center room 315. This event is free and open to the public.

‘Depicting genocide, crime, and war in an age of a changing media’

Current war crimes and genocides are often both overlooked and mis-

represented in the media.

This exhibit will represent these misrepresentations in both past news and current news. These range from the Holocaust to the Democratic Republic of Congo to Syria.

With a tent set up in the Shapiro Campus Center, slam poetry and a speaker, this will be an event worth seeing.

Monday from 4 to 5:30 p.m. This event is sponsored by the Student AntiGenocide Coalition, and is free and open to the public.

SLAM!

The Student Union presents: SLAM. Join us in Cholmondeley’s coffee house on Jan. 31 from 9 to 11 p.m. for our first event to kickoff the New Year. This event will be a poetry slam to raise awareness about the importance of social justice and diversity on campus.

We invite all members of the Brandeis Community to participate in an open and honest discussion about what social justice and diversity means to you and the importance they hold in the Brandeis community. The event will be hosted by Dean of Studens Jamele Adams.

Friday from 9 to 11 p.m. in Cholmondeley’s Coffee House. This event is free and open to the public.

OFF-CAMPUS EVENTS

‘Samba Spirit’—Modern Afro Brazillian Art

For the first time, the Museum of Fine Arts presents a selection of works by 20th-century Brazilian artists of African descent.

These painters and sculptors are rarely studied in the United States, and draw on indigenous, European and African traditions.

The artists found inspiration in all aspects of Brazilian life—religious rituals, urban and rural

life, music and dance. Each artist has a distinct approach to subject, style and iconography, creating a lively range of imagery. The exhibition features key works by Heitor dos Prazeres, Maria Auxiliadora da Silva and Waldomiro de Deus.

The exhibition will be on view through Oct. 19 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Admission ranges up to $25, and is free with a Brandeis ID.

Lady Antebellum at TD Garden

Come see everyone’s favorite country group perform at Boston’s TD Garden this weekend. Along with Lady Antebellum, artists Kip Moore and Kacey Musgraves will also be performing.

The band is touring as a part of their Take Me Downtown Tour, which is making its way through the U.S. this season.

Friday at 7 p.m. at Boston’s TD Garden. Tickets are available online at http://ticketmaster.com/, and range from $59 to $86.

BSO: All-Ravel Program

Boston Symphony Orchestra Conductor Emeritus Bernard Haitink leads two consecutive weeks of concerts this season, beginning with an all-Ravel program featuring the dazzling mezzo-soprano Susan Graham as soloist in the atmospheric orchestral song cycle Shéhérazade.

The composer’s Spanish-tinged, pictorial Alborada del gracioso opens the program, and the work Ravel considered his best, the complete “symphonie choréographique” Daphnis and Chloé, concludes it.

Ravel wrote this cornerstone of musical impressionism for the famous Ballets Russes, which gave the premiere in Paris in 1912.

Thursday at 8 p.m. at the Boston Symphony Hall. Tickets are available online at http://bso. org/ and range from $30 to $104.

Pop Culture n

ww It finally happened. Justin Bieber was arrested. Early Thursday morning, the “Beauty and a Beat” singer was drag racing down a residential street in Miami, when police officers intervened, after hearing engines revving. According to the police report, the 19-year-old pop star had been driving a rented yellow Lamborghini while racing his friend, rhythm and blues singer Khalil Sharieff, also 19, who was driving a red Ferrari (as if those cars wouldn’t attract any attention). Apparently, the two artists had been driving upward of 60 mph on a 30 mph stretch of road.

The Miami Beach Police allegedly smelled alcohol on Bieber’s breath, and the young singer was uncooperative during the arrest, hurling a string of expletive-laden statements. Bieber was taken in for driving under the influence, drag racing, driving with an invalid license and resisting arrest. In a statement, Bieber admitted to smoking marijuana throughout the day, consuming alcohol and taking prescription medication. The police report also indicates that Bieber was in a stupor and that he failed a field sobriety test.

