The Justice: September 1

ARTS PAGE 15

SPORTS Cross country teams highly ranked 12

PAINS OF ART

FORUM Don’t rush to opinions on Israel 11 THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER

the

OF

BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY SINCE 1949

Justice www.theJusticeOnline.com

Volume LXI, Number 2

Waltham, Mass.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

ATHLETICS

PICKING PRODUCE

Future of golf team unclear ■ Team captain Lee Bloom

’10 and Athletics Director Sheryl Sousa ’90 disagreed on the future of the team.

By HARRY SHIPPS JUSTICE EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

According to captain of the Brandeis golf team Lee Bloom ’10, Athletics Director Sheryl Sousa ’90 informed the team that there is a possibility that it could fit back into the University’s budget if the University budget deficit decreases. In response to Bloom’s comments, however, Sousa told the Justice that the budget for fiscal 2010 has already been fixed and will not change.

According to Bloom, Sousa told him that “if the economy improves and the budget deficit decreases, then there is a possibility we [the golf team] could be fit back into the budget.” In contrast, Sousa said, “At this point I have no

information to suggest that that will happen. Our fiscal year 2010 budget has been set up, and at this point there is nothing to suggest that it will change.”

Sousa said that the suspension of the golf program was part of sweeping cuts that were made across the Athletics and Physical Education departments. Last year, led by team captains Aaron Hattenbach ’09, Alex Podell ’09 and Ralph Harary ’09, the golf team raised roughly $25,000 in order to maintain the team for the 2009 to 2010 academic year. In a message to the Justice, Hattenbach wrote, “Reflecting upon the issue as a graduate, I do feel that we established valuable relationships with donors this past year. We succeeded in raising the necessary 21k, and even exceeded this goal by raising a surplus of roughly 5k more.”

Bloom said that the University had not given a definite deadline but that

JULIAN AGIN-LIEBES/the Justice

Campus farmers market Students selected fresh foods at last Sunday’s Brandeis Farmers Market, which was organized last year by Mariah Rich ’10, Nicole Starman ’10 and Samantha Lenard ’10.

See GOLF, 5 ☛

ACADEMICS

ROSE ART MUSEUM

Rose archives under review Library hours of ■ During the review, which

began in December, access to Rose Art Museum-related materials is restricted.

By ALANA ABRAMSON JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

The University has restricted access to all Rose Art Museum-related materials in the Robert D. Farber University Archives and Special Collections until the completion of a review pertaining to a lawsuit filed by three members of the museum’s Board of Overseers, according to the University’s legal counsel, Judith Sizer.

In an e-mail to the Justice, Sizer wrote, “Full access to Rose-related documents housed in the archives will be reinstated when the review has been concluded, subject to any exigencies that may stem from the litigation recently filed against the University.” When asked about such exigencies, she responded in an interview with the Justice that the defense counsel in a litigation process will generally gather all documents potentially pertaining to the

trial in one place to ensure a proper defense of the case.

The lawsuit was filed by Rose overseers Jonathan Lee, Meryl Rose and Lois Foster on July 27 in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachussetts.

The case was subsequently transferred to the Suffolk Probate Court.

The lawsuit states that the University’s decision to close the museum and sell its paintings would violate the museum’s ethical codes and Brandeis’ commitment to the Rose family to maintain the museum.

Sizer explained in an interview with the Justice that there are three types of restricted information: museum records, library archives and internal University records, which relate to donor information and can be traced back to years before the founding of the University.

Sizer said that all three types of the records are crucial to determining donor intent.

“The records from the early years of the University can be spotty. If you’re trying to determine donor intent you need to look at every document you can get hold of,” she said.

The review, which is being conducted by University counsel, began

operation reduced

last December. The museum records were previously stored inside the museum, and Michael Rush, the previous director of the Rose, began photocopying these records last February and delivering the photocopies to the administration. The museum records were transferred to Sizer’s office after Rush left on June 30. The Rose archive materials were also transferred to Sizer’s office in early May. Sizer was unable to provide a date for completion of the review, however, saying that she has not yet determined “the extent of the documents.”

When asked about the review, she responded that it has been proceeding well.

Sizer noted, however, that she would consider providing access to graduate students who want to use the materials in the archives for academic reasons.

“Once we have finished reviewing the documents, we will discuss setting up a process for undergraduates, graduate students and other members of the Brandeis community who may have legitimate needs to review materials,” wrote Sizer in an e-mail to the Justice. Sizer further

■ Both the Gerstenzang

Science and Goldfarb Libraries now close earlier and open later than before.

By DESTINY AQUINO JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

The Goldfarb Library and Gerstanzang Science Library have reduced their hours by eight and 62 hours, respectively, in light of recent surveys conducted by Library and Technology Services.

The Goldfarb Library now closes at 6 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights and opens at noon on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

Previously the Goldfarb Library was open until 8 p.m. on both Friday and Saturday and opened at 10 a.m. on the weekend. After-hours study hall is also no longer available at the library. Additionally, Gerstanzang Science Library is no longer open over the weekends. The money saved from the cut in hours has been used to make improve-

See ROSE, 5 ☛

ments to the libraries and create new programs, some of which are already in effect.

According to Director of Integrated Services at Library and Technology Services Joshua Wilson, the eight hours that have been cut from Goldfarb’s hours only saw between zero and five students use the facilties. Wilson said that monitors at the doors to the library allow library administrators to review these statistics.

“We conduct two online surveys each year. The data gathered from these surveys helps us make informed decisions about the services we offer to the University community, and helps us tailor our services so that they’re as helpful as possible for Brandeis students, faculty, and staff,” Wilson wrote in an e-mail to the Justice.

One of the surveys looks at the IT and library services while the other examines student use of instructional technologies, including Latte, according to the e-mail.

See LIBRARY, 5 ☛

A different lifestyle

Volleyball set to open

More internationals

■ Brandeis students traveled to Palestine to study at Al-Quds University.

■ The volleyball team will start its season tonight at Babson College at 7 p.m.

■ The first-year class includes 130 international students, a 4percent rise from last year.

FEATURES 6 For tips or info call Let your voice be heard!

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

INDEX

SPORTS 12 ARTS

13

EDITORIAL FEATURES

8 7

OPINION POLICE LOG

9 2

SPORTS LETTERS

NEWS 3 10 9

COPYRIGHT 2009 FREE AT BRANDEIS. Call for home delivery.

2

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2009

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THE JUSTICE

NEWS POLICE LOG

AP BRIEF Sen Kennedy remembered for his years in the US Senate WASHINGTON—Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, laid to rest alongside his slain brothers John and Robert, was remembered as a “veritable force of nature”' who worked tirelessly in the Senate for nearly five decades on the causes he cared about deeply.

Crowds lined the streets of two cities on a day that marked the end of an American political era outside Kennedy’s funeral in rainy Boston, where he was eulogized by President Barack Obama, and later in humid, late-summer Washington.

Kennedy, who died Tuesday at age 77, more than a year after he was diagnosed with brain cancer, was buried Saturday on hallowed ground at Arlington National Cemetery. At a graveside enveloped in deepening darkness, Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, archbishop emeritus of Washington, offered sympathies to Kennedy relatives and “an extended family that must probably include most of America.”

Earlier, Obama delivered the eulogy in Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, packed with row upon row of mourners including former presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

“He was given a gift of time that his brothers were not, and he used that time to touch as many lives and right as many wrongs as the years would allow,” Obama said in remarks that also gently made mention of Kennedy’s “personal failings and setbacks.”

As a member of the Senate, Kennedy was a “veritable force of nature,” the president said. But more than that, he was the “baby of the family who became its patriarch, the restless dreamer who became its rock.”

One of Kennedy’s sons, Patrick, wept quietly as another, Teddy Jr., spoke from the pulpit. Teddy Jr. recalled the day years ago, shortly after losing a leg to cancer, that he slipped walking up an icy driveway as he headed out to go sledding. “I started to cry and I said, ‘I’ll never be able to climb up that hill.’”

“And he lifted me up in his strong, gentle arms and said something I will never forget. He said, ‘I know you can do it. There is nothing that you can’t do.’”

Kennedy’s freshly excavated gravesite was on a gently sloping Virginia hillside flanked by a pair of maple trees. His brother Robert, killed in 1968 while running for president, lies 100 feet away. It is another 100 feet to the eternal flame that has burned since 1963 for John F. Kennedy, president when he was assassinated.

Saturday’s events marked the end of four days of public and private mourning meant to emphasize Kennedy’s 47 years in the Senate from Massachusetts and his standing as the foremost liberal Democrat of the late 20th century yet a legislator who courted compromise with Republicans, a family man and the last heir to a dynasty that began in the years after World War II.

Medical Emergency

Disturbance

Aug. 26—A caller in Deroy Hall reported a student feeling nauseous, possibly due to the heat.

University Police and BEMCo responded and found the party conscious and alert. The party was transported to the Health Center

by University Police.

Aug. 30—A party in Hassenfeld Hall reports that he observed a female party who appeared to be extremely intoxicated being taken into a room by an unknown male who claimed to be an EMT. The party became suspicious because the male, who was described as being white with curly brown hair and a medium build, did not appear to be an EMT. University Police responded and then requested BEMCo. BEMCo requested an ambulance, and the party was transported to the Newton-Wellesley Hospital. All units were cleared without any further incident.

Aug. 25—University Police received a call from a Waltham resident who reported hearing fireworks coming from campus.

University Police checked the area around the Cedarwood neighborhood and were told that someone had set off fireworks near the playground.

Aug. 30—A party reports that loud music was “shaking the walls” in 567 South St. University Police responded and reported that there was no loud music, just a loud movie and people talking.

The occupants were advised to quiet down and all units cleared without further incident.

sor in Renfield Hall reported that the refrigerator had been taken from the common area. The CA stated that one of her residents witnessed two black males pushing it down the hallway, possibly staff employees relocating it. University Police compiled a report.

Harassment Aug. 25—A party in North Quad Lot reported two males harassing a student. University Police responded to the suspect’s residence and requested that a community development coordinator be notified. University Police compiled a report and an investigation is to follow.

Vandalism

Larceny Aug. 26—A caller reported the theft of two BlackBerry phones from the field house area of the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center. University Police compiled a report.

Aug. 27—The community advi-

Miscellaneous Aug. 26—University Police responded to a fire alarm at the Rosenstiel Research Center. It was reported that an ethanol fire had started and was quickly extinguished. The Waltham Fire De-

A photo credit in News last week incorrectly identified the photographer who took the picture. David Sheppard-Brick took the photo, not Max Breitstein Matza.

(Aug. 25, p. 1) An article in News last week incorrectly stated the location of New York University’s new institution. The institution is located in Abu Dhabi, not Abu Ghraib. (Aug. 25, p. 5) A photo credit in Sports last week incorrectly identified the photographer who took the picture. Max Breitstein Matza took the picture captioned “Kicking Around,” not Julian Agin-Liebes. (Aug. 25, p. 13)

The Justice welcomes submissions for errors that warrant correction or clarification. E-mail justeditor@brandeis.edu

theJustice 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 Wednesday from 1 to 2 p.m. in the Justice office.

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— compiled by Harry Shipps

Student Union to Focus on Justice Brandeis Semester

An article in News last week incorrectly named a Brandeis professor. The professor’s name is Chandler Rosenberger, not Charles Rosenberger. (Aug. 25, p. 3)

A subheadline in Sports last week was meant to indicate that a new academic year has begun after the departure of Ben Premo ‘09, not that a full calendar year has passed. (Aug. 25, p. 16)

Aug. 29—University Police compiled a report on a possible hit-and-run involving a white Nissan Altima on Charles River Lower Road.

SENATE LOG

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS

An article in News last week misrepresented the details of the new Wiser Plan meal plan. The meal plan and the Dining Dollars included in the meal plan will expire at the end of the academic year, not just Dining Dollars.

(Aug. 25, p. 4)

partment responded, and the University safety officer was called. A report was compiled.

Aug. 27—The Waltham Fire Department responded to an alarm from the Stoneman building and found large amounts of smoke coming from the basement. The Stoneman and Golding buildings were evacuated. University Police and WFD cleared at 9:55 a.m.

Aug. 29—Waltham Police Department requested assistance with a crowd of students on Hammer Street in Waltham. Waltham Police estimated more than 200 people were present. University Police assisted and the party was cleared.

DAVID SHEPPARD-BRICK/the Justice

Settling In The First Annual Move In Market, a sale of lightly used items collected at the end of last semester, attracted a crowd of eager students last Wednesday in the Shapiro Campus Center Atrium.

Student Union President Andy Hogan ’11 announced that his main objective for the Student Union was to provide input and to work with the administration on ideas for the Justice Brandeis Semester, a pilot program scheduled to begin this summer, which brings students to campus for experiential learning.

He said that it was the Student Union’s goal to establish a program that “people would want to give up their summer for.”

Hogan also said that the Union was planning to create a “concerned student listserv” where students could express how they feel about things going on at Brandeis and in the Union.

The Services Committee announced its idea to start a community biking program beyond ’DeisBikes for anyone on campus who wanted to invest in more durable bicycles.

Hogan added that this year the Union Constitution would undergo a review mandated to take place every four years.

Jenna Brofsky ’10 was confirmed as director of community advocacy. Sydney Reuben ’10 was confirmed as director of communications. J.V. Souffrant ’12 was confirmed as the racial minority senator.

During senator reports goals were laid out for the Student Union.

Some senators said that they wanted to get in contact with the environmental sustainability coordinator, Janna Cohen-Rosenthal ’03.

Other senators will focus on getting more parking spots on campus.

The Dining Services Committee said it wanted to alter and improve the meal plan system.

Senator-at-large Rami Abdelghafar ’10 said that he had contacted the chief of the Waltham Police Department in hopes of setting up an event so that police officers could teach students about their jobs.

Mark Zager, senator for the Class of 2012, transferred before the beginning of this academic year, and senator-at-large Asa Bhuiyan resigned Aug. 30.

— Alana Abramson and Harry Shipps

ANNOUNCEMENTS Social Justice Leadership Series, Part 1 Attend a lecture and discussion with Dr. Kevin Bales, one of the world’s leading experts on modern slavery and human trafficking. In this Social Justice Leadership Series inaugural event, Bales will share the ideas and insights that can finally lead to slavery’s extinction and that will engage the Brandeis community in an enlightening discussion, not only about his groundbreaking work in the antislavery movement but also about the unique path that led him to be an outspoken abolitionist. Wednesday, Sept. 2 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in Olin-Sang Auditorium. For more information, e-mail hbend@brandeis.edu.

President Reinharz Holds Office Hours President Reinharz will be available to meet with students for approximately 10 minutes per student on a first-come, firstserved basis. Please call (781) 736-3001 on

the scheduled date to confirm that no changes have been made. Friday, Sept. 4 from 2 to 3:30 p.m. in Irving 113.

Experiential and Community-Engaged Learning Informational Workshop Students interested in learning more about experiential learning, communityengaged learning or opportunities at Brandeis to “learn by doing” can attend this event to learn more or pose questions.

Today from 7 to 8 p.m. in Shapiro Campus Center 313. For more information, e-mail grady@brandeis.edu.

Study Abroad Info Session This information session is designed to give you an overview of the off-campus study process at Brandeis. Topics to be discussed include tips for researching programs and destinations as well as information pertaining to the application process and financial aid. Attending a gen-

eral information session is mandatory for students wishing to study abroad for the semester or academic year. Tuesday, Sept.

8 from 4 to 5:55 p.m. in Usdan Student Center, Room 122. For more information, call the Office of Study Abroad at (781) 736-3483.

BOO First-Year Panel First-years looking to get an insider’s perspective on social, religious and academic life at Brandeis can come meet a panel of experienced upperclassmen who will share a wealth of knowledge and advice. Upperclassmen are encouraged to attend as well to meet the first-years. This event is sponsored by the Brandeis Orthodox Organization. Wednesday, Sept. 2 from 8 to 10 p.m. in the basement of Shapiro Residence Hall. For more information, e-mail zglasenb@brandeis.edu.

THE JUSTICE

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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2009

3

ORIENTATION

Number of international first-years rises ■ The proportion of

international students in the first-year class increased by 4 percent from last year.

By HARRY SHIPPS JUSTICE EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Almost 130 new students participated in last weekend’s International Student Orientation compared to last year’s figure of 78, said Director of the International Students and Scholars Office David Elwell.

The international students were part of a first-year class that included 910 first-years as well as 60 transfer students, according to an email from Jennifer Abdou, the orientation programs specialist. Last year, 78 international students were part of a first-year class of 754; This year, the number of international

students within the entire first-year class has increased by 4 percent. The number of international students is far greater than in any year in the past decade, said Elwell.

