The Justice - March 3, 2009

ARTS PAGE 20

SPORTS Swimmers break school records 16

BRIGHTON BEACH

FORUM Humanities forgotten? 10 THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER

the

OF

BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY SINCE 1949

Justice www.theJusticeOnline.com

Volume LXII, Number 21

Waltham, Mass.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

SELECTION DAY SUCCESSES

ACADEMICS

UCC motions for an optional third semester ■ The financial aspects of

INSIDE

pursuing the new Justice Brandeis Semester were also discussed last week.

■ Finances of new

proposals, p. 5.

■ Union resolutions

By NASHRAH RAHMAN JUSTICE EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

DAVID SHEPPARD-BRICK/Justice File Photo

Basketball teams make NCAA Tournament The men’s and women’s basketball teams both were selected to play in the NCAA Division III Basketball Tournament. The women’s team goes to the tournament for the fourth straight season and will host the first two rounds this weekend. The men’s team will make its third consecutive appearance. (See story, p. 16)

CAMPUS SPEAKER

Bill Ayers to visit campus ■ The Student Union paid

$900 to help bring Bill Ayers and Robert H. King to speak at Brandeis.

By ALANA ABRAMSON JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

The Student Union Senate voted 10-8 at last Sunday’s Senate meeting to pass a Senate Money Resolution providing $900 of funding from the Senate discretionary fund for Bill Ayers and Robert H. King to speak at Brandeis March 30 and April 3, respectively.

The debate over the resolution was contentious, with many of the Senators arguing that Lev Hirschhorn and Alex Melman,

senators for the Class of 2011, who are members of Democracy for America, one of the resolution’s sponsors, should refrain from voting. Hirschhorn and Melman ultimately voted in favor of the resolution.

Ayers is a founding member of the Weather Underground and is currently a professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He became a very controversial figure during the presidential election last fall when the Republican party tried to tie him to Pres. Barack Obama. King, a member of the Black Panther Party, spent 32 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of murder.

Hirschhorn said that DFA, Students for a Democratic Society,

support proposals, p. 5

New developments on recent academic restructuring proposals include a discussion of the financial aspects of pursuing a Justice Brandeis Semester over the summer and the University Curriculum Committee’s motion for the creation of a voluntary Justice Brandeis Semester in the summer of 2010.

The UCC also motioned to create a new Business Major, a new Media, Communications and Society major and change the residency requirement from seven to eight semesters in the beginning of fall 2010. These motions will be voted on at the faculty meeting this Thursday.

Concerns about the new Business major, the new Communications, Media and Society major and the change of the residency requirement to eight semesters were discussed at a town hall meeting last Wednesday.

Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe said that “significant money”

will be necessary to implement the proposals but “the money to pay the cost of doing this, we see, is a reasonable investment to get the $6 million in additional revenue [predicted to generate from increased enrollment].”

While Jaffe said at the town hall meeting that the Justice Brandeis Semester “would be required of all students,” the UCC’s motion to the faculty states that the semester will be voluntary.

“I think that the faculty feels that we haven’t spelled out exactly what is going to qualify [as academic criteria for the Justice Brandeis Semester and] we haven’t specified how we’re going to come up with enough of these options for thousands of students to do it per year,” said Jaffe in

See UCC, 5 ☛

ROSE ART MUSEUM

the History department and the Peace, Conflict and Coexistence program are co-sponsoring Ayers’ and Kings’ respective visits.

Hirschhorn added that Ayers asked for $2,500 in speaking fees and King asked for $1,000.

The senators who voted against the resolution thought the funding was too excessive and that the event was too controversial for the Student Union to sponsor.

“The Student Union should not be supporting the visit of someone like Bill Ayers, a domestic terrorist,” Senator for the Class of 2010 Rebecca Wilkof, who voted against the resolution, said in an interview with the Justice.

She later said, “Regardless of my political beliefs, however, I do

See SPEAKER, 7 ☛

Donation goes to Rose ■ An anonymous donation

will be put toward the Rose Art Museum’s operating budget for this fiscal year.

By HANNAH KIRSCH JUSTICE EDITOR

A donor has provided funds to help pay the Rose Art Museum’s operating budget for the remainder of this fiscal year, according to a Feb. 26 “frequently asked questions” briefing e-mail to Brandeis alumni sent by University President Jehuda Reinharz and forwarded to the Justice by several alumni.

The donor “specifically asked to remain anonymous” and requested that the exact amount of the donation be withheld as well, according to Joe Baerlein of Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications, Inc., the University’s temporary public relations firm. Baerlein did say, however, that the gift is “a substantial, low-six-figure gift that is very generous.”

Baerlein told the Justice, “The donation will be used to cover the University’s expenditure for the overhead costs of the Rose,” adding that the money will go into the University’s operating budget for this fiscal year, which ends July 1.

He also said the donor left the des-

See ROSE, 7 ☛

Prof discusses book

Sharp blades

Effect of new bill

■ Prof. William Flesch (ENG) talks about his acclaimed new book.

■ Brandeis hosted the Intercollegiate Fencing Association Championships last weekend.

■ The University may benefit from Congress’ passing of the $787 stimulus package.

FEATURES 8

For tips or info call Let your voice be heard!

Submit letters to the editor online (781) 736-6397 at www.thejusticeonline.com

INDEX

NEWS 3

SPORTS 14

ARTS

17

EDITORIAL FEATURES

10 8

OPINION POLICE LOG

11 2

SPORTS LETTERS

16 11

COPYRIGHT 2009 FREE AT BRANDEIS. Call for home delivery.

2

TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2009

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THE JUSTICE

NEWS SENATE LOG

BRIEF

POLICE LOG

Campus Life Committee discusses shifting quiet hours

Medical Emergency

Traffic

Feb. 23—A student in Massell Quad reported that she had cotton from a Q-tip stuck in her ear. BEMCo treated the student on-scene with a signed refusal for further care.

Feb. 24—A party in Massell Quad reported that a student with a collapsed lung was suffering from chest pain. University Police and BEMCo responded. The student was transported to the NewtonWellesley Hospital via ambulance.

Feb. 25—A student in the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center reported that she had twisted her ankle in a Physical Education class. University Police and BEMCo arrived, but the patient refused treatment.

Feb. 27—BEMCo was notified about a student with a knee injury in Massell Quad. BEMCo treated the student on-scenesigned refusal for further care.

Feb. 27—A party reported an incident outside North Academic Quad in which a vehicle had been involved in an accident, and the other vehicle had left the scene. University Police responded and compiled a report on the accident.

Several issues, including quiet hours, the ’DeisBikes program and the prospect of requiring students studying abroad next spring to live in the Village in the fall were discussed at the most recent Campus Life Committee meeting held last week, according to Dean of Student Life Rick Sawyer.

The Campus Life Committee was created with the goal of bringing multiple stakeholders together to discuss pressing campus issues. It is co-chaired by Sawyer and Student Union President Jason Gray ’10, according to the Student Union Web site. The committee meets approximately once a month.

Quiet hours were discussed extensively at the meeting, according to Gray. Several students at the meeting advocated shifting quiet hours in certain residential locations around campus. The proposed change would affect the Foster Mods and would move quiet hours from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. on a trial basis.

Gray said, “[The Student Union proposes] extending quiet hours for a trial period in a trial area, the Foster Mods, to see the effects. ... [Changing quiet hours is] ... one of the different things we can do that administratively can change, that will allow for a better structure for people to have more fun, and there’s no reason we shouldn’t try it.”

Blumberg wrote in an e-mail to the Justice, “We’re discussing what would need to be done to shift the quiet hours in specific locations on campus. This takes into account the wishes of that community next year (we will be conducting surveys once the housing selection is complete), potential changes to [the Rights and Responsibilities Handbook] (the specific hours of quiet hours are stipulated within that document), and educating the community.”

Sawyer said, “Quiet hours is an annual discussion. … The perennial nature of it is that there is a body of students, apparently, who feel that a 1 o’clock quiet hour is, really, this day and age, too early.”

DeisBikes will allow students to borrow bicycles free of charge for recreation or transportation. The bicycles will be maintained by a group of volunteer student mechanics, but there will be a charge for bikes that are damaged or lost.

Blumberg wrote in an e-mail to the Justice, “At this point the discussions surround final details, such as where the helmets will be stored, where the bikes will be stored during the off season, having the bike rack moved into place, etc” and that ’DeisBikes hopes to be up and running “for the middle of March.”

The Campus Life Committee also discussed the policy that all students planning to study abroad next spring must live in the Village in the fall semester. Gray said, “Students should choose whether or not to study abroad based on whether or not they want to study abroad, not based on concerns about housing, not being able to live with their friends.”

Gray said that this is a long-term issue that will probably not be discussed by the Campus Life Committee again until next year.

Theft Feb. 24—University Police compiled a report on the theft of a large tool box from a secured area in the basement in EdisonLecks.

Miscellaneous Feb. 26—Three males on the loop road hanging signs and taking pictures were observed on a security camera. University Police sent units to investigate and identified the individuals as students who were hanging posters for a play.

Feb. 26—A party reported that a bathroom in the Usdan Student Center was vandalized.

University Police observed that paper dispensers had been ripped off walls and that there was waste on stalls. University Police compiled a report, and the Physical Plant Department was dispatched to clean the bathroom.

Feb. 27—A party reported that a female was hanging papers outside the Shapiro Campus Center. Officers identified the female as a non-student, and she was asked to leave the area. A verbal trespass warning was issued, and the female complied without incident.

Mar. 1—University Police was notified that flower pots at the rear of the Castle were vandalized.

—Compiled by Nashrah Rahman

—Harry Shipps

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS A headline in News last week incorrectly identified the nature of an act that Brandeis is involved in getting adopted in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act is an act, not a law. (Feb. 24, p. 1).

The headline in the Senate Log last week misrepresented the bylaw that was changed by the Senate at the Feb. 22 Senate meeting. The headline states that senators will be censured when, in fact, the bylaw only suggests that censure is a possibility. (Feb. 24, p.2).

An article in Sports last week incorrectly spelled the surname of a guard on the Brandeis women’s basketball team. The player’s name is Lauren Goyette ’09, not Lauren Goyete. (Feb. 24, p. 16).

An article in Arts last week incorrectly identified the position of a Brandeis administrator. Jamele Adams is the Assistant Dean of Student Life, not the Dean of Student Life. (Feb. 24, p. 19).

The Justice welcomes submissions for errors that warrant correction or clarification.

E-mail jsw5@brandeis.edu.

MAX BREITSTEIN MATZA/the Justice

Learning to save lives Zachary Einzig ’09 demonstrates how to care for a conscious choking victim as part of the event “How to save a life” hosted by Brandeis Health Occupation Students of America. Einzig’s class on CPR was open to the entire community.

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 every Thursday from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. in the Justice office.

The Committee on Disabilities is having a speaker and film series throughout March. The first speaker will be Prof. Valerie Leiter ’01, associate professor of sociology at Simmons College.

Leiter’s work focuses on children and youth with disabilities.

Today from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the Pollack Auditorium.

Spring Career Fair Main Line News Forum Features Sports Arts Ads Photos Managing

(781) 736-3750 (781) 736-6397 (781) 736-3746 (781) 736-3754 (781) 736-3745 (781) 736-3753 (781) 736-3751 (781) 736-3752 (781) 736-3567

The Justice Brandeis University Mailstop 214 P.O. Box 549110 Waltham, Mass. 024549110 E-mail: justeditor@brandeis.edu

Student Union President Jason Gray ’10 announced that the University Curriculum Committee passed proposals for a new Business major and a new Media, Communications and Society major, as well as the Justice Brandeis Semester. However the University Curriculum Committee passed the Justice Brandeis Semester as optional instead of required as originally proposed.

The Senate unanimously favored and signed the resolution on the Justice Brandeis Semester resolution.

The Senate passed the Senate Money Resolution regarding the Democracy For America event that will bring Bill Ayers and Robert H. King to campus this spring.

Student Union Director of Communications Jamie Ansorge ’09 reported on how the communications task force is working to facilitate faculty interaction with clubs, reaching out to prospective students to more efficiently target the most qualified students and working to communicate the message of gender-neutral housing to the community.

Gray spoke about the Uniform Management of Institutional Funds Act and the Uniform Prudent Management of Instituional Funds Act. He also spoke about the efforts of Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Massachusetts to change Massachusetts law regarding endowment procedures.

Gray also announced that the Committee on Endowment Ethics and Responsibility had a meeting this past weekend and that it hopes to have a series of suggestions for the May board meeting.

Andrew Hogan ’11 spoke about the installation of a new cell phone amplifier in the Usdan Student Center as well as his efforts to make it easier for clubs to request event space.

Gray reported that he met with fraternity and sorority presidents to discuss their lack of recognition by the University and what they can possibly do to sway the University in favor of recognition.

The Senate implied a new procedure for Senator Reports. All senators have now published a written report on the Student Union Web site.

The Senate unanimously granted a Senate Money Resolution to the ’DeisBikes Rental Program which will begin on March 23.

The senate tabled a bylaw that addresses ’DeisBikes as a responsibility of the Brandeis University Student Union Services Committee.

The Senate passed the Senate Money Resolution for a costume “Mishloach Manot” fundraiser that will be held at Cholmondeley’s March 6.

The Union granted provisional charter to FRESH Water, The Brandeis Sailing Team, The Girl Effect and A Cappella Etc. —Destiny Aquino

ANNOUNCEMENTS Committee on Disabilities

theJustice

Student committee on endowment ethics reconvenes

More than 40 employers representing the fields of nonporfit, government, health care, policy and research will be on campus to recruit students. Professional attire is required. Thursday from noon to 3 p.m. in the Hassenfield Conference Center, Sherman Function Hall.

Inventing the prison in democratic Athens Prof. Marcus Floch from the University of Richmond will discuss the ancient history and evolution of the prison. He suggests that the prison developed (and was criticized) in classical Athens as a natural extension of democratic state-formation, imperialism and democratic notions of justice and the body.

Thursday from 5 to 6 p.m. in OlinSang 104. For more information, email aoko@brandeis.edu.

Africa’s vision for development Speakers from the World Bank, the United Nations and Harvard University will discuss climate change, peace and conflict, the economic crisis, education and

governance. Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. in the Heller School for Social Policy and Management.

For more information, e-mail byajos@brandeis.edu.

Vagina Monologues These performances celebrate the mystery and complexity of female sexuality. This year’s performances feature an all-new cast and new monologues. All proceeds go to BARCC, REACH and VDay to end gender-based violence. Friday at 8 p.m. and Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. For more information, e-mail vickico@brandeis.edu.

Gender and human rights The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Project on Gender, Culture,

Religion, and the Law will host Canadian Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella for a discussion on the issues of gender and human rights in modern times. Seating is limited and RSVPs are encouraged. Sunday at 6:30 p.m. (reception) and 7:30 (lecture) in the International Lounge. For more information, email hbi@brandeis.edu.

Independent Major

Interdisciplinary

All students pursuing an IIM proposal for Spring ’09 must submit their completed application by 5 p.m. March 9 to the Office of Academic Services, Usdan 130.

For more information, e-mail jmkim@brandeis.edu.

THE JUSTICE

●

TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2009

3

BUDGET

Stimulus may aid Univ ■ Financial aid and

scientific research may benefit from the passing of the U.S stimulus package.

By MIRANDA NEUBAUER JUSTICE SENIOR WRITER

MICHELLE STRULOVIC/the Justice

Hefner on business Former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Playboy Enterprises Christie Hefner ’74 spoke to students, faculty and administrators last week in her program, titled “Transforming a Business. Transforming a Life.”

STUDENT UNION

Students to aid admissions ■ The Executive Task Force

for Admissions will connect current Brandeis students with prospective students.

By ALANA ABRAMSON JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

The Student Union is in the process of forming the Executive Task Force for Admissions, a committee that will encourage current Brandeis students to reach out to accepted students in an effort to help admissions recruit potential students, Student Union President Jason Gray ’10 said.

Gray appointed Jamie Fleishman ’11 and Sofya Bronshvayg ’11 as the heads of the Executive Task Force, the committee spearheading this initiative, right before the February break.

The task force currently only consists of Fleishman and Bronshvayg, but Fleishman said that he, Bronshvayg and Gray are in the process of finding six or seven students to serve on the task force and that the members will be chosen “within a week.”

While he would not name the potential members because they are not yet confirmed, he said that they would be from all facets of the student body, not just the Student Union.

“Even though we are picking from a self-selecting pool, we have reached out to people that are very active in the Brandeis community and enthusiastic about Brandeis as a whole,” Fleishman said.

He said he hopes to make membership an application process by next semester.

Gray said that he and Dean of Admissions Gil Villanueva “realized that as a result of the financial challenges Brandeis is facing, continuing to recruit a strong class would involve recruitment from current students.”

Fleishman said that he met with Villanueva over February break to discuss ways in which the student body could help the Office of Undergraduate Admissions with the recruitment process.

He said the task force will initiate several specific ideas over the course of the semester to help increase enrollment for the Class of 2013 such as talking to students, making a video showcasing certain students’ Brandeis experiences and organizing an event on Accepted Students’ Day. Admissions recently sent letters to the top 500 applicants assuring

them of likely admission to Brandeis and providing them with a link to indicate a preference for student contact. Fleishman said that the members of the task force will begin calling and e-mailing these students when Villanueva gives them permission.

As more applicants in addition to the top 500 are accepted to Brandeis, Fleishman said that the task force will send a mass e-mail to the student body asking for help contacting potential students. Those students who are interested will list their hobbies and interests and will then be entered into a database, enabling the task force to match current students with prospective students according to their various interests.

The task force will also work with the Office of Communications to help develop a video featuring up to six students telling their personal stories about why they chose to attend Brandeis.

Fleishman said that while the video will most likely feature Gray, he and Bronshvayg have not decided who the other students will be. He said that the task force was looking for a “good representation of every class year as well as students that are enthusiastic about Brandeis.”

The task force is also working on planning a concert on Accepted Students’ Day April 7 featuring various student a cappella and dance groups.

Fleishman said the task force had not chosen which groups would perform.

He said the Senate Outreach Committee is organizing a mixer for prospective students and the members of the Student Union on the evening of Accepted Students’ Day. While Gray acknowledged that the financial crisis “primed the need for current students to reach out to prospective ones,” he, Bronshvayg and Fleishman said that they are trying to make this initiative a longterm effort.

“This initiative may have started because of the financial crisis, but the idea behind the initiative—student outreach to accepted students— is something that should have been started a long time ago, and we are aiming to make this committee a long-term initiative,” Bronshvayg said.

“We are trying to create a large number of opportunities for students to create a tangible impact and involve themselves in the University,” Gray said.

“If people are worried that the economic crisis will adversely effect Brandeis’ reputation, this initiative enables them to get involved and change that,” he added.

The $787 billion stimulus package that the U.S. Congress passed Feb. 13 includes federal funds that could benefit Brandeis in the areas of financial aid and scientific research, according to Provost Mary Krauss and Dean of Financial Services Peter Giumette.

The stimulus bill, which is intended to create jobs and induce a widespread economic recovery, includes $29 billion toward health, science and research, of which $10 billion goes to the National Institutes of Health for research and facilities. The bill also provides $106 billion for education and job training, which includes extra funding for programs such as Pell Grants, which go to students with high financial need and higher education tax credits that provide tax relief for families to pay education costs.

The stimulus legislation increases the maximum Pell Grant from $4,850 to $5,350. Giumette explained that Pell Grants are limited to students of high need and are received by about 15 percent of undergraduates. “Not only did they increase the annual amount [of Pell Grants], they also increased the number of awards one student could receive in a single academic year, ... so that’s helpful for students who might be considering summer sessions at Brandeis.” He explained that this change would not have a large effect on the plans for a Justice Brandeis Semester because it is only one source of federal funding. Other kinds of financial aid such as the Stafford Loan still have an annual maximum that most students use up in the

spring or fall.

In past years, Pell Grants have not kept pace with the increased cost of education, representing an eversmaller portion of the overall cost in the past several years, Giumette said.

The tax credits would help families pay for college costs because they allow them to save money in federal taxes, Giumette explained. “It’s fairly minor compared to the overall cost. … I’d rather have had the money allocated to federal aid programs than given as a tax credit.”

In order to organize faculty efforts to receive funding from the NIH and the National Science Foundation, Krauss said that she established the Stimulus Coordinating Committee Feb. 17. She said, “The meeting of 12 faculty from the sciences and [the] Heller [School for Social Policy and Management] was organized within 24 hours as faculty began learning the details of the stimulus package.”

Krauss said the meeting was an effort to encourage faculty to start preparing. “It doesn’t take much to organize this faculty when they see opportunities,” Krauss said.

Prof. Greg Petsko (CHEM) said that possible uses of the stimulus funds in the sciences at Brandeis could be a renovation of the third floor of Bassine and of Edison-Lecks as well as some construction associated with Phase 2 of the science complex project. “I think this is a tremendous opportunity, particularly coming as it does at [a] time when the University’s own finances are in difficulty,” Petsko said.

Prof. Eve Marder (BIOL) explained that the NIH intended to create more jobs through funding for renovations, equipment and research. The $1 billion will be available for University building and renovation funds, she said. “The point of that is the construction projects create jobs, and then they are also thinking that some

of those same institutions will be building labs that then will be creating jobs in the long term” when faculty members hire technicians, post doctorate or graduate students. “The other big piece of it is direct grants to researchers,” she explained, which come in the form of large equipment grants and research grants. “Virtually every big piece of equipment in the sciences on campus was funded by an equipment grant from the government,” Marder said, explaining that the money is going toward grants, among other things.

Marder explained that the University receives an extra portion of funding from the government in addition to money that goes directly to the researcher to pay for supplies, technicians, graduate students and post doctorate students and “For every million dollars that goes directly to the investigator, there’s [about] $550,000 that goes in indirect costs to the University” as an additional fixed percentage of the direct cost. Those funds can go toward infrastructure, she explained. “The reason the government does this is because it acknowledges that it’s a real cost of doing the research to provide the facilities and the light and the heat that that allows the work to happen.”

“Anybody who can get additional grant dollars … is helping the University by bringing in additional [revenue],” she said.

Many of the research grants could benefit previously submitted projects that were well-reviewed by the NIH and NSF but for which there was previously no government funding available, a number of faculty said.

In the social sciences, Prof. Constance Horgan (Heller) and Prof. Deborah Garnick (Heller) also hope to receive funding for two previously submitted proposals analyzing managed care programs and the treatment of substance abuse.

ACADEMICS

Committee to study abroad drafts selection criteria list ■ The Advisory Committee

to Study Abroad discussed selection criteria for study abroad applications.

