Volume 14 Issue 14
“To acquire wisdom, one must observe” www.brandeishoot.com
Two Brandeis profs. awarded Nobel Prize
By Hannah Schuster editor
photo by hannah schuster/the hoot
nobel prize Professor
Michael Rosbash and Professor Emeritus Jeffrey Hall won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their research concerning circadian rhythms.
staff
Reported cases of sexual assault and drug abuse are down compared to last year, according to annual crime statistics released by the university on Friday in accordance with the federally mandated Clery Act. “Our campus crime statistics are relatively consistent and if numbers decrease it may be attributed to the number of campus education resources available to the Community,” said Ed Callahan, Director of Public Safety, in a statement to The Brandeis Hoot. Six rapes were reported in 2016, all occurring on campus, compared to 17 reported rapes in 2015 and nine in 2014. One hate crime, a simple assault on a religious basis, took place in 2016, according to the safety report. Instances of drug abuse violations also declined. In 2015, 102 cases of drug abuse violation were referred for disciplinary action and in 2016, 59 cases were referred for disciplinary action and one arrest was made. Rates of other crimes remained relatively consistent with two cases of fondling and one case of domestic violence in 2016, the same
as in 2015. From 2015 to 2016, cases of burglary dropped from six to three and cases of stalking and motor vehicle theft each rose from zero to one. The year 2016 saw 210 liquor law violations, all occurring in student housing, a slight increase from the 189 violations in 2015 and 199 in 2014. No fires occurred in residence halls in 2016, a slight decline the from one fire in 2015 and five in 2014. In 2016, one fire evacuation drill was held at each residence hall on campus. Fire drills at the start of the this academic year have led to student complaints. University personnel have entered student residences as part of these drills and at times confiscated items or substances which were in violation of Brandeis policy. According to section 9.4 of Rights and Responsibilities, “The university reserves the right to inspect rooms and perform maintenance at reasonable times, and to enter rooms at any time in case of emergency, in response to a complaint of disturbance or when there is reason to believe that a violation of University policy is occurring within the room.” Section 8.1 which discusses fire
Inside This Issue:
See CRIME, page 3
News: Hoot Market fundraises for hurricane relief Ops: Give reality TV a chance Features: Campus Activities Board rebrands Sports: Cross country teams place at invitational EDITORIAL: Too many new requirements
Two Brandeis professors were awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine Monday morning for their work studying circadian rhythms. Biology Professor Michael Rosbash and Professor Emeritus Jeffrey Hall both came to Brandeis in the 1970’s and soon developed a professional partnership, and close friendship, that led to major breakthroughs in our understanding of humans’ “inner clocks.” “The phone call at 5:10 this morning destroyed my circadian rhythms,” joked Rosbash, who is also the Peter Gruber Endowed Chair in Neuroscience, at a celebratory gathering on campus Monday. President Ron Liebowitz too joked about his circadian rhythms, as did Brandeis press
articles on the award. “We at Brandeis certainly could not be prouder of our two professors,” said Liebowitz on Monday. Brandeis arranged the gathering for 11 a.m., 30 minutes after a campus-wide announcement. Hundreds poured into the Rappaport Treasure Hall to hear from Rosbash and toast with champagne. Guests stood packed together in the back of the room and more listened from outside the door. Liebowitz described Rosbash as a dedicated member of the Brandeis community. He called him the the “number one fan” of Brandeis’ basketball team and “the kind of Brandeis professor who comes to [Admitted Students Day] and and invites them into his lab, where they see for themselves the magic created when See NOBEL, page 2
Required classes rise in new General Education proposal
Crime statistics show decline in sexual assault and drug abuse By Ryan Spencer
October 6, 2017
Brandeis University’s Community Newspaper · Waltham, Mass.
By Elianna Spitzer editor
On Sunday night, several members of the Task Force on General Education met with the Student Union to discuss the recently released General Education Requirements proposal. The 45 page document alters current requirements and splits them into five
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Sukkot
new categories. The Task Force on General Education released the report in early September. According to the document, requirements will now be housed under five themes: Brandeis First Year Experience, Foundational Literacies, Schools of Thought, Health Wellness and Life Skills and Global Engagement. The five themes came out of a set of goals the task force has for
every student upon completing their degree at Brandeis. The requirements are based, in part, on student feedback. The Task Force held two open forums last year and received survey responses from over 1,400 undergraduate students. According to the Task Force’s proposals, the survey responses See EDUCATION, page 4
photo by katie decker-jacoby/the hoot
Brandeis Farmers Club celebrated the upcoming harvest with homemade food, live music and dancing. See
Page 2 Page 13 Check out the sukkot around campus Page 5 Page 14 Week In Photos: PAGE 11 Page 10
Angsty Pickles Tres Fimmano shares his love for pickling on instagram and reveals a recipe FEATURES: PAGE 6
NEWS
2 The Brandeis Hoot
October 6, 2017
Senate club chartering restructured to include probationary period under club support
By Samantha Lauring staff
The Student Union Senate voted unanimously to pass a new amendment that restructures the club recognition and chartering process on Sept. 17. The amendment was designed to ensure that all clubs on campus are viable, have measurable goals and receive the proper amount of funding, while increasing the efficiency of the Senate approval process. The main changes include requiring clubs to work more with the Club Support Committee and a “probationary period” for new clubs. Senators Tal Richtman ’20, chair of the Club Support committee, Abhishek Kulkarni ’18, chair of the Bylaws Committee and other Club Support Committee members met with other Union mem-
bers, club officers, the Allocations Board and Student Activities to establish the new club recognition process. “The idea was that Tal and I noticed Brandeis has a ton of clubs, but there are also limited resources,” stated Kulkarni. There is now a 14-week probationary period for all new clubs. Under the old system, new clubs presented once for the Senate to get recognized and again after 40 days to become chartered, meaning they could request funds from A-board. Now, students will begin by working closely with the Club Support Committee and present only once before the full Senate to request the probationary status. During this probationary period, new clubs will have access to limited A-board funding through a separate request process. They will then work towards the goals they set with Club Support. After 14 weeks, the committee
737 items donated to hurricane relief in C-store drive By Charlotte Aaron editor
Over the course of a two-week drive in the Hoot Market, 737 items were donated and are to be sent to the Red Cross for hurricane relief. The drive, according to General Manager of Brandeis Dining Services Andy Allen, was a collaboration between the university and dining services. “We know that the community wanted to do something for the hurricane relief, and we worked out a way to do it at the HOOT!,” wrote Allen in an email to The Hoot. The drive, which ended on Wednesday, displayed items such as water, paper towels, and canned good in the entrance to the store. As students, or other community members, entered the Market, they were prompted to purchase a few of the displayed items and donate them as part of the drive. As of now, the items are still on the Brandeis campus, but Allen is working with the Red Cross to determine where the products are to go. While the drive was live for two weeks, the first week resulted in few donations. During one trip to the store shortly after the drive began, Emily Politi ’19 asked her friend working a shift behind the register how much had been donated. “She told me that the side behind the register had already been bought and donated, but everything on the other side hadn’t, and there was everything on that side and nothing behind the register,” said Politi. As she spoke to her friends, Politi realized most students assumed the pile of donation items were simply unstalked merchandise. “It was really unclear that three quarters of the stuff still needed to be donated, so I went the next morning, and I talked to the manager,” said Politi. At the time, the only advertising for the drive was one poster with what seemed like 1000 words, explained Politi.
To draw more attention to the cause, Politi got permission to display a large cardboard poster along with smaller paper signs identifying the items needing to be donated. “Every day I’d go back, and there was more stuff that had been bought and moved over,” she said. In addition to the physical signs, Politi and her friends shared informational posts on their personal Facebook pages, as well as the class pages. “I just tried to get people to know because it’s really easy to get stuck in your bubble at Brandeis and get caught up in your school work and friend stuff or whatever’s going on in your life … and forget about everything else,” Politi explained. As a lower New York resident, she recalled living through Hurricane Sandy five years ago, an experience that contributed to her motivation for helping with the Hoot Market relief drive. “I had a tree fall in my house and could see the sky through my roof,” said Politi, noting how fortunate she was that her mom could afford to get it repaired. “But there are so many people who can’t afford to have these places rebuilt or don’t have electricity even to think about it,” she continued. “Right now they only can think about survival.” Like Politi, when Allen was seven years old, he lived through Hurricane Camille in Southern Mississippi where his father was stationed with the Air Force. “After the storm was over, we drove through the towns that were affected, and I still remember the enormous amount of devastation,” wrote Allen. “To see the devastation of the two hurricanes that hit this year brought back the memories again.” Although the Hoot Market hurricane relief drive has ended, there exist other opportunities for students to donate to the cause. For more information, visit the Disaster Relief Efforts webpage under the Brandeis Department of Community Service.
will check-in with leaders, and if the group is meeting its goals, it will be officially established. If the committee deems that the club has not met its goals, then it will begin another 14-week probationary period. If club support decides the club is not viable, it will be disbanded. Another new feature is that rather than getting 150 students signatures, new clubs must have 15 members provide paragraph long statements expressing why they want to join the club and why it would benefit the Brandeis community. This provision allows club members, rather than just club leaders, to give insight into why the club should be chartered. Toxic Majorette Dance Line was the first new club to use the new recognition process. The Senate voted to grant the club probationary status on Sunday, Oct. 1, giving Toxic access to limited
funding. Ketorah Walker ’18 and Asia Hollinger ’18, two of Toxic’s founders, gave a presentation in front of the Senate describing their club membership, rehearsal schedule and one semester plan. Before their Senate presentation, Walker and Hollinger began working with the Club Support Committee to guarantee their club would have measurable goals and a solid membership. To retain members, the Club Support Committee suggested that Toxic have fewer mandatory rehearsals, according to Walker. During Toxic’s 14-week probationary period, it will focus on getting into the community and hopefully creating a majorette dance program in Waltham schools as well as working towards a semester show, said Walker. The probationary and established status is to ensure new clubs have proper oversight to make sure they are sustainable. As
of now, the Senate has been operating under the understanding that a new club is chartered unless the Senate has reason to believe the club is exclusive, although this is not explicitly stated in the amendment, said Kulkarni. A problem with the old system was that Senate trusted A-board to use discretion in funding chartered clubs, while A-board trusted the Senate to only charter clubs that deserved funding, but under the old system, the Senate generally charted every new club, noted Kulkarni. Vidit Dhawan ’19, Senate Representative to A-board, will now be a member of the Club Support Committee to ensure clubs are getting the proper amount of funding. All formerly charted clubs will remain unaffected by the new system. Clubs will have to submit a re-registration form every year with goals and reflections.
Nobel Prize winners did work on circadian rhythms NOBEL, from page 1
tenured professor interact and engage with undergraduates, doctoral students and post docs all in the same space and all working together.” At the top of his speech, Rosbash thanked the undergraduates, graduate students and postdocs who have assisted him the lab over the years. “It’s impossible to name them all at this point,” he said. Rosbash continues to work in his lab and teach courses at Brandeis, though Hall retired in 2008 and retains emeritus status. He was unable to make it down from his home in rural Maine for the celebration. Rosbash and Hall share the award with Michael Young, a professor at Rockefeller University, and all three will split the $1.1 million prize. Rosbash and Hall were recognized for papers they published between 1984 and 1992. Rosbash and Hall helped uncover the “molecular mechanism,” that governs our internal body clocks. They studied fruit flies and isolated a gene that regulates circadian rhythm. They studied the “PER” protein and took note of the way its levels in the cell rise and fall throughout the hours of the day and, after continuing research, they found the messenger RNA (which carry instructions throughout a cell) that sets off its production. The scientists discovered the “feedback loop” that causes PER molecules to appear and disappear. “Understanding the molecular mechanism of behavior is one of the holy grails in biology,” said Professor Eve Marder (NERO) on Monday. This work was not always so well respected within the scientific community. “The idea that studying activity rhythms of an insect would have an impact on human health was not something that people really/many people would have thought of maybe 25, 30 years ago. But it has,” said Professor Leslie Griffith (BIO).