Later Thursday, Bieber appeared before a judge through a video link with his attorney, Roy Black (who has represented a slew of celebrity clients) and his bond was set at $2,500 dollars —nothing compared to the $75,000 he threw down at a Miami strip club a couple nights prior. An hour after his bond was set, the singer was released from the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, and he was photographed wearing dark sunglasses and a hoodie, waving to fans while perched on top of a black SUV. Of course, social media is playing a big role in this on going saga. The following day, Bieber took to Instagram to post a photo of this now-infamous post-jail wave of his, juxtaposed next to a photo of the late Michael Jackson in which the King of Pop stands on top of a car, wearing sunglasses and waving

By Mara Sassoon

CREATIVE COMMONS

BEHIND BARS: Singer-songwriter Justin Bieber was arrested in Miami Thursday morning. to his fans outside of a Santa Monica courtroom after his “not guilty” plea to child molestation charges. Below the photo pairing, Bieber referenced a lyric from a 2003 Jay-Z song, writing “What more can they say.”

His Instagram post hasn’t been the only photo that has garnered attention. Bieber’s mug shot has been the source of folly for many media outlets, with comparisons of the entertainer’s bouffant blonde hairdo and wide smile to photos of Miley Cyrus sporting a similar look.

Bieber’s Miami arrest came after a much more minor brush with the law earlier this month, when he allegedly threw eggs at an estranged neighbor’s

house in Calabasas, Calif. Equipped with a search warrant, the Los Angeles Sherriff’s Department raided the star’s house after this vandalism accusation, and during the search officers arrested someone in the house—not Bieber—for felony drug possession.

Wild antics seem to be the name of the game for Bieber lately. The singer’s recent behavior begs the question: Will all the Beliebers out there keep on beliebing? Judging by the swarms of fans who awaited him as he left the Miami jail, the answer still looks like “yes.”

But, at the end of the day, there’s nothing funny about Bieber’s DUI arrest.

Here’s hoping that he can get back on the straight and narrow.

ARTS COVER PHOTOS: OLIVIA POBIEL and RACHEL HUGHES/the Justice, Creative Commons and courtesy of Claire Iltis. DESIGN: OLIVIA POBIEL/the Justice.

THE JUSTICE | TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2014

ART EXHIBIT

19

PHOTOS BY RACHEL HUGHES/the Justice

GUARDIAN ANGEL: Rosowsky’s sculpture, “Angel of Auschwitz,” is suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the gallery, seemingly watching over the exhibit.

‘Blood Memory’ unites family and history

By RACHEL HUGHES JUSTICE EDITOR

Marking the beginning of its 2014 season, the Kniznick Gallery at the Women’s Studies Research Center hosted an opening reception for its first art exhibition of the year on last Thursday. Called Blood Memory: a view from the second generation, the exhibition is comprised of selected works by artist and graphic designer Lisa Rosowsky.

The artist, who resides in Massachusetts and teaches at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, uses her work as a medium to engage with memories of how her family was affected by the Holocaust.

The artist writes in a catalogue for the exhibition that “blood memory” is a term that she uses to describe her experience as a member of what she calls the “second generation”—that is, the second generation in her family after the Holocaust. Rosowsky writes that her family’s collective memories live on in her life as “a lifetime of terrifying dreams; in the nameless fears of my childhood; in my desire to

protect my parents; in the way I scope out a new room when I enter it, looking for good hiding places.”

Walking into the Kniznick Gallery to muted gray walls, the somberness and gravity of Rosowsky’s familial experience confronts the viewer immediately.

Unlike other exhibits that have been staged in the space, the selection of Rosowsky’s works on view is staged relatively starkly—there is ample room between each piece, allowing viewers to take in both the works themselves and the negative space of the room.

One of the first things that I noticed about the selection of works was the variety of mediums that Rosowsky uses—the works were crafted from wire, silk, plaster, canvas, wood, lights and repurposed or found objects.

The range of mediums encourages a more interactive and lively experience as one walks through the exhibit, even though its subject is so serious.

