The Brandeis Hoot - Apr. 30, 2010

VOL 7, NO. 12

APRIL 30, 2010

B R A N D E I S U N I V E R S I T Y ' S C O M M U N I T Y N E W S PA P E R

WA LT H A M , M A

Paul Simon to serenade seniors

BY ARIEL WITTENBERG Editor

Singer-songwriter Paul Simon will sing at commencement on May 23, helping Brandeis seniors to end their four years at the university on a happy note, despite some senior’s remaining anger over the choice of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren as the speaker at the ceremony.

The news broke Wednesday when University President Jehu-

da Reinharz sent an e-mail to the class of 2010 informing them that Simon, who was already scheduled to receive an honorary degree at the ceremony, would also serenade seniors to a tune of his choice. Simon will also speak at the School of Creative Arts commencement ceremony.

In the e-mail, Reinharz attributed the news to students organizing around bringing Simon to campus.

“The decision came after we

reached out to Mr. Simon’s management and conveyed the excitement of your ‘Facebook’ campaign requesting that he sing,” Reinharz wrote. “This will certainly contribute to making commencement a memorable moment for you and your families.”

Michael Weil ’10, one of the cofounders of the Facebook campaign to encourage Simon to sing at commencement, said he was See SIMON, p. 5

PHOTO BY Ariel Wittenberg/The Hoot

TEA PARTY: Political analyst Chip Berlet presents his paper “From Tea Parties to Militias” at Wednesday’s New Right Wing Radicalism Conference.

Despite Fox News coverage, right wing conference not so scalding

BY ARIEL WITTENBERG Editor

Political analyst Chip Berlet distinguished the differences between the American Tea Party movement and neo-Nazis at a conference Wednesday that had received attention from rightleaning media outlets concerned Berlet would conflate the two.

PHOTO BY Max Shay/The Hoot

New Rose Art exhibit announced for fall

BY ARIEL WITTENBERG Editor

The Rose Art Museum this week announced it’s fall 2010 exhibit, “Atmospheric Conditions,” featuring the works of Eric Fischl, April Gornik and Bill Viola. The announcement follows 14 months of uncertainty concerning the museum’s future after the board of trustees unanimously voted to sell a portion of the museum’s artwork to help close a then $80 million budget gap within five years.

“Atmospheric Conditions” will be housed in the Foster and Lee galleries of the museum, with Fischl and Gornick’s work in the Foster Gallery and Viola’s in the Lee Gallery. Another exhibit titled “water ways” will be housed in the Rose building of the museum and will exclusively feature works from the permanent collection.

THIS WEEK:

“Atmospheric Conditions” will mark the first time the museum will exhibit works not from the permanent collection since spring 2009. This comes as good news to members of Brandeis’ art community who worried that the board’s intent to sell artwork would cripple the museum.

Indeed, directly following the initial announcement about The Rose last February, the museum’s staff was halved from six to three when its executive director, education director and registrar left.

The museum has only recently begun to regain staff members, with Kristin Parker joining as collections manager and registrar in March. Provost Marty Krauss has stated in universitywide e-mails that a search committee is reviewing applicants for an education director; however the position has yet to be filled.

There have been no attempts to fill the position of executive director, with Director of Museum Operations Roy Dawes as the museum’s top position.

Dawes said he is still unsure of how long “Atmospheric Conditions” would be exhibited at the museum. Traditionally, the museum houses an exhibit per semester; however in 2009-2010 the museum showed an exhibit of its permanent collection, which opened in October, for the entire year.

“No matter what happens, we’ve gone from a complete stop last year to a collections exhibit to an exhibit of upper-tiered artists,” he said. “This will continue the tradition of wonderful exhibits at The Rose.”

The university is currently being sued by three donors to The Rose Art Museum in order to stop the sale of art. The trial is scheduled for Dec. 12 and 13.

To read more on the media surrounding the conference see page 20.

The New Right-Wing Radicalism Conference, sponsored

by Brandeis’ Center for German and European Studies, was

meant to primarily focus on neoNazism in Europe, with only three of eight papers presented discussing the United States.

The conference was brought to the attention of Boston talk show host Michael Graham late last week when a Brandeis student sent him an e-mail with a photograph of a poster used to advertise the event which included a swastika. The story was then picked up by Fox News and was discussed by TV personalities Glenn Beck and Megyn Kelly.

All three were concerned that the event would falsely connect the Tea Party to neo-Nazis.

These concerns proved unSee CONFERENCE, p. 4

McFarlane new VP of enrollment

BY JON OSTROWSKY Staff

Keenyn McFarlane, former director of budget for the Division of Students and Enrollment, returned to Brandeis on April 5 to serve as the university’s vice president for enrollment, according to a statement from Jean Eddy, senior vice president for students and enrollment.

Frank Urso, who left the university in February, used to hold McFarlane’s position and currently works at Harvard, where he previously worked before coming to Brandeis.

McFarlane has worked in federal government for the Depart-

ment of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Department of Homeland Security since leaving Brandeis, and said he was looking forward to interacting with and listening to students.

“I believe in the Brandeis student. That’s why I’m back,” McFarlane said. “I’m really looking forward to resuming a meaningful relationship with the university community.”

The Office of Enrollment’s work includes interacting with admissions to attract new students, but it also helps manage student life See ENROLLMENT, p. 3

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Arts, Etc. , page 11

Impressions, page 16

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Pearlstein discusses partisanship, conservatives, the Tea Party at Q-and-A

BY JON OSTROWSKY Staff

Rick Pearlstein, a historian and journalist who focuses his coverage on political parties and their movements, spoke about the conservative movement, the Tea Party and President Barack Obama’s role in partisanship in a question-and-answer session Monday in Usdan’s International Lounge.

Pearlstein discussed the role of the conservative movement in America after World War II and explained historical analogies to the recent Tea Party movement.

Reflecting on the Tea Party, Pearlstein said “European reporters call wanting to know about the history of the Tea Party [and] American reporters just want to know about [its effect on] elections.”

He emphasized that the issues of the Tea Party are not something unheard of before, and said, “All these Americans believe that the other side is going to end the world.”

In the discussion session with Charlie Peters, a reporter from The Boston Globe, Pearlstein explained that many conservatives ask themselves, “Why don’t these liberals understand that we’re just trying to take our country back?”

In addition to participating in the question-and-answer session, Pearlstein also delivered a lecture to students earlier in the day. The session with Pearlstein in the evening was set up with more than 30 students.

Sahar Massachi ’11 wrote in an e-mail to The Hoot that he invited Pearlstein to speak as part of a new program called “Change Agency” because “his insights on social movements and their relationships to politicians could serve as an inspiration and instruction to us all.”

Massachi, who wrote that Pearlstein is a “brilliant” and “insightful” person, said “the goal was to expose others to his thinking.”

Pearlstein credited the student organizers of the event for doing “what Barack Obama could not do—which is bring Republicans and Democrats together.” While

ENROLLMENT (from p. 1)

PHOTO BY Ingrid Schulet/The Hoot

POLARIZED: Historian and journalist Rick Pearlstein answers questions in the Usdan International Lounge Monday. Pearlstein discussed conservatives, the Tea Party and President Barack Obama’s effect on polorizing politics, explaining that the Tea Party sees itself as trying to ‘take our country back.’

answering questions, Pearlstein answered questions from liberal and conservative students.

Pearlstein said that much of the fear of the opposing political party stems from false interpretation of the concept that “once they take this, they will take that,” and they will continue to keep achieving unreasonable goals “so we cannot let them take this.”

He added that just as many liberals often misinterpret the intentions of the Tea Party, conserva-

tives often wrongly describe the Democrats’ passage of health care legislation.

“Saying everyone has to buy [health] insurance—that ain’t socialism,” Pearlstein said.

Pearlstein explained that citizens must accept the fact that they must contribute to the greater good of society. “There are public goods that everyone has to contribute to, whether they like it or not.”

He added that the February act of

the man who flew his plane into an IRS building must not be ignored.

“There’s a lot of quiet desperation and anxiety in American life,” he said.

In his opinion the solution to such extremism is for politicians to learn to address the underlying issues and persuade citizens to discuss them in a more civil manner.

“Wise leaders can serve the nation in a way that tamps down incivility,” Pearlstein said.

Scientists, artists come together at festival

BY BECCA CARDEN Staff

The “Art of Science … Science of Art” event Wednesday opened the 2010 Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Arts. The presentation featured artists Daniel Kohn, Guhapriya Ranganathan, Jessica Rosenkrantz, Christopher Janney and Nancy Selvage, and two scientists, Professor James Bensinger (PHYS) and Professor. Elinor Karlsson of Harvard, who spoke about the intersection of these two disciplines in their work.

“Often when people think about

New VP of enrollment chosen

aesthetics, they think of aesthetics as the realm of the arbitrary,” said Kohn, who often works on his art in collaboration with the Broad Institute for Genomic Research. He opened the event by contextualizing the connection between art and science.

Kohn said he enjoys applying meaning, often scientific meaning, behind the visuals he creates. For him, a canvas is a universe where the artist must create, but also follow, a set of rules. While art is an examination of the laws of this

universe, science is the study of the laws of our own universe. Kohn explained that this realization allowed his work to become playful: once he knew the rules, he was able to move around inside of them more easily.

“The sort of intention of looking at the world and trying to respond to it and trying to account for our experiences in it, and to pass that on to others, so that they can respond to it,” he said, is what both art and science are all about.

Ranganthan, a successful artist with a college education in engi-

neering, on the other hand, creates pieces that directly connect to science through their content. They are based on “science, spirituality and movement.” Her art displays neurons, synapses and other electrifying body parts.

One of her series, called “Recombinations,” is based on “the very idea of passing information from one generation to another,” she said.

The death of her grandmother and See SCIENCE AS ART, p. 3

and the finances of the university, McFarlane said.

McFarlane explained that he valued how much Brandeis students care about their community and the university.

“The typical Brandeis student cares. They care about [everything from] the weather to who the next Brandeis president is.”

Although the presidential search process is guided largely by a committee consisting of trustees, alumni and faculty, former Union President Andy Hogan serves as a nonvoting representative. McFarlane said he believes that student concerns will be addressed in the search process.

Reflecting on the fact that Hogan is a member of the search committee, McFarlane said. “It says something about the institution that it even has that.”

“Given the nature of Brandeis students, their voices will be heard,” he said.

Brandeis is also a university that McFarlane said he feels very comfortable working at again. The relationships that he formed with members of the administration as well as with some students who are still here have helped make his transition an easy one, he said.

“It’s great knowing people at a university,” McFarlane said. “It’s really a comfortable feeling.”

McFarlane also said that he is optimistic about the university’s future, despite recent economic difficulties. He said that despite Brandeis’ struggles this year, nearly every aspect of the economy has suffered financial losses. “[Brandeis] is a place that I feel is turning the corners,” he said.

In his time in between positions at Brandeis, McFarlane served as deputy chief financial officer for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of the Department of Homeland Security.

He explained that by examining an organization or institution from a financial overview, “You can look at it from a fresh perspective.”

Aside from his work as a government employee, McFarlane has worked in both for-profit and non-profit industries, according to Eddy’s statement.

In his work at the university, McFarlane will be responsible for overall budget issues, Student Activity fees and oversight of tuition revenue,” Eddy wrote in her statement.

In addressing budget issues, McFarlane emphasized the need to focus on details, even ones about small issues and costs, because they can have a positive influence on the university’s finances.

“We want to do things smarter [and] better,” McFarlane said.

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April 30, 2010

Sustainability fund amendment to Union Constitution passes with student body vote

BY NATHAN KOSKELLA Editor

The student body voted Monday to pay an extra $15 per year as part of their Student Activities Fee in order to create the Brandeis Sustainability Fund, reaching the required two-thirds majority in a special campus-wide vote.

The fund created by the vote to raise the Student Activity Fee, currently $324 a year, will give students a vehicle through which they can fund projects pertaining to sustainability.

The board members of the newly created Sustainability Fund Administrative Board will decide what proposals to finance on factors such as “relevancy, impact” and other considerations such as which projects will best improve campus sustainability and greener student life.

“I’m excited for Brandeis, this is an opportunity for all students to fund and have their projects on sustainability,” said Hannah Saltman

’12, president of Students for Environmental Action (SEA), a club whose members sponsored the amendment.

“This has been a yearlong process and it’s very nice to have a victory,” Saltman said. “We’ve met with multiple administrators, Student Union leaders from the president to the treasurer, then 10 Senate signatures to even get to a vote of the student body … I’m very excited.”

The period between the announcement of the amendment proposal and the vote consisted of opposing and at times passionate reactions from many students.

SEA, one of the largest undergraduate clubs, defended some misunderstanding that the money, totaling nearly $50,000 judged by the current undergraduate population, would go to the club itself.

“I think that we passed this under this principle [students raising their own fees] because it was the first one,” said Nathan Robinson ’11, who has written about his opposition to the amendment on the

PHOTO BY Max Shay/The Hoot

SEA CHANGE: Members of Students for Environmental Action participate in an event the club funded earlier this year. The amendment to create a sustainability fund was proposed by three members of the environmentalist student group.

Brandeis-based blog Innermost Parts. “Now, we must just impose

good proposals. The board has $50,000 but no specific purview

and we have to hold them accountable.”

Berlet explains Tea Party movement at conference NOW ONLINE: CONFERENCE (from p. 1)

founded, as Berlet explicitly stated near the end of his talk.

“The claim that we would exploit the agony of the Holocaust for personal gain and agrandeizment is offensive to this conference, to the Brandeis community, and every decent person on the planet,” he said.

“I have explicitly said before and I will say it again that the Tea Party is not an extremist group, nor is it a racist group.

It is a legitimate political movement that deserves to be treated with respect.”

“People have a tendency to lump the Tea Party and neo-Nazis together because Hitler manipulated the middle class fear to get them to vote for him and thus legitimize him,” he said.

“There are parallels between the movements in that example alone. The Tea Party is not a racist movement.”

Berlet also expressed similar viewpoints in a column that ran on the Huffington Post Thursday in which he called the media attention “a hoax.”

Those attending the conference were met with increased security when they arrived.

The 120 people in attendance, including some Tea Partiers, were each handed tickets upon entering the International Lounge in the Usdan Student Center and were not allowed to bring backpacks into the room.

In his talk, Berlet described the demographics of Tea Party.

“The Tea Party movement is a largely mainstream demographic group,” he said. “it is a little more white, a little more better

off, and a little more educated than the average American.

But for the most part Tea Party members reflect the areas they live in.”

Though the movement had gained a large following, Berlet said it has yet to “gel as a social movement,” which makes its future unclear.

“People who say they know where the Tea Party is going don’t know what they are talking about,” he said. “All social movements don’t make sense to each other and don’t have a concrete platform.”

Despite this, Berlet chided liberals who are quick to dismiss the movement as a joke.

