The Brandeis Hoot - 4-11-08

VOL 4, NO. 25

A P R I L 11 , 2 0 0 8

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

First set of charges against Darwish dismissed in appeal

BY ALISON CHANNON Editor

The University Board of Appeals dismissed one set of charges against TYP student Mamoon Darwish at a hearing on April 8.

“The fact that I appealed an administrative decision and then won the appeal is a big issue because it’s something new to the Brandeis community,” Darwish wrote in an e-mail to The Hoot.

Darwish “had two cases before him,” Director of Student Conduct Advisors Laura Cohen ’09 explained in an e-mail message.

“One case concerns an alleged incident and the other concerns a fight. This incident is called an “alleged” incident because the accusing body retracted their statement and claimed that the event never occurred.”

When Darwish’s case was originally considered, both charges were part of the same case. The cases “had been merged, the [first]

Despite delay, Gravel addresses crowd

appeal split them, now we’re having two hearings” before the Board of Appeals, said Union Advocate Brian Paternostro ’08. “Tuesday was the rehearing that the appeal created,” he added.

Because Darwish did not plea responsible or not responsible to the charges against him within 48 hours after they were first issued, it was considered as though he pled responsible. As such, he did not have a hearing before the University Board of Student Conduct and was sanctioned. Because “you can appeal a sanction even if you don’t have a hearing,” Darwish was able to file an appeal even though he did not have an original hearing, Paternostro explained.

Student conduct cases are first referred to Director of Student Development and Conduct Erika Lamarre. Students have “48 hours to decide whether or not they want a hearing [before the University See APPEAL p. 13

PHOTO BY Max Shay/The Hoot

SILENT PROTEST: Students gather on the Great Lawn to protest injustices on the Brandeis campus.

Students organize demonstration against injustices at Brandeis

BY PAT GAROFALO Editor

A demonstration was held on the Great Lawn yesterday by about 85 students citing a number of grievances related to students’ rights.

The demonstration, organized to

coincide with Open House, lasted an hour.

After five minutes of silence, individual students spoke on a variety of issues, including the pending appeals of suspended TYP student Mamoon Darwish, the way in

See GRAVEL p. 13

INSIDE:

See DEMONSTRATION p. 13

Treasurer delievers State of Finance

OPEN HOUSE

BY ARIEL WITTENBERG Staff

good standing.

Probation, however, “is a permanent record for students and it affects choices they make,” said Jaffe.

“For instance, they cannot study abroad, they’re not supposed to get any incompletes, and…we cannot certify that they were in good standing all throughout their career at Brandeis,” which is important to many applying to law schools.

“So, [this policy change] does have some impact and potential.”

A group of students last year

Student Union Treasurer Choon Woo Ha ’08 announced that the student body will vote on how to spend a portion of the $260,000 of rollover funds that the Student Union has accumulated at his State of Finance address Monday night.

The $260,000 in rollover monies is comprised of money left unspent by clubs and money from the CapEx fund, described as intentional rollover.

According to Ha, after every semester money that goes unspent by clubs reverts back to the Union’s F-board for the next semester. Because of the large amount of money that went unspent this semester and last, F-board has decided to allow all undergraduates to submit proposals for how to spend the money—a decision which will ultimately be made by a school-wide vote.

The proposals—which will be due within the next couple of weeks—should suggest projects which will benefit all students.

“Undergraduate students are

See PROBATION p. 12

See FINANCES p. 12

BY KAYLA DOS SANTOS Staff

In Lown auditorium late Sunday night, presidential candidate and former senator Mike Gravel gave a brief speech, followed by an impassioned talk with students on topics such as the National Initiative for Democracy, the 2008 campaign, the Senator’s recent switch from the Democratic to the Libertarian Party, global warming, and the military industrial complex.

Sen. Gravel, who is running for the Libertarian presidential nomination, participated in his first Libertarian debate Saturday. After the debate in Kansas City, Missouri, the Senator missed his flight and then encountered further delays.

Gravel’s speech at Brandeis, which was supposed to begin at 8 p.m., was postponed until 11 p.m.

Students for a Democratic Society, the event’s sponsor, chose not to reschedule the speech for Monday because of the concern that

which the administration handled the case regarding Prof. Donald Hindley and the arrest last weekend of two students after a party in the Mods.

For the duration of the demon-

PHOTO BY Napoleon Lherisson/The Hoot

SHOWING OFF: Accepted students and their families speak to Brandeis students during accepted students day.

Faculty Senate approves new academic probation criteria

BY JASON WONG Staff

Faculty members at the April 10, 2008 Faculty Senate meeting, voted in favor of changing the current probation policy.

Dean of Arts and Sciences, Adam Jaffe, presented the motion to change the policy and explained what those changes would mean.

Under the newly changed policy, a student whose cumulative GPA is above 2.000 and receives a single grade of D while under Advising Alert will stay under Advising

Alert. Under the old probation policy, a student who received a single grade of D in a semester while under Advising Alert would subsequently be put under probation.

Advising Alert is given to a student who receives a single D in a semester or, under the new policy, whose cumulative GPA is between 2.000 and 2.2. The purpose of the alert is simply to notify the student that he or she is not performing at the academic level expected by the university but is still considered in

GARDEN IS BEAUTIFUL

PG 4

GENDER NEUTRAL HOUSING

PG 12

PLAN B

PG 6

TRACK

PG 14

THIS WEEKEND

PG 16

COMICS

PG 16

2

The Hoot

April 11, 2008

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

Sri Kuehnlenz Editor in Chief Kathleen Fischman Editor in Chief

Alison Channon News Editor Bret Matthew Impressions Editor Ben Sacks Features Editor Chrissy Callahan Features Editor Jordan Rothman Business Editor Ben Douglas Backpage Editor

Napoleon Lherisson Photography Editor Danielle Gewurz Copy Editor Andy Meyers Media/Advertising Editor Clarissa Stark Media Editor Max Shay Technology Officer Adam Hughes Sports Editor

Senior Editors David Pepose, Pat Garofalo

FOUNDED By Leslie Pazan, Igor Pedan and Daniel Silverman

Put weight behind your words

I

n addition to the hoards of prospective students and their parents, the Great Lawn was also the site of a student demonstration during yesterday’s Open House. The demonstration was organized to “bring justice back to Brandeis,” according to one of the signs a student was holding.

The demonstration deserves respect for its success in drawing a relatively large number of community members to the Great Lawn. However, it is questionable how great of an impact the demonstration will have. The demonstration cited a number of incidents, past and present, including the controversy surrounding the Voices of Palestine art exhibit, Nadia Kim, Gravity Magazine, Jimmy Carter, Donald Hindley, and Mamoon Darwish.

While we appreciate the organizers’ attempt to show that injustice exists at Brandeis, we think that drawing upon so many incidents may weaken the impact of their demonstration. Grouping together so many complicated incidents makes for an unfocused and possibly ineffective demonstration. Rehashing old wounds gives the administration the option of saying that these issues have already been dealt with and there is nothing further they can do to address the issue. Remembering past injustices is important, but throwing around various incidents from the past without explicitly explaining the significance of these events, may confuse passersby who are not entrenched in the planning of the demonstration.

While the demonstration was well planned and organized with the purpose of creating a dialogue with the administration, in the end it appears to be just talk. Talk may be a valuable first step, but organizers should not feel satisfied with yesterday’s demonstration. While the administration seemed to respect the students’ efforts, yesterday’s demonstration may easily be forgotten if further steps are not taken.

Senator for Racial Minority Students Gabe Gaskins ’08, one of the event’s organizers, says the next step is finding a solution. However, the organizers will find that implementing a solution may prove to be more challenging than simply voicing their concerns. Hopefully, complacency will not impede their ability to abolish systemic injustice, rather than just identifying it. Yes, we can only improve by reflecting on the past, but more importantly we must focus on how we will change in the future.

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 to editor@thehoot. net. All letters must be from a valid email

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.

E-mail: editor@thehoot.net

The Point

Thinking back to college visits

BY EMMA NEEDLEMAN Columnist

Spring has sprung, which means that the Brandeis campus is filled with sprightly prospective students, coming from as far away as Westchester and Newton to tour our concrete paths. For most of us, seeing “prospies” is a painful experience—we see ourselves reflected in their pasty faces and beady eyes and we know that we are going to hate them when they inevitably enroll.

But think back to when you were applying to colleges. I know that some of you had been building an alter to Harvard and Yale since you were thirteen and that your mom had to talk you off the roof of the library after you didn’t get in, but for some of you, it was probably a more confusing process. I remember that I treated the whole ordeal pretty blithely until the eleventh hour, which is probably why I ended up at Stalag Brandeis. There’s a lot of pressure on kids to make the right choice—more than make the right choice, to be the right way, so you can get into the right college.