The piece that caught my eye first was a life-size plaster angel, suspended from the ceiling and hanging above eye level, as

if watching over the exhibition.

Called the “Angel of Auschwitz,” the white plaster figure wears a white silk dress that extends past its feet, down to the floor and trails off several feet behind it.

The gentle figure has subtle facial features, no hair and thin arms that fold up in front of her face, as if she is holding something that the viewer cannot see. Massive barbed wire wings weigh on her back, reaching a wingspan of approximately 12 feet, and in the barbed wire the words “Tod Macht Frei” are spelled out. The German phrase translates to “death will set you free,” and alludes to the inscription above the entrance gates at Auschwitz, which reads “Arbeit Macht Frei,” or “work will set you free.” The angel epitomizes the exhibit in a simultaneously terrifying and soft manifestation. The haunting mood that the “Angel of Auschwitz” sets for the exhibition continues in other pieces that are staged at eye-level and use more familiar materials.

For instance, in the center of the gallery, a work called “Designated Mourner” is positioned—the work itself is a floor-length black

dress that Rosowsky sewed based on a pattern of a French mourning dress from 1901. The dress is fitted to a standing mannequin and across its back drapes a white silk shawl printed with blacks and grays, detailing images of barbed wire, crows flying overhead and people lined up as they are imprisoned in concentration camps.

The incredibly crisp images printed on the shawl reflect the artist’s skills as a graphic designer, and this particular choice of medium challenges viewers to think about what it means to carry or “wear” memories and pain.

Other pieces on view incorporate family belongings such as gloves that belonged to her family members—white for those who survived the war and black for those who didn’t—as well as photographs of the artist’s family, and even some of her own drawings of the concentration camps that they were held in. Overall, each of Rosowsky’s works embodies an intensely personal facet of her interactions with her family’s memories of the Holocaust, and their love and their loss through it.

HAVE A SEAT: Rosowsky transformed a found wooden chair into art by upholstering it with fabric printed with her sketches of concentration camps.

WSRC curator Susan Metrican responds JustArts: How was the work of Lisa Rosowsky chosen to be exhibited at the gallery?

Susan Metrican: Michele L’Heureux, the previous Curator at the Women’s Studies Research Center, is responsible for organizing this exhibition. I have only been the Curator for a few weeks, but came on just as the installation for this show was happening, so I had the pleasure of working with both Michele and Lisa during install.

JA: Would you tell us a bit about the exhibition and the message that the artist communicates in her works?

SM: Blood Memory: a view from the second generation, is a solo exhibition of Lisa Rosowsky. With the works in the show, the artist focused on the shared memories and fears of the Holocaust that members of her paternal family experienced and that live in her through “blood memory.” The work serves as a memorial to lost family and provides an entry point for conversation about something that is often not spoken about in personal terms.

JA: How long has the exhibition been in the works, and how were the individual pieces selected to be displayed?

SM: The exhibition Blood Memory was first shown in fall 2012 at the Holocaust Museum in Houston, and many of the works are the same, although Lisa included some newer pieces for the Kniznick Gallery.

JA: Rosowsky uses a variety of mediums. How does this range of materials serve to express the message of blood memory in her works?

MOURNING CLOTHES: Called “Designated Mourner,” this dress and shawl were handmade by the artist and patterned after a 1901 French mourning gown.

SM: Lisa uses materials that reflect the delicate nature of memory.

I think she is sensitive to the materials she uses as they are almost always identifiable in each work.

She chooses linen, gauze, silk or wax for some pieces for their tactile quality, and in some cases their direct connection to history, as in “Designated Mourner,” in which she recreated a French mourning dress in silk and wool from a 1901 dress pattern. She often incorporates found objects or personal items, like her aunt’s gloves, to tell her family’s story. The meaning of Blood Memory comes through in these choices because they feel deeply connected with her life and story.

—Rachel Hughes

20

TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2014 | THE JUSTICE

CRAFT FAIR

Student vendors show off their work

WRIST ART: Marissa Lazar ’14, one of the key planners of the fair, hand-makes these bracelets.