Speakers noted the research could have bearing on alzheimer’s, disease susceptibility, mental health and even cancer. The practical applications for this research are still on the horizon, said Rosbash, but he sees “reason to imagine” the possibilities because so many of our cells are affected by circadian rhythm. Provost Lisa Lynch recognized the professors for their “willingness to think about problems in a different way, for being unconventional in [their] scientific thought,” and for working through the “challenges” and “frustrations,” that brought them to this award. This is the first Nobel prize for “longtime Brandeis faculty members,” said Liebowitz in a campus-wide email. According to his message, Saul Bellow earned the the 1976 prize for literature prior to joining Brandeis as a visiting professor, and John Nash, who taught at Brandeis in the 60s, won the Nobel for economic sciences in 1995. One alumnus, Rod MacKinnon
78, H’05, won the Nobel in 2003. On Tuesday, an MIT professor won the Nobel Prize in physics. As the Boston Globe’s coverage of Rosbash and Hall takes note, Brandeis is a smaller institution with a much smaller endowment than other Boston-area “research powerhouses.” It boasts fewer Nobels compared to MIT’s 89 or Harvard’s 49. “We have always been resource poor and human capital rich,” said Rosbash, explaining that in this smaller environment, there is a lot of collaboration and that Brandeis “[gets] a lot of mileage out of our resources.” Asked what advice he would give young science students, Rosbash said, “Find your star, find something you love and go for it.” “I’m stunned by this news, and will remain, I hope your colleague and friend” he concluded in his speech. This spring, Rosbash will teach a course on sleep, “the behavioral, cellular and molecular control of sleep and its effects on physiology,” according to the course listings.
photo by hannah schuster/the hoot
October 6, 2017
NEWS 3
The Brandeis Hoot
Student Union works to clarify rules for room searches during fire drills
CRIME, from page 1
alarms and drills makes no mention of university personnel entering rooms during fire drills. “I think that Rights and Responsibilities doesn’t make the conditions under which student rooms can be entered into clear enough to students,” said Student Union President Jacob Edelman ’18 in an interview with The Hoot. The Clery Report outlines that fire drills are conducted in all campus residence hall and that “the drills are conducted by the area coordinators, community advisors, The Department of Facility Services, Environmental Health and Safety Department and the Department of Public Safety.” The Student Union is working with Timothy Touchette, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs, to add clarity to Rights and Responsibilities about the entry of student residences during fire drills, according to Edelman. In the future, students may be warned via email that fire drills are planned, according to Edelman. However, to make the drills realistic, the exact dates and times would not be provided. In an email to the students, faculty and staff last Friday, Callahan
linked the 73-page Clery Report. In addition to crime and fire statistics, the report details dozens of Brandeis policies, evacuation and notification procedures and advises best practices to prevent theft and other crimes. The 2016 Clery report is publicly available on the Brandeis website, with a link to the report on the Public Safety homepage. Last year, the email linked to the Public Safety homepage though the report was located in a specific tab. Crime statistics occurred on page 61 of the report and fire statistics were found on pages 63, 68, 69 and 70. The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act requires colleges and universities that receive federal funding to provide students and employees with an annual security report and outlines requirements for the report, according to the Clery Center website. Callahan’s email also linked students to the City of Waltham sex offender registry, found on the city’s website. Bentley University, located in the same city as Brandeis, reported two cases of rape and seven cases of stalking in 2016 in their
Clery report. Bentley has approximately 4,200 undergraduate students compared to Brandeis’ 3,600 undergraduate students, according to statistics found on both universities’ home pages. Bentley listed four fires in 2016, three of which were intentional, according to the university’s report. Boston College, with 14,000 enrolled students, reported 27 cases of rape and Harvard University,
with 6,700 undergrad students, reported 28 cases of rape in 2016. Positions at the Office of Prevention Services (OPS) are in flux. Sheila McMahon, the Director of Sexual Assault Services and Prevention, and Julia Rickey, the Survivor Advocate and Education Specialist, left OPS over the summer. The Rape Crisis Center is currently staffed by Purnima Sahgal, Interim Survivor Advocate, and
Trish Glover, Trauma Therapist at the Brandeis Counseling Center. Several members of OPS have also stepped up during this interim period while the university seeks replacements for McMahon and Rickey. Carrie Robertson has been serving as the Interim Program Manager and Elba Valerio, a previous employee of the Intercultural Center, is acting as an Interim Program Manager in an administrative capacity.
photo by yarissa diaz/the hoot
Second Free Expression open meeting yields low student, faculty and staff turnout By Elianna Spitzer editor
The Task Force on Free Expression held its second meeting on Oct. 2 to review free expression principles that will guide campus discourse. The open meeting, meant to act as a forum for students, faculty and staff to express opinions or concerns about the principles, was attended by three undergraduate students. One student was on the task force and two were part of the Student Union. The principles will guide free speech and expression of community members. The meetings on Sept. 27 and Oct. 2 did not reflect the community as a whole. The audiences were almost entirely white and contained more alumni, staff and graduate students
than undergraduate students, the largest body of the Brandeis community. Jamele Adams, Dean of Students, pleaded for more people, particularly students, to speak up about the free expression principles. Only two students spoke at the Oct. 2 meeting which was held on a Monday from noon to 1:15 p.m. Adams had no suggestion as to how to get more students involved, but expressed hope that the Oct. 30 meeting, which will be held later in the day, will have better attendance. Students can also engage in conversation about the principles through an online forum. Students can post anonymously or have their name attached to comments about the principles. The panel at the Oct. 2 meeting included Provost Lisa Lynch,
photo by elianna spitzer/the hoot
President Ron Liebowitz, Professor Susan Dibble, Professor John Plotz and Professor Matthew Sheehy. Liebowitz emphasized at the start of the open meeting that these principles will guide policy. The open meetings are a way to get feedback on the principles and to hear community opinions on how policy can best adhere to them. At the Free Expression Task Force Meeting on Monday, a professor asked members on the panel whether they thought the decision to turn Buyer Beware into a course fit the principles listed in the Free Expression guidelines. The panelists, including Dibble, Chair of the Theater Arts Department, referred to Buyer Beware as an ongoing situation. As of press time, The Brandeis Hoot is not aware of any changes to the decision to turn the play into a course for this spring. The Hoot wrote an article last week about Buyer Beware, a play written by a Brandeis alum that was originally scheduled to be performed later this semester. The play tells the story of a white college student who uses the n-word in a comedy routine, spurring national Black Lives Matter protests. Brandeis students raised multiple concerns, including how Black Lives Matter is portrayed in the play. Two meetings came from those concerns on Sept. 20 and Sept. 26. During the second meeting, students and faculty decided that the best way to handle the play was to turn it into a course. The play will now be performed in the spring as part of that course. Speakers on stage expressed a greater interest in discussing policy than at the last event. When asked questions about policy,
members of the panel directed those questions back at the speaker. A staff member asked whether the principles will affect workplace conversations. Members of the Task Force responded that the principles do not trump established workplace laws and guidelines. Several speakers again pressed the panel on the fact that the principles lack concrete definitions and distinctions. There is no definition of hate speech. The document does not address how the community should handle speech that may incite violence. One student expressed concern that some viewpoints may “shut speech down” for other students. Lynch remarked, “I’m very sympathetic to the notions that when you are embracing free speech...we have to recognize that somebody’s free speech might, in fact, in turn, shut somebody else’s speech down. So, certainly as a provost, if a circumstance like that were to present itself, I would be working with faculty to ensure that, if there are groups that are feeling that this speech is going to shut their speech down, to find ways to empower them so that they do feel safe to speak up as well.” Other members of the task force on stage echoed the importance of the section titled “Sharing Responsibility” as a way to combat students feeling like their speech has been “shut down.” The document reads, “The university must find ways to engage the whole community about each person’s responsibility to foster a just and inclusive campus culture so that all can participate fully in the intellectual and social life of the university.” A staff member asked the task
force members to expand on the meaning of sharing responsibility and asked how the entire community can be expected to facilitate difficult conversations. Brimhall-Vargas responded by explaining the task force debate about invited speakers. “There was this question about the assumption of community at all, if we have a community, what are the expectations of the community members. What happens when someone brings in a controversial speaker? [...] Where someone brings them in, and it’s like laying a bomb on the campus and then they wash their hands of it, leaving other people looking after it. Is that what people do in a community?” he said. Brimhall-Vargas went on to explain that some people on the task force wanted to include a principle which would ensure that someone inviting a controversial speaker would follow up on the invitation. He did not define what this meant. Others on the task force, according to Brimhall-Vargas, were worried that asking an invitee to be accountable after the speaker came to campus would create a “chilling effect” and discourage the invitation of such speakers. The debate “left a lot of language on the cutting room floor,” said Brimhall-Vargas. It is an example of why the document is so broad and universally appealing. The principles lack concrete deifinitions or examples of complex situations that they hope to guide. The next step for members of the administration, after the Oct. 30 meeting, is to decide how to incorporate the task force principles into policy.
4 NEWS
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P.E. requirement becomes “Health, Wellness and Life Skills” modules EDUCATION, from page 1
supported having multiple broad requirements. That feedback was taken into account when forming the five themes. The proposal has already been approved by last year’s Undergraduate Curriculum Committee. It must still be approved by faculty and the Board of Trustees for it to go into effect. The requirements have not been changed since 1994. The Task Force aims to have the General Education implemented for the first-year class entering in the fall of 2019. As of now, Brandeis has 11 requirements—including Quantitative Reasoning, and Non-Western and Comparative Studies and the school distribution requirement where students take a class from four areas: science, humanities, social science and creative arts. Most of the requirements have been swapped one for one. However, two new required courses have been added to the list: Digital Literacy and Diversity Equity and Inclusion in the U.S. These bring the total list of requirements to 13. The Task Force reviewed the requirements of peer institutions and found that most had at least 12. The First Year Experience requirement will build upon the University Writing Seminar (UWS). Traditionally, a UWS course is made of up three essays centered around a core theme. Under the First Year Experience, students will now participate in one of two “Critical Conversations” during the semester in which two faculty members will
offer contrasting viewpoints on broad topics such as The Meaning of Truth or American Healthcare. Students will also have a three to five hour mandatory experiential learning trip during the semester. The trip will be designed to expand upon an assignment. The proposal gives volunteering at a Waltham farm as an example. Tal Richtman, 2020 class senator, asked the Task Force members present whether there has been a push to limit the amount of graduate students teaching UWS courses. Members of the Task Force agreed that the university would like to have more faculty teaching the First Year Experience, but it seems unlikely to not need graduate students to teach. The new Schools of Thought requirement is essentially the same as the School Distribution requirement, with the exception that students can no longer use AP credits to satisfy it. Students in the Union expressed concern that the new requirements would burden incoming students. “We actually expect that students for the most part will be taking fewer requirements than they are now, because even though the maximum theoretical number of requirements is a course or two higher, we’re now taking some of those requirements like the Writing Intensive and the Oral Communications [...] and folding them into the majors. So those will be major requirements,” said Birren. This means every department will include courses that satisfy certain requirements, including Writing Intensive and Quantitative Reasoning.
Writing Intensive, Oral Communication and Quantitative Reasoning are still four credit course requirements, but can now be found under the theme titled Foundational Literacies. The proposal states that these requirements can and should be taken within one’s major. A course in Digital Literacy should also be taken within a major and asks students to, “evaluate the validity of digital sources; create and use digital media; analyze, present and reason about large sets of data; generate or utilize appropriate software in the discipline; and become adept at utilizing data bases,” as defined by the major. Health Wellness and Life Skills will replace the mandatory two course Physical Education requirement. It mandates that a total of three non-credit courses be completed in three different areas: Navigating Health and Safety, Mind and Body Balance, and Life Skills. A varsity athlete would not be required to take one of the three modules. Non-Western and Comparative requirements exist under the name Difference and Justice in the World. The Foreign Language requirements will be referred to as World Languages and Cultures. Four Task Force members were part of the panel on the Sunday night: Susan Birren, Dean of Arts and Sciences, Elaine Wong, Senior Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education, Bulbul Chakaborty, Professor of Physics and Tory Fair, Associate Professor of Fine Arts. Alona Weimer ’18, UCC student representative was also present, but not as a part of the panel.