“Liberals have this idea that elite Republicans had this idea of ‘let’s create a Tea Party’ and that this is a fake grass roots movement,” he said. “It’s true this started as an Astroturf party, but within months it became a legitimate thing. When people say the movement doesn’t really exist and it’s a lot of hot air, there is no evidence that that’s true.”

“There is not a shred of evidence that says the people who join the extreme right wing are any more crazy or less intelli-

gent than the rest of America,” Berlet said.

Berlet attributed the tendency of liberals to make fun of the Tea Party to two ideas within the party; “unplugging grandma” and “Obama is a socialist.”

According to Berlet, both of these ideas have roots in legitimate sources in the history of conservative discourse.

The idea of “unplugging grandma” links back to the 1970s when conservatives opposing the legalizing of abortion argued that abortion was the first step toward euthinasia.

“This was a big thing used to bring Protestants into the antiabortion movement,” Berlet said.

As for the idea that “Obama is a socialist,” Berlet said that though the current academic mainstream sees the connection between Hitler and Stalin to be totalitarianism, in the 1940s a large sect of political scientists saw the connection to be “Big government.” Berlet said the remnants of that school of thought are still alive in the Tea Party today.

“The media is ignorant for laughing at these things,” Berlet

There is no shred of evidence that says the people who join the extreme right wing are any more crazy or less intelligent than the rest of America.

- Chip Berlet

said. “They might not be in accordance with what we believe now, but at one point these ideas were very mainstream, and are no less legitimate now, even if you don’t agree with them.”

Berlet’s presentation was during the second half of the conference. The first half consisted of five professors who discussed neo-Nazism in Germany and Eastern Europe.

Topics of the first panel included the struggle in Germany to ban the National Democratic Party, the efforts of neo-Nazis to inject themselves into the mainstream, and the reasons behind Germany’s strict hate speech laws.

Graham, who had expressed his outrage at the conference before Wednesday, attended the second panel discussion devoted to the United States and reported about it on Fox News at 6:30 Thursday morning.

In an interview with The Hoot Graham said that, “I appreciated them making the distinction between the Tea Party and the neo-Nazis, but I don’t understand why the Tea Party was even part of a symposium where everything else was about neoNazis.”

“It’s like serving a seafood dinner with steak to prove that steak is not seafood,” he said. “[Brandeis] should be embarrassed that they did this.”

Professor Sabine von Mering (GRALL), who organized the conference, said she would not comment on the controversy, but that she thought the conference was “extremely successful.”

“I was pleased that after all the tension leading up to this, there was such a relaxed atmosphere,” she said.

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First orthodox ‘rabba’ discusses Students use Facebook to protest, petition about commencement role of women in Judaism

BY LEAH FINKELMAN Staff

When asked, the majority of the Jewish community, especially the Orthodox Jewish community, reports with absolute conviction that women cannot be rabbis.

Those polled would either be giving their own belief or what they know to be the religious rule.

Rabba Sara Hurwitz, the first Orthodox woman to become a rabbi in the United States, would disagree, and spoke about the discrepancy at Brandeis Wednesday.

The event, which attracted more than 100 students, faculty and community members, focused on Hurwitz’s controversial ordination and the question of whether women could actually be ordained as Orthodox rabbis. In an interactive lecture, Hurwitz explained the duties of a rabbi, saying that although, because of her gender, she is not allowed to perform such duties as sitting on a Jewish court of law, being a woman “doesn’t really affect the day-to-day responsibilities of a rabbi.”

Hurwitz was ordained last year, and her new position has caused controversy across the Orthodox world. After her ordination, she took the title of “Mahara’t,” an acronym referring to her leadership in law, spirituality and Torah. Earlier this year, Hurwitz adopted the title “Rabba,” which is used by most women rabbis in Israel.

The Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) and Agudath Israel, two prominent Orthodox groups, are against the use of the title because it is so similar to “rabbi.” The timing of the event was relevant, as the day

before, the RCA unanimously decided to reject the idea of ordaining women. urwitz considers being a rabbi her “calling,” and said that it is tradition, not Jewish law, that prohibits women from being ordained.

She is also the dean of Yeshivat Mahara’t, started in 2009 by her mentor and the man who ordained her, Rabbi Avi Weiss. The school currently has four students, all girls.

Hurwitz said the goals of the yeshiva were to foster young women to become exceptional spiritual leaders with an eye towards inclusivity, as well as educating the greater Orthodox community about the benefits of women rabbis.

“I think the Orthodox community here at Brandeis is generally more accepting of her ordination than the general American Orthodox population,” Brandeis Orthodox Organization (BOO) Education Director Daniel Kasdan ’13 said. “We were raised in a generation which has women receiving an unprecedented amount of leadership roles, even in the Jewish community … It makes sense that Hurwitz’s ordination doesn’t feel as weird to many of us as it does to our parents.”

The BOO hosted Hurwitz after Kasdan and Rabbi Elliot and Toby Kaplowitz, codirectors of Brandeis’ Jewish Learning Initiative, invited her to speak. Hurwitz is an alumna of Barnard College, and is on the rabbinical staff of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale as well as serving as dean of Yeshivat Maharat. She is also the curricular researcher and writer for the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance’s Gender and Orthodoxy Curriculum Project.

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SIMON (from p. 1)

surprised by the cooperation of the university administration in helping to convince Simon to sing.

“I told President Reinharz that this would be a good way to show people we appreciate the arts, and he said he thought it was a great idea,” Weil said.

Weil then talked to Professor. Scott Edminston (FA) who was in contact with Simon’s management. Edminston told Weil he should create a petition that Edminston could show Simon.

The Facebook group Weil created as a result had 200 members over night, and currently there are 730 members.

Edminston said there was a “short e-mail exchange between me and Simon’s assistant to his assistant to his assistant” before he learned that Simon had agreed to speak and sing.

The announcement of Simon’s upcoming performance comes one day before a protest staged by students who are angered that Oren’s speaking at commencement.

One group of students will protest this today at 3 p.m. outside of the BernsteinMarcus administrative building. These students, organized in the Facebook group “Commencement was Supposed to Be About Us: Against Michael Oren as Speaker,” which has 233 members, think “regardless of the motivations for having Oren speak at commencement, it will be fundamentally divisive at a ceremony that is supposed to be unifying,” Dan Orkin ’‘10, one of the protest’s organizers said.

Oren was chosen to speak last week by Reinharz from the list of honorary degree recipients.

While Reinharz did not respond to The Hoot’s requests for comment, he did reply to an e-mail from one student upset about his decision, writing he was “surprised and frankly somewhat disappointed” by the student’s anger.

“Do you really want the absence of all possible controversy to be the standard by which Brandeis selects its honorees?” the e-mail continued. “You appear to believe that it’s fine to have controversial speakers so long as the university doesn’t honor them at commencement. If the honorees at commencement are all to be non-con-

troversial insofar as any in the audience are concerned, you remove from the list of potential honorees a great many individuals with outstanding records of accomplishment.”

Though students against Oren speaking may be the most vocal, they are not the only voices–or the only ones forming Facebook groups–on the issue.

One Facebook group called “A Letter in Support of President Reinharz and Ambassador Oren” has 158 members. Another group, titled “Two Groups About Michael Oren = Division = Reason He Shouldn’t Speak” has 31 members.

The announcement that Simon will sing at commencement has the potential to reunify the senior class in support and excitement that they will get a concert as well as a ceremony to end their days at Brandeis.

Even Orkin, who said Simon’s singing “doesn’t compensate for the choice of Oren as commencement speaker” admitted that “it’s a unifying gesture for sure.”

Simon’s ability to unify is not specific to Brandeis’ graduating class–many of whom are united by the shear excitement of having a live concert as part of the ceremony.

Professor Judy Eissenberg (FA), who teaches about Paul Simon in her Introduction to World Music class, said Simon is a unifying figure.

Eissenberg described Simon as the “midwife of world music,” describing how his visit to apartheid South Africa in 1986 and the subsequent release of his album “Graceland” simultaneously brought world music to the popular music charts while raising awareness about social and racial conditions in the country.

“He says his music is above politics, but nothing can ever be fully above politics,” Eissenberg said. “That’s the power of music.

It touches people and can keep people in the same room when they just want to leave and stop talking to each other.”

As for Weil, he’s just looking forward to seeing what song Simon chooses.

“I didn’t do this to galvanize and unite everyone,” Weil said. “I did this because I’m a big Paul Simon fan and want everyone to have a good time at commencement. But this has been a crazy commencement. First everyone protests Oren, and now we have Paul Simon singing. Nothing surprises me anymore.”

FEATURES Helping Haiti: A semester summary

6 The Brandeis Hoot

BY BECCA CARDEN Staff

The Brandeis Haiti Relief Effort, co-chaired by Nate Rosenblum ’10 and Shaina Gilbert ’10, has worked throughout this semester to take part in the global campaign to aid Haiti after the earthquake that took place there Jan. 12. As the semester winds down, the Brandeis Haiti Relief Effort is growing closer and closer to its goals for spring 2010.

The group will be holding their last event, “A Night for Haiti,” on Saturday in an effort to raise the last thousand dollars needed to get to their goal of $25,000.

Gilbert expressed her pride for the relief effort thus far: “Haiti was hit hard, but the love and support [being extended to this country] hopefully hits it even harder,” she said.

Rosenblum echoed Gilbert’s sentiments: “Knowing how many groups that came together to make this happen is [very cool]. Just looking back, I’m overwhelmed.”

Wednesday afternoon featured a panel called “Looking Forward: Sustainable Development in Haiti,” hosted by the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, in conjunction with the Relief Effort, and the annual A Cappella Fest Benefit Concert, hosted by Starving Artists last Wednesday evening, featured all of the a cappella groups on campus, and donated its proceeds to the relief cause.

A Night for Haiti, a semi-

April 30, 2010

formal gala, called A Night for Haiti, which is scheduled to take place Saturday night. The Night for Haiti festival is a formal dinner to mark the end of the semester and to celebrate students’ efforts for Haiti so far.

“I want to see a lot of students come and support it because it’s the culmination of all the Haiti events this semester,” said Sofia Bronshvayg ’11, an organizer of the event. “I think it’s something different that the whole campus is invited to—We don’t have a whole campus formal, to my knowledge. We are also inviting faculty, trustees [and] alumni, which is somewhat unusual,” she explained.

The event will feature Haitian music and cuisine. There will also be a silent auction including a homemade dinner for six in Father Walter Cuenin’s home, preseason tickets for the Patriots, parking in North Quad (though not a parking pass), vases from the pottery club and a three-day trip to Montreal, among other prizes.

“I think this community needs a big pat on the back for all the work that’s been put in[to this cause],” said Rosenblum of the Gala.

The money that is raised through the relief efforts will be split between three organizations: Partners in Health, Hope for Haiti and ETE Camp, which Gilbert and her family founded last summer.

This year, five Brandeis students, including Gilbert, are traveling to Haiti to work as counselors at the camp.

Next year, there will be an ap-

PHOT BY Max Shay/The Hoot

DRAWING ATTENTION TO HAITI: (Above) Student Patric Medelus ‘12 attends the Haiti Vigil at the beginning of the semester. (Right) Jemial Adams speaks at the MLK event.

PHOTO BY Max ShayThe Hoot

HOOPS FOR HAITI: On April 16 Brandeis students played against Brandeis faculty to raise funds for Haiti.

plication process for students who are interested in interning there.

“It’s important that we incorporate the Haitian people as part of the [rebuilding] process. Brandeis is familiar with community service, and what it means to be a community worker is to work with the community,” said Gilbert.

Her sentiments were echoed in Wednesday’s panel, where experts discussed how Haiti can continue to develop. The panelists agreed that in order for the effort to succeed, there must be a shift in mindset: Foreigners must stop feeling that they are providing aid to a country that cannot help itself, and must instead begin to feel solidarity with the Haitian people.

So far, the panel argued, the overall Haiti relief effort has been uncoordinated and has

failed to bring help to many Haitians who need it. For example, the relief effort is too centered in urban areas, even though many people who lived in cities have taken refuge in rural areas.

Gilbert agreed with some points addressed at the panel, but encouraged people to emphasize the good that has been done as well.

“I do admit that the efforts aren’t coordinated, but they’re there. And that’s not something we had before,” said Gilbert, optimistically. “Even though they’re making [mistakes] on the federal level, the global level, the international level, that doesn’t mean Brandeis has to, too,” she added.

In fact, Brandeis’ semesterlong push to provide significant monetary relief has been full of very coordinated activities: The Brandeis Haiti Relief

Effort, working in conjunction with an enormous number of other clubs, has helped to organize a vigil for Haiti, a charity dinner at the Chabad house, concerts, ice skating, valentine making and the Hoops for Haiti event.

In addition, there have been several educational events, including Take Me to Haiti, a night dedicated to celebrating Haitian culture. At the event, there was a slide show, Haitian food, poetry, a live mural and other activities.

“It was just really cool that people appreciate Haiti on a whole other level,” said Gilbert.

Moreover, the Brandeis Haiti Relief Effort already has a few events planned for next semester.

“We’re getting together a Brandeis alumni trip to Haiti with doctors and nurses,” explained Rosenblum.

“We’re seeking to have a student exchange program, so students from Haiti can come here,” said Gilbert.

In addition, there is talk of possibly teaming up with the Volunteer Vacations program to send students to Haiti. “We’re hoping to send a Brandeis contingent,” said Rosenblum, “I think it would be phenomenal to have a group of Brandeis students go down to Haiti.”

While this semester’s efforts are drawing to a close, they have been inspirational for many who participated in one or more of them.

“It’s been an amazing semester, watching everybody come together,” said Gilbert. “My soul is in this moment right now.”

Tickets for A Night for Haiti event are $10 for Brandeis students, $15 for students who do not attend Brandeis and $25 for everyone else.

April 30, 2010

The Brandeis Hoot

FEATURES

7

Science and art share mutual appreciation SCIENCE ART (from p. 3)

the birth of her son inspired her to think about the ways to transport information through bodies.

Bensinger, who teaches physics at Brandeis, explained that his strictly scientific work relates unexpectedly to art in a number of ways.

“I think some of the things we build have a certain beauty to them, in my mind,” he said. He demonstrated his statement with photographs of the Large Hadron Collider.

The famous Collider stimulates particle collisions that he and a team of scientists are studying.

“We’ve been trying to understand what happens during the collisions, and from that understanding,” he said, “[figure out] the laws that govern their behavior.”

He, much like Kohn, explained that the existence of these laws is what connects science and art.

“Science is trying to make the phenomena of the universe understandable to human beings— and that’s very similar to what an artist is trying to do.”

Rosenkrantz works at a company that creates and sells one-ofa-kind jewelry pieces inspired by living organisms. Her project was the inspiration for the panel.