Mark Levi ’12, an international student from Turkey, attributed the rise in the number of first-year international students to the climbing admittance rate overall. “I am assuming that because of the financial crisis, … generally the admittance rate increased for the U.S. and international students,” he said.

Christine Chen ’12, an orientation leader who had two international students in her AIDE group, said that she thought the increase in the number of international students might be evidence of Brandeis’ efforts to bring more diversity to the University.

International students began arriving on Friday, Aug. 21. According to Elwell, the international students who arrived early took part in early

orientation programs focused on the needs and challenges of students arriving from other countries before taking part in the general New Student Orientation, which began Sunday.

International students had the option of participating in a reception for students and families Friday evening as well as making a trip to Target to purchase various items, among other orientation events. On Saturday, students participated with their international AIDE groups in a program geared toward the experiences and challenges of being international students, according to the International Student Orientation schedule.

According to Abdou, international students “are provided an International Orientation Leader for those two days [Friday and Saturday] and then goes with his/her assigned Orientation Leader and meets the rest of his/her AIDE (Advise In-

tegrate Develop Educate) group starting on Sunday.”

Elwell said that during International Student Orientation, the International Students and Scholars Office addresses “the immigration … and legal parts [of being an international student] and also [incorporates] parts on cultural adjustment. … A lot of it is very similar. All new students are adjusting to college, but [international students] have some of the add-on of someone who may not have been to the United States before whose first language is not English.”

Along with the 89 OLs, these students took part in new events such as “the Tunnel of Oppression, which allowed students to read, listen, and view different types of stereotypes and oppression that exist around the world in safe space and then discuss what they saw, read, and listened to with their Orientation Leader and AIDE group members. … Associate

ACADEMICS

CROWN CENTER CONFERENCE

Brandeis establishes Univ learning goals ■ The goals will be tailored

to individual departments over course of this year.

By MIRANDA NEUBAUER JUSTICE SENIOR WRITER

JULIAN AGIN-LIEBES/the Justice

Trouble in the Middle East Dr. Naghmeh Sohrabi, assistant director for research at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, was one of the three panelists who discussed current issues pertaining to conditions in the Middle East last Thursday at Rapaporte Treasure Hall.

ACADEMICS

DCC comes together for first meeting ■ The Dean’s Curriculum

Committee had its first meeting on Wednesday and will now meet twice weekly.

By MIRANDA NEUBAUER JUSTICE SENIOR WRITER

The Dean’s Curriculum Committee focused its discussions on faculty affiliations, the formation of curriculum committees for every academic department and the possibilities of streamlining majors at its first meeting last Wednesday, according to Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe.

All three issues will be under further discussion at a department chairs’ meeting this Thursday, according to an e-mail Jaffe sent to the faculty. Committee member Prof.

Jane Kamensky (HIST) suggested that faculty affiliation guidelines “would formalize and recognize some of the ways faculty already participate in each other’s units.” She said the committee talked about ways department chairs could recognize the service of affiliated faculty in their annual performance reviews.

The committee also discussed rules for low enrollment courses and the reevaluation of the Curriculum and Academic Restructuring Steering committee’s departmental faculty target sizes and reviewed the success of the effort to increase the “efficiency” of the overall curriculum, according to Jaffe’s e-mail.

Jaffe explained that the committee

is an advisory group that aims to help implement ways to continue delivering the curriculum with fewer faculty members as recommended by the CARS committee. “It’s not a committee with handbook or legislative authority,” Kamensky said. She added that the committee would routinely offer summaries of the meetings, which will take place every two weeks.

Last year, the CARS committee recommended that faculty should increasingly teach classes in departments outside their own to counteract the negative effects of a smaller faculty. CARS also recommended that departments form curriculum committees to help create three-year curriculum plans under both the old and new target faculty size. In addition, CARS suggested that departments re-examine whether the curricula for majors and minors can be more flexible.

Jaffe wrote that he will discuss a possible policy for increasing the workload of faculty who are not contributing on all three dimensions of scholarship, teaching and service with the Faculty Senate. In addition, he will discuss revamping of the teaching of statistics with the relevant departments, dually listing courses in the course schedule in more than one department or program with the University Registrar and examining the Independent General Education Requirement with the Student Union and the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee.

Kamensky said she thought that eventually, “one of the DCC’s roles

Dean Jamele Adams gave an energetic and informative diversity discussion titled ‘The Beauty, Balance, and Challenge of Diversity,’” wrote Abdou. These events went along with events that are always included in New Student Orientation, such as the Academic Overview and the Values Program.

Abdou wrote in an e-mail to the Justice that “Orientation collaborates with the International Student and Scholars Office to create a comprehensive program for the international students.” The program includes “sessions on academics at Brandeis, adjusting to US culture, [and] working in the US.” Chen said that the challenges of working with international students varied. She had one student who chose to spend more time with people from his country than with the AIDE group, but another international student attended all the events during orientation with the group.

would be helping to mediate among departments if the Department Curriculum Committees come up against each other” about how to split a faculty member’s time between two departments, for example.

Drawing on her own experiences, Kamensky noted that she currently teaches as a core faculty member in the Women’s and Gender Studies program. “I don’t get reviewed by Women’s Studies. We don’t have that mechanism, … so it would be wonderful if, … in addition to writing a page each about the faculty members whom I chair in history, I also wrote about the wonderful service that [faculty from other departments] render to our graduate program,” Kamensky said Student Union Director of Academic Affairs Supreetha Gubbala ’12 said her role as a student representative on the committee was very important. “[Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences Elaine Wong] or [Jaffe] will turn to you and just ask you, ‘Where do students stand on this?’ and a lot of times that happened when we were discussing the CARS recommendations,” she said.

Gubbala said that she pointed out at the DCC meeting that the “streamlining of major and minor requirements would be something that affected students right off the bat.” She added that she thought the IGER would be important to first-year students working on fulfilling their requirements.

“It was very useful to have a student perspective on which of these relatively arcane issues was and wasn’t important,” Kamensky said.

The University will undertake an effort this year to formulate curricular and cocurricular learning objectives based on a framework of campuswide learning goals crafted by the Committee on Assessment of Student Learning to meet the accreditation guidelines of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, University Provost Marty Krauss said.

This year, the administration will continue its discussions with the various community members it consulted in drafting the learning goals about how to tailor the goals to specific academic departments or other University departments such as Athletics or the Hiatt Career Center, Krauss said. Eventually, programspecific goals could go in the University Bulletin so that students can have a better idea of what they would learn from a major, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Michaele Whelan said. Krauss noted that the languages and the sciences already engage in assessment.

As part of the University’s reaccreditation by the NEASC in 2007, representatives from NEASC visited Brandeis at the end of 2006. They compiled a report in spring 2007 on the University based on their visit and a self-study completed by the University administration. The NEASC report noted that “Brandeis does not have a systematic, broadbased and integrated approach to assessment of student learning.”

Among the many standards the association requires is that the institution “develops the systematic means to understand how and what students are learning and to use the evidence obtained to improve the academic program.” NEASC requires that Brandeis submit a fifth-year interim report in 2011 before a comprehensive re-evaluation in 2016.

In its self-evaluation, Brandeis reported that student learning assessment already occurs through interactions between teachers and students during grading and exams as well as when faculty members respond to student concerns. The University report also noted a required course sequence in the pursuit of some majors and stated that the consultations among faculty in smaller departments can function as a form of assessment, with course evaluations and the senior survey also playing a role. The self-study concluded that “assessment of student learning at Brandeis is uneven and incomplete.”

Krauss formed the Committee on Assessment of Student Learning in

the spring of 2007, which consisted of University faculty and staff.

Krauss said that the committee consulted with many organizations, including the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, the Committee for Support of Teaching, department chairs, Academic Services, the Hiatt Career Center, Athletics, senior administrators and as the Board of Trustees, in addition to looking at information from other institutions.

The committee became very interested in discovering “what is it we want our students to learn,” committee member Prof. Dan Perlman (BIOL) said.

The final document on the Brandeis Web site published last Monday states that “a Brandeis education combines core skills, knowledge and social justice.” The document further breaks down each of those three points with subitems such as communicative, quantitative and critical thinking skills and the ability to engage in research, intellectual flexibility and intellectual creativity.

Because of the upcoming NEASC interim report, the implementation of the new Universitywide learning goals and the assessment of student learning “is not a choice; it’s really something that we need to do,” Krauss said.

After articulating goals, finding the evidence to assess their fulfillment is often difficult, Krauss said, asking as an example, “What kind of evidence would you use to determine whether or not you become a better critical thinker because of your time at Brandeis?” She said, “You just can’t say that a Brandeis education will develop critical thinking skills. … You have to be able to say how you know that.”

Perlman said the effort was about “trying to understand in a systematic way how much of a difference we’ve made in our students’ understanding and skills and knowledge” Krauss said that plans to familiarize the community with the goals included the distribution of bookmarks and a banner on the Shapiro Campus Center. Whelan added that there would be talks with the Student Union about establishing a student subcommittee of the Committee on Assessment of Student Learning in order to continue to get student input on the assessment effort.

Staff from the Provost’s Office also presented the proposals to Roosevelt Fellows last year.

“I thought it was a very interesting idea to make your University experience structured in a certain way,” Roosevelt Fellow Nadir Daudi ’10 said. “I still think there is a lot of work that can be done with it, because just sort of encompassing students’ four-year experiences here on a piece of paper is a little difficult to do.”

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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2009

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THE JUSTICE

SIGNING ON

STUDENT LIFE

Citizenship model set to be reviewed ■ Student Union members

will work over the year with administrators to overhaul the student conduct system.

By HARRY SHIPPS JUSTICE EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Director of the Department of Student Rights and Community Standards Dean Gendron will create a campuswide committee to conduct a yearlong review of the student citizenship model, including the Student Rights and Responsibilities handbook and the Student Conduct System.

Gendron said that the committee, which will be formed in the near future, will include both undergraduate and graduate constituents. Both Gendron and Dean of Student Life Rick Sawyer said that the Department of Student Rights and Community Standards would be collaborating with the Student Union and the Office of Student Rights and Advocacy, as well as other groups on campus. Student Union President Andy Hogan ’11 confirmed that he had been in contact with both Gendron and Sawyer over the summer.

Sawyer said that a full review of the student conduct process and the judicial process has not taken place for 25 years and that it would be, “professionally and community-wise, remiss not to review it periodically.”

“We’re beginning the conversation [by discussing and looking at] the conduct process; that’s really the focus of the exercise at this point,” said Gendron. He added that he thought the conduct process could not realistically be dealt with separately from the Rights and Responsibilities because so much of the conduct process overlaps with that document. He said that as changes are made to the conduct process, corresponding changes will likely have to be made to parts of the handbook.

Gendron said, “The next collection of conversations will be about the constituent groups who are represented on this campuswide committee … to make sure that we are identifying the voices that need to be heard.”

Gendron said that the committee would aim to explore the ways in which conflicts on campus are resolved and possibly change and expand upon the procedures currently in place. He mentioned the possibility of mediated resolution either by professionals or trained students as a prior option to formalizing the issue.

When asked how the committee would conduct its review, Sawyer deferred to Gendron, but said, “I imagine it would be a matrix and combination of simply reviewing what we have with the committee; I’m sure they will want to learn about the historical factors that went into our current process. … I bet you they will examine what other schools are doing. I bet they will have almost like Senate hearings.”

Gendron said that any changes that were made would not take effect this year but would most likely be in place at the beginning of the next academic year.

When asked what he hoped the committee would accomplish, Hogan said that “the goal is to make the process simpler on all parties.” Gendron added, “I will be perfectly satisfied if we come to some agreement about the contemporary nature of the process, whether or not the process is accomplishing the goals that it is set out to do.” Gendron is aware that the committee might come to the conclusion that the process warrants no changes, but he is also prepared for a situation in which the committee advocates sweeping changes to the process.

—Nashrah Rahman contributed reporting

Students get active Members of The Girl Effect, a club dedicated to helping impoverished women around the world, plugged their organization to Walid Sharif ’12 at the Student Activities Fair Sunday evening. Brandeis club members advertised to prospective members at the fair.

ACADEMICS

AP BRIEF United States braces for the return of swine flu WASHINGTON—The alarm sounded with two sneezy children in California in April. Just five months later, the never-before-seen swine flu has become the world’s dominant strain of influenza, and it’s putting a shockingly younger face on flu.

So get ready. With flu’s favorite chilly weather fast approaching, the United States is going to be a sick nation this fall. The big unknown is how sick. One in five people infected or a worst case—half the population? The usual 36,000 deaths from flu or tens of thousands more?

The World Health Organization predicts that within two years, nearly one-third of the world’s population will have caught it.

“What we know is, it’s brand-new and no one really has an immunity to this disease,”Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says.

A lot depends on whether the swine flu that simmered all summer erupts immediately as students crowd back into schools and colleges—or holds off until millions of vaccine doses start arriving in midOctober.

Only this week do U.S. researchers start blood tests to answer a critical question: How many doses of swine flu vaccine does it take to protect someone? The answer will determine whether many people need to line up for two flu shots—one against swine flu and one against the regular flu—or three.

The hopeful news: Even with no vaccine, winter is ending in the Southern Hemisphere without as much havoc as doctors had feared, a heavy season that started early but not an overwhelming one. The strain that doctors call the 2009 H1N1 flu isn’t any deadlier than typical winter flu so far. Most people re-

JULIAN AGIN-LIEBES/the Justice

cover without treatment; many become only mildly ill.

We’re used to regular flu that, sadly, kills mostly grandparents.

But the real shock of swine flu is that infections are 20 times more common in the five- to 24-year-old age group than in people over 65.

That older generation appears to have some resistance, probably because of exposure decades ago to viruses similar to the new one.

Worldwide, swine flu is killing mostly people in their 20s, 30s and 40s, ages when influenza usually is shrugged off as a nuisance.

Especially at risk are pregnant women. So are people with chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes, heart disease and neuromuscular diseases, including muscular dystrophy. Some countries report more deaths among the obese.

“People who argue we’re seeing the same death rates miss the point —they’re in young adults. To me, that shouldn't happen,” said one infectious disease specialist, Dr. Richard P. Wenzel of Virginia Commonwealth University.

Children, however, are the flu’s prime spreaders. Already, elementary schools and colleges are reporting small clusters of sick students. For parents, the big fear is how many children will die.

Panicked crowds flooded India’s hospitals in August after a 14-yearold girl became that country’s first swine flu death. In the U.S., regular flu kills 80 to 100 children every winter, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reports of about three dozen child deaths from swine flu.

Even if the risk of death is no higher than in a normal year, the sheer volume of ill youngsters means “a greater than expected number of deaths in children is likely,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat.

New practicum options available ■ The practicum courses

incorporate real-world experience with base academic material.

By NASHRAH RAHMAN JUSTICE EDITOR

New two-credit experiential learning practicum courses that can be taken in conjunction with fourcredit experiential learning base courses are being offered this fall.

Academic Administrator for Experiential Learning Audra Grady explained that “[an experiential learning base course] is just like any other course, but it uses an experiential learning model incorporating practice and reflection that is integrated with the course content. A two-credit practicum is an additional option that you can add on top of a four-credit course that requires an additional amount of work.”

Students can choose to take an overall six-credit option, which incorporates a mandatory two-credit practicum as chosen by the professor or a two-credit addition of their own choice with a learning base course.

The proposal to create a new twocredit experiential learning practicum course was presented by former Academic Administrator for Experiential Learning Adi Grabiner-Keinan, Profs. Laura Goldin (AMST) and Tim Hickey (COSI) and passed by the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee last semester.

The University currently offers 50 or more experiential learning courses, some of which require an additional three to five weekly hours of hands-on experiential components, according to the UCC Web site. Prior to the creation of the two-

credit practicum, students did not receive credit for undertaking additional work. “[The two-credit practicum] was created to … provide an outlet for students … to have deeper learning or develop more skills in a particular area or focus,” Grady said.

“As we’ve been doing more and more experiential learning, students have been looking for a way to get official acknowledgment for the time thatthey spend on experential aspects of these courses. ... [This] will allow us to recognize officially when these activities are occuring,” Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe said.

Grady explained that students will receive one letter-graded credit for the six-credit option and two letter-graded credits for the two-credit addition option. She added that the six-credit option and the two-credit addition option count toward the required 128 credits for graduation.

However, Grady clarified that it is up to the discretion of the individual departments whether a six-credit option or a two-credit addition option can count toward a particular major or minor.

Goldin, who is teaching a sixcredit option called “Greening the Ivory Tower: Improving Environmental Sustainability of Brandeis and Community” and a two-credit addition course called “Environmental Law and Policy” this semester, said that she had added a fourth period to “Greening the Ivory Tower” last year.

Goldin said that, in the past, students completed the additional hour—despite not receiving credit for it—because they were passionate about the subject.