October 6, 2017
IN THE SENATE: October 1, 2017 • Union met with Task Force on General Education member Susan Birren, Elaine Wong, Tory Fair and Bulbul Chakaborty, to ask questions about new general education requirements. • Senate will vote on the proposal on 10/8 • New Gen. Ed. requirements proposal approved last year by UCC—ultimately must be approved by faculty 23 years ago since last change in reqs • General education requirements made by following standard: What do students need before to know they graduate Brandeis? • Samantha Barrett ’20, East Quad Senator and Chair of Health and Safety Committee, expressed need for more committee members • Toxic Majorette Dance Line granted probationary status under new club chartering process. • New club in 2015, was part of BBSO • Club support will check in after 14 weeks • Senate voted to charter Sharsheret at Brandeis • Jewish women in support of ending breast cancer • Senate voted to approve the name change of Brandeis literary and art magazine from “Where the Children Play” to “Blacklist.” • Lilly Hecht ’18 confirmed as Chief Justice of the Judiciary • Hannah Brown ’19, Vice President of the Union, spoke to DCL about fire alarms going off in residence halls and said fire drills are required by City of Waltham. • Several Union members skeptical if DCL is allowed to enter room during fire drills without giving students 24hour warning. • Shaquan McDowell ’18, Chair of COW-G, said free menstur- al products on campus will be tested soon • FMLA is gathering volunteers to help with distribution - Samantha Lauring, Staff
Former German diplomat warns of crisis in European Union after Brexit
By Daniel Johnston staff
The former German diplomat Thomas Matussek gave a speech at Brandeis this past Monday evaluating the state of affairs in Europe. Matussek was the German ambassador to the United Kingdom from 2002 to 2006, the Permanent Representative of Germany to the United Nations in New York from 2006 to 2009, and the German ambassador to India from 2009 to 2011. He believes Europe is in a crisis, mainly stemming from problems stemming from the euro, the 2015 refugee catastrophe, and the potential decrease in national security support from the United States. Matussek recommends that to be successful in the future Europe must work closer together, particularly on defense, and successfully negotiate Brexit. “Across the Atlantic from here, it’s not a very pretty picture,” is how Matussek opened his talk, titled ‘Three Elections and a Brexit’ as an allusion to the movie ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral.’ Roughly two dozen members of the Brandeis community went to the Mandel Center for the Humanities to attend the event, most of them professors and graduate students. While Matussek is largely con-
tent with the results of the recent European elections—in France, Germany and The Netherlands, he views the 2016 Brexit referendum as bringing upheaval to Europe. “The times in which we could completely depend on others are, to a certain extent, over,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel famously declared earlier this year after NATO and G7 meetings. “I’ve experienced that in the last few days. We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands.” Matussek believes the biggest immediate reason for the European nationalistic trend is the refugee crisis. “All of a sudden, there was this onslaught of refugees, more than a million,” he explained. “When Angela Merkel said, ‘You all can come, and we cannot protect our borders anyway,’ this was a decision with very far-reaching consequences.” The former ambassador blames Merkel for “single-handedly creating” a German right-wing party. He claims her decision, taken without clear assurances for the future, led to Germans becoming fearful of foreigners and globalization. A similar situation took place all throughout Europe. Another big disturbance to Europe, in Matussek’s view, is the evolving U.S. attitude towards international defense. “It’s quite clear that the body politic in
America says, ‘Look, the Soviet threat is gone, the Iron Curtain has fallen, and we’re still paying the bulk of the security of the European countries. Why do we finance all these free riders?’ And I would say that is fair enough.” European countries have become less cooperative as they realize a potential future lack of U.S. support may force them to become increasingly self-reliant. Matussek also points to complications arising from a currency union, such as the situation in developing Greece. “The Euro, which was considered a unifying bond, is now driving us apart.” Europe has been providing Greece with liquidity on the promise they will institute reforms. “Now we’ve been doing this for the last seven years, an enormous amount of transfers have built up, and nothing much has changed.” A common currency causes issues when, as in the case of the euro, some of the member countries of the currency are at dissimilar points of economic development. Germany’s former diplomat laid out steps Europe can take to improve its future prospects. First, he emphasized that it is crucial for Europe to band together. “Each and every European country, in a globalized world, is just too small and too insignificant to make a difference. So Europe can only
act decisively and influence international developments if they do it together. Europe is a world power, but only a world power in integrated policies…When the European Trade Commissioner negotiates with the Chinese, with the Indians, they know he speaks for 450 million people. But on foreign security policy, we are the laughingstock of the community, because everybody goes their own way.” A European army would be an efficiency upgrade for Europe, according to Matussek. “We have twenty-seven different systems, while the U.S. has only one…Is it really necessary that Estonia has an air force? Is it really necessary that Luxembourg has a navy?” He explained that Britain has long opposed the creation of a European army, and with their departure from the European Union (EU) faster movement towards shared defense could be on the horizon. Matussek also thinks that Brussels, referring to the capital of the EU, should not be meddling unnecessarily in the internal affairs of member states. “Kick upstairs only issues that everyone understands can only be handled at a European level. For instance, exchange of information between the secret services…and leave the other stuff where they belong, closer to the people. Because a lot
of the unease which you have in Catalonia or in Scotland etc. is because the central government and Europe is meddling in our affairs.” A successful Brexit is crucial to the prosperity of Europe, Matussek argued. Having activated “Article 50” in March, Great Britain will cease to be a part of the EU in two years. Great Britain and the EU are currently trying to come to a compromise on the terms of the exit. The U.K. wants the privileges of internal markets that come from being in the EU, without having to be bound by the responsibilities that come from being in the union. “That is of course, in those clear terms, impossible.” Matussek is concerned about the possibility of a deal not being reached. “All in all, you’re talking about 25,000 rules and regulations and laws which you’ll either have to rescind, or adapt, or make a derivative of, but obviously this can’t be done…The jury is still out. I can only say the risk that this thing falls off a cliff is still very high.” Despite this, Matussek chose to strike an optimistic tone. To sum up the state of Europe, the German channeled an American author. “All in all, what I could say about Europe is what Mark Twain said about Wagner’s music: ‘It’s much better than it sounds.’”
FEATURES
October 6, 2017
The Brandeis Hoot 5
Social Media at Brandeis
A vegetarian adventure with @cravingswithoutcaution By Zach Cihlar editor
“The food in Italy was just so photogenic!” Akshiti Todi ’19 exclaimed, “It tasted so amazing and looked so good.” While visiting Italy on a family vacation, Todi amassed a collection of photographs featuring all the food she ate while in the country. From those collections of pictures, @ cravingswithoutcaution was born. @cravingswithoutcaution records the food adventures Todi goes on throughout the year,
from restaurants in Boston to homemade food in India, and even a few creations of her own. “I started it because I love food so much, and it actually makes me happy to look at food,” Todi said enthusiastically. The inspiration to create the account, she said, stemmed from her love for creative and unique food. Growing up vegetarian, Todi’s always been very attentive to what she eats every day, and she considers herself an expert on eating vegetarian and delicious vegetarian options. Born in Mumbai, India, Todi’s en-
photos courtesy
@cravingswithoutcaution
tire family eats vegetarian food, and since then she’s always been able to find great creations following the dietary restriction. “It was easy to be vegetarian because all we ever ate growing up was vegetarian food,” she said. Todi also takes great influence from her grandmother, she said, who dislikes food outside of the vegetarian dietary restriction. Todi has since adopted her eating habits in accordance with her grandmother’s tastes. Despite eating all kinds of vegetarian food, Todi said her favorite type of food to Instagram was easily dessert foods. Nearly a third of her posts are dedicated to desserts ranging from macaroons to frozen yogurt. Her favorite post of hers, in fact, was deep fried Oreos with condensed milk. Beyond sharing her variety of experiences with food, @cravingswithoutcaution has taught Todi numerous lessons about social media and marketing, she said. Working to build her food Instagram has mirrored the social media outreach required of many businesses. In that sense, she said, developing the @cravingswithoutcaution brand has aided in building practical promotional skills that she may use in the future. Ultimately, Todi hopes that she
can use @cravingswithoutcaution as a resume booster while also doing something she loves, eating and photographing good food. As an added bonus, she mentioned, if she can build her food Instagram large enough, restaurants might actually offer her free food in exchange for promoting the restaurant on the account. Despite all the benefits of pursuing a food Instagram, Todi warned that operating the account has made her overanalyze her food choices when ordering at a new restaurant. “I felt that when I ordered food, I ordered for the look and uniqueness rather than
the taste,” she elaborated. Each meal, she said, revolved around her next post rather than the enjoyment of the food she loves. Ultimately, she said, “taste is way more important than the aesthetic.” Though she has been less active on @cravingswithoutcaution since returning to school, she said that her followers should expect a large uptake in media presence in a few months when she goes abroad for the spring semester. Dedicated fans of @cravingswithoutcaution will follow along Todi as she spends one delicious semester in Edinborough, Scotland!
Club Spotlight: Campus Activities Board By Polina Potochevska editor
Want to be more involved at Brandeis? Do you enjoy planning events and having the opportunity to host concerts and other fun events on campus? If so, the Campus Activities Board (CAB), previously known as Student Events, may be the right group for you! One of the co-presidents, Alissa Fagin ’20, an Anthropology and Psychology major, says that CAB is going through a “rebranding process.” Their new slogan is “A new standard of fun,” which is representative of the club’s mission for this semester and beyond. “Our goal is the enjoyment of the students,” Fagin said, pointing out that the board hopes to create fun social events that students will enjoy and “be proud of ” while on-campus instead of in the Boston area. The board is made up of an executive board and general board members. Fagin leads E-board and general board meetings, essentially making sure that everything runs smoothly on “the macro things” with the help of their staff advisor, Steve Pagios. She explained that she oversees the executive board members, who at this point in the semester, are focused on marketing the board and on
smaller details like ordering necessary supplies for future events. The general board members participate on a volunteer basis, and can choose how much or how little they want to be involved in events throughout the semester. Fagin said that general board members can “volunteer at one event, or if you want to come to every meeting and be in tons of different committees,” then that is also great and encouraged. There is an unlimited amount of general board members, and the more there are, the better. This semester, CAB has some exciting events coming up, the most well-known of which is Fall Flex, the fall semester concert on Oct. 21, Fagin said. This year, Brandeis is hosting X Ambassadors, known for their songs “Unsteady” and “Renegades.” The Concert Chair and their committee, members of the general board, help to decide every year what musicians will come to campus. “We’re really excited because the fall concert hasn’t been a huge event in the past, and I think that according to our surveys, people wanted to see bigger names at our concerts.” She also explained that it will be a nice contrast to Springfest, as the band is more alternative, so they will cater to a lot of different music tastes.
Another fun and new event is X-Lawn, on Saturday, Oct. 14. The extreme event will feature bungee jumping, a rock wall, an extreme themed photo booth and free food provided by Blue Ribbon BBQ. CAB hosts Family Weekend, which is taking place Oct. 26 to 30. That Friday, CAB will be hosting comedian Colin Jost in the Spingold theater. “We always try to get a comedian to come and Colin Jost is a big name, he was on SNL [Saturday Night Live] so we’re really excited about that,” Fagin expressed. She also said that a lot of work has been put into the variety show, taking place on Saturday night, and that it will be great for students and parents alike to see what students are accomplishing outside of their classes. One of Fagin’s favorite events from last year was the ’Deis Food Fest, a food truck festival that took place on the Great Lawn. She helped plan it and create the playlist, and while she said it was a simple event, “it made people really happy, and there’s something to be said about that kind of simplicity.” The Campus Activities Board cannot operate without general board members and is looking for more students! Fagin explains that there are lots of incentives, including meeting the artists
photo from facebook.com
who come to perform, making closer relationships with administration, free T-shirts and other items and the freedom to decide your level of commitment. “It’s an amazing thing to be behind the scenes; when you put on the events and see other people benefitting from that, there’s nothing more satisfying,” she said. In addition to joining CAB’s list-
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serv, general board meetings take place every Tuesday night at 8:15 p.m. in the SCC Multipurpose Room, where they split the meetings into both logistics and fun. Fagin herself became a member of CAB after attending one general board meeting out of curiousity, so if you even have a little interest, it is definitely worth checking out.