By JILLIAN WAGNER JUSTICE EDITOR

In an attempt to close an $800,000 gap in the operating budget for study abroad programs, the Advisory Committee to Study Abroad discussed various selection criteria for the study abroad application process at its third meeting Feb. 11 including grade-point average, cocurricular activities and whether students have any previous judicial sanctions.

In addition, the Office of Study Abroad is “reviewing some options for students to apply directly to some of our overseas partners rather than going through a third-party program provider, but there is no decision on this at the moment,” Assistant Dean of Academic Services and Director of Study Abroad J. Scott Van Der Meid wrote in an e-mail to the Justice. He also wrote that Study Abroad is evaluating whether there are other programs that can be added to the approved program list that would allow the maximum number of students to study abroad “within the designated study abroad budget.”

The committee drafted three proposed selection criteria for study abroad. According to the criteria posted on the committee’s myBrandeis Web site, “Primary preference will first be given to students who demonstrate a strong academic interest in selecting their study abroad site. Those for whom study abroad links to a major and who have also completed advanced language study will have the strongest preference for study abroad. GPA and participating in co-curricular activities will also be a factor.” The second crite-

rion gives preference to students who wish to study abroad for a minor, and the third gives preference to students “who can demonstrate a compelling academic reason for study abroad,” which is “demonstrated through language study and coursework in the region.”

“The real question the committee is trying to get at is … how can the committee find out if study abroad actually fits into a student’s educational plan,” Prof. James Mandrell (ROMS) said.

“I think it’s really important that the people who are going abroad have a reason to go,” Hanna Rosenthal-Fuller ’09, a student member of the committee, said. “If you just had one class in a certain area that got you excited, that’s a reason enough to go.”

Regarding cocurricular activities, Van Der Meid explained in an e-mail to the Justice, “While someone might not have course work in a particular region of the world, their involvement with a group like STAND might show some connectivity and initiative towards their desired study abroad program.” However, he wrote, “Just the number of clubs and activities in and of themselves would not be grounds for approval. Quality over quantity is the idea.”

About 42 percent of the sophomore class submitted preliminary applications indicating an interest in studying abroad next year, Van Der Meid wrote in a March 2 e-mail to the Justice. “We have already had some [decline] in the number that applied for fall, some withdrawing, others changing to spring. We don’t expect the final number to be as high since the [decline] for spring students who showed interest this February might be higher than usual given the time between now and [October],” he wrote.

About 45 percent of the current junior class studied abroad this year but the percentages of students

studying abroad are similar because that class is larger than the sophomore class, Dean of Financial Services Peter Giumette said.

Another point of discussion at the meeting was how students’ judicial sanctions should be taken into consideration in the study abroad selection process. Currently, only students on active probation are ineligible to apply to study abroad. According to the meeting’s minutes, Assistant Dean of Student Life Maggie Balch “suggested various ways to interview a student with a questionable application, such as asking them to be able to explain how they can use their judicial sanctions to learn lessons, promote positive behavior and change, be good ambassadors etc.”

Whether students who have social or academic issues should be allowed to go abroad or not, they’ll be “representing Brandeis University and also the [United States] in a foreign country,” Mandrell said in an interview with the Justice. He did not advocate approving applications of students with any history of conduct problems at the meeting.

The current policy requires study abroad applicants to grant the study abroad application committee the right to review their judicial files. At the meeting, Van Der Meid suggested that the program follow a similar model used by other schools in which faculty or a committee would “read only more ‘questionable applications’ such as students with judicial records,” according to the minutes.

Van Der Meid also suggested instituting a criteria system similar to the one used at Bates College, which ranks students’ study abroad program preferences. The minutes state that “For example, Brandeis could chose [sic] to give preference to full year programs with language immersion above programs in Englishspeaking programs.”

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THE JUSTICE

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TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2009

5

ACADEMIC PROPOSALS BUDGET

Committee projects $11M gap past 2014 ■ Brandeis projects an $18

million budget gap close resulting from academic restructuring proposals.

By MIRANDA NEUBAUER JUSTICE SENIOR WRITER

The University’s academic restructuring plans are projected to close $18 million of the University’s $25 million yearly deficit, but the institution will still face a sustained $11 million gap starting in 2014 because spending its $84 million in reserves over the next two years will decrease the earnings from the endowment, according to a presentation by the Faculty Budget Committee last Thursday.

The Faculty Budget Committee, composed of Prof. Peter Conrad (SOC), Prof. Carol Osler (IBS) and Prof. Gina Turrigano (BIOL), among others, presented the data to the faculty and administrators at a special faculty meeting last Thursday.

The Committee received the information for the presentation through many discussions with Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Peter French, Conrad said in a March 2 interview with the Justice.

“But this is our interpretation of the data; this is not necessarily [French’s] interpretation,” Conrad said.

French did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Vice President for Budget and Planning Frances Drolette and University Provost Marty Krauss referred all

questioning to Conrad.

The University projects that the academic restructuring plans will provide $6 million in revenue by increasing enrollment over four years. One-time expense reductions this year would cut total expenses by $6 million, the projected decrease in faculty over five years would save $5 million and cuts to the graduate school would save $1 million, according to the proposal. Those plans would cut $18 million from the $25 million deficit and leave a $7 million gap.

The University uses 5 percent of its endowment for operations, according to the presentation. “The plan is as we are restructuring, we will spend our reserves,” Osler stated at the meeting, adding that the reserves are also part of the endowment. With that $84 million missing, the University will no longer receive $4 million, or 5 percent of those reserves, Conrad said Monday. Conrad explained that the University placed $84 million in reserves in bonds that don’t gain interest when the stock market began to fall.

Before the economic crisis, the University had a $710 million endowment, $470 million as the original principal and $240 million of reserves, which together were expected to generate $36 million as an earning of 5 percent. After the reserves fell from $240 million to $84 million as a result of the crisis, total expected earning—that 5 percent draw—was lowered by $8 million. With the $84 million gone, the University not only is very low on liquid assets but is also adding an additional cost of $4 million, the missing 5-percent draw of

STUDENT UNION

Union in favor of CARS proposals ■ The Student Union passed

two resolutions in support of the academic proposals.

By DESTINY AQUINO JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

The Student Union passed two resolutions in response to recent academic restructuring proposals—one that supported the new Business major and Communications, Media and Society major and one that advocated making the Justice Brandeis Semester optional on a temporary basis but eventually requiring it for all incoming students.

The resolution supporting the proposed majors was read at the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee meeting last Thursday, at which the proposed majors, as well as the Brandeis Justice Semester, were approved.

The resolutions will be presented to the faculty for a vote at this Thursday’s faculty meeting.

These resolutions are the only ones regarding academics that have been created and passed this semester by the Union.

Student Union President Jason Gray ’10 explained that a resolution is “an expression of the Student Union’s views on a particular subject on behalf of the student body.” Gray, along with Executive Senator and Acting Vice President Andrew Brooks ’09 and a few other senators co-wrote both resolutions, which were then signed by other members of the Senate. The majors resolution was passed by a majority vote, with one senator opposed and two senators absent. The Justice Brandeis Semester resolution was supported unanimously.

Brooks said in an interview that he feels both majors would “make our University more competitive and reach out to more potential constituencies during the application

process. ... I feel that these majors won’t fundamentally change Brandeis to the point where it’s unrecognizable but that it will aid us in this economic crisis.”

Gray said the addition of majors would, “increase Brandeis’ ability to recruit more high-caliber students so that our ranking as a university and the academic intellect of students on this campus remains high.”

Senator for the Castle Nathan Robinson ’11 was the only senator who voted against the resolution supporting the proposed majors. “I don’t think a Business major has a place at a liberal arts institution,” he said. “If I were on the committee that puts together majors and minors, I wouldn’t have a Business minor either. I think the point of an institution like ours is to enrich us as people. ... the study of business is pure careerism and it doesn’t nourish us or fulfill us as people; it trains us to be worker bees in the corporate hive.”

He also said, “I don’t really have an opinion on the Communications major, and if they were separate resolutions I would have voted for the Communications and against the Business.”

Nipun Marwaha, senator for the Class of 2012, said, “I think adding anything to an academic institution as far as majors goes only bolsters the [University’s] work toward academic integrity and teaching the next generation.”

This Justice Brandeis Semester is now being proposed to the faculty as optional, as opposed to an original proposal that required students of the Class of 2014 and on to participate in this semester as a graduation requirement. The Senate resolution regarding this, however, encourages the faculty to pass the Justice Brandeis Semester as optional and rereview it after it has been in effect to address whether it should then be optional or required.

the $84 million specifically to the remaining $7 million gap as an indirect effect of the economic crisis, Osler explained. “Essentially,” Conrad said, “we have no liquid assets available.”

Regarding the 5-percent draw from the endowment, Conrad said that “if your sustainable income is too low, then we have a gap between your expenditures and your revenues. The 5percent sustainable endowment draw under the best of circumstances is supposed to fill that gap.” The $11 million is a “yearly gap [beginning in 2014] that persists if we don’t do anything about it,” Conrad said.

As an example, Osler explained at the meeting that if the University received $10 million to build a pool, with $8 million going toward construction and $2 million to support ongoing repairs, those funds could generate a 5-percent draw of $100,000 to pay for the pool’s operating costs.

“The donor intends us to support the pool forever; if we were [to] use some of that $2 million [for other purposes], … we would not be able to use it [to] help the pool,” she said.

The $11 million gap does not include the structural deficit Brandeis bears as a result of not renovating buildings. “We’re balancing our budget only by leaving out things we should be fixing,” Osler said.

Rounding down that deficit to $10 million for simplicity’s sake, Conrad went on to present various theoretical options that would close such a gap. He said the most likely response would be combining several measures. Reducing costs by $10 million would be equivalent to cutting 91 faculty jobs or 130 staff jobs, eliminating all retirement benefits, a three-year

salary freeze for faculty and staff with no catch-up or closing 25 buildings.

Conrad said during the presentation, “We are not recommending any of these, this is just a way of understanding what our options are.” Not only could these measures severely affect the academic standing of the University, but the University would still be facing high risk due to low reserves, Conrad said.

To increase revenue by $10 million, the University would have to add an additional 500 undergraduates in addition to the already announced increase of undergraduates, doublesponsor research by government research grants, raise tuition by 5.5 percent over three years or drop financial aid coverage from 34 percent to 27 percent of students.

Replenishing the endowment, which would be the least painful option, would require an additional $200 million per year in revenue, Conrad said. “If a fairy godmother gave us $200 million to go into the endowment, we’d be all set.” Realistic possibilities for achieving this goal could include selling off assets such as real estate, treasures and art. The committee set the possibility of funding through art at an arbitrary number of “$100 million plus,” Conrad said.

The value of total marketable Brandeis real estate is around $30 million, which includes the Brandeis House in New York City, three small lots in Waltham, graduate student housing, the Foster Mods and the Charles River apartments, according to Conrad.

Projected Figures The University will still face a budget deficit after academic restructuring measures. The figures below are denoted in millions.

Projected yearly deficit past fiscal 2014

25 -18

Projected amount saved from recent proposals, including:

6

Projected revenue from academic restructuring

6

One-time expense reductions

5

Savings from projected decrease in faculty

1

Cuts to graduate schools (Heller, IBS)

+4

Additional projected losses for eradication of reserves funds by 2010

11

Remaining projected operating budget gap

BRIAN BLUMENTHAL/the Justice

UCC: Third semester is now optional CONTINUED FROM 1 an interview with the Justice. Based on these concerns, Jaffe, who is the chair of the UCC, said that the UCC “felt that the risks associated with making [the Justice Brandeis Semester] required before we have all these details worked out is too great.”

Jaffe told the Justice that the University is contemplating reducing the tuition for the Justice Brandeis Semester to three-fourths of the normal tuition rate, which stands at $37,566 for the 2009 to 2010 academic year. He explained that the rate would be reduced as “[the Justice Brandeis Semester] is three-fourths of the normal course load.” According to the UCC motion, the Justice Brandeis Semester will encompass 12 credit hours.

At the town hall meeting Jaffe explained that students who choose to pursue the Justice Brandeis Semester over the summer would be eligible for Brandeis-funded financial aid. However, he said, “There is an issue with certain federal connected sources of aid [because] if you were to do three semesters in one year there are limitations on these [funding] in that they can be used in three semesters in one year.”

Dean of Financial Services Peter Giumette explained in an interview with the Justice that some forms of financial aid such as the Stafford loan, a student loan that is offered to eligible students enrolled in institutions of higher education, is limited to a fixed amount of aid in an academic year.

Even if the amount is split up over three equal dispersions for the three terms, the total annual amount will not change, said Giumette.

In an interview with the Justice, Jaffe confirmed that a homeschool model will be used for the Justice Brandeis Semester. Under the model, Jaffe explained, the student applies to a program through the University and then “Brandeis contracts with the provider of the foreign program who sends you there, and you don’t necessarily know how much that costs.”

Prof. Richard Gaskins (AMST) was concerned at the town hall meeting about the academic criteria of the Justice Brandeis Semester. “I hope we can find rigorous criteria for assuring

Subcommittee Charge

Quote

Suggests the ways in Admissions and which Brandeis can increase enrollment.

Recruiting

Steven Burg (POL): “[We have] focused on two large issues: [the] ... content of printed and website propaganda and ... the characteristics of the potential applicant pool.”

The Special Faculty Advisory Committee

Currently reviewing all of the non- revenue-generating degree programs in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Ben Gomes-Casseres (IBS): “Many of the people involved in designing the major will be involved in overseeing and teaching.”

Bulbul Chakraborty (PHYS): “We are talking to programs and hope to make some preliminary recommendations to CARS by the end of this month.”

Summer Semester and Experiential Learning

Examines the way the experiential learning experiences are integrated into the curriculum.

Tim Hickey (COSI) : “We are excited about the possibilities that the Justice Brandeis Semester program offers for curricular innovation.”

University Degree Requirements and Advising

Reviews and recommends changes to the general University requirements and advising at Brandeis.

Sarah Lamb (ANTH): “We are also considering proposing an ... option that would allow serious-minded ... students to propose their own general education curriculum.”

Aims to develop and Business Major propose a plan for a new Business major.

BRIAN BLUMENTHAL/the Justice

the depth and strength of a Justice Brandeis Semester, especially when it counts for so many credits.” Gaskins told the Justice.

On the other hand, Prof. Dan Perlman (BIOL) voiced his suggestion at the town hall meeting that the faculty should be trained in order to support students who will be enrolled in the Justice Brandeis Semester. In an interview with the Justice, Perlman said, “There were number of things listed under the [Justice Brandeis Semester including] short, intensive programs; internships; longer, very intensive programs; all of these things need different types of teaching from standing up in front of a class and lecturing or leading a small seminar discussion.” Jaffe told the Justice that because students will be eligible to fulfill two of the eight semesters of residency requirement through study abroad or the Justice Brandeis Semester, they will have to fulfill a minimum of six semesters of on-campus residency. However, the requirement will remain unchanged for midyears.

“If you’re going to take a Brandeis degree, you should spend a certain amount of time at Brandeis,” Jaffe

said.

Prof. Jonathan Sarna (NEJS) questioned the need to change the residency requirement at the town hall meeting without doing significant market research to find out whether it would be profitable.

Reflecting on the University’s mission statement with a commitment to social justice, Jessica Kent ’09 questioned the need to create a Business major. At the town hall meeting, she said she believes that it will attract “the typical business students [who] are not a good fit for Brandeis.”

Prof. Ben Gomes-Casseres (IBS) responded, saying, “A student who wants to take 20 Business courses is not going to like this program” because the major will have a special focus on the impact of business on society.

Reflecting on the decision to create a Media, Communications and Society major, Jaffe told the Justice that the decision was partly based on the significant number of students who create a major in communications through the Independent Interdisciplinary Major program.

Attention: Sports Fanatics the

Justice wants you to give the Brandeis community a play-by-play of campus sporting events.

E-mail Sports Editor Ian Cutler at ianc@brandeis.edu for more information.

THE JUSTICE

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TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2009

7

STUDENT UNION

SPEAKER: Union attendance bylaw changed Ayers will visit Brandeis ■ Student Union senators

could be censured for tallying unexcused absences to meetings.

By HARRY SHIPPS

JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

CONTINUED FROM 1 not think it is appropriate for the Senate to sponsor an event that is aimed at a fairly select group of people. The money in the Senate discretionary fund is for senators’ projects, and this money resolution is clearly a club project.”

Melman said in an interview that he felt the passage of the resolution showed the strength of the Senate. “It shows that the Student Union will commit itself to controversial events that will be educational, even if it will greatly anger some people.”

Liza Behrendt ’11, the campaign coordinator of DFA who is organizing Ayers’ visit, said she came up with the idea to bring Ayers to campus when he was receiving extensive media attention during the presidential election in the fall.

“Ayers has unique historical insight to share, and Democracy for America decided Ayers would be a really useful speaker to bring to Brandeis, especially in light of Brandeis’ reputation for activism,” she said “People often involve themselves in activism but do not think about its basis. Bringing an extreme activist like Bill Ayers to campus causes us to question the limits of activism,” she added.

Behrendt said last semester she contacted Liz Cole, Ayer’s booking agent, who said that Ayers was going on tour and would be happy to speak at Brandeis if Behrendt raised the necessary funds. In an effort to raise the money in order to be able to bring Ayers to campus, Behrendt said she contacted multiple departments. She did not specify how many departments she contacted, but said that she received “a lot of negative responses” as a result of the potential controversy the event could generate.

She would not provide the names of the departments that responded negatively.

Hirschhorn said that Justine Johnson, King’s booking agent, contacted the Students for a Democratic Society listserv two weeks ago, saying that King was embarking on a book tour to promote his autobiography, From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King.

Johnson explained that King would be in Boston and was looking for schools to visit.

Hirschhorn, who is a member of the SDS listserv, remained in contact with Johnson and arranged to bring King to campus.

The History department and the Peace and Co-existence program are currently sponsoring these events.

Prof. Jane Kamensky, the chair of the History department, wrote in an e-mail to the Justice that the History department would provide $400. “Because the Weather Underground played a serious (if contentious and lamentable) role in our nation’s history, this visit seemed to me to fall under History’s mission,” Kamensky wrote.

Prof. Gordon Fellman, the chair of the Peace, Conflict and Coexistence program, said that his program had not yet decided the exact amount of money to provide, but it would fall somewhere between $100 and $200.

“Ayers is a controversial figure, but something he did 40 years ago should not be a source of controversy today,” Felman said in an interview with the Justice.

Besides the Senate’s $900 contribution, Hirschhorn said that DFA was contributing $500 and SDS was contributing $1,500 and that the clubs had received $400 from the Brenda Meehan Social Justice-inAction grants.

The Student Union Senate passed the Attendance Improvement Act of 2009 at the Feb. 22 Senate meeting in order to improve current Senate attendance rates, according to Executive Senator and Acting Vice President Andrew Brooks ’10.

The bylaw amendment will “define the phrase ‘extenuating circumstances’ and restate the requirement of Senators to notify the President of the Union Senate of an absence due to such circumstances. In addition, the bylaw amendment will automatically add a censure resolution to be considered by the Senate should a senator accumulate two or more unexcused absences.”

Before voting on the bylaw amendment, senators discussed how to decide the appropriate action to be taken against senators found in violation of the attendance policy. As written in the

final version of the amendment, “Should a senator miss two or more meetings of the Senate without providing advance notice of an extenuating circumstance to the President of the Union Senate, a censure resolution shall be automatically added to the agenda of the next meeting of the Senate.”

“This bylaw simply makes it mandatory that a resolution appear for censure upon a senator being absent twice … It wasn’t an automatic censure, but rather it is a resolution that appears that [the senators] then have the choice whether we want to enforce or not. And so it leaves it to individual senators to decide if they feel comfortable passing it or not,” Brooks explained.

The amendment is not retroactive, which means that senators will not be penalized for their previous attendance records, Brooks said.

The bylaw passed by a vote of 113 with two abstentions.

Nipun Marwaha, senator for the class of 2012, said that he voted in favor of the amendment because “other [senators] have been egregiously missing meetings; some of the numbers added up to … a 68percent absence rate, and that’s why I thought it was necessary to have some sort of action being

taken automatically, because everyone is hesitant to punish a peer.” When asked if he had any reservations about the amendments, Marwaha said, “If I was more involved in the writing of this bill, in particular, I would have probably added after a certain number [of absences] the question of impeachment would be automatic; not after two, maybe after, like, seven.”

Senator for the Castle Nathan Robinson ’11 said that he voted against the bill because he “thought it was only being introduced as an easier way to remove senators and punish those who didn’t attend [Senate meetings].” He added, “I agree that attendance is an issue in the Senate, and I think that senators should attend meetings. I don’t have a problem with efforts to ensure that senators attend meetings; I just believe that it should be done through encouragement rather than punishment.”

When Brooks originally introduced the bylaw amendment at the Feb. 1 Senate meeting, he said he believed that some senators were taking advantage of the previous attendance bylaw, which instructed senators to “attend all meetings of the Senate and committees on which they are assigned, except in

extenuatingcircumstances.”

Brooks said that “[some senators] have taken ‘extenuating circumstance’ to mean any sort of excuse.”

When the bylaw was first introduced, there was discussion about putting a cap on the number of excused or unexcused absences; Brooks suggested the cap be set at two. At the time, the discussion also included the idea that senators found in violation of this policy could be punished with censure or impeachment, Brooks said.

However, the final version of the bylaw did not include a cap on the number of excused absences before a senator faces consequences.

Brooks said, “After meeting with various senators, [it was] decided … that we should not limit the number of excused absences. There are legitimate things that could come up, legitimate extenuating circumstances that could come up.

We did agree that unexcused absences weren’t acceptable.” The issue of excused versus unexcused absences is addressed in the first section of the amendment, which reads, “Extenuating circumstances are situations that arise which are unusual and extreme. Situations that occur regularly or semi-regularly are not extenuating circumstances.”

ROSE: Operating budget to get funds CONTINUED FROM 1

MAX BREITSTEIN MATZA/the Justice

Mixed race in popular media Eric Hamako, a doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst discussed the depiction and the signifigance of mixed race in modern-day movies.

He examined the paradox between White Supremacy and Christian Supremacy through science-fiction movies like Harry Potter, Blade, and Underworld.

ignation of his gift up to Reinharz, who suggested the idea of putting those funds toward covering the Rose’s operating budget.

The donation will not affect the “future of the Rose,” according to Baerlein, who said that there will be “in the near future announcements about what [the repurposing] process is going to entail.”