The company has based designs on microscopic images of bamboo, bubbles trapped under ice, formations made from lava and cellular models. Rosenkrantz and her partner put these patterns onto a computer and manipulate them until they can be used to create jewelry.

“We’re not typically interested” in copying images of nature exactly, she said, “We’re interested in developing them in such a way that it becomes unnatural.”

The company has also recently begun to use three-dimensional computer imaging. It has moved beyond jewelry to create textiles, lampshades and even vases.

Janney, an architect and a musician, tries to mix these two very different mediums in his work.

“Sometimes I try to make architecture more like music, more

spontaneous and alive. And then other times, I try to make music more like architecture,” he said.

“I think that you can hear color, that you can see sound,” he added, “For the artist, this is all quite possible.”

In one project, he hooked a dancer up to a biomedical heart monitor, which he wirelessly attached to speakers. Then, the dancer was able to move to the rhythm of her heartbeat.

Karlsson studies genes and the evolution of the modern human.

“What we’ve been doing is comparing people in different places to see how they live,” she said, “And so what we’re comparing is the genome.”

Certain mutations, which indicate evolution, leave signals that Karlsson and her team find. These have led them to view genes like light skin pigment, silky black hair, under active sweat glands, strong immunities, good hearing and balance and other characteristics, to be the result of natural, long-term, human evolution. This body-based research relates to the figure paintings Karlsson produces after work.

Selvage is a sculptor who focuses on nature in her artwork. “I started college with the assumption that I would become a medical doctor, but my path led to operation on clay rather than flesh,” she explained, “My artwork is connected to science by investigated processes, by research and in some cases by content.”

In one of her projects, Selvage made a model of the Grand Canyon. In another, she made a clay mural of a local river.

For Selvage, science and art both “invite the viewer to question and discover meaning in unknown territory.”

This presentation was sponsored in part by the Women in Science Initiative and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. Selvage and Ranganathan’s artwork will be on display at the Kniznick Gallery at the Women’s Studies Research Center in the Epstein Building through June 30.

PHOTO COURTESY University Archives

A PIONEER AT BRANDEIS: From left to right, Eleanor Roosevelt, Saul Cohen, Harry S. Truman, Abram L. Sachar in Massell Quad.

In Memoriam: Saul G. Cohen, 93

BY ALEX SCHNEIDER Editor

Professor Saul G. Cohen, Brandeis’ first chemistry department chair, dean of faculty and university professor, died last Saturday due to heart failure. Cohen was 93.

Current Chemistry Department Chair Irving Epstein described Cohen as a “man of enormous breadth of intellect and interest, not only in science but in literature, politics and many other areas.”

He added, “He was probably the most important person in setting Brandeis on a course toward becoming a great research university.”

Over his career, Cohen played a crucial role in Brandeis’ devel-

opment. In 1950, Cohen left Polaroid, where he had worked to develop organic chemicals necessary for instant-film, to join the faculty of Brandeis. In addition to taking on numerous administrative leadership roles, Cohen worked with pre- and post-doctoral students to publish more than 100 articles and reviews on topics such as photochemistry, reaction mechanisms and free radicals, according to his Brandeis biography.

According to Epstein, Cohen even continued “his research in organic chemistry and its applications to systems of biological importance” until illness prevented him from working.

Cohen also received a number of awards. He was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in 1958, a Gug-

genheim Fellow in 1958 and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1972, Cohen received the American Chemical Society’s James F. Norris Award, and in 1992 he received the Centennial Medal of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Cohen graduated summa cum laude from Harvard with a degree in chemistry and went on to earn a doctorate from the school.

Cohen leaves his wife, Anneliese, his daughter Elisabeth, his son Jonathan, his stepchildren Elizabeth Kissinger and David Kissinger, and nine grandchildren. His family has asked that in lieu of flowers, remembrances may be made to The Saul G. Cohen Memorial Fund c/o The Development Office at Brandeis University.

So long and thanks for all the fish

BY HANNAH VICKERS Editor

My interest in journalism started while I was studying abroad in Australia. Up to that point I had planned on taking the most popular path among my peers: law school. After all, I have always loved writing and, on more than one occasion, my father has declared that I can talk my way into or out of any situation. While I was in Mel-

bourne, though, I started to think about what I wanted out of my life. Most people I met over there were more concerned with getting into a field they enjoyed than anyone in America.

I began to reflect on what it was that made me happy and what I could see myself doing in the future. That was when I first got the idea of pursuing sports journalism. When I returned from studying abroad I took two journalism courses with Professor Eileen McNamara, “Ethics in Journalism” and “Media and Public Policy,” and fell in love.

I found the excitement I was missing in some of my other courses and was welcomed with topics I could really sink my teeth into. I officially declared my journalism minor this fall and loaded up my schedule to complete it in time.

Around the same time I decided to join The Hoot. When I first began I had no idea how far I would go. As the younger paper on campus, the smaller staff made for a close-knit family, a place to feel at home. I covered everything from the women’s basketball team reaching the NCAA Division III Elite Eight

last spring to player and team profiles.

Once the existing editor graduated last spring, I took over. It was intimidating at first, especially during weeks when the responsibility fell on me to fill the two pages assigned to me. I worried about giving everyone fair coverage, trying to make sure each team was highlighted.

Don’t get me wrong: there were weeks where I was tearing my hair out trying to get it all done. But the pressure was exhilarating.

As a lifelong procrastinator, the newsroom and the tension of production night just seemed to fit.

And now, on my last production night, I could not be more grateful for my time here.

Through my college classes and even more so through my time here at The Hoot my love for journalism has grown more than I could have ever predicted. As I look to the work ahead next year when I will attend the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, I can say without a doubt that I will miss my Thursday nights in Shapiro with this team.

SPORTS

8 The Brandeis Hoot

April 30, 2010

Baseball: Judges beat Bowdoin in marathon game, fall to Keene St.

BY JON OSTROWSKY Staff

The Brandeis baseball team presented fans with a lot of excitement this week, earning a come from behind victory against the Bowdoin Polar Bears (21-11), the seventh ranked team in the region.

The Judges (11-22) claimed a 1715 victory in their last regular season home game despite trailing by seven runs in the eighth inning. In the top of the eighth, the Polar Bears posted six runs, before the Judges had 12 batters hit in the bottom of the inning, and scored nine runs.

Andrew Weissenberg ’13 helped get the Judges out of their rough top of the eighth when he forced Bowdoin’s shortstop Reid Auger to ground into an inning ending double play.

In the bottom half of the inning Judges’ second baseman James Likis ’10 helped the Judges by hitting a fly ball, which was misplayed, into left field, allowing one run to score while Nick Cortese ’13 walked and Likis later scored after advancing on a passed ball.

While the Polar Bears tried to mount a last minute comeback in the top of the ninth, Alex Tynan ’12 earned his first career save for the Judges, and helped seal the victory.

After three hours and four minutes and 37 total hits for both teams, the Judges, thanks in large part to Jon Chu ’12 who went 5-for-6 at the plate and Tony Deshler ’11 who went 3-for6, the Judges gave their fans a perfect ending to their last home game.

On Thursday, the Judges moved on to face off against Keene State College but couldn’t find the strength they drew from their home crowd the day before and ended up dropping the game 15-8.

Over the weekend the Judges will face of against Wheaton on Saturday at 1 p.m. and UMass Dartmouth Sunday at 1 p.m.

’DEIS WINS: Top: Brandeis pitcher John McGrath ’11 (No. 24 pictured), hurls it home during Brandeis’ 11-6 win, Tuesday. Bottom: Sean O’hare ’12 (No. 11 right), Brandeis short-stop dives back to first, avoiding a pick-off move.

PHOTOS BY Robbie Hammer/The Hoot

Growing up with golf

BY BRET MATTHEW Editor

I remember a warm spring day. I walked onto the mat tee— a green square made of beat-up Astroturf—and carefully placed a small white ball onto the rubber tee. About 60 yards ahead of me, a yellow flag with a large number one blew in the wind.

Dad sat on the bench behind me, watching as I approached the ball, club in hand, and centered it in my stance. With a wild windup that almost knocked me off my feet, I took my shot.

The ball bounced off my club at a downward angle and rolled for a few yards until it came to a stop in the tall grass that separated the tee from the hole.

I was 11-years-old, and this was my first time on a real golf course.

Dad and I began playing golf at about the same time. I received my first exposure to the game the summer before sixth grade while participating in lessons offered by the local police. They weren’t actu-

ally very good players themselves and probably only played once a weekend, but all they needed to do to get me hooked was give me a club and tell me to swing. Dad didn’t have much more experience, having only played once before with a few co-workers, but he decided to learn when it became clear that I wanted to continue.

Before long the two of us had our own clubs—I a shortened, lightweight seven iron and a cheap putter, he a rudimentary set from Wal-Mart.

We started playing at a small course in the neighboring town of Lancaster. Known as “The Links,” the course at Lancaster Golf Center did not contain a hole longer than about 100 yards, and most were between 60 and 80. Though you could still play real golf on it, the length gave young players like myself a fair chance.

But it was still frustrating. Being far younger and much less coordinated than Dad, it took me longer to learn the precise swing mechanics that are necessary to hit long, accurate shots. While I watched him work on his shot

consistency, I was struggling just to hit my ball in the air. At times (most of the time, in fact) I let my short temper get the best of me as I tried to figure out what I was doing wrong.

While it must not have always been pleasant to deal with my behavior, Dad still took me to play almost every weekend. We found new, longer courses for us to learn on, sometimes driving an hour or more just to find a good one. After more rounds, more lessons and countless hours in the front yard working on my swing, I was able to hit far enough so that I could play on a real, full-length course.

We moved to Twin Springs, a nearby course that contained some of the longest holes I had yet to play.

We both improved, I perhaps quicker than he, but only because I had more ground to gain. I acquired more clubs and learned about the situations in which to use them.

I could drive a first shot more than 200 yards down the fairway, stick a high approach shot on the green, and then putt across its

smooth, curved surface. Soon our scores became closer and we (or at least I) became more competitive. I even managed to beat him a few times.

To Dad’s relief, as I got better I learned the most important skill golf ever taught me: how to calm down and accept bad games without losing my temper. It helped my game tremendously. I was able to join my high school’s golf team and move on to competitive play.

Armed with a full set of clubs and plenty of experience, I played some of the best rounds of my life, against teams from all over Central Massachusetts. It required a lot of practice, but I played Twin Springs to death during our offseason, so much that my coach took notice and let me start in more matches.

Meanwhile, while Dad was proud of my progress, his was starting to lag. He had begun to notice a pain in his shoulder that wouldn’t go away when he moved it the wrong way. It turned out to be a torn rotator cuff. At first, he tried to ignore it, playing and

wincing at the same time. But eventually he found himself having to stop in the middle of a round when swinging a club became too difficult.

He slowly became a spectator. When my team played home matches Dad would sometimes sit outside the clubhouse with binoculars, waiting for me to finish the last hole. He was watching the day I hit the longest drive of my life, a perfect, down-the-middle shot on Twin Springs’ ninth hole that we talked about for hours afterward.

I haven’t played much golf since high school—surprising, I know. I gave it up when my schedule became too busy for me to find the time, and when friends began to lose interest in playing.

But I think springtime has done something to me. Or maybe it’s uncontrollable nostalgia. I have a growing urge now to go into my garage, pull down Dad’s dusty set of clubs from the perch where it hangs.

I wonder if I can still hit the way I used to. I wonder if Dad would like to come along and find out.

April 30, 2010

The Brandeis Hoot

Women’s track and field places fifth, men seventh at outdoor UAA Championships

BY HANNAH VICKERS Editor

In a weekend full of stiff competition, the Brandeis track and field teams stepped up their game and walked away from the University Athletic Association Championships in St. Louis with three championship performances, one meet record, two school records, two NCAA qualifying standards, and five all UAA honors.

“The amazing success our athletes had this weekend in only our first championship meet is going to really come to fruition this weekend and the weekends to come,” co-captain Lucia Capano ’11 told The Hoot in an e-mail.

“Well I’m wicked excited,” cocaptain Suzy Bernier ’10 told The Hoot.

As she should be. After taking the UAA title indoors earlier this season for high jump she turned around and claimed it again in the outdoor event. In the process she broke her own school record by a quarter of an inch, propelling herself over five feet, six inches above the ground.

“I knew what I was going for,” Bernier said. “There were three of us still in and they had all made it before I did so I got up there and had to [make it].”

With the jump Bernier improved her previous NCAA qualifying height by 0.03 meters. This was the second UAA title for Bernier, both of which came this year.

Grayce Selig ’11 took home her first UAA title later in the day when she ran the 1,500-meter in 4:36.79, more than half a second faster than second place.

“This weekend’s races were really all about putting ourselves in a position to place and get as many points for the team as possible,” Selig said in an e-mail to The Hoot.

Selig had set a new school record the week before of 4:33.91 but her time at UAAs was still good enough to be an NCAA provisional mark.

The final UAA title of the day came courtesy of the 4x800-meter relay, where Selig took her second title of the day. Classmate Emily Own, Erin Bisceglia ’12 and cocaptain Beth Pisarik ’10 were also on the team. They combined for a time of 9:18.83.

That time not only broke the UAA meet record by almost four seconds but destroyed the previous school record by nearly 18 seconds. The Judges were eight seconds ahead of the second place squad.

“The 4x800 was great,” Selig told The Hoot. “We have such a strong middle distance team and and so I know there is a lot more to come from each of them, both in their individual events or if we decided to do another relay … It was a great way to finish a good weekend.”

The 4x100-meter relay team, made up of co-captains Capano and Michelle Gellman ’11 and rookies Brittany Bell and Anifreed Sinjour, took home third place and All-UAA honors. This was the sixth event of the meet for Capano who also competed in the long jump, the high jump, the 100-meter dash, the 4x400 and the triple jump where she finished fourth. Her teammates were certainly impressed with the diversity of events she competed in.

“Luci did a great job this weekend too even though she didn’t get all UAA honors,” Bernier said.

“It’s definitely difficult to pre-

pare for a number of events that require quite a bit of technical work,” Capano told The Hoot in an e-mail. “I practice approaches for both of the horizontal jumps, block starts for the 100m, handoffs for the relay and triple jump form. The 4x100 is probably my favorite event because I love running curves, and when you’re running a curve and are catching the girl who started in front of you is totally exhilarating.”

Alyssa Pisarik ’12 also took home All-UAA honors when she took home second place in the 5,000-meter run with a time of 17:49.76.

With so many incredible schools in the UAA, the pressure was definitely high.

“I tried to think of last weekend as just another race,” Selig said, “but there was so much great competition in the 1500 so it is definitely a confidence booster going into the upcoming races.”

While the men did not take home first place in any events, they did have three team members claim All-UAA honors.