“Before, I was very reluctant to give too much more work, but now I can really make some things that have been optional mandatory, and

I feel like I can let the course blossom to what it should be rather than limiting the assignments or limiting the hours,” Goldin said.

The two-credit addition option, “Environmental Law and Policy,” which is not fully developed yet, will allow students “to do additional legal research and be involved in the city council process that has to do with the redevelopment of a big site in Waltham with all kinds of landuse law issues,” according to Goldin.

The option will have separate seminars and requirements for papers and presentations if taken with its associated learning base course.

Grady said that the six-credit Experiental Learning practicum and 12-credit experiential learning Justice Brandeis Semester are similar options. “I think the JBS is going to offer … a more intensive experience. … I think the JBS is still developing, so we’re going to see what comes out of that and what the faculty are going to offer.”

Ellen Abramowitz ’11 enrolled in “Greening the Ivory Tower” before it was designated a six-credit class because of its community-engaged learning component. She was notified by e-mail of the change over the summer while abroad on vacation.

Abramowitz said that she appreciated the fact that Brandeis will recognize the extra work that is required by experiential courses.

Abramowitz added, “I think it’s also helpful for applying in the future, like when I have to mail off my transcript for scholarships or internships or even grad schools eventually. They’ll see that this class is six credits, and that will obviously show that you put in a lot of time and effort into it.”

—Miranda Neubauer contributed reporting.

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GOLF: ROSE: University archives under review Team in limbo CONTINUED FROM 1

CONTINUED FROM 1 the team was told that it needed to raise enough money to endow the team within the first couple of years; however, Sousa said that the University has not officially asked the golf team to raise the money to endow the program.

“It’s the golf team that has the initiative to endow the program, and if they were to do that and follow through with that, there would be no reason for us to suspend it, but they haven’t been asked to do that by the University,” Sousa said. According to Sousa, endowing a team involves collecting enough money through specific gifts to be put in an investment account and earn income. The team would then be run off the income raised. The cost of endowing the golf team is between $300,000 and $400,000, Sousa said.

Much of the $25,000 raised in the last year was given by alumni, family and friends of team members, said Bloom.

Bloom added that family and friends accounted for a small percentage of the funds, so he expected that the team would have to rely heavily on alumni to raise the much larger sum needed to endow the program.

Bloom said that he hopes that either the team will receive enough money to endow the program this year or that benefactors will effectively endow it by pledging to pay the $20,000 dollars every year for the next 10 years. He said that the team is focusing on alumni but has not yet decided how to contact them. Bloom said that he assumed they would do something similar to their fundraising effort for this year: send a letter that explains the situation and asks for help or donations.

Sousa indicated that the University was unwilling to allow the golf team to continue to operate on a year-by-year basis because of the amount of planning involved in running a varsity sport and the difficulty of recruiting prospective students to a program that is in limbo, saying, “All the planning … needs to be done ahead of time. …

You’re competing against other universities, so you have a commitment to set your schedules up at least a year in advance and in terms of making arrangements and travel arrangements and that sort of thing.”

Head coach Bill Shipman said, “The plan is, they were given one year, they saved the money for one more year thanks mostly to the players who were on the team, and after that they would have to raise enough money to continue the team for some time.”

Brandeis has indicated that the swimming and diving program will be eliminated at the end of this year.

Sousa said that the situation differed from that of the golf team as the University’s decision to suspend the swimming team was due to the failure of the Linsey pool. “If the pool were still operating in a proper way, we would not be looking to suspend our swimming program,” she said.

Sousa said that the annual operating costs of the swimming program were between $100,000 and $150,000, but added, “At this point it’s not about their annual operating costs. It’s about … how difficult logistically and how challenging it is to run a program in magnitude of a varsity swim program off-campus. It’s just really taxing on everyone involved.”

Both the men’s and women’s swimming teams are currently fundraising in an effort to raise “as much money as possible,” according to men’s team captain Jesse Hershman ’10. The teams are selling Nike-brand Brandeis apparel and plan on contacting alumni and holding more sales over the course of the year.

Women’s swim team captain Siobhan Lyons ’10 said that to her knowledge the swim program will be cut at the end of this year. She added that although the teams are fundraising, the University has given them no concrete dollar figure or deadline to aim for.

explained in the e-mail that the Justice would be able to access documents, but that access would not be exclusive to the Justice.

University Provost Marty Krauss referred all questions about this matter to Sizer.

Sizer added that the review is necessary because the University needs to obtain all information possible before making any decisions regarding artwork from the Rose.

Jonathan Lee, the chairman of the Rose Board of Overseers and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said the administration’s decision to restrict access to the archives served as an indication that they had something to hide.

“I think it is all part of the duplicitous conduct they have been engaging in since their decision to sell off

the art. They made a poor decision and have behaved poorly to protect that decision,” said Lee. Lee said that he personally had never attempted to access anything from the archives. Although Lee said his status as a plaintiff prohibited him from saying which specific documents he would choose to access from the archives, he was careful to note that the decision to restrict access would not hamper the litigation process, explaining that the process involved a methodology called the discovery process, which can enforce disclosure of documents.

Fred Hopengarten, a lawyer related to the Rose family, said in an interview with the Justice that he first attempted to access information from the archives last April and that he tried again in May, June and July. He said he was particularly

interested in obtaining a copy of the 1969 trust created by Edward Rose for the art museum.

A letter from Abraham Sachar to Edward Rose that accompanied and referred to the trust agreement has been incorporated into the lawsuit.

In that letter, Sachar writes that Edward Rose and his wife, Bertha, have “made a magnificent art facility available and … are providing permanent maintenance and support.” However, Hopengarten said that he has been unable to access a copy of the trust itself.

Hopengarten said that in June, he received a response from Sizer saying that she was optimistic that she would be able to reply during the summer, but during July she notified him again to say that she doubted there would be answers for him in July.

“Tomorrow is Sept. 1, and I still

have no substantive response,” said Hopengarten, adding that Karen Abramson, the chief of the archives, told him that she no longer had responsibility for these archives and directed him to Sizer.

Prof. Mark Auslander (ANTH) wrote in an e-mail to the Justice that he was previously unfamiliar with the restriction regarding the archives. Although he stressed that he did not know enough about the situation to provide a substantial comment, he wrote that he believes the archives are invaluable educational resources because many of his students have benefited from them, and he hopes they will become available again soon.

— Hannah Kirsch and Nashrah Rahman contributed reporting.

ARABIAN NIGHT

DAVID SHEPPARD-BRICK/the Justice

Magic Carpet Ride Brandeis first-years and returning students took part in the belly dancing that took place at last Tuesday’s Magic Carpet Ride event on the Great Lawn. Music, tarot card readings and henna tattoos were among the other activities available at this Middle Eastern-themed orientation festival.

LIBRARY: Libraries’ hours of operation reduced CONTINUED FROM 1 The decision was made by LTS as a whole but was recommended by Wilson. Wilson said in an interview with the Justice, “We wanted to decrease hours by a minimal amount that would cause the least amount of harm to students while still leaving funds that would be created by this decrease available to allocate to much cooler and useful things for students overall.”

The increase in available funds from the decrease in hours has been used to increase LTS Help Desk hours, which have grown from 63 hours per week last year to 78 hours this year. LTS has also now implemented on-the-spot computer repair at the Help Desk.

LTS has also used the newly available funds to create a pilot laptop program. The program includes 12 new laptop stations in the upper mezzanine of Goldfarb that each fea-

ture a power outlet, monitor and mouse for use with students’ own laptops.

As a result of additional funds, in mid-October LTS will install laptop lockers that allow students to charge and safely store their computers while they study in the library. A small number of laptop power cables and accessories for Mac and Dell laptops will also be available to students around the same time.

Two new scanners have been also been installed in the Goldfarb Library commons. Students can now print from their laptops directly to library printers.

“The library is definitely a place where students can go to shut themselves out from the distractions that college life has to offer and focus on their work. It is not crippling to me but definitely unfortunate,” said Adam Cohen ’12.

“Most weekdays it’s really the same hours, so I think that if the

JULIAN AGIN-LIEBES/the Justice

REDUCED ACCESS: Cuts in Goldfarb Library hours freed funds for other projects.

University’s going to cut something, then a couple hours a week isn’t too terrible,” said Laura Hand ’11, who works at the circulation desk.

Hannah Janoowalla ’10 said that

“sometimes, even when it closed at 8 … that was too early for me.”

— Shana D. Lebowitz contributed reporting.

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THE JUSTICE

features

VERBATIM | Bruce Barton When you're through changing, you're through.

ON THIS DAY...

FUN FACT

In 1959, Sandy Koufax set a National League record by striking out 18 batters.

It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

A glimpse of life behind the wall

BENJAMIN HABER/Flickr Creative Commons

SEPARATION WALL: A large Palestinian-Israeli checkpoint seperation wall much like the ones Garrett Nada ’10 and Jared Hirsh ’10 had to pass through on their way to Al-Quds University in Abu Dis.

Students visit Al-Quds University and bond with Palestinian peers

By GARRETT NADA and JARED HIRSH SPECIAL TO THE JUSTICE

As we reach the checkpoint, we are overcome by the sheer size of the structure before us. There is a 50-foot concrete wall covered in graffiti reminiscent of Cold War Berlin; it’s complete with guard towers, floodlights and barbed wire. Our Palestinian friends, Hasan Odeh and Sinan AbuShanab, attempt to dispense some lastminute guidance about how to successfully navigate the checkpoint and get back to the Israeli side of the border. We pass through a series of enclosed catwalks, ramparts, steel doors, metal detectors and airport-style security. Crossing late at night, no one else is around except for the few soldiers who are checking us. We feel vulnerable as we are waved through layer after layer of security, talking to voices coming from loudspeakers and cameras. We show our passports twice and have our belongings checked before we finally make it to the other side.

In May 2009, we visited the West Bank as part of the Brandeis-Al-Quds Partnership. This Ford Foundationsponsored program featured the first Brandeis undergraduate visit to AlQuds University. We traveled to AlQuds with two fellow Brandeis students, Claire Cooper ’11 and Holly Devon ’11, under the leadership of Assistant Provost of Graduate Student Affairs Alwina Bennett and Vice President of Global Affairs Daniel Terris.

We stayed in Palestine for 10 days, experiencing life as students at Al-Quds: attending classes, taking part in academic workshops, meeting with faculty and administrators and traveling to Ramallah, Jericho, Bethlehem and East Jerusalem.

The Brandeis-Al-Quds Partnership is designed to help build a Palestinian civic institution and provide educa-

tional opportunities for students, faculty and staff at both universities. The program educates the campuses about the advantages of cooperation, goodwill and understanding.

While the faculty of Al-Quds was anxious to teach us about academic life, our Palestinian peers gave us another kind of education. They wanted us to experience Palestinian society as they experience it. They wanted us to understand their unique challenges under occupation by showing rather than telling. We followed our friends through the West Bank, crossing checkpoints, talking with locals, sampling local cuisine, drinking coffee in Palestinian homes and talking about politics and the future over water pipes.

Each morning we left our hotel in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem for the 40-minute commute to Abu Dis, where the main campus of Al-Quds is located. Having to leave hours before classes start is a common Palestinian experience. Students at Al-Quds told us that their ability to take an exam or attend a lecture was often dependent upon the mood of Israeli soldiers at the checkpoints.

Passing through checkpoints, we noticed that sometimes we were waved through with minimal scrutiny and at other times were subjected to lengthy examinations and searches.

We soon learned that many of the student activities we took for granted at Brandeis took on a decidedly different flavor at Al-Quds. Unlike student elections at Brandeis, which are generally non-partisan and do not reflect national parties or interests, the student council at Al-Quds works much like the Palestinian parliament. Candidates running for student council more often represent national issues than campus issues and align themselves with political factions such as

Fatah and Hamas. During election periods, tensions run high and the administration must remain vigilant against the threat of violence between students to prevent disruption of university activities.

Political rivalries were close to the surface during our visit when Hamas announced it had decided to boycott the elections. Relying on our Arabic training at Brandeis, we read political slogans, posters and speeches with words such as “freedom,” “unity” and “resistance.” For students at Al-Quds, it is difficult to escape the intersection of national politics and education.

Like Brandeis students, students at Al-Quds care deeply about issues of social justice. Al-Quds houses the an extensive museum documenting the plight of Palestinians in Israeli prisons. The Abu Jihad Museum for Prisoners’ Movement Affairs explains the conditions facing some of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners. While the museum led us to feel sympathy for Palestinian prisoners, we felt conflicted knowing that some of the prisoners had been arrested for committing or attempting to commit terrorist acts. Others in the museum had been detained for merely disseminating political pamphlets or attending protests. We learned that many of the students and faculty at Al-Quds had family in prison or had been detained themselves. Even the president of the university, Sari Nusseibeh, spent time in an Israeli prison for his political activism.

During our stay at Al-Quds, the university took us on a tour of the Old City of Jerusalem. While both of us had visited the Old City on multiple occasions, the tour organized by the Jerusalem studies department of AlQuds was unlike anything we had ever experienced. We walked down many of the same streets that we had seen on

PHOTO COURTESY OF JARED HIRSH

UNITY DESPITE DIFFERENCES: Garrett Nada ‘10, left, and Jared Hirsh ’10, center, spending time with two Palestinian friends they made at Al-Quds University. previous visits, but seeing the city through Palestinian eyes was to see it anew. Our guide, an Afro-Palestinian, pointed out the homes of Palestinians killed during the First and Second Intifadas, as well as Palestinian homes taken by settlers and a market destroyed by a grenade attack.

A particularly special part of our experience was the relationships we developed with Palestinian students.

These relationships put a human face on the challenges confronting Palestinian society. Sinan Abu Shanab gave us a personal tour of his hometown of Bethlehem. We wandered through ancient streets plastered with political posters and visited the Church of the Nativity. Hassan Odeh guided us through the bustling thoroughfares of Ramallah and showed us what it means to live as a Palestinian refugee by taking us through the Qalandiya refugee camp. On one of our days off, after a morning at the Dead Sea, we helped prepare a traditional Palestinian feast with students and administrators from Al-Quds in Jericho.

Hasan Odel explained to us that before our visit to Al-Quds, “there was a

normal feeling of fear in the lack of understanding the other or the inability to deliver the information correctly.”

However, after sharing common experiences with Brandeis students, he felt “we were able to overcome this, and we [understand] each other more.”

Although we had spirited debates, particularly in the Al-Qudssponsored discussions of liberty and society, we learned that we had more important roles to play as observers of Palestinian life. We were there to learn and observe, not to serve as peacemakers. With this mindset, we were able to cast our preconceptions of life in the Middle East aside and allow our Palestinian hosts to show us their society. It was equally important for us to show our Palestinian peers that there are Americans and American Jews willing to listen and learn about the situation from their point of view.

Due to this feeling of mutual understanding, as we crossed the security barrier for the final time, we could not help but think that we had successfully broken down barriers to our own understanding of Al-Quds University and Palestinian society.

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Road to radiance Phront helps raise money to get electricity for a village in Peru

Brandeis a cappella sings for the Sacred Valley

By REBECCA KLEIN JUSTICE EDITOR

For 22 hours a day, the village of Socma, located in the Sacred Valley of the Peruvian Andes, runs merely on sunlight. But for two hours, after the sun goes down and the moon goes up, Socma is illuminated.

Since early August, thanks in part to money raised by the Student Philanthropic Front, Socma has access to electricity for the first time. The electricity will allow the rural village, which is home to approximately 48 families, to open an emergency medical center and give children a chance to study at night.

Phront, co-founded by Julian Olidort ’11 and Robin Lichtenstein ’11 in the fall of 2008, is a student group at Brandeis that helps match student activism with fundraising.

“Essentially we elect a cause for a semester, and we do our best to fundraise for them and achieve a tangible impact,” Olidort said.

Alex Ball ’09 initially had the idea to help bring electricity to Socma and wrote up his plan in a proposal he submitted to Phront. Ball learned about Socma’s difficulties through his work with an organization called Rustic Pathways, a group that does community service with high school students in underdeveloped regions.

Ball had been to Socma, a village that only recently gained the title to its lands from its Spanish owners, several times before he realized how much the village could benefit greatly from electricity, he explained.

“I was [at Brandeis] trying to raise money by selling scarves and hats [for Socma],” Ball said. “It was the day [Phront was] having their initial [proposal] meeting, and I found out about it like 10 minutes before. … I went up and did an awful presentation but got really lucky.”

Lichtenstein said that although Alex had been working on the project for some time, it needed more fundraising.