To an extent, that’s understandable. You invest a lot of time and

money into your undergraduate education and your degree is theoretically important to your future career. But, at the same time, isn’t it kind of your right as a seventeen-year-old to treat everything blithely? Why do you have to invest so much of yourself in this decision, especially when it so dramatically favors the colleges and universities?

I personally only visited two colleges (one of them was Brandeis) before I applied. It just didn’t seem worth it to visit more—despite the myriad advice people had been giving me since I was in eighth grade, I didn’t know what to look for and I didn’t think following a “polysci” major named Deirdre around a strange campus was going to give me any direction. Everybody knows that campus representatives just lie to you, anyway. After I got into a liberal-arts college in Manhattan, they had a student call me and ask if I had any questions. I asked what I was genuinely curious about—which was whether they had a lot of cocaine on campus— and she got totally confused and said no, even though this school was notoriously coked-out.

Part of the problem is that col-

leges are desperate to project an image that will appeal to prospective students, but that desire is mostly rooted in the desire for more money and prestige. Look at the newly remodeled Brandeis website, which boasts that the school is the “Smart Choice!” because of our new science complex and the fact that our researchers invented a certain delicious buttery spread.

It reads like an advertisement for a tangible product, not an informational website for an institution of learning. If you don’t level with the kids, you’re only helping to perpetuate the culture of stress and exploitation that comes along with higher education in the United States.

I don’t know how we can shift the power so our educational resources are equitable and open to more people, but I think debunking the glamour and needless exclusivity that universities are trying to create is a good start. I commend the kids who recently formed a drum circle and yelled, “Don’t come here! Brandeis is racist!” to passing tour groups. That’s the right idea—don’t let the fascists gloss anything over, man.

Do you have visions of a creating a new Student Union?

Are you sick of high food prices?

Or are you just a generally angry person?

Write for The Hoot Impressions by emailing bmatthew@brandeis.edu

April 11, 2008

The Hoot

3

IMPRESSIONS

The Semiotic Eichman Visions of a new Student Union Fighting With Pinpricks

BY PAUL BALIK Special to The Hoot

BY JON LANGE Columnist

On this day in 1961, the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann began in Jerusalem. Pictures of these proceedings are among the most recognizable in the history of photojournalism—the three judges sitting atop a high dais with Eichmann below in a bulletproof booth, headphones around his ears to hear the translation.

There is something profoundly and uncomfortably strange about Eichmann; he keeps popping up, like Leonard Zelig, under the strangest of circumstances. The tribunal, of course, found him guilty and sentenced him to death; however, the trial also marked the first attempt at constructing a sort of semiotic Eichmann, i.e. at managing Eichmann’s meaning and deploying that meaning in fields as diverse as ethics, politics, and science.

The Eichmann of the trial—a trial carefully orchestrated by the Israeli authorities and broadcast all over the world—symbolized a virulent threat to Jewish lives which necessitated the existence of a strong Israeli state which could ensure that the Holocaust would never be revisited upon world Jewry. One of the reporters covering the trial, the philosopher Hannah Arendt, saw things differently. Her Eichmann represented the capacity for individuals in advanced technological societies to abdicate their moral and ethical judgment and instead conform blindly to the directives of the state or of mass public opinion.

It is around this time also that another semiotic Eichmann becomes the object of scientific investigation. Stanley Milgram designed a controversial experiment to answer the question: “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices . . . were just following orders?” He found, horrifyingly enough, that nearly all of his subjects were willing to deliver fatal electrical shocks to perfect strangers when ordered to do so by an authority figure.

The latest semiotic Eichmann is the “little Eichmann” which emerged in the mid-1990s when the anarcho-primitivist John Zerzan published an article called “Whose Unabomber?” In it, he branded the Unabomber’s victims as “many little Eichmanns who are preparing the Brave New World.”

Ward Churchill drew ire when he used the little Eichmann concept to describe some of the victims of the September 11th attacks. To

Zerzan and Churchill, Eichmann is the exemplar for a long tradition of technocrats who are unconsciously complicit in mass murder from a comfortable distance.

With so many Eichmanns, each one carrying its own accusations and its own political solutions, what are we to make of Eichmann today? Certainly we are disgusted and angered by Eichmann, but how should that disgust and anger manifest itself ? The Israeli government as well as Zerzan and Churchill would have us eliminate the Eichmanns, or at the very least council us not to object to those who do kill Eichmanns in the name of justice and peace. Arendt, on the other hand, places the responsibility squarely on the Eichmanns themselves; it is they who must recover their moral judgment. Milgram, perhaps the least interventionist of the group, would have us find a scientific explanation for the “extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority.” Unfortunately, none of these seem a very promising avenue for us.

All four of the Eichmanns I’ve mentioned do share one thing in common. They are all indicative of a belief that Eichmanns still roam the earth, that even though Eichmann is dead, many more Eichmanns have sprouted up to take his place. To the people behind these multifarious visions of Eichmann, however, Eichmann always turns out to be somebody else.

I propose another semiotic Eichmann to solve this problem: the Eichmann within. Instead of scouring the planet searching for new Eichmanns “out there”, we should be looking at ourselves, at our communities, and at our society. Anyone who pays taxes in the United States, for example, has played some small role in bankrolling the murder of 600,000 to 1 million Iraqi civilians; we each participate—by either our silence or by the ineffectiveness of our protest—in Guantanamo Bay and CIA black sites; many of us are still reaping the windfall of the slave trade. In short, if Eichmann has any meaning today, if in fact the whole terrible 20th century is to serve any function today, it must force us to interrogate the million ways in which we are all somebody’s Eichmann. Furthermore, we must then act to change the situation, because when our time in the bulletproof chamber comes, in this world or possibly in others, we will not be able to say that we were just following orders.

Over the past two years, I have had the pleasure of living, learning, and growing up in this most venerable of institutions, Brandeis University. I have built a life of commitment to learning, not just as a good in and of itself, but as a tool to understanding, appreciating, loving, and recognizing ourselves as integral parts of a vibrant society, rich in the complexity of its interactions, relationships, hopes, joys, fears, pains, struggles, and injustices. Yes, education equips us with the skills necessary to pursue professional success and material comforts, as well as the privilege of building a life in modern America that ensures such comforts for our current families and families to come. Yet education also empowers us to begin to understand the intricacies of those structures upon which our society is based and to question their role in the pursuit of a common good.

From this education comes not just a set of skills in thought and background knowledge to pursue our own interests. This education instills a sense of duty and moral obligation that first reaches toward all members of our Brandeis community, permeates across the land, and shoots off into the farthest reaches of the Earth.

Now what does this mean for Brandeis and what does this mean for the New Union? It means that, as our immediate community, Brandeis must be recognized as our world entire, the perfection of which must be treated as something sacred in quality. And, at the same time, while we must venerate and uphold the sanctity of our own community, we must understand that the greatest injustice in the world is to extend our universe of moral obligation no further than the simplicity of our own lives or the physical space of our own campus. The greatest task for our New Union must be the recognition of the figurative walls that exist around the Brandeis campus, sheltering us and hiding us from the enormity of the plight of our fellow man and preventing our immersion into that very world community which we are expected to lead upon graduation.

To lead a community without a vested interest in and understanding of the beauty and struggles of that community is but tyranny, and tyranny ought to be destroyed in all of its forms. To educate us to lead without such a vested interest and understanding is to educate us to be tyrants.

Let the first mission of our New Union be a creative enterprise. Let us bind our university to the interests of Waltham, to the greater Boston community, to our nation, and to our world. Let us burst the Brandeis bubble and break down those barriers that prevent our immersion into the community and impede our education.

Let the Union demand the opening of university funds for Brandeis alumni and soon-to-be alumni who wish to dedicate them-

selves to projects in public service and social entrepreneurship. As a university that prides itself on its commitment to social justice, we must do everything in our power to encourage and to help fund promising, well-planned ventures with such aims. We must be proud of the numerous institutions on this campus committed to serving the community and uniting our interests with the greater community’s interests. Through the Waltham Group, through Community Engaged Learning, and through countless activist clubs and organizations on campus, Brandeis students have sparked wonderful institutions devoted to the perfection of our world. Brandeis funding and guidance can provide the necessary incentives and support for student leaders to help fan those sparks into a flame upon graduation.

Let the Union serve as a voice for student activism and service at Brandeis. Let us debate those issues over which our student leaders have voiced their concerns and back them with the weight of the student body.