Co-captain Paul Norton ’11 received his fourth All-Association this season for his second place

SPORTS

9

finish in the 5,000-meter run with a time of 15:19.47. Aaron Udel ’10 also finished second in his event, coming in just .37 seconds behind first place in the 800-meter run, to take All-Association honors.

Devon Holgate ’11 took his first individual All-UAA honor in the 1,500-meter run, taking third place with a time of 3:57.69, shaving three seconds off his seasonbest time in the process.

Both teams will be competing in the New England Division III Championships this Saturday, May 1.

“I’m excited for this weekend,” Bernier told The Hoot. “So far I haven’t lost an outdoor meet–four wins in a row. Hopefully I can get one last one in this weekend then its All New Englands.”

“We have all been training hard and most importantly consistently,” Selig said. “So hopefully it will be another great weekend for our team and hopefully we’ll get some more qualifying times out of the way for meets later in the season.”

The Hoot wishes luck to all the athletes competing this weekend as well as for the rest of the season and congratulates the seniors on four wonderful years on the team.

Men’s tennis finishes fourth at UAA Championships

BY KARA KARTER Staff

On the courts of Carnegie Mellon University last weekend, the Brandeis men’s tennis team wrapped up a successful season at the University Athletic Association’s yearly tournament.

The Judges, who entered the tournament with an 8-8 record, left with a fourth place finish, the team’s best under fifth-year coach Ben Lamanna.

The journey for fifth-seeded Brandeis began last Friday in a match against the University of Chicago. Trailing 2-1 after doubles competition, the Judges took four out of six singles matches to steal a victory from the nationally ranked Maroons.

Chicago claimed the win in fourth and six singles in straight sets (6-0, 6-1) and (6-3, 6-0) before Brandeis roared back with four consecutive victories. Fred

Rozenshteyn ’13, who with Michael Tatarsky ’12, had combined for Brandeis’ doubles win, won his first set 6-2 and was up 4-3 in the second when opponent Dillon Klincke ’13 defaulted after taking too much time during a break.

Subsequent successes from fellow rookie Steven Milo and Nick White ’11 evened the score at four-all.

With the task of advancing the team to UAA semifinals for the first time since 2003 left squarely on his shoulders, Simon Miller ’11 came through with what Lamanna called a “huge victory.”

After winning the first set 6-2, number two Miller allowed opponent Troy Brinker ’12 to swipe the second, 7-5. Brinker broke serve and claimed a 5-3 edge in a high-intensity third set, before Miller–who staved off a pair of match points–forced a tiebreaker.

“It came down to Simon Miller in a third set tiebreaker,” explained Lamanna. “It was a crazy match. Craziest match I’ve ever

been a part of.”

It was a crazy match that Brandeis left victorious. Miller won the tiebreaker by a 7-3 margin.

“We talked about that one match all year long. It helped us get into the top four.”

In 2009, Brandeis exited UAAs with a last-place finish, failing to win a match.

Saturday’s semifinals saw the Judges go toe-to-toe with tournament top-seed Washington University in St. Louis. WashU’s Bears, coming off a convincing 9-0 defeat of New York University, won the first two doubles contests. The tandem of Milo and Dave Yovanoff ’13 tallied a doubles win–9-8 in a tiebreaker–for Brandeis. It would be the Judges’ only win of the day.

The defending UAA champions, WashU earned victories in fourth, first, and second singles.

Though Milo won a set in third singles, the contest went unfinished. With WashU up 5-1, the

matchup–forced indoors due to weather–was played only to decision.

The Judges played their season finale the following day. With a third-place finish at stake, the hosts claimed the consolation title. Carnegie Mellon–the Judges’ fifth consecutive nationally ranked opponent (No. 7)–ran away to a 5-2 win. As in the team’s two previous matches, the Judges earned one of a possible three points in doubles play. All three matches were closely contested; each wrapped with an 8-5 score.

In singles, Miller earned Brandeis another mark, pulling the Judges to within 3-2 after a 6-3, 6-2 triumph at number two. Though Miller would clinch the match, unfortunately for Brandeis, it wouldn’t be Simon.

Up 4-2, Carnegie Mellon’s Duke Miller ’13 edged Yovanoff 6-2, 5-7, 7-5, securing the bronze for the Tartans.

Despite the loss, Lamanna found reason to remain positive.

“The strength of our team is that we brought in eight new players. We had two starters from last year’s team. We’re a young team.

We started two freshman and three juniors … It was a trying year in that sense, but I think the guys really battled in the end...

Moving on towards next year, I’m really looking forward to seeing how much personal and individual growth [they show.]”

The two freshman starters, Milo and Yovanoff, earned Second Team All-UAA honors. Lamanna too received accolades. With Assistant Coach, Payum Payman, the duo was named Coaching Staff of the Year.

When asked, Lamanna refused to take credit.

“It’s really a testament to our whole group. It wasn’t just me. It’s the whole team. We went from eighth to fourth place. We upset the 15th ranked team in the country.”

Next year, the Judges may very well have a ranking of their own.

Brandeis completes road schedule with two wins

BY ADAM HUGHES Staff

Occasionally, usually less than once a week, the Brandeis softball team has actually lost a game this year.

I know, this seems shocking given their stunning season so far. Never fear, though–they just made sure that their national ranking of 18 can only improve following another perfect week on the diamond.

To be fair, they only had to

win two contests to make sure that would be true. On Tuesday, their home doubleheader against Babson was rained out, and the looming NEWMAC softball tournament means that it will not be made up. So the Judges’ success or failure this week depended entirely on Thursday’s doubleheader in Providence, Rhode Island, where the Rhode Island College Anchorwomen awaited their challenge.

The first game started ominously for Brandeis when Rhode Island plated a run in the bottom half of the first inning.

In the second, however, Danielle Lavallee ’11 hit a solo home run to tie. Then, after a single from Chelsea Korp ’10 and a walk to Melisa Cagar ’11 put women on the bases, singles from Marianne Specker ’12 and Brittany Grimm ’12 scored a pair to put the Judges up 3-1.

Rhode Island returned the favor by scoring two in the bottom of the third, only to have the Judges counter-punched in the top of the fourth after Korp took home on a wild pitch and Stacy Berg ’13 slapped an RBI single. That would be all they would need, but

a three-run bases loaded single from Lavallee and a run-scoring error by the Anchorwomen provided the final 9-3 margin.

In the later game, Specker hit an RBI single in the third and a twoRBI single in the fifth to provide the Judges first three runs. Rhode Island helped the Brandeis cause by committing a two-run error, and Erin Ross’s one-run single in the seventh left Brandeis with a comfortable 6-2 lead going into final at bats.

But the Anchorwomen wouldn’t go quietly. Two hits, a walk and an error later, the score was 6-5, and

pitcher Caroline Miller ’12 was being relieved by Emily Vaillette ’10. Vaillette left the hearts of the Brandeis faithful beating rapidly, giving up a wild pitch and another walk, but she induced a grounder for the final out and the Judges’ sweep.

Brandeis stands at 24-6-1 now, with their away schedule completely behind them. Their regular season ends with home doubleheaders against Emerson on April 30th and Framingham State on May 2nd before they embark on what will hopefully be a long post-season trip.

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Festival shows art is the ‘Source’

BY SEAN FABERY Editor

Ordinarily rain spoils outdoor events, but Wednesday’s rainy weather felt appropriate for the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts’ opening ceremony, which celebrated the symbolic importance of water as it unveiled a temporary installation by artist-in-residence Michael Dowling.

The festival officially presented Dowling’s “Source/ReSource,” a temporary installation constructed out of copper and stone, to the Brandeis community at the beginning of the opening ceremony.

The installation essentially is a copper bronze fountain. A water trough was placed on the steps of The Rose Art Museum, which in turn leads to a large fountain placed on the museum’s lawn.

Though only temporary, the installation’s warm copper tones contrast nicely with The Rose’s gray façade, with each complementing the other.

Dowling designed the artwork specifically for the festival and sought inspiration from the Brandeis community. Throughout the year, he sat in on classes and also gleaned ideas from the landscape around campus, specifically the Charles River.

“My inspiration is the counting cycle of generations who come to Brandeis—the source—and return to the world as a resource for vision, justice, creativity and social change,” Dowling said in a press release.

The festival also took its theme, “Art is the Source,” from the structure.

The festival actively engaged the community by distributing 2,000 copper buckets across campus. Though there were some reports that buckets had been stolen by students, many students, faculty and staff appeared at the installation’s unveiling with buckets in hand. During the ceremony, attendees were encouraged to dump their bucket’s contents into the fountain in order to establish a stronger connection to art.

The opening ceremony began with a Hebrew language musical performance given by Brandeis students on the steps of The Rose. Immediately afterwards, members of the Brandeis Theater Company gathered around the fountain and proclaimed what their sources in life were, with most declaring at the end that “justice” and “art” were their sources of strength.

In turn, this performance was folPHOTO BY Andrew Rauner/The Hoot lowed by a presentation given by the SOURCE/RESOURCE: Brandeis community members were encouraged to bring water-filled buckets to the Brandeis Chaplaincy—Rabbi Elyse Michael Dowling “Source/ReSource” installation at the Rose Art Museum.

Winick, Father Walter Cuenin, Protestant chaplain Alexander Kern and Muslim minutes, proved an eclectic mixture of cept of water a bit too literally—what about chaplain Imam Talal Eid—each spoke about Brandeis’ cultural components, with both the many other components of Dowling’s installation? the importance of water in their respective art and religion playing a prominent role.

The melding of the various performance Of course, these are minor quibbles, as religious texts, with water commonly being pieces, however, sometimes seemed a bit the festival’s opening proved enjoyable and presented as a source of renewal. off.

This was especially true of the dance often captivating. Any celebration of art in a Another performance piece then started, performance in the fountain.

By itself, it society (and this is true on-campus, as well) with a woman singing a spiritual song as would have been fine, but it came across as where art is increasingly not appreciated is Professor Susan Dibble (FA) began dancing a bit bombastic immediately after the chapmore than fine with me. gracefully in the pond. This was then follains spoke. lowed by another musical performance.

As a whole, the ceremony took the conThe ceremony, though lasting only 20

Former poet laureate Louise Glück reads from new book

BY KAYLA DOS SANTOS Editor

Chico Colvard presents a ‘Family Affair’

BY SEAN FABERY Editor

In a series of powerful readings, former United States poet laureate and Fannie Hurst visiting professor Louise Glück shared with Brandeis students a few selections from her new book of poetry “A Village Life.”

According to event coordinator and Glück’s friend, Professor Mary Campbell (ENG), the renowned poet doesn’t like to do readings. Campbell hypothesized that she feels like “she doesn’t own it—a gate opened in her mind, it came out of her and the doors shut again.” Campbell suggested that Glück wants to keep her life separate from her work. She did not want to become like Sylvia Plath, whose work has become entwined with her life story. Campbell said, “[Plath] is not considered a great poet because she isn’t seen as making art.”

Glück’s reluctance at doing readings is surprising because at the event it was a joy to listen to her. She used simple words to construct poetic turns of phrase that chilled the spine because of the depths of truth she touched upon. Many of the first poems she read like “Tributaries” and “At the River” featured water imagery, which was appropriate as, in the Lois Foster Wing of the Rose Art museum, the audience could hear the soft patter of rain.

In “Tributaries” young and old gather around a fountain, with children frolicking around it while the elderly are consigned to sit at metal tables on the outskirts. In this poem, water is the life source and the fountain is the center. The comparison of water to a life source seemed to fit the collection’s preoccupation with aging and what it means as one approaches death. This opening poem was also a revelation of the

PHOTO BY Lien Phung/The Hoot

A VILLAGE LIFE: Pultizer Prize-winning poet Louise Glück read her work at The Rose Art Museum.

way that many of Glück’s poems include a breathtaking rhythmic quality: “avenue of broken faith, avenue of disappointment, avenue of lost time,” she read.

Campbell described how each of Glück’s books of poetry is a new experiment with language. “A Village Life” differs from her previous works in the length of the line. “[A Village Life] is so novelistic but it isn’t a novel,” Campbell said. “[The reader] gets glimpses like an artsy foreign film, your own mind gets to do the filling in. [She] creates space for [your] own imagination.”

“My natural language was brevity … austerity,” Glück explained. “The adventure of writing is trying to stay surprised. Long See POET, p. 12

For the average member of a family that has been rocked by abuse, it isn’t exactly easy talking publically about your own situation. Filmmaker Chico Colvard is not average in this regard, as he spent the last eight years crafting a documentary titled “Family Affair” which delves into the way his own family has handled a legacy of abuse. Colvard brought the film to Brandeis on Monday as part of the SunDeis Film Festival and answered questions afterward.

“Family Affair” begins with a surprising act of violence. Chico recounts how he, as a 10-year-old, shot his sister Paula with one of his father’s guns. Paula, believing she was about to die, revealed to her mother that her father had repeatedly raped her along with her two older sisters, Angelika and Chiquita. Their family was never the same.

This documentary represents Colvard’s attempt to understand what happened to his family after this revelation and, specifically, how his sisters reacted to their abuse.

We’ve become accustomed to abuse narratives in which the victims, in the end, are completely liberated from their oppressor.

This is not the case with Colvard’s story.

Within a few years of their father’s release from prison, all three of his sisters had reestablished some kind of parent-child relationship with their father. Chico himself did not speak to his father for 15 years, but eventually he, too, agreed to see him again. Conversely, their mother completely dropped out of their lives, partially because she was aghast that her children would speak to their father again.

The logic behind their decision to see

their father is a bit hard to understand for an observer—Chico himself expresses uneasiness with it in the documentary. On the one hand, the sisters all speak about the immense mental and physical toll their father’s abuse had on them—Angelika, for instance, had to have an abortion at age fourteen and, when she later had a child with her husband, was afraid to touch it for more than two weeks as she was afraid she would be an abusive parent like her father. On the other hand, all of them express their interest in keeping their family as intact as possible.

Probably the most profoundly disturbing part—both for the audience and apparently also for Chico, who speaks to a psychologist about it in the film—occurs when the sisters speak about how “gentle” their father was when he raped them.

Though the camera’s gaze is almost exclusively on his sisters and parents, one senses that the film served as a kind of catharsis for Colvard. Towards its end, he asks his father why he did the things he did, but, as it turns out, “asking the question was more important than anything he had to say.”

“Family Affair,” while beautifully constructed and told, is not an easy film to watch, but it is an attempt to frame an abuse narrative in a way that diverges from the norm. Colvard’s sisters are not simply presented as poor, tortured saints; they are clearly vibrant people with diverse viewpoints and personalities. Colvard stressed the importance of this as he began answering questions after the film.

“I tried to capture [their sense of humor],” he told the audience, “so that they’re not reduced to the worst thing [in the audience’s mind].”

See COLVARD, p. 12

12 ARTS, ETC.

The Brandeis Hoot

April 30, 2010

Colvard shares documentary Early Music Ensemble rocks the Renaissance

COLVARD (from p. 11)

He described at length the process of making the film.

