VOL 5, NO. 18
FEBRUARY 13, 2009
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
THEHOOT.NET
$20,000 PR bill paid by senior admin. pay cut BY ARIEL WITTENBERG Editor
Money from a ten percent pay cut taken by both President Reinharz and Cheif Operating Officer Peter French will be used to pay for the services of the public relations firm Rasky Baerlein, Reinharz wrote in an e-mail to faculty senate chair William Flesch which was then fowarded to the faculty listserv. Rasky Baerlein has been contracted by the university for the months of February
and March--a contract that will cost Brandeis $20,000. Reinharz, who’s pay cut, in conjunction with French’s gains the university roughly $90,000, wrote that “the salary savings from Peter and myself are more than enough to cover the expense” of the firm. In an interview with The Hoot, Reinharz said that both he and French had been planning to cut their salaries for the benefit of the university before the university See RASKY BAERLEIN p. 3
PR firm represented Boston archdiocese in sex abuse scandal BY ARIEL WITTENBERG Editor
University President Jehuda Reinharz announced last week that the university’s senior administration had employed the services of the public relations firm Rasky Baerlein in order to help handle the media storm after the Board of Trustee’s authorization to close the Rose Art Museum. According to an e-mail from Reinharz to Faculty Senate chair Prof. William Flesch (ENG), the firm is being employed for a two month period with the aim of “[assisting] the senior administration in strategically crafting the overall university messages that are needed to communicate…
that we are a strong institution.” In reality, the university is working most closely with the president of the public relations firm Joseph T. Baerlein, who, according to his profile on the Rasky Baerlein website, specializes in “crisis management.” Rasky Baerlein has a long history of being employed for crisis management—or, as their website describes, “control[ling] the message before it controls you”—in the Boston area. The firm’s most notable client in this field is the Archdiocese of Boston. The Archdiocese employed the public relations firm in Sept. 2004 in order to help See ARCHDIOCESE p. 2
Rep. Barney Frank speaks about economic crisis
IN THIS ISSUE:
Usdan cell service to improve BY ARIEL WITTENBERG Editor
A signal amplifier will be installed in lower Usdan over February break in order to increase cell phone service in the dining hall. The amplifier, which should work for all cell phone providers, was the idea of former North Quad Senator and current Union Director of Community Advocacy Andy Hogan ’11.
The amplifier consists of an external antenna that would be placed outside Usdan to strengthen the signal. “If there’s reception outside, there should be reception inside once this is installed,” Hogan said. Cell phone service has been a problem in lower Usdan for just about as long as Vice President for Campus Operations Mark See CELLPHONES p. 3
Committee to rethink academic requirements, social justice BY ARIEL WITTENBERG Editor
BY KAYLA DOS SANTOS Editor
House Representative Barney Frank explained why the economy plummeted, what the Obama administration is currently doing to fix it, and what should be done in the immediate future during the Heller School’s Distinctive Public Policy Speaker event on Monday. The day before the Senate approved the $789 billion economic stimulus package, Frank, who is a representative from Massachusetts and the Chairman of the House’s Financial Services Committee, detailed how past administrations relied too much on the hands-off economy approach. “The default position has been that the government doesn’t do anything,” Frank said. He described that during the Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush administrations there was a focus on “taking the restraints off capital,” deregulation, and an over-emphasis on raising the GDP. The reasoning behind the concentration on the GDP, he explained, was caused by the belief that it would increase the economic well-being of all. “[They’ve said] a rising tide lifts all
PHOTO BY Max Shay/The Hoot
Part I in a series on academic restructing.
PHOTO BY Max Shay/The Hoot
FRANKLY BARNEY: Rep. Barney Frank spoke at Raport Treasure Hall on Mon. about the nation’s economic crisis.
boats… but what if you don’t have a boat?” he said. During his lecture, he expressed the need for policies that would lessen the gap between the wealthy and the impoverished. In terms of globalization, he dismissed the logic that capitalism would result in democracy. “There’s nothing inherently deSee BARNEY FRANK p. 4
Studying abroad in Granada Features, page 6
When the Curriculum and Academic Restructuring Steering Committee was created by the Faculty Senate in early January, it was crafted with the idea that the committee would find ways to save money by reorganizing Brandeis’ academic curriculum. Almost one month later, the committee’s sub-committee on academic requirements has developed some ideas for restructuring the curriculum that probably would not help the university financially, but that would codify Brandeis’ definitions of liberal arts and social justice. Co-chair of the steering committee’s subcommittee on academic requirements Prof. Sarah Lamb (ANTH) said in an interview that “there’s a lot of energy around looking into requirements now that we’ve never had before.” “We can look more into what we want to do with education and where we want to go and how to structure ourselves,” she said. “Basically, this crisis is an excuse to do things that don’t really have to do with the budget.” Current first-year students are required
On the left of patriotism Impressions, page 12
to take one university seminar, one university writing seminar, one writing intensive course, one oral intensive course, a quantitative reasoning course, three courses in a single foreign language, a non-western course and they must also take one course in every school (science, social science, humanities, creative arts, and two physical education classes). Lamb said that the sub-committee on academic requirements is looking into whether to keep the requirements as they are, “tweak” them, or discard the requirements all together. Dean of Arts and Sciences and chair of the steering committee Adam Jaffe said that when it comes to certain requirements “the budget crisis has provided us with the opportunity to think outside the box on many things.” “A lot of these things are ones that someone thought before and that have already been discussed to various degrees,” he said. “But the budget pressure makes it easier to change things it would have been harder to change otherwise.” One such example is the non-western requirement. Lamb said that the requirement has been thought as out-dated for See REQUIREMENTS p. 3
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