Let us make the New Union transparent. There is no issue in the New Union that ought to be discussed behind closed and locked doors. Without a vested interest in the community we serve and without accountability to that community, we are but tyrants.

Let us work for transparency in the university’s endowment. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, argues that civil disobedience must be pursued nonviolently, for “the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek”. As we must purify the ends of our education by channeling them toward our self-actualization and the perfection of our world, so too must we purify the means through which that education is pursued. We must ensure that the money we invest into our education is not channeled toward organizations whose aims and means actively harm the pursuit of a more perfect world.

Let us recognize that a just society is inconceivable in a world of environmental disrepair. Let the New Union work toward the greening, beautification, and environmental sustainability of our campus. This goal must be pursued through both individual and collective actions.

Let us first purify ourselves as individuals by conserving energy and minimizing waste. Let us also collectively demand the establishment of an environmental sustainability fund for the university and the incorporation of the environment into any short-term and long-term planning model. Let us form an advisory board of both students and administrators to address the beautification and greening of our campus. Let us diminish car dependency and discourage car use on campus by providing inexpensive or free public bikes or bike rentals so that students can easily travel around campus and Waltham without needing a car. In conjunction with providing convenient, clean, and efficient transportation

alternatives, let us devote less of our campus’s space to car infrastructure and more toward green space and worthwhile buildings.

Let us recognize the injustices of the current system of dining services on the Brandeis campus. We students are required to purchase grossly overpriced meal plans with inflexible food options and dining hours. We spend more on a meal than the price of the food we eat and we spend more on a point than the value of the point. If given a choice, there is NO economic reason to purchase a meal plan. The only worthwhile meal plan would be no meal plan. One can have the same flexibility by simply buying a large amount of WhoCash at the beginning of the semester and buying all of his/her food with this WhoCash. Required to buy meal plans, we are forced to pay an organization that has no reason to diminish its prices or to provide better service to us. Aramark monopolizes our food services. We are required to pay them and they face no competition from outside providers. Aramark also makes little effort to improve its labor practices and to diminish the quantity of its waste.

Aramark’s contract is up for renewal in spring 2009. The Dining Services Committee and administrators must begin exploring other food service providers for the campus and drawing up the demands that any organization that receives Brandeis’s food services contract must meet.

Let us use the voice of the student body to bring our world’s leaders to this campus to speak. It is important that we, as learners, are exposed to the leaders of today for guidance and for inspiration.

We must also do everything in our power to bring leaders to campus that represent well-balanced opinions on every issue, thus encouraging our critical thinking and opening us up to the diversity of opinions in our world.

Let us reject the problems of old in the pursuit of our New Student Union. Our current Union is bound by inaction, meaningless debate, a grossly inflated sense of self-importance, and unwillingness to look toward more progressive, proactive initiatives on behalf of the students. We have seen the gross over-politicization of a seemingly distasteful advertisement that our very own Gravity humor magazine published last year. Individuals were hurt, the Union’s own by-laws and the Rights and Responsibilities were trampled upon, and people felt less free to speak at an institution and in a country where the free market of ideas ought to be our prized possession. By encouraging leadership that is neither truly vested in the interests of nor accountable to those whom they represent, we encourage tyranny. Tyranny ought to be rooted out and destroyed in all of its forms.

Let us build a New Union. Let us immerse ourselves in the perfection of our community.

Note: The author is running for Senator for the Class of 2010.

44 The TheHoot Hoot

August April31, 11,2007 2008

I IM MPPRREESSSSI IOONNSS

Garden is Beautiful

Public eruption against atheism

BY ADAM HUGHES Editor

There is no doubt that atheists in the United States form a persecuted minority. From general public opinion to specific Constitutional prohibitions, there are many barriers preventing atheists from equal recognition as American citizens, opportunities for holding public office, and the protections of civil rights legislation which defend other religious groups. However, in many ways, atheists are more fortunate than other minority groups. There are no differences in physical appearance with which they can be segregated, they have no formalized rituals or gatherings that could be used to distinguish them, and, if necessary, they can easily disguise their beliefs.

However, those who desire the right to free expression of their beliefs, which is theoretically given to everyone under the United States Constitution, must be prepared to face the consequences of a society still strongly biased against them. While it would be easy to assume that this bias is held only by a vocal but insignificant minority of the population, we were reminded last week that it is ingrained even in the highest levels of government.

Democrat Monique Davis has represented Illinois's 27th House of Representatives district in the state's General Assembly for over 20 years, and she has earned a reputation as one of the most influential members of the body. The rewards she has reaped during her term of services include a seat on the powerful State Government Administration Committee, and it is this position which gave her the opportunity to launch one of the most hateful tirades in modern American politics last Wednesday, a tirade which shows how far the United States has to go before atheism is given the respect as a philosophy which it is due.

The incident occurred as noted secular activist Rob Sherman was testifying before the committee on the question of a $1 million grant directed towards the Pilgrim Baptist Church. Sherman's argument was that such an explicitly religious contribution amounts to nothing more than a state-sponsored religion, one which the First Amendment clearly prohibits.

However, Rep. Davis, insistent on the grant's passing, decided to ignore the Constitutional angle and turn the hearing into a forum on

religious belief. She interrupted Sherman to comment, " I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy – it’s tragic -- when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight. They want to fight prayer in school. I don’t see you [Sherman] fighting guns in school. You know?"

Already, Davis has set up a false pretense with which to attack Sherman; the hearing was neither about school prayer nor gun control. While it is true that Sherman has an established reputation as an opponent of prayer in public schools, this was irrelevant to the issue at hand. Furthermore, I very much doubt that Sherman has any desire to see weapons in schools either. Davis's pointless tangent displayed a great failing in her role as a legislator; however, she was just getting started.

to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands." What Davis seems to be proposing is the censorship of an entire belief system based on a wholly flawed assumption that it somehow supports violence in schools. Apparently, she is unaware of exactly how many lives have been lost in the name of Christianity and how many positive contributions to the progression of America those with atypical religious beliefs have made.

The assumption is that the culpability for school violence rests on anyone who does not accept Rep. Davis' chosen view of God, and, as someone whose beliefs clearly differ strongly from hers, I refuse to accept this. There is no room in a secular humanist worldview for the murder of children. Nothing could be more horrifying to me.

Davis finished her rant by nearly screaming, "I am fed up! Get out of that seat!"

Sherman calmly responded "Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, and I’m sure that if this matter does go to court..." but Davis shouted him down, continuing, "You have no right to be here! We believe in something.

You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon." Apparently, Sherman has no right to free speech, no right to petition the legislators he helps to elect, and no right to defend his nation's Constitution.

Monique Davis clearly has no understanding of the legislative process, of the United States Constitution, or of the respect due to all Americans, including Rob Sherman or any other nontheist.

Yet what is even more frightening is the tepid public outcry over her bigotry. If she had launched the same tirade against Christians, Jews, or even Muslims, calls for her resignation or impeachment would be immediate and forceful.

However, it is now over a week since the incident occurred, and there seem to be no plans to force her removal or censure her at all.

It is a sad mark of how deeply held the anti-atheist sentiment of this nation is that Rep. Davis can get away with being this hateful and ignorant while retaining a powerful governmental position; the unfortunate conclusion is that we cannot be sure our public policy is being created by individuals who have some respect for the values of tolerance upon which this nation was founded.

There is no doubt that atheists in the United States form a persecuted minority.

Rep. Davis continued, "I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children." Again, questions of what Sherman believes or even whether his personal philosophy has any validity have no bearing on the legality of the proposed grant, and again, Davis rashly assumes that Sherman's atheism equates to a moral opposition or ambiguity to ensuring the security of children. It is interesting that she cited Abraham Lincoln to defend her point, a president known for making statements highly critical of organized religion.

Yet Davis would soon move in an even more venomous direction. "What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous" she railed, and when Sherman interrupted to ask "What’s dangerous, ma’am?" She responded "It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court

The Hoot accepts submissions to the Impressions section on any topic of consequence to any member of the campus community. Our mission is to give every community member a voice.

The views expressed in the Impressions section do not necessarily reflect the views of The Hoot's editorial board.

Book of Matthew

World food crisis

BY BRET MATTHEW Editor

The world is facing a major crisis, but you may or may not have noticed it. I guess it's kind of hard at Brandeis; we buy most of our food with meals and points, rather than actual money. However, if any of you have been off campus recently, I’m willing to bet that the food you bought was more expensive than usual.

You are not alone.