6 FEATURES
The Brandeis Hoot
October 6, 2017
A passion for making angsty pickles By Charlotte Aaron editor
Angsty_pickles Instagramer Tres Fimmano’s ’18 introduction to pickling came in the form of an unexpected blueprint for pickled eggs on the back side of a recipe for pancakes. “Out of curiousity, I tried them,” said Fimmano about the eggs. Lo and behold, the chance recipe introduced Fimmano to the world of pickling, a culinary specialty he still works on today, two years later. Pickling, a form of fermentation, Fimmano explained, is a process that allows for the preservation of food, specifically hardboiled eggs and vegetables. “If you have produce and vegetables that you want to hold onto for a long time, pickling allows you to save them for longer,” said Fimmano, noting the positive environmental impact pickling can have. By way of a cooking process that takes about 20 minutes, Fimmano is able to experiment with a variety of spices and vinegars to create batches of pickled vegetables. “This is going to sound really corny, but really every pickle is different,” said Fimmano as to why he is so passionate about the process. As a beginner, he stuck to a few specific recipes that he knew were good. Yet, as he became more familiar with the spices and their flavors, Fimmano began experimenting on his own. “I just find some spices like ‘oh, I haven’t tried
this together,’ or ‘I liked this last time, maybe I’ll do more of that spice,” he explained. “That’s what’s really fun about it for me … I’m constantly able to try new things but also follow a pretty familiar structure that I know is reliable.” When preparing pickles for friends, Fimmano tires to stick to the basics, such as Garlic Dill Pickles and Bread and Butter Pickles, or pickles that tend to sound most appetizing to people unfamiliar with the pickling processes. However, left to prepare pickles for himself, Fimmano has found his favorite recipe to be one that “does not sound particularly appetizing … to most people”—pickled eggs in red-wine vinegar and beet juice. Just as the name describes, Fimmano’s favorite recipe is that of hard-boiled eggs soaked with beets in red-wine vinegar. “They have a really dark-red, purplish stain to them that even kind of fades into the inside of the white of the egg,” said Fimmano. When he cuts the egg in half, he is able to see where the purple stain seeped into the white of the egg. “It looks really cool. It tastes delicious,” he said, emphasizing the vinegar flavor he has come to love since he started pickling. Though failure is not a word Fimmano used to describe any of his pickles, he did note that despite his best efforts, he was not able to appreciate pickled carrots. “I tried to get into pickling carrots
photos courtesy
By Sara McCrea
@angsty_pickles
Tres’ Beginner Pickle Recipe
photo courtesy tres fimmano
for a long time, and not only did I find that very boring because they didn’t really retain a lot of flavor of the spices, but also whenever they did pull in spices, it wasn’t very useful,” said Fimmano. He recalled one batch of carrots that he flavored with mustard seed and resulted in something “that just tasted like a really bad carrot.” As much joy as pickling brings Fimmano in the kitchen, he loves being able to introduce other pickle-lovers to the process. “Something that I really enjoy is when I mention to someone that I like pickling, and they’re all of a sudden like ‘oh my god, I love pickles,’ because all of my friends think it’s one of the weirdest things about me,” said Fimmano. “But you’ll realize how many people are just so into pickles, and they don’t realize how easy it is to make their own, and I really discovered that there really is a pretty strong cult following of pickles.” For any new picklers, Fimmano recommends first checking out a few recipes and then to “just stop using them, because you’re going to have the most fun just finding a spice that you think will be interesting and throwing it in there, and you’re only going to get there by trying it.” To get any interested readers started with their first batch of homemade pickles, Fimmano shared one of his favorite homemade recipes with The Brandeis Hoot’s readers. He suggests starting with cucumbers, as they have the least natural flavor, and then moving into other vegetables from there.
Ingredients:
Pickling Cucumbers, Chips or Spears (as many as will fit in your jar) White Vinegar (¾ of your jar) Salt (1 tablespoon) Pickling Spices (1 tablespoon) Finely Chopped Garlic (4 cloves) Dill (2 teaspoons) Sugar (1 tablespoon) Chopped Onion (½ onion) Note: pickling spices are sold as a mix that can be purchased at Hannaford’s or Market Basket.
Recipe :
First, bring the vinegar to a boil. Depending on how strong you want the pickles to be, you can use anywhere from 50 to 100 percent vinegar. “I personally really like doing an entire jar of just vinegar, but some people find that very overwhelming, so if I’m trying to make a jar that’s for someone else, or if I’m going to share, it will be closer to about 50 percent vinegar and 50 percent water,” explained Fimmano. The vinegar should fill about three quarters of the jar you are making the pickles in. While the vinegar is boiling, measure out and prepare the salt, garlic, dill, sugar, pickling spice, and onion. While the onion can be cut in whatever way is easiest for you, Fimmano prefers to chop larger pieces, as he “like[s] the aesthetic of the long rings of onion in” the jar. When the vinegar boils, add the spices, garlic, and onion, cover the pan, and bring the mixture to a simmer for 10 minutes. During those 10 minutes, cut up whatever vegetables you are using. For this recipe, Fimmano suggests pickling cucumbers, which can be prepared as sliced chips or spears. After the vinegar has simmered for 10 minutes with the spices, quickly pour it into the jar of cucumbers, seal the container, and put it in the refrigerator to sit overnight. They will be ready to eat as early as the next morning!
A conversation with @crocsofbrandeis
staff
If you have a particular affinity for a shoe that is flexible, comfortable, waterproof, durable and, above all, stylish, you have probably heard of the instagram account @crocsofbrandeis. With over 670 followers and 89 posts of Crocs sightings from around the Brandeis campus, the account’s bio is, “Simply displaying Brandeis’ finest fashion trend.” “I was actually inspired by SUNY Geneseo because they had a @crocsofgeneseo page that followed me,” said the anonymous manager of the @crocsofbrandeis account. “I thought it was the best idea ever and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before.” The manager of the account is always on the lookout for Crocs around campus, but they also get direct messages from Brandeis students who have started taking photos whenever they see someone sporting the fashionable footwear.
“I’ve definitely acquired an eye for crocs,” the manager said. The manager started the account about a year ago and since then has posted pictures of crocs in every color from all ends of campus. The page acts as a place for students to come together and celebrate the uniqueness of the shoe, as well as the Brandeis community’s focus on positivity. “Probably my favorite post is this one where this guy is just sitting in a tree and his Crocs are dangling down in the air,” the manager said. “It’s so beautiful.” Crocs have even made their way into the classroom. A spot last January showed a physics professor sporting a pair of vibrant purple Crocs. The post has over 150 likes from Brandeis students. “I think it’s funny when you see something that’s so ridiculous and ugly and then take it and celebrate it,” the manager said. “I like twisting something that a lot of people make fun of and lifting it up.” As for what Crocs the founder of @crocsofbrandeis
has, they like to keep it classic with a practical navy clog. Against all odds, Crocs seems to be revamping their brand. According to Vogue UK, in Sept. 2016, fashion designer Christopher Kane sent a model down the runway in gemstone embellished crocs. The brand Balenciaga has now debuted the platform Croc. The Denver Post reported that within the last economic quarter, Crocs profits have raised 54 percent due to a $200 million investment by private-equity giant Blackstone Group in 2013 and strategic planning to do away with underperforming styles and stores. And with actress Drew Barrymore and wrestler John Cena signed on as spokespeople for the company, the Crocs trend won’t be going anywhere soon. “It isn’t necessarily something that’s so specific to Brandeis, but I think it’s more of a generational thing,” the manager said. “They’re just so easy to make fun of, but I try to say in the captions, ‘These are beautiful!’”
photo courtesy
@crocsofbrandeis Some of the page’s colorful Croc posts.
@crocsofbrandeis
ARTS
October 6, 2017
The Brandeis Hoot 7
Andy Nagy: 40 years and still going strong on WBRS By Katie Decker-Jacoby editor
Andy Nagy’s “Black Jack Davy Show” has been airing weekly since the spring of 1976 on WBRS. Every Monday he drives 100 miles round-trip between Amesbury and Waltham, Massachusetts. When the clock strikes 8:30 p.m., it’s show time for Nagy. Nagy fell in love with folk music at four years old when one day his parents turned on Irish music in the car. His babysitter played Burl Ives records, which he thoroughly enjoyed and looked forward to as a young child. His passion for folk music was reignited in the seventh grade. He began to search for performers in his area and over time gathered his own collection of music. When Nagy was a senior in high school, an older friend who attended Brandeis introduced Nagy to WBRS and offered to sneak him into WBRS’ radio broadcast booth. “I always had a passion for sharing music as well and was always bringing records to school and sharing them with friends and bringing the latest thing over to friends’ houses… so this seemed like a great idea,” Nagy added. He got 30 minutes of his friend’s show and the rest is history. His own show started airing on Thursday mornings and then WBRS gave him Monday nights. He’s been on Monday nights ever since. “As soon as I heard my friend talking about it, I was like, ‘ooh that’s what I want to do,’ and then coming here [to Brandeis]
photo from facebook.com
you meet all kinds of amazing people who are really into all kinds of different music,” said Nagy. Nagy attended Brandeis only for his first year of college. He studied music and participated in the Early Music Ensemble, as well as WBRS. “I was psyched, I was excited. I just remember being more excited about being able to do this because it seemed like the perfect outlet, the perfect extension of what I had already been doing with friends,” he added. So what exactly has kept Nagy motivated for 40 years? “What’s kept me going is just the love of the music and the new music that keeps happening because there’s a really vibrant folk scene,” he said. “The Black Jack Davy Show” specifically highlights contemporary and traditional folk and roots-re-
lated music from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France, Brittany and beyond. “The Black Jack Davy Show” is named after the song “Black Jack Davey.” Nagy loves this song and the several different versions which have been created around the world. “Just the fact that it was found in all these different places, I thought it symbolized what I was doing, which is playing music from all these different places,” Nagy explained. Every Monday, Nagy hauls two heavy bags from Amesbury to Waltham: One is filled with CDs and the other with records, adding up to around 100 CDs and records from home. He spends a couple of hours planning the music and show in advance. “But it’s also very spur of the moment too, like one song will make me think
of another… and I’ll play that, so I can go off on tangents that have no relation to what I thought I was going to do,” said Nagy. Luckily, he has access to WBRS’ expansive music library, which is located in the studio. Once he arrives at the studio, he arranges his personal CDs and records in order by genre to help him stay organized throughout the night. He then decides the night’s theme song and pops that into the CD player or puts it onto the turntable. His show’s themes include birthdays, album release anniversaries, holidays and the progression of specific songs. Nagy’s wealth of musical knowledge and knack for playing good sets does not solely reach Brandeis students and other community members on campus. Nagy’s radio show captures the attention of listeners around the world. At one point, he even had many fans in Australia. Some fans used to call in and sometimes the show featured other guest speakers or even live performances too. In terms of how things are changing in the realm of music and media, Nagy thinks the present-day ways of listening to and sharing music might be altering the music landscape in the wrong direction. “I have to say, I think that social media and downloading and all that has possibly closed things down because you don’t really share as much with the records or see the new releases that come in. I mean, you can see what comes out, but not so much listening to full albums, and I think that can potentially make things less adventurous,” said Nagy.
As for the change in radio scene, Nagy has noticed a decline in interest for radio broadcasting. Students used to stay up late and even sleep on couches in the studio, but this is not so much the case nowadays. However, WBRS is making strong efforts to get more people engaged in the radio station, according to Nagy. As for what takes up his time outside of the WBRS studio, Nagy works at a psychiatric hospital, helping patients who who deal with addictions, mental health and developmental disabilities. Although this job greatly differs from his gig at WBRS, Nagy really enjoys working with his patients. Also outside of WBRS, Nagy used to host a show on WGBH FM. He also played in a band called We Saw the Wolf from his late twenties to the early 2000’s. His band has been on and off since then. “We did a significant performance for a two-week 50 Years of Boston Rock festival a couple of years back sponsored by MIT’s radio station, WMBR,” said Nagy. In fact, Nagy has been busy in the booth creating new music and plans on teaming up with a family music group called The Funn Family to record a full album. Though Nagy has brilliant things in store, at the end of the day, he has continued his WBRS radio show for 40 years because of his intense passion for sharing his love of music with others. Nagy will carry on as one of Brandeis’ hidden gems on campus, and you can tune in to experience it every Monday night at 8:30p.m. on WBRS 100.1 FM.
‘Fortnite: Battle Royale’ raises the bar with scare factor and high intensity
By Noah Harper staff
Horror movies rarely scare me. They used to, but it’s been awhile since a scary movie has given me that feeling of creeping terror that made me squirm or jump out of my seat. But a new video game mode, “Battle Royale” in “Fortnite,” had me legitimately screaming. The concept is simple: 100 players are dropped onto an island. Once on the ground, they have to scavenge for weapons and supplies and try not to die. There’s also a slowly-shrinking circle that funnels everyone together and
adds even more paranoia to the fray. If this sounds like a ripoff, it’s because it is. “Battle Royale” took its concept from “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” (“PUBG”) which was inspired by “The Hunger Games” and Koushun Takami’s 1999 novel “Battle Royale.” I haven’t experienced something as nerve-wracking and engaging in video games (or any medium) like I have in “Battle Royale” in a long time. The core survival element, the singular goal of not dying, is so deeply ingrained in the game that anything that could lead to death—the slightest sound, a distant blur on
photo from epicgames.com
the horizon—becomes cause for alarm. I was playing with my cousin last week, and after he was surprise-shotgunned after opening a door to a house, I’m not ashamed to say I let out a high-pitched scream. I’ve been really interested in exploring what makes this gamemode so compelling. What’s particularly fascinating is that the visual aspects of “Battle Royale” are completely in conflict with the most engaging parts of the game—the characters and world are cartoony and exaggerated, but the gameplay feels real and tense. It’s incredible that despite this aesthetic tension, the game is still able to affect me in such a dramatic way. It feels real, even though it’s obviously not. Against all odds, I become heavily invested in this silly cartoon world. The question remains: is “Battle Royale” a rip-off of “PUBG?” I would argue that video games “steal” ideas from each other all the time. Fifteen years ago, pretty much all games labeled first-person shooters as “Doom Clones” because gamers thought that they copied the mechanics from 1993’s “DOOM.” Maybe they did, but I don’t think that was necessarily a violation of copyright law. But we wouldn’t say today that every game that features shooting from a first-person perspective as a mechanic is ripping off “DOOM,” so why would we say that about “Battle Royale?”
“PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” popularized the mode (and, I’d say, is better), but does that mean that they’re entitled to a monopoly on the genre? After all, their names are different, the art direction dramatically distinct and “Battle Royale” lets you build structures and craft items, which isn’t an option in “PUBG.” But are these differences enough to warrant distinctness, or are they merely superficial? On Steam, the widely-used PC platform, “PUBG” recently surpassed longtime stalwarts “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive” and “Dota 2” to become the most played game on the platform. I think it’s pretty obvious that “Fortnite” is trying to follow the money by making a mode that mimics “PUBG”—but is this necessarily wrong? The real reason I’m playing “Battle Royale” right now and not “PUBG” is because of platform and price of entry. I don’t have a gaming computer, I have an Xbox, and “Battle Royale” is free-to-play, not $40. It doesn’t matter that “PUBG” is coming to Xbox by the end of the year, because right now there is an underserved market, and “Battle Royale” took advantage of it. “Battle Royale” isn’t the better product, but it’s available and it’s free—and that’s really all that matters. As for whether “PUBG” owns exclusive license to this “Hunger Games” style model, I think courts would decide in favor of
“Battle Royale.” In 2016, a federal court issued a summary judgment in the case of DaVinci Editrice v. Ziko Games, LLC, about whether or not a Chinese company copied game mechanics for the card game “Bang!”. The court found that the Copyright Act states that, “In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle or discovery,” and that there had been no copyright infringement. What might this mean for “Fortnite” and “PUBG?” I think that as this genre explodes, we’re going to see a lot more “PUBG” clones. But that’s because it’s a genre, instead of just a specific game. This means that one developer can’t hold a monopoly on making one style of game, just like how iD, the makers of “DOOM,” couldn’t keep everyone else from making first-person shooters. If you want to experience the heart-racing, pulse-pounding intensity of the “Battle Royale” genre, you can download “Fortnite: Battle Royale” for free on PC, Xbox One and Playstation 4. Or you can buy “PUBG” (or wait months for it to come to console). This is a new game genre with the potential to create really exciting experiences and I look forward to seeing other developers continue to innovate the idea and make even more intense experiences.
8 ARTS
The Brandeis Hoot
October 6, 2017
Farmal enlivens rooftop garden with food, music and dancing
By Katie Decker-Jacoby editor
Farmers, food lovers and community members alike gathered around Farmers Club’s rooftop garden above Gerstenzang Science Library to partake in Farmal 2017, on the evening of Sunday, Oct. 1. This year, Farmal offered a homemade dinner, live music and dancing. Farmal is an annual fall event hosted by Farmers Club in celebration of the fall harvest. The club strives to promote sustainable agriculture and organic produce. E-board members teamed up to create a delicious, healthy and fresh feast. For the non-Kosher menu, they made a salad with leafy greens, tomatoes, avocado and chickpeas, as well as shell pasta with a pumpkin sauce. The pasta dish contained nutritional yeast, salt, pepper and broccoli. The salad was light and refreshing, with perfectly ripe avocado. The pumpkin sauce on the pasta was such a pleasant surprise. Creating such a tasty pumpkin sauce without incorporating any dairy is seriously impressive. The meal concluded with carrot cake. The Farmers Club also brought in bread from the Waltham Farmer’s Market to accompany the pasta and salad, as well as apple cider to drink. Everything was vibrant and vegan! Farmers Club additionally cooked food for those who keep Kosher. This menu consisted of vegan chili, vegan cornbread and a salad of leafy greens, tomatoes and peppers. Regardless of the meal, praises and compliments could be heard all around the rooftop of Gerstenzang. “On the farm, we grow a variety of leafy greens including kale, spinach and Swiss chard, as well as tomatoes, peppers, garlic and a variety of herbs… While most of the produce used was locally sourced, we were only able to use herbs grown on the garden to season the meal at Farmal—We really strive to send our produce to where it can have the largest impact, and the Friday preceding Farmal was our first big donation day of the season,” said On Campus Coordinator Lucy Wingard
photos by katie decker-jacoby/the hoot
’20. With the fall theme running through the meal, the warm weather and the amazing view of the vibrant garden, it wasn’t hard to start getting into the fall spirit at Farmal. Rebecca Weiss’ ’18 live fiddle playing set a lovely mood for the event and was perfect for the evening’s contra dancing, which took place after everyone finished eating. Contra dancing is a type of folk dance that involves pairs of dancers that follow the caller’s instructions. Each participant gets to interact with several other dancers throughout, making for a fun way to combine movement and meeting new people. “It’s a celebration for the end of our harvest… it’s just a great way
to gather the community and introduce farming to people who might not know that much about it or just are super interested in farming,” said Farmers Club Treasurer Benee Hershon ’20. “It’s a really unique opportunity to bring in sustainable local agriculture, arts… and culture… so it’s a really cool event in that its integrated arts, science and humanities,” said Farmers Club President Hannah Moshay ’18. Since the weather gets colder in the fall, Farmers Club is safe to keep farming outside until the first frost. The club’s fall harvest consists of tolerant and robust produce including herbs, carrots, micro greens and leafy greens. Once the weather starts getting worse, Farmers Club utilizes in-season extensions such as wire and tarp to protect the pro-
duce from frost. The club tries to stretch out the season as much as possible since being on a roof gives them the advantage of heat. In fact, last winter, Farmers Club still had carrots in the ground in the spring after all the snow had melted. The club is also in the process of getting a temporary greenhouse structure that could minimize the challenges of harsh weather later in the fall. Farmers Club financially sustains itself through its farmer’s markets, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs and by selling some of its herbs to Sodexo. The club donates a share of its produce to several local partners: Jewish Family & Children’s Service of Greater Boston, Grandma’s Pantry of the Christ Church
Episcopal, SkinnyWheels Meals, Boston Area Gleaners and a few Brandeis Waltham Group programs. You can get involved by attending farming hours, Farmers Club events, farmer’s markets with local vendors and the club’s own produce, as well as farm stands in the SCC on Fridays. Everything is grown and picked by fellow students. Farming hours take place weekly on Mondays from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. and Fridays from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. Students do not need any prior experience to help out in the garden. Farming hours entail harvesting vegetables for the club’s CSA program or for donations, depending on the week. Newcomers can also help with weeding, planting and other tasks.
Film screening brings human rights discussion to Brandeis
By Zach Phil Schwartz editor
On Oct. 4, the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life hosted a film screening of “Never Again: Forging a Convention for Crimes Against Humanity.” The 40 minute documentary paints a stark picture of an international criminal legal system unable to fully deliver justice to war-torn areas around the world. The film opens by providing context on those war-torn areas, including situations in Chad, Iraq, Colombia, Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and North Korea, with particular emphasis on the latter four. It proceeds to give background information on the history of international justice
and its foundations in the postWorld War II military tribunals, most notably the Nuremberg trials of Nazi officials and soldiers. For the first time, the charter that provided foundation for the Nuremberg tribunals defined crimes against humanity in its attempt to put a halt to horrendous atrocities and to end impunity for those who commit them. As the film continues, it discusses how crimes against humanity have not been as solidified and punishable as have other agreed-upon conventions, such as the 1948 Genocide Conventions. It reported tens of millions of deaths and the perpetration of tens of millions of other crimes against humanity, such as sexual crimes, forced relocation, torture, disappearances and others. As it stands, however, only some of
those crimes have been codified by international convention and in places such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, they continue to occur with impunity. The film features comments from the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) Chief Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, who explained how the bringing about of justice and the associated stemming of impunity can serve to cool trends in the commission of crimes against humanity. The documentary’s primary aim is to express its support for the enactment of a new international convention on crimes against humanity, akin to the one created in 1948 to address crimes of genocide. Critics, the film explains, pass such an initiative off as redundant, but ignore that crimes against humanity still oc-
cur. In this vein, it delves into its brief case studies in discussing North Korea’s state violence against its civilians, ISIS’ (a nonstate actor) continuing unpunished crimes in Iraq and continued disappearances occurring in Colombia’s Buenaventura city. In its final segment, the film discusses a group of experts in international law, crimes against humanity and diplomats who organized into a steering committee at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis to finally move forward in drafting an international convention for crimes against humanity. The committee’s goal was to put together a workable draft of such a convention with tenets of international cooperation that could be given to the United Nations (UN). Indeed,
as the documentary notes, the draft ended up in the hands of the UN’s International Law Commission in 2013, and in 2014, it was added to a UN program of work. The film ends on a high note with hope for the future, with one of the experts expressing optimism for the submission of the conventions to the UN General Assembly around 2020, although it did conclude with caution that, while it is possible, getting it passed will take time. The event continued with a discussion that explored initial reactions to the film. The conversation moved into viewers’ thoughts on the U.S.’s role in crimes against humanity, alternative means of achieving justice and possible early warning systems to further reinforce efforts to truly make “never again” a reality.
October 6, 2017
ARTS 9
The Brandeis Hoot
Berklee Beantown Jazz Festival proves that jazz is still thriving By Noah Harper staff
I’d begun to think that jazz was dead. That had seemed to be the cultural opinion, too. One of last year’s Oscar contenders, “La La Land,” had the death of the genre as a major theme. Even the way we talk about jazz is with an eye to the past—about the greats who’ve been dead for decades. But that narrative just isn’t true. I arrived late to the jazz party. It was only earlier this year, in February, that I got to witness my first live performance in New York. It blew me away, and I’ve been fascinated by the genre ever since. But I couldn’t help noticing at the show that everyone else was at least a decade older than me—it definitely didn’t feel like a musical genre for young people. It’s hard to be a young jazz aficionado in this city. Most (if not all) jazz clubs in the Boston area are twenty-one plus, or, if not that, require expensive dinner reservations. It’s almost as if the community has intentionally closed itself off to a younger audience. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the youth aren’t there, just that they’ve been underserved. In this respect, last Saturday’s free, all-ages Berklee Beantown Jazz Festival
was encouraging. It was awesome to see such a diverse crowd—people of all ages, races, genders etc., come together to celebrate the genre. The ample turnout was evidence enough that there are still plenty of people who love jazz. The festival was set on six blocks of Columbus Avenue south of Mass Ave that had been closed to traffic. There were stages at the respective north and south ends of the area, and people were free to travel back and forth between them. Vendors sold memorabilia and food. There was Caribbean cuisine (I had some delicious curried goat), barbecue and traditional street fair. There were also booths for cultural institutions, such as WBUR and JazzBoston, to connect with the community. Events at the festival ranged from a drum-off hosted by the Blue Man Group to a special “KidsJam” area presented by Berklee’s Music Education Department. Though it was your typical dreary Boston day, the weather varying from a drizzle to an outright downpour, there was still a sizeable crowd, with people putting on ponchos or holding up umbrellas in order to enjoy the open air music. The artists, too, didn’t let the rain get them down. The performers—one in particu-
lar—effectively demonstrated just why jazz is still so relevant and important today. The highlight of the show for me was the stellar performance by recent Berklee graduate Emily Estefan. Estefan unequivocally showed that the genre is in very capable hands. For over an hour, she brought a dynamic energy and varied musical palette that captivated the crowd. The daughter of famed Cuban-American musicians Gloria and Emilio Estefan (her mother was in attendance Saturday), 22-year-old Emily Estefan proved without a doubt that jazz is very much alive. A talented multi-instrumentalist, she played drums and guitar, in addition to providing leading vocals. Her voice was incredible, with a high vocal range, deftly projecting and holding our attention through the pouring rain. Estefan performed original works, in addition to covers like Michael Jackson’s “Rock with You.” Her songs were individually distinct, blending influences from Prince to Santana to the Talking Heads. This mix of the old and new, the implementation of soul and R&B and funk and pop infused with Latin jazz roots felt compelling and fresh. The highlight of her show was the medley of songs from women that she felt
photo from billboard.com
were her inspirations, spanning a century, from Billie Holliday to Beyoncé. Her live rendition of “Crazy in Love” was amazing. Like any artform, jazz has to evolve to stay relevant. But that’s what it’s good at—the genre is adept at co-opting and celebrating new sounds. If jazz inspired rock and R&B and hip-hop, then I think we’ve finally reached the point at which it’s now taking back these sounds, adding them back into the mix. At its core, jazz is ephemeral; it’s about the moment. Jazz creates a powerful, shared experience, in which people are actively listening and improvising, expressing themselves and collaborating in a dynamic, nonverbal way. It’s a
conversation, and last week’s festival showed me that it’s still in dialogue with both the past and the future. After attending the Berklee Beantown Jazz Festival, I’m no longer under the impression that jazz is on the verge of dying out or becoming obsolete. It was evident that a diverse, large group of people are very still passionate about making and consuming the musical genre, and that, as it evolves, it’s going to become even greater. My only hope is that someone figures out how to host jazz artists in the area in a way that people of all ages can attend and hear this amazing artform, so we can ensure that there’s an audience for years to come.