Prof. Nancy Scott (FA), a member of the Faculty Committee to Review the Closing of the Rose, said, “If the donor wanted to allow the money to be used in that way, it is a fine thing, but I think what we need to know is what is the ultimate fate of the Rose. That’s the real worry.” Scott said that she heard of the donation news from an alumnus approached her at a conference, but she dismissed it as a rumor after she did not receive any official notification.

“To my knowledge, no other faculty had been told about this,” she said.

Reinharz also wrote in the email that although the Board of Trustees vote had authorized the administration to sell works of art from the Rose collection, “Nothing will be sold into the currently depressed art market.” However, the e-mail stated, “One of the revenue-raising options being considered is selling a limited number of works from the Rose’s collection, if necessary.” According to Baerlein, “there’s an $85 million stabilization fund” that will help compensate the University’s structural deficit for the next two fiscal years but that over five fiscal years, “if necessary, the administration would have the ability to sell select pieces of art.”

Scott said, “I’m glad that [the administration] recognize[s] the importance of holding the art during a depressed art market.”

She also said regarding the other questions addressed in the e-mail, “I feel that there is a lot about all of this that remains unanswered, so it’s a matter of continuing concern.”

THE JUSTICE

just

features

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TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2009

VERBATIM | Horace Walpole The world is a tragedy to those who feel but a comedy to those who think.

ON THIS DAY...

FUN FACT

Ho Chi Minh was elected President of Vietnam in 1946.

Every second, Americans collectively eat 100 pounds of chocolate.

ANDREW RAUNER/Justice File Photo

SPEAKING TO THE PEOPLE: At a meet-the-author event in October, Prof. William Flesch talks about his book ‘Comeuppance: Costly Signaling, Altruistic Punishment, and Other Biological Components in Fiction’

The coming of ‘Comeuppance’ Prof. William Flesch (ENG) gained acclaim for his new book

By SAM DATLOF JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

Prof. William Flesch (ENG) works in a small, cluttered office, his desk surrounded by bookshelves stuffed so tightly that they might not accomodate even one more sheet of paper. Still, despite the clutter, his office has a homey, inviting feel, and the smell of old books pervades the air. Flesch sits at his desk in sweatpants, sipping a Diet Coke as he pores through works of literature that reflect his eclectic interests in literature, biology, mathematics and philosophy.

The 49-year-old Manhattan native has recently gained national attention for his newest book, Comeuppance: Costly Signaling,

Altruistic Punishment, and Other Biological Components in Fiction.

The book received rave reviews, and The New Yorker’s James Wood named it one of 2008’s top 10 books.

Comeuppance is about “using ideas of evolutionary psychology and particularly evolutionary game theory to explain why narratives work,” Flesch says.

In the book, Flesch examines the literary theory behind why people become emotionally involved in stories they know are not real. He tries to figure out why readers and moviegoers care about characters they know do not exist.

Flesch came upon literary theory and evolutionary biology through his interest in literature. “[I] got into evolutionary psychology [because I saw] that a

whole lot of the way people were thinking about literature in the last century was influenced by anthropology and in particular by structuralism,” he says.

Flesch teaches several English courses, including some that focus on Shakespeare and one about Spenser and Milton.

Flesch says he came to Brandeis because the school is “a place that [has] a wonderful intellectual history and a wonderful intellectual presence.” Although he is now an English professor and an acclaimed scholar, Flesch was not always solely devoted to the study of literature. As a student in Riverdale, N.Y. and as a member of Yale University’s class of 1978, he planned on majoring in math and English.

His switch to focus solely on English happened more by chance than by any complex plan.

“The math classes were all early in the morning, and the English classes were all late in the afternoon,” Flesch says.

He also said his competence in literature didn’t compare to his abilities in mathematics.

Flesh says that literature has been a part of his life since he was a child. “My father used to read us Kipling aloud. And I just loved that,” he says.

Flesch went on to get his Ph.D. in English from Cornell. Flesch now has two children of his own and is married to Laura Quinney, a fellow English professor at Brandeis.

Some students remember Flesch for his unique teaching style and personality.

Flesch “seemed like he was a lot more in tune to what we were thinking [than other professors were,]” said Amy Thompson ’11, who took “Shakespeare” with Flesch last semester.

Flesch “seemed to know endless amounts of facts about Shakespeare,” Thompson said. “Anybody would ask him a question, and he could answer it.”

Hannah Merchant ’10 was inspired to take “Advanced Shakespeare” with Flesch this semester after enjoying “Shakespeare” last semester.

“Even when he gets off-topic, you feel like you’re learning something,” she said.

Flesch has also written one other long nonfiction work, Generosity and the Limits of Authority: Shakespeare, Herbert, Milton and will continue to author books.

He says he’s considering writing books on a number of philosophical and literary subjects.

At the moment, Flesch says he is most interested in “a kind of exposition of the ideas in Comeuppance going through Shakespeare.” A working title for this piece, he revealed, is Shakespeare and the Management of Vindication.

8

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TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2009

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THE JUSTICE

the Justice Established 1949

Brandeis University

MIKE PRADA, Editor-in-Chief ANDREA FINEMAN, Managing Editor HANNAH KIRSCH, Deputy Editor J OEL HERZFELD, SHANA D. LEBOWITZ, DAVID SHEPPARD -B RICK and DANIEL D. SNYDER, Associate Editors JILLIAN WAGNER, News Editor REBECCA KLEIN, Acting Features Editor REBECCA B LADY, Forum Editor IAN CUTLER, Sports Editor JUSTINE ROOT, Arts Editor JULIAN AGIN -LIEBES and MAX B REITSTEIN MATZA, Photography Editors B RIAN B LUMENTHAL, Acting Layout Editor B RIAN FROMM, Copy Editor C OURTNEY B REEN and SARA ROBINSON, Advertising Editors

Business challenges liberal arts On Thursday, the Faculty Senate will be voting on a proposal to form an undergraduate Business major. The proposal has sparked an ideological debate between those who believe that a student who takes upward of 10 classes in business (already a minor) and economics should get credit for his or her work and those who believe that a Business major will only take Brandeis farther away from the liberal arts ideology. What the issue comes down to is whether Brandeis ought to be and, in fact, is a liberal arts school.

The goal behind forming a Business major is financial: to attract more students. Unlike with other attractive majors, such as Engineering, establishing a Business major will require little initial investment since the University already offers Business classes and includes a graduate International Business School.

However, some members of the community don’t believe the Business major is worth the damage it would do to the University’s liberal arts ethos.

Not only is business far from a liberal art, but also some think the establishment of a Business major would attract a different group of students than those Brandeis usually admits.

Brandeis is absolutely thought of by its community as a liberal arts school; it’s heavily marketed as such to prospective students and is frequently described as such by students and professors. However, Brandeis’ liberal arts identity begs questioning.

The Board of Trustees’ resolution to sell the Rose Art Museum’s collection is only one high-profile item on a laundry list of Brandeis’ recent slights to the liberal arts. In 2005, there were plans to cancel the Linguistics major, the Music Composition graduate pro-

Change in rhetoric needed gram and the teaching of ancient Greek. Only major public outcry narrowly saved those programs from their demise. Cutting University Seminars and increasing class sizes in foreign language classes (and considering the disposal of that requirement completely) are some of more recent changes that go against Brandeis’ liberal arts reputation. There are also noticeable absences in several programs—for example, there is no historiography core class for History undergrads, yet the registrar’s Web site lists five statistics classes offered this semester alone.

This is not to say that those supporting the Business major are calling for the death of liberal arts at Brandeis.

The University is not responsible for supporting the liberal arts at any cost, especially when that cost could very well spell bankruptcy. If Brandeis wants to move in a direction that includes an emphasis on fields like business, that is not a problem.

What is problematic is a continuing rhetoric of “supporting the liberal arts” when the University’s recent actions indicate that the liberal arts have been on the back burner for some time. A Brandeis where ancient Greek, linguistics, music composition, the various Ph.D. candidates who won’t be admitted next year and the University’s legacy in the form of an irreplaceable collection of midcentury masterpieces are in danger of falling off the map is not a liberal arts school.

A main tenet of business is that one cannot do many things well. Brandeis cannot support the liberal arts to the level they deserve while maintaining world-class research facilities and initiatives like the Business major.

Judge wisely when spending Thanks to Brandeis’ recent financial tailspin, the school is pursuing radical options, like the sale of art from the Rose Art Museum and less dramatic changes like discontinuing paper products in some residence quads to save money or generate revenue. In the face of these desperate measures, we question the wisdom of spending $3,000 to install a cell phone signal amplifier in the Usdan Student Center. Our situation demands more prudence on the University’s part and more frugal advocacy on the Student Union’s part.

The administration and students must examine their priorities. Better cell phone reception in Lower Usdan is convenient but hardly a necessity. In times of economic distress, such luxuries should be the first to go, well before art museums and even paper towels. This is especially true since the signal amplifier is such a minor improvement. It would not have been unreasonable for the administration to ask the Student Union to buy the amplifier rather than turning to the Office of Facilities Services for funds.

If the Union felt strongly about the amplifier, it could have utilized its discretionary fund or held a fundraiser.

This amplifier is not the only situation in which the University has spent when it could have saved. In January, Cholmondeley’s was allocated about $10,000 for renovations, which, accord-

Don’t waste on luxuries now ing to Chum’s General Manager Nirja Parekh ’09, had not occurred in 10 years. The coffeehouse’s peeling paint and shabby carpets are evidence of the need for such an effort, and the renovation was certainly more warranted than a signal amplifier. Unfortunately, this money would have been better spent in prior years. Today, allocating such a sum for what is, after all, another luxury is irresponsible. Even beyond choosing not to fund inessential projects, Brandeis could address other forms of waste in the community, such as leaving lights and computers on in the Goldfarb and Science Libraries, to save on energy costs and push the operating budget further.

We recognize that in the face of multi million-dollar deficits, $3,000 or even $10,000 seems like small change. But students upset about drastic moneysaving strategies and worried about the University’s finances can show their support by giving up luxury items; the administration can show the extent and sincerity of its efforts by retaining every possible cent for the necessities of the operating budget. In the wake of the Rose debacle and controversial money-saving proposals, a little shared scrimping might be a first step in better relations between students and administration.

ELI TUKACHINSKY/the Justice

In unsteady economic times, our humanities education is put on hold

By HANNAH KIRSCH JUSTICE EDITOR

In Oryx and Crake, an acclaimed novel by Margaret Atwood, we are presented with a disturbing future.

Science and its (sometimes questionably ethical) products are paramount, and pursuit of commercially viable technology has almost completely superseded pursuit of liberal arts. Of the two main characters of Oryx and Crake, it is the scientifically gifted Crake who attends the prestigious Watson-Crick Institute. Jimmy, with his meager talents as a writer and wordsmith, is relegated to the rundown Martha Graham Academy, which “found itself without a very convincing package to offer” after “the erosion of its former intellectual territory,” the digital replacement of innovation in the humanities.

While we are not, of course, anywhere close to the bleak dystopia of Atwood’s novel, her idea of a humanities program that is kicked to the wayside “without a very convincing package to offer” rings true. These days, universities focus increasingly on using intellectual resources to keep themselves afloat and on equipping students with skills for success in an economically tenuous environment. Both of these actions favor science over a more balanced liberal arts program.

Here at Brandeis, the “repurposing” of the Rose Art Museum and possible creation of a Business major are hard evidence that this is, in fact, where the school’s focus lies.

The encouragement of business and the sciences (in the form of the now-postponed Carl J. Shapiro Science Center) will certainly be more lucrative for the school than encouragement of philosophy and fine arts would be.

This University sorely needs the money, and we would be hard-pressed to begrudge it a heavier emphasis on revenue-generating studies. In the meantime, Brandeis, along with other schools, is emphasizing as much as possible the practical aspects of a humanities education: analytical skills, the study of politically valuable languages and other knowledge that will make us marketable.

Through such school statements as promotional materials for possible student applicants, this greater emphasis on practicality rather than culture, wisdom, and other notoriously “unprofitable” benefits has been made eminently clear.

Not that it is inherently wrong to assign commercial value to a liberal arts education. We can’t all be Ernest Hemingway, starving in Paris on 30 francs a page, convincing himself that “hunger is good discipline.”And as former Harvard president Derek Bok told the New York Times last week, skills in such liberal arts pursuits as writing, philosophical analysis and the critical thinking that comes from studying history go a long way to “contribute to the preparation of students for their vocational lives.”

Where this goes wrong is the mindset in which, similar to the situation in Oryx and Crake, the halcyon ideal of learning purely for personal enlightenment is completely supplanted by widespread pursuit of an education that will foster occupational prosperity. We can and must have our Watson-Crick Institutes and biotechnology firms. But at the same time, academia at Brandeis and elsewhere should seek to preserve that which will not lead directly to a lucrative career. In the words of Archibald MacLeish, “a poem should not mean, but be,” and it is the very existence of humanities studies that should be valuable, not what they mean for a student’s future vocation.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow, a former Brandeis professor, created the idea of a “hierarchy of needs,” asserting that before we can pursue self-actualization— involving spontaneous creativity and investigation of morality—we must achieve security of body, respect, community and employment. Perhaps in this economy, we do need to turn the liberal arts to the lower ranks of the hierarchy. Perhaps there is currently no room for what is, after all, a rather elitist pursuit of the humanities in order to explore what it means to be human. But administrators and students alike must keep in mind that self-actualization through the liberal arts has its own inherent value, so that when the country has weathered this recession, we can return to the luxury of liberal arts for the sake of self-edification.

OP-BOX Quote of the Week “The study of business is pure careerism, and it doesn’t nourish us or fulfill us as people; it trains us to be worker bees in the corporate hive.”

—Castle Quad Senator Nathan Robinson ’11 justifies his vote against the resolution to support the proposed Business major. He was the only senator to vote against the resolution.

(See News story, page 5)

Brandeis Talks Back What are you doing with your snow day?

NICOLA BRODIE ’09 “I did some thesis work and played board games.”

JESSI FIXSEN ’12 “First I caught up on some missed TV, and now I’m studying for a midterm.”

ZHILONG LIN ’10 “I am doing homework.”

NAVEH HALPERIN ’12 “Same thing I do every day.”

THE JUSTICE

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Business not in the spirit of Brandeis To the Editor: I am strongly opposed to the idea of an undergraduate Business major at Brandeis.

Brandeis must not sell its soul to save its purse.

The proliferation of the pseudo-discipline of “Business” and the venal ambition of students who pursue it instead of reading literature or philosophy or learning basic science and who might otherwise become teachers, biologists, writers, doctors or social workers instead of Ponzi schemers is what got this country and Brandeis into its financial predicament in the first place. Does Brandeis really want to open its doors to hundreds of proto-Madoffs with no greater intellectual ambition than to learn how to make an ever-quicker buck?

Go back and read A Host At Last, Brandeis’ first president Abram Sachar’s book. From its inception, Brandeis was to be a peer of the best colleges and universities in America. Those peers do not have undergraduate business programs. Brandeis should not either.

—Todd Melnick ’84

TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2009

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Brandeis Business is practical, unique

Commend our innovative professors To the Editor: In response to your article “CARS seeks revenue gains” (Feb. 24 issue): These sound like good and well-reasoned approaches to a very challenging financial situation. The Brandeis faculty members need to be commended for thinking of creative solutions like the Justice Brandeis Semester and the proposed Media, Communications and Society and Business majors. These solutions seem to effectively address pressing problems yet still maintain Brandeis’ core values, and the faculty’s approach and creativity make me proud to be a Brandeis alumnus. The rest of the University could learn a thing or two by learning from the outstanding teachers at the Brandeis academe.

—Michael Hellmann

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By ZACHARY MATUSHESKI JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

In an episode of the television comedy Everybody Hates Chris, the titular awkward Brooklyn teenager blows an aptitude exam and is sent to the guidance office. The guidance counselor tells Chris that if he is going to go college he should have a purpose.

Otherwise, why bother? As a demonstration, the guidance counselor takes Chris on the bus and asks how many people wished they had the money they spent on college to spend on bills. All raise their hands.

Although college is a place to explore and grow in ways that extend beyond pursuing a career, ignoring the future entirely is foolhardy. The perfect situation is to form a sort of bridge between studying for learning’s sake and studying for a career’s sake. Thus, students should pursue a liberal arts education while also coming out of college with marketable skills. The proposed new Business major allows for that.

There are three specific aspects of the new

proposal that are great assets to those who take on the Business major.

To start, the University has designed the Business major with the intention of offering students accreditation by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. This accreditation, along with Brandeis’s reputation for rigorous study, will give students an advantage when they search for that first job that will give them the experience for betterpaying future jobs. More often than not, students with Bachelor of Arts degrees face difficult job markets. The Business major will give students the ability to edge out the competition. Although a Bachelor’s may enrich the soul, it doesn’t pay the bills on its own.

Second, the Brandeis Business major aims to produce businesswomen and men of a special caliber. Thanks to exciting thematic electives, including classes on international political economy, economics of the developing world and sustainability and health care policy, students pursuing this major will come out with an innovative view on social problems and their solutions. This critical element of

the Business program, along with an emphasis on entrepreneurship, distinguishes Brandeis’ outlook on the components of a good businessperson by allowing students to focus not only on the nature of the business profession but also on the ways business interacts with greater society.

The final valuable aspect of the program is its emphasis on case study. Students will learn to analyze cases and how to assign variables and measure and then come up with actionable solutions to problems. The program will emphasize taking on leadership roles and engaging in teamwork. All of this surely provides students with marketable skills when they go for those first interviews after college.

Who says you can’t love literature and learn the ways of business at the same time? The proposal for a new Business major provides literature lovers with an opportunity to get a job that pays better than that service job he or she got over the summer ever did. The Brandeis community should embrace this proposal for reasons beyond increasing the admissions pool.

Attending senate meetings is crucial To the Editor: In response to your column “Senate act not democratic” (Feb. 24 issue): Senate meetings are of extreme importance to the senators and their constituents. During these three-hour-plus meetings, we receive briefings from the student leaders of committees as well as the executive board. With this information we can accurately convey what is going on in the University to our constituents.

This is especially important with the academic restructuring that is currently being discussed. Additionally, the Senate charters and recognizes clubs that enhance the Brandeis student’s experience. The Senate as a whole is also able to pass bills that express student sentiment such as last week’s resolution that supported the Business major. Finally, although some people may be under the impression that a senator cannot be involved in Senate meetings and committees and projects, I would argue that a good senator can do both.

—Andrew Rhodes ’09 The writer is the senator for the Village.

Faculty, speak up to save the Rose To the Editor: In response to your article “Semantics over substance” (Feb. 24 issue): As a former staff member of the Rose, I urge the Faculty Committee to rescind the University Trustees’ decision to terminate the Rose Art Museum as we know it. The sole reason for the trustees’ position is to get at that fantasy figure of $350 million.

What the trustees are proposing has nothing to do with enhancing the Art department’s ties to the community. “Repurposing” the museum to access even limited selling off of the collection outside of the American Association of Museums guidelines would end accreditation; no museum in the country and few private collectors would ever lend it art. More donors will be lost by this than gained by selling our cultural treasure.

In short, the Rose will morph into a carcass.

The work of two generations of the Brandeis “family”—not to mention Brandeis administrators— will be dismantled by a panicked few. All the more reason for the Faculty Committee to step up and right this wrong, and strengthen a major part of a major university!

—Roger Kizik The writer is a former preparator at the Rose Art Museum.

Write to us

LISA FRANK/the Justice

Value of effort is absent in online internship auctions Rebecca

BLADY MAELSTRÖM

Résumé.

Too often, this is perceived as the single most important document you will ever write. The word evokes fear and dread and conjures images of faceless employers critiquing every aspect of your life experience. Those one or two pages that you grudgingly compile can determine the most important months, even years of your life. You do not want to write it. And even when you finally get around to it, it’s never, ever perfect.

But you have to do it. Because otherwise you’ll never get that high-profile internship that will only make your résumé look even better.

Or will you?

It may seem utterly unbelievable and even a little bit offensive, but there is, in fact, another way to get that top-notch life experience that you need to be able to show off. And yes, it can all be done without stalking Hiatt representatives for days on end.

Don’t let the constraints and competition of this economic crisis get you down. Desperate college students, you can now buy your internships by bidding on them in online auctions.

These auctions are hosted by Web sites that invite visitors to bid on a variety of items and experiences. The money raised by your winning bid goes to charity, and you’ll have landed the job of your dreams.

A Feb. 25 article on collegenews.com says of this new phenomenon: “These websites are now

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also auctioning drool-worthy internships at big name places, such as Rolling Stone magazine, which recently had a two-week internship bid close at an estimated $5,000, as well as for designers Donna Karan and Carolina Herrera.”

“Drool-worthy” is right. The quality of internships that these Web sites are offering is pretty amazing, considering the fact that interns are chosen solely for the amount of money they’re willing to give out of pocket.

For example, Charityfolks.com closed an auction on a position at the Creative Coalition, which is advertised as an entertainment advocacy organization that offers the opportunity to learn about the lives of “high-profile celebrities and political leaders and influencers” and a “thing or two about the American legislative system,” at the jaw-dropping price of $2,750. A closer look at the posting’s Web page revealed that the internship’s “market value” is actually $10,000. Furthermore, the terms of the auction advise winners that this “experience cannot be resold.”

As if purchasing internships isn’t ludicrous enough. It seems a little backward to pay employers to do work for them, and placing such an obscene price tag on the whole experience makes the entire concept even more ridiculous.

Too bad you can’t give your expensive internship away if you’re unsatisfied: You’re stuck doing the work—and paying for it—whether you like it or not.

But more importantly, the idea of bidding for an internship hits today’s aspiring, hardworking college-age population especially hard. The traditional search for an appropriate internship is often stressful and confusing, and students receive no help from this most unfriendly recession. The job market is vicious these days, and

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we are already disadvantaged by hiring freezes among major companies. With layoffs occurring left and right, companies should be interested in investing in the best and the brightest students who demonstrate the ability to perform relevant tasks well. Offering great positions to less qualified individuals with a desire to finance their own job is neither fair to better-skilled students nor beneficial to companies in this economy.

Although Web sites such as CharityFolks.com and CharityBuzz.com attempt to excuse all of these issues with the fact that the funds collected from each auction go to charitable causes, I remain concerned about the ethics of this initiative. Ideally, people should recognize that giving charity is a moral endeavor and thus give willingly to choice organizations. But in the real world, most people do not simply open their wallets and provide for those in need. Auctioning off sought-after internships is not the way to advocate giving charity. Messing with the system in order to encourage “moral” and “generous” behavior is completely counter intuitive in a case that ostensibly values money over merit.