The World Bank recently estimated that global food prices have risen 83% over the last three years, the most destabilizing increase since the Soviet Union bought massive amounts of US grain during the “Great Grain Robbery” of the 1970’s.

Thanks to the recession, Americans, who already spend about 10-15% of their income on food, will be hit hard by these prices. Some will have to apply for food stamps, and almost everyone will have to cut down on personal spending in order to get by. In short, the economic situation is not likely to improve.

But the story does not end here. What America will face is nothing compared to what citizens of poorer nations will have to deal with. People in Ghana already have to dedicate 60% of their income to purchasing food. In Bangladesh, it is 70%.

These are the kinds of people who cannot afford to keep up with food price inflation. They will be forced with a choice, whether to starve or riot, and given that choice it is likely that most people will choose the latter. Unfortunately, this will lead to even greater instability in the third world, and open the door for even more extremist factions that the world cannot afford.

You may be wondering how all this could be possible, and there are several causes. The first, and most obvious, is population growth and development. The world population is currently greater than 6.6 billion, almost double what it was in 1970, and demand for food is increasing rapidly. In rapidly industrializing countries such as China and India (both of which have populations of over a billion), many more people are accumulating wealth, and choosing to buy food instead of grow it. This is simultaneously increasing food demand will decreasing supply.

Oil is another large part of the problem, because unfortunately, oil is a key to the agricultural process. Fertilizer requires fossil fuels to be made, and food cannot be grown without it. Also, once the food is grown, it still must be transported to consumers. This is difficult to do when gas costs over $100 a barrel.

Furthermore, oil has contributed to the problem through global climate change. I have

to say; one of the greatest tragedies in this world is the fact that in the time it took for enough people to believe in global climate change, we could have acted to prevent it. But we did not, and whether we like it or not, this phenomenon is causing damage all over the world. Australia, for example, normally harvests 25 million tons of grain each year, the second-largest grain harvest in the world. But, it is currently in the midst of the worst drought in its history, and in 2006 only yielded 9.8 million tons. I’m sure you can all see why global wheat stocks are at their lowest levels since 1979.

At this point in the equation, we throw in the politicians.

They were pretty quiet as this crisis unfolded, but now they’ve finally realized that voters care.

About global climate change and energy independence, that is. Now I’m not complaining; I care about those issues too.

I just wish Americans had the capacity to care about more issues.

But it really doesn’t matter too much, because the politicians have decided to take the least helpful, yet most profitable path. That would be biofuels.

I have to admit, I used to think biofuels were a great idea.

What could be wrong with homegrown energy? Sure, some experts warned that it would take too much of the corn harvest, but I didn’t believe them.

I knew the US government has paid some farmers not to grow corn since FDR was president, so I assumed that if we needed more corn, we could easily grow it.

Never assume, folks.

Agribusiness in this country must be more influential than I thought. It has to be. Because even though the government has mandated that we use more corn-based ethanol, it is still paying farmers not to grow corn. Ironically, this practice still yields that exact same result that it yielded during the Great Depression: corn prices rise.

This will keep farmers happy.

It will keep giant agribusiness happy. It will keep the ethanol business happy. It will keep well-connected politicians happy. But that’s about it. The rest of us, we’re just going to have to deal with higher prices.

As someone who has little faith in campaigns to “spread awareness,” I regret to say that this is the best solution that I can think of. People all over the world need to understand that there are several reasons why their food is getting more expensive. They need to understand that even when we acknowledge these problems, we won’t be able to solve them until we come together with that as a common purpose.

It’s not like we have much of a choice. We all need to eat.

April 11, 2008

IMPRESSIONS

The Hoot

Shopping for Truth

One Tall Voice

5

What is friendship? Learning about the people of Haiti

BY CHRISSY CALLAHAN Editor

BY JORDAN ROTHMAN Editor

In our present society, people really throw the word “friend” out there a whole lot. Many call perfect strangers “friend” as if they have known them for a number of years. People regard mere acquaintances with the highest respect, even though they have maybe only known each other in a class or within any number of other casual settings. My personal definition of the word “friend” goes quite deeper than these superficial specifications. Many people have often commented that I have many friends.

Some may even regard themselves as my friends and think me worthy of this title when contemplating their own personal circles. In fact, I have very few friends and think I am one of the most friendless people I know. I only regard four people at Brandeis worthy of this special title, and rather use a number of other designations to describe my other personal relationships.

This may sound like a game of mere semantics, but people shouldn’t be throwing the word “friend” out there so much! Most of these so called “friendships” are in fact forged in the crucible of heavy drinking, or a freshman USEM. Sure these occasions may be trying indeed, but I would rather use a vast hierarchy of terms to describe my interactions with many people. The lowest level begins with acquaintance, someone you perhaps know the first name of, or maybe shared a building with during your freshmen year. Perhaps above that is a close acquaintance, someone who has been a companion throughout most of your college career and who you know fairly well. Above that, in a relatively high position, I place my teammates and fellow club members.

And at the top are my friends. Yes, some may relegate this position to people deemed “best friends” but the point is the same. Here are the people I can depend on. These are the ones that brighten my day.

A friend is so much more than a

name and a background and that’s why there are so many layers to interpersonal relationships.

While I’m on the subject of friendship, I guess it is appropriate to discuss another question in this arena. In the movie “When Harry Met Sally” the two main characters have a debate on whether or not men and women could be friends.

I originally thought that this was impossible. Surely as long as there is sexual attraction between two individuals, then this force would always get in the way of true

Many call perfect strangers “friend” as if they have known them for a number of years. friendship (I am assuming a heteronormative world). But now, I have come to realize that this is not the case. Men and women can certainly have deep meaningful interactions regardless of attraction. Truly, the different insight, the varying background, and the unique experience of the opposite gender enrich a relationship. So I no longer abide by the principle set forth in that immortal movie, though Billy Krystal made his points so well!

Our society is obsessed with the idea of friendship and of personal interactions. Still, I don’t think we use the correct terminology when discussing our relationships. It sounds like mere semantics, but I am of the adamant belief that true “friends” are not just fickle walkons in the game of life, but are rather vibrant factors that are truly important in our own personal world. In addition, I no longer follow the opinions laid out in “When Harry Met Sally” and believe that men and women can be perfectly fine friends. And the Facebook phenomenon is just complicating the issue altogether. I think this social networking service should adopt a scale of acquaintanceship as well. I think this implementation would make a lot of awkward situations much more improved!

How many times a day do we complain about our lives? Now I know I’ve previously discussed this (Start Complaining, Start Living, 2/15/08), but here’s installment two in light of my most recent knowledge gained from my current French class.

I’m currently enrolled in Professor Jane Hale’s Francophone Literature class titled Haiti: Then and Now. Before taking this class, I had absolutely no idea about Haiti and its people, and realize now just how ignorant I really was. If you had mentioned the country’s name to me, I probably would’ve shrugged my shoulders and had absolutely nothing to say about the subject. In fact, the first day of class, I was somewhat embarrassed to have very little to say when we had to write down what we knew about Haiti. But not anymore! After several months of exploring the literature, art, history, and culture of Haiti, I have a newfound appreciation for it.

If there is one thing that I’ve learned from taking this class, it would have to be the fact that it is so important to step outside of your comfort zone and explore new things, new countries, new subjects, etc. As a primarily language-oriented person, I’ve usually stayed and intended on staying in my comfort zone in many ways. I always figured that since I knew what I wanted and what subject matters I was interested in (French, Journalism, and American Studies), that it would all fall into place somehow and I wouldn’t have to bother with anything outside of that realm of academia.

Never mind any undesirable subjects like science.

Let me tell you something about myself. I hate science! I have nothing against it theoretically speaking, but in

practice, it’s just never been my thing.

I don’t have a science brain you could say, and shudder when I think about balancing an equation or leading a lab.

So I’ve always known that I would never pursue a science major. Not to say that science isn’t good, on the contrary, I admire the people brave and competent enough to pursue a major in this field. More power to them! But it’s just not my thing.

But writing and speaking French always has been so I figured I’d just stick with that. Now I know that taking a French class is going to seem like staying in my comfort zone, but it hasn’t been that way because I’ve never really been an extremely politically or internationally-aware person.

Sure, I’ve taken history classes and all and have learned a lot, but somehow taking a class dedicated to a culture entirely different from my own, and in the language that they speak there has been a true learning experience.

I have learned to appreciate the beauty of Haitian art and the spirit of community that the poetic literature we’ve read represents as tantamount to this culture. In addition, voodoo had never even been on my radar until reading literature and watching films about its’ prevalence in Haiti.