PHOTOS BY OLIVIA POBIEL/the Justice

By EMILY WISHINGRAD JUSTICE EDITOR

In a collaborative effort by Student Activities, the Fine Arts department, the Entrepreneurship Club and Her Campus Brandeis, the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Campus Center Atrium held the firstever Student Vendor Arts and Crafts Fair on Friday afternoon.

The atrium was filled with tables overflowing with student-crafted artworks and wearables—from jewelry to T-shirts to photographs. The students meandered from table to table, shopping and admiring the handmade pieces.

After speaking with some of

the vendors, I discovered that many of them have actually been selling their work for some time now. Many said that they make sales on Etsy, an online store for independent artists, or that they have their own websites to sell their merchandise.

Andrea Stern ’14, who is involved with Her Campus Brandeis, Marissa Lazar ’14, an undergraduate departmental representative for the Fine Arts department, and Nathan Feldman ’14, one of the heads of the Entrepreneurship Club, were key players in the planning of the event. In an interview with the Justice, first printed on Tues-

day, Jan. 21, Stern commented, “we have so many vendors that come—outside vendors that don’t work for Brandeis.” The fair’s purpose was to give students an opportunity to show off their hard work and artistry to both their peers and the faculty who they work with on campus.

One vendor, Gustavo Lopes ’15, said that he got his start in high school when he started making graphics under the label NLIGHTN. He then transitioned into silk screening and started to create apparel. Lopes said that when he was in high school, he would get up around 6 a.m. and create a shirt that he would wear

that very same day to school.

Lopes says he gets his inspiration from street art and that he is interested in addressing current political issues in his work. For instance, one of his shirt designs depicts a young African-American boy holding a bucket emblazoned with the Obama logo. Underneath the graphic, the shirt reads, “Begging for Change.”

Lopes says that he does not know if he will make a career of his hobby, but still says he is certainly interested in continuing.

Another vendor, Olivia Leiter ’14, sold earrings at the fair.

From a distance, Leiter’s earrings look like beautiful beads,

IN CHARGE: From left to right, three students, Andrea Stern ’14, Marissa Lazar ’14 and Nathan Feldman ’14 were the main planners behind the event.

but a closer look will show you that the earrings are actually made out of little pieces of folded paper—works of origami. Leiter said she started making origami when she was just seven years old and began making her work into earrings during her middle school years.

Leiter noted that the earrings are completely durable despite being made of paper, as she soaks them in polyurethane to harden their forms. Lazar said that she hopes this fair will be “the first of many,” and that the new UDRs for the Fine Arts department carry on the tradition after she graduates in the spring.

ON CAMPUS

THE JUSTICE | TUESDAY, january 28, 2014

21

Rose interns describe their experiences

DAY AT THE MUSEUM: There are two curitorial interns per year who help the museum with various tasks from creating information packets to updating information about the artwork to filling out condition reports. This photo was taken in June 2011 before the Museum renovation.

ROBYN SPECTOR/Justice File Photo

JustArts spoke with this year’s curatorial interns at the Rose Art Museum: the Sherman and Jill Starr Curatorial Intern, Dustin Aaron ’14, and the Lynn Warner Curatorial Intern, Molly Channon ’14.

JustArts: How did you get involved with the Rose internship?

Dustin Aaron: I was only marginally aware that there was an internship at the Rose. I knew that there were two positions because I was familiar with the two people that had them last year but I wasn’t really aware of what they did. But I’m an Art History major so I was pretty conscious of the Rose and what was going on there. But at the end of last school year, there was a call for interns, essentially looking for people to interview. So I thought it was interesting and I obviously applied and got the position.

Molly Channon: Part of the reason I transferred to Brandeis last fall was because of the Rose and its amazing collection. I got involved with the museum through [Student Committee for the Rose Art Museum] and by working at the Rose as a gallery guard. Guarding at the Rose really piqued my interest in applying for the internship.