Ball said that months ago, before Socma had any prospects of gaining electricity, Socma residents found an electrical pole and carried it up a mountain to their town. To him, the villagers’ willingness to bring back the pole demonstrated their determination to develop their community. “[Due to poverty, communities in the Sacred Valley] haven’t had access to electricity or drinking water. They also don’t have a middle school or high school, so I was really inspired [to help them],” Ball said.

The Peruvian government is currently undertaking a national rural electrification project to help bring electricity to villages like Socma. Because of the project’s significance, the mayor of Urubamaba, the region in which Socma is located, agreed to match whatever funds Ball, Rustic Pathways and Phront raised.

“Alex was very connected in the whole project because he was working with Rustic Pathways, high school volunteers and the Peruvian government, who matched our numbers,” Olidort said. “[The government] sent over the people who installed the generators [through the] rural electrification company of Peru.”

However, Ball explained that working with the Peruvian government was not an easy process, as they caused several problems and often made false promises. Nevertheless, news that electricity was installed came at perfect timing.

“About three weeks ago during their yearly celebration [to commemorate] receiving the title to their land, they finally got the light switch on,” Ball said. “It was a really special day in the community and turned out to be a huge success.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF ROBIN LICHTENSTEIN

A CAPPELLA-OFF: VoiceMale performs in a first-year residence hall.

PHOTO COURTESY OF ROBIN LICHTENSTEIN

NEWLY ELECTRIFIED: The village of Socma, once inhabited by the Incans and located in the Sacred Valley of the Peruvian Andes, is home to about 400 people.

PHOTO COURTESY OF ROBIN LICHTENSTEIN

SUITING UP: Even in cold weather, Voices of Soul performs in bathing suits.

PHOTO COURTESY OF ROBIN LICHTENSTEIN

CHILDREN OF THE VALLEY: Children of Socma use their newly provided electricity to study at night. The village only uses electricity for around two hours a day.

Yet electricity in Socma is still used very minimally. “[Socma] is in the mountains, but it’s also in a valley, so there’s a period of time before the sun goes down when the moon goes up, and that’s when the children want to be studying. They use the lights for an hour or two at night," Ball said.

Ball explained that before they had electricity, residents of Socma would some times use battery-powered lights. However, batteries are more expensive than generator powered electricity and therefore less efficient for the community.

Phront helped raise money for the project through several events. They first went dormstorming with several other groups, including Tron, the men’s ultimate Frisbee team. They also held a candygram sale as well as a “social night” at Biagio Ristorante and Bar in Waltham. Finally, they had an “a cappella-off” in which five a cappella groups competed in first-

year residence halls.

Ultimately, Phront raised $1,435.86 in two to three weeks.

Still, Ball worries that the electricity project will encourage Socma to become dependent on the support of international organizations.

“It presents some problems in my mind, because our concept of development with electrification, ... and sponsoring it with outside funds ... creates some problems with dependency,” Ball said.

In the future, Ball still plans to work with villages in Peru and hopes to help build a high school dormitory for young girls in an indigenous community in Peru.

Olidort nevertheless stressed the positive impact electricity will have on Socma.

“It’s essentially their key to education, medical attention, international and even national relations,” Olidort said. “Really basic things they didn’t have without electricity.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF ROBIN LICHTENSTEIN

SINGING FOR A CAUSE: Manginah joins the effort to help Phront.

Phront helped raise money to get the impoverished village of Socma electricity in several ways. First, members went dormstorming to try and solicit money from students. They also had a candygram sale, in which people could buy candy and have it delivered to friends. There was also a “social night” at Biagio Ristorante and bar. At the social night, campus bands as well as groups from Boston performed. Finally, they had an “a capella-off” in which five a capella groups competed for money in firstyear residence halls.

“It’s really the Brandeis community that helped us do the fundraising. ... Everyone’s money was collected,” Olidort said.

Each semester, Phront chooses a cause to support with fundraising efforts. Causes are chosen from proposals that fellow students present. Last semester, Phront helped fundraise for three subgroups of the Waltham Group.

—Rebecca Klein

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THE JUSTICE

the Justice Established 1949

Brandeis University

HANNAH L. KIRSCH, Editor-in-Chief J OANNA SCHORR, Senior Editor ANDREA FINEMAN, Managing Editor ANYA B ERGMAN, SHANA D. LEBOWITZ and DAVID SHEPPARD -B RICK, Associate Editors NASHRAH RAHMAN, News Editor REBECCA KLEIN, Features Editor REBECCA B LADY, Forum Editor IAN CUTLER, Sports Editor JUSTINE ROOT, Arts Editor SARAH BAYER, Acting Arts Editor JULIAN AGIN -LIEBES and MAX B REITSTEIN MATZA, Photography Editors B RIAN N. B LUMENTHAL, Layout Editor B RIAN FROMM, Copy Editor B RAD STERN, Acting Advertising Editor

Rethink cutting library hours The University’s decision to shorten library hours is exceptionally disappointing. The newly reduced hours for Gerstenzang Science Library—11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays and closed on weekends—disadvantages students, as does closing the main library at 6 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and at noon on Saturday and Sunday. This does not agree with the University’s assurances of its commitment to the experience of its academic community.

Brandeis has been remarkably considerate of the student population throughout its difficult financial situation. Despite the numerous budget cuts, students have been put at a minimal disadvantage. The University has chosen to consult the student body when dealing with significant decisions, such as those of the Curriculum and Academic Restructuring Steering committee. But implementing reduced library hours runs contrary to the interests of not only all Brandeis students but also the general public, including faculty and alumni with limited hours to spend visiting the libraries.

The vast majority of students, especially undergraduates, do not operate on a classic 9-to-5 workday schedule.

Therefore, it is unreasonable to expect students to be able to use Gerstenzang Science Library during its precious few open hours. Students typically attend classes during daytime hours.

Last year’s hours—9 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Monday to Thursday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday, and noon to 11 p.m.

Saturday and Sunday—permitted stu-

Prioritize student needs dents to use the library for nighttime and weekend studying. The loss of a valuable study location as well as important resources for research— particularly the textbooks in the science library—limits students’ options and inconveniences them.

The reduction of the main library’s hours also poses problems. Although fewer people generally use the library weekend mornings and evenings, early risers, focused weekend studiers and those who simply appreciate peace and quiet do not have a single library on campus to use during their desired hours. Students should have as much access as possible to books, research materials and other resources.

Additionally, although the rationale for cutting hours was to redistribute the money saved to purchasing useful tools for the library, the University should find a solution less academically harmful, such as shutting off lights and electricity at night while the library is closed.

Moreover, Library and Technology Services offers a large number of positions, compared with other job providers on campus. Eliminating working hours puts library staff and students who need to make money at a serious disadvantage.

We urge the University to reinforce its commitment to the academic experience by reconsidering its decision to cut library hours and guaranteeing the best possible study and work environments for all students.

Hasten Rose archives review We understand the legal and practical necessity of the University’s review of Rose Art Museum archive materials and documents in the museum and in the Robert D. Farber University Archives and Special Collections. The pending lawsuit from three overseers of the Rose and the possibility of art sales means that Brandeis must examine documents that may be legally pertinent.

However, considering it has been eight months since students have had full access to the archives, the handling of this review could be altered to ensure a positive experience.

While it is perhaps in the University’s best legal interests to sequester Rose-related documents, photos and video until the review is completed, the administration should take steps to shorten this period. Since December, the University general counsel Judith Sizer has conducted this review largely without assistance.

Each day Ms. Sizer operates without additional aid prolongs the period of time the archives are off-limits to interested graduate or undergraduate students. With the University’s educational mission in mind, the administration should consider additional hires—of undergraduate or graduate students, if possible, in addition to outside assistance—or internship positions to help conduct the review and hasten the restoration of as much of the archives as possible to the public eye. And the sooner the review is complete, the sooner the University coun-

Information should be public sel can commit more time and energy to the Rose lawsuit itself as well as other pressing issues and day-to-day University legal goings-on.

Furthermore, while we acknowledge the legal rationale behind not making a public announcement of the review, we urge University officials and the archives to formulate a response to applicants for access to materials. An agreement on the precise wording still has not been reached, and in the meantime those seeking access to materials have received only vague responses. It is in the University’s own interests to form a concrete policy in order to avoid bad faith from the public.

And while it is in the University’s best interest to keep under wraps any documents useful to its defense in the current lawsuit brought against them by a group of Rose benefactors, it contradicts the archives’ mission to “preserve and make available permanent records of historical, legal, fiscal, administrative, and research value to the Brandeis community and to provide a useful information service to its members and the general public.” A greater ideological question is raised: to what degree can information be sequestered because of legal interest?

Journalists and graduate students have been denied access to Rose-related materials in the Farber archives for the past eight months—and the legal firestorm surrounding the Rose doesn’t promise to clear up any time soon.

A. ELI TUKACHINSKY/the Justice

Time to prep for H1N1 Hillel

BUECHLER AND SO ON

H1N1 is out there, continuing to infect thousands of people worldwide. It will eventually get to Brandeis. And we’re simply not prepared to block the potentially crippling effects of a campuswide outbreak. But we could be.

If a quarter of the student population became infected, they’d cancel classes and beg us to please stay in our rooms. It’d be chaotic and hazardous, especially to those students and professors who have higher risks of complications. And with the way things are going internationally with the H1N1 virus, we could get to that point. But that doesn’t really worry me at the moment. What worries me is how the University will deal with those first two or three infected students. That’s going to be critical. If we can keep isolated cases of H1N1, well, isolated, then we’re set. But the current University guidelines aren’t going to accomplish that. It’s really nice that we have some new hand sanitizer dispensers around campus. And it’s great that the Health Center sent us an e-mail about washing our hands. But these things alone won’t prevent an outbreak.

Our campus seems somewhat secluded, but with every passing day and weekend the odds increase that some students venturing through the greater Boston area will be exposed to H1N1 and generously bring it on campus for sharing. And once that handful of students on campus have flu symptoms, it’ll be up to them to decide whether to stay in their rooms as much as possible or head out to that really, really important class. So right now, it’s up to the University to make sure that those first few students remain the only few students and ensure that they choose to stay in their rooms.

Ideally, students with H1N1 should temporarily go home or be housed in one building while ill. But Brandeis students come from all over the country and the world, so going home is quite implausible. And there probably aren’t many buildings on campus available to house the sick. (Or perhaps the pool could be used for something once again.) So let’s stick with trying to keep sick students in their rooms. To do that, we’re going to need some initiative on behalf of the University.

The Health Center’s Web site lists the first symptom of H1N1 as a fever “lasting 3-5 days.” And under the section, “What to do if you have flu symptoms,” aside from resting and taking medicine, the Web site mentions that we should avoid public activities for at least five days.

There are several major problems with that current “plan.”

First of all, are we supposed to wait until we’ve had a three-day fever until we decide that we have the flu and then commit ourselves to isolation? That wouldn’t work. It’s not like you wouldn’t have the flu the first two days. It’d be much safer to take the logical precaution and urge any student with a significant fever to stay away from others, but that isn’t easy. There’ll need to be incentive for sick to students to stay in their rooms.

But as students, we have two basic needs: good grades and good food. To get those things, we need to leave our rooms. So as of now, staying inside only has disincentives.

The Center for Disease Control’s H1N1 Web site makes the following recommendation to colleges and universities to help keep flu cases isolated: “Review and revise, as needed, policies, such as student absenteeism policies and sick leave policies for faculty and staff, that make it difficult for students, faculty, and staff to stay home when they are ill or to care for an ill family member,. [sic] Do not require a doctor’s note to confirm illness or recovery.” That needs to get done. Professors must be prepared to send PowerPoint slides and class notes to anyone claiming to have a fever, and even the strictest instructors should offer makeup exams and assignment extensions, no questions asked. Students need to have specific assurance from the University that flu isolation will not kill our GPAs. The CDC also recommends separating ill students from their roommates. And if that isn’t possible, we should have surgical masks ready for ill students with roommates, as the CDC also recommends.

And the CDC also poses the idea of bringing meals to sick students. An August New York Times article mentions that many schools already say that their dining services would do this. We need to make sure that we’re one of them.

Last week, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology publicly released its official report on H1N1.

According to that report, the pandemic should peak around mid-October. With every passing day and week, we only increase our chances of joining that pandemic. The University should immediately get to work on creating and implementing a better H1N1 defense plan. We can’t wait until mid-October to get serious about this. We need a better plan—now.

OP-BOX Quote of the Week “It's essentially their key to education, medical attention, international and even national relations.”

—Julian Olidort ’11 on the benefits electricity brought to the Peruvian village as a result of fundraising by the Student Philanthropic Phront.

(See Arts, page 21)

Brandeis Talks Back How do you feel about the newly reduced library hours?

EMIILY HERMAN ’12 “To be honest with you, I didn’t know. I haven’t been to the library yet this year.”

NATE ROSENBLUM ’10 “They’re reduced?”

ABBY ARMSTRONG ’13 “I had no idea they were reduced.”

YANG ZHANG PH.D. ’14 “As a new student here, I don’t have any experience using this library.”

THE JUSTICE

READER COMMENTARY More Jewish donors to Brandeis should give donations anonymously In response to your article “Kalman lawsuit settled” (News, Aug. 25): First, it is sad that this required litigation. How is it possible that Brandeis officials would not have offered to do something substantially similar to this in the first place, if not before being asked, then certainly after?

Second, why is it that so many donors to Brandeis place such high importance upon buildings bearing their names? I think this is especially ironic and unfortunate given the largely Jewish alumni base, because charitable gifts that are both requested and given nonanonymously are considered among the lowest forms of tzedakah [charity]. Where are the noble Shapiros, Kalmans, Roses and others who will make contributions that are unsolicited, anonymous and/or given largely or totally free of conditions and stipulations about how they are to be used (most especially for nonbuilding purposes)?

I realize it may be unfair to place this burden upon Brandeis’ Jewish donors, but as an American Jew I find it to be a distasteful black mark on American Jewry that, when given the opportunity and the means to be philanthropists, we seem to want to ensure that everyone knows how generous we were and to force the recipients to conform to our dictates about how it can best be put to use.

A comparison of the University’s large physical plant (with almost entirely name-bearing buildings) and its relatively paltry general endowment illustrates this point alarmingly well. I look forward to a time that more donors hop on the anonymous train.

—Michael Schakow M.A. ’01

Brandeis should not forget its most generous and respectable donors As one of Julius Kalman’s relatives, I believe that Brandeis should have offered to do something similar to this in the first place. It angers me that only with the threat of litigation, which they probably would have lost, did they finally agree to do the right thing.

I can’t help but think of other generous donors whose donations have been “forgotten” because they didn’t have descendants who were able stand up to Brandeis and/or other institutions and demand the continual recognition of their generous ancestors.

Julius Kalman was a modest man who chose to live a quiet life based upon his high moral standards. Certainly he could have spent his wealth on grand homes, expensive vacations and so on and so forth. He also could have left his fortune to his family. Instead he defined his family and responsibilities as that of future generations and wanted to enable Brandeis students to have the opportunities to learn and achieve in the sciences.

For that he should be highly praised, memorialized and looked up to as an inspiration to us all.

—Bonnie Rosenthal

Online education can potentially improve the status of the University In response to your article “University should not begin to consider online education” (Forum, Aug. 25): I had my doubts about higher education online—until I became involved in it professionally.

I have taught online graduate courses for three years, and I find that my students, spread over North America and beyond, work hard, learn a great deal and consistently meet and exceed my rather demanding expectations.

Comparison to the for-profit University of Phoenix is a classic straw man argument. No one is proposing that Brandeis become a diploma mill.

The opportunity to offer a limited number of courses taught by Brandeis faculty members to students who cannot attend a full-time residential program for four years can enhance the University’s reputation, broaden the student body (online students are often older and more experienced, and they are likely to live far from Waltham) and perhaps provide needed revenue. All of that is consistent with the University’s mission.

In a world in which “if you are not virtual, you are not real,” an online teaching component might even be a necessary expansion of the University’s activities.

—Peretz Rodman ’75, M.A. ’83

Write to us

The Justice welcomes letters to the editor responding to published material. Please submit letters through our Web site at www.thejusticeonline.com. Anonymous submissions cannot be accepted. Letters should not exceed 300 words, and may be edited for space, style, grammar, spelling, libel and clarity, and must relate to material published in the Justice.

Letters from off-campus sources should include location. The Justice does not print letters to the editor and op-ed submissions that have been submitted to other publications. Op-ed submissions of general interest to the University community—that do not respond explicitly to articles printed in the Justice—are also welcome and should be limited to 800 words.

All submissions are due Friday at 5 p.m.

●

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2009

9

Disorientation for the Class of ’13

By EITAN COOPER

JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Imagine you are a vending machine. You have happily spent your entire life in the dark and quiet basement of an office building. You know the ins and outs of the place— what time the boss eagerly comes down to eat, which of your buttons he pushes and even which secretaries are cheating on their diets. You are fond of all of the food products that you house.