Most touching to this whole experience has been the understanding that I have gained regarding the devastating poverty touching Haiti. As my research paper topic, I decided to write about the history and present effects of poverty in Haiti. As the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti suffers from unimaginable poverty, worse than any of our fellow American citizens.

Yet the spirit of resilience in the Haitian culture I have seen through my reading and video viewing has taught me to appreciate what I have and how well off we all are to be liv-

ing in a country where we have much more than others around the world.

Sure, everyone’s freaking out about a recession in the United States, but do we realize how good we have it compared to other people? And yes, the US has been plagued with political infighting over the years, but I never realized how much political instability the people of Haiti had to deal with before taking this class. Gang violence, political coups, disease due to abject poverty-all in a day for both past and present Haitians. Yet, they persist. It just makes me think that we would do well to stop complaining a little and start looking to what problems we can help to fix other than the trivial personal ones we focus on on a daily basis.

And learning a bit of Creole has been so invaluable to understanding the Haitian culture through the second language other than Creole which Haitians speak. With the help of these basic building blocks of Creole we’ve learned, reading Haitian literature has been a discovery process, as I have been able to take what I’ve learned and apply it to reality concretely.

What is the point of this whole column, you ask? Simply to appreciate what you have and realize that there are other people out there who have it worse in some ways and yet, although they might be worse off economically in many ways, the people of Haiti are rich in cultural beauty. What can you do personally? Well, for starters, research Haiti, read up, and watch documentaries. And on campus, come on down to Schwartz Hall Gallery through April 30th to see select pieces of Haitian artist Fred Cadet on display.

Now to conclude, I’d like to say to all of my classmates in Fren 165: s’ak passé?

Sexiled

On the map: A geography lesson

BY RACHAEL BARR Columnist

How to have sex the West-Coast way: while looking in a mirror.

How to have sex the Midwest way: in the bed of a pickup truck.

How to have sex the Southern way: outside Church after Sunday School.

How to have sex the East-Coast way: while drinking coffee, smoking a cigarette, and cheating on your girlfriend. Or running from one place to the next.

Ok, so those were all stereotypes.

I’m sorry if I offended anyone. But there are some stereotypes that exist for a reason…

The geography I know best: Southern and Midwest. Replace church with country club or football game and got yourselves an after-school special.

A few pieces of advice if any of you ever choose to travel…bring padding, shelter, and condoms. Pickup trucks, fair grounds, and tents tend to be covered in manure, Carnies, and rocks. Respectively. And Carnies don’t carry condoms. Or so I hear.

I can’t say I’ve approached sex from the East-Coast perspective.

Well, if you can follow this, I had sex with a West-Coaster in the Midwest the East-Coast way, but I don’t think that counts. The closest I ever got was, “Let’s just cuddle.” I’d rather not, thanks. I’d rather fuck. Bicoastal.

Tri-coastal. Regionally. All over the United States.

And as for West-Coast, I don’t do mirrors. Yet. Small Town, Colorado. 2004. My boyfriend at the time – we’ll call him Luke because, well, that’s his name – was going to be my first. I’d decided.

Because I was mature and knew what I was doing. (I was horny.)

So I told him in a very awkward way. As is my style. One night we were standing in my driveway saying goodnight and I blurted out, “I’m ready for sex.”

Then I went and threw up from embarrassment. Minus the throw up.

I just stood there and stared at him.

He stared back. It was all very comfortable…

Then he said, “You want to go get ice cream?” And raised both eyebrows. I didn’t get it. I said no and ran back into the house, mortified. Ice cream? Yes, I’d like a double scoop of “Just Shoot Me,” please.

Every day for the rest of that summer he asked me if I wanted to go get ice cream and raised both eyebrows. I kept saying no because, not going to lie, there was something fishy about the way he said it. Finally, the day before he left for college, I asked him what the hell “ice cream” stood for. It was, and I quote, “to get me into the back of his car.”

I mean, I’m pretty easy. I had no ob-

jections. That would’ve gotten me just fine. But he didn’t have condoms.

Which lately hasn’t been one of my requirements – which my friends really appreciate – but at the time I had standards. So I actually said no. More than what I do now, I can tell you.

The point being – I have no idea.

Southerners like God, football, and sex. In that order. Midwesterners think sex and ice cream are synonymous, both can be had in the car, and everything should be eaten outdoors.

Speaking of outdoors…A friend, and I emphasize the friend part because this is the one absurd thing I have not done, was camping with her dad, step mom, and stepbrother. Her dad had just gotten married and this was their first family trip. And, by the bye, this was to be my friend’s first… everything. That’s right, folks. We’re not so far from the South in little Ole Colorado. My friend and her stepbrother explored the Deep South and found it to be quite, uh, familial.

So, I guess, another suggestion for the tour books: leave your family at home.

If you plan on a cross-country road trip, trim the hedges before you leave, scout the churches along the way, clear out the backseat, and hit the open road.

You never know what you’re gonna get.

6

April 11, 2008

The Hoot

FEATURES

When Plan A fails, try Plan B

Golding Health Center offers students emergency contraceptives

BY ARIEL WITTENBERG Staff

the time, you know. We’re not judgmental about it. We don’t judge them if they fall and scrape their knee and we don’t judge them if the condom breaks.”

Plan B does not have any effect after the egg has been fertilized. However, if it is taken as directed, the risk of pregnancy is reduced by up to 89 percent. Plan B does not protect against STDs and is not a guarantee against p r e g n a n c y, but Maloney en co ur a g es students in need to come to the health center and ask for help.

“It’s your body, so if you have questions about it, ask the questions,” she said. “As a health care provider you do everything you can to keep people healthy, physically and psychologically, and when you’re a sophomore at Brandeis and you have a long life and many reproductive years ahead of you, you know, we need to help you if you think you might get pregnant,. [So] I’m pro emergency contraception. Come on down.”

At the health center, Julia was asked to take the first of two doses of Plan B. One dose is supposed to be taken as soon as possible after sex, and the other 12 hours later. When

The fifth time that Julia* ever had sex, the condom broke. Julia, who had been dating Mike* for about three weeks, had never had sex with any of her previous boyfriends, despite the fact that she had been in serious relationships before, primarily because she was afraid of getting pregnant. When Mike pulled out and looked at the condom and told her that it broke, Julia was face-to-face with her long time fear.

“As soon as it broke, I just felt like every second I could get pregnant,” Julia said.

“The sperm was meeting the egg, and that was the end.”

“I asked him what he would do if I was pregnant—because we were dating, but we had just started dating, so we hadn’t had the conversation—and he was honest, and he said that he would help me out,” Julia said, “but he also said ‘we’re aiming for no.’”

Mike had to dress and carry a shocked Julia down the stairs and told her that they would go to the health center to get Plan B—commonly known as “the morning after pill”—an emergency contraceptive that prevents fertilization of the egg after sex has already occurred.

While the Golding Health Center has offered Plan B to students since 2004, 13 percent of Brandeis students are unaware that the health center provides it, according to an MAP survey from Brandeis' Department of Institutional Research.

Julia was one of those students. While she had already scheduled an appointment with the health center in order to get on birth control before the condom broke, and had told Mike that although he was wearing a condom he could not cum inside of her vagina until after she was on the pill, she was not only unaware that the health center offered Plan B, but was unaware of Plan B’s existence prior to the condom breaking.

--Health Center Director Kathleen Maloney “At first I was like, shit, I’m not having sex again,” Julia said. “I just felt so stupid and that the health center would judge me, but they didn’t.” a student goes to the health center and asks In fact, Julia was only one of 58 other stu- for Plan B they are asked to take the first dents who visited the health center in order dose at the health center itself. to obtain Plan B this year.

While the health center, administers the “Condoms break,” said Health Center Di- first dose of Plan B, students in need of rector, Kathleen Maloney. “We do this all emergency contraception are also educated

about safe sex and their menstrual cycles.

“We want to make sure that the person who needs the medication has also heard about their other options,” Maloney said.

“I was just in freak out mode when they told me that,” Julia said, “so it’s a really good thing that [Mike] was there.”

“She just kept saying that she was stupid...and I knew that emotionally she was out of it and she kept saying every crazy irrational thing possible, so I tried to keep it logical,” Mike said.

According to Maloney though, Mike being there for Julia was a special case.

“It is very rare that the guy comes in with the girl,” Maloney said.

“The guys seem to be more shy...I just wonder if it’s the way we are socialized that getting pregnant is the girl’s responsibility, but you know, sometimes I have to remind the girls that there’s two people in a relationship.”

According to Mike, however, letting Julia go to the health center by herself was not an option. “I was having sex with someone I cared about, so that helps. It’s very easy to do the right thing when you care about the person,” he said.