It’s definitely a unique opportunity I didn’t want to miss.

JA: What does your typical day look like?

DA: There is no typical day, which is actually kind of part of the fun. It’s always hectic, and if it’s not hectic then

it’s incredibly quiet. There are a lot of different things going on depending on the time of year and the time of semester … I don’t spend a lot of time in the galleries. I’m mostly in the student office in the back and it’s [doing] a lot of different tasks for different people.

So if I’m working for the registrar I’m updating object files, updating the information we have on the artwork. If I’m working with the collections manager it will be moving things around in storage or condition reports. So no day’s really the same.

But the day to day is generally tasks that need doing more than anything.

Although one of the nice parts is as a student intern, we try to put together these student-based information packets and guides for the guards and museum visitors, for any of the students who would for some reason be doing research on the collection and for what’s up on display so a lot of what we do is research on the artists and the art that’s up.

JA: Have you had any unique or especially interesting experiences that you had due to your position as a curatorial intern?

MC: Spending time in the vaults has been amazing, as well as being able to witness and participate in the incredibly elaborate and meticulous work that goes on behind the scenes in preparing exhibitions.

The end result speaks for itself, but the process leading up to a show is truly fascinating.

JA: What has been your biggest

challenge as a curatorial assistant?

DA: Definitely my biggest challenge has been learning to appreciate some of the artwork. I come from a more medieval base. I study medieval art and I’m a Medieval and Renaissance Studies minor and that’s my focus.

So this whole internship is a little out of my field, which has been great. It’s great exposure and I think one of the hardest parts has been coming to appreciate some of the contemporary artwork—especially some of the stuff that’s being put up on display now.

MC: As in any internship, it can be hard to find your place as an intern.

One thing that I’ve learned through my experience is that it is valuable to speak up, ask questions, volunteer and always maintain your motivation when on the job.

JA: Do you like working in a museum atmosphere and is this something you would like to pursue as a career?

DA: I’m hopefully going to grad school in the fall. Hopefully I’ll end up in museums one day ... doing some sort of curatorial work so this is a great stepping-stone on the way there.

MC: I definitely plan to pursue a museum career. It requires just the right amount of teamwork, individual drive and investigative research that I love so much. I can’t imagine pursuing any other career.

—Emily Wishingrad and Rachel Hughes

Top and middle OLIVIA POBIEL/the Justice; Bottom JOSH HOROWITZ/the Justice

SEEING ART: Top, museum-goers view Andy Warhol: Image Machine, middle, viewers contemplate Al Loving’s piece, “Self Portrait #23” and bottom, two women examinine a piece from Art at the Origin: The Early 1960s.

RACHEL HUGHES/the Justice

Dustin Aaron ’14 is an Art History major and the Sherman and Jill Starr Curatorial Intern at the Rose Art Museum.

PHOTO COURTESY OF MOLLY CHANNON

Molly Channon ’14 is the Lynn Warner Curatorial Intern at the Rose Art Museum, and is also a member of the Student Committee for the Rose Art Museum.

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23

MUSEUM EXHIBIT

PHOTO COURTESY OF CLAIRE ILTIS

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ILLINOIS STATE MUSEUM

A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME: “False Bloom,” a frontalfocused 1971 work of acrylic on masonite, currently belongs to a private collection in Philadelphia, Penn.

ALL DRESSED UP: This 1971 work of acrylic on masonite, called “Black Widow,” shows the constriction of the female figure in traditional 1950s and 1960s-era undergarments.

Artist engages with forms of femininity By kiran gill justice Staff writer

As a young girl growing up in the 1950s, artist Christina Ramberg developed a preoccupation with gender roles and the female form, but her untimely death at the age of 49 hindered the spread of her work. Jenelle Porter, a senior curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, has assembled a concise but eye-opening exhibition of the works of the Chicago artist whose work from the years 1971 to 1981 reveals a maturing study of form and shape.