But one day, some big movers with green uniforms unplug you, wrap you up, empty out all of your candy and move you a few hundred miles away to the roof of a brand-new skyscraper. They give you a whole new set of diverse candies but tell you not to worry because these new treats are here to help you.

They want to make this transition as smooth as possible. They want to see you succeed.

And in truth, you know this massive skyscraper has a better view and is the right place for you.

But in those first few weeks of living in your new home, all you want to see is your old boss in that basement. You don’t really care about the new candies. You want your old outlet, and you miss your old bags of chips terribly. You feel pretty disoriented.

Sound familiar?

A few days ago, I calculated that I could recognize and name roughly 1,000 people including family, friends and even celebrities. And this week at “orientation,” I met approximately 200 new Brandeisians. So, in effect, I attempted to stuff 20 percent more names and faces into my head in a matter of days. Can you imagine gaining 20 percent of your total weight in a few days? What about growing 20 percent taller? Unfathomable.

Yet here at Brandeis University we constantly insist on pushing our brains to the limit. We met OLs, CAs, TAs, UDRs, deans, professors, Roosevelt Fellows, academic advisers, faculty advisers, health services representatives, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and maybe, if we were fortunate enough, some plain old, run-of-the-mill, average Joe people.

Orientation is about getting both feet firmly planted. It’s about feeling completely comfortable with the people and places around

MAX BREITSTEIN MATZA/the Justice

A WHOLE NEW WORLD: First-years congregate on the Great Lawn for a barbecue to kick off orientation. you. Truth be told, I don’t really think that a week is enough time to orient us to the Brandeis community. Don’t get me wrong: I thought that this week was a very valuable experience. We got to know the campus, learned a few people’s names, familiarized ourselves with the system and got used to our twin extra-long beds. The OLs did a superb job at making every single first-year feel as comfortable as possible. They unpacked our cars, picked us up from our rooms and lovingly shepherded us everywhere. We never felt like we didn’t have a place to be—which anyone who has ever been in a brand-new environment can attest is one of the main causes of homesickness. Their “orientation” was a total success. However, no one found his niche completely. No one can really say that he has both feet firmly planted. No one was truly “oriented.” But this was to be expected; we are all human.

So why is this week called “orientation?”

Brandeis Class of 2013, welcome to disorientation: the week during which your life completely changes, and you are given a new

home, a new set of friends and a new day-today existence.

But really, sometimes disorientation is a great thing. We need to have disorienting experiences in our lives; otherwise, we would be like that vending machine, remaining with the same boring bags of chips. New settings are intimidating, but they force us to step out of our little “basements” and view the world from a new and exciting perspective.

So if I have taken away anything from this jam-packed week of lectures, lawn games and luaus, it is that all four years at Brandeis will be about orienting ourselves, not just the first week. But for now, we should be excitedly disoriented. For as the former first lady and Brandeis professor Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.’”

Study the issues, then speak out on Israel Rebecca

BLADY MAELSTRÖM

On the evening of June 3, 2009, American teenagers swarmed the bars of downtown Jerusalem. Amid the remains of beer bottles and hookah, the kids were not in the best condition for their impromptu interviews about recently-elected President Barack Obama with American filmmaker and journalist Max Blumenthal. Out came the statements that instantly flooded the Jewish blogosphere and even appeared on the pages of the Israeli newspaper, the Jerusalem Post: “I don’t know politics, but he’s a sh*thead.”

“He does care about Jews, and he does care about the Arabs. The thing is he doesn’t understand that this country is ours.”

“He’s not from the U.S. He’s like a terrorist.”

It’s easy to label these kids as idiots. It’s also easy to write off Blumenthal as a poor journalist portraying the predictable actions of “drunk racist white kids,” as Ta-Nehisi Coates did in the The Atlantic magazine. But Blumenthal’s YouTube sensation (officially titled “Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem on the Eve of Obama’s Cairo Address”) invites some more serious discussion.

It’s not uncommon for a Brandeis student to travel to Israel. Whether for the first time or the 40th time, all of us embarking on the 6,000mile journey need to bear in mind who and what we represent. Now more than ever, it’s time for us to educate ourselves and consider other perspectives in order to form substantial opinions. Because of its political interests in Israel, America plays a large role in the Israeli

The opinions stated in the editorial(s) under the masthead on the opposing page represent the opinion of a majority of the voting members of the editorial board; all other articles, columns, comics and advertisements do not necessarily. For the Brandeis Talks Back feature on the opposite page, staff interview four randomly selected students each week and print only those four answers.

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Fine Print

mindset. As its citizens, we must be honest with ourselves about what we do and do not know and be careful when expressing passion without reason—here or abroad.

Some Brandeis students have echoed this sentiment, citing experiences with peers on either end of the political spectrum. Leah Silver ’12 recalled an experience with a classmate on the night Obama was elected. “Why don’t you like Obama?” Silver asked her classmate. “Well, he’s just not good for Israel,” the classmate responded. The two proceeded to engage in a circular argument. Silver told me, “It was clear she grew up in a background that said, ‘You have to believe this,’ but never got a foundation for it.”

More generally, Anna Drapekin ’12, who spent her summer at a secular university program in Israel, said in an e-mail interview about students on our campus, “Brandeis students are different from the students in the video in their opinions. They are similar to them, however, in that their claims are callow and poorly supported. Just like the students in the video they are ill-informed. It has become a trend and fully expected for Brandeis students to support the far left opinion no matter what.”

These two anecdotes represent just two perspectives of the Brandeis community on American-Israeli politics. With such a diverse Jewish community, students visiting Israel will represent a variety of the many facets of American Jewry. Emily Diamond ’12 said about her yearlong experience on a Conservative Jewish American post-high school program, “People were able to change their opinions and rethink them in seminars and lectures.”

On the contrary, Alison Uliss ’12 said, “We didn’t really talk about politics.” She and Rebecca Erenrich ’12 both attended women’s seminaries in Israel, where, as Erenrich

The Staff For information on joining the Justice, write to justeditor@ brandeis.edu.

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT NEWS: Harry Shipps

explained, “Only a handful knew stuff about politics.”

Drapekin relayed a different experience with her peer group. “These individuals were, therefore, Zionists, and they were well informed. With this in-depth understanding, they often and confidently disagreed with President Obama’s current decisions concerning Israel. They, however, unlike the students in the clip, were able to articulate their thoughts and, in an un-inebriated manner, explain thoroughly the reasons for their opinions.”

Why bring up these varied accounts of experiences in Israel? Because each one—seminary, yeshiva, academic year courses, summer courses—has a notable a presence on campus, probably more notable than you’d immediately think. Although Waltham is fairly far removed from Jerusalem, people will turn to campus Jews in order to integrate another perspective into their knowledge of Arab-Israeli politics and American-Israeli relations. “Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem” is not limited to Jerusalem.

Truth be told, alcohol or no alcohol, without a proper foundation to your passionate argument, you’re just as idiotic as those kids.

Brandeis students will continue to participate in yearlong, summerlong and weeklong Israel courses and programs, immersing themselves in Jewish texts, tradition and culture.

Yes, Israel is holy, and it’s amazing and beautiful, and yes, the drinking age is 18. But it’s also full of people who care deeply about their land on an intellectual level. No matter your experience, the point remains the same: Reason before you rush to state an unfounded opinion.

Israel is a place to party, but first it’s a place to think and learn. Regardless of your level of inebriation, an opinion on something so sensitive and easy to misinterpret requires some preliminary thought.

STAFF Senior Writers: Miranda Neubauer, Jeffrey Pickette, Melissa Siegel Senior Illustrator: A. Eli Tukachinsky News/Features Staff: Alana Abramson, Destiny Aquino, Sam Datlof, Irina Finkel, Reina Guerrero, Ruth Orbach Forum: Richard Alterbaum, Hillel Buechler, David Litvak, Zachary Matusheski, Ethan Mermelstein, Eileen Smolyar Arts: Wei-Huan Chen, Sean Fabery, Rachel Klein, Emily Leifer, Wei Sum Li, Daniel Orkin, Alex Pagan, Shelley Shore Photography: Rebecca Ney Sports: Sean Petterson Copy: Ariel Adams, Jacob Chatinover, Emily Kraus, Lauren Paris, Joyce Wang Layout: Karen Hu, Kathryn Marable

10

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2009

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THE JUSTICE

SPORTS MEN’S SOCCER

Coven thinks team will have new look

■ Coach Mike Coven spoke

about the men’s soccer team’s new strategy for the 2009 season.

Men’s soccer coach Mike Coven is entering his 37th season at his position. Coven spoke with justSports about the upcoming season last week.

The Judges open the year Saturday in the Adidas Kick-Off Classic at Wheaton College.

JustSports: There are numerous positions up for grabs on this year’s squad. Have any particular players impressed you in the preseason?

Mike Coven: We got a group of guys coming back who are going to play on a fairly regular basis, and they look pretty good. The problem is that some of the guys who I feel will be regular players have been hurt and really haven’t participated all that much in preseason. … You are right when you say there are a lot of positions open, and we have our first game on Saturday. You know it’s going to go right down to the wire [when making the starting lineup] on Friday night to see who is healthy and who is not.

JS: Your team has eight new rookies this season. How have they done thus far in integrating themselves into your system? Do you foresee any of them making an instant contribution in their first season?

MC: Oh yeah, definitely. Come Saturday, we will have minimum three freshmen starting. I think Joe Eisenbees ’13 has been one of our better players. Lee Russo ’13, who has been playing up top—he can play in the midfield, too—has been great. As of late Matt Kingsley ’13 has been playing great. He came in very strong, but then he had a tight hamstring, and we didn’t want him to pull

it, but now he’s been back. [It’s early in the week], but if I had to put a starting team on the field tomorrow, those three would be starting.

JS: Your team faces a tough pair of opponents:Rutgers-Newark University and the University of Southern Maine at the Sept. 5 and 6 Adidas Kick-Off Classic at Wheaton College. How have you been preparing for the opening back-to-back games?

MC: You know, back-to-back games don’t scare us. I don’t know [these opponents] since we haven’t played either of these teams. I know that Rutgers-Newark won their ECAC tournament for their region last year, which is a tough region, so I think they will be very good. Southern Maine I know is a good team. They had a couple of kids graduate last year, but I think they will be very athletic. Again, I’m just trying to see who I want for our top 11 players and who our top three or four subs are. It is difficult just because we haven’t yet been all able to play together. It is hard, to be honest with you. Right now I’m not worried about these two teams, I’m more worried about us, just getting us in shape and finding out who is going to play early in the season and who can’t.

JS: The soccer team fell short of the postseason last year. What does the team need to change to make it this season?

MC: The last two years, it has come down to the final game of the year: the game against New York University. If we had beaten them the last two years, we would have made the [Eastern College Athletic Conference Championships]. You know we need to become a better team. Obviously we need to defend a little better and attack a little better. [Last season] we gave up lots of games that we were up 1-0, we let a goal slip in, or two goals

XCOUNTRY: Men’s squad ranked 13th CONTINUED FROM 12

MAX BREITSTEIN MATZA/the Justice

THE FRIENDLIER SIDE OF THINGS: Men’s head soccer coach Mike Coven smiles and waves during one of the Judges’ preseason practices last week. slip in and we would lose or end up with a draw when we should have won the game. … We didn’t have a balanced scoring attack; everybody was just looking for [Ben Premo] ’09 to score. [The rest of the team] kept giving him balls when he was covered by two or three players. The teams we play, we have a very difficult schedule, and every team would double- or even triple-team him, and it made it impossible for him to score.

I think this year without [Premo] we will be a better all-around team. I am hoping to get a lot more players involved in the attack so teams won’t

be able to defend against us as easily as they did the last two years.

JS: One last question: I’ve heard a rumor that [University] President Jehuda Reinharz is a soccer fan. Do you think you would have a spot for him in your lineup?

MC: Well, you know, it’s pretty competitive. So he has got to get out there. He missed a couple sessions, so he’s behind the eight ball right now.

He has got to get out there and prove to me he can play.

—Sean Petterson

room to improve but still is respected in the cross country community.

Brandeis is ranked ninth in New England and expects that its standing in a tough region will translate into successful late-season meets.

“We’re one of the top contenders in our league and our region, and as long as we stay healthy, I think we’ll do well throughout the season,” captain Beth Pisarik ’10 said.

The Judges started off very well last season, defeating Bentley College in its opening meet and then taking third place of 41 teams at the UMassDartmouth Invitational, but the team struggled at the UAA Championships, finishing seventh of eight teams.

Brandeis fared well at the New England Division III Championships, however, taking 13th place out of 39 teams. Marie Lemay ’11 highlighted the team’s performance at the regional championships by improving her placement in the six-kilometer-run by 60 places. Lemay took 41st place in the race after finishing 101st in her rookie season the year before.

This year, the women’s team will also strive for higher goals.

“We’re always going for UAA title, but I guess we’ll see how far we can go once we start competing,” Alyssa Pisarik ’12 said. “We have really high hopes this year.”

The men’s and women’s cross country teams will open the season against Bentley College Friday at 3 p.m. Last season, the men’s team defeated Bentley in a 19-42 decision while the women’s team beat the Falcons in a 2041 decision.

THE JUSTICE ● TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2009

AP BRIEFS

ROOKIE TO LOOK FOR

Mets’ Figuerora, Brandeis alum, strikes out 10 in win at Chicago

Alex Kramer ’13 ■ The rookie cross country runner looks to continue his success from high school and claim the chance to continue a Brandeis legacy.

The expectations for rookie cross country runner Alex Kramer ’13 are larger than those for other first-year athletes.

Kramer has bigger shoes to fill.

The Massachusetts native has the opportunity this season to become the third consecutive Brandeis runner to win the University Athletic Association Rookie of the Year honor: Marc Boutin ’12 earned it last season, and Mekonen Gendebo ’11 did so the year before.

“He can be someone that can contribute and maybe keep the UAA Rookie of the Year award in our name,” teammate Paul Norton ’11 said.

“I want to contribute to a team that should be very good,” Kramer said in an email to the Justice. “If the season goes well, my goal is to be the top freshman at the NCAA meet.”

As a runner for North Andover High School in North Andover, Mass., Kramer won the New England Indoor Championships in the one-mile run and set a meet record in the outdoor division’s two-mile run.

For the Judges, Kramer will race in the one-mile run, the 3,000-meter run and the 5,000-meter run.

Kramer said his training this summer has been “extremely consistent” and that he looks forward to continuing to improve with his new teammates.

“It has been great having such a good group of runners to train with every day,” he said. “That has helped me become much stronger.”

—Ian Cutler

Judging numbers

2

consecutive Eastern College Athletic Conference titles won by the women’s soccer team.

The No. 2 Judges defeated No. 4 University of New England Nov. 16, 2008 for the championship.

11

games last season in which women’s soccer starting goalie Hillary Rosenzweig ’10 allowed zero goals in a game.

The Judges were 10-0-1 in games in which Rosenzweig shut out her opponent.

22

postseason appearances for men’s soccer head coach Mike Coven. The Brandeis coach is entering his 37th season at the helm of the men’s soccer team.

30

years that women’s soccer coach Denise Dallamora has been coaching at Brandeis.

5

new members on the volleyball team who are expected to play this season. The Judges did not have any rookies on the team last season.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY JULIAN AGIN-LIEBES/the Justice

UAA STANDINGS Men’s Soccer

Women’s Soccer

Final 2008 Standings

Final 2008 Standings

UAA Conference WL T Emory 6 1 0 Rochester 6 1 0 Carnegie 5 2 0 Washington 4 3 0 Case 3 3 1 Chicago 1 5 1 New York 1 6 0 JUDGES 0 5 2

WL T 16 1 1 14 2 2 15 3 1 12 5 1 13 5 1 5 10 3 6 9 3 8 9 2

Overall Pct. .941 .875 .833 .706 .722 .333 .400 .471

UAA Conference WL T Washington 6 1 0 Emory 6 1 0 Chicago 5 2 0 JUDGES 3 3 1 Rochester 3 4 0 Carnegie 2 4 1 New York 2 5 0 Case 0 7 0

WL T 15 3 1 16 4 1 13 5 2 13 7 2 11 6 2 8 6 3 11 8 1 8 11 0

Overall Pct. .833 .800 .722 .650 .647 .571 .579 .421

TEAM LEADERS MSoccer (points)

WSoccer (points)

Forward Ben Premo ’09 led the Judges with 23 points during the 2008 season.

Forward Melissa Gorenkoff ’10 led the squad with 25 points in 2008.