Plan B costs $20.00 at the health center and can be paid for by cash or check. Because Plan B is an over-the-counter medication in Massachusetts, health insurance does not cover it. Plan B can also be found at all sorts of pharmacies, however while it does show up on the Walgreen’s website, The Hoot could not find it online at CVS. While Julia is thankful that the health center had Plan B, she said that if she had to do it again, she would wait to have sex until she was both on a birth control pill and using condoms. “Plan B is really good, [but] you don’t want that to be the only option you have, it’s just too stressful.”

She added “yes, having it gave me a lot of tranquility, but it doesn’t ensure that no pregnancy will happen and it doesn’t protect you from STDs. I would not recommend taking Plan B as a plan A. There’s a reason why it’s called Plan B.” For more information about Plan B and other contraceptives, either visit the health center or go to www.go2planB.com.

While the Golding Health Center has offered Plan B to students since 2004, 13 percent of Brandeis students are unaware that the health center provides it.

We don’t judge them if they fall and scrape their knee and we don’t judge them if the condom breaks.

Editor's note: names have been changed to protect anonymity

Interested in having The Hoot cover something strange, freakishly weird and out of the ordinary for the Features section?

Email bensacks@brandeis.edu or chriscal@ brandeis.edu

STRANGE BUT TRUE

BY BEN SACKS Editor

Burglars rob store, then pose as mafia Three burglars entered a restaurant in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, took approximately $150 from the cash register and left. Stunned, the owner watched as several minutes later the same men, dressed in the same clothes but this time not wearing motorcycle helmets, posed as local mafioso offering the restaurant protection from thieves for a mere $660 per month. As soon as the men left for the second time, the owner called the police, who arrested the men in a timely fashion.

Man fills out job application at store, then robs it A man sat in an Athens, GA store and filled out one of the job application forms by the entrance as he waited for it to empty out. Then he robbed the cashier at gunpoint.

Once he left, the cashier called the police and showed them the job application. Turns out the robber had filled out his real name and a real phone number, and the police had little trouble tracking him down.

Burglar flees scene of crime but leaves child behind

A man was stealing catalytic converters from cars in Harrison, OH when police arrived at the scene, inducing the man to flee. Tracking him was easy, however, as he left behind some valuable evidence: his son. The man is being charged with child endangering, possession of criminal tools, possession of drugs, criminal trespass, two counts of theft, and two counts of criminal damaging.

Burglar flees scene of crime via wheelchairand escapes An elderly looking, bearded man robbed a bank in Palo Alto, CA from his wheelchair, with bandages around his legs and a gun in his hand. When he received the money, he slowly rolled out in his motorized wheelchair toward a busy part of town. Police have little to go on because he didn’t leave his son.

April 11, 2008

F E AT U R E S

The Hoot

7

Where everybody knows your order They know your order, but do you know them?

Getting to know the Usdan workers

BY GINA GOTTHILF Special to The Hoot

If you consider your last date at Usdan the opposite of romance, think again. Jane Bellan Flood, 61, met her husband Mike Flood during a coffee break for Usdan employees and custodians. “My coworker told Mike, ‘Jane’s looking for a single, honest, godly man. Do you fit that description?’ And Mike said ‘Well, I’m single.’ We clicked and… [have] been married for 13 years,” says Jane, who has worked at Usdan for the past 18 years.

Jane is just one of a group of enthusiastic employees who have worked at Usdan for over a decade, and one of five employees who started working on campus before most current students could even babble the word “Brandeis.”

Yet, though most of us have now learned to babble, no student can speak of the romance, mystery, comedy and horror that have taken place in the university’s cafeteria as well as these veteran workers can.

Positioned from behind the counters that have separated customers from employees for over five times the years necessary for an undergraduate diploma, these workers have compiled stories and experiences far more nourishing than any of the diverse meal options they might be serving.

Yet in approaching each station shyly and uttering no more than the few words necessary to obtain lunch, very few students recognize the people behind the aprons or care to hear what they might say beyond “for here, or to go?” Regardless of whether or not you decide to eat at Usdan, a peak into these characters’ minds can provide any customer with far more to go than can be placed in a cheap, white container.

Got the blues? Welcome to Usdan Café, second-home to the “Three Amigos” (as employee Gordon Ward named his veteran group of co-workers) who have turned their monotonous decadelong routines into a private comedy. Step up to the grill and meet Gordon, who has worked at Usdan for the past 11 years, feeds ducks on his free time, and met his wife via a pen pal program.

Cross over to the pizza counter and greet 17-yearveteran Carlos Cardona, the well-known mustached Italian who hides his amicable disposition behind silence and sarcasm. “Every day is funny here,” he said, pointing to his most ancient co-worker

Maria Umina as she blended a smoothie amidst a contagious laugh attack. “Just listen to her cackle.”

Maria, veteran of 22 years at Brandeis, listens to students with such attention that she has memorized most of her customers’ favorite concoctions of “three fruits and a liquid.”

“I remember everyone’s smoothies,” she said. Along with many of the experienced workers at Usdan, Maria attributes her decision to stay at Usdan to the pleasure she finds in working with students. “I always want to work here,” she said, when provided with a theoretical choice of doing anything she would like to with the rest of her life. “I like seeing the kids, I want to always see the kids.”

Despite her appreciation for students, Maria regularly spends her short lunch breaks sitting by herself. “Unless,” she said, “I see a student with a burnt piece of toast. I don’t like that. I say ‘hey, you paid for that, go get yourself a

with her a few months ago, and we had the most interesting conversation.”

Through taking the time to speak with Maria, one immediately notices her unfailing optimism, as well as an appreciation for her job that no student-worker at Usdan could come to understand.

For more optimism – albeit of a different sort – step downstairs to the Boulevard and order a wrap from Marie Martin, the 61 year-old rosy-cheeked Canadian from New Brunswick who regularly frequents casinos. Marie compiles students’ and faculty members’ sandwiches before they’re even through with small talk. “My kids come every day,” says Marie with humble

lunch, you must have come across Julie Richard, the grand veteran who has worked on campus for 30 years. “My brother’s mother, who

What a shame to merely search for edibles at the cafeteria when so much character and experience are waiting to be shared. had been working here for 20 years when I started,” she remembers, “told me ‘Julie, don’t forget to sign up for your retirement!’ I laughed.

‘I’m not gonna be here that long!’

I replied.”

PHOTO BY Napoleon Lherisson/The Hoot

LOQUACIOUS LUNCH LADIES: These people have stories to tell if you just take the time to listen.

pride.

Meanwhile, her neighbor and colleague Janet Lyons (veteran of 20 years) effectively avoids small talk by turning every request for Java City coffee into a full-fledged c o n ve r s a tion. “The freshmen named me Java Jan [this year], I get a different name every year,” she boasts.

And if you’ve ever paid for

Yet, though most of us have now learned to babble, no student can speak of the romance, mystery, comedy and horror that have taken place in the university’s cafeteria as well as these veteran workers can. new piece of toast.’”

On a few occasions, a student spontaneously joins her at the table, like Aaron Voldman ’09. "I sat

is “very easy,” she remembers several difficult episodes involving coworkers in the past.

She recounted, for example, an instance in which one co-worker, an amnesiac, shoved her arm into the flames at the grill in order to reach the counter. Whereas the average person would have likely reacted with anger, Maria saw the situation from a very different angle. "I felt so sorry for her," she explains, "she shouldn't have been working under those conditions."

Moreover, while the majority of experienced Usdan employees discuss their careers here at Brandeis with eager pride, for Tao Wang, the friendly Chinese man who makes burritos and fajitas in lower Usdan, the past 10 years working at Usdan have been a very solitary struggle.

In Chinese, he explains that his English is not very good and therefore he never gets to enjoy any interaction with students. His loneliness is worsened by the fact that Chinese students prefer to order their dishes in English, and therefore never converse with him.

Finally, perhaps you’ve never heard of the tragic murder of Carlita, a beautiful Usdan employee who was killed in front of the cafeteria in broad daylight 15 years ago as her co-workers and students had lunch. “Her husband shot her, and then shot himself,” Julie recounts with horror.

In a country with stereotypes of hair-netted lunch ladies with pans of mystery-meat, these Usdan employees make for quite the exception. What a shame to merely search for edibles at the cafeteria when so much character and experience are waiting to be shared.

“Some students are very impatient,” said Jane, despite counting herself among the die-hard fan of the ‘kids.’ “Patience is a very good thing to have, especially with people,” she says, and advises that “when someone walks into your life, no matter who it is, you should pull them into your heart.”