Close Looking Series at the Rose explores sexuality, gender, HIV/AIDS and the female body By Sarah Terrazano editor
How do we have sex after the AIDS crisis? This was only one of the questions that Prof. Tom King (ENGP) and Susan Metrican (FA) considered at the first session of the Close Looking series at The Rose Art Museum. King and Metrican spoke to a group of about thirty on Wednesday about Carrie Moyer’s painting “Vieni Qui Bella” (which translates from Italian to “Come Here, Beautiful”) and how Moyer’s painting can be read in conversation with a few other works also on display at the museum. “Vieni Qui Bella” is a striking work that your eyes are drawn to immediately upon walking into the museum, even though it is on the opposite side of the room from the entryway. The background of the large canvas is a cascade of colors, almost like a sunset, starting with purple at the top, pink in the middle and finishing with orange at the bottom. Overlaying the canvas is a succession of gray loops, which look like the stitching of lace or a
veil. As Prof. Dawn Skorczewski (ENG), one of the session’s guests, pointed out, the gray loops look like knitting or embroidery that is being pinned at the top of the canvas. All over these gray undulations are red cell-like blobs, which were referred to as bacteria throughout the talk. King and Metrican began their discussion by elaborating on the context of the work and its name. Moyer dedicated the work to her wife, artist Sheila Pepe. She is the “Beautiful” referenced in the title. For this reason, King situated his discussion of the work in a feminist and queer studies reading. He described the painting as being a “seduction” of sorts, because Moyer dedicated the piece to her wife. Considering the bold strokes and striking red color scheme, the painting does have a seductive quality, both for its intended recipient and for the work’s viewers. In situating the work with the AIDS crisis, King also noted that the red, bacteria-like cells convey an element of disease. Metrican said that in addition to the gray loops that resemble embroidery, they also suggest the
shape of the human body. Considering these corporeal shapes and the bacteria cells, Metrican related the work to the HIV/AIDS crisis. And even though it was painted in 2016 and was dedicated to her wife, she described “Vieni Qui Bella” as “genderless, timeless.” “Vieni Qui Bella” is a work from 2016, but King and Metrican also analyzed the painting alongside two other works in the Rose, both created at least 30 years ago. The first, “The Interior of the Heart,” was created from 1987-88 by Tim Rollins and KOS, or Kids of Survival—a group born from an after-school program that Rollins developed for at-risk kids in the Bronx. Also a massive work, even larger than “Vieni Qui Bella,” “The Interior of the Heart” deals explicitly with the HIV/AIDS crisis. Its background consists of a canvas of book pages ripped from “The Scarlet Letter.” On top of these pages are several scarlet “A’s” in various shapes, clearly alluding to the scarlet A worn by the protagonist in “The Scarlet Letter.” Many of these red As are distorted in shape, and one of them
looks like an image of two people facing each other. Especially taking into account the year that the work was created, King noted how the painting symbolizes that having HIV or AIDS was like its own kind of “scarlet letter” that marked people during this time period. The third work mentioned was Hannah Wilke’s “Needed-EraseHer” (1974), which consists of a display of small vaginas molded from gray erasers. There are over 100 vagina-erasers, about an inch wide, lined up in rows on a tabletop under glass casing. King and Metrican discussed the wordplay of the work’s title—eraser, erasure and erase her. The work presents a social commentary on the simultaneous sexualization of women’s bodies and taboo of their genitalia. Women, and the agency of female sexuality, can be “erased” in society when their bodies become the topic of debate and politicization. The discussion also turned to as aspect of seduction like in “Vieni Qui Bella,” as “Needed-Erase-Her” presents sexual content through the ordinary, toned-down medium of erasers.
The Close Looking series is a collaboration between the Mandel Center for the Humanities, the Rose and the Robert D. Farber Archives and Special Collections at the library. Caitlin Rubin, Assistant Curator at the Rose, was present for the discussion. “When you have other people come [into the Rose] with different backgrounds, you see other perspectives and it’s really exciting,” she said. King echoed this, noting that “from a faculty perspective, it’s fascinating how people in other disciplines talk about or interpret different cultural objects… With the series, you can pair someone who knows art history with someone who knows literary criticism,” he said with a smile, referring to Metrican’s artistic knowledge and his literary theory background. The Close Looking series is a great opportunity to get a more in-depth look at the artistic works that Brandeis has to offer, and hear faculty and staff perspectives on these works. The next Close Looking session will take place on Oct. 25 at 3:30 p.m. in the Archives and Special Collections in the library.
photos by katie decker-jacoby/the hoot
EDITORIALS
10 The Brandeis Hoot
“To acquire wisdom, one must observe.” Editors-in-Chief Hannah Schuster Emily Sorkin Smith Senior Managing Editor Allison Plotnik Senior Editors-at-Large Charlotte Aaron Zach Phil Schwartz Senior Copy Editor Sarah Terrazano News Editor Elianna Spitzer Arts Editor Katie Decker-Jacoby Opinions Editor Katarina Weessies Features Editor Polina Potochevska Senior Sports Editor Sarah Jousset Sports Editor Zach Cihlar Photo Editor Yarisa Diaz Layout Editor Candace Ng
Volume 14 • Issue 14 the brandeis hoot • brandeis university 415 south street • waltham, ma
STAFF
Faria Afreen, David Aizenberg, Jordan Brodie, José Castellanos, Elizabeth Cayouette-Gluckman, Anindita Chanda, Brianna Cummings, Shea Decker-Jacoby, Gabriel del Carmen, Sanin Dosa, Daniel Freedman, Ally Gelber, Noah Harper, Sophia He, Kevin Healey Daniel Kang, Jonah Koslofsky, Matthew Kowalyk, Samantha Lauring, Santiago Montoya, Katharine Mound, Faiyaz Rahman, Ryan Spencer, Lily Wageman, Emily Botto, Sara McCrea, Jerry Ping, Daniel Johnston
MISSION As the weekly community student newspaper of Brandeis University, The Brandeis Hoot aims to provide our readers with a reliable, accurate and unbiased source of news and information. Produced entirely by students, The Hoot serves a readership of 6,000 with in-depth news, relevant commentary, sports and coverage of cultural events. Recognizing that better journalism leads to better policy, The Brandeis Hoot is dedicated to the principles of investigative reporting and news analysis. Our mission is to give every community member a voice.
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T
October 6, 2017
New General Education Requirements go too far
he Task Force on General Education released new General Education Requirements in early September. The Brandeis Hoot sees value in certain changes to the system, but we are concerned the requirements will become too extensive or complicated. Among the several new requirements is the “Schools of Thought” requirement. This is the same as the current “school distribution requirement” in which students must complete one course from each of the four schools of Arts and Sciences: humanities, social sciences, science and creative arts. What is new, however, is that students will can no longer use AP or IB credit to satisfy the requirements. AP or IB scores can still be used to accrue credits towards graduating, but can no longer count for certain requirements. At a Senate meeting on Sunday night, Susan J. Birren, the Dean of Arts and Sciences, said this should not cause students to feel overwhelmed by the number of necessary courses because certain other requirements are now going to be housed within each major. This means that every department will offer courses that satisfy the Writing Intensive, Oral Communication and Digital Literacy requirements. For example, an English major, instead of taking a computer science class that would not count towards their major, can take an English course outfitted for Digital Literacy. We see this as a beneficial change. It is already common for students to double-count major requirements and university requirements, and this change will make it even easier to incorporate these requirements into students’ course loads. Everyone knows the classic jokes about “Physics for Poets” or “Rocks for Jocks,” or even the Brandeis “Tree Class,” and we don’t want that stereotype pushed by university requirements.
We appreciate that students can gain these skills while learning about subjects they’re passionate about. Classes are far better run when students are actually interested in the material. Despite the added burden of the new requirements, we do think that the new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Studies requirement is a great addition to the curriculum. However, we still think there is reason to be concerned about the minimized use for AP/IB credits. Whether students are taking a Digital Literacy class within their major or outside it, under the new system there will a greater number of courses students must complete. This also limits students’ flexibility to choose classes within their majors. Increasing the number of requirements, and thus the number of classes that students need to fit in their schedules, will limit the academic freedom that students have. We worry about bogging people down with courses, when Brandeis students are already spread across various majors and minors. The cliche here is that Brandeis students have triple majors and triple minors—oftentimes not related to one another. Intellectual curiosity is a hallmark of Brandeis students; it’s a unique stereotype to our university that it wouldn’t be crazy to find a student double majoring in HSSP and Computer Science with minors in Studio Arts and CAST. We are not saying that all the required courses are without merit, but we wish the university had more faith that students would choose to explore their interests and seek out important life skills during their time here. We also have concerns about the new Health, Wellness and Life Skills category that will now replace the current Physical Education requirement, mandating that students take three six-week module cours-
es. Having students take three modules that are not for credit is too much. They will have to tack them onto their schedules which are already jam-packed with courses and extracurriculars. Students who want to participate in extracurriculars may have to sacrifice their interests in order to schedule the time to take these modules. Additionally, the “UWS” course will now become the “First Year Experience” and will mandate students participate in two “Critical Conversation” sessions with faculty members and take a 3-5 hour “experiential learning” trip with the class. We don’t want to overwhelm first-years and discourage them from exploring different academic departments or clubs. Additionally, in this new system, Brandeis is eliminating the fitness test that now allows students to test out of one or both of the requirements. Varsity athletes are currently exempt from the entire P.E. requirement, and under the new system they will still be exempt from one of three modules: We take issue with this point because it is unfair that athletes maintain the exemption while other students, who are equally as active, will be required to take all modules. Students on most club sports teams practice twice a week for three hours. Dancers practice anywhere from one to 10 hours a week, and yet this does not count for the physical education requirement. One could argue that official varsity teams are easier to monitor, but that is not a legitimate argument. That does not equate to dedication to their sport, and there has to be a way to effectively monitor whether club athletes or dancers are attending their practice, which could combine having a sign-in system at facilities in Gosman and relying on students to be truthful about their involvement.