Player Ben Premo Patrick Metelus Alexander Farr Jaime Batista Mike Silberstein

Player Melissa Gorenkoff Tiffany Pacheco Kaitlin Oldfield Izabella Miranda Alanna Torre

Points 23 13 10 7 6

Points 25 20 14 12 10

Volleyball (kills)

Volleyball (digs)

Outside hitter Paige Blasco ’11 led the team with 339 kills in 2008.

Outside hitter Lorraine Wingenbach ’09 led the squad with 371 digs in 2008.

Player Paige Blasco Lorraine Wingenbach Piera Carfagno Nicole Smith Bridget McAllister

Player Lorraine Wingenbach Paige Blasco Violette Ruggiero Abby Blasco Bridget McAllister

Kills 339 316 242 226 191

Digs 371 308 300 265 220

UPCOMING GAME OF THE WEEK Men’s Soccer vs. Rutgers-Newark University The Judges start the season Saturday in the Adidas Kick-Off Classic at 2 p.m.

0

wins in conference play for the men’s soccer team last season.

The Judges went 0-5-2 in games against opponents from the University Athletic Association.

11

The men’s soccer team is looking for a fresh start to the 2009 season after a disappointing 2008 campaign.

Brandeis will start the season in the four-team Adidas Kick-Off Classic against Rutgers-Newark University, Saturday at 2 p.m.

The Judges will then play against the University of Southern Maine on

Sunday at 2 p.m.

The Huskies will take on host school Wheaton College prior to the Judges’ season opener Saturday afternoon.

Brandeis will not play Wheaton during the Classic but will get a chance at the Lyons at home Sept. 26.

The Judges finished with a record of 8-9-2 last season.

CHICAGO—Nelson Figueroa ’98 had command of all his pitches, and that was too much for the Cubs hitters.

Figueroa struck out a career-high 10 and had an RBI single to lead the New York Mets to a 4-1 victory over Chicago on Sunday “We used all of them. I think that was one of the keys,” Figueroa said. “They never could sit on one certain pitch, looking for a slider with two strikes. I was able to throw my fastball and move it around to different spots on the plate, just really expanded the zone and taking advantage of some of their aggressive swings.”

Figueroa (2-3) allowed one run on six hits in sevenplus strong innings and won his first start since April 27, 2008. Figueroa, who took Johan Santana’s spot in the rotation, got Jake Fox swinging for the second out of the fourth inning for his ninth strikeout of the game.

Mets manager Jerry Manuel was impressed with how Figueroa attacked the hitters.

“He is the epitome of getting secondary pitches over,” Manuel said. “And it also looks like to me he’s kind of a cerebral guy where he has a good memory out there as to what he did before to get a particular guy out and able to command his fastball enough to be able to attack them in different spots.”

Mets leadoff hitter Angel Pagan had three hits against his former team as New York won just for the second time in nine games.

Brian Stokes pitched a perfect eighth inning, and Francisco Rodriguez pitched a scoreless ninth for his 28th save in 33 opportunities.

The Cubs had a chance in the ninth against Rodriguez with Kosuke Fukudome on first. Right fielder Jeff Francoeur dropped Jake Fox’s short pop-up, but second baseman Luis Castillo recovered the ball and forced out Fukudome at second.

Starter Carlos Zambrano (7-6) couldn’t get through the fourth inning for the Cubs, who failed to complete a three-game sweep of the Mets. Zambrano hasn’t won since July 22 at Philadelphia.

Zambrano allowed four runs and 11 hits in 3 1/3 innings. It was his second poor outing since being activated from the disabled list with a sore back. In his first start back, Zambrano yielded a season-high eight runs in 4 1/3 innings of a 15-6 loss to Washington last Tuesday.

“I pitched OK today. I didn’t make too many mistakes,” Zambrano said. “It looked like they came ready to hit today. I made some good pitches to Pagan and [Luis Castillo] and they were able to get the head of the bat on the ball.”

Trailing 1-0 in the third inning, Pagan walked and advanced to second on Castillo’s single. Zambrano tried to pickoff Pagan at second, but his throw went into center field, moving Pagan to third and Castillo to second.

Daniel Murphy and Francoeur followed with back-toback RBI singles to give the Mets a 2-1 lead.

The Mets added to its lead off Zambrano in the fourth inning. After getting Fernando Tatis to fly out, Zambrano allowed five consecutive hits before being pulled by manager Lou Piniella and booed by the fans.

After Brian Schneider singled, Anderson Hernandez followed with an RBI triple.

With the infield in, Figueroa helped himself out with a single to score Hernandez. Zambrano’s outing ended after he gave up back-to-back singles to load the bases.

Reliever Tom Gorzelanny limited the damage by retiring Murphy and Francoeur.

Cubs manager Lou Piniella is concerned with Zambrano’s mechanics.

“He is opening up his front shoulders. They’re getting a good look at him, because they’re not swinging and missing at all. That’s usually a pretty good indication you’re showing the ball to the hitter a little prematurely and you’re giving the hitter a longer look,” Piniella said.

Michigan players claim violations DETROIT—Several Michigan football players claim the program regularly violates NCAA rules limiting how much time they can spend on training and practice sessions, according to a published report.

Players from the 2008 and 2009 teams told the Detroit Free Press for a story published on the newspaper’s Web site on Saturday that the amount of time they spend on football activities during the season and in the offseason greatly exceeds the limits. The players spoke to the newspaper on condition of anonymity because they feared repercussions from coaches.

Coach Rich Rodriguez and the university’s compliance director, Judy Van Horn, both denied that the football program was violating NCAA rules.

“We know the practice and offseason rules, and we stay within the guidelines. We follow the rules and have always been completely committed to being compliant with all NCAA rules,” Rodriguez said in a written statement to the newspaper.

Van Horn said her department conducts “in-person spot checks of practice during the academic year and summer. We have not had any reason to self-report any violations in this area with any of our sports.”

NCAA rules allow eight hours a week for mandatory workouts during the offseason. However, players told the newspaper that they spent two to three times that amount on required workouts.

The players also said the amount of time they spent on football activities during the season exceeded the weekly limit of 20 hours and often exceeded the daily limit of four hours.

They also said quality control staff often watched seven-on-seven offseason scrimmages that are supposed to be voluntary and that only training staff are allowed to attend.

The Free Press said five of the 10 current or former players it interviewed gave similar accounts of how the program is run, and a sixth player confirmed most of the descriptions. Other players gave a general idea of the program. None disputed the allegations, the newspaper said.

just

Sports

Page 12

COACH TALK Men’s soccer head coach Mike Coven spoke with justSports about the upcoming season, p. 10.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Waltham, Mass.

BIG UPS

CROSS COUNTRY

Judges expect success in 2009

WOMEN’S SOCCER

Team’s first test is MIT at home ■ The women’s soccer team

will open the season tonight against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

By MELISSA SIEGEL JUSTICE SENIOR WRITER

■ Both the men’s and

women’s cross country teams are ranked in the top 10 regionally, and the men are ranked 13th nationally.

By IAN CUTLER JUSTICE EDITOR

After a 10-year absence from the NCAA Division III Championships, the men’s cross country team surprised many when it reached the most competitive meet of the season and finished in 20th place out of 32 teams, recording 512 points. This season, the team expects an appearance in the NCAA Championships, and anything less would be a disappointment.

The team is ranked third in the Division III New England Region behind Williams College and Amherst College and 13th nationally, the highest ranking among all University Athletic Association squads.

“We’re really excited,” runner Paul Norton ’11 said. “We definitely expect to make [NCAAs] this year.”

Brandeis graduated only four runners at the end of last year—Jake Devereaux, Matt Jennings, Matt Phillippo and Mike Stone—and returns Devon Holgate ’11 after he did not compete last season. The team also welcomes rookie Alex Kramer ’13, a Massachusetts native who won the New England Regional Championships in the one-mile run in high school.

With most of its top runners back on the team, Norton was not surprised by the team’s high ranking but said it would be a different experience for a team that has not had such attention before.

“I think it’s new to have these expectations on us,” he said. “We hadn’t made NCAAs in 10 years, and when you return [a lot of runners], people look out for you.”

The Judges won their only head-tohead meet last season against Bentley College to open the fall schedule last year and had a number of top finishes throughout the season in various competitive meets.

Aside from their 20th-place finish at the NCAA Championships, the Judges were fourth of eight teams at the UAA Championships and fourth of 49 teams at the New England Division III Regional Championships.

Norton said he thinks the team will live up to its rankings and improve upon its finishes from last season.

“We should be challenging to win at UAAs and regionals and should be fighting for a spot on the podium at NCAAs,” he said.

Norton added that during preseason training, the team has focused on preparing for the meets later in the season leading up to the championship meets.

“We have a few small injuries here and there but nothing serious,” Norton said. “I don’t think we’ll be full strength for the first few meets, but we’ll be ready for November.”

On the women’s side, the Judges hope that the loss of only two runners from last year to graduation—Katy Agule and Rebecca Happnie—will not be detrimental to a team that has

See XCOUNTRY, 10 ☛

DAVID SHEPPARD-BRICK/Justice File Photo

AT THE NET: Paige Blasco ’11 spikes a ball in a win during the Brandeis Invitational last season against Endicott College.

Squad starts season on road ■ The volleyball team will

travel to Babson College tonight to take on the Beavers at 7 p.m.

By MELISSA SIEGEL JUSTICE SENIOR WRITER

After a disappointing, injuryplagued 2008 season, the Brandeis volleyball team will start the 2009 season with a tough test right off the bat tonight at Babson College.

Babson is coming off one of its best seasons in years. The 2008 Babson team finished 16-12, losing to the University of New England in the quarterfinals of the Eastern College Athletic Conference Division III New England Volleyball Championship Tournament.

Brandeis chose not to participate in the tournament, which it had won in the past two years.

The game will be a test for a Judges squad that will have almost as many returning players as it has rookies in the upcoming season. After recruiting no first-years last year, the Judges will have five rookies join the squad this season.

The last matchup between the two teams was in 2007, when the Judges defeated Babson 3-0 at the Brandeis Invitational. But the inexperienced Babson squad that played two years ago now boasts two juniors and three seniors.

Leading the upperclassmen is senior middle hitter Caitlin O’Neill, a second team All-New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference selection last year who led the team with 65 blocks and was second with 277 kills and 41 aces.

Unlike the Brandeis volleyball team, the Beavers had a strong rookie class last year, highlighted by outside hitter Meg Flaherty. She led the team last year with 309 kills while also playing well on defense with 265 digs.

“I’m extremely excited about the potential of this year’s team,” Babson coach Tonya Strange told the Babson Athletics Web site.

“This may be the most talent we’ve had on our roster since I’ve been back [in 2006]. However, we’re also playing a much more difficult schedule this fall, so we will need to work cohesively and continually improve as a team throughout the season if we are going to maintain the success we

enjoyed last year. If we can do that, it should be a really fun and exciting season for Babson volleyball.”

Meanwhile, the Judges will have to deal with the loss of one of their best players in team history, outside hitter Lorraine Wingenbach ’09.

Wingenbach finished her Brandeis career as the team’s alltime leader in kills, kills per set and games played and was second all-time in digs and aces. But the team will have the return of setter Abby Blasco ’11, who led the team with 787 assists last year and outside hitter Paige Blasco ’11, who had a team-high 339 kills last season.

While middle blocker Piera Carfagno ’10 thinks this year’s team has improved since its first practice together, it will be different in the first game.

“We’ve come a long way; it’s just games are different from practice,” Carfagno said. “You can practice all the technical stuff, you can do as many repetitions as you want, but the tempo of the game is different. You’re playing against people you haven’t played before; it’s a different ball game.”

The game will begin at 7 p.m.

The women’s soccer team has three straight wins against its first opponent this season, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including one in the 2007 semifinals of the Eastern College Athletic Conference Division III New England Championships. Yet coach Denise Dallamora is making sure her team is not overconfident going into the season opener.

“We have to go into every game with the same mentality,” Dallamora said. “We’ve got to step up and play hard and play our game. So we’ll do some mental preparation [in practice]; we’ll talk about the importance of our first win regionally, setting a mark. … I’m sure [the team is] mentally ready for their first game.”

Brandeis faces MIT in the season opener for the third straight season tonight at 7:30 p.m. The Judges hope to start off their season with a regional win that could be the first step toward reaching the NCAA Tournament after coming up short the last two years.

Last season, the Engineers finished the season with a record of 7-9-2, losing in the semifinals of the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference tournament.

The season before, they made it all the way to the ECAC semifinals before losing to the Judges 1-0 on a goal by tournament MVP Tzlil Castel ’08.

Brandeis, who finished last season 13-7-2, counters with a team coming off its second straight ECAC title and returning all but one of its main starters from last season. One of those returning starters, midfielder/defender Alanna Torre ’12, thinks the continuity will help the team get off to a strong start this year.

“We were actually just talking about it on the bench, a few of us saying how we are going to be so strong because we played together and it’s not just new people,” Torre said.

Torre was one of 16 rookies on the squad last season. This year, she thinks her first game this season will be quite different.

“I was definitely a lot more comfortable with the other players [in practice this season],” Torre said. “I definitely wasn’t as nervous as I was last year. It’s just a more comfortable feeling.”

When the Judges played against MIT last season, they got off to a quick start by defeating the Engineers 4-0.

They scored two goals in the first half, the first by Torre in the 14th minute and the second by midfielder Sofia Vallone ’11 in the 29th minute.

Forward Tiffany Pacheco ’11 and forward Izabella Miranda ’12 added goals in the second half to put the game out of reach.

The game was the first of four straight shutouts the Judges had to start last season, led by goalie Hillary Rosenzweig ’10, who started 20 of 22 games last year and finished with nine shutouts.

Brandeis returns all of its top goal scorers from last season, including Pacheco and forward Melissa Gorenkoff ’10, who tied for the team lead with eight goals apiece.

MIT also returns its leading scorer from last season, sophomore forward Alisha Lussiez, who also tallied eight goals.

Brandeis will next host Nazareth College Sunday at 1 p.m.

just

September 1, 2009

ARTS

Pains of Being Pure at Heart brings indie pop to Brandeis p. 15 Photo courtesy of Pavla Kopecna. Design: Andrea Fineman and Max Breitstein Matza/the Justice.

14

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2009

●

THE JUSTICE

POP CULTURE

INSIDE ON CAMPUS

14-17

■ Friday Music Breaks 15 The Music department debuts a new series of lectures and concerts designed to bring the Brandeis community together and generate interest in the work of graduate students.

15 ■ Pains of Being Pure at Heart The up-and-coming indie band will play at Cholmondley’s this Friday during Punk, Rock n’ Roll Club’s first concert of the semester.

The group will be supported by two other rising stars, offering students an early look into several bands’ promising careers.

17 ■ “Numbers, Color and Text” The Rose Art Museum has frequently been closed at the start of the classes in years past. This semester, however, the establishment is greeting students with an exhibit featuring works by such artists as Alfred Jensen and Jasper Johns.

OFF CAMPUS

19-20

19 ■ Review: ‘Taking Woodstock’ The cliché-ridden comedy, which stars Demetri Martin, lacks any real perspective on the history-making concert that gave the movie its name and instead offers crass laughs with ’70s stereotypes.

19 ■ Review: ‘Disfarmer’ Bill Frisell, a jazz guitarist, has produced an album honoring the work of Depression-era photographer Mike Disfarmer.

CALENDAR

INTERVIEW

by Shelly Shore

Sadly, the Summer of Celebrity Death is not over; Friday evening, celebrity DJ Adam Goldstein, known more commonly as DJ AM, was found dead in his Manhattan apartment.

He was 36 years old.

While the official cause of death has yet to be determined, rumors have been flying. Sources tell TMZ that DJ AM had been “completely devastated” over a recent breakup with his girlfriend, Hayley Wood (she was the one to call off the relationship). Sources close to Goldstein also revealed that he was having difficulty dealing with post-traumatic stress from the plane crash he survived in September 2008. The crash killed four people, and Goldstein and Blink-182 member Travis Barker were the only survivors. Many fans have begun speculating that, despite being sober for the past nine years, the breakup and stress over the crash may have caused Goldstein to begin using drugs again.

Addiction specialist Dr. Drew Pinsky said Saturday that pain medications prescribed after the plane crash may have led Goldstein away from his sober path. “It very slowly and subtly reawakens addiction,” Pinksy said of pain medication in an interview Saturday. “I’m not saying it was inappropriately prescribed; I’m saying he didn’t know the risks.” A medical examiner’s office spokeswoman said Saturday that toxicology tests, expected to take weeks, are needed to determine what killed Goldstein.

An autopsy was inconclusive, said spokeswoman Ellen Borakove.

Whatever the official cause of death, Goldstein’s friends, family and fans are in mourning. “I am absolutely heartbroken. For those of us lucky enough to have known him, Adam radiated a contagious exuberance for life and also personified the very definition of a true friend,” said Mandy Moore, who dated

McNeely offers peek into past ■ Brandeis archivist Maggie McNeely talks about her exhibit of artifacts from Brandeis’ past.