The next time you walk into Usdan, think of Jane’s advice: “Don’t forget about the community,” she says, “and about people who aren’t as fortunate as you.” Maria’s message for Brandeis students jibes with Jane’s. “You picked the best place to be in the world, and don’t waste it. Your parents are paying a pretty penny for it,” she says, nagging her finger mockingly.

As for the secret ingredient to her smoothies, Maria insists “it’s just a little touch of love.”

Finally, as you make your way outside to stick that bagel in the toaster and notice that its huge mass has disappeared, turn to the staff for further appreciation of the mystery and humor at Usdan.

“Someone put a croissant in there and there was a big fire! The cook got scared. That’s why our toaster is gone,” says Jane. In an afterthought, she blurts, “I’ve seen it happen before – the toaster on fire.

Usually I just turn it off and… hope for the best! If you take out the fire-extinguisher, there’s no more toaster.”

But despite the festive atmosphere these workers describe, students who have worked at Usdan part-time know how difficult the routine can be. For example, though Maria claims that her job

12

April 11, 2008

The Hoot

NEWS

Res Life DeCapua discusses gender neutral housing options for Fall attendance were involved with the Queer Resource Center, and none voiced objections to the plan.

On Thursday night, Director Breslow prompted students into of Residence Life Richard Dea discussion of the reasoning beCapua officially announced that hind creating gender-neutral housnext fall gender neutral housing ing. He emphasized that the plan will be available would only affor sophomores fect 1-2% of No one’s going to be and upperclassthe Brandeis men. pushed to live where community and TRISK, the they’re uncomfortable. would only be Social Justice creating more Committee, and options for TransBrandeis students. “No --Aaron Breslow ’10 have been one’s going to working with be pushed to Resident Life to live where they’re uncomfortable,” implement a gender neutral houshe said. He specifically mentioned ing option in order to ensure that that the new option would benefit all students feel comfortable living transgender students. on campus.

Other students talked about how This Thursday there was a forum the plan would help those who in the International Lounge to diswould prefer to live with someone cuss the new housing option with who they are not sexually attracted students. DeCapua, Greg Jones, the to, and those who would simply Coordinator of Residential Operawant to live with a member of the tions, Aaron Breslow ’10, the Genopposite sex. eral Coordinator of TRISK, Emily Then, DeCapua described his exBurd ’08, Chair of TransBrandeis, perience with gender-neutral housand Village Quad Senator Mike ing at Wesleyan University, where Kerns ’09, member of the Social he was the Assistant Director of Justice Committee, were there to Residence Life. “[We] made every answer questions and address conmistake we could make,” he said. cerns. The forum was also supWesleyan has theme-based housing posed to be available for students selection and Res Life had decided who opposed the idea. However, to make a gender-neutral theme. almost half of the 20 students in

BY KAYLA DOS SANTOS Staff

Students complained, DeCapua said, that the housing was like a “zoo” where people “came to look at the transgendered population.”

He also explained how he was disappointed in the Wesleyan administration as Res Life had to go to lengths to implement the gender-neutral policy for the entire Wesleyan population. An alum who had made the transition from man to woman spoke to educate the board of trustees. “[Reslife] shouldn’t have had to go to such extremes,” he stated.

DeCapua stated that the Brandeis administration has been responsive to Res Life’s p r o p o s a l s, although, he admitted the administrators he reports to did not always understand the ideas he presented.

He said, “I learned that to push this [policy] hard is a mistake…we have to teach people.” DeCapua described how most of the upper administration view the new housing policy as progressive or as something new and different to distinguish Brandeis from compet-

ing schools.

He further explained that through the media it has become clear that people view the main problem of gender neutral housing is that “men and women will hook up.”

He said that this was because “most people don’t understand what transgender means.” While he was speaking, he repeatedly mentioned the need to educate the population about terminology, and gender as opposed to biological sex.

Incoming freshmen in the fall will not have the gender-neutral housing option. DeCapua said, “First year students are like “golden cows” and --Rich DeCapua are treated with “kid gloves.” He stated that before applying the housing policy to freshmen, the policy needed to be first implemented on sophomores and upperclassmen in order to reassure people that the new housing option would result in positive experiences.

I learned that to push this [policy] hard is a mistake... we have to teach people.

Changes to academic probation accepted PROBATION (from p. 1)

came to Jaffe and Academic Services expressing their concern about how “Brandeis appears to be more Draconian, or more strict in its rules of academic probation compared to peer institutions” said Jaffe. From this, Jaffe assembled a small ad hoc group to review the Brandeis’ probation policies as well as other institutions.

In their review of the policies, Jaffe reported that between the schools, “there is a continuum.

[Brandeis is] not an outlier on that

continuum but I believe it is fair to say it is correct to characterize our current policy as lying toward the more draconian, more stricter end of the continuum.”

Jaffe and his committee proposed the currently approved changes to the probation policy to reflect this matter. In addition, the changes were also able to rectify an issue with keeping policies consistent between criteria for graduating and for being put on probation.

Jaffe said, “there’s no restriction with having D’s on your record; so it does seem potentially inappropri-

ate to put someone on probation and put this official notice alter for performance, if the performance that you’re noting is in fact acceptable to graduate.”

A question was raised concerning whether or not students in good standing, (for instance with 3.0 GPA) should still get academic probation if they just have one bad semester with two D’s. Although this question was addressed, it provoked very little discussion from Jaffe and the Faculty Senate.

Currently, 69 students are on probation, three of which are on pro-

bation because of getting single D’s in subsequent semesters. Brandeis also currently has 68 students on Advising Alert, with 36 additional students whose GPA is between 2 and 2.2 and will be put on Advising Alert after the probation policy changes are implemented.

Before being brought to the Faculty Senate meeting Thursday, the changes to the probation policy had already been brought to and endorsed by the Committee on Academic Standing and the Academic Curriculum Committee.

Crystal bus hit by Jeep

BY ALISON CHANNON Editor

A Brandeis Crystal Bus returning from Boston was hit by a car the evening of Friday April, 4. The accident happened at approximately 9 p.m. No one was injured as a result of the crash.

According to Director of Public Safety Ed Callahan, the bus was turning left from Route 30 onto River Road when it was struck by a Jeep Grand Cherokee. Callahan explained that the bus had a green light when the Jeep entered the intersection and hit the bus.

Ori Appelbaum ’11 described, “we were taking a wide left turn and the car came in front of the bus and hit it. The bus kept moving and the car kept moving too.”

“I was facing the door [and] saw glass shattering everywhere,” he added. “It definitely was scary for a second.”

In addition to shattered glass, “there were two big holes in the bus,” Appelbaum stated.

The Weston Police arrived at the scene and then asked that all passengers write down their names, birthdates, and hometowns, Danielle Gershon ’10 explained.

The police found that the bus driver was not at fault, Callahan said. The police did issue a “citation to the Jeep for failing to stop at a red light,” he added.

The front of the jeep was “smashed,” said Appelbaum. The Jeep was later towed from the scene.

“We had to wait 45 minutes before we started going back to Brandeis,” Appelbaum stated.

Upon returning to Brandeis, the bus driver asked for the same information his passengers had supplied the police, presumably to prevent false claims of injury, Gershon explained. The driver could not be reached by time of publication.

Appelbaum rode the very same bus the next day. “They put duct tape over the holes,” he remarked, “they didn’t repair anything.”

Treasurer outlines plans for rollover monies, future policy FINANCES (from p. 1)

stakeholders of [the Student Activities Fee].

They should be able to determine how this large rollover should be spent,” Ha said.

At the State of Finances, Ha also announced that the F-board would cap the Student Activities Fee in light of the rollover.

While in previous years SAF has risen along with tuition, the SAF paid as part of a student’s tuition will remain the same for the 2008-2009 fiscal year as it was for the 20072008 fiscal year.

Ha also outlined the long-term goals of the treasury in order to try and reduce future rollovers. These goals include reforming the CapEx fund, a fund created two years ago for the “purchase of non-recurring properties.: Ha proposed an amendment that would rename it the Reserve Fund and give it a floor of $25,000. The fund is currently capped at $150,000. The Reserve Fund will not have a ceiling.

The F-board has also come up with a plan

to better allocate money to clubs in order to reduce money.

First, the F-board plans on giving incentives to fiscally responsible clubs by giving them high priority over clubs that have spent their funds less wisely.

In addition, the F-Board has instituted a new fund-allocating mechanism, which will reduce the risk of rollover.

Club leaders used to have to request money every time they had an event and often over estimated the funds they needed. After the event, the unused money reverted back to F-board and became part of the rollover.