The major companies that allow people to bid on their impressive internships should reconsider the true benefits of a scheme that promotes paying for success instead of earning it through hard work and dedication.

In the end, the matter boils down to a single choice: We can sit down and slave over that résumé, knowing full well that it stands a good chance to fail. We can write honestly about our efforts and achievements, painfully reminiscing about all of our past rejections. Or we can skip the work, pay a nominal multi-thousand dollar fee and add a job description that’s so impressive, it’s practically unreal. I think we can all deduce which option truly has the greater value.

Eileen Smolyar, Naomi Spector Arts: Wei-Huan Chen, Sean Fabery, Laura Gamble, Rachel Klein, Emily Leifer, Wei Sum Li, Daniel Orkin, Alex Pagan, Ben News: Nashrah Rahman Strassfeld, Brad Stern Photography: Rachel Corke, Rebecca Ney, Adina Paretzky, Michelle Strulovic STAFF Sports: Andrew Ng, Sean Petterson, Adam Rosen Senior Writers: Miranda Neubauer, Jeffrey Copy: Ariel Adams, Emily Kraus, Marissa Linzi, Danielle Myers Pickette, Melissa Siegel Illustrations: Lisa Frank, Gail Goldspiel, Eli Tukashinsky Senior Photographers: Sara Brandenburg, Layout: Kathryn Marable, Lee Marmor David Brown, Hsiao Chi Pang News/Features Staff: Alana Abramson, Destiny Aquino, Sam Datlof, Reina Guerrero, Michelle Liberman, Ruth Orbach, Greta Moran, Michael Newborn Forum: Richard Alterbaum, Hillel Buechler, Matt Lawrence, David Litvak, Doug Nevins,

EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS ARTS: Sarah Bayer

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TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2009

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THE JUSTICE

GAIL GOLDSPIEL/the Justice

Take paper towel reduction a step further Hillel

BUECHLER AND SO ON

Adieu, paper towels. A month ago, the Department of Residence Life instituted a trial cutback on paper towels for communal bathrooms. Although this was a sudden inconvenience for many of us, going through with the trial was a great decision. But ResLife should take the idea behind the trial several steps further by permanently ceasing to supply paper towels to all bathrooms. The inconveniences that may arise from this initiative are far outweighed by its financial and environmental benefits.

The purchase of paper towels to fill the dispensers throughout the school is almost certainly not a pivotal aspect of the University’s annual budget, but it’s still significant.

While increasing the University’s enrollment or selling some art may yield larger overall amounts of money, ridding ourselves of a reliance on paper towels is a straightfor-

ward decision that can be made instantaneously and effortlessly and will yield immediate financial savings. If ResLife decided to stop supplying paper towels for communal bathrooms today, the decision could be implemented simply stopping refills of the paper towel dispensers.

Environmental considerations make it hard to argue against eliminating paper towels from our bathrooms. Paper towels are used once and then discarded. Although they are often made of recycled materials, we throw them in garbage cans after a single use and ultimately bury them in landfills. And then we buy some more, which means someone has to make some more.

The prospect of mass deforestation within the United States is not currently a major concern, but the processes of cutting down trees and transporting the material to factories and ultimately to Brandeis University, as well as the manufacture of the paper towel itself, all leads, in at least some way, to the release of additional harmful gases into our atmosphere.

The prospect of a University largely devoid of paper towels may create an image of thousands of people stricken with a perpetual plague of awkwardly wet hands. But in our

bathrooms, in remarkably close proximity to the paper towels, are electric hand dryers. As I grab one or two paper towels to dry my hands, I often forget about their existence. But they really are there. And they really do work.

More importantly, electric hand dryers are notably more environmentally friendly than paper towels, according to research findings from Franklin Associates, a consulting firm that specializes in life cycle analysis and solid waste management. This is after taking into account production and transportation energy costs over time. According to the findings, if someone uses a hand dryer for 30 seconds to dry their hands as opposed to two paper towels, he or she uses less than half the energy.

Even using just one paper towel uses more energy than an electric hand-drying session.

The electric hand dryers are also superior on a financial level. Yes, there is the cost of the apparatuses and their installation. But the savings are palpable once they’re installed— which they already are at Brandeis. Master Building Specialties, a bathroom construction company, studied the cost differences between the two and found that for every 1000 hand dryings, paper towel usage costs about $25 while electric hand dryer usage costs only

$1.34. That’s a huge difference over the course of a semester.

And to those with cleanliness concerns: Electric hand dryers are just as safe as paper towels regarding germs. The Division of Clinical Microbiology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, N.Y. performed an experiment in which researchers traced the germ counts on the hands of participants using four different forms of hand-drying including paper towels and electric hand dryers. The data collected in the experiment demonstrated “no statistically significant differences” in any method’s effectiveness at removing bacteria. And if students really don’t want to use the electric hand dryer for whatever reason, they can bring hand towels to the bathroom.

Continuing our inefficient use of paper towels is unwise and impractical. Aside from saving a handful of seconds to more rapidly dry our hands, there is no real benefit derived from keeping paper towels around. When we are faced with a simple decision that is both economically and environmentally friendly, we should act. ResLife should immediately cease to supply our bathrooms with paper towels. It’s just the right decision.

Justice Brandeis Semester requires curriculum change Richard

ALTERBAUM THE SCOOP

One of the new budget-aiding initiatives proposed by the Committee on Academic Restructuring is the introduction of a mandatory semesterlong experiential learning program called the Justice Brandeis Semester.

The administration should implement this plan. It gives students insight into real-world situations, provides them with practical knowledge and can reduce potential overcrowding in the future. Brandeis can already provide the infrastructure and resources necessary for such an initiative. However, if the administration goes through with this they ought to take into consideration the changing of class requirements; a semester spent outside the classroom does not leave enough time to complete them all.

The Justice Brandeis Semester would require all students entering Brandeis in the fall of 2010 to leave campus for one spring, fall or summer semester to apply their academic expertise to areas outside of the classroom in the form of an internship, extended project or

specialized coursework. Two proposed examples are an intensive creative project that culminates in a Brandeis Summer Arts Festival and a Brandeis Environmental Studies Intensive Semester that would allow students to observe the effects industry and tourism have on specific ecosystems.

If these plans and the logistics associated with them are properly handled and implemented, they will make for a great addition to the overall Brandeis experience. Learning concepts and theoretical ideas in a classroom is essential to one’s education, but equally important is how to make those facts come to life while at the same time preparing students for a full-time career. What good are abstract ideas if students don’t know how they are applied or what they can actually accomplish?

In addition to the benefits of practical experience, this initiative solves problems for Brandeis itself. Since students participating in it will be living off campus, the administration will be able to house more students, allowing it to increase the size of the student body and bring in more revenue in the wake of a tightening budget. This will be beneficial as long as the University maintains its standards for applicants while it fills out a larger student body.

Also, the school already has found success in providing similar experiences. The Hiatt

Career Center has been able to grant students access to internships in major companies for majors and minors as diverse as International and Global Studies, Education and Business.

This resource will fulfill a similar function in handling this aspect of the Justice Brandeis Semester.

The Office of Study Abroad has served its titular function very well and will give students

“

What good are abstract ideas if students don’t know how they are applied or what they can actually accomplish?

the ability to fulfill a Justice Brandeis Semester elsewhere in the world. With more staff and resources at hand, both Hiatt and the Office of Study Abroad will be able to better serve more students and offer more exciting opportunities for a semesterlong learning experience.

However, the administration should consider that one potential consequence of this pro-

posal is a reduction in the amount of time students have to fulfill their requirements. With the Justice Brandeis Semester, students will have fewer terms to gain the number of credits that they need for majors, minors and University requirements. As a result, the University should find a way to reduce requirements for students. This could mean changing around the major and minor system in a way that not only makes students feel less pressured to take certain courses but also grants them more flexibility to choose classes under tighter time constraints. Considering that the school is already contemplating actions such as these to reduce general academic costs, these changes can complement the Justice Brandeis Semester.

The Justice Brandeis Semester has the capacity to distinguish our school. While other colleges resort primarily to classroom-based learning and cramming theoretical knowledge into the minds of their students, ours could be more experimental and innovative. Brandeis could become known for not only providing a top-quality liberal arts education but also for offering an entry into the professionalized world for all students, regardless of their areas of interest. As other schools face the unfortunate need to sacrifice academics with the declining economy, ours can serve as a bastion for both theoretical and practical knowledge.

THE JUSTICE

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TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2009

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MEN’S BASKETBALL

Judges extend winning streak to five ■ The men’s basketball

team swept its season series against New York University last Saturday on the road.

By JEFFREY PICKETTE JUSTICE SENIOR WRITER

With the men’s basketball team holding on to a 27-24 lead at New York University last Saturday, forward Terrell Hollins ’10 wrestled the ball away from the hands of Violets junior guard Zachary Kuba before converting a layup at the other end of the court with 1 minute remaining in the first half.

Thirty seconds later, guard Kenny Small ’10 sank a three-point shot to give the Judges an 8-point lead heading into halftime.

Brandeis never looked back, earning a decisive 63-44 win in its regular season finale.

WBBALL: Judges lose at New York CONTINUED FROM 16 ly in the game, as the Judges shot only 34.5 percent for the game, including 2-12 from threepoint range, while the Violets shot an even worse 33.3 percent, including 7-23 from three-point range. NYU was helped by a large disparity in free throws, shooting 17-23 while Brandeis had 11 fewer attempts, converting seven of 12.

This was similar to the first game between these two teams, when Brandeis had just seven free throw attempts in the game compared to 31 for NYU. “They take the ball to the basket hard and get the contact and get the bucket and the foul,” Chapin said of NYU. “I think overall we need to take more advantage of getting to the free throw line, because those are easy points.”

Brandeis had two players in double figures for the game.

Chapin led the way with 11 points and a career-high 17 rebounds.

Cincotta was next on the team with 10 points to go along with three rebounds and three assists.

It was the final regular season game for senior forwards Lauren Orlando ’09, Dadaos, and Amanda Wells ’09, who have made the NCAA tournament every year since they began playing for the varsity team at Brandeis.

“Clearly my time here has been really more than I could have asked for,” Dadaos said. “I think that we’ve just had a very successful run the last couple of years. It’s been a very fun program to be a part of and a very successful program to be a part of.”

The Judges return to the NCAA Tournament despite posting their worst UAA record since the 2002 to 2003 season.

Five of the Judges’ 17 wins came against NCAA tournament teams. They defeated Bowdoin College, Tufts University, Widener University, Emmanuel College and the University of Rochester this season.

Brandeis will play its firstround tournament game at 7 p.m.

“To go on a run like that [gave us] great momentum going into halftime. It helped us out a lot,” assistant coach Eric McKoy said.

Brandeis concluded the regular season with a 17-8 record. The Judges’ 10-4 record in University Athletic Association play trails only No. 2 Washington University in St. Louis in conference standings.

The Judges will now travel to Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. for the first round of the NCAA Tournament, where they will take on the University of Scranton.

With the score tied at two last Saturday, Brandeis and NYU played to a stalemate for the first 17 minutes of action. There were eight lead changes and six ties during this stretch of play.

Hollins broke the deadlock, hitting three out of four free-throw attempts in a 40 second period, fueling the 8-0 run for the Judges at the

end of the half.

A three-pointer from forward Steve DeLuca (GRAD) pushed the lead to 41-30 6 1/2 minutes into the second half. A layup from NYU sophomore guard D.J. Glavan 2 minutes later cut the deficit to 41-34, but the Violets would not be able to get any closer.

Over the next 4 minutes, Brandeis went on a 12-2 run as guard Kevin Olson ’09 sank three three-pointers, while Small added another three-pointer of his own.

“NYU plays their style; they slow it down. It feels like every hoop is a big hoop, and if you can get some threes in a row, you can really break their backs,” Olson said.

Leading 53-36 with just under 7 minutes left, the Judges cruised to an eventual 19-point victory.

“It just shows that if we play our game, we come out with energy and effort, we can do a lot of great things,” McKoy said.

Olson led the way with 21 points,

including hitting five of six threepoint shots. Olson has converted 59.7 percent of his three-pointers this season, which leads all divisions of men’s NCAA basketball.

He has hit 65 percent of his threes in 14 conference games.

Small added 14 points, while DeLuca had 13 points and nine rebounds. Guard Andre Roberson ’10 was held scoreless for the first time this season, but matched a season-high with 10 assists.

With just five points, six rebounds, and two steals, Hollins might not have stood out on the stat sheet, but McKoy was impressed with his effort.

“Even if [Hollins] is not scoring, we need that energy, we need that effort from him,” McKoy said.

“When he’s playing his good basketball, we’re good … he came out and gave us a great effort on the defensive end today.”

Brandeis has held NYU to just 79 combined points and 31 percent

shooting in two meetings this season, both Brandeis victories.

“They don’t play a high scoring game, so it’s a little inflated in that sense, [but] we really want to limit them to one shot and make them take tough, contested shots,” Olson said.

The Judges end the regular season on a five-game winning streak, their third such streak of the season. During this run, Olson, DeLuca, and Small have combined for 242 points, representing 63.4 percent of the team’s offensive output.

DeLuca said the team is currently playing its best basketball of the season. “[Olson, Small] and I right now are playing really well together,” DeLuca said. “It’s very hard for teams to stop us. If you stop only two of us, the other guy is going to hit some shots.”

The team will play in the first round of the NCAA Tournament Friday night at 6 p.m.

BACK TO THE DANCE

BBALL: Both squads NCAA bound CONTINUED FROM 16 son for the Brandeis Tip-Off Tournament but did not play the Judges because it lost to Bowdoin College in the first round.

“They’re an athletic team, and they’re good,” Dadaos said of Western Connecticut. “It’s going to be a good challenge for us now that every game means a lot.”

Even though the men’s team’s postseason fate was less clear than the women’s team’s heading into selection day, assistant coach Eric McKoy confidently told the Justice, “See you next week,” after the Judges’ 63-44 win at New York University last Saturday.

Despite starting the season 0-3, the men’s team makes its third straight NCAA Tournament, finishing with a 17-8 record and a 10-4

UAA mark. Like the women’s team, its strength of schedule propelled them into the field. The Judges’ opponents’ winning percentage was the 11th-highest in Division III, according to d3hoops.com.

“I kind of expected [that we would make the NCAA Tournament], to be honest,” head coach Brian Meehan said. “Our schedule alone made a convincing case [to the selection committee].

Ten games against ranked opponents is pretty impressive. That’s why we set that schedule up year after year.”

Brandeis was ranked eighth in the final public Northeast Regional Rankings, in addition to finishing second in the UAA. The team will face 21-6 Scranton, who topped Susquehanna University 80-75 in overtime in the

Landmark Conference tournament championship last Saturday. The Royals have won seven in a row and 10 of their last 11 games.

Scranton head coach Carl Danzig describes his team as “deep” and “versatile.” They feature four players who average between 11.5 and 13.9 points per game.

“We’re a slow, grind-it team. …

[We] try to work for the best shot,” Danzig said. “We’re going to work that shot-clock down; we’re going to move the ball.”

While the Judges feature Kevin Olson ’09, the most statistically accurate three-point shooter in all three divisions of men’s college basketball at 59.7 percent, Scranton senior guard Ryan FitzPatrick is close behind him, hitting 52.9 percent of his 136 three-point attempts this season.

Women’s Sectional Bracket First Round March 4-6

Second Round March 7

Sectionals March 13-14

Semifinals March 20

Men’s Sectional Bracket First Round March 4-6

Amherst (25-2)

Widener (22-5)

Babson )(20-8)

Virginia Wesleyan (17-12)

) S. Maine (22-6)

Second Round March 7

at Amherst

Sectionals March 13-14

Semifinals March 20

at Widener

Salem St. (21-6)

Emmanuel (21-7)

Rochester Tech (19-8)

NYU (21-4)

Franklin & Marshall (22-5)

Salve Regina (20-8) Mary ) Washington (23-5)

Host school Franklin & Marshall is about 360 miles southwest of Brandeis, but Meehan is not concerned about his team having to travel.

“I think for this team it’s good to be on the road. We tend to play a little better on the road,” he said.

McKoy said he was particularly excited that forward Steve DeLuca (GRAD) and Olson will be able to participate in the tournament in their final season with the team.

“They gave us their all; what better way to send them out than [to] make the NCAA Tournament,” McKoy said. “They deserve it; they’ve put in hard work all season.”

Last season, the men’s squad lost to Amherst in the Round of 8, while the women’s team fell to Kean University in the second round.

Wesley (18-9) at F&M

at NYU

BRANDEIS (17-8)

Stevens (22-5) Scranton (21-6)

BRANDEIS (17-7)

Worcester Polytech (20-5)

W. Connecticut ) (21-5) Husson (16-11)

Mount ) St. Mary (23-4)

at Brandeis at Worcester Polytech

Mass-Dartmouth (25-3)

Brockport St. (19-9) Baruch (23-5)

Bowdoin) (24-4) at DeSales (22-5)

Castleton St. (17-11)

St. Joseph's (L.I.) (24-3) ) Muhlenberg (24-3)

at Bowdoin

March 5

Westfield St. (22-4)

at Ithaca

Ithaca (24-2) COMPILED BY BRIAN BLUMENTHAL VIA NCAA.COM

COMPILED BY BRIAN BLUMENTHAL VIA NCAA.COM

14

TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2009

●

THE JUSTICE

FENCING

Squad takes sixth at Championships ■ The fencing teams had the

best finish among Division III schools at last Saturday’s Intercollegiate Fencing Association Championships, hosted by Brandeis.

By ANDREW NG JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

Épée Caitlin Kozel ’09 admitted she was worried about how she would fare against some of the nation’s top fencers at the 112th Intercollegiate Fencing Association Championships, which were played at Brandeis last Saturday. Her first two bouts, both losses, did little to dissuade her doubt.

But in the end, Kozel turned things around, winning seven of her nine remaining bouts to earn the third seed in the bracket of 16 épée fencers.

Kozel eventually earned a bronze medal, finishing in a tie for third with Yale University junior Rebecca Moss after falling to Columbia University rookie Neely BrandfieldHarvey 15-7 in the semifinals.

“I came into the meet thinking I might not win a single bout,” Kozel said. “Before the meet, I looked at all the A-strip fencers I would be competing against.

I was very intimidated, but I managed to do well.”

Collectively, Brandeis finished sixth overall in the six-weapon team standings, which combined both men’s and women’s competition.

The sixth-place finish was the best among Division III schools at the meet.

Individually, the women’s and men’s teams both finished seventh of 12 teams in the three-weapon team standings.

The top Brandeis weapon performances came in the men's foil and the women's épée, in which both squads took sixth place.

The University of Pennsylvania won the overall combined sixweapon championship and the men’s title. No. 5 Columbia took the women’s championship, becoming the first school to win all three weapons on the women’s side. They placed ahead of second-place UPenn in foil and épée and tied with the Quakers for first place in saber.

For the Judges, coach Bill Shipman said he thought both the

ANDREW RAUNER/the Justice

ON POINT: Men’s épée fencer Damien Lehfeldt ’09 fights an opponent from Columbia University at the Intercollegiate Fencing Association Championships Feb. 28. men’s and women’s teams fenced well but did not finish as strongly as he had hoped.

“The women’s team did not perform to the best of their abilities, but they performed as well as we expected,” he said. “Unfortunately, the men’s team did not fence as well.

They haven’t fenced competitively in a few weeks, and that might have hurt them in their preparation.”

Women’s foil Jessica Newhall ’09 was eighth place in pool play with a 5-6 record before losing 15-14 in the first round of the championships to ninth-seeded Princeton University rookie Rocky Rothenberg. After falling behind 13-7 in the bout, Newhall battled back to tie the score at 14 but lost the final point on what

she said was a mental mistake.

“I was extremely exhausted and had a couple of cramps,” Newhall said. “I gave away the match by continuing to remise against her, even though I knew it wasn’t an effective strategy. I just let her get too many touches at the beginning of the bout.”

Sabers Anna Hanley ’11, who went 6-5 in pool play, and Alex Turner ’11, who went 7-4, also contributed to the team’s success, finishing sixth and 14th in the championship round, respectively. “[Turner] fenced very well from the B strip and lost in the first round of the individual competition. It was still a great performance from a sophomore who has

INDOOR TRACK

Judges prepare for UAA finals ■ Both indoor track teams

held out several of their top runners at last Saturday’s Open New England Championships.

By SEAN PETTERSON JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

With just one week left before the University Athletic Association Championships next Friday, the men’s and women’s indoor track teams rested many of their main runners at last Saturday’s Open New England Championships.

Both teams finished 28th of 32 teams, with the men tallying four points and the women scoring three.

The University of Connecticut swept the men’s and women’s fields, winning on the women’s side with 186.50 points, and on the men’s side with 128.50 points.

Coach Mark Reytblat confirmed that the main goal of this past weekend was to keep key team members healthy. Anat Ben Nun ’09, Ali Sax ’09, Mike Stone ’09 and Myles TryerVassell ’12 all sat out.

“I’m confident,” he said. “It seems like everyone is in good shape, and we don’t have any injuries right now.

Everybody should be ready to go [for the UAAs].”

On the women’s side, two distance quartets made the final round of their relay events. In the distance medley,

which is composed of 400-, 800-, 1,200and 1,600-meter legs, the Brandeis team placed sixth, earning the team’s only three points. The squad featured Michelle Gellman ’11 on the 400-meter leg, Meaghan Casey ’09 on the 800meter leg, Beth Pisarik ’10 on the 1,200-meter leg and Marie Lemay ’11 finishing the race on the 1,600-meter leg.

The squad finished with a time of 12 minutes, 10 seconds, improving on its personal record by two seconds. The foursome had already provisionally qualified for the NCAA Championships but said they would like to improve enough to meet the automatic qualifying time of 11:53.60 at next weekend’s UAA Championships. Their spot in the NCAA Championships is only guaranteed if they pass the 11:53.60 qualifying time.

“We knew [this past weekend] was going to be one of our last chances to qualify or improve our time for nationals,” Casey said. “Everyone ran really well; our legs were fresh for this weekend, so we knew it was probably our best shot to improve our time for nationals.”

In the 800-meter relay, the Brandeis squad consisting of Julia Alpaio ’10, Erin Bisceglia ’12, Jess Girard ’10 and Emily Owen ’11 finished 14th with a time of 9:36.55.