DAN STEINBERG/The Associated Press

DEATH OF A DJ: DJ Adam Goldstein, a.k.a. DJ AM, was found dead in his apartment on Friday.

Goldstein for two years.

Barker expressed his emotions in his own way. “Don’t know how I am gonna play 2night but I am for AM,” the drummer, 33, posted on Twitter Saturday night. “My brother is gone. I love u and miss u.” He continued: “I’ll never forget everything we’ve been through and every time I play the drums, I’ll think of you. U were an amazing friend/DJ/human being.”

The music world has lost another brilliant artist as the summer draws to a close.

Hopefully, the fall will bring brighter times.

What’s happening in Arts on and off campus

Too Cheap for Instruments Auditions Brandeis’ all-female folk/folk-pop a cappella group is looking for new talent. Students wishing to audition may e-mail Becky Sniderman at tcfi@brandeis.edu to schedule an audition.

Although singers can schedule auditions, walkins will also be given the opportunity to try out.

TCFI prides itself on its emphasis on good musicianship and its novelty acts, which occasionally do not fall under the category of folk music.

Tuesday from 8 to 10 p.m. in Slosberg 234.

Punk, Rock n’ Roll Club Meeting Want your favorite band to play on campus?

Then attend the Punk, Rock n’ Roll Club’s first meeting of the semester, at which we will discuss how club members work together to bring unique bands to Brandeis. Over the past several years, PR n’ R has organized shows at Cholmondeley’s featuring such performers as Girl Talk, Mirah, the Wrens, Mt. Eerie and Calvin Johnson, Man Man and John Vanderslice. PR n’ R’s upcoming shows will include performances by Experimental Dental School (Sunday, Sept. 13) and Nat Baldwin of the Dirty Projectors (Friday, Oct. 2).

Tuesday from 9 to 10:10 p.m. in Shapiro Campus Center 313.

Friday Music Breaks@3 In the debut event for the new colloquium and recital series run by graduate students from the Music department, Erin Jerome (GRAD) will present a lecture on the operas of Joseph Haydn.

(See article p. 15) Friday at 3 p.m. in Slosberg Lobby.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart Punk, Rock n’ Roll Club’s first show of the semester will feature the musical stylings of the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, “a New York fourpiece who plays sweet & noisy POP with boy/girl vocals, blissful melodies and blistering drums.” The New York Times described the group’s self-titled debut album as “warm on the outside ... [and seething] with refreshingly mordant wit.” Other artists performing at this show include The Depreciation Guild and Cymbals Eat Guitars. The latter group has been praised

by Detour Mag for its “epic jams that effortlessly encapsulate the last 20 years of indie rock with the ease of dudes that have been ‘doin’ it’ forever,” while the former lists Cocteau Twins, Gangway, Scritti Politti and Aztec Camera as its

WHAT’S ON?

REBECCA NEY/Justice File Photo

CHUM’S SURFER: Girl Talk performs at a 2008 show sponsored by the Punk, Rock n’ Roll Club. primary musical influences.

Friday from 9 p.m. to Cholmondeley’s.

midnight

at

The 24-Hour Musical 2009 Come watch your sleep-deprived peers perform in the University Theater Cooperative’s 24-Hour Musical, a show that, as the name implies, is put together in only 24 hours. The actual play that is being presented will remain unknown to both cast and attendees until 8 p.m. of the day before the presentation, so either arrive Sunday and be surprised or check the Shapiro Campus Center Atrium the Saturday night prior to find out what show is being undertaken.

Sunday from 8 to 10:30 p.m. in the Carl J. Shapiro Theater.

OFF-CAMPUS EVENTS Apoptygma Berzerk The Norwegian music group will be performing with Into the Presence and The Surrender.

Apoptyma Berzerk recently released its sixth studio album, Rocket Science, and is led by Stephan Groth. According to Groth, “If I had

studied mathematics or engineering for the same amount of time that I’ve been ‘studying’ music and working with Apoptygma, I would probably have been a rocket scientist by now.

That’s part of where Rocket Science comes from.

I’m doing the only thing I know how to do. Apop has been my life since the age of 18.”

Friday, doors at 8 p.m. at the Middle East Downstairs in Cambridge.

mfafirstfridays As part of its ongoing series, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts will bring the David Eure Latin Ensemble to the Koch Gallery for the Museum’s May installment of mfafirstfridays.

Patrons will also be treated to fine art, tapas and a cash bar featuring signature cocktails.

Visitors must be at least 21 years of age, but entry is free. Future mfafirstfriday guests are to include DJ Dave Pettengill (November) and The Bob Christopherson Holiday Jazz Trio (December). In October, a special program will highlight selected artists from Roxbury Open Studios.

Friday from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

McNeely’s exhibit, “From Waltham Wilds to Urban University: The Story of Brandeis Through Maps and Aerials,” celebrates Brandeis’ transformation from its early days to the built-up campus it is today. As an employee of the Robert D. Farber University Archives and Special Collections, located on the second floor of Goldfarb Library, McNeely works among such treasures as the original manuscript of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 , the Hall-Hoag Collection of Extremist Literature in the United States and the Gorham Collection of Early Music Imprints, a collection of Renaissance music documents dated from 1501 to 1650. The exhibition will be on view in Goldfarb Library throughout the fall 2009 semester.

JustArts: How did you get interested in archive work originally? Did you expect to be doing museum-related work when you set out for a career in archiving?

Maggie McNeely: I was always interested in libraries, but like many people I pictured ladies with buns and card catalogs, an era I sometimes have a bit of nostalgia for now. I picked up a brochure at Simmons College for archives management, and I instantly decided that it was the kind of training I wanted. My background was not very skillbased—it was in the liberal arts. It left me feeling like I could think a lot but do little.

My liberal arts background turned out to be very useful, because it is helpful to know a little about many subjects in my line of work.

I became interested in museum work in college but decided against the profession when I learned about how political the museum world is. I just wanted to hang an exhibit on some great idea or theme based on objects I thought were interesting, but I came to learn that I would never have that much flexibility. And in a way, that is what I am doing now but on a much smaller scale.

We have some similarities to museums, but most of what we do here centers on collecting and preserving our history and connecting people to that material.

JA: I understand you were inspired by seeing people’s reactions to aerial photos of Brandeis. How has the early response been?

MM: Yes, I used to have a large blow-up of a campus aerial from 1975 above my desk, and even though it was one of those fadedorange ’70s prints, people were always hanging out, examining it and asking questions.

I think one of the fascinations is that it is disorienting at first, but then you suddenly get your bearings and you get to see the campus from a whole new perspective. Seeing 20 aerials at once impresses even me, and I have been looking at these images since I started working here almost four years ago.

It is still summer vacation, so we have not had much heavy traffic yet, but we have had some good quality visits that have resulted in discussions where I get to learn new things. What I really enjoy is that on their visit, faculty and staff can tell their own university narrative, and it is like trading in historical tidbits.

JA: What kinds of related projects have you worked on in the past, and do you plan to do any more stuff like this in the future?

MM: I created an exhibit in 2005 about the campus master plans by architects Eero Saarinen and Max Abramovitz. I guess you could say that the physical campus has kept me enthralled. The next exhibit will come from the Special Collections side of the house, which will feature rare and unique items as always. We take turns creating exhibits here, staff and student workers, but I have to say that creating exhibits in our wonderful exhibit space is one of the most rewarding parts of my job, second only to assisting grateful researchers.

—Andrea Fineman

Top 10s for the week ending Sept. 1

Box Office

Billboard

WBRS

Staff Playlist

1. The Final Destination 2. Inglourious Basterds 3. District 9 4. G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra 5. Julie & Julia 6. The Time Traveler’s Wife 7. Shorts 8. Taking Woodstock 9. G-Force 10. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

1. Reba – Keep On Loving You 2. George Strait – Twang 3. Third Eye Blind – Ursa Major 4. Kings of Leon – Only By The Night 5. The Black Eyed Peas – The E.N.D. 6. Neil Diamond – Hot August Night/NYC 7. Soundtrack – Hannah Montana: The Movie 8. Taylor Swift – Fearless 9. Daughtry – Leave This Town 10. Various Artists – NOW 31

1. Green Day – “Song of the Century” 2. Bela Fleck with Djelimady Tounkara – “Mariam” 3. The Jeff Healey Band – “Whipping Post” 4. Yim Yames – “All Things Must Pass” 5. Kevin So – “Our America” 6. Coldplay – “Glass of Water” 7. Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band – “Roosevelt Room” 8. As Tall As Lions – “Go Easy (See The Love)” 9. Manchester Orchestra – “In My Teeth” 10. Cage the Elephant – “Ain’t No Rest For the Wicked”

1. Masafumi Takada – “Pleather for Breakfast” 2. Tyr – “Sinklars Visa” 3. Led Zepplin – “Immigrant Song” 4. John Cameron Mitchell – “Sugar Daddy” 5. Bernard Herrmann – “Twisted Nerve” 6. Roisin Murphy – “Ramalama (Bang Bang)” 7. Lola Y Manuel – “Tu Mira (Edit)” 8. Ben Charest – “Cabaret Hoover” 9. New Bad Things – “The I Suck” 10. The Pixies – “Nimrod’s Son” —Justine Root

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, SEPTEMBER 1, 2009

15

ON CAMPUS BRANDEISIANS PROVIDE MUSICAL BREAKS

PHOTO COURTESY OF SHAWNA KELLEY

SALSA SEPTET: Latin band Obbini Tumbao will lead an improvisational jazz session in Slosberg Music Center on Oct. 23. The group’s concert will be free and open to the public as part of the Friday Music Breaks series.

Fridays go casual with new series ■ The Friday Music Breaks

series will allow students to experience the musical works of graduate students, staff and resident artists.

By SARAH BAYER JUSTICE EDITOR

Last semester, as the Brandeis administration announced it would close the University’s flagship arts institution and threatened to eliminate smaller departments like Classics and African and Afro-American Studies, graduate students in the Music department conferred with their professors and administrators about how to bolster their department’s reputation.

Recognizing that, as Joanna Fuchs (GRAD) puts it, “We don’t have a lot of money right now,” the students proposed instituting Friday Music Breaks,

a series of weekly colloquia and recitals free and open to the public. With no funding from the department or the University, students volunteered to lecture or perform at these events in the hopes of garnering campuswide interest in their program of study.

Fuchs, a musicologist with a focus on 20th-century music, is coordinating the program along with composer James Borchers (GRAD). The events take place every Friday at 3 p.m. in various rooms in Slosberg. There’s a colloquium the first Friday of every month, kicking off Sept. 4 with a presentation

by Erin Jerome (GRAD) about the operas of Joseph Haydn.

The rest of the Fridays are devoted to recitals, jam sessions and master classes by Brandeis students, professors and resident artists. Highlights include an Oct. 9 master class by resident artists Paul Rishell and Annie Raines on “The Story of the Recorded Blues” and an Oct. 23 improvisational jam session led by Boston-based Latin band Ob-

bini Tumbao.

“My hope is that over time, all segments of the Brandeis community will begin to count on our Friday Breaks as a great way to ease into the weekend and take in some fabulous presentations all at once,” wrote Music department chair Prof. Mary Ruth Ray in an e-mail to the Justice.

Shawna Kelley, the Music department’s concert manager who has also planned many of the events, points out that “it can be a break in the day before the weekend starts or the only chance that you may get to see someone perform.” In the past, she says, many students and professors have regretted missing weekend performances due to other obligations.

Students who offer up their time to lecture or play music gain unique training for a potential career as a music professor or performer, Fuchs says. She adds that attending Friday Music Breaks may help undergraduates in Music get a better sense of the graduate

course of study in their field, preparing them for postbaccalaureate pursuits.

More than that, the concerts and discussions offer the chance for graduate students in the Music department to learn from each other in a preprofessional format, according to Borchers.

“Many of the grad students in Music were concerned that there was not enough of a ‘community’ or a sharing of each other’s work amongst our colleagues, and it is our hope that this series will offer a chance for composers and musicologists to get to know each other,” says Borchers. While composers generate original music, musicologists study performance and the social role of music throughout history. The two groups take some classes together, but otherwise do not have many opportunities to interact.

Graduate composition students already have a venue to perform their original works through the New Music Brandeis concert series, which Borchers co-directs with Michele Za-

ccagini (GRAD). Borchers believes Friday Music Breaks can extend that opportunity to the department as a whole.

“We also hope that the series will provide a more public ‘face’ for the terrific work currently being done by the grad students in the Music department,” he says.

Fuchs envisions music departments at other schools, including Harvard and Boston University, participating in the Friday Music Breaks, raising the profile of Brandeis’ Music department within the Boston college scene at large.

Groups from other schools have already been invited to participate either by attending or performing.

Fuchs describes Friday Music Breaks as the first student lecture series on campus. She sees the all-volunteer, interdisciplinary spirit of the program as a useful model in these dire economic times for the University. “I would like to see more interdisciplinary things, … students getting involved in what else is going on,” she said.

MUSIC

Pure at Heart taking pains to play at Brandeis ■ The indie band will play with Cymbals Eat Guitars and The Depreciation Guild at the semester’s first Punk, Rock n’ Roll concert.

By BEN SERBY JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

This Friday, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart will play at Cholmondeley’s and launch a threemonth, worldwide tour that officially begins on Saturday at the Middle East in Cambridge. The Brandeis event will also include performances by fellow New York bands Cymbals Eat Guitars and The Depreciation Guild in what promises to be an impressive opening to the 2009 to 2010 academic year for the Punk, Rock n’

Roll Club.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart released a self-titled debut album in February this year that garnered an enviable critical reception. The entire 35-minute record features simple chord changes, catchy melodies and straightforward song structures but is perhaps chiefly distinguished by an obvious intent to revive the sound of bygone decades of indie pop. TPOBPAH literally wears its influences on its sleeve (literally—the album cover is an homage to Belle and Sebastian).

Those influences, easily identifiable in all 10 songs, result in an approximate mixture of dance-punk, twee, new wave and shoegaze that never sounds far from its several inspirations and antecedents.

Such defiant ’80s-worship seemingly points to a regrettably backward-looking hipster aesthetic that has already spent itself, as it tends to

magnify bands that have already been lifted well out of whatever sacred obscurity they once enjoyed. But whatever TPOBPAH may lack in surprise or originality for its unapologetic nod to the past, it is hard to argue with the way it makes the sound it has elected to adopt.

Lead vocalist Kip Berman can sound a bit like Morrissey on a happy day (if he ever had one), with confident, reverberant and somewhat soothing vocals. At times, his midrange lead is crucially supplemented by the gentle harmonizing of keyboardist Peggy Wang, whose celestial synth notes add to the trebly tunes.

Underneath this compelling layer of melody, each song features Kurt Feldman’s steadily pounding drums and the harmonious counterpoint of bassist Alex Naidus. Berman’s guitar, though usually a feathery element of the backdrop, will sometimes

take the lead as the supercharged and fuzz-toned power driving a song forward, as evidenced by the delicious climactic surges of what is arguably the best song on the album, “Gentle Sons.”

And then there’s the name: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. It certainly seems too long, as well as ohso-cute, and perhaps ironically innocent—in a word, twee. According to the band members, they chose to name themselves after an unpublished short story written by a friend, a fact reminiscent of Stuart Murdoch of Scottish indie superstars Belle and Sebastian, whose lyrics routinely refer to childhood and adolescence. A quick glance at TPOBPAH’s track list turns up several titles with a direct mention of those subjects, like “Young Adult Friction” and “A Teenager In Love.” And, one critic has noted that in the song “The Love

is F*cking Right!,” Berman says “fecking” in the chorus rather than drop the F-bomb to reinforce an image of sweetness and innocence.

But it’s not all twee. A dark streak runs through the album, as shown by the song “Stay Alive,” which sounds deceptively upbeat at first yet reveals itself upon closer examination to be about suicide. And the love that is apparently “f*cking right!” is directed toward the “sister” of whoever is singing. Make of that what you will.

Regardless of their twee credentials, TPOBPAH is a group of exciting new musicians with a burgeoning following. With a new EP scheduled for release on Sept. 22, it will be interesting to see whether the band can continue to carry the indie-vintage torch without seeming too derivative and irrelevant. Brandeis students will be uniquely positioned to decide that for themselves come Friday night.

THE JUSTICE

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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2009

17

ART

PAINT BY NUMBERS

JULIAN AGIN-LIEBES/the Justice

MATHEMATICS: Jensen’s theories of numerology and color theory are literally expressed in this work. The thickly layered painting style, referred to as ‘impasto,’ is something that all of Jensen’s paintings in the show share.