Ramberg’s paintings present clear shapes and forms of women’s bodies as the women slip their dresses up and over their bodies. The artist chooses to paint only a microcosmic view of the female body. She starts painting at the neck and ends midthigh in a somber color palette that

appears to connote a Victorian vibe.

Her 1971 canvases “Black Widow” and “Shadow Panel” reference the Western art historical trend, epitomized by the Impressionist artist Degas, of depicting women in the intimate moments of their lives. Ramberg is not painting the soft, delicate toilette scenes of Degas, though— while both Ramberg and Degas rarely depict the faces of their subjects, their implications are different. Degas’ anonymous women increase selfidentification between the viewer and the woman in the work, whereas the women of Ramberg’s works, whose heads are sharply cut off by the frame of the work, appear robotic. Utilizing geometric figurations, Ramberg paints the female body as an assemblage of different parts that are then amalgamated to create one whole. Her early work composes the female body rather concretely as the

curve of her subjects’ bosoms seamlessly attaches to a rectangular midsection. Yet, the body is not nude; instead, feminine fabrics and motifs such as lace, ribbons and floral embellishments emphasize form in the way that lingerie and undergarments are used to suck, tuck and more importantly, bind the female body into societal norms of perfection.

As time progressed, Ramberg’s style evolved from concrete figuration to an abstraction of form as she uses paint to evoke different textures and fabrics that she uses in place of the body. These images are darker— grotesque, even—as they do not depict the idealized female form. For example, Ramberg’s “Wired,” completed between 1974 and 1975, creates a headless, insect-like entity with pincers for arms that are composed of squiggles of wire and meticulously-bound strands of hair that tightly

bind and constrict the pelvic area.

While the image implies an animalistic depiction of the original, it is also indicative of female sexual organs.

On one hand, Ramberg pronounces the similarities between human and animal form. On the other hand, she utilizes fabric to highlight the body not through flesh but instead through cloth and texture. The body becomes mutable as in the 1977 work “Schizophrenic Discovery,” in which Ramberg creates the form of the body through thick, rope-like strands of what appears to be hair, clothing and visible undergarments. Alluding to the piece’s name, the combination of diverse materials reflects a schizophrenic nature that also works to allude to the increase in mental and emotional dismay in women during the 1950s and ’60s as they attempted to adjust and conform to changing societal expectations. A tiered, steel-

blue, collared shirt covers the left half of the body in exacting strokes that contrast the right half of the body, which has no visible signs of a shirt with the exception of the pointy collar. Instead, broken strands are haphazardly composed to evoke a sense of shape. In this broken, imperfect depiction of the female form one cannot help but ask: what is it, what ingredients, are needed to be a female?

As an artist associated with the Chicago Imagists, Ramberg combined her art and cultural influences to produce a body of work that not only grappled with cultural issues of gender politics and constructions but also artistic concerns of form and shape. The Christina Ramberg exhibition at the ICA shines light on an artist who chose to contest the use of the female body as a vessel not just historically, but also socially.

Theater Review

‘The Color Purple’ production portrays struggle

By Rachel liff

justice contributing writer

The tragic and touching story of The Color Purple took its time reaching the stage. Originally written as a novel by Alice Walker in 1982, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1983, and Stephen Spielberg first produced a film adaptation of the story in 1985. It took 20 more years for the work to appear on Broadway in 2005 and took until this month to make its way to the popular theater the SpeakEasy Stage Company in Boston.

Not only did the SpeakEasy production’s Producing Artistic Director Paul Daigneault choose to include The Color Purple in this season at SpeakEasy, but he also opted to direct it himself, an unusual choice.

“I have always been drawn to stories about ‘the other,’ the person on the

outside who is longing to find their way in,” he wrote in his director’s note. In this case, “the other” is the show’s main character, Celie. The musical starts when she is a teenager and ends 40 years later. In the first scenes, Celie has her second child at 14, but her father, who is also the father of the child, quickly takes him away. Celie is then married off to Mister, a cruel and abusive man who is quick to remind Celie that she is ugly and worthless. The rest of the play revolves around her life in his house and the people she forms relationships with along the way.