11 The Brandeis Hoot
WEEK IN PHOTOS
sukkot
October 6, 2017
With the harvest festival comes sukkots all around campus.
photos by matt kowalyk/the hoot
fmla love your body day
photo by sarah terrazano/the hoot
photo by yarisa diaz/the hoot
Flu shot clinics keep the campus safe by vaccinating large numbers of students in a short period of time. flu shots, get your flu shots
usdan sukkah
The sukkah outside of Usdan serves students eating kosher meals during the holiday.
photo by yarisa diaz/the hoot
new work from home and abroad
Student artwork is showcased at the Goldman Schwartz Studio Building
The Brandeis Hoot 12
OPINIONS
October 6, 2017
Brandeis’ new General Education University Requirements will hurt students
By Matthew Kowalyk columnist
As the Class of 2018 Senator, I need to express my views concerning the new curriculum changes that the Senate will vote on this Sunday, which will be voted on by the Faculty Senate soon after. Last Sunday, a delegation from the Curriculum Committee came to answer the Senate’s questions concerning the new General Education requirements which will come into practice by the end of 2019. The curriculum will more overtly incorporate Brandeis’ mission of social justice into every degree by adding social justice oriented general education requirements. It will also require that students take certain life skills and wellness courses meant to teach them how to function well as adults and college students. The Curriculum Committee explained the program is so far along in development that no
substantive changes will be made. I was away from Brandeis for all of last year, so I was not present for many of the formative debates or sessions of student feedback. However, I feel that it is necessary to voice some opposition to a program that might pass with our vote of confidence with a decent margin. I intend not to have the curriculum changed, as it seems little can be done at this point, but to start a conversation. Many of the requirements were not changed substantively, but instead renamed with very specific, long-winded titles such as “Differences in Justice in the World” or “Diversity and Inclusion Studies in the United States” or even “Foundational Literacies.” These changes seem to value colorful language over function. Many of these courses are sociology or cultural studies that can be found within the umbrellas of several different majors, few in the hard sciences (as one might expect). Why not Global Studies or Amer-
ican Studies requirements? It is not impossible to use more palatable, shorter titles. This, along with a lot of the other language, adds a level of pretension that does not need to exist. If anything, it turns away people who might expand their worldview through a liberal arts education. The changes are all consistent with the university’s mission, and it is in some ways a noble one. However, the new names for requirements feed into stereotypes about social justice, and people who have not been exposed to social justice issues might be turned off by the wordiness of the titles. The life skills classes since much of it seems like information you could easily find on Google. The alcohol coaching, bystander training and other things that people are already introduced to in Orientation make sense, and maybe they should be emphasized there rather than taking up time that could be spent on classes. Maybe I am wrong to think that it is easy
to find this information because I was blessed with teachers, family members and friends to guide me to know right from wrong in these areas before college, but I do believe that legal adults can usually figure out for themselves many of the skills taught in life skills courses. Paying for courses to be developed or hiring more staff might be redundant in the end. Overall, pointing degrees in a specific direction in order to make them seem more ‘Brandeisian’ will not be helpful for marketing or for the students. Independent development of a perspective should be encouraged, and our university with its flexibility in degree programs and classes has so far offered that to so many students. Allowing students to grow into their own rather than coaching them along every step of the path may not be beneficial to our academic culture nor to our mission. The culture the new requirements attempt to enforce is al-
ready embedded in university activities. I believe strengthening the culture of the campus outside of the classroom is the central issue that requires resources to address, not necessarily courses. This is the first time the program in its entirety has been revealed. I do not think it necessary for people to be guided down a specific path through all of their education. It takes away the ability for synthesis of different subjects and ideas and limits creativity. The fact that Brandeis wants to incorporate social justice is to more of its education is noble, but limiting academic creativity and students’ agency over their education is not the best way to achieve this goal. If the U.S. and elsewhere is to see justice for disadvantaged groups, it will take all of the unbridled creativity and the most diverse minds to come together. Pushing perspectives through specific requirements discourages that.
Hugh Hefner: prescursor to Trump’s misogyny, not equal rights pioneer By José Castellanos columnist
In the days since the passing of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, some media outlets, such as the liberal publications “Vox” and “Newsweek,” have praised him as an equal rights pioneer and staunch advocate of social justice issues. Much of the defense lies with Charles Beaumont’s 1955 story envisioning a world where the majority of people were gay, and defended the publication by saying “If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society, then the reverse was wrong, too.” Hefner wrote an editorial for Playboy in 2012 in support of marriage equality, stating that “No one should have to subjugate their religious freedom, and no one should have their personal freedoms infringed … This is America and we must protect the rights of all Americans.” However, a few pieces speaking in favor of marriage equality and gay rights do not erase the fact that Hugh Hefner and Playboy have repeatedly engaged in misogynistic practices that have set back the progress that feminists have made, and frankly acts as a precursor that has normalized the sexism that was so prevalent in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Hefner essentially popularized the misogynist tendencies present in Trump’s campaign. Feminist journalist Gloria Steinem went undercover as a Playboy bunny and reported that Hefner would pressure women in the Playboy Mansion to have sex with him, and would have the women in the mansion give similar treatment to men that he would invite to the property. Additionally, Steinem reported, most of the women who worked there were not paid the full amount that they were promised, often having pay cut through
a demerit system and workplace rules that made them cover much of their personal upkeep. Frankly, this treatment is not surprising, given that Hefner once stated that “the notion that Playboy turns women into sex objects is ridiculous. Women are sex objects … That’s why women wear lipstick and short skirts.” These are not the words of a pioneer of equality, but they’re certainly reminiscent of Trump’s “grab them by the p***y” comments that he refused to genuinely backtrack. Playboy and Hefner’s treatment
hugh hefner, founder of playboy
of women made public misogyny a larger part of general culture, and as a result led many to accept Trump’s treatment of women in the 2016 election cycle. For example, Trump’s treatment of Miss Universe pageant contestants, which included barging into their changing room and making lewd comments about their bodies, didn’t seem to faze many people. Hefner’s influence in popular culture is largely to blame for the lack of disgust. Hefner constantly objectified, disrespected and preyed on wom-
en throughout his decades-long career, and saw any feminist opposition to his treatment of women as a personal affront and a war to be fought. “These chicks are our natural enemy. It is time to do battle with them … What I want is a devastating piece that takes the militant feminists apart,” Hefner wrote in a leaked 1970 memo. His aggressive and violent language demonstrates an unwillingness to accept any criticism of his actions as anything but unwarranted acts of aggression show that he truly had no respect for women, and
truly did see them as sex objects, and nothing more, a pattern that was repeated in Trump’s campaign and administration. Hefner and his son would later go on to denounce Trump, but that does not absolve them from their compliance in popularizing misogyny. It does not excuse decades of abuse and misogyny, and it certainly does not undo his erasure of decades of women’s progress by reducing them to sex objects for popular culture to gawk at.
photo from extratv.com
October 6, 2017
OPINIONS 13
The Brandeis Hoot
America’s gentrification problem will require a large-scale solution
By Katarina Weessies editor
American cities are struggling with the dual issues of gentrification and homelessness. Google defines gentrification as “the process of renovating a district so that it conforms to middle-class taste.” It results in higher rents and cost of living, forcing the neighborhood’s original residents to move out in search of a cheaper place to live. Gentrified neighborhoods typically become wealthier, whiter and younger than they were before they were gentrified. The issue of gentrification feeds into increasing homelessness in American cities. Rising prices in gentrifying neighborhoods can drain residents of their income before forcing them out. This makes it challenging for the residents to find an affordable place to live, sometimes leaving them homeless. The classic example of gentrification in America is that of New York City. NYC notoriously has some of the highest rents in the country, especially in Manhattan. Housing costs have been rising gradually throughout the previ-
By Anindita Chanda
ous decades, making the city unaffordable for many of its inhabitants. The increasing cost of New York apartments feeds into the city’s growing homeless population. According to Coalition for the Homeless, in the last 10 years, the number of New Yorkers sleeping in homeless shelters has increased by 75 percent. In 2017 alone, this number has increased by 39 percent. The rising level of homelessness in New York becomes more problematic when one realizes many of the apartments in the wealthiest portions of New York are empty. The New York Times reports that in the portion of the East Side “bounded by Fifth and Park Avenues and East 49th and 70th Streets, about 30 percent of the more than 5,000 apartments are routinely vacant more than 10 months a year because their owners or renters have permanent homes elsewhere.” This trend persists in other neighborhoods, where many of the city’s most expensive buildings consist mostly of investment properties, without permanent or even seasonal residents. The existence of widespread in-
vestment property ownership is not bad on its own, but in a city with over 61,471 homeless people, the number of unoccupied properties is egregious. Also, without these empty properties, many of the large luxury buildings in the city would not exist. The space required to build these pricey complexes could instead be used to construct more affordable residences that would attract residents rather than investors. The compounded issues of gentrification do not exist exclusively in New York City, but are happening to some extent in many of America’s growing cities. Many of these municipal governments and anti-homelessness organizations have made attempts to reform housing policy in a way that protects residents from gentrification-catalyzed homelessness. One idea implemented by Charleston, South Carolina, is the imposition of higher taxes on secondary homes than on primary residences. This has potential to decrease the number of unaffordable homes in the city by disincentivizing the building of high-cost properties meant to exist solely for the purposes of investment.
Another potential solution is to require that luxury apartment buildings dedicate a certain portion of their apartments to affordable, lower-income housing. New York City has put this idea into practice by granting several tax incentives to developers who set aside a certain portion of their market-rate properties for lower-income New Yorkers. The idea behind this policy is that living in higher-income neighborhoods will facilitate upward mobility in the New Yorkers living in the rent controlled apartments. While this policy might work well for the few New Yorkers who get to live in the rent controlled apartments, the increasing level of homelessness in New York City shows the policy is not doing enough. Another much more radical solution to gentrification in these cities would be to legalize squatting in buildings that remain unoccupied year-round. Squatting is the illegal practice of living in an unoccupied building without paying rent. While legalizing squatting would surely provide a shelter to many struggling urban residents, as well as disincentivize the buying of investment property in cities, it’s not an implementable
solution. On one hand, owners of investment properties, without legal recourse to remove squatters from their properties, might resort to illegal or violent means if they want the property to remain empty. Additionally, unoccupied buildings aren’t guaranteed to have water, hear, air conditioning or electricity. Legalizing squatting in owned but unoccupied buildings would constitute an unsustainable, poorly maintained solution to homelessness. There is no easy solution to gentrification and related homelessness. However, any meaningful, long-term solution will have to involve some sort of sweeping change to urban housing markets. A good solution will have to disincentivize the purchase of empty luxury investment properties. Additionally, it will have to provide a form of affordable housing to a city’s homeless and housing insecure populations. Either way, if cities like New York want to decrease their homeless population, they will have to implement more broad and radical reforms that meaningfully change the housing market within the city.
Taking “Let’s hang out sometime” from dream to reality
columnist
We are becoming more encompassed within our own world and own little bubble. We have become better at isolating ourselves. I wish I had realized this earlier on and that I’d had the guts to branch out more socially. But it is senior year, and I am glad that I finally realized it sooner rather than later. There is still time to get to know people, to have interesting conversations, to “hang out.” There is certainly still time to work on the things we wish to improve on throughout our lives. This past week I found myself
reflecting a lot about my years at Brandeis. I guess it’s that time of senior year to start doing so, before the exams come pouring in. While I have tried to go about my four years at Brandeis without any regrets, I inevitably have some, and I’m sure many others do as well. One of my regrets comes from the phrase that we all may know too well: “Let’s hang out sometime.” The number of times classmates of mine and I have exchanged that phrase is too many. And in all honesty, we both know that “sometime” will never happen. As a senior, it has crossed my mind that this is the last year we will all be under the same roof. It
has also occurred to me that, after college, it might not get any easier to meet new people, to diversify the conversations that we will have. For The Hoot, I often find myself writing advice-like articles for underclassmen, and these are suggestions that I genuinely want the next class of people to know so that they will not make the same mistakes that I did—at least, if they do, they will know they are not alone and will have options for overcoming them. That said, a lot of my advice has been academically concerned, even though a huge part of college is about developing who we are socially. My advice to those who are
reading this is to try to make that hangout happen, whether it is just a quick lunch or dinner, a coffee at Einstein’s or a conversation from one class to another. Throughout the years I given myself excuses for why I did not reach out. As someone who often initiates and gives others the advice to do so, I did not initiate as much as I would have liked to for pure social things. That said, the few times I have reached out, I thoroughly enjoyed it and was grateful for those conversations, friendships and insights. As we get older, we may realize that we will never have the perfect friend or friend group. We may realize that the friends we
clung to early on may drift away from us or that we may drift away from them. That said, take the opportunities you may have to learn about other people. Your schedule will not get any easier as you move up at Brandeis. Even if you are a fellow senior reading this, realize that it is not too late to take the time to have a decent conversation with a fellow classmate. Go into the conversations not looking for a lifelong friend, but rather that you are open and ready to get to know someone new, see how they view the world and share your perspectives. As the social creatures that we are, a conversation like this can be very refreshing.
