Volume 16 Issue 12
“To acquire wisdom, one must observe” www.brandeishoot.com
May 3, 2019
Brandeis University’s Community Newspaper · Waltham, Mass.
New members join Union
Students call for Univ. action By Celia Young editor
By Celia Young
Brandeis students gathered at the top of the Rabb steps to stand in solidarity with the students protesting at Johns Hopkins University and Yale University and to ask the Brandeis community to recognize racialized policing and violence on Wednesday, May 1. The students read a series of demands at the steps and then marched from the Rabb Steps to the Department of Community Living Office (DCL), to the Office of Public Safety and to the Shapiro Campus Center (SCC) Atrium, reading the demands at each stop. The list of demands included calls for transparency from DCL
Brandeis Student Union representatives gathered in the Shapiro Campus Center Multi-Purpose Room on Thursday to speak about the achievements of the Union over the past year, and to swear in the new Union members. Student Union Treasurer Adrian Ashley ’20 spoke first. Ashley said he was grateful for the opportunity to help fund clubs and felt that students were able to spend more money and create better events during his time as treasurer. He also announced the new spending system, Slate, which will allow clubs to request funds more easily than the cur-
See RALLY, page 4
staff
VIOLENCE AND CAMPUS POLICING RALLY Students
march from Rabb to DCL and Public Safety.
Prof. part of black hole imaging team By Sabrina Chow and Faria Afreen editor and staff
Brandeis Prof. John Wardle (PHYS) was amongst the group of scientists that assisted in generating the first image of a black hole ever captured. The black hole that this group of scientists photographed, and released to the public in early April, is at the center of Messier 87, which is in the Virgo galaxy cluster with a mass 6.5 billion times that of the sun and 55 million light-years away from Earth. The announcement was made in a series of six papers that were published in a special issue of “The Astrophysical Journal Letters,” according to the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) website. The EHT is an international collaboration on improving the capability of the “Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) at short wavelengths in pursuit of this goal,” according to their website. Radio dishes around the world are connected to one another which helps create an interferometer, which measures the size of the emissions of two
Inside This Issue:
“supermassive black holes”: one, SgrA*, which lies at the center of the Milky Way and a second, M87, which sites in the center of the Virgo A galaxy, according to the website. Wardle was a part of four different working groups that contributed to the project, the professor said in an interview with The Brandeis Hoot. In total, over 200 scientists around the world helped. The four groups Wardle was a part of included: “one that helped with imaging, one that is looking at the polarization of radio waves, which is my particular speciality… one that was helping all the publications get refereed internally. And then the fourth one was looking at the more distant quasars,” Wardle said. Together, all the working groups have used eight different telescopes around the world, according to Wardle, to observe the wavelengths produced by the black hole over the past four years. Data collection was completed in April 2017, according to a BrandeisNOW article. The knowledge gained from this project also helps to further See BLACK HOLE, page 4
Commissioned art for Israel week painted over By Rachel Saal editor
Brandeis Hillel commissioned a group called Artists 4 Israel to paint a cube that would sit on the Great Lawn all week to commemorate “Israel Week.” The artists painted three sides of the block on Tuesday, leaving one blank with the intention of letting students paint on the empty canvas,
ISRAEL WEEK “Free
Celebration of Service
according to Sydney Brenner, the IACT Coordinator for Israel Engagement at Brandeis Hillel. The next day, however, Hillel staff were informed that the words “Free Palestine” were painted over the side of the block that read “Israel.” Brandeis Hillel flipped the canvas and Jackie Zenou ’19, former member of Brandeis Israel Public Affairs Committee (BIPAC)’s board and a member of Brandeis
Hillel, painted over the graffiti with different “peace messages” including “Coexist,” at roughly 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday. She also had other people write words like “Shalom” and “Salam,” meaning peace in Hebrew and Arabic respectively, according to Zenou. On Wednesday evening, IfNotNow, a group that is trying to “end American Jewish community’s See ISRAEL WEEK ART, page 5
Palestine” was written on the Israel week cube.
Page 5 Page 16 Page 12 DCS celebrates volunteers. Page 9 EDITORIAL: Union: reflecting and looking ahead Page 8 NEWS: PAGE 7 News: Search for two new admin. positions Ops: Seniors’ last words to Brandeis Features: Study abroad can change career Sports: Softball at 25 wins
See STATE OF UNION, page 2
PHOTO BY CELIA YOUNG/THE HOOT
‘Endgame’ Jonah reviews “Endgame.” ARTS: PAGE 19
PHOTO COURTESY OVERHEARD AT BRANDEIS ON FACEBOOK