“I had this ridiculous idea that I could merge my interest in film with my interest in social justice,” he said. “I was lawyering with my camera.”

He stressed the importance of the film to himself, with the impetus for its creation being a “fear of spending the rest of my life with this past.” He described it as being “transformative” in some sense both for himself and his sisters.

“It’s not like I made a film and now we’re all recovered,” he said, cautioning that approaching the issue as he has done is not the ideal for all victims of abuse.

“It’s not for everybody. They get to call their own shots. And it allowed me to stop being judgmental of my sisters,” he said.

His sisters were his primary concern while making the film, as he worried what effect it would have on them.

“I knew I could not turn this movie into an ‘incest film,’” Colvard said.

Though none of them had any idea that his project would turn into a full-fledged feature-length documentary, they gave him their permission to go ahead with it.

“They were supportive and trusting of me … to record their lives in such an authentic and vul-

BY ADAM HUGHES Staff

PHOTO COURTESY OF Alice Kelikian

CHATTING WITH COLVARD: Filmmaker Chico Colvard answered questions about his debut documentary ‘Family Affair’ at the Wasserman Cinematheque.

nerable way,” he said.

He did not show them any footage of his project until a few weeks before the film’s premiere at Sundance. This meant withholding footage of his mother from his sisters, who had not seen her in 20 years.

“I promised myself that if they said ‘no,’ that I would say ‘no’ to Sundance,” Colvard said.

His sisters accompanied him to Sundance, where they attended two screenings of the film and answered questions about it. Though

some have suggested to him that his sisters should accompany him to all his screenings, he thought this would be too “draining” and “intense” for them after Sundance.

“Family Affair” will receive its national debut in 2011 on OWN, the new network established by Oprah Winfrey. Colvard, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston, is tentatively at work on his next project, a look at “the modern-day consumption of racist memorabilia.”

BY KAYLA DOS SANTOS

ded, torn apart and stitched back together, transformed so as to be almost unrecognizable or simply poorly imitated. This leaves any new adaptations with the burden of trying to add something new to a source material that has been gradually sapped of its creative energy.

BORG’s production mainly stays true to the original radio play. There isn’t much deviation apart from the occasional Brandeis allusion. Who wrote the worse poetry in the universe?

Why, Carl Shapiro, of course.

Bartels adds to the original play through the staging of her adaptation. There are no fancy effects or gizmos, but this defines, in part, this scrappy production’s charm. In the opening scene, Arthur’s home is about to be knocked down to make way for a bypass. In Bartels’ version, Arthur (Andrew Prentice ’13) lies in front of a small plastic toy tractor, a charming addition to the absurdity of Arthur’s situation. The best use of a prop was when Arthur had to turn on the spaceship’s improbability drive, which was an “easy button.” As soon as he pressed the button, the lights dimmed and “That was easy!” sounded. I almost spit out my pan-galactic gargle blaster from laughing.

The costumes are similarly unpretentious. Marvin the manically depressed robot (Scott Finkelstein ’12) wears a spray-painted cardboard construction, while the Vogon aliens wear kitchen gloves, goggles and antennae headbands.

Two weeks ago, the Brandeis Music Department was catapulted into the 1500s, and it still has yet to return. Following on the heels of the University Chamber Choir’s exploration of Renaissance-era a cappella, the Brandeis Early Music Ensemble presented “Mixed Blessings: Beatitudes and Benedictions from Another Age” to small, intimate audiences on Sunday, April 25, and again on Wednesday, April 28.

I was fortunate enough to attend the Wednesday performance, held in the cozy, reverent confines of Berlin Chapel (the Sunday concert was in Slosberg).

The setting allowed the audience to sit right next to the musicians, giving the unique impression of a private performance. The acoustic environment was pristine; every murmur of a viol and breathy pulse of a recorder reverberated cleanly through the chapel.

Under the direction of Sarah Mead, the ensemble presented a selection of early Renaissance music, both sacred and secular, exploring medieval ideas of blessings in various contexts. The first of five short sets was devoted to

three secular songs. The very pretty “Your blessed bowers,” by English composer John Farmer, began the program; its eight-part structure, which Mead described as “big and meaty,” is unusual among Renaissance madrigals, and it immediately showed the skill of the musicians at performing the polyphonic music of the era. Countryman John Dowland’s “By a fountain where I lay” showcased the lovely soprano of Claire Arkin, which sounded particularly vibrant in the chapel. The only disappointment was “Beato mi direi” by Cipriano de Rore. The instrumental trio contained an ornamented recorder section that was composed later than the rest of the piece, and consequently it did not seem to gel with the piece as a whole.

The next set consisted of sacred pieces that were intended for use in the home rather than in the church. Mead explained that John Calvin was one of the first biblical scholars who encouraged reading the Bible in the vernacular.

He translated psalms into French and set them to folk songs to be used for a more personal form of worship. “Bien heureus est qui conques” came from 1551’s See RENAISSANCE, p. 14

Renowned Don’t panic! ‘Guide’ a scrappy tribute to original poet reads her work Editor

POET (from p. 11)

form really surprised, it contradicted every impulse I have.”

While Glück may be wordier in this new book of poetry, she doesn’t use any superfluous language. Nearly every word is used to its best effect. Her descriptions are concise and fitting. She depicted a tired mother, sick of life, as a “dry blade of grass.”

The best poem that Glück read at the event was the titular “A Village Life.” Glück likens the “dead moon” to the soul and this comparison seemed both new and familiar. New because Glück used simple but evocative language that made her description appear fresh and yet familiar because what she said seemed true.

Currently, Glück is waiting for her next burst of inspiration. “[I’ve] gone for long periods in life not writing at all. You have to have stamina to wait out your silences in the hope that they end,” she said. “[I] wait for something that will make me alive again after a long period of being dead.”

Glück’s visit was part of Creative Writing’s “School of Night” reading series. To finish off the semester, on May 4, Creative Writing seniors will read excerpts from their novels that they wrote for their senior theses.

I went to the Brandeis Official Readers’ Guild’s (BORG) production of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” with some reservations. I love Douglas Adams’ radio play, with its talented vocal cast, nifty sound effects and killer theme song. I couldn’t bear to see what carbon-based life forms would do to it. I gulped a pan-galactic gargle blaster, wrapped my towel around my neck and hoped for the best.

The phrase “Don’t Panic!” was written in friendly white letters on a projector screen when I entered.

I instantly felt better.

“Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” follows the adventures of a befuddled Arthur Dent and his alien friend Ford Prefect as they traverse various galaxies following the destruction of Earth, Arthur’s home planet. With the help of the Hitchhiker’s Guide, a record of nearly everything in the universe, Arthur and Ford hitch a ride with hostile aliens, learn the importance of always carrying a towel on your intergalactic travels and discover the ancient planet of Magrathea.

The biggest challenge director Leah Bartels ’12 must have faced was making the radio play her own. Since the original radio series aired in the 1970s, it has been adapted into books, plays, comics, computer games and film. Some, like the books, were extremely successful, while others—like the unfortunate musical—were not. The series has been poked and prod-

PHOTO FROM Internet Source

However, Bartels’ best change to the original canon is her presentation of the Book. In the radio series, the Book, the Hitchhiker’s Guide, interrupts the action and narrates. In BORG’s version, the lights are dimmed on-set, and the Book (Tegan Kehoe ’10) is given a spotlight. This device cleverly adapts the Book’s role for the stage, transforming the Book into a kind of announcer.

The performances in the play varied in terms of acting skill, but,

for the most part, they were satisfactory. Prentice plays Arthur with the right amount of confusion, and Daniel Noar ’13 as Ford Prefect proves an effective coolheaded foil.

BORG’s production was by no means perfect: Kehoe fumbled a few of her lines, Finkelstein ran into a curtain because his Marvin costume obstructed his view and some of the acting was amateurish—but I think Adams would have approved.

April 30, 2010

The Brandeis Hoot

ARTS, ETC.

13

‘Super Marios Brothers, The Musical!’

Photo spread by Max Shay

Brandeis Ensemble Theatre’s (BET) “Super Mario Brothers, The Musical!” proved to be a flashy and colorful stage adaptation of the beloved video games, with a set that was an eerie reproduction of the source material with its green warp pipes and a series of hiding places that added a dimension of surprise to the production. Another highpoint of the production was its cast, particularly brothers Aidan and Dotan Horowitz ’12, two talented singers who played Mario and Luigi with flair. The script, written by Doug Friedman ’10, however, failed at giving the video games any depth. This would have been fine as a stylistic choice, but it seemed to be more the fault of poor writing, with all of the characters having after-school special-type issues that were hard to swallow. The play also portrayed its women poorly, with both Peach and Daisy being mindless and easily manipulated.

BET’s production was amusing on the surface but unsatisfying for audiences looking for greater significance.—Kayla Dos Santos

Moving beyond skinny jeans and shaggy hair

BY DANIELLE GEWURZ Editor

Quick: name five female artists you listen to on a regular basis.

Now name five artists of color. I came to the somewhat startling realization, as someone who identifies as a feminist and is interested in anti-racism, that the vast majority of music I own has been produced by white dudes.

Most of it is indie rock. The artists of color I listen to tend to be in completely separate genres. It seemed bizarre that, almost without my noticing, I had consistently excluded women and people of color from my music collection, even though it spans several gigabytes on my hard drive.

This realization led me to seriously ask myself a few questions.

What’s the explanation for this?

Should I consciously try to fix it? How has nearly every album I’ve reviewed for this paper been something made by one or more white men in their 20s and 30s?

To me, these questions are of pretty serious importance. Music is a huge part of my life. I’m deeply immersed in online music journalism. And, of course, I spend out-of-class time writing about music for this paper. So it was disheartening to realize that there’s a bland sameness to the

music I own.

Without a doubt, part of the problem is who’s making music: signed artists are overwhelmingly male and non-minorities. When music scenes are already skewed this way, the problem becomes further exacerbated by the fact that reviewers tend to focus on white men when talking about “serious” indie rock. The rare reviews written about the work of female artists tend to shift credit for their work at least partly towards adjacent male collaborators. When M.I.A. first emerged, tons of ink, both real and virtual, was devoted to discussing producers Diplo and later Switch and the substantial impact they must have had on the album. When I look for new music, the vast majority of music that gets publicized is made by the same demographic that’s already substantially overrepresented in my collection.

Another part of this problem is that male lyricists who write vague lyrics can somewhat easily be interpreted as writing universally. But that’s not the case for other artists, who are easily pigeonholed as writing exclusively for other women or for their own race. This sort of perspective is frequently enforced in critical writings about music—that music by white guys represents the de-

fault perspective but music made by anyone else is more niche-oriented. There’s no reason for this, really; all artists are writing from their perspective. It’s just a question of whose perspective we’re used to identifying with.

Biases in music criticism are the easy explanation. But that’s not the whole story. I’ve internalized plenty of social biases about who is “talented” and making “legitimate” art. I personally don’t seek out marginalized artists. I don’t give female rappers nearly as much leeway as male rappers.

I’m far more likely to give “difficult” all-male bands more listens. That’s partly because of the general narrative that men are auteurs while women are accessories for rock bands. The more I try to rectify the situation, the more clear it becomes that a large part of this stems from the preconceived notions I’ve absorbed and unwillingly hold about music. My listening patterns have absorbed much of the free-floating cultural detritus about women.

It’s easy to talk about why there should be more women in music (which there should be! Riot grrl is awesome!), but a lot harder to talk about how I don’t support that many female artists myself.

It’s a shame, and the inevitable result of marinating in a culture in

which women’s contributions aren’t valued highly.

All this isn’t to say that there isn’t merit in music played by the aforementioned white men. I do, after all, listen to the music I have; I like it. But it’s clear that institutional and internalized thought patterns have consistently limited my exposure to diverse forms of music. It’s startling to realize that decisions I make on an individual level, like what music to acquire, are profoundly shaped by mostly invisible external dynamics. And if diversity of experience is desirable in a Supreme Court nominee, then I think I could at least try to seek out minority artists.

Does what I listen to matter in the grand scheme of things? It doesn’t feel like it. But the artists I listen to are the artists I might spend money on to go see and the artists I tell other people about. So, as long as my listening habits are geared this way, I will be, in my

GRAPHIC BY Ariel Wittenberg/The Hoot

own small but decidedly capitalistic way, furthering the very same system that I currently find problematic. It’s not that I don’t like the music I have; it’s that there’s a whole mess of historical oppression that influenced my tastes long before I purchased any of these albums. It’s that the music I have is shaped by structures that are both invisible and beyond my control. And it’s not much, it’s not activism and it’s not a cure for oppression, but it’s a start; from now on I will prioritize marginalized artists when looking for new music. It’s the least I could do. I encourage you to make an effort to do the same.

14 ARTS, ETC.

The Brandeis Hoot

April 30, 2010

Ensemble reinvigorates Renaissance

Dancing to the beat of my own drum

BY HILDA POULSON

Special to the Hoot, Diverse City

I discovered African dance during the fall of my junior year while I was studying abroad in Chile. Valparaiso was putting on its huge annual street parade. It featured, among other things, African dance and drumming. Hearing that more dancers were needed, I immediately volunteered.

Mind you, I’d never taken an African dance class, had never even seen African dance performed before. So I was more than a little surprised to find myself dancing with wild abandon through the streets of Valparaiso.

After the parade, I began attending African dance classes three times a week. I was in love! Initially, all I knew was that I was thoroughly enjoying myself. The rhythm of the drumming and dance moves just came so naturally. Through African dance class, I entered a community of women who, in spite of their cultural differences, related to one another through this one shared interest. Later on, I realized that becoming part of this community was one of the experiences I loved the most about my time abroad.

As soon as I returned from Chile, I

joined Brandeis’ very own African dance club. Yet something felt different. I began to wonder: Why are there no black African dancers in African dance club? What are the implications of a bunch of white Jewish girls performing traditional African dances? I began to worry that my passion for African dance represented something sinister: a patronizing fascination with the exotic, an unfortunate combination of anthropological curiosity and white guilt.

In the context of Brandeis, I realized the obvious: I was a white person doing African dance. In Chile, all the dancers and drummers had been Chilean. Even my teacher was Chilean. Because I began studying African dance in this context, it had never occurred to me that the movements I found so natural were, for many people, associated with a skin color, and that this skin color differed from my own.

You may ask, “Why does it even matter?

What does your being white have to do with your enjoyment of African dance?”

I asked myself these questions too. I even asked other people. When I asked Joh, my African dance teacher from Mali, he shook his head violently and told me he hates it when people associate African dancing with skin color. He said it doesn’t matter what anyone’s skin color is, as long as they

Arts Recommends

enjoy the rhythm of the dance and are having fun. My friends generally agreed, but not all of them. One friend suggested that I should volunteer to teach African dance to the kids from Waltham Group rather than the children at Lemberg pre-school because “the kids in Waltham Group are mostly black, right? Their bodies are just more naturally equipped to do movements like those required by African dance.”