Don’t write off reality TV; recognize its impact on society By Kevin Healey columnist
Reality TV is trashy, right? Many people think it plays to our basest desires, giving us cheap, stupid entertainment without forcing us to have any of those pesky thoughts or feelings related to actual art. Reality TV is the modern circus, the opiate of the masses that religion once was. It holds no true value in the world. The attitude that reality television is low culture and thus undeserving of study is common in the Ivory Tower of elite college campuses, academic think tanks and news media. But despite this distaste for reality TV, nothing about it is meaningfully different from any other form of television: Studios balance high upfront pro-
duction costs with the hope for massive ad revenues from a successful show. Each show is thus beset by a series of sometimes conflicting incentives: to maximize viewership, win over advertisers and stay on the good side of studio executives. Pop culture tends to focus only on the first of these incentives, critiquing and examining what leads people to tune in to “Jersey Shore” or “Cake Boss.” The rise of reality TV, however, came largely due to studio executives rather than the public. Compared to a scripted program, with paid union actors and expensive location shots, reality programs can be filmed for a far lower cost per episode. For many less successful niche cable TV networks, from The Learning Channel to the Food
Network, reality television offered an easy way to fill up timeslots with original programming that didn’t break the bank. The easy production process of reality television sometimes results in shows with problematic premises. For example, fetishization of the exotic is a driving staple of reality TV, with television programs focusing on polygamy (“Sister Wives”), weight management (“Biggest Loser”) and many other specific lifestyles (“Amish Mafia” and “Duck Dynasty” come to mind). These representations can drive intolerance or ignorance regarding the groups that the shows focus on. When “Biggest Loser” couches their unsafe weight loss program in a rhetoric of personal success
and responsibility, it absolutely affects the way its viewers think about weight management. The “real” element of reality TV can cause viewers to take the shows’ biases more seriously, potentially fueling prejudice and ignorance toward the shows’ subjects. Reality TV is not, by its nature, regressive. Positive media portrayals of oppressed groups can challenge stereotypes incredibly effectively. When Pedro Zamora appeared as an HIV positive gay man on “The Real World” at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, millions of people saw a positive representation of life with HIV for the first time. In a climate of fear, where many people saw AIDS as divine justice from God and many more were
afraid merely to touch gay men because they might be infected, this positive portrayal led to real advancement in promoting better public health policies. Given that reality TV has done both good and harm to the world, it seems that a debate on whether or not reality TV is “good” is beside the point. Instead of judging TV, make it better. Reward shows you find innovative and inclusive, and reject those that are offensive or prejudiced. Take part in fan communities and challenge viewers who spout offensive views. Whether we like reality TV or not, it’s not going anywhere, so instead ought to challenge reality TV providers and viewers to use the medium of reality television for good.
SPORTS
14 The Brandeis Hoot
October 6, 2017
Volleyball drops three in UAA Round Robin By Zach Cihlar editor
Women’s volleyball traveled to Cleveland, Ohio over the weekend of Sept. 29-31 to compete in the first University Athletic Association (UAA) conference Round Robin. Playing in one of the most competitive conferences in the nation, the team had the opportunity to play a few highly ranked teams. The Judges entered the weekend with quite a bit of momentum, coming off three 3-0 wins in a row and boasting a 7-3 record. Last season’s first UAA Round Robin saw Brandeis dropping three matches 0-3. Playing more competitively this season, the team looked to make a greater dent in the UAA conference. The first day of the round robin had Brandeis scheduled to play solid nationally-ranked teams including #3 Emory University, a team with a quarterfinal berth in the 2016 Division III national championships. First on the schedule was #25 University of Chicago. The Judges fought hard but dropped the match 18-25, 12-25, 21-25. Chicago continued to have a successful weekend, defeating all three of their conference opponents on their schedule, including Emory on day two of competition. Captain Yvette Cho ’19 gave the Judges out with 16 digs, while her teammate Marissa Borgert ’21 helped out, offering 20 assists. At the net, Zara Platt ’19 and Emma
heads up Captain Yvette
Cho serves.
Bartlett ’20 offered solid offense with eight kills and seven kills, respectively. Barely an hour later, the Judges returned to the court to play Emory, a team boasting a 13-1 record when they met the Judges in match play. The only match Emory dropped in the regular season was against Wittenberg University, currently ranked #1 nationally in Division III. The Judges played a tight first set with the highly ranked team, even leading at 18-14 when Em-
photo from brandeisjudges.com
ory attained a seven-point win streak with a series of Brandeis errors and Emory kills that pushed the Atlanta-based team into the lead. Emory would retain the lead for the rest of the match. Earning a lead against a team that highly ranked was a substantial accomplishment for the team, according to one of the team’s outside hitters and Hoot sport’s writer Shea Decker-Jacoby ’19. “This game was one of the tops games I have ever played,” she elaborated, “The team played as a unit, played with heart and grit,
and left everything out on the court.” Despite facing formidable opponent across the net, Decker-Jacoby described the team as unphased by the high level of competition. “We wanted to show teams what Brandeis Volleyball is now and show them how hard we have worked over the past month and half and really compete with the teams,” she said. Brandeis played their final game of the Round Robin on Sunday, Oct. 1 against the University
of Rochester. Of the three games they were scheduled to play over the weekend, Rochester was the most winnable. Though overmatched in height, the Judges came out swinging, looking to prove volleyball’s improvement since last year. Ultimately, the women dropped the match in four sets, earning their sole set of the weekend in the second set 25-21. The overall score tallied at 1825, 25-21, 24-26, 17-25. Decker-Jacoby and the rest of the team are taking away positives from the weekend, considering they competed and performed at a higher level than they have as a team in the past. “Taking a set off of Rochester was a big win for the Brandeis program and shows the leaps and bounds we have taken as a program,” Decker-Jacoby said. The next on the schedule for Brandeis women’s volleyball is a three-game homestand over Homecoming weekend in preparation for the second UAA Round Robin Oct. 7-8, where the team will play the four other UAA teams they have yet to compete against. “Looking to our next three games, we are looking to improve our mental toughness and technical work,” Decker-Jacoby told The Hoot. After the three game homestand, the women’s volleyball will play out the rest of its season on their opponent’s turf, until the season finalizes with the UAA tournament in early November.
Cross country places first at Keene By Sarah Jousset editor
This past weekend the men’s and women’s cross country teams won both team and individual titles at the Keene State Cross Country Invitational in New Hampshire. The men’s team excelled, placing first as a team among nine schools. Ryan Stender ’18 placed first overall in the race with a time of 25:46. The win was Stender’s first career win with four second place and two third place finishes. Brandeis’ Mitchell Hutton ’18 came in behind Stender, securing the second place spot for himself with a time of 26:03. While the seniors carried the Judges, the next two Brandeis runners to place were first-years, proving the Judges to be strong
women’s cross country team
all around this year. Luke Ostrander ’21 placed fifth with a time of 26:31, while Mark Murdy ’21 placed seventh with a time of 26:40. Three other Judges placed in the top 20 of the race. Liam Garvey ’18 placed tenth with a time of 26:45, in his first race this season over 8k. Max Whitmore ’18 placed 12th with a time of 26:58 and Brian Gao ’20 placed 18th with time of 27:23. The women’s cross country team placed first overall among nine teams. The women were led by twin sisters Emily and Julia Bryson ’19. Emily Bryson finished first with a time of 17:38, while Julia Bryson finished with a time of 18:51 to put her in fourth place. Emily has finished either first on second in every meet this season so far. Five other Judges placed in the top 20 for Brandeis. Niahm Kenney ’21 placed sixth
with a time of 19:16, while teammate Danielle Bertaux ’20 placed right behind in seventh place with time of 19:19. Kyra Shreeve ’18 closed out the scoring for the Judges, securing them the team win overall. Shreeve finished with a time of 19:48, placing 10th. Doyin Ogundiran ’19 placed closely behind in 11th place with a time of 19:55, while Christine Minor ’19 finished 18th with a time of 20:15. The women have now placed in the top three in each of their last three meets, while the men’s team has matched the women in overall team wins in the past three meets of the season. The men’s and women’s cross country teams are back in action Saturday, Oct. 14 for the Conn College Invitational at Harkness Park in Waterford, Connecticut.
emily bryson
ryan stender
photos from brandeisjudges.com
October 6, 2017
SPORTS 15
The Brandeis Hoot
Women’s soccer stays strong with 3-0 shut-out against CWRU By Shea Decker-Jacoby staff
The Brandeis University women’s soccer team flew to Cleveland, Ohio for their first UAA match against Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). It was a competitive match, but the Judges came out on top with a three goal shutout. The Judges went into the game with a 7-1-1 record and the Spartans came in with a 4-5 record.
The highlight of the game was at the 31st minute of play when Junior Sasha Sunday crossed a ball through the box to find teammate Becca Buchman ’19 on the other side to redirect the ball to the back to the net. This was Buchman’s first career goal at Brandeis and Sunday’s 5th season assist. The Judges went into the second half with a 1-0 lead, but still came out swinging to earn two insurance goals in the span of 67 seconds. In the 66th minute of play
photos from brandeisjudges.com
sasha sunday
senior Samantha Schwartz ’18 got a one-on-one with the goalie on a breakaway from a cross by Sunday to earn the team’s second goal of the game. Schwartz led the team with five shots on goal and is the team-leader with six goals this season. Sunday earned her final assist of the game giving her six assists for this season. This also places her second in the conference for assists and fifth with 16 total points. She has now scored a point in all but one of Brandeis’ 10 games this season. In the 67th minute of play junior Emmy Thiem ’19 scored her second goal of the season with her long shot from 30 years out. Brandeis outshot CWRU 20-6 dominating every half with 7-1 in the first and 13-5 in the second. The Judges also took the advantage in corner kicks by 7-2. Sophomore goalkeeper Sierra Dana ’20 made two saves to earn her third shutout this season. This game was the ninth game in the Judges winning streak. On Tuesday Oct. 3, the Judges were on the road again to face Lesley, who is ranked #16. The Judges earned their 10th win in a row with a 3-0 victory over to improve their record to 9-1-1. The Judges scored all three of their goals in the first half and two of them within the first ten minutes of play on their first two shots of the game. Daria Bakhtiari
buchman scores first career goal
’21 scored her first collegiate goal when she converted a corner kick from Sunday. At the six minutes mark Junior Sam Volpe assisted Senior Haliana Burhans to earn her fourth goal of the season. With just 10 seconds left in the first half, first-year Willa Molho scored her first goal of her career. The Judges maintained the lead throughout the second half without a shot in the final 45 minutes of play from the Lynx’s. Brandeis outshot Lesley 15-4 for the game. It was the Judges’ second shut-
out game in a row. Sunday has now scored a point in four straight games and 10 of the team’s 11 contest this season. With a 9-0-1 in their last 10 games, this is the fourth year in a row the Judges have had a winning streak of 10 or more games. The longest winning streak in school history is 13-0-3 stringing that spanned the 2003-2004 seasons. Next, the Judges face nationally ranked #10 Carnegie Mellon on Saturday for Homecoming at 1:30 p.m.
Men’s soccer secures victories in tough matchups By Sarah Jousett editor
The Brandeis men’s soccer team dominated in a tough week of games before gearing up for Homecoming this weekend. The Judges played in their first University Athletic Association (UAA) conference match against Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) on Sunday, squeaking by with a 1-0 victory. They then took on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the program’s 61 meeting, making this matchup the second-longest rivalry in Brandeis history. The game’s only goal came in the 4th minute of the game, when Patrick Flahive ’18 scored off a short pass from Max Breiter ’20. Flahive’s goal was his second game-winner and fourth of the season. The teams were almost evenly matched in shots, with Brandeis leading 15 to 13. However, Brandeis edged out their competition when it came to shots on goal, the Judges outshooting CWRU 9-2. Case Western’s best chance at scoring came toward the end of the first half when Ben Woodhouse ’18 tipped the attempt over the bar. Goalkeeping duties were split by Woodhouse in the first half of the game, and Greg Irwin ’20 taking over in goal in the second half. The Judges were back in action against long time rival, MIT. The Judges defeated the MIT Engineers 3-1. Scoring finally opened up at the end of the first half in minute 29, when MIT scored on themselves to start the Judges off. Dylan Hennessy ’20 sent a long free kick into the box which in an effort to deflect the kick it was
headed by an MIT defender. However, the ball shot off the MIT defender’s head into his own goal. The fluked sparked the Judges streak, who went on to earn two more goals of their own within 7 minutes to bring the score to 3-0 going into halftime. The second goal came in the 43rd minute, when Bernardo Ponte ’18 fed Hennessey who chipped the game-winning goal over the goalkeeper. In the last few seconds before halftime, Andrew Allen ’19 snuck around two defenders to find Josh Handler ’19 wide open. Handler converted Allen’s quick pass into his third goal of the season. In the second half, MIT couldn’t come back from their deficit, scoring their only goal in the 80th minute. The Engineers’ Loukas Carayannopoulos ’21 launched a ball into the goal from 20 yards out. Carayannopoulos’ shot was the only ball that got by Brandeis’ Greg Irwin ’20 in his first start for the Judges. Irwin earned 4 saves in the game against MIT, including a diving save in the 88th minute to maintain the Judges’ 3-1 lead. The Judges finished up the game with dominant numbers in shots, saves and corner kicks. The Judges outshot their opponent 18-8, while the Judges also led in saves 4-3 and corner kicks 7-3. The Brandeis men’s soccer team will play at home game this Saturday for Homecoming. The Judges face off against Carnegie Mellon at 11 a.m. and will enter the game with a 8-2 overall record, and 1-0 in conference play.
dylan hennessey
andrew allen
photos from brandeisjudges.com
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The Brandeis Hoot
October 6, 2017