This particular production excelled in many aspects, but also faltered with some directorial and technical features. The cast was spectacularly talented; their powerful, soulful voices filled the theater while their comical yet sincere acting held the attention of the audi-

ence. The women who played Celie (Lovely Hoffman), Nettie (Aubin Wise), Shug Avery (Crystin Gilmore) and Sofia (Valerie Houston) stood out as the best performers, bringing heart and emotional beauty to each moment they were on stage. However, some of the positioning of the actors was clumsy, especially the stage combat, which failed to convince the audience of a real fight. The set design consisted of a giant tree, which sat stage left. Its branches reached above the proscenium and its roots spread over the stage and draped into the pit. Although the tree was used well, it seemed difficult for the actors to move around it at times.

The production’s other design elements were not as questionable as the actor positioning. The costumes, which depicted the changing periods from 1919 to 1959, were as beautiful as they were functional, and their

colors were vibrant. Scenic Designer Jenna McFarland Lord said during a talkback after the show, that “[a]s an artistic team, we were interested in those instances when ‘color’ does appear in Celie’s world, and what that color represents to her.” Bright colors, specifically purple, were not used in the costumes or lighting until the end of the show.

During the talkback, the audience raised concerns about the lightness of the play with the actors. The musical covers extremely serious topics, such as abuse, racism and incest, and some viewers were concerned that the musical did not treat them seriously enough.

Houstin and Gilmore, thought otherwise. “[The interpretation] depends on the director, the actors and the audience,” said Gilmore in response to the comment, although she disagreed with their assessment.

Houston claimed that it is “a story about rebirth,” and since the plot spans over so much time, it is impossible to address every issue directly.

Both agreed that the main focus of the story was on women. “All women have abuse,” asserted Houston, “all women have a story.” Both actresses stressed that the importance of the musical is that it could reach everyone, no matter what race, gender or age they were.

Although The Color Purple addresses serious matters, this production depicted the struggle of an abused and marginalized woman with integrity and hope. “It’s heavier, but you get the chance to educate an audience,” said Houston, “but it’s not a black story. It’s a human story played by black people.”

The Color Purple is playing at the Boston Center for the Arts through Feb. 8.

24

TUESDAY, January 28, 2014 | THE JUSTICE

TOPof the

ARTS ON VIEW

Brandeis TALKS

CHARTS

Quote of the week

Top 10s for the week ending January 26

“The decisions we make have to have students’ interests in mind, and with this decision in particular, I’m not entirely sure that the best interests of students were the driving force behind the changes.”

BOX OFFICE

1. Ride Along 2. Lone Survivor 3. The Nut Job 3D 4. Frozen (2013) 5. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit 6. I, Frankenstein 3D 7. American Hustle 8. August: Osage County 9. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) 10. Devil’s Due

—Student Union President Ricky Rosen ‘14, on the new mandatory residential meal plans. (News, p.1)

What are you doing for Superbowl Sunday?

NYT BESTSELLERS

JOSHUA LINTON/the Justice

SOMBER MEMORIES: Justice associate editor Joshua Linton ’14 took this photo on a MEOR Poland trip over winter break. The photo depicts a guard tower at Auschwitz which overlooks one of the gas chambers.

Alex Izso ’14 “Going home to New York to visit my girlfriend and feeling the vibe of the Super Bowl being there.”

the justice wants to see your original artwork!

Submit your photography or a photo of your original drawings, sculptures, paintings or works in other mediums to photos@thejustice.org to be featured in the next issue!

Alex Thomson ’15 “Wait, is it this Sunday?”

Lauren Phillips ’15 “Literally nothing.”

Sydney Westervelt ’17 “Watching it in my room with friends, but I’m really just watching it for the commercials.”

DOWN 1 Modern junk dealer?

2 Hard to pin down 3 It’s highly touted 4 Sitcom cousin 5 Benchmark 6 First name in erotica 7 Sweet-smelling bloomers 8 That guy, to Guy 9 Singer known as the “Peruvian songbird” 10 Bearcat maker 11 “How __ to know?”