On the men’s side, Paul Norton ’11 finished fifth in the 5,000 meter race with a time of 14:50.50, earning the Judges their only four points. Norton, who is still getting back to full

strength after an Achilles’ injury last year, said he was pleased with his performance. “[My race] was a [personal record] by almost 20 seconds, which was very good,” Norton said. “It had been a very frustrating season for me. … I had a little Achilles’ injury and right when I was coming back from that, I got sick, so to get out there and run a big [personal record] was really satisfying.”

Devon Holgate ’11 continued his resurgence after missing all of last season with a strained quadriceps, finishing 14th in the one-mile run with a time of 4:14.44, shattering his previous personal record in the event.

“The race had [Division I], [Division II] and [Division III] runners in it, so I figured it was going to be pretty fast,” Holgate said. “So I just kind of tucked in, tried to stay out of trouble and let them pull me to a fast run.”

Chris Brown ’12 finished 25th in the one-mile run with a time of 4:22.46, and Zach Schwartz ’11 finished 24th in the 3,000-meter race, running in 8:55.34.

“For everyone who ran this weekend, there were a lot of [personal records], and everyone ran really solid races,” Norton said. “I think we are rounding into form for next week.”

Both indoor track squads will next travel to New York University Saturday and Sunday where they will run in UAA Championships starting at noon.

only been fencing saber for two years,” captain and foil Jess DavisHeim ’09 said.

On the men’s side, captain and foil Will Friedman ’09 finished in 10th place in the championship round, falling in the first round of the individual competition despite being seeded fourth after pool play.

Friedman lost 15-12 to Columbia University junior Issac Kim, who was the 13th seed.

“I dropped the ball,” Friedman said. “I needed to be more responsive to the referee’s calls. Against Kim, I should have used more second-intention actions and been more active instead of relying on my opponent to miss me.”

Saber Adam Austin ’11 had the

highest finish among the men’s fencers, finishing eighth in pool play despite only going 4-5. He reached the quarterfinals in the championship round where he fell to the No. 2 seed, rookie Peter Soudners of Boston College “Austin is showing a lot more maturity and strategic skills on the strip. His confidence is growing, and he is starting to fence at a higher level. He has demonstrated a lot of improvement, and hopefully it will continue to show,” Shipman said.

The Judges next compete in the NCAA Regional Championships at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. this Sunday.

SWIMMING: Relay team makes history at ECACs CONTINUED FROM 16 their seasons because they reached NCAA B cut qualifying times, making them eligible to be selected to the NCAA Division III Championships in Minneapolis starting March 18.

The NCAA will select the top 18 swimmers for each event.

Both teams combined to break 13 school records last weekend, with the women’s team breaking seven.

Going into the ECACs, Chui, Viray, Lyons and Derk had already held the school records in the 800yard freestyle relay at 8:07.35, the 400yard medley relay at 4:07.46 and the 200-medley relay at 1:52.25.

In their first race last Friday, the squad broke the school record in the 200-yard freestyle relay. They later broke their own school mark in the 400-yard medley relay, twice—once in the preliminaries by 5 seconds in 4:05.26, and again in the finals by 3 additional seconds in 4:02.25.

“They’re four very strong swimmers,” captain Rachel Nadas ’09 said. “[The records] were very strong to start with so it’s exciting to be breaking [already] fast times.”

Chui also lowered three of her previously owned individual records.

She broke her mark in the 200-yard individual medley twice last Friday, first in the preliminary rounds and then again by bettering her score in the finals at 2:09.38 to win the B finals

after missing the A cut in the preliminary rounds. She later set new marks in the 400-yard individual medley and the 200-yard backstroke.

Viray broke a team record in the 200-yard breaststroke with a time of 2:26.76 in the preliminaries. Viray qualified for the NCAA B cut in this race and the 100-yard breaststroke the day before.

Eder had the meet’s best finish for the men’s team, as he captured the school record in the 200-yard breaststroke in the preliminaries with a time of 2:04.79. The time made Eder eligible for a bid to the NCAA Championships.

“I tried to pace myself better [this time],” he said. “I knew the kid next to me was seeded at 2:03.00 so I was trying to stay with him because my goal was 2:06.50 and so when I looked up I had my time, … we were shattering records left and right.”

Bobby Morse ’09 and Aaron Bennett ’11 each set three school records to round out the six total.

Morse followed Bennett’s recordbreaking performance in the 500yard freestyle event with one of his own and later broke a record in the 1,650-yard freestyle event.

Bennett broke the mark in the 200yard butterfly event and teamed with Morse, James Liu ’10 and Michael Rubin ’09 to break the school’s mark in the 800-yard freestyle relay.

THE JUSTICE

■ The transfer student won the Northeast Conference Women’s Fencer of the Year award last week for the second straight season.

6

th place finish for the Brandeis Fencing teams in the six-weapon overall standings at the 112th Intercollegiate Fencing Association Championships held at Brandeis University last Saturday.

The Judges had the best finish among Division III schools.

59.7

three-point field goal percentage for men’s basketball guard Kevin Olson ’09 on the season. Olson’s mark is the best in the country among Division I, II and III.

46

combined points and 29 combined rebounds for New York University women’s basketball senior forward Jessica McEntee in two wins against Brandeis this season. She had 27 points and 17 rebounds in the Violet’s 62-49 home victory over the Judges last Saturday.

17 5

rebounds for women’s basketball guard Jessica Chapin ’10, a career-high, in the Judges’ 12-point loss at NYU last Saturday.

th place finish for runner Paul Norton ’11 in the 5,000 meter-run at the New England Championships last Saturday.

Norton’s race gave the men’s indoor track team its only four points at the meet and was the best finish on the team.

13

school records broken by the men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams at the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference Championships last weekend at Harvard University. The women’s team set seven new school marks while the men’s team set six.

15

New England trades Matt Cassel and Mike Vrabel to Kansas City

Anna Hanley ’11

Judging numbers

TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2009

AP BRIEFS

ATHLETE OF THE WEEK

For the second consecutive season, saber Anna Hanley ’11 was named the Northeast Conference Women’s Fencer of the Year. The only difference from last year is that she earned the honor for a different team.

After transferring to Brandeis from Sacred Heart University last summer, Hanley went 49-0 against Northeast Conference fencers and took her second straight Fencer of the Year honors prior to last Saturday’s Intercollegiate Fencing Association Championships, held in the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center. “[Hanley] was consistent throughout the year. She is one of the best fencers in New England and has only been fencing the best fencers from other teams in the Northeast Conference. When she is fencing at her best, she can compete against any of the top fencers in the country,” coach Bill Shipman said.

Hanley has lost only eight bouts all season, but despite her continued success on the strip, she said her initial transition from Sacred Heart to Brandeis was not as easy.

“We didn’t have a fencing room at Sacred Heart, so every time we held practice, we would have to arrive 45 minutes earlier to set up the strips and machines.

Practices were very unorganized, and many of my teammates were out of shape. … Here, everyone is well-conditioned and focused,” Hanley said. “I have a strong individual record, but I had difficultly adjusting to the more academically competitive environment [at Brandeis].”

●

PHOTO COURTESY OF EVAN WHITNEY

At the IFA Championships, Hanley finished sixth, winning her opening-round match 15-10 against Harvard University rookie Hayley Levitt before falling to the runner-up, rookie Robin Shin of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 159 in the quarterfinals.

Hanley will compete with the rest of the team at the NCAA Regional Championships this Sunday. Last year, Hanley did not compete at the event, missing the cutoff by one bout.

—Andrew Ng

UAA STANDINGS Men’s Basketball

Women’s Basketball

Not including Monday’s games UAA Conference W L Washington 13 1 JUDGES 10 4 Carnegie 9 5 Rochester 7 7 Chicago 6 8 Case 5 9 New York 4 10 Emory 2 12

W 23 17 19 16 6 8 15 7

L 2 8 6 9 19 17 10 18

Overall Pct. .920 .680 .760 .640 .240 .320 .600 .280

Not including Monday’s games UAA Conference W L W L Washington 13 1 21 4 Rochester 11 3 22 3 New York 10 4 21 4 Chicago 8 6 17 8 JUDGES 7 7 17 7 Emory 4 10 13 12 Case 3 11 10 15 Carnegie 0 14 5 20

Overall Pct. .840 .880 .840 .680 .708 .520 .400 .200

TEAM LEADERS MBball (points per game)

MBball (rebounds per game)

Forward Steve DeLuca (GRAD) leads the Judges with an average of 15.2 points per game.

Forward Steve DeLuca (GRAD) leads the Judges with an average of 6.8 rebounds per game.

Player Steve DeLuca Kevin Olson Kenny Small Andre Roberson Terrell Hollins

Player Steve DeLuca Terrell Hollins Christian Yemga Kevin Olson Rich Magee

PPG 15.2 12.7 11.3 10.4 9.1

RPG 6.8 6.0 3.1 3.0 3.0

WBball (points per game)

WBball (rebounds per game)

Guard Jessica Chapin ’10 leads the team with an average of 14.1 points per game.

Guard Jessica Chapin ’10 leads the Judges with an average of 6.7 rebounds per game.

Player Jessica Chapin Lauren Orlando Lauren Rashford Cassidy Dadaos Dianna Cincotta

Player Jessica Chapin Cassidy Dadaos Lauren Orlando Lauren Rashford Amanda Wells

PPG 14.1 9.5 8.1 6.5 6.4

RPG 6.7 5.2 4.5 4.2 3.9

UPCOMING GAME OF THE WEEK WBBALL vs. Western Connecticut State Univ.

The Judges will host the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament this weekend.

The women’s basketball team reached the NCAA Tournament yesterday for the fourth consecutive year, and will host the first two rounds of the tournament for the first time in the school’s history.

The Judges will take on the Colonials of Western Connecticut State University in the first round this Friday night.

Brandeis was 17-7 this season and 7-7 in the University Athletic Association and has won four of its last five games, Western Connecticut ended the regular season 21-5 and 12-2 in Little East Conference, and is coming off a loss in the LEC Semifinals last Friday to the University of Southern Maine, the eventual conference champion.

Matt Cassel won’t have to worry about being the NFL’s most expensive backup next season.

A little more than three weeks after New England put the franchise tag on Cassel as insurance for two-time Super Bowl MVP Tom Brady, the Patriots traded him and veteran linebacker Mike Vrabel to Kansas City last Saturday.

The Chiefs, who earned the third overall selection following a franchise-worst 2-14 season, gave up just their second-round pick—No. 34 overall—for the two players in a deal that highlighted a busy second day of NFL free agency.

Cassel hadn’t started a game since high school but stepped in when Brady suffered a season-ending knee injury less than eight minutes into the season opener against Kansas City. He went on to throw for 3,693 yards and 21 touchdowns in 15 starts.

Brady’s rehab was set back when an infection forced a second operation. By putting the franchise tag on Cassel, New England would have had to pay him $14.5 million to keep him as a backup.

“It is very easy to root for guys like Matt Cassel, who do everything the right way and flourish as a result,” Patriots coach Bill Belichick said in a statement. “As much as we would have loved to continue working with Matt, we wish him nothing but the best as he takes this next step forward in his career.”

In other major moves, Denver signed seven-time Pro Bowl safety Brian Dawkins, who spent 13 seasons with Philadelphia; the Eagles traded Lito Sheppard to the New York Jets; Dallas acquired Jon Kitna from Detroit to back up Tony Romo and signed linebacker Keith Brooking; linebacker Michael Boley signed a five-year deal with the New York Giants; and Houston signed defensive end Antonio Smith.

Getting Cassel and Vrabel is the latest move for Chiefs general manager Scott Pioli, the Patriots’ former personnel director who joined Kansas City in January.

“I have a long history with both players,” Pioli said. “[Vrabel] and [Cassell] are men that I respect both personally and professionally. I look forward to having them as new members of the Chiefs family.”

Vrabel was part of three Super Bowl-winning teams in his eight years with New England, primarily as an outside linebacker. He joins a team whose linebackers were devastated by injury and played poorly.

Although Dawkins turns 36 next season and is clearly on the downside of his career, he brings a hard-hitting style and leadership qualities coveted by new Broncos coach Josh McDaniels.

McDaniels, the New England Patriots’ offensive coordinator before he was hired to replace Mike Shanahan in Denver, envisions his new veteran safety playing a role similar to what Rodney Harrison had in New England in recent seasons.

The Broncos also signed free agent safety Renaldo Hill, who helped lead the Miami Dolphins’ turnaround last season. McDaniels is tapping the New England pipeline as he tries to resurrect the Broncos, luring two free agents from the Patriots in wide receiver Jabar Gaffney and long-snapper Lonie Paxton.

Sheppard, who spent his first seven NFL seasons with the Eagles, could immediately start in a Jets secondary that ranked 29th against the pass last year despite having Pro Bowl cornerback Darrelle Revis and playmaking safety Kerry Rhodes.

“We acquired a veteran corner with Pro Bowl ability,” Jets coach Rex Ryan said. “This young man has already gone to two Pro Bowls. He is a great athlete with the topend speed that we look for to play that position. We think he can match up with some of the best receivers in the game.”

Neither the Jets nor the Eagles announced terms of the deal, but Philadelphia will reportedly receive a fifthround pick in April and a conditional pick in next year’s draft.

Dallas traded starting right cornerback Anthony Henry to Detroit, where Kitna appeared in only four games last season before going on injured reserve with a back injury.

When Romo missed three games last season because of a broken pinkie finger, the Cowboys went 1-2 and leaned heavily on their defense to beat Tampa Bay 13-9 for the lone victory in that stretch. The Cowboys, who began the season as a Super Bowl favorite, instead finished 9-7 and missed the playoffs.

The 36-year-old Kitna, who was due a $1 million roster bonus next week, was not expected to return to the Lions.

He’s scheduled to make $1.95 million this season.

The 26-year-old Boley, who signed a five-year, $25 million contract with the Giants, is excellent in pass coverage and is expected to be given a shot at winning the weakside linebacker job after playing the strongside for Atlanta.

New York Giants sign Bernard and Boley to strenghten defense EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J.—The New York Giants gave new defensive coordinator Bill Sheridan a little more depth, signing former Seattle Seahawks defensive tackle Rocky Bernard as a free agent.

Bernard signed what is believed to be a four-year $16 million contract Saturday night, hours after the Giants signed former Atlanta Falcons linebacker Michael Boley.

“He's a veteran defensive tackle with skins on the wall,” Giants general manager Jerry Reese said. “He plays hard, he’s stout against the run, and he has to be accounted for as a pass rusher.”

Fred Robbins and Barry Cofield, the starting tackles last season, both have had arthroscopic surgery in the offseason.

“I’m really, really excited to be coming to the Giants,” Bernard said. “I wanted to go to a team that has had a lot of success and has a really good defense.

That’s what the Giants have. It feels good to be part of a great organization. They’re a good football team.”

The Giants finished last season at 12-4 and won the NFC East division title.

just

Sports

Page 16

PRESTIGIOUS FENCING Brandeis hosted the 112th Intercollegiate Fencing Association Championships last Saturday, p. 14

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Waltham, Mass.

Double the madness ■ Both basketball teams

made the NCAA Tournament and the women’s team will host first- and second-round games for the first time in the program’s history.

By IAN CUTLER, JEFFREY PICKETTE and MELISSA SIEGEL JUSTICE STAFF WRITERS

Upon hearing the news of the women’s basketball team’s postseason fate, head coach Carol Simon shrugged her shoulders with a smile and said, “I guess anything is possible.”

Despite posting its worst University Athletic Association record since the 2002 to 2003 season, the women’s basketball team not only made the NCAA Tournament, but will host first- and second-round games for the first time in school history this weekend. The Judges will play Western Connecticut State University in the first round Friday at 7 p.m., with the winner to play against the winner of the game between Mount St. Mary’s College and the State University of New York in Brockport in the second round Saturday at 5 p.m.

The men’s team also received a bid to the NCAA Tournament for the third straight season and will travel to Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. to play the University of Scranton in the first round Friday at 6 p.m. The winner of that game will play the winner of the game between Franklin & Marshall and Wesley College Saturday at 7 p.m.

“I was very surprised,” Simon said when asked about the women’s team hosting first- and second-round games. “I thought we were going to make the tournament. I thought we were probably going to get sent to either Amherst [College] or Bowdoin [College]. Never in a million years honestly did I think we’d host, and I just think that it shows our strength of schedule and that [the NCAA]

DAVID SHEPPARD-BRICK/Justice File Photo

COMING TOGETHER: Members of the women’s basketball team link arms during a win over Emory University Feb. 20. The team is tournament bound. respects that.”

The women’s team finished the season 17-7 overall and 7-7 in the UAA. The team was third in the final public Northeast Regional Rankings and fifth in the UAA. But despite seven losses, the team’s tournament résumé was fortified by its difficult strength of schedule. The Judges had the second-highest opponent’s winning percentage in Division III. Five of the Judges’ 17 victories came against teams that

reached the NCAA Tournament.

The women’s basketball team is the first Brandeis athletics team since the 1996 to 1999 baseball squads to make the NCAA Tournament four years in a row. Forwards Cassidy Dadaos ’09, Lauren Orlando ’09 and Amanda Wells ’09 have been on the team all four years.

“It’s just a really good way to kind of cap off the four years and get a good postseason and to get to do it at home makes it even better,” Dadaos

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

said.

Western Connecticut, which finished 21-5, made it to the semifinals of the Little East Conference Tournament before losing to eventual conference champion University of Southern Maine.

Western Connecticut was ranked sixth in the final public Northeast Regional Rankings. Western Connecticut came to Brandeis earlier in the sea-

See BBALL, 13 ☛

MORE COVERAGE

☛ Sectional brackets for both teams inside, see p. 13 For full brackets go to www.thejusticeonline.com

SWIMMING & DIVING

Judges drop season finale Records shattered at ■ The women’s basketball

team lost its final regular season game at New York University last Saturday.

By MELISSA SIEGEL JUSTICE SENIOR WRITER

At the start of the second half, the No. 25 Brandeis women’s basketball team was clinging to a 2523 lead at No. 20 New York University after being up by 13 points earlier in last Saturday’s contest.

Then, just 20 seconds into the second half, NYU senior forward Jessica McEntee hit a three-point shot to give the Violets a lead they would never relinquish.

The shot came in the middle of a 20-0 NYU run that spanned across both halves, helping the Violets defeat the Judges 62-49 to sweep the season series.

NYU defeated the Judges earlier this season at Brandeis 61-49 Jan. 17. The most recent loss drops the Judges to .500 in the University Athletic Association as they finish the regular season 17-7, 7-7 in conference play.

Despite the loss, the Judges made the NCAA Tournament for

the fourth straight year and will host the first two rounds of the Tournament, playing Western Connecticut State University in the first round Friday night.

“It's not often that teams make an NCAA tournament,” head coach Carol Simon said. “It's hard enough to get in it and that much harder to host, so I would hope that the University and all the students and the administration will be down here on Friday supporting us.”

Brandeis got out to a quick start against NYU, scoring the first six points and taking a 10-2 lead on a layup by guard Diana Cincotta ’11.

The Judges would go up 25-12 with 5 minutes, 48 seconds left in the first half before the Violets went on an 11-0 run to close the half to pull within two.

After McEntee’s three-pointer gave NYU its first lead of the game, the Violets continued their run from the first half, scoring the next six points to take a 32-25 lead with 17:04 left to play.

“I think that we built a big lead in the beginning of the first half, and they kind of just started to chip away,” forward Cassidy Dadaos ’ 09 said. “They really executed on second chance opportuni-

ties and were able to get it in off of offensive rebounds. We didn’t box out well, so I think that really kind of got them going on both ends of the floor.”

Brandeis closed the gap several times in the second half, pulling within three after a three-pointer by guard Jessica Chapin ’10 with just over 9 minutes left in the contest.

They got within three points again with 3:37 to go on a jumper by reserve forward Amber Strodthoff ’11 but could not get any closer.

McEntee was the game’s top scorer with 27 points, the only Violets player to reach double figures in the game.

She also added 17 rebounds for her 48th career double-double, and her second against Brandeis this season. McEntee had 19 points and 12 rebounds at Brandeis Jan. 17 in New York’s 12-point victory.

“She’s really a good player. You have to give her a lot of credit because they find a way to give her the ball,” Chapin said. “We struggled boxing out and she got to the foul line and those are all keys to putting up big numbers.”

Both teams struggled offensive-

See WBBALL, 13 ☛

ECAC Championships ■ The swimming and diving

teams broke13 school records at last weekend’s Eastern College Athletic Conference Championships.

By IAN CUTLER JUSTICE EDITOR

The women’s swimming and diving team’s relay foursome of Angela Chui ’12, Hollis Viray ’10, Siobhan Lyons ’10 and Julia Derk ’12 held four out of five school records in relay events coming into the final day at the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference Championships at Harvard University last Sunday. The only mark left to break was the 400-yard freestyle relay school record. It was only a matter of time until that record fell, too.

While the relay squad took only 11th place of 15 teams in the preliminary round, it conquered the school record in the 400-yard freestyle event with a time of 3 minutes, 41.28 seconds, beating the old mark of 3:42.78 which was set Feb. 23, 2003.

“We knew coming in that we had to drop a certain amount of time [to

break the record] and that was a goal we set for ourselves,” Viray said. “It’s cool to know we’re the fastest team to ever race at Brandeis.”

The women’s team took 13th place out of 26 teams with 90 points, the best among Division III schools at the meet.

The men’s team was 16th of 23 teams with 66 points. The U.S. Naval Academy won the Championships on the men’s side with 703.5 points while host school Harvard University was the best women’s team with 494 points.

The ECAC Championships conclude a tumultuous season for the Judges after the closing of the Linsey pool in October. The Judges practiced at Regis College and Bentley College this year. The program will remain for one more season but will be suspended thereafter.

“I think the reason we were so good this year is because we pushed ourselves so hard,” Marc Eder ’12 said.

“Without a pool we had a tough challenge and came out of it really well. I don’t think any other teams in the [University Athletic Association] had to make the sacrifices we’ve had to for this season.”

Chui, Viray and Eder may continue

See SWIMMING, 14 ☛

March 3, 2009

Brandeis Players brings to life ‘Brighton Beach Memoirs’ p. 20

Photos and Design: David Sheppard-Brick/the Justice

18

TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2009

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THE JUSTICE

POP CULTURE

INSIDE ON CAMPUS

18-20

■ An Interview with Bassham 19 The actress discussed her time at Brandeis.

19 ■ SunDeis Preview Producer David Pritchard will be the special guest at this year’s SunDeis Film Festival.

■ ‘Brighton Beach Memoirs’ 20 Dan Katz ’12 starred in the BP adaptation.