I don’t think my friend intended to sound like a Social Darwinist. But she’s not the only one. Many people at Brandeis have told me that they find it confusing/hilarious/strange to see a group of white girls performing traditional African dances. I never know how to respond to these people, except to say that I also struggle with these same preconceptions about African dance.

I’m not sure if I will ever reconcile my affinity for African dance with the fact that I am not black. Some days, I’m sure it doesn’t matter. Other days, I feel terribly self-conscious about what I consider to be my own brand of cultural imperialism. I suppose the upshot is that, in questioning how racial identity relates to artistic expression, the answer is never simply black and white.

Not everyone has the time to pick up the latest books or see the latest films. Our editors make some recommendations that you can pick up at the nearest library.

Music Pick: “Devotion”

A crucial part of studying for finals is having the perfect playlist. To that end, Beach House’s “Devotion” is a perfectly soothing, delightfully wistful album. The long vocal trails on “Gila,” the delicate piano, the organ, the delightfully dreamy pop vibe—it’s all soothing enough to help those economics theorems go down smoothly, even though the album itself is tinged with loss and yearning in many places. Listen to it in the background, and, once you’ve taken the exam, give it your full attention; it’s an album whose subtle vocals and intricate tones of decay reward the attention paid. —Danielle Gewurz

Book Pick: “The Running Man” Need to take a break but don’t have the energy to trudge through a lengthy bestseller? Check out Stephen King’s “The Running Man,” a fastpaced slim novel that you will devour in one sitting. Set in a future where society has become obsessed with reality television and gaming, everyman Ben Richards is compelled to enter the ultimate competition. While winning the game would mean getting money for medical treatment for his ailing daughter, losing means death. Richards is hunted by the gaming corporation and viewers, making his participation in the contest a kind of suicide mission. The plot is by no means complex, and the characters are a bit two-dimensional, but “Running Man” provides thrills and a shocking conclusion that will leave you breathless.—Kayla Dos Santos

Movie Pick: “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” Director Werner Herzog presents one of the most notable entries of the German New Wave with “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” (1972), a positively hypnotic vision of madness. Aguirre (Klaus Kinski) is a member of a band of Spanish conquistadors that travels down the Amazon while searching for the mythical El Dorado. When his group becomes separated from the main force, Aguirre stages a mutiny and decides to lead his men deep into uncharted territory. The film’s cast is strong, especially Kinski, who almost embodies insanity, but it’s the way Herzog handles the camera that grants the film its greatness. Perhaps no film has achieved the kind of hypnotic, evocative atmosphere that “Aguirre” creates; every moment of the film is ripe with gorgeous visuals filled overflowing with meaning. Once you get used to the fact that these Spanish conquistadors are speaking German, it’s a pretty thrilling movie.—Sean Fabery PHOTOS FROM Internet Sources

RENAISSANCE (from p. 12)

“Genevan Psalter,” and the group played through the original version before augmenting it with Christoph Dalitz’s two-part setting from 2009. “Verordelt o heer,” by Clemens non Papa, was presented by three recorders, and it suffered from occasional lapses in unity. The final piece was the reverent “O bienheureuse la personne” by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck.

The ensemble moved on to four sacred pieces for church worship. They were all written in Latin, and Mead described them as the initial inspiration for the program.

They were all even more reverent in tone than the earlier works, and the complex vocal interplay was perfectly suited for church choir settings. Tomás Luis de Victoria’s “Benedicam Dominum” was performed by a recorder quartet; it was the best recorder-driven piece of the concert. Four viols presented Jacob Arcadelt’s “Benedixit Deus Noë,” and Ludwig Senfl’s “Benedicat tibi Dominus” sounded suitably reverential. The anonymously-composed “Ecce sic benedicetur” was one of the most complex pieces, as it started with a solo voice and recorder before the entrance of several viols.

The concert then moved further back in time to the 1400s for Leonel Power’s “Beata progenies” and Gilles Binchois’ “Beatus auctor saeculi.” Both were among the shortest and simplest pieces, hailing from a primal Renaissance sound before more advanced theories of composition developed and featuring the dulcet. Sandwiched between them was Orlandus Lassus’ “Beatus vir,” a viol duet that sounded particularly sweet in the cozy chapel.

Finally, we left for Tudor-era Britain to close the concert with selections from the English royal court. “Benedic, anima mea,” from Alfonso Ferrabosco I, had a very dense viol section, and the ancient instruments acquitted themselves beautifully.

The last piece was Thomas Tallis’ “Blessed are those that be undefiled,” which reached soaring heights, particularly in the closing choral section after an extended duet.

The Brandeis Early Music Ensemble is a unique example of multifaceted talent on campus. Most of its instrumentalists play several very different instruments, and almost all of its vocalists play instruments as well. The music they perform is challenging and uncommon, and their audiences tend to be comparatively small. Still, they’re a diamond in the rough in the crowded music scene on campus, and, while they’re not always fully polished, stumbling upon them can still be quite valuable.

EDITORIALS

April 30, 2010

Established 2005 "To acquire wisdom, one must observe."

Ariel Wittenberg Editor in Chief Alex Schneider Managing Editor Destiny D. Aquino News Editor Nathan Koskella Deputy News Editor Bret Matthew Impressions Editor Alex Self Deputy Impressions Editor Chrissy Callahan Features Editor Hannah Vickers Sports Editor Jodi Elkin Layout Editor Max Shay Photography Editor Leon Markovitz Advertising Editor Vanessa Kerr Business Editor Savannah Pearlman Copy Editor Leah Lefkowitz Layout Editor Sean Fabery Arts, Etc. Editor Kayla Dos Santos Arts, Etc. Editor Josh Waizer Distribution Manager Senior Editors Sri Kuehnlenz, Kathleen Fischmann Alison Channon, Danielle Gewurz

FOUNDED BY

Leslie Pazan, Igor Pedan and Daniel Silverman

SUBMISSION POLICIES The Hoot welcomes letters to the editor on subjects that are of interest to the general community. Preference is given to current or former community members. The Hoot reserves the right to edit any submissions for libel, grammar, punctuation, spelling and clarity. The Hoot is under no obligation to print any of the pieces submitted.

Letters in print will also appear on-line at www.thehoot.net.

The deadline for submitting letters is Tuesday at 8:00 p.m. All letters must be submitted electronically at www. thehoot.net. All letters must be from a valid e-mail address and include contact information for the author. Letters of length greater than 500 words may not be accepted.

The opinions, columns, cartoons and advertisements printed in The Hoot do not necessarily represent the opinions of the editorial board.

The Hoot is a community student newspaper of Brandeis University. Produced entirely by students, The Hoot serves a readership of 6,000 with in-depth news, relevant commentary, sports and coverage of cultural events.

Our mission is to give every community member a voice.

CORRECTIONS Due to a reporting error, “Irresponsible fees” from last week’s Hoot misstated the cost of the proposed sustainability fee and the cost to students of previously installed solar panels at Brandeis. The sustainability fee is $7.50 per semester, not $7.50 per year, and the solar panels are not entirely free, as electricity generated by the panels costs the university 1 extra cent per kilowatt hour more than regular electricity sources. We regret these errors.

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The Brandeis Hoot 15

Me and Jehuda down by the schoolyard

U

niversity President Jehuda Reinharz’s choice of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren as commencement speaker has been called too divisive a choice for an occasion that is supposed to unite the senior class in their last moments at Brandeis.

In order to help avoid similar protests about what singer-songwriter Paul Simon should perform at the ceremony, here’s a list of tunes that, like Oren, might seem like good picks but actually marginalize segments of the community.

“America.” Pros: A song about young people on a road trip to find themselves, “America” is perfect to put the graduate in the moving-on state of mind. Cons: The song’s title–”America”–and chorus–“gone to look for America”–are a great example of American exceptionalism and would marginalize international members of the Brandeis community.

“Mrs. Robinson.” Pros: Everyone loves

a song about a “Graduate.” Cons: The references to Jesus and cougars probably wouldn’t sit well with the Board of Trustees.

“Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes.”

Pros: The use of African beats would sit well with the culturally pluralistic community. Cons: The song’s title and chorus flaunt wealth that many graduates have no hope of attaining with their plans to live poor and save the world.

“The Boxer.” Pros: A song about overcoming adversity and listening to others’ opinions might seem perfect for a graduation ceremony who’s speaker is stirring up protest. Cons: A song about a boxer might not be the best idea at a university that outlawed contact sports in 1959.

“Keep the Customer Satisfied.” Pros: Uses the story of a con-man to teach gradates that words are harmless, no matter how much they get “slandered.” Cons: It might hit too close to home for Reinharz who continuously “gets slandered, libeled” for

trying to keep students satisfied.

“The Boy In The Bubble.” Pros: It is a socially conscious song encouraging students to get involved in the world surrounding them with the lyrics “These are the days of miracle and wonder.” Cons: Its message contradicts the practice of university administrators who live in a bubble, neglecting to gain community opinion on campus-wide decisions.

“Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.” Pros: The song’s chorus “I’m on my way–I don’t know where I’m going” can certainly speak to graduates about to embark on an unknown journey. Cons: The song, which tells the story of a juvenile delinquent who’s arrest somehow garners national press attention, may not be appropriate with a lawsuit pending against the university concerning The Rose Art scandal.

On second thought, maybe Paul Simon is too controversial. Is Miley Cyrus available?

Letters to the Editor To submit a Letter to the Editor, send an e-mail letters@thebrandeishoot.com Irresponsible Journalism

To the editor, I was shocked [Friday] when I opened my copy of The Hoot to see the article “Irresponsible Fees” by Alex Schneider. I scoured the article for a single warranted argument as to why this fee could be viewed as “irresponsible,” yet failed to find a single one. The Princeton wordnet defines “irresponsible” as “showing a lack of care for consequences.” Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “not answerable for conduct or actions; not liable to be called to account.”

The fee certainly shows a concern for consequences; its creation has been deliberate and its purpose is to remedy the negative environmental consequences of our life at Brandeis.

The second component of responsibility is accountability, and the fee certainly meets that requirement. The Brandeis Sustainability Board, which would be created by the fund, is a completely separate institution from Students for Environmental Action. In fact, I personally suggested to the creators of the amendment that they include a representative from SEA on the Board, and was told they were not doing it for this very reason.

The student component of the board will consist of the [Student UInion] treasurer, the chair of the Social Justice Committee, and then two independently elected student representatives. The election of these two representatives by the entire student body means that they are held accountable to the student body, a fact which distinguishes them from every student-run club on campus. On top of that, the fee will also have external accountability: it includes members of the Brandeis faculty and staff, who have the benefit of years of experience and a different viewpoint, as well as independence from the student body, all of which will ensure that the funds are used in a responsible manner.

While the article fails to prove any sort of irresponsibility on the part of the Sustainability Fee, it does show a great deal of journalistic irresponsibility on the part of both Schneider and The Hoot’s editors.

A brief list of the facts that Schneider got wrong, and that anyone reading either the publicly available documents or the writings in support of the fee on SEA’s website, Facebook group or in response to the Justice’s editorial last week could see are blatantly untrue:

1) The fund supports the club, Students for Environmental Action. This is false,;SEA can’t touch the money, does not have a representative on the board; the board is accountable to the entire student body; anyone can submit a project, and it is specifically designed to accomplish projects that SEA is unable to handle.

2) The fee came about as a result of SEA losing the vote to be secured. Any attempt at fact-checking would reveal that the club has been working on this amendment since the beginning of the fall semester. This statement approaches libel.

3) That the fee is a circumvention of Fboard funding. The majority of student projects would be infrastructure changes which do not constitute “student activities,” such as electric vehicles for facilities workers, drought resistant landscaping; or LED lampposts.

Although it pains me to think of the damage caused by Schneider alone, the majority of the fault lies with The Hoot’s editors.

Clearly a conscious decision was made not to fact-check, which is irresponsible on the part of the organization and represents a failure of journalistic integrity. That, and not the fee, is the true irresponsibility.

- Matthew Schmidt ’11 ________________________________

Be weary of mandatory fees

To the editor, I recently read Alex Schneider’s column “Irresponsible Fees” (April 22, 2010) and truly enjoyed the piece. Indeed, I think his article was in line with the best traditions of opinion writing at The Brandeis Hoot, and also believe that his words conveyed a message that is important to the Brandeis community. Beyond the discussion of whether or not a $7.50 charge to support environmental projects is too much for needy students, and beyond whether or not you think that sustainability is important, there is one issue that should predominate conversations about this subject. This involves assessing whether or not imposing additional costs on Brandeis students takes away their freedom to support or oppose causes as they wish.

If this campus is truly committed to the fight against environmental derogation, if Brandeis students truly wanted to help increase sustainability, then they would voluntarily provide their donations to environmental initiatives. This could easily be accomplished by an

online system, which would allow students to abstain or opt into giving $7.50 of their own money to environmental causes. However, forcing these additional costs on the Brandeis community disallows people from making the conscious, voluntary and responsible decision to support the environment. Indeed, this fee only demonstrates a lack of faith in Brandeis students, as the mandatory charge presupposes that students would not take measures on their own to increase environmental sustainability.

To many, this charge seems like a minor fee. However, it represents a restriction to the rights of students, and shouldn’t be allowed.

If Brandeisians truly wanted to support the environment, they would donate voluntarily. Forcing them to do so against their will, however, counters fundamental notions of liberty and freedom, which our institution so adamantly supports. I therefore applaud Mr. Schneider for writing his article and augmenting the discussion about this initiative.

In the end, students should consider many factors when deciding whether to establish this fee, and Mr. Schneider has illuminated several reasons why this charge would run counter to several fundamental principles of liberty and fairness.

- Jordan Rothman ’09 ________________________________

Hoot article flawed

To the editor, I have always held The Hoot in higher esteem than the Justice; I’ve considered it more of a friend to us students than the administration-subsidized other. However, after reading last week’s Impressions article

by Alex Schneider titled “Irresponsible Fees,” I was shocked and angered to see how irresponsible The Hoot’s board is. You failed the students, not to mention the Brandeis Sustainability Fund, by printing an article with so many factual errors.

I am not one of the students who have been working on this project for the past year or more, having countless meeting with administrators, other student groups, etc., but I wholeheartedly support them and their effort to actually make some truly meaningful, institutional change on this campus. Without a printed apology and an update to the online version, I will never again be able read The Hoot in the same light of respect.

- Susan Paykin ’11

16 The Brandeis Hoot

IMPRESSIONS

Commencement is not the proper venue to protest Oren deserves respect from students

PHOTO from internet source

BY JEFFREY PICKETT Special to The Hoot

The events at Michael Oren’s February appearance at the University of California, Irvine were an embarrassment for the school and for its students. The Israeli Ambassador to the United States was interrupted ten times throughout the course of his speech and school administrators pleaded with those in attendance to stop the protests to no avail.