12 Dramatic 36- Across finalminute situation 13 Contrition 14 Saturate 22 Smart ones?

24 Join 26 Fluorine or iodine

Nonfiction

1. Duty—Robert M. Gates 2. The Things That Matter—Charles Krauthammer 3. David and Goliath—Malcolm Gladwell

4. Killing Jesus—Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard 5. I Am Malala— Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb

CROSSWORD ACROSS 1 In an innovative and memorable way 10 There’s a point to it 15 Dangerous element 16 Get to the point?

17 Site of 1890s gold rushes 18 “Your wish is my command” 19 Fort Laramie hrs.

20 Kirshner of “The LWord” 21 Audited 23 __ en scène 25 Cartoonist awarded a Congressional Gold Medal in 2000 27 AEC successor 28 Poetry slam, e.g.

30 “__ for me” 31 Coordinate nicely 32 Almost went down 34 Make milk 36 Game with checks 38 Brand of attachable rotary mower 40 Job seeker-to-be, often 44 Shut (up) 45 First to be called up 47 Israeli statesman Dayan 48 36-Across great 49 Rhoda’s sister 51 Brae toppers 52 Issue 54 Pro-__ 56 Well-connected co.?

57 Israel’s southernmost city 58 First stroke for many 61 Whoops 62 Line on New York’s state quarter 63 Christopher Hitchens work 64 “Lend a Hand. Care for the Land!” spokescritter

Fiction 1. The Invention Of Wings—Sue Monk Kidd 2. The Goldfinch—Donna Tartt 3. First Love— James Patterson and Emily Raymond 4. The First Phonecall From Heaven— Mitch Albom 5. Sycamore Row—John Grisham

iTUNES

1. Katy Perry—“Dark Horse (feat.

Juicy J)” 2. Pharrell Williams—”Happy” (from Dispicable Me 2) 3. John Legend—”All of Me” 4. Austin Mahone—“Mmm Yeah (feat. Pitbull)” 5. Lorde—“Royals”

BILLBOARD

1. Bruce Springsteen—High Hopes 2. Soundtrack—Frozen 3. Kidz Bop Kids— Kidz Bop 25 4. Beyonce— Beyonce 5. Jennifer Nettles—That Girl 6. Switchfoot—Fading West 7. Lorde—Pure Heroine 8. Eminem—Marshall Mathers LP 2 9. Katy Perry—PRISM 10. Imagine Dragons—Night Vision Top of the Charts information provided by Fandango, the New York Times, Billboard. com and Apple.com.

29 Texas __ 31 Lack permission to 33 Make safer, as livestock 35 Overflow 37 Muskmelon 21 Trig function 38 Smoothie sweeteners 39 Presents for display, as blueprints 41 Emphatic turndown 42 Current principle 43 Edit, in a way 44 Robin Williams 46 Slowly 49 Title auto in a 1978 Harold Robbins film 50 Pumped (up) 53 Big party 55 Pouches 59 Número atómico 79 60 One might be

STAFF’S Top Ten

Solution to last issue’s crossword Crossword Copyright 2013 MCT Campus, Inc.

Oscar Winners

By MAX MORAN

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.

D’Andre Young ’15 “I’ll be watching it in Grad with friends, eating wings at a quad event.”

—Compiled by Lilah Zohar and photograhed by Morgan Brill/the Justice

Solution to last issue’s sudoku

Sudoku Copyright 2013 MCT Campus, Inc.

justice EDITOR

The Academy Awards are coming up on March 2, so it’s fun to take a look back at some past Best Picture winners.

Here are ten of my favorite past best picture winners, one per decade, and my pick for this year.

1. It Happened One Night (1934) 2. Casablanca (1943) 3. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) 4. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) 5. The Godfather (1972) 6. Amadeus (1984) 7. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) 8. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) 9. Argo (2013) 10. Her (2014)