OFF CAMPUS

21-24

■ ‘The Dumb Waiter’ THA 100b performed the dark comedy.

20

■ ‘Jewels’ 21 “Rubies” was the show’s most notable act.

■ ‘Endgame’ 21 Marcus Stern directed the A.R.T.’s version.

■ ‘The Nose’ 21 The show was based on Gogol’s short story.

■ ‘Stories Left to Tell’ 22 Spalding Gray’s monologues were revived.

■ Oscar Analysis 22 Slumdog Millionaire was rightfully rewarded.

22 ■ ‘Finale’ This restaurant provided a sweet experience.

23 ■ ‘Dirty Dancing’ The film has been adapted for the stage.

23 ■ ‘Fool’ Christopher Moore’s latest novel falls flat.

23 ■ ‘Two Lovers’ Isabella Rossellini is film’s best performer.

CALENDAR ‘Testimony of Collaboration’

Q&A

by Shelly Shore

It’s time to give Bubbe a call and warn her to avoid temple from now on—Lindsay Lohan has announced that she is converting to Judaism.

The occasional actress, raised Catholic, decided to convert to prove her devotion to girlfriend Samantha Ronson. Their relationship has been making headlines over the past few months for its constant fights, from Lindsay sulking behind Sam’s DJ booths to the girls screaming at each other in the streets. Rumors of breakups have been swirling and it seems like Lindsay’s taking a stand to prove that she’s in this relationship for the long haul.

LiLo visited a London synagogue with Samantha on Friday and again on Saturday for Sam’s half brother Joshua’s bar mitzvah.

When the girls walked into temple arm-in-arm on Friday, an onlooker asked if she was converting. Her response: “I’m trying!” She made her decision official on Facebook, changing the religion section in the profile of her official page to read: “I’m converting.” That’s commitment, kids.

It’s a long process to convert from any religion to another, and Judaism makes things especially difficult. In addition to finding a rabbi to act as a spiritual guidance counselor, LiLo will have to study the religion extensively and thoroughly, meet with a religious court who will make sure that her motives for conversion are clear and sincere, immerse herself in a mikvah (a cleansing bath) and choose a Hebrew name. Hopefully Lindsay doesn’t think her conversion will happen overnight.

As we all know, Lindsay isn’t the first starlet to venture into the Jewish faith and definitely not the first to do it for love. Sacha Baron Cohen’s baby mama and fiancée is con-

Musician to jazz up Rose ■ Local saxophonist Charlie Kohlhase speaks about honoring the musical legacy of jazz while forging a path to the future of the “infinitely perfectible” genre.

JENNIFER GRAYLOCK/The Associated Press

LILO SEEKS LIGHT: Lindsay Lohan says she wants to convert to Judaism from Catholicism. verting before the pair’s upcoming wedding and there could be a synagogue in Leo DiCaprio’s future if he sticks with his girlfriend, Israeli supermodel Bar Rafaeli.

So, our girl Lindsay is joining the ranks of love-smitten celebrities crossing the bridge of faith. In the wake of all the poor decisions she’s been making lately, a little Jewish-relative smothering from the Ronsons will probably do her some good—she could definitely use a home-cooked meal.

What’s happening in Arts on and off campus

Witnesses: Two Scholars’

Composer Ruth Lomon and conductor Jane Ring Frank, both Women’s Studies Research Center scholars, will offer a “behind the scenes” look at the world premiere performance of Testimony of Witnesses, an oratorio based on the poetry of 18 Holocaust victims and survivors that is the product of of an eight-year collaboration. “Transport,” one of the movements of Testimony of Witnesses, was featured on Boston Secession’s CD Surprised by Beauty: Minimalism in Choral Music.

Tuesday from 12:30 to 2 p.m. in the WSRC Lecture Hall in Epstein.

‘Moolade’ “Set in a village in Burkina Faso, [the latest film by Ousmane Sembene] tackles the subject of female genital mutilation, but its political resonance is hardly limited to the parts of Africa where that custom is practiced. Colle (Fatoumata Coulibaly), the tough-minded second wife of a village elder, offers protection to four young girls who have fled the knives and starts a revolution. In chronicling [Colle]’s struggle with male power and deeply-rooted tradition, Sembene also paints a rich and complex tableau of village life, which gives the film, in spite of its harsh topic, a remarkable bouyancy of spirit. ... Moolaadé is an example of humanist cinema at its finest, a movie that reminds you of the dignity and heroism of ordinary life” (A.O. Scott, The New York Times).

Moolaadé is a part of an ongoing festival of award-winning French and Francophone films.

Thursday from 7 to 9 p.m. in Shiffman 219.

A Performance by Christine Lavin Singer and songwriter Christine Lavin, who was recently listed in the “Top 100 Most Influential Artists of the Last 15 Years” by Performing Songwriter Magazine, will share her soundtracks of Americana at Brandeis, which nail a number of the absurdities, reversals and neuroses that occupy our everyday existence. The concert is part of Brandeis University’s “Marquee Series,” which presents a collection of concerts each year celebrating wide-ranging musical styles and themes.

Friday at 8 p.m. in the Slosberg Music Center.

Inside View: “Hans Hofmann Circa 1950” Join exhibition curator Michael Rush, director

WHAT’S ON?

DAVID BROWN: Justice File Photo

ROCKING THE ROSE: Boston-area jazz musicians play at the Rose Art Museum every second Sunday. Previous performers have included Jon Damian, left, and Prof. Bob Nieske (MUS). of the Rose Art Museum, for a tour of “Hans Hofmann: Circa 1950.” This body of work, created by Hans Hofmann for the architect Josep Sert when he was constructing a city plan in 1950—an undertaking titled the Chimbote Project—is the genesis for this exhibition.

“The nine painting studies Hofmann produced for a series of murals in this Peruvian city form a concise and inspired example of the depth of Hofmann’s strengths as an abstract painter and modernist visionary.”

Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Rose Art Museum.

B’yachad’s Standing O! This event, which is held every spring, is B’yachad’s annual showcase. Byachad is a semiprofessional Israeli dance performing group that performs on campus and at festivals both in Boston and New York City. The group combines the music and styles of the Israeli dance world—which come from the many different countries—with jazz and lyrical influences.

Saturday from 8 to 10 p.m. in the Levin Ballroom

Playback Theater Workshop The Brandeis Playback Theatre Society and professional Brazilian Playback Actor Sheila Donio will bring to Brandeis a day of instruction in the art of a theater method that can “facilitate deep listening between all peoples.”

The workshop is open to all students, faculty and staff looking to learn more about the practice and performances of Playback Theatre as well as to those who are interested in theater, music, improvisation or the convergence of the arts, coexistence and social justice. Lunch will be provided.

Sunday from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. in the Shapiro Hall Lounge.

Jazz at the Rose Every second Sunday of the month, the Rose will host one of Boston’s finest avant-garde jazz groups or artists to provide an afternoon of musical enjoyment. This month, Charlie Kohlhase, a jazz saxophonist, composer and member of of four bands (including the Charlie Kohlhase Quintet) will be performing.

Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Rose Art Museum.

Charlie Kohlhase is a prolific Boston-based jazz saxophonist and composer. He leads four bands, including the Charlie Kohlhase Quintet, which he founded. Kohlhase also teaches at the Longy School of Music, directing their Modern American Music Repertory Ensemble. He hosts “Research and Development,” a jazz radio show on WMBR 88.1 FM. Kohlhase will perform at the Rose on Sunday, March 8 at 2 p.m. He took questions from the Justice by email last week.

JustArts: How does your appreciation of music history affect the creative process?

Charlie Kohlhase: When I started out in the music I was attracted to the dissonance and great swing of Thelonious Monk and the irresistible beat of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. At the same time I fell under the sway of the great conceptual advances coming about at the time in the music of Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy and Roscoe Mitchell. I’ve pretty much spent my career trying to balance my music between those poles. Braxton, Muhal Richard Abrams and the other folks involved with the Association for Advancement of Creative Musicians movement in Chicago were always very much about researching early jazz, which prompted me to investigate the early music of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson. What’s fascinating about much of that stuff is that those players didn’t have a lot of recordings or other players to influence them.

Jazz was really kind of a blank slate at the time, and it’s fascinating to hear the way the music evolved, just from 1923 to 1927 for example. I’m not sure if a lot of Lovie Austin is going to show up in my next composition, but I do enjoy hearing that perspective. What’s missing from much of today’s jazz is the awareness of the early music: so many cats just start with either Duke, Bird or, for that matter, Coltrane, and I think you can hear that lack of roots in much of today’s jazz.

JA: What are your favorite aspects of the jazz scene here, and what sets Boston’s scene apart from that of New York?

CK: There is a solid community of committed creative and uncompromising musicians in Boston who have been honing their craft for many years. I’m very happy to be part of that community. I think most of us seem to fall under the radar as far as the national media is concerned.

JA: What connects jazz as it is taught in the classroom with the way it is performed?

CK: I do feel ... that jazz education can at times be one of music’s greatest enemies. I try to get across to my students that just learning some scales, licks and a few harmonic devices doesn’t necessarily make you a great jazz musician: it’s a matter of keeping your ears open and evolving! As my teacher/mentor/friend Roswell Rudd put it a long time ago, “Music is infinitely perfectible.” Move into the future while exploring the past. While there may appear to be a certain amount of stasis in the music presently, I think there are interesting rhythmic developments that have emerged in the last decade and a half: there’s a lot more odd meter and compound meter stuff going on. And many of the younger players are gaining the rhythmic flexibility to be able to improvise fluently in that kind of setting. I think some of this might come from hip hop, although I really haven’t been keeping up with contemporary pop music for quite some time.

JA: Are there are particular types of venues you like to play?

CK: I’ve really enjoyed playing at the Rose and at other art galleries. I think the setting makes people more receptive to actually slowing down and listing to the music. I like concert halls and clubs as long as folks are willing to quiet down and give the music a chance to be heard: it’s not easy to play your heart out to a roomful of disinterested individuals.

—Sarah Bayer

Top 10s for the week ending March 3

Box Office

College Radio

Billboard

WBRS

1. Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail 2. Coraline 3. Taken 4. He’s Just Not That Into You 5. Slumdog Millionaire 6. Friday the 13th 7. Paul Blart: Mall Cop 8. Confessions of a Shopaholic 9. Fired Up! 10. The International

1. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion 2. Andrew Bird – Noble Beast 3. Matt and Kim – Grand 4. A.C. Newman – Get Guilty 5. Antony and the Johnsons – The Crying Light 6. Cotton Jones – Paranoid Cocoon 7. Lonely, Dear – Dear John 8. Franz Ferdinand – Tonight: Franz Ferdinand 9. Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart 10. Los Campesinos! – We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

1. Taylor Swift – Fearless 2. Charlie Wilson – Uncle Charlie 3. The Fray – The Fray 4. Nickelback – Dark Horse 5. Beyonce – I Am ... Sasha Fierce 6. Jamie Foxx – Intuition 7. India.Arie – Testimony: Vol. 2, Love & Politics 8. Kanye West – 808s & Heartbreak 9. Robert Plant/Alison Kraus – Raising Sand 10. Lady GaGa – The Fame

1. The Weather Machines – “Parts of Speech” 2. Yellowcard – “Light Up The Sky” 3. The Killers – “Human” 4. Elk City – “Close To Me” 5. Minisnap – “New Broom” 6. A.C. Newman – “The Palace at 4 a.m.”

7. Guy Davis – “Down South Blues” 8. Mogwai – “Kings Meadow” 9. Starkeys – “Shift Drink” 10. We Are Scientists – “After Hours”

Album information provided by Billboard Magazine. Box office information provided by Yahoo!Movies. Radio charts provided by CMJ.

THE JUSTICE

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TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2009

19

ON CAMPUS FILM

SunDeis spotlights schedule, special guest ■ This year, the Film Festival will bring back such popular events as the 48 Hour Film Contest while introducing new proceedings.

By JUSTINE ROOT JUSTICE EDITOR

In an interview with the Justice on Wednesday, the SunDeis Film Festival’s Special Guests Chair Eve Neiger ’09 and Communications Chair Hanna Rosenthal-Fuller ’09 discussed this year’s events and special guest, as well as changes that have been made to the Festival.

In an effort to provide everyone with an opportunity to see the cinematic works of their peers, the festival will have three separate sessions for the screenings of student films on March 18, 19 and 21. And in order to include those who did not contribute a film to the main event the Festival will once again hold the “48 Hour Film Contest.” For those who are unfamiliar with this undertaking, the 48 Hour Film Contest is an event open only to Brandeis students that requires participants to make a film within the time period mentioned in the title. However, those who participate in the event will face the challenge of—in addition to sleep deprivation—including certain features dictated by SunDeis officials (for instance, all films must use a spoon as a prop).

According to Neiger, some of past SunDeis’ best and most interesting efforts have been the product of 48 Hour Film Contests. However, the event also serves a practical purpose: “[The 48 Hour Film Contest] really inspired people to take advantage of film resources, many of which they were unaware of before,” Neiger said. In addition, those films submitted to the contest will have a separate screening, which will take place on Friday evening.

This year’s SunDeis will also include several events meant to introduce students to possible careers in the film industry. On March 18, SunDeis will host the Film Careers Workshop, an event cosponsored by the Hiatt Career Center. And on

AMY SANCETTA/the Associated Press

VICTORIOUS ‘CAPTAIN’: Director Amin Matalqa accepts an award at the Sundance Film Festival for his work on the movie ‘Captain Abu Raeb,’ a film created in Jordan.

March 21, the “Alumni & Friends: Clips and Conversation” meeting will take place. At this happening, a panel made up of people who have a strong connection to Brandeis and the film industry will answer questions from students and participate in one-on-one discussion sessions with attendees following the question-and-answer session. In the eyes of Rosenthal-Fuller, this event is especially important as it is “really in-

spiring for students to meet people who have made it in the film industry.”

Also occurring on March 21 will be the question-and-answer session with this year’s special guest, producer David Pritchard, one of the men behind the award-winning film Captain Abu Raed. The film, in addition to being the first feature film produced in Jordan in more than 50 years, was also the first ever to be

submitted by Jordan to the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film.

And, in keeping with the Festival’s theme of “encouraging and rewarding student work,” SunDeis will conclude with a Red Carpet Awards Ceremony that will take place on March 21. At this event, awards will be handed out to students according to the conclusions reached by a judging panel com-

posed of Brandeis faculty and staff.

As its name suggests, the ceremony will emulate award ceremonies usually found in the realm of Hollywood stars.

However, in reality, the Red Carpet Awards Ceremony is not the only event meant to honor the work of SunDeis participants; recognition of student filmmakers is the purpose of—and will be found throughout— every SunDeis event.

Q&A

Alumna discusses leap from Brandeis to ‘Blackbird’ ■ Actress Marianna Bassham MFA ’99 talks about her experience acting in such plays as ‘Lion in the Streets’ and ‘Quills.’

M arianna Bassham stars in the Speakeasy Stage Company’s production of Blackbird, running through March 21. Bassham has been acting professionally for almost 10 years, becoming an equity performer even before her graduation from the MFA program at Brandeis University in 2002. An experienced, versatile actress (she has performed in shows ranging from Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire to Sophocles’ Antigone), Bassham is also a grounded, friendly young woman who appreciates innovation and hard work in the theater. Blackbird is a great example of such innovation, a show with a plot twist so unexpected and integral to the show’s impact that the press kit for reviewers requests no one give it away.

The Justice talked with Bassham in late February.

JustArts: Did you know what the show was about before you read the script?

Marianna Bassham: No, I did not know about the show before I read it. I had heard some of the things about it, which is that it’s about a relationship, two people who haven’t

seen each other in 15 years … who were seeing each other again for the first time. So that’s sort of all I knew. So I was excited when I read it. … I knew it was a part that I really wanted to do.

JA: And how you end up doing this show?

MB: Well, I heard through the grapevine that David Gammons was directing it. He had directed Titus Andronicus. … He won the Elliot Norton Award [for Outstanding Director] for it. He did a lot of work with the Actor’s Shakespeare Project, which is a company that I’ve also worked with, but we had not yet worked together. … I was really interested in working with him particularly.

JA: Was it especially difficult to do this show, since you two were really the only performers, there was no intermission, and you were on stage the whole time?

MB: Here’s the thing. That sort of thing always seems really daunting before you get into it. I started running the lines about a month before we went into rehearsal. I worked on them on my own before we started, and as for the movement for the scenes, [director] David Gammons gave us a lot of freedom … and it all came naturally. ... This is the second time I’ve done a two-person show, and what first seems like impossible is possible. Each moment leads you to the next moment, so you don’t feel like “Oh my god, I’m on stage for 90 minutes—what happens if I forget 20

pages?” There’s some safety in that.

I feel real safe doing it.

JA: What do your friends and family think when they see you in something like Blackbird or some of the more unconventional shows? How do they react?

MB: Most of my friends are theater people, so they understand the work that I’m trying to do. We all, you know, are colleagues. When it comes to my family—my family’s not really invited to [Blackbird].

There are a couple of shows over the years that I didn’t feel comfortable inviting my family to, if it has something sexually explicit or if the topic was something that I thought would be difficult for my parents to handle.

I think Quills they weren’t invited to. [Laughs.]

JA: What sparked your interest in acting? How did you get into this?

MB: Oh, my gosh. When I was little I actually did a couple plays in elementary school. And then I did a production of Oliver Twist. I played Nancy. … I didn’t do anything again until my senior year of high school, really.

JA: How did you get your first professional job?

MB: At the time that I was a thirdyear student, the Brandeis MFA program had a relationship with the New Repertory Theatre, so we got the chance to either be in or understudy for a show that was going on at the Rep. Luckily, somebody turned down a part in Tartuffe, so I got it and that was my first sort of

breakthrough.

JA: What brought you to the MFA program at Brandeis?

MB: I studied theater in college, and then a year after I graduated I went back home to Ohio, not sure of what I was going to do. Then I was in a production if Richard III that was happening in Cleveland. …. It was directed by Bartlett Sher, and at the time he was getting famous. He’s a very well-respected director.

JA: Do you remember some of the shows you did at Brandeis?

MB: Yeah, I did, let’s see, I did a production of Lion in the Streets, and that was a really exciting, dark piece that we did. I did The Three Sisters. I played Masha, and that was a really great production directed by Adrianne Krstansky [THA]. And I did a really interesting, African-American play, and I played an African American. It was a beautiful play.

JA: What was it like playing an African American? How did you prepare for that?

MB: Well it’s interesting. I just decided that I was mixed race, a person who lived in the same neighborhood as all the other characters and who grew up with them.

It was interesting. ... [The character] was a crack addict. She had a very overbearing mother. … I prepared for it the same way I would anything else.

JA: What did you take away from your experience at Brandeis?

MB: One of the things that’s good

about the Brandeis program is that they really … let you figure out what works best for you. What might be a good way to do one character might not be the way to do another character. So I feel like Brandeis really gives you, you know, a really solid bag of tools to approach different kinds of work. I certainly felt like that was the case when I was there. I don’t know what it’s like now. The teachers that I worked with, they were all from different schools of thought.

JA: How do you go about getting more work once a show is finished?

MB: A lot of the casting happens during the summertime. They have general auditions, and you show up, … I have my season figured out by the end of the summer. The same thing happened last year. … The scary time is May through July, when you have to figure out what the next year is going to look like.

JA: During Blackbird, how do you keep your feelings under control?

MB: I have to be as committed as I can possibly be to what my characters are going through. When I am experiencing emotional distress or anger, it’s essentially coming from a fairly real place. ... In order to do justice to these characters and what they’re going through, I think you have to go there as much as you possibly can, and I’m willing to go there, so I just do it. And it’s exhausting.

—Daniel Baron

20

TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2009

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THE JUSTICE

‘BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRS’

DAVID SHEPPARD-BRICK/the Justice

‘MEMOIRS’ MEAL: The play depicts a Jewish family in 1940s Brooklyn. From left to right: Dan Katz ’12, Annie Chiorazzi ’11, Briana Bensenouci ’12, Lauren Elias ’10, Jessi Fixsen ’12, Sam Roos ’09 and Charlie Kivolowitz ’11.

Players take a trip to ‘Brighton Beach’ ■ The play, written by Neil Simon, tells the story of a Jewish boy growing up in New York City during the early years of World War II.

By DANIEL BARON JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

I was in awe of the elaborate set for last Saturday’s Brandeis Players production of Brighton Beach Memoirs; it was as though Freddie Mac had donated a foreclosed house and all its belongings to the Players. The two rooms upstairs with posters and beds, the living room with a piano and early 20th century radio, the kitchen with its oven and refrigerator, the dining room, the stairs, the door, the window, everything.

Once the audience was let in to the auditorium (late—around 7:55 p.m. for an 8 p.m. show), the characters had already set to work. A woman was setting the table. Another was sewing. A boy was playing catch with himself outside. A girl was reading on the couch. Then the lights were dimmed, we were told to silence our cell phones and reminded that flash photography is dangerous, and Dan Katz ’12 began to entertain.

Katz successfully portrayed the naïve and excitable Eugene, who takes us on a journey into his life via pen and paper. Eugene wants to be a writer but does not want anyone to read his memoirs until after he has passed away. All he knows about women is what he learns from his older brother, Stanley (Sam Roos ’09, of TBA and Boris’ Kitchen fame).

And he is all too likeable in his hilarious opinions and perceptions of the mess going on around him, of the dysfunctional family that always, somehow, reverts to an optimistic outlook of its situation; his Jewish family that experiences its fair share of drama but does not let that get in the way of clan cohesiveness.

Eugene grows up with two cousins (Jessi Fixsen ’12 and Briana Bensenouci ’12) and an aunt (Lauren Elias ’10), in addition to his brother and parents (Anne Chiorazzi ’11 and Charlie Kivolowitz ’11) during the early years of World War II. It’s a tight-knit group starting to fall apart due to the economy and war on the outside and adolescence and a complicated familial history at home.

I had never seen Roos act in a play before, having only known him as a superb comedian and improv troupe member. I was impressed by his ability to portray a very serious and troubled young man who wants

nothing more than to do what’s right but who ends up shooting himself in the foot because of it. Elias, Chiorazzi and Kivolowitz were wonderful as the three adults in care of children whose differences in age and priorities make their lives a headache. Fixsen is genuine as the rebellious teenage girl who is at that strange interval between puberty and womanhood. Last but not least, Bensenouci is delightfully funny as the 13-year-old female who would rather read books than look at guys.