Don’t let this happen here. Not at commencement.

You might not like what Oren represents and you might not like the fact that a “divisive” and “controversial” figure has been invited to speak at graduation, but if commencement is supposed to be about us, as the Facebook group formed to criticize the selection suggests, refrain from any form of protest during his commencement address.

Heckling or even booing him at commencement will forever make the day about Michael Oren and his appearance here. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Oren is apparently a lightning rod—three Facebook groups have been formed to debate his appearance at commencement. Some students would like to hear him speak, but feel graduation is not the proper time or place. Others defend his appearance and look forward to the potential discourse on the Middle East. Some feel the selection only solidifies the Brandeis stereotype that this is a Jewish institution. Most are indifferent.

Oren happens to be a respected scholar of the Middle East, but his affiliation with the Israeli govern-

Heckling or even booing him at commencement will forever make the day about Michael Oren and his appearance here.

It doesn’t have to be this way. ment, particularly his role as Israeli Defense Forces spokesman during the Second Lebanon War and Gaza operation in 2009, has made him a polarizing choice for some students.

Protest this decision every day leading up to graduation, if you so choose. March up and down the Rabb steps letting us know how you feel. Spend hours writing on Facebook walls and blogging on Innermost Parts about how Partners in Health founder Paul Farmer would have been a more worthy choice. After all, this is Brandeis.

But come May 23, it’s all about us, the graduating seniors. Leave the protest signs in your dorm rooms.

Graduation is not the right venue for protest. Protesting here shows a lack respect for this institution.

Take for example Joe Wilson, the South Carolina congressman who shouted “You lie!” during President Obama’s health care address to Congress this past September.

Wilson had every right to disagree with the President and to protest his policy, but to do so during an official address shows

a lack of sound judgment on his part.

Commencement will be the first and only time that many in attendance will ever step foot on this campus. Many in attendance will not be familiar with Oren. It would be a mistake to embarrass Brandeis and to give off the impression that after four years of college we cannot demonstrate the ability to behave like civil human beings in a formal setting.

Let May 23 be a day to celebrate the class of 2010—and yes this can still happen, even with Oren speaking.

“One of the great and eternal, cultural facets of the Middle East is hospitality,” Oren told the UCIrvine crowd after being interrupted by a heckler. “When you invite somebody into your house, even if you do not agree with them, even if they are ostensibly your enemy, once you have invited them into your house, you are their hosts and they are your guests.”

Love it or hate it, Michael Oren is coming to our house. We may not all agree with what he will be saying, but we all need to treat him with respect.

April 30, 2010

Borde-nough

What the public doesn't know can hurt it: examining financial reform

BY CHRIS BORDELON Columnist

The backers of the Restoring American Financial Stability Act now before Congress seem to have their hearts in the right place.

A seemingly well-intentioned President Barack Obama told an audience in Quincy, Illinois, on April 28 what he thought the law would accomplish. “Accountability—which means no more bailouts. Closing loopholes—no more trading of things like derivatives in the shadows. Consumer protections—no more deceptive products. A say on pay—so that we give shareholders a more powerful voice.”

Those purposes are good ones. Will the bill accomplish them?

Sometimes it might. But it draws few hard legal lines around big banks and companies, giving regulators who are even harder to keep tabs on than Congress too much discretion.

The bill’s most consequential parts would empower new and existing administrative bodies to regulate, supervise and liquidate big, poorly run banks and non-bank companies. Regulators would oversee a pool of money to be collected from big financial institutions.

The pool is supposed to obviate the need for future government bailouts. The law gives corporate shareholders a non-binding vote on the question of executive pay.

The bill is complex and lengthy. High finance doesn’t seem to people to affect them in the way that, say, health care does. That may explain why the public is not engaged in the debate about the present bill.

But what the public doesn't know can hurt it. One of the biggest problems with the bill is that a handful of administrators will decide on regulations in which a small and potentially collusive group of the most powerful companies in the country are most interested.

Unlike Congress, regulators don't have to explain their choices to constituents. Their new authority will ensure that bankers who had to lobby Congress to get the rules changes embodied in the current bill will now have to make their case only to small expert panels. The same experts will be looking for work at the banks when their terms expire. Moreover, regulators may be only as good as the president who appoints them.

Would a panel full of, say, George W. Bush’s appointees likely be firm with big banks and corporations?

The risks inherent in allowing too much regulatory discretion in this area are vast. A case in point occurred in 2004. The Securities and Exchange Commission—like most regulators, a difficult entity for the public to keep tabs on—changed regulations to allow investment banks to vastly increase the debt they could issue to finance the real estate lending market. Bankers had lobbied the agency for the rule changes, knowing that the changes would permit their large banks to reap large profits by making riskier, higher-interest loans.

The SEC’s decision helped lead to America's real estate bubble, its bank bailouts, and its current economic problems. But few Americans knew about the decision when it was made. The powers that the new bill will vest in administrative bodies create a similar risk that public entities will quietly act to serve private interests.

The pool of money in regulators' hands for liquidating companies will not be under Congress' direct scrutiny. The public will have trouble holding anyone accountable for its misuse—but after sensing the public’s anger over the bailouts, that suits Congress and the president fine. The pool itself is too small to ensure that there will be “no more bailouts.” Taxpayers have lately been asked for much more.

They’ll be asked again.

The risks posed by companies that are too big to be allowed to fail will remain as long as such companies exist. The bill gives regulators some authority to supervise or restructure big, failing companies. But it won't eliminate bailout demands when a big company encounters problems.

The executive pay provision won’t do much. Shareholders can vote on executive pay, but executives can ignore them when setting it.

But the provision raises interesting questions. If Congress can tinker at the margins of state corporate law with such changes, why can't it go whole hog? Why doesn't it directly regulate excessive executive pay in companies that utilize the enormous but often down played privilege of limited liability offered by incorporation?

Indeed, why doesn't Congress place below state corporate law certain federal minimum standards imposing on corporate management duties to operate companies in a manner that takes account of public as well as private interests?

Why not give shareholders—and federal and state attorneys general acting in the public interest—the right to enforce these duties in federal court? The answer to those questions likely has to do with the power wielded in Congress’ lobbies by big banks and corporations.

The financial services bill’s proponents claim to be turning the markets into a regulated field of dreams.

But the strongest players don’t want them to go the distance.

April 30, 2010

The Brandeis Hoot

Book of Matthew

IMPRESSIONS

17

Conflict-free electronics

BY BRET MATTHEW Editor

Not since World War II has the world seen a conflict as deadly as the one currently raging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

It is beyond comprehension.

Imagine boys younger the age of 15 being taken from their homes and forced to kill by their abductors—and used as human shields if they are not strong enough to carry weapons.

Imagine groups of men entering villages and brutally raping women and girls in order to intimidate the locals.

Imagine a democratic government that is so corrupt that it is unable to assuage its country’s suffering.

This is one of Africa’s leastfortunate countries. Since 1996, more than 5.5 million people have died and 1.5 million have been displaced internationally as a result of fighting that kills 45,000 each month. Most of the deaths are not due to combat injuries but to malnutrition, malaria, and pneumonia—treatable causes that can not be addressed in the chaos.

Of the dead, 47 percent are children.

In America, talk of this conflict tends to be pushed aside by talk

Microsoft, Apple, Dell, Nintendo, Panasonic, HP, Nokia and all the other big names need to hear by letter, e-mail and phone call that consumers will only purchase goods that are made from ethically mined and refined minerals. of more pressing foreign matters—say, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or even the genocide in Darfur. But we must not allow ourselves to forget about the Congo. We are the ones helping to fuel the conflict in the first place.

You might be doing it every day, when you talk on your cell phone or log onto Facebook. I might be doing it as I write this column on my laptop. Brandeis and many other schools might be doing it when they spend thousands of dollars on computer equipment.

We are all consumers of the four main minerals used to make consumer electronics: gold (which is used to coat wiring), tantalum (which stores electricity), tungsten (which makes cell phones vibrate) and tin (which is used to solder circuit boards). Large quantities can be found in the Congo, making it an ideal source. Supplies, however, are controlled by armed groups who illegally tax these minerals

and smuggle them to Asian countries, where they are refined and processed into components that are sold worldwide. Meanwhile, these armed groups make millions of dollars that they use to buy weapons and continue the war.

How do we stop this? It certainly wouldn’t hurt to lobby Congress to pass the Congo Conflict Minerals Act, which would require American companies to disclose the origins of the supplies they purchase.

This would make it easier for the government to properly inform consumers about these companies’ business practices, allowing us to be wiser purchasers. Of course, since this bill has been stuck in committee since 2009, its only realistic chance of becoming law is if we force our elected representatives to move it forward.

We could also lobby electronics companies directly. Microsoft, Apple, Dell, Nintendo, Panasonic, HP, Nokia and all the other big

names need to hear by letter, email and phone call that consumers will only purchase goods that are made from ethically mined and refined minerals. Anything less is an affront to our sense of morality.

At the very least, if you have a

little spare time after you finish reading this, you ought to pay a visit to www.raisehopeforcongo. org, where you can read more about the crisis and learn about how you can take action, particularly on college campuses. Need I say that it’s the right thing to do?

A Little Learning

On lessons already learned (and unlearned)

BY MATTHEW D. KIPNIS Columnist

Having slogged through health care, and with immigration and climate change next up on the agenda, the United States Congress currently finds itself embroiled in the debate over financial regulation.

Virtually everyone agrees that something must be done; unfortunately, exactly what that something is remains contested. For the moment the Democrats are quite happy to play politics with the issue, forcing Republican senators to make unpopular votes against their regulatory legislation.

In June of last year President Obama put forth a plan for financial regulatory reform, two aspects of which immediately drew fire: giving the Federal Reserve greater authority to supervise financial institutions whose size poses a systemic risk to the economy, and the creation of a new regulatory arm, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA).

With its plain, workmanlike title, the new CFPA quickly came under attack for proposing to protect financial consumers.

Banks naturally claim that such an agency would unduly hamper consumer choice: after all, who isn’t a fan of predatory lending.

Congress, in a rare moment of wisdom, chose to act on the president’s suggestions, and on Dec.

Barring consumer banks from an entire sector of the market—surely that’s a radical step, no?

11 the House of Representatives passed a regulatory bill by a vote of 223 to 202. The Senate couldn’t quite manage that running start.

Christopher Dodd of Connecticut introduced a bill that would limit the involvement of banks in the regulatory process as well as examine the markets for the possibility of systemic risk. The bill would also give the Federal Reserve the job of monitoring the largest banks, those worth $50 billion or more.

The most radical (just how radical you’ll see in a moment) measure came from Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas. Lincoln’s proposal would require banks to divest themselves (to “spin off ”) their derivatives trading units (derivatives, and their sub-category Credit Default Swaps, being oft fingered as a principle cause of the financial meltdown). Banks would be given a choice: give up derivatives trading or lose their

access to federal deposit insurance (the famous “Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insured” in every bank advertisement).

Barring consumer banks from an entire sector of the market— surely that’s a radical step, no?

Only if you’ve never heard of something called the Glass-Steagall Act. One of the first pieces of New Deal legislation passed in 1933, the act created the FDIC and expanded the Federal Reserve’s power to loan troubled banks money. But the most important part of the act was to separate commercial and investment banking. Banks then operating had to decide if they wanted to continue as commercial (read retail) banks or investment banks financing corporations.

Ever wonder why there are both J.P. Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley? Back in 1933 J.P. Morgan and Company was given the

choice of becoming a commercial or an investment bank: they decided to remain a commercial bank (which later merged with Chase Manhattan Bank), while they separated their investment functions into the brokerage house of Morgan Stanley (Harold Stanley being one of the founding partners).

In time the regulatory regime imposed by Glass-Steagall broke down, until then the separation of commercial and investment banking was repealed entirely by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. Commercial banks, investment banks, securities firms and insurance companies were allowed to consolidate for the first time since the Great Depression.

While not necessarily responsible for it, this law certainly influenced the wave of consolidation seen in the banking industry in the last decade, and hence the creation of more financial companies considered “too big to fail.”

The basic argument against uniting commercial and investment banks remains just as it was in 1933: that commercial banks —the banks where you and I put our money—have an incentive to be conservative in their lending practices, while investment banks have an incentive to be liberal in such practices. The large risks inherent in securities lending can threaten the deposits of a single, united bank, forcing the govern-

ment to come in and secure the bank or risk paying out huge sums in deposit insurance. Sound familiar? It’s called a bailout.

Given this history, it becomes rather hard to see Blanche Lincoln’s proposal as very radical at all. Indeed, in December Republican John McCain of Arizona and Democrat Maria Cantwell of Washington State proposed reenacting those parts of Glass-Steagall repealed in 1999. One version of this—limiting liabilities in various areas—has been proposed by former Federal Reserve chairman PauOnl Volker, and included by President Obama in his proposal for reform.

The banking industry is naturally opposed. After spending years trying to get Glass-Steagall repealed, the prospect of its reimposition has prompted near unanimous resistance.

While hardly going so far as to break up the fundamental units of banking as Glass-Steagall did, Senator Lincoln’s proposal to spin off derivatives deserves serious consideration.

Last week the measure passed the Agriculture Committee by a vote of 13 to eight. It should be enacted into law. Surely we have enough evidence to show what happens when you join massive firms and huge risks.

Eventually someone makes a bad bet.

18 IMPRESSIONS

The Brandeis Hoot

April 30, 2010

The Self Shelf

Considering a transfer?

Food for thought: A dining critique Stick around

BY ALEX SELF

BY LEON MARKOVITZ Editor

It is 2:00 a.m. I am holding a café latte in hand and staring at the blank word page on my computer screen. I take a break (from the hard work of staring at the screen) and read some useless stuff. Now back to “writing.”

Still nothing. Just another night at Brandeis, wondering what to write about. Except this time is not like any other time, this time it is about my last article at The Brandeis Hoot.

It feels like yesterday when I was moving into my freshman dorm, full of illusions and hopes about college. My first disappointment was to find out that college, or at least Brandeis, was not like American Pie—man what a bummer.

And not only that, but I was in a forced triple, with very awkward roommates. Then of course came the awful, and depressing weather. And from there on, it was all down hill, Brandeis was going to be a living hell, and a cold one.

But fortunately, I was lucky enough to become friends with Seniors who would cheer me up and tell me the usual “it is what you make of it” (and of course provide alcohol in which to sink my sorrows). They also told me I would grow to like it and appreciate it. As it turned out, I did. But in the meantime, I had divided my section of the room from those of the roommates with sheets. Gradually, I learned to love Brandeis ... it was a little like having “Stockholm Syndrome.”