Rose Art show experiments with basics

By ANDREA FINEMAN JUSTICE EDITOR

JULIAN AGIN-LIEBES/the Justice

SUPPORTING WORKS: On the lower level of the Rose’s main gallery, a number of works supporting the theme of “Numbers, Color and Text” surround the reflecting pool.

The Rose Art Museum is often closed at the start of classes to prepare for a fall semester slate of exhibitions. This year, however, the Rose is greeting incoming and returning students with an exhibit of paintings from the permanent collection on the theme of “Numbers, Color and Text.” The show, open until Sept. 25, takes as its starting point a group of paintings by Alfred Jensen. Roy Dawes, curator of the show and director of museum operations, says the show is “a small exhibit to get us started again.” Due to the University’s ongoing legal controversy over the Rose and its collection, the museum cannot receive touring exhibitions or loans from other museums; nonetheless, the Rose’s own collection of 20th century art is a rich source to draw from.

“These Jensens are works we own but haven’t shown recently,” says Dawes. “I took off with the idea of ‘numbers, color, text’ for obvious reasons.” The five Jensen paintings along the back wall of the Rose’s main gallery, which were recently on view at the Milwaukee Art Museum, display brightly

colored numbers in contrastingly painted shapes.

These five inspired Dawes to assemble a group of works by other artists, hanging in the downstairs portion of the Rose’s main gallery, that support the Jensen ROY DAWES works on the main level.

Jensen, who, incidentally, studied with Hans Hofmann, an artist featured last semester in a show in the Rose’s Foster Gallery, was known for his complex and personal theories on numerology and color theory—something highly evident in these paintings on display at the Rose. The artist experimented with ideas about prisms, the breaking of light, the ancient Chinese calendar and Goethe’s writings on numerology. “Jensen had so many complicated theories that one can get hung up in the theories and not experience the paintings themselves,” says Dawes. “Joe Ket-

“One can get hung up in the theories and not experience the paintings.”

ner, [a previous Rose director], once had some of the mathematicians here at Brandeis take a look [at the paintings] to see if they could make heads or tails of the numerology, and they could not.”

Downstairs, Dawes has assembled works by modern and contemporary artists that continue in the theme of color theory, numerology and text. A few prints in the show have never been shown before, including a version of Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square in green, yellow and blue and a work

by Jasper Johns.

The textual works in the show range from funny to serious—a work by Boston artist Todd McKie that reads “I will not make fun of conceptual art” hangs only a few feet away from a small plaque by Jenny Holzer, an artist known for making provocative statements whose latest work focuses on Abu Ghraib.

On Sept. 25, the Rose will be closed for about a month as Dawes and former Rose curatorial fellow Adelina Jedrzejczak work together to curate a fall show that will open Oct. 28. The opening will take place in conjunction with the publication of the new Rose catalogue, a collection of writings about the Rose collection.

IMAGE COURTESY OF TIM ROLLINS AND K.O.S. JULIAN AGIN-LIEBES/the Justice

PRIME LOCATION: The Milwaukee Art Museum recently returned paintings to the Rose that now hang along its back wall.

TEXTUAL WORKS: Tim Rollins and K.O.S. (standing for Kids of Survival) created this work, painted on pages of The Scarlet Letter, in 1987.

THE JUSTICE

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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2009

19

OFF-CAMPUS FILM

Lee’s ‘Taking Woodstock’ a bad trip ■ The ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ director’s interpretation of the legendary concert is riddled with stereotypes and lacks any actual footage of the 1969 show.

By JUSTINE ROOT JUSTICE EDITOR

Unlike some members of my generation, I’ve never been particularly nostalgic for the 1960s and 70s. When I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, I didn’t feel especially sad that I missed out on an era when my bountiful neuroses would have been met with electric shock therapy. And I have yet to think to myself, “Self, if only you could have been a college student during a time when political unrest and turmoil were rampant and protesting on campus would have gotten you hella shot sometimes.”

Consequently, I went to see Ang Lee’s dramatic comedy Taking Woodstock—which, as the title implies, concerns the legendary 1969 music festival—with only a limited knowledge of that psychedelic era and the belief that it was dominated entirely by frolicking Communist hippies.

Unfortunately for the improvement of my level of open-mindedness and anyone looking for a subtle but enlightening jaunt through the 1960s, Taking Woodstock is essentially a nearly two-hour exhibition of stereotypes.

I knew the film wasn’t headed anywhere good when, 10 minutes after Taking Woodstock began, its writers began embroidering Elliot Teichberg’s story with scenes in which his Jewish mother heatedly proclaims in the middle of an unassuming bank that she did not (to paraphrase) escape pogroms with nothing but potatoes in her pockets only to see her clan denied a loan, on account of its religious affiliation, that would salvage the family business. And I really knew the film wasn’t headed anywhere good when, five minutes later, Eli leads a Chamber of Commerce meeting during which a woman obviously meant to be a naïve, sweetly anti-Semitic back-country yokel suggests that in order to raise money, the town should bring together the local dairy cows to meander after visitors in a faux Running of the Bulls, remarking that it would be “charming to see the cattle chasing those Jews!”

Now, I have no doubt that such racist/religionist sentiments were common during the late 1960s. However, to see the film deal with these issues in such a heavy-handed manner while simultaneously portraying ethnic groups in such insulting ways is just distasteful. Indeed, the film wouldn’t have left such a bad taste in my mouth had the above scenes been the only offending events, but Taking Wood-

FRANCOIS MORI/The Associated Press

LAUGHINGSTOCK: Demetri Martin (second from left), perhaps best known for his stand-up comedy, stars as Elliot Teichberg in Ang Lee’s new film, “Taking Woodstock.” stock continues down the road laid by the aforementioned incidents throughout its entire duration: Hippies greet helicopters naked, Vietnam veterans do nothing but drop the Fbomb and have flashbacks, and the Teichbergs scam customers visiting the family’s hotel in order to fulfill Elliot’s mother’s dream of tripling their money. For instance, at one point later in the film after the title concert has brought them abundant funds, Elliot asks his mother to “stop thinking about money,” and at another he finds her sleeping on a bed of cash.

In addition to being borderline offensive, Taking Woodstock can’t seem to decide what plotlines it wants to follow. Granted, it does follow Elliot’s role in the development of Woodstock, but along the way it features more half-developed stories than a hippie has pieces of drug paraphernalia. (Note: Taking Woodstock is the one that informed me that all hippies are horrible drug addicts, so please cease hating, haters.)

Taking Woodstock has a few scenes detailing each of the following dilemmas: Elliot’s discovery of homosexuality, the animosity of the townspeople toward the concert and the Teichburgs’ and Elliot’s familial struggles. Ultimately, none of these threads are truly tied up, and we’re left with a half-finished portrait of Elliot’s reality.

And the fact that the movie skips over the concert in its entirety only further lends to this feeling of incompleteness. Taking Woodstock spends an hour and a half leading up to the grand event to include it only as a source of background noise and neglects to include any actual footage of the concert. Granted, I wasn’t expecting the film to be a documentary, but I would at least liked to have seen some kind of reference to the musical performances that made the concert so legendary. That, and the film does choose to include video recordings from the era—it’s just not of Woodstock. Rather,

footage featured in the movie is of the traffic back-up the concert caused and of the moon landing, which didn’t actually take place during the time frame in which the film takes place.

The film’s only redeeming feature is its reference to the political atmosphere of the late 1960s; the interest groups that flock to the concert and the portrayal of young men burning draft cards brings depth that is lacking throughout the majority of the film.

Ultimately, Taking Woodstock makes its namesake and the era in which it took place seem as though it is something best forgotten rather than a time and an event to be celebrated. I’m sick of films spending 10 to 15 minutes re-enacting drug-induced hallucinations; I’ve never dabbled in that kind of venture personally, but I’m fairly sure that the groovy blending of colors Hollywood employs as a representation of an acid trip is nothing like the actual experience.

MUSIC

Frisell delves into world of Depression-era Disfarmer ■ Jazz guitarist Bill Frisell has made

an album illuminating the work of Mike Disfarmer, a photographer born in 1884 who documented life in his rural Arkansas community.

By ALEX PAGAN JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

Jazz is often considered to be the great American musical art form: While jazz has its roots in European harmony and African folk music, the synthesis of those elements is distinctly American.

The prominent jazz guitarist Bill Frisell has expanded his genre’s boundaries even further to include more traditional realizations of Americana (the folk music of American settlers and its modern progeny, country music), and although he does still occasionally play in the traditional jazz idiom, Frisell’s work of the last several years has been predominately influenced by his exploration of bluegrass, country and roots music.

Bill Frisell’s latest work, Disfarmer, finds him attempting to illuminate the work of the obscure but brilliant photographer Mike Disfarmer through his playing. Disfarmer, born in 1884, lived and worked in rural Arkansas, photographing the members of his local community during the 1940s.

During his lifetime, Disfarmer was perhaps known more for his brusque and intensely private nature than he was for his artwork, though it was perhaps these same qualities that provided the intense vulnerability and emotional frankness of his portraits.

The subjects often appear unhappy or uncomfortable, qualities attributable to either Disfarmer’s ec-

PHOTO COURTESY OF BILLFRISELL.COM

NO DISCONTENT IN THE ‘DISFARMER’ QUARTET: (From left) Greg Leisz, Jenny Scheinman, Bill Frisell and Viktor Krauss comprise the group responsible for the music on Frisell’s latest album, ‘Disfarmer.’ centricity or his long photographic sessions.

Frisell is no Disfarmer. His music does not convey the same solemnity that Disfarmer’s photographs do; his sounds are warm and lush with violin and fantastic pedal steel playing overlaid with guitar ostinati. Disfarmer’s photographs are crisp and sharp; the subjects typically embody a subtle sense of tension, an aspect that is doubtlessly a consequence of Disfarmer’s contrarian attitudes.

There is no such quality to Frisell’s playing. His

melodies are often effusive, and the production of the album is soft and atmospheric, a quality typical of albums on Frisell’s label, ECM. However, this fundamental difference in mood is not a detriment to Frisell’s project. While Disfarmer’s photographs portrayed a community from the perspective of an outsider, the album seems to be a narrative from the perspective of an actual member of the community—maybe several members and therefore several perspectives—with

the album’s many quirks and oddnesses representing the photographer.

Disfarmer is divided into 26 short vignettes (the songs are approximately two minutes each), a form that is fitting for the project at hand. While the most satisfying tracks are those that fully embrace the talents of steel guitarist Greg Leisz and fiddle player Jenny Scheinman—like “Disfarmer Theme” and “I Am Not A Farmer”—there are several outstanding solo guitar pieces on the album that adequately portray the simplicity and frankness of both the photographs and rural Arkansas itself.

Frisell, in his press releases about the album, compares Disfarmer’s obscurity to that of another great American artist, composer Charles Ives.

While the latter is related to Disfarmer only incidentally, Frisell does appear to take a few vital concepts from Ives. His treatment of popular tunes and simple melodies, as in his adaptation of Sandy Faulkner’s song “Arkansas,” is interesting and ultimately very satisfying.

Jazz enthusiasts may listen to this album and be disappointed by the conspicuous lack of traditional jazz influence. In fact, harmonically and instrumentally, Frisell’s work in the last half-decade has been more closely related to idiomatic country or folk than jazz. Disfarmer seems to only continue the legacy of jazz music through its use of instrumental rather than lyrical narratives and its extemporaneous qualities. But if one is able to take the album for what it is—an unfettered expression of Americana—rather than expecting a typical contemporary jazz album, it is difficult to imagine finding this album disappointing. And if nothing else, it is sure to serve as an excellent sonic introduction to a unique and brilliant photographer and his immortalized Depression-era Arkansas.

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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2009

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THE JUSTICE

ARIES (March 21 to April 19) A chaotic atmosphere taxes the patience of the Aries Lamb, who prefers to deal with a more orderly environment. Best advice: Stay out of the situation until things settle.

TAURUS (April 20 to May 20) Tension runs high in both personal and workplace relationships. This can make it difficult to get your message across. Best to wait until you have a more receptive audience.

GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) This is a good time to take a break from your busy schedule to plan for some well-deserved socializing. You could get news about an important personal matter by the week’s end.

CANCER (June 21 to July 22) An offer of help could come just when you seem to need it. But be careful about saying yes to anything that might have conditions attached that could cause problems down the line.

LEO (July 23 to August 22) Sometimes a workplace colleague can’t be charmed into supporting the Lion’s position. That’s when it’s time to shift tactics and overwhelm the doubter with the facts.

VIRGO (August 23 to September 22) You continue to earn respect for your efforts to help someone close to you stand up to a bully. But be careful that in pushing this matter you don’t start to do some bullying yourself.

LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) Don’t ask others if they think you’re up to a new responsibility. Having faith in your own abilities is the key to dealing with a challenge. P.S.: That “private” matter needs your attention.

SCORPIO (October 23 to November 21) This is a good time to use that Scorpian creativity to come up with something special that will help ACROSS 1. Quantities stolen 6. Boom times 9. Harvest goddess 12. Up to 13. Enthusiast 14. Torched 15. Mrs. Gorbachev 16. Render untraditionally 18. Incision implement 20. Leak slowly 21. Mueller’s org.

23. State of India 24. Twangy 25. Lounge about 27. Unfriendly 29. EBBs collectively 31. Veer 35. Excuse 37. Stench 38. Story-telling brother 41. Scarlet 43. Wolfed down 44. Carry on 45. Breakfast choice 47. Put on a pedestal 49. Oust 52. Round Table address 53. La —, Bolivia 54. Bakery request 55. Plaything 56. Raw rock 57. Saccharine DOWN 1. “Ben —” 2. Literary collection 3. Work with 4. Sax-playing Simpson 5. Word on the street?

6. Open 7. Green shot

get your derailed career plans back on track and headed in the right direction.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22 to December 21) While change is favored, it could be a good idea to carefully weigh the possible fallout as well as the benefits of any moves before you make them.

CAPRICORN (December 22 to January 19) The Goat continues to create a stir by following his or her own path. Just be sure you keep your focus straight and avoid any distractions that could cause you to make a misstep.

AQUARIUS (January 20 to February 18) A colleague’s demands seem out of line. But before reacting one way or another, talk things out and see how you might resolve the problem and avoid future misunderstandings.

PISCES (February 19 to March 20) A personal matter appears to be making more demands on your time than you feel you're ready to give.

See if some compromise can be reached before things get too dicey.

BORN THIS WEEK: You’re able to communicate feelings better than most people. Have you considered a career in the pulpit or in politics?

BRANDEIS

Through the Lens

Solution to last issue’s crossword.

DAVID SHEPPARD-BRICK/the Justice

Whirling Dervish A dancer performs at Tuesday’s Magic Carpet Ride on the Great Lawn. Amid fortune tellers and exotic music, students gathered for

Sudoku

8. Pigs’ digs 9. Hodgepodges 10. Fast food choice 11. Bessemer product 17. Hammock occupant 19. Raccoon’s cousin 21. Winter bug 22. — relief 24. Without delay 26. Canine coat 28. Wickerwork willow 30. Freddy’s street 32. Become aware of 33. Examine 34. — out a living

36. Pleasant wind 38. Mill fodder 39. TV’s ancestor 40. Scrimshaw material 42. Gary Cooper role 45. Despot 46. Declare 48. Wall St. debut 50. Bee follower 51. Potent stick

King Crossword Copyright 2009 King Features Synd., Inc.

■ It was American humorist, writer and television host Sam Levenson who related the following remembrance: “It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm.’”

■ The most common surname in the United States is Smith, followed, in order, by Johnson, Williams and Jones.

■ The Associated Press recently reported on a kind act gone terribly awry: An Israeli woman surprised her mother by having her old mattress hauled away and replacing it with a brand-new one. When the mother returned home and discovered what had happened, she was terribly distraught. It seems the woman had been hiding money in the old mattress for years—about $1 million.

■ According to a survey conducted in 2008, 15 percent of American men spend more than an hour in the bathroom every day. Unsurprisingly,

the number of women who spend that long in the bathroom is much higher, at 38 percent.

■ It’s been reported that whenever he traveled, French philosopher, mathematician, scientist and writer René Descartes brought with him a doll named after his daughter, Francine.

■ A man in Sandusky, Ohio, evidently had a rat problem in his home—and had a novel way of dealing with it. It seems that whenever he saw—or thought he saw—a rat, he would shoot it. This method didn’t always work the way he planned, however. He once shot himself in the foot. On another occasion, he mistook his wife’s hat for one of the pesky rodents and shot it.

Unfortunately, the hat was on her head at the time, and the man was charged with negligent assault.

Thought for the Day: “Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to to hide them.” —Francois 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 2009 King Features Synd., Inc.

a taste of other lands. Like a Brandeis education, the event allowed students to explore the world from a familiar environment.