None of this would be possible without the brilliant Neil Simon, the playwright who wrote Brighton Beach Memoirs in 1983. His humor is timeless, universal and accessible. However, with text so colorful, it can be easy to gloss over the subtext and stick at the shallow end of his words. But, director Brian Melcher ’10 did not settle for an enthusiastic recitation of lines. It was apparent that the six on stage had worked as a team to go deeper into Simon’s book, and Melcher is responsible for having steered them in the right direction.

It’s too bad that the Saturday night performance was only half full. I really wish more people would have come to see it. I could not believe the quality, considering that those involved are also students

DAVID SHEPPARD-BRICK/The Justice

ROCKY ‘BEACH’: Jessi Fixsen and Lauren Elias in a family dispute during ‘Memoirs.’ with many other responsibilities.

And, considering that over half the actors were underclassmen, I expected a good show with some strong and weak moments here and there, some good and bad points mixed in together. What I ended up seeing was a great show, practically flawless. I really have no complaints. To say I was relieved would be an understatement. The perform-

ance as a whole was like the show’s set: It blew me away. If they had more performances I would see it a second and third time. Within 10 minutes of the curtain call, I was telling a friend of mine to see the Sunday matinee. Say whatever you want about Brandeis, but wow, we’ve got some real talent! I just got served by the cast and crew of Brighton Beach Memoirs.

THEATER

THA 100b’s ‘Dumb Waiter’ serves up a decent performance ■ Though lacking in finish,

the class’s performance of Harold Pinter’s play was a respectable effort.

By WILLIAM-BERNARD REID-VARLEY JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

A production by “Theater Text and Theory II” of the The Dumb Waiter, a one-act play written in 1960 by Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter, was not a polished performance but did the best it could with the venue and prep time allotted to it.

The play is an absurdist dark comedy that centers around two hit men— Ben (played by Amy Thompson ’11) and Gus (played by Rob Orzalli ’11)—sitting

in a basement waiting for a call telling them their next target has arrived.

The drama sits uneasily between pure existential musing and traditional plot-focused theater. On the one hand, there is a definite (if only implied) disturbing ending in which the identity of the awaited victim is finally revealed.

On the other hand, the majority of the drama involves a series of absurd conversations (during one of which Ben exclaims that the news story of a girl who killed a cat is, “almost enough to make you puke”) and interactions with a mysterious upstairs neighbor (who sends down multiple, and, given the state of the basement, apparently ridiculous requests for gourmet dishes). Furthermore, the call from Ben’s and Gus’ boss arrives through the same “speaking tube” with which

Ben spoke to the person making the food-orders, leading you to wonder whether the two are one and the same.

Both characters are morally conflicted—while meek and nervous Gus apparently recognizes this fact, seasoned hit man Ben never draws the connection between his disgust for the juvenile cat-killer and his own morbid occupation. The ambivalence concerning the genre of the play rejects the absolutism of both existentialism and traditional systematic philosophy. Pinter chooses instead a conception of life (more realistic in his opinion) that uneasily embodies both meaninglessness and meaning, rationality and absurdity.

Brian Melcher’s ’10 set design exceeded the other aspects of the play in artistic accomplishment, as it trans-

formed the poorly designed Merrick Theater into an engaging and visually exciting dramatic arena and echoed the core message of the play. He combined mundane, everyday belongings, such as suitcases stacked atop wooden boxes, with absurd, out-of-place objects including a headless plastic deer on stage-right and an overturned metal mesh trash basket near the other end of the stage holding the missing deer head. Strewn all across the stage among everything else is a dizzying number of copies of the Blowfish.

Overall, Melcher created an atmosphere of frantic absurdity whose hints of realism imbue it with an air of unnerving menace.

Thompson, of the comedy groups Boris’ Kitchen (where she serves as both a writing coordinator and per-

former) and Bad Grammer, delivered the stronger performance, trailed by Orzalli, of Brandeis Theatre Company’s Saturday Night and several UTC productions. His acting, though featuring flashes of genuine talent, more often exhibited a roller-coaster of rushed lines and a recurring sense that he was holding back. The latter was stressful to watch as, for his sake and the sake of an enjoyable performance, one wished he would just let himself go. Some of this may be the fault of the director, Hannah Kaplan ’10, who, though an excellent stage manager, has limited directorial experience. On the whole, however, the voice of the playwright and the message of the play filter through. If nothing else, this should inspire the audience to explore the remainder of Harold Pinter’s remarkable works.

THE JUSTICE

BOSTON BALLET

By WILLIAM-BERNARD REID-VARLEY JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

GENE SCHIAVONE/the Boston Ballet

‘DIAMONDS’ DUET: Roman Rykine and Larissa Ponomarenko performed in the final act of George Balanchine’s ‘Jewels.’

Ballet deemed a gem choreographed by Balanchine, consists of three contrasting parts.

By ANDREA FINEMAN JUSTICE EDITOR

On Feb. 4, The New York Times reported that the last of choreographer George Balanchine’s protégées, a ballerina named Darci Kistler, had announced her retirement. The news marks the end of an era, to be certain; however, Balanchine’s death in 1983 did little to muffle his reputation as a preeminent figure in the 20th-century ballet world.

The Boston Ballet’s performance of Jewels, a 1967 Balanchine work, proves to be an exciting and diverse production. The ballet, which consists of three parts in different styles, is sure to please both dance connoisseurs and cultural dilettantes simply interested in seeing a beautiful manifestation of the abilities of the human body. Jewels’ plotlessness was something quite innovative at the time of its debut. While plotless theatrical or film works are sometimes targeted only at the advanced cultural connoisseur, the beauty of dance is that the mesmerizing display of movement remains visually engaging even without a narrative arc.

21

‘Endgame’ boasts worthwhile players brings to life a haunting yet humorous short play written

by Samuel Beckett in 1955.

The first and longest act of Jewels, “Emeralds,” is based on ballet’s French origins. While an inexperienced viewer may not recognize the parallels between Balanchine’s “Emeralds” and the history of French ballet style, one can certainly understand the contrasts between it and the following two acts, “Rubies” and “Diamonds,” choreographed in Balanchine’s own athletic and modern style and in the style of Russia’s classicism, respectively. I personally found “Emeralds” to be the weakest of the three portions. While the performances were certainly beautiful, the stately choreography and dull costumes and set design paled in comparison to the flashy, modern style of “Rubies” and the vivacious, agile choreography of “Diamonds.” This is, perhaps, just a matter of taste; however, I feel that with most types of art, whether visual, musical or theatrical, pairing a subtle and quiet work with a more modern and unusual or more energetic work has the effect of downplaying the greatness of the former.

Thus it was “Rubies” that truly stole the show. The nonballetic movements and the athletic, almost gymnastic style of the act gave the performance some amount of attitude. This style of dance is more selfaware, I thought as I watched the piece. The bright red costumes and backdrop of the act further energized the performance. Only 22 minutes in

TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2009

THEATER

■ Director Marcus Stern

■ ‘Jewels,’ a 1967 work

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length, the second movement left me wanting more. Some may disagree, but I feel that this more modern style better exploits the possibilities of expression through the stylized gestures of dance.

“Diamonds,” finally, appropriately concluded the show. As the curtain rose and revealed brilliant white costumes and a shimmering white backdrop, the audience released murmurs and gasps. The truly stunning costumes and design fit perfectly with the sprightly choreography of the movement. My fellow viewers could barely contain their excitement as dancers both female and male executed pirouette after pirouette (the woman beside me counted aloud breathlessly as one dancer twirled and twirled as the audience gazed on).

I left the ballet with the sense that the three disparate styles embodied in the three acts were expertly arranged: the first, unfortunately somewhat dull but nonetheless beautiful French act; the second, invigorating modern act; and the third, triumphant, light and moving Russian act. The Boston Ballet’s shimmering sets and lovely execution of this innovative Balanchine masterpiece provided a perfect setting for balletgoers to take in the splendor of Balanchine’s talent.

Jewels runs through March 8 at the Citi Performing Arts Center Wang Theatre.

American Repertory Theatre’s current production of existential playwright Samuel Beckett’s 1955 play Endgame, directed by Marcus Stern, associate director of A.R.T., features a full cast of professional actors with nearly 300 productions between them.

The nationally renowned American Repertory Theatre, which will celebrate its 30th year in Cambridge this fall, has won numerous awards including the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

Time Magazine recently named it one of the top three theaters in the nation. A.R.T. is housed at two locations, the Loeb Drama Center, their mainstage and the location of the current production of Endgame, and the Zero Arrow Theatre, both of which are adjacent to Harvard University.

The play opens with a spotlight highlighting a cloaked, wheelchairbound Hamm, played by Will Lebow, followed by the illumination of Hamm’s adopted son/servant, Clov, played by Thomas Derrah. Finally, a harsh, white light, which remains throughout the duration of the play, fills the stage. Sparse and raw in every regard, the hour-and-a-half, four-character production unfolds on a single stark set that consists of three bare, off-white walls soiled with the brown residue of water leaks, two curtained windows (which Clov, to great absurd effect, determinedly opens to reveal boarded up glass with only a thin slit of windowpane visible), a radiator and a door to “Clov’s kitchen.” It could be a nearly normal, if drab and mundane, house.

On the right wall, however, a picture is hung with the back facing out, and at the front of the stage, embedded in the wood floor sit two lidded metal trash cans in which live Hamm’s pitiful, hoary-headed parents, Nagg (played by Remo Airaldi) and Nell (played by A.R.T. founding member Karen McDonald). The effect of the set is an absurd confusion of inside and out, “us” and the world—ambiguities which set the foggy air of absurd yet realistic contradiction which is the permeating, vivifying force of the play. An obvious tragedy, Beckett nonetheless intended for the play to be simultaneously comedic, through both the attempts at jokes by Hamm and Clov and the unintentionally absurd deportment of all four characters.

The set that is the “gameboard” of Endgame never changes, foregrounding the characters and their interactions with each other. The

game is not so much one player versus another, but each player versus the board, which represents existence. Though Hamm would have it “end with a bang,” in the end the game fades away, as each of the four characters both hates and needs the others in what develops as a painful and nearly unbearable tragedy.

In an ambiguous comment on the motivations of humanity, we learn that Hamm adopted the orphan Clov as his son but now treats him as his slave. He calls him with the harsh grating of a whistle at his every capricious whim, reminding Clov of his past magnanimity in adopting him when Clov’s gratitude seems lacking. While on the whole Lebow’s performance resonates with the cold despair of a life circumscribed by darkness and immovability, he falters with a Fonzy-like delivery of Hamm’s attempts at jokes. Clov is a character whose seeming simpleness belies an insight and a soul torturously split between loyalty to his father/master and his own aspirations. Derrah, whose 114 previous productions include The Seagull, Mother Courage, Our Town and the 2003 film Mystic River, delivers a highly animated and movementfilled performance that serves as the perfect foil for the icy, stationary Hamm. Nagg and Nell are the most human and personable and the least hateable of the four. White of hair and white of clothes, they exemplify the forgetful purity of old age returning to its source.

An existential drama, Endgame is at its heart existence devoid of the veil of life. Watching the plot tumble along is like watching the stars and the deep hollow black of space without the distorting effects of the atmosphere. Stark and bitter yet humorous in the absurd unavoidability of the end, the playwright’s voice rings clearly throughout the play.

While many dramatic works deal with death on one level or another, Endgame is not simply a play about finality—and therein lies its unique attraction. In the half decade immediately preceding the penning of Endgame, Beckett witnessed the inevitable decline and death of his mother from Parkinson’s disease and his brother from lung cancer four years later as he sat by their bedsides until the end. Through these experiences Beckett comes to realize that existence is not meant to be won—it is merely “something … taking its course.”

Born from the darkest period in Beckett’s life, Endgame is a portrayal of a family in rather than on the brink. It is the journey—not the destination—with which Beckett most identifies. No one can ever truly know the end. All we can see is existence and the moment immediately before it vanishes, and such is the resonant beauty of Endgame.

THEATER

Operatic version of Gogol’s ‘The Nose’ nothing to sneeze at ■ Opera Boston produced

an excellent performance that transports audiences to 19th-century Moscow.

By HANNAH KIRSCH JUSTICE EDITOR

The world of opera has its iconic settings and moods: the consumptive, romantic Paris of La Bohème; the sexy, dangerous Seville of Carmen; the jolly and quirky Italy of The Marriage of Figaro. But in Opera Boston’s performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s The Nose, staged last Friday at the Cutler Majestic Theatre, precedent is tossed aside. Instead of a world of family, love and war, we are shown a Moscow in which the police force is too busy fondling a pretzel salesgirl to arrest the giant anthropomorphic nose strolling across the road.

The plot of The Nose, drawn from the Gogol short story of the same name, goes something like this: Minor bureaucrat Kovalyov awakens one day to find his nose has vanished from his face. After discovering the nose in his morning bread, the barber Ivan Yakovlevich attempts to dispose of it by flinging it into the river, but the nose returns as a bureaucrat of a higher level than Kovalyov himself.

What follows is a delightfully surreal romp through the city as Kovalyov tries to find his nose and reattach it to his face, abetted and thwarted all the way by fools of every social class.

Opera Boston’s directors, designers and choreographers made certain from the first that the audience would be totally immersed in the grotesquerie that is Gogol’s vision of 19th-century Moscow. The production opened with cleverly lit “rain” on a stage bare but for screen buildings and streets in various stages of gray decay, and the first movement

on stage is of the Russian golden double-headed eagle flapping onstage with the giant nose held in its claws.

The introductory scenes that follow— the corpulent, foul barber, the hipthrusting succubi and the raunchy timpani and brass of Kovalyov’s dreams—did not so much set the stage for the narrative as characterize it, throw us into the absurdity to come rather than allow us to dip our toes in.

Stephen Salters proved adept as the mostly noseless Kovalyov with his rich voice and properly blustering manner. While Salters could have more effectively brought out the selfimportance that is so important to Kovalyov’s character, his skill at navigating Shostakovich’s thorny score offset any thespian weaknesses.

If there is any role whose difficulty is to be highlighted, though, it is that of the nose itself. The vocal role of the renegade schnoz requires minimal singing time, but featured in that

brief period is an astounding row of 11 high Cs—the six of them sung by Tonio in Donizetti’s Daughter of the Regiment are challenging enough, and achieving 11 is nothing to turn up your nose at. Torrance Blaisdell hit them perfectly and navigated his endlessly amusing and probably ungainly costume besides.

But Frank Kelley’s portrayal of the Police Inspector stole the show. Kelley’s inspector was bombastic, petty and ridiculous and had great vocal talent to boot. From crawling like a dog on the ground to screaming at Ivan through a megaphone, Kelley admirably conveyed the embodiment of all that is wrong with Russian society as depicted in The Nose.

Yeghishe Manucharyan also deserves a nod for his bumbling Ivan the Lackey, especially during his balalaika solos; he cooperated perfectly with the orchestra to bring one of the most musically amusing moments of the show to its height.

By far the best moments of the show, in fact, were when vocalists and orchestra shone together to showcase Shostakovich’s brilliant writing. Musical parodies of bodily functions, wet dreams and nattering townspeople came to life under the baton of Gil Rose and thanks to the skilled musicians and chorus. Particularly impressive was the musical and choreographic coordination of the newspaper clerks and their highminded editor.

Occasionally, The Nose slipped into oppressive buffoonery; occasionally, the combination of score and scene and slapstick could be overwhelming. But all in all, Opera Boston’s production of The Nose was dramatically engaging, musically honed and often laugh-out-loud hilarious. The talented artists brought to life through Shostakovich Gogol’s surrealist impression of a Moscow unhinged, a wondrous, if occasionally disturbing, creation to observe.

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TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2009

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THE JUSTICE

‘STORIES LEFT TO TELL’

FOOD

Boston-area Finale provides a sweet escape for foodies ■ The dessert restaurant serves up decadent dishes such as “Molten Chocolate,” a melted chocolate cake, and Boston cream pie.

By CAROLINE HUGHES JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

PHOTO COURTESY OF ASHMONT MEDIA

A STORYTELLER REMEMBERED: Local celebrities, including Claire Messud, read autobiographical writings by Spalding Gray, above.

Guests honor Gray at ICA ■ The widow of actor and playwright Spalding Gray has developed a play that tells the late performer’s story in his own words.

By ANDREA FINEMAN JUSTICE EDITOR

It takes a lot to pull off a one-man show of autobiographical monologues. The late Spalding Gray, a theatrical performer and performance artist best known for his 1985 play (and 1987 film of the same name) Swimming to Cambodia was one of the rare individuals who could. (Cambodia, a monologue inspired by Gray’s small role in the film The Killing Fields, consists of Gray sitting behind a desk, speaking for four hours. The film version, at 85 minutes, grossed over a million dollars.)

To bring Gray’s monologues to life, the creators of Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell employ no fewer than five actors in their mash-up of Gray’s monologues and diary entries, which premiered at the Minetta Lane Theater in New York City and which appeared at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston last weekend.

Stories Left to Tell, conceived in part by Gray’s widow, Kathie Russo, employed guest readers at its original inception as well as at the ICA’s run, whose guest readers included novelist Claire Messud and local radio personality Christopher Lydon. Saturday night’s guest reader was Vincent

“Buddy” Cianci, former mayor of Providence. Director of Programs David Henry said by way of introduction that Cianci was included in the guest line-up because the museum felt it needed to include a Rhode Islandarea celebrity in the performance. It was clear from the beginning of the performance why this was relevant— many of the monologues are rooted heavily in Gray’s upbringing in Barrington, R.I. Having seen little of Gray’s work before attending the show on Saturday night, I came to the ICA with no expectations other than a general hunch that this performance might be something special. I was right. The production in the ICA’s small theater was rather spare: There were no elaborate costumes, the set consisted of a few pieces of average-looking furniture and there were no special effects.

With only a few colored lights and a sound system loaded with a few clips of music, the creators of this performance simply enhanced Gray’s irreverent, honest and moving works of storytelling.

The play more or less traced the story of Gray’s life in his own words.

Charming lines about Gray’s children and humorous stories about his adolescence mixed with more morose tales about his mother, who committed suicide after a period of mental illness. The first three quarters or so of the performance may have been funny and compelling due to the content of the monologues, but some amount of sadness overlaid the actors’ upbeat words: All present were no doubt thinking of Gray’s tragic 2004 suicide. Gradually, however, the per-

formance shifted from a cheerful and moving portrait of Gray’s life to a gripping, heartbreaking telling of Gray’s decline into depression after a 2001 car accident in which he sustained a brain injury as well as broken bones. The theater slowly darkened as actor Ain Gordon read progressively darker entries from Gray’s journal.

Then the performance took a risky turn: As the journal entries grew closer and closer to the date of Gray’s death, one expected the play to end on a somber note. It seemed as though a change in tone would completely kill the effect of Gray’s heartbreaking words. I hate to spoil the ending for anyone who may see this performance in the future, but suffice it to say that the four readers at the ICA Saturday night managed to turn the play around, ending on an ultimately positive and transcendent note without crossing the thin line between celebratory and cheesy.

Director Lucy Sexton said before the curtain rose that many theatergoers come to the performance with a certain expectation, given Gray’s distinct style of delivery. Said a New York Times theater reviewer in an article about a 1981 Gray performance, “He is a sit-down monologuist with the comic sensibility of a stand-up comedian.” In trying to describe Gray’s style, I’ve often thought of a more engaging, sincere version of the comedian Steven Wright. It’s true that, compared to Gray, the performers of Stories Left to Tell seem downright plain. However, it is that very plainness of affect that allows Gray’s stirring words to truly shine forth.

The word finale usually evokes a play’s final show-stopping number or the last soliloquy in a Shakespearean tragedy. In terms of Boston cuisine, however, Finale refers to a fantastically chocolatey experience that occurs inside what I think is the best dessert restaurant in the United States.

Finale has redefined the relatively new culinary experience of a dessert restaurant. It is a sort of hybrid between bakery and restaurant at which dessert is the most prized course of the evening. At Finale, the dinner and lunch menus include light fare like soups, salads and small entrée portions to ensure plenty of room for the final course.

The food dishes often leave a bit to be desired—my soup has been lukewarm and my sandwich dry—but Finale more than makes up for an average kitchen with its unbelievable desserts.

For some, the climax of the Finale experience occurs when they bite into the “Molten Chocolate,” an explosion of chocolate cake that is melted on the inside and fluffy on the outside. Others prefer the crème brulée or various other choices, including Finale’s versions of Boston cream pie and cheesecake. The crème brulée and molten chocolate are specialties of the house, but in my humble opinion, why go to a renowned dessert restaurant and order the same flamed sugary, puddingy dish available at any French restaurant? Stick with their original creations, like the chocolate cashew tart with blackberry cabernet sorbet on the side.

Dessert plates are served with various accompaniments, like chocolate embossed with the Finale logo, crispy chocolate wafers and sugary walnuts. Additionally, Finale offers “sharable desserts” that include sampler plates and delicious chocolate fondue (they provided grapes for my melted chocolate, a strange but tasty combination). To add to the experience, there is a mirror over the pastry chefs’ station, at which copious amounts of fruit and chocolate are, quite visibly, transformed into glorious desserts. Though it is more striking and enjoyable in my opinion

to see the, well, finale of the dessertmaking process, sometimes the very sight of the ingredients stimulates the palate. Continuing with that idea, pictures of berries and of chocolate decadence adorn the walls of Finale, creating an omnipresent feeling of deliciousness. Decorations come in brown, white and red, evoking (what else?) chocolate, coconut and berries.

Cosmopolitan magazine, the go-to guide for women, featured Finale a few years ago as a great place for a date. Though the demographic of Finale patrons ranges from college students to families to girls on a night out, couples comprise the majority of eaters. The restaurant consistently sells out on Valentine’s Day. Case in point: I traveled to the Park Plaza Boston locale for my own romantic evening but due to a lack of planning I could only get in either at 4:30 p.m., when they start serving dinner, or at 11 p.m., when they stop. My date and I opted for the “linner”-style dining.

To my surprise, the restaurant was practically full of couples eating off a specialized prix fixe Valentine’s Day menu in the late afternoon. By 6 p.m., the bar, bakery and restaurant areas were completely crowded with well-dressed men and women. Because of its prime location between Newbury Street and the Theatre District, Finale often sees many theatergoers before and after curtain times.

With that being said, Finale recently closed their short-lived Natick Mall location. Since it was certainly not the quality of the food that made it close in December after a little over a year of existence, I can only attribute it to the unsteady economy and to the general decline of restaurant traffic.

Finale recently added a new feature to its Web site that involves delivering cakes and pies that may make up for the lack of attendance.