But in all seriousness as I try to collect my memories I feel a sense of satisfaction mixed with nostalgia, and a smell of coffee and bagels. Four years have gone by, and here I am, as Paul Simon would say "older than I once was

and younger than I'll be, that's not unusual. No it isn’t strange after changes upon changes we are more or less the same after changes we are more or less the same.”

I was reminded of that this week when I gave a ride this week to a freshman student who was also heading to the Brandeis Pool in Brookline, 25 minutes away from campus. It was during this ride that I realized how much I actually liked this place.

I asked him about his experience so far, and he told me he was considering transferring.

I immediately supported this decision, of course. I mean the school is broke, there are too many liberals, the buildings designs don’t match, the girls (boys) situation is less than desirable, the meal plans are a ripoff, student housing is awful and so forth. I believe I scared the freshman, seriously. But then, without noticing, I began to defend it.

Because in reality, I realized that all these issues are insignificant when contrasted with all the good things at Brandeis. Sure, there are many things that can be improved, but it is up to us, the student body to demand its improvement, and so it begins: the Brandeis metamorphosis. Being a small school we are not just a number, we have the opportunity to develop stronger relationships with faculty, staff and fellow students. We feel much more capable of making a change by raising our voice and expressing our desires; which as a consequence often gets raised to a point of ridicule. But this is the Brandeis spirit—embrace it and it will take you far. As Rabbi Hillel said “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

Columnist

I recently went on a nighttime foray to Einsteins. I went because my floormates had informed me that at 2 in the morning (Einsteins’ closing time), Einsteins gives away all of the bagels that it didn’t sell during the day. Apparently, there’s a tradition on my floor of receiving a half dozen free bagels which would otherwise be thrown out—it seemed reasonable to me.

So at closing time, I stood at the counter of Einsteins waiting for them to give me my rightfully earned bagels. I was then informed that, due to a change in Aramark policy, the staff was forbidden to give out the bagels.

Instead they were to be thrown away.

I asked why this policy was implemented and received the answer that Aramark didn’t want to be liable for anyone who might get sick from the “expired” bagels.

The problem with this explanation is that there is no expiration date on bagels at Einsteins. Thus, if I had bought the bagel five minutes earlier, I could’ve also gotten sick and Aramark would’ve had the same problem.

This new policy by Aramark is just the latest unpopular policy implemented by the flawed dining at Brandeis. There are many other problems which I have heard voiced by my peers.

The largest problem is the faulty meal plan system. All of the options offered are flawed in their own way. Yet if you want to live on campus, you must buy into one of these plans. Problems with this system include the fact that meals cannot be used anytime but only once during a meal block. This would not be such a problem if meal blocks didn’t stretch for over five hours. Points are supposed to make up for this inefficiency but one should be able to have lunch at 11:30 and dinner at 4:30 if they wish, using two meals.

Additionally, students are grossly overcharged for these plans. Take the 10 meal Combo Plan for example. Ten meals a week times 14 weeks a semester + 525 points = a grand value of $1645, and that’s with each meal counting for the maximum dinner amount of $8. Yet the actual cost of the meal plan is $5,138. I can expect that production and staffing costs would require overcharging students but this amount is ludicrous.

To compound the iniquity, the allotted meals one receives disappear at the end of every week.

Not only are students being overcharged but they are being robbed of their meals at the end of every week. This wouldn’t be a problem if students could use meals whenever they wanted but they cannot and so they are shortchanged again.

Yet the cost of these rolled over meals is not a mere eight dollars.

Since meals count for more than their dollar worth (as shown by

the equation above), one is losing close to thirty dollars per meal.

Thus the loss of meals is a far more egregious wrong than one might initially think.

But nonetheless, let’s leave the idea of the meal plan system.

Aramark might prefer it because of the profit margin or perhaps its infrastructure cannot support students able to use multiple meals at once. Other colleges, such as UMass Amherst, have these capabilities, but let’s pretend for the moment that allowing students to use their meals whenever they wish to use them isn’t feasible.

Finally, the food selection itself is lacking in variety in comparison to the high costs of the meals. Aramark recently tried to revamp the dining system and I hope it’s a sign of further changes to come. At the moment, however, the food selection is decidedly poor. Much of it is based on easily produced food like burgers, pasta and pizza.

The stations in Usdan don’t even serve all of the dishes that their menus directly above their stations advertise. In fact most don’t even serve half of them.

There’s an apparent disconnect in the food that they are supposed to serve and the food they actually provide. I don’t blame this on the personnel – in fact the friendly Aramark staff is the

best part about the meal plan.

Instead, it’s the fact that the food is simply not there.

As to how the situation could be improved, I believe in two main changes.

My first change would either include allowing students to use meals whenever they wanted or rolling over meals. This would make sure that, even if the meals have a high cost, the students can at least use them to their benefit (as they’ve already paid for them).

My second change would include adding more variety to the food served. Perhaps adding more restaurants on campus (I know this is already an aim of the Student Union) or at least producing all of the food items offered on the menus would help alleviate complaints in this area.

Other changes might include allowing students on campus to opt out of meal plans even if they live on campus and perhaps offering the village meal plans (which are markedly better) to all students.

The latest improvement in food quality shows that the system is capable of improvement and indeed there is a mechanism where students can make suggestions.

Consider these my suggestions which I believe, if implemented, will alleviate the majority of student complaints and help give Brandeis an even better reputation.

April 30, 2010

The Brandeis Hoot

ADVERTISEMENT

19

Freedom of speech in need of defense

BY GORDY STILLMAN Staff

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Our right to free speech is granted in the First Amendment to the Constitution, not the 10th, not the 20th, but the First. The right to say just about anything, provided it does not encourage illegal action, is among the cornerstones of American society.

Unfortunately though, this right seems to be giving way to fear. Two weeks ago in response to South Park’s 200th episode a group based in New York called Revolution Muslim issued a statement “warning” the show's creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone that they “will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show." Out of fear, Comedy Central placed further restrictions on the follow up episode. They not only censored the image of Mohammad (also done in the 200th episode), but also censored any reference to his name.

Additionally, Comedy Central has pulled the 200th and 201st episodes from the line up and has not made them available on iTunes.

Four years ago, South Park did two episodes relating to the image of Mohammad with no problem. As Cartman quite bluntly put it, once one episode gets pulled, it

Sexcapades

South Park wasn’t attempting to mock Mohammad.

opens the door for more and more until a show ends.

Comedy Central has set down a slippery slope because of a statement protected by the First Amendment. While this group has the right to intimidate Comedy Central, South Park apparently lacks the right to mention someone’s name.

Additionally, this incident if anything illustrates just how well some religions respond to comedy compared to others. Last Thursday John Stewart of The Daily Show spent the first 10 minutes of his show defending South Park and thanking members of every religion his show has joked at the expense of for not responding with threats.

Judaism and Christianity seemed to be the most common targets of his show, and yet apparently the angriest letters received have been from the Amish.

South Park wasn’t attempting to mock Mohammad. In fact, about nine years ago, when they DID show an image of Mohammad he was portrayed as a good guy who was integral in preventing a disaster. In

this post 9/11 world, fear seems to trump equality.

I am not a Muslim, and so you may say that there is some part of this that I am just failing to understand. But when it's OK to have Buddha doing drugs and Jesus watching porn, why is it so wrong to merely have an image of Mohammad?

You have the right to be offended, but by being offended you are being treated to equality. As a Jew I have been offended at times by jokes South Park has made at my religion’s expense, however my religion isn’t specifically targeted more frequently

than any other religion. Furthermore the actions of Revolution Muslim, which I acknowledge is a radical group and not representative of Muslims in general, are protected by the same first amendment that should allow South Park to discuss any issue.

Comedy Central has the right to censor what is broadcast on its network, however that is a right that must be exercised with extreme care.

Every time something is censored it risks setting the precedent that would make whatever subject is censored taboo.

Beware the all-consuming relationship

BY SOPHIE RIESE Columnist

It may seem as though we’re too young to have the overwhelming, all-consuming relationships and love stories that we are bombarded with all the time in movies, literature and other formats. However, this is most certainly not the case.

We’ve all seen it—a friend gets into a relationship, and suddenly you’re like, “Bob who?” As early as high school, our friends started disappearing into the abyss that is a “great” relationship, often without even realizing it. Even if it’s not love, it’s easy enough to fall into the trap of spending every waking hour

together, just because. Now that we’re in college, all of the boundaries usually set by our parents have disintegrated, and very quickly, couples effectively move in together, because it’s easier to just stay at the same place every night than to figure out when and where.

But at what point do our relationships become our lives?

And at what point do we cross the line from cute and cuddly to annoying? How much of a toll should we allow our private lives to take on our social ones?

The first time I was in a relationship that left behind my friendships, I was in eighth, maybe ninth grade. We went to different schools, and so any time

when we were both free was automatically allocated to each other.

We were both athletes, in addition to being involved in various other ways at our schools and in our community, which meant as it was, we didn’t have much free time. About three months into our relationship, a friend called to ask if I was going to make it to her birthday party. My response was “Of course,” to which she replied, “Are you sure? You’re not going to see Alex?” Until that point, I had not realized I was sacrificing my friends for my boyfriend, and until later, I didn’t realize how hazardous it was.

In high school, I lived with my boyfriend for the summer, after deciding that I just couldn’t

Sleazy/ Matt Kupfner

Impressionable The Hoot Comics

handle my parents anymore. By the time school started again, both his friends and mine had gotten so used to us being constantly together that we were invited as a couple to anything where people actually wanted us to show up.

In any relationship, but especially a happy and comfortable one, it is easy to fall into a sort of rut, where all you do is see your partner, with little regard to what is going on in the outside world. However, given the volatility and relative instability of many relationships, this can be problematic in the long run.

At our age, we’re making many of the friends we will have for the rest of our lives, and by fail-

ing those friendships in favor of potentially flawed relationships that will end, we risk losing our friends. Sometimes, it is difficult for us to see exactly what is happening, but we later recognize it as foolishness.

My freshman year at Brandeis, I dated someone at another school, and spent so much time traveling between the two schools, that I didn’t realize I hadn’t made many friends until I came back, single, for second semester. It’s hard to remember to delegate our time, but it’s necessary. College is about meeting, and befriending, a variety of people, which is difficult to do if you spend all of your time with one person.

20 The Brandeis Hoot

HOOT SCOOPS

April 30, 2010

Boiling point How one Brandeis academic conference ended up on Fox News

By Ariel Wittenberg, Editor Brandeis University found itself under attack from right-leaning media, angered by advertising that included a swastika for an academic conference that included a paper on the Tea Party movement.

Wednesday’s conference, “New Right-Wing Radicalism: a Transatlantic Perspective,” was sponsored by the university’s Center for German and European Studies.

It featured papers primarily about the European right wing and neo-Nazism in the United States. Only one discussed the Tea Party movement, “From Tea Parties to Armed Militias.”

To read about the conference, see page 1 The paper itself didn’t draw fire, but the logo used to publicize the overall conference–a swastika inside the international symbol of negation–caused some to suggest Brandeis was equating the Tea Party with neo-Nazism.

Radio talk host Michael Graham lit into the conference Friday on his mid-day show on 96.9 Boston. Fox News hosts Glen Beck and Megyn Kelly also picked up on the controversy.

In an interview with The Hoot on Monday Graham said he was alerted to the forum by an e-mail from a Brandeis student. He then looked at the website, where, among other things, he was upset by the link to a video of the recent Tea Party rally in Boston featuring Sarah Palin. “[The rally] is something that I personally helped publicize, and here you have Brandeis linking me, essentially, to neo-Nazis,” Graham said.

He said he was also bothered by the description of the conference as including “discussion of a wide range of movements and activities in the United States, from the extreme and violent to the Tea Party, as a point of comparison.”

After Graham voiced his objections on air, the Center for German and European Studies was besieged with phone calls and e-mails from enraged Tea Partiers.

By the weekend, the university had removed the link to the Tea Party rally from the conference’s website, issued an official apology about its use of the swastika and removed the swastikas from fliers advertising the event.

Professor Sabine von Mering (GRALL), director of the center, said Monday she and her colleagues were caught off guard by the strong reaction. She said they decided to include the Tea Party in the conference because “we always find it is helpful for students if we give them a reference point within the United States to compare Europe to.”

“The Tea Party is the most recent political phenomenon on the right,” she said. “It would be strange to talk about the radical right without making the connection.”

She acknowledged that the swastika was provocative, but that the intention was to draw students to the event.

“We usually have trouble attracting students to these types of events, and the swastika not only fit the topic but also seemed like it would gain us some attention.”

Indeed, it was not until Graham picked up on the conference that von Mering heard any complaints about its topic or advertisements.

“Those fliers were up for about a week before we heard anything about it. There was no

on-campus response at all,” she said. “Students only got riled up once they heard Fox News had anything to say about it.”

Beck, on his nationally syndicated radio show, and Megyn Kelly, anchor of “America Live” on the Fox News Channel, discussed the events on air Friday, April 23.

Beck said the university’s use of the swastika was not surprising given it was named after Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis.

“When [Louis Brandeis] died, he died wealthy and he left a legacy fund for social justice, so it’s not surprising that Brandeis would bring this swastika to represent the Tea Party,” Beck said. In fact, the social justice fund was established by a member of the Brandeis class of ’57, not

by Louis Brandeis.

“Brandeis is putting the Nazi symbol up and saying they are doing a symposium on how the Tea Party movement is a Nazi-styled movement,” Beck added.

According to von Mering, neither Kelly nor Beck contacted the university before commenting on air. At the end of last Friday’s segment, Kelly did offer to give the university an opportunity to respond. However, the network canceled a segment scheduled to air Monday that would have featured Andrew Gully, Brandeis’ senior vice president for communications and external affairs.

Neither Kelly nor Beck responded to requests to comment on their coverage.

“Honestly, what I see is that [the controversy] has nothing to do with the conference,” von Mering said. “This is just people wanting to confirm stereotypes of universities as havens for aggressively liberal progressives.”

“This is not based on facts. I have people calling to tell me that Hitler was extreme left wing and that therefore Obama is the real fascist,” she continued. “This response is just mind-blowing.”

Chip Berlet, the author of the disputed paper, said Wednesday he had not been expecting the media attention to the conference.

“My paper explicitly discusses how the Tea Party is not a part of this extreme, violent right wing,” he said.

“If they had done research they would have seen that I take the Tea Party very seriously and believe they should be treated respectfully and as a legitimate political movement.”

Von Mering added that she be-

lieved the university’s reputation as a school with Jewish roots had complicated the publicity the conference has received.

“These people aren’t interested in German studies; they are interested in Brandeis as a Jewish university using the swastika for what they would call our liberal agenda,” she said.

Graham said he planned to attend the conference. “I do want to know how they could have made this connection that I think is intellectually indefensible,” he said prior to the conference.

“Who knows, maybe I’ll learn something.”