There’s a catch: Only a few kinds of desserts—the Dark Chocolate Decadence cake, two kinds of cheesecake and the Cherry Almond Tart—can be shipped, and they must be shipped in two days. This bumps up the price significantly, and it almost would be cheaper to buy the cake, travel to the designated receiver and hand-deliver it. That said, if I ever move from away from Boston and its Finale restaurants, I may have to resort to the delivery service.

There are three Finale restaurants, all of which are easily accessible via the MBTA: Park Plaza Boston, Harvard Square Cambridge and Coolidge Corner Brookline.

Look for a new venture in Washington, D.C. hopefully opening this year.

ENTERTAINMENT

Success of ‘Millionaire’ at the Academy Awards is no surprise ■ The sleeper hit of the year explores timely themes with a sense of optimism.

By BEN STRASSFELD JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

Despite what some experts may say, forecasting the Academy Awards isn’t exactly rocket science; one need only look to last year’s Best Picture victory for No Country for Old Men to see the blueprint for Oscars glory.

Step one: Have a director seriously overdue for Oscar attention (such as the Coen brothers) make a film that combines aspects of great past works with a new, bold direction. Step two: The story should be adapted from a great literary work. (No Country was based on a book by Cormac McCarthy, one of America’s most celebrated writers.) Step three: Throw in some themes that relate to America.

(In No Country’s case, examinations of lawlessness and the West—though, more often than not, it seems to be about race.)

Looking at these criteria, it is obvious that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was the film that was the best or at least most predictable fit to win Best Picture of the Year at this year’s 81st Academy Awards ceremony; the film boasted the long overdue and much heralded David Fincher, director of Se7en and Fight a serious literary Club, pedigree—Button was based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story—and a story about as American as they come—Forrest Gump comparisons are at least true in that way.

Of course, as we all know by now it was not to be for Benjamin Button.

The big winner on Sunday, Feb. 22 at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles was, without a doubt, Slumdog Millionaire. While not wholly unexpected given that it had been scooping up major awards for months, including Best Picture prizes from solid Oscars predictors like the Golden Globes and the Directors Guild of America, Slumdog’s victory still marked a major and unexpected shift for the Academy Awards. In addition to being a movie

by non-American director Danny Boyle that takes place in a non-American setting, the slums of Mumbai, it should also be noted that over a third of the film was spoken in Hindi and subtitled for American audiences, making Slumdog Millionaire the first partly foreign-language film to win Best Picture at the Oscars.

And yet, looking back, perhaps

“

By the time the Oscars had come around, “hope” was the new buzzword.

Slumdog’s victory should not have been such a surprise. To be sure, the film is undoubtedly excellent, a deserving winner and one of the best (though perhaps not the best) films of

Boyle’s impressive directorial career.

However, Slumdog also had something else going for it: It was a film that, though not American, managed to draw upon the current American consciousness better than any American film this year. While Hollywood busied itself with reexamining American suburbia for the hundredth time (Revolutionary Road) and adapting Tony-award winning plays (Doubt and Frost/Nixon), Slumdog was a small film made in India that tapped into the collective and undeniable optimism the country is feeling in the wake of Obama’s election. While it would be silly to claim Slumdog only won because Obama won, there is a definite sense to which the Academy’s choices reflect the goings-on of their particular political era. Likewise, Slumdog’s story of orphan children struggling each and every day to scrape together money and food gained added significance in light of the recent economic collapse.

In this sense, it is little surprise that The Dark Knight, the film everyone was shocked did not get nominated

for Best Picture, was shut out from the major awards save for Heath Ledger’s preordained Oscar win for Best Supporting Actor. While six months ago, with George W. Bush still in office and the world seeming to come unhinged before our eyes as our economy collapsed, The Dark Knight’s extremely gloomy look at the world seemed to reflect the murky world of 2008. Somehow by the time the Oscars had come around, things had shifted and “hope” was the buzzword everyone was talking about—not the anarchic visions of society The Dark Knight so gleefully presents. It is for this reason that Slumdog Millionaire’s victory was perhaps so inevitable, for Slumdog is the perfect Oscars film for America today; hopeful, with a focus that extends far beyond our borders while managing to have a love story that was accessible to all.

And, while this particular win may not signal a shift for the Oscars in future Best Picture races, at least for one year the Academy seems to have gotten it right.

THE JUSTICE

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TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2009

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FILM

‘Two Lovers’ is an intriguing affair ■ The slow-burning drama, which stars Joaquin Phoenix, is poignant and intelligient.

By SEAN FABERY JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

Upon entering the apartment at the heart of director James Gray’s Two Lovers, one visitor notes its “nostalgic” quality. The film itself, if not quite nostalgic, is reminiscent of a more intimate, personal style of filmmaking that we seem to be seeing less and less of as many filmmakers begin to favor more explosive fare.

Joaquin Phoenix stars as Leonard Kraditor, a bipolar 30-something man living with his parents in the aftermath of a broken engagement. We are first introduced to him via a botched suicide attempt, half-heartedly executed on a bridge near his Brighton Beach, N.Y., home. One quickly gets the sense that it isn’t his first attempt.

Leonard seems emotionally hollow, lacking drive and ambition in all aspects of his life. Holding vague pretensions of becoming a photographer, he works in his parent’s dry-cleaning business in the meantime.

Two women enter Leonard’s life—Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), the daughter of his father’s business associate, and Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), his new neighbor. Leonard awkwardly bumbles through his initial encounters with Sandra, perceiving her as something safe and comfortable, essentially an extension of his current existence with his parents. Michelle, on the other hand, is Sandra’s polar opposite—wild, reckless and, like Leonard, terribly self-destructive. Unfortunately for Leonard,

PHOTO COURTESY OF MAGNOLIA PICTURES

PSYCHO SEDUCER: In what is rumored to be his final film role, Joaquin Phoenix plays a disturbed man by the name of Leonard.

Michelle is involved with a married man and views him as a brother.

Leonard turns to Sandra, but he’s not completely satisfied. He still remains at Michelle’s beck and call, hoping for something more while entertaining a romance with Sandra. He’s torn between total destruction and potentially soul-crushing comfort, between the woman who will hurt him and the woman he might hurt.

Just as there are two lovers, two Leonards vie for supremacy, one sub-

BOOK REVIEW

dued and the other exuberant. The latter comes out when he works at his family’s shop and through his benign courtship of Michelle, expressing itself via dance and an intense eagerness to photograph her. The former appears around his family and around Sandra, morose and mumbling. Only when Michelle becomes unattainable does Leonard really commit himself emotionally to Sandra, offering his more joyful side, but even this concession comes into question later.

James Gray, who wrote and directed the film, imbues it with a subtlety and grace befitting its quiet subject matter. The love triangle at the core of the film could easily fall apart into a clichéd romantic melodrama, but Gray never allows this. He clearly respects his audience, refusing to spoon-feed them every little detail; the film is mercifully light on unnecessary exposition, relying on the audience to pick up on subtle clues. The action unfurls slowly; nothing feels

rushed. Gray’s expert direction is complemented by a muted visual palette, exposing Leonard’s limited, virtually monochromatic world.

Two Lovers boasts a strong cast, with Phoenix’s central performance chief among them (hopefully word of his retirement from acting is a hoax).

Despite his almost unintelligible mumbling at times, the audience comes to sympathize with Leonard, particularly in a scene in which he explains the cause behind his broken engagement. Paltrow also puts in a fine performance, giving us a sense of why Leonard becomes so infatuated. The standout member of the supporting cast, however, is Isabella Rossellini as Leonard’s mother. Despite her few lines, she manages to capture the incredibly loving dynamic that exists between mother and son; not a minute of her limited screen time is wasted.

Each performance, like the film’s screenplay and direction, is fittingly restrained.

Two Lovers skillfully portrays a man in romantic conflict, a struggle by extension between heart and mind.

It displays a different view of love, defined by its muted emotions. In the end, it comes down to what’s reasonable, what’s logical, what’s comfortable—which isn’t to say that heart isn’t involved. This isn’t the same presentation of romance that one would find in, say, a Baz Luhrmann film. Rather, it’s a delicate balancing act with a quiet, devastating conclusion that, though clear from a mile away, remains compelling. Two Lovers is a solid film with a simple, beautifully fleshed-out premise. Despite and, indeed, because of its desperate melancholy, the film certainly rates a viewing.

THEATER

‘Fool’ proves humorless ‘Dirty Dancing’ graces the stage ■ Excessive vulgarity mars Christopher Moore’s parody of ‘King Lear.’

By HANNAH KIRSCH JUSTICE EDITOR

The cover of Fool, best-selling author Christopher Moore’s latest effort, warns prospective readers of the vagaries contained therein, including shagging, split infinitives and “the odd wank.” From the beginning, this overly coy warning for the benefit of our virginally pure minds did not bode well.

Now I read 2003’s Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings, one of Moore’s most acclaimed works, which follows marine biologist Nate Quinn through a surreal whale of an adventure. And I loved it. Fluke was hilarious. Fluke was deliciously outlandish.

Fluke had its ribaldry, but every bit of it was tempered with wit and accurate descriptions that make readers snort with laughter in embarrassingly public situations. If Fool were anything like Fluke, the sheer hilarity of it would gloss over every vulgar episode thrown the reader’s way. But as it turns out, Fool is not so much punctuated by the odd wank as it is a continuing spurt of vaguely Shakespearean masturbatory fiction.

In this parody of King Lear, we follow the fool, Pocket, who, we are all too quickly informed, is short of stature but large in areas Pocket seems to find more important. Accompanied by his enormous and perpetually horny apprentice, Drool, Pocket shags and swaggers his way around the set of Lear’s rapidly disintegrating kingdom, alternately tossing around banter and sinking into introspection that will hopefully convince us of the perceptiveness hiding beneath his priapism.

Unfortunately, the constant stream of sex (both consensual and otherwise) and varieties of crude descriptions thereof are only distractions from what are, truth be told, not Moore’s most insightful witticisms. Early on in Fool, we learn from Pocket that “Life is loneliness, broken only by the gods taunting us with friendship and the odd bonk.” This sage observation is about as good as it gets. Furthermore, combining flowery, tongue-in-cheek

Shakespearean description with tired modernisms like “whatever” grows old before it's begun, and no number of retellings of Pocket’s latest conquest of Goneril will save it.

And then there are the footnotes.

Rather than hearkening to the punstuffed works of fantasy humorist Terry Pratchett or the addenda of the late, great footnote master David Foster Wallace, Moore’s footnotes are almost purely didactic. An author attempting an incisive sendup of Shakespeare apparently cannot trust his readers to know what a dirk is, or, in the event that the reader is curious, to break out ye olde dictionary. Plus, the smattering of anachronistic terms amid the archaicisms Moore wishes were obscure makes the clunky footnotes all the more frustrating.

None of this is to say that the flamboyantly foul cannot also be flagrantly fun. T.C. Boyle’s Water Music is as vulgar and as grossly sexual, but has a more persistent undercurrent of sardonic desperation. Everything ever penned by the depraved Irvine Welsh is gritty, crude and brilliant. And Fool has its moments of priapic hilarity.

Fool just misses joining its ilk on that fine line between entertainingly vulgar and just repugnant. Moore would have done well to decrease the general ejaculation frequency (I counted, and the sum was positively Portnoy-esque) and Pocket’s repetition of archaic words describing the not-so-tender act of love (“bonk,” “shag,” and, yes, even the F-word lose their shock value more quickly than Lear loses his mind). He could have replaced them with what were to me the bright spots of the book, the jabs at religion, politics and other dignified pursuits. The requisite three witches are named Parsley, Sage and Rosemary, with a clever riposte available to those who ask about Thyme, and the Crusades get their own winking condemnation; unfortunately, japes of both sorts were constantly overshadowed by the much more dull potty humor.

The conclusion of Fool does achieve some sort of insight into Lear, with the fool becoming more complex and sympathetic and the king less sympathetic and more cruel. But in the end, Moore should leave the Shakespearean introspection to Tom Stoppard and return to a voice more his own.

■ The theatrical adaptation of the classic film was filled with technical marvels.

By WEI-HUAN CHEN JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

It’s hard to imagine how different seeing Dirty Dancing—The Classic Story on Stage is from watching the movie. On one hand, Eleanor Bergstein’s adaption follows the movie very precisely—the script and soundtrack are almost identical and many cast members bear surprising resemblances to the players that appear in the movie. But there is something exciting about witnessing 10 professional dancers simultaneously hoist their legs atop their studly partners’ shoulders in the fiery “Do You Love Me?” number that doesn’t quite happen in the movie.

It’s an exhilarating 1963 summer for Frances “Baby” Houseman, played by the charming Aspen Vincent (at the show I attended, she was substituting for Amanda Leigh Cobb, who usually plays the role). Baby’s family had planned to visit the Catskills retreat for some relaxation, but Baby’s agenda is waylaid when she meets Johnny Castle, played by Josef Brown, and is introduced to an entirely different world.

Castle’s dance partner, Penny Johnson, played by the sleek and gorgeous Britta Lazenga, is knocked up and is afraid that her pregnancy will ruin her and Castle’s performance at the end of the weekend. In an attempt to save their routine, Baby becomes Castle’s new dance partner and secretly sneaks off during the retreat to learn how to dance.

However, her father, who dislikes Castle, discovers Baby’s involvement. The lovestruck Baby fights against her parents’ disapproval and begins her journey as a young woman in this tale of passion and defiance.

To me, though, the plot is trivial compared to the show’s astounding dancing and unbelievable technical work. From the first scene, I was drawn in by the musical’s presentation. The combination of varying scenes of song and dance strung together seamlessly by unnoticeably quick scene changes gives the stage a three dimensional effect that was never in the movie.

The result is complete immersion.

For example, there is a section on the

floor of the stage that rotates. Well-to-do lodgers sit and have light lunch, their tables moving with the platform as the retreat activities director walks slowly past them, keeping up with the platform’s speed. The audience feels as if they are moving with the director, not unlike watching a moving frame of reference.

Speaking of which, the stage is quite a technical achievement. In addition to the rotating portion, a rising platform lies upstage and is used in scenes where the performers are elevated. The two sometimes combine, such as when Baby walks up to Johnny’s room on the rising and rotating platform, giving the effect of her walking up stairs. Drop-down props include colored lamplights used during intimate slow dance scenes and, most impressively, the giant log that Baby and Johnny walk on in the woods.

The centerpiece of the production is a screen behind the stage consisting of 50 LED video panels that project images to accompany the scene while also opening and closing to allow performers and props to move to and from the stage. According to a press release from Lighthouse Technologies, responsible for the display, it is “lit by 200 moving lights and includes more than 200 automation cues with state-of-the-art surround sound.”

Considering the presentation, Dirty Dancing is as much a dance performance as it is a musical. The three leads, Vincent, Brown and Lazenga, do not sing at all, but their performances and choreography—which were directed by Kate Champion, Craig Wilson and David Scotchford—more than make up for the lack of singing.

Vincent, Cobb’s understudy, displayed technical grace even when Baby is meant to stumble. Unlike Cobb, though, Vincent is much shorter than Brown and doesn’t much resemble the film’s Jennifer Grey, causing me to do a double take when she was addressed as Baby. Brown, a leading dancer in The Australian Ballet, flaunts his toned body with perfect spins and steps, giving the show the majority of its sex appeal. He plays Johnny Castle well, though his acting is stiffer than Patrick Swayze’s.

But this is unimportant considering how phenomenal his dancing is. Whoever his partner is, he leads and lifts her with ease while also demonstrating outstanding footwork.

The star of the dancing show, however, is the stunning Lazenga. A former member of the Joffrey Ballet, she has danced leading roles in Snow Queen, White Widow and Hermia. When she makes her first appearance dancing with Brown, her blend of allure and flawless technique locked my attention instantly onto her despite the presence of other dancers. Every move was precise and deliberate, and even though she had high heels on and was taller than all the other female dancers in the show, she maintained perfect balance. It’s a shame her character becomes pregnant; I would have loved to see her dance in more than a few numbers.

As noted, Dirty Dancing is more of a dance performance than a musical play, but the musicians are just as essential in the show. Often a trumpet or saxophone player would accompany the dancers on stage, bringing out the soundtrack with live music. Notable are performances by Ben Mingay and Karen Burthwright, featured singers whose duet in the Oscar-awarded “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” will melt the hearts of any Dirty Dancing fan.

The nonmusical aspect of Dirty Dancing is weak, however. By the middle of the second act, I was so tired of the sappy dialogue that my attention drifted until the next minor dance number came up.

The play drags on until Castle makes an impressive entrance from behind the audience. After saying the famous line “No one puts Baby in a corner,” the audience cheers not only because they recognize the line but also because they’ve been waiting a long time for something exciting to happen. Then again, the final 10 minutes are worth the wait. The sudden explosion of visual and aural stimuli overloaded my senses, and it was not until the cast started taking bows when I noticed that my jaw had literally dropped. It was that good.

So despite the drawn-out plot, Dirty Dancing—The Classic Story on Stage absolutely blew me away. It doesn’t just bring the movie to life, it presents an entirely new perspective of the story--one that focuses on what gave audiences “the time of their lives.”

Dirty Dancing—The Classic Story on Stage is produced by Jacobsen Entertainment and is now playing at the Boston Opera House for a 10-week run through April 12, 2009 before heading to L.A.’s Pantages Theatre.

24

TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2009

●

THE JUSTICE

ARIES (March 21 to April 19) Take time from your busy schedule to check out what’s going on around you. You might find that someone has been secretly trying to pull the wool over those beautiful Sheep’s eyes.

TAURUS (April 20 to May 20) Once again, the Bovine’s boldness pays off in uncovering the source of a disturbing workplace situation.

Your personal life calls for patience, as a certain matter plays itself out.

GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) Forget about going all-out to impress someone in your personal life. Just being yourself is all that matters.

A workplace decision will need more time.

Don’t rush into it.

CANCER (June 21 to July 22) Some supersensitive Crabs might take offense at what they perceive as a slight, but a closer look points to a simple misunderstanding. The weekend holds a welcome surprise.

LEO (July 23 to August 22) Sure, you can roar your head off over someone’s failure to keep a promise. But the wiser course would be to ask why it happened. Be prepared for an answer that might well surprise you.

VIRGO (August 23 to September 22) A developing relationship needs time to find its direction, so please be patient and resist pushing things along. A recently cooled-down workplace situation could heat up again.

LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) Congratulations. Your well-thought-out proposal seems to be working. Someone who hasn’t agreed with you on most things in the past could turn out to be one of your major supporters.

SCORPIO (October 23 to November 21) Things seem to be going well. However, you can still expect criticism—some of it pretty heavy.

ACROSS 1. Information 5. Platoon setting 8. Strikebreaker 12. Enrages 13. “Born in the —” 14. Domesticate 15. Oceans 16. Menace 18. Islamic leader 20. To-do list entry 21. Thailand, once 23. Solidify 24. Name 28. Turned blue?

31. Spelling contest 32. 1988 movie, Without — 34. Go schussing 35. Sailor’s mop 37. Intensify 39. Deity 41. Birthright barterer 42. Restitution 45. Look up to 49. Wolfram 51. Heehaw 52. “Beetle Bailey” dog 53. Common Mkt. 54. Unrivaled 55. Disarray 56. Post- opposite 57. Tolkien’s tree creatures DOWN 1. Platter 2. Vicinity 3. Blue hue 4. St. Francis’ home 5. Small, short-tailed bird 6. Blond shade 7.Stallion’s companion 8. Didn’t blink

But as long as you can back up your position, you’ll be able to rise above it.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22 to December 21) Getting together with people who care for you is a great way to get that ego boost you might feel you need at this time. Things start to look brighter by week’s end.

CAPRICORN (December 22 to January 19) You should be able to continue with your plans once you get past those temporary delays.

Surprise, surprise. An offer to help comes from a most unlikely source.

AQUARIUS (January 20 to February 18) Prioritizing your tasks is important this week because of all those demands you have to deal with. The pressure eases in time for you to enjoy the weekend.

PISCES (February 19 to March 20) Save your energy and stay focused on what has to be done, despite all those distractions you’re likely to face. You should see some evidence of real progress by week’s end.

BORN THIS WEEK: You are a generous, giving person who is always ready, willing and more than able to help others in need.

BRANDEIS

Through the Lens

Solution to last issues’s crossword.

RACHEL CORKE/the Justice

Playtime Potpourri This photomontage by Amy Tsao ’10 hangs in the Dreitzer Gallery as part of an exhibit of artwork by Brandeis students. Viewers may

Sudoku

9. Action accelerator 10. “So be it” 11. Flex 17. Work unit 19. Leaning Tower of — 22. Big fracas 24. Couric’s employer 25. Chop 26. Chemically active substances 27. Pest 29. — out a living 30. Lotsa noise 33. “Zounds!”

36. Beatnik’s drums

38. Hardly conceited 40. Dentist’s abbr.

42. Fermi’s bit 43. Silent 44. Stairway part 46. Press 47. Carry on 48. Spuds’ buds 50. Always, in verse

King Crossword Copyright 2007 King Features Synd., Inc.

■ It was infamous German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche who made the following sage observation: “In individuals, insanity is rare, but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”

■ If you’re like the typical person, you completely regrow your fingernails once every four-and-a-half months.

■ Financial statistics show that 1 percent of the population in the United States owns more than one-third of the country’s wealth.

■ In the 17th century, a Frenchman opened a coffee shop in London and sold chocolate, newly imported from the Americas, for 10 to 15 shillings a pound. That may not sound like much until you learn that at the time the going price of a pound of gold was 20 to 30 shillings.

■ Some species of lizards can lay many clutches of eggs over the course of a number of years after having mated only once.

■ Way back in 1879, the Cincinnati Gazette predicted that the game of baseball had “run its course.”

■ If you’re a fan of fishing, here’s a cautionary tale regarding the weather: A 48-year-old Colombian man named Felipe Ortiz decided (for reasons unknown) to go out fishing in a raging storm. He cast his line into a strong wind, but the line blew back and caused the baited hook to lodge in his throat, killing him.

■ You probably have never heard of the affliction once known as “boanthropy,” but evidently in the 1800s a man thinking he was an ox was common enough to require its own word.

■ In the past 30 years, the size of the average American home has increased by nearly twothirds.

Thought for the Day: “Some people with great virtues are disagreeable, while others with great vices are delightful.”—Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld

Enter digits from 1 to 9 into each blank space so that every row, column and 3x3 square contains one of each digit.

Sudoku Copyright 2007 King Features Synd., Inc.

recognize a favorite candy or cartoon character among the debris, which is a familiar sight in many Brandeis desk drawers.