With the new mechanism, club leaders can request funds for multiple events at one time, thus ensuring that money that goes unspent on one event can then be spent on the next one.

Ha also advocated better financial education for club leaders, citing that he has already made a treasurers manual and treasurers packet and that the Office of the Treasurer website will now be updated “24/7.”

Ha also mentioned that the number of destination concept”—where instead of financial transactions rose dramatically this clubs having multiple on and off campus acyear from 1,459 last year to 2,928 this year. counts, all club funds would be handled by Because of this, Ha said, it is increasingly the office of the treasurer. important that the Office of the Treasurer, Ha also announced Student Sexuality Increated this year, be susformation Service and tained. Ha suggested Punk, Rock n’ Roll that in light of heavy [The Office of the Treasurer Club as the best finantreasurer turnover in the and the Student Union] have cially managed clubs five years prior to his year and thanked worked so hard not just for this tenture, Treasurer- elect Wallach and the rest of Max Wallach ’09 estab- me, but for the entire student the Office of the Trealish a chain of com- body. surer and the Student mand within the Office Union for helping him of the Treasurer for an in his time as treasurer.

--Choon Woo Ha ’08 interim treasurer.

“These people have Ha also mentioned always believed in what that the Office of the I did and been there for Treasurer will institute a new software pro- me—unless they skipped their office hours,” gram by the end of July in order to “con- he said. “They have sacrificed numerous solidate all financial management into one hours a week to ensure that finances run system.” smoothly. They have worked so hard not just This would help complete one of Ha’s for me, but for the entire student body.” goals as treasurer—what he calls the “one

April 11, 2008

NEWS

On Great Lawn, students speak out against campus injustices DEMONSTRATION (from p. 1)

stration, students stood with raised fists, holding signs with statements such as “bring the justice back to Brandeis,” “violations of our rights,” and “due process for Mamoon.” Some covered their faces with scarves or ski masks.

A printed statement disseminated beforehand via email and then at the event read “the demonstration today is in regards to an ongoing situation at Brandeis University. We are asking the student body to carefully consider these things: the removal of Palestinian Art, Nadia Kim, Gravity Magazine, Jimmy Carter, Donald Hindley, and Mamoon Darwish and consider the implications of the way the Administration and the student body has responded.”

“There’s a systemic problem on campus, where the community doesn’t feel its voice is being heard,” explained Ryan McElhaney ’10. “We are demonstrating to the university that we are standing for certain values.”

McElhaney spoke to the demonstrators about the silencing of student voices, while Senator for Racial Minorities Gabe Gaskins ’08, one of the event’s organizers, noted to the crowd that “this is probably the only time I’ve ever seen this scene at this campus center. This is a demonstration of student solidarity.”

Adriani Leon ’08 then spoke on the treatment of Prof. Hindley, asking “if a tenured professor is going to come under fire for something he is not, what can we expect for ourselves?”

Gaskins said afterwards that the demonstration could be a step toward more dialogue between students and the university administration.

“People were afraid that this would close dialogue and I couldn’t

PHOTO BY Max Shay/The Hoot

disagree more,” he explained. “I saw this as nothing more than a dialogue starter. The next step is finding a solution, and the solution will arise.”

Amanda Dentler (GRAD), another of the event’s organizers, explained that a meeting has been arranged with Vice President of Students and Enrollment Jean Eddy regarding Darwish’s case.

Other student reactions immediately after the demonstration touched on a variety of subjects, but were all positive.

“I think it was a powerful, effective protest,” said Student Union President Shreeya Sinha ’09, adding that “we really need the administration to hold forums and events so that students don’t feel the need to protest. People are graduating with the perception that a lot of suspicious things are happening on campus with process.”

“I’m really impressed by the outcome,” said McElhaney. “I think it definitely showed solidarity within the student movement.”

“It was very very good because we don’t have a lot of public displays of students sharing in their passion, because they’re worried about the consequences,” said TYP Senator Kamarin Lee ’11.

Like meeting new people? Interested in investigating the inner workings of Brandeis?

Ever wondered what Jehuda’s office looks like? Think your name belongs on the front page? Contact Alison Channon at achannon@ brandeis.edu to write for The Hoot.

However, Lee believes that more demonstrations may be necessary for the administration to fully receive the students’ message.

Meanwhile, Lisa Hanania ’11, who spoke to the demonstrators regarding her experience chartering the club Students for Justice in Palestine said “this makes us better activists. We can create an atmosphere that’s lacking here. This proves that we can work together, should work together.”

Dean of Student Life Rick Sawyer also had good things to say following the protest.

“I go to a lot of protests, and I’m always proud of our students,” he said. “I know deep down inside they really love the place.

“I thought it was pretty cool that it was on Open House day,” he added. “We like activists, we admit activists. It was ‘Deis students doing their thing.”

The day’s events concluded with a gathering in the Campus Center Atrium, at which students discussed the effectiveness of the demonstration.

“This turned out better than I thought it would,” said Leon. “If this amount of concerned students came out, I know there are many more out there.”

The Hoot 13

Gravel, students debate GRAVEL (from p. 1)

they would not be able to find a replacement venue.

Despite the three-hour postponement, Gravel spoke to a packed auditorium.

In a telephone interview with The Hoot Wednesday, Sen. Gravel explained why he agreed to come to Brandeis. “[With] Brandeis having a theme of social justice it seemed fitting [to speak there] as that’s the theme of my entire political career.”

The former Alaskan senator began his speech by clarifying that his decision to become a Libertarian didn’t mean he had changed his values. In the Senate, Gravel said, members of the Democratic Party had viewed him as a “maverick.”

During the question and answer session he stated that he had always been a “closet Libertarian” and he now “wants to be the standard bearer.” He emphasized that the party’s views on domestic and foreign policy more closely coincide with his own. Specifically, he mentioned the party’s belief in a citizen’s right to many personal freedoms and the view that the U.S. should end the war in Iraq. In an interview, Gravel said that his supporters have been encouraging in regards to his switch to the Libertarian Party and some had even become Libertarians.

Gravel described extensively in his speech his “National Initiative for Democracy,” a law and constitutional amendment, which would give people the power to create laws. He detailed how he gradually came to the realization that simply informing the people was not enough as they have no power.

In a democratic society, Gravel explained, power is lawmaking. Gravel, quoting Cicero, said, “Freedom is participation in power.”

A student posed the question, “What stops the majority from oppressing the minority?” Sen. Gravel replied, “nothing stops them.” He stated that a person should ask him or herself, “Do I have unreserved

faith in the people?” and that one should consider the alternative, of having “faith in the elite.” He claimed that states, which have initiative legislation such as California, are the best governed. He went on to say that the people in those states “have done as good a job as elected officials.”

Gravel criticized the other candidates running for the 2008 presidency, specifically Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain, for being “cowards,” “gutless,” “egotistical,” and “dishonest” in their campaigns. “Leaders that play it safe, you get their egos…they just want to live in the White House,” he said.

He stated that “politicians lie” and “power corrupts,” but included himself in that category.

“I’ve done it. I’ve walked in the mud with the best of them.” He described how when he was the Senator for Alaska he alienated his constituents, which was why he wasn’t re-elected.

When Gravel answered students questions, he seemed impassioned, but the discussion turned particularly heated when a student disagreed with Sen. Gravel’s criticism of Al Gore. Gravel stated that Gore had done much to inform the people on global warming, but only when he was out of office. A student thought that was an incorrect statement and contradicted the Senator, which sparked a tense debate. Sen. Gravel questioned the student about specific facts regarding global warming, which the student was able to answer. Although the Senator moved on to answer other students’ questions, he occasionally went back to the student who disagreed with him on Gore.

After the event Sen. Gravel stayed to take pictures with students and sign copies of his book Citizen Power: A Mandate for Change.

Gravel stated, in an interview, that if he is not elected president, then he would spend the rest of his live advocating the “National Initiative for Democracy” and trying to empower the people.

Darwish wins first appeal APPEAL (from p. 1)

Board of Student Conduct] or if they would like an administrator to determine the outcome. If a student doesn’t return their choice of action, they’re found responsible by default,” Lamarre explained.

A student can still have a hearing if he or she claims responsible in order to determine the sanctions imposed, she said. A student can furthermore file an appeal with the Board of Appeals if he or she believes the sanctions unfitting, Paternostro said.

Tuesday’s hearing concerned the ‘alleged incident.’ Cohen wrote, “The Board dismissed the charges and Mamoon was found not responsible.”

Darwish is still suspended, said Cohen. “We will be working diligently in the next week to get Mamoon back on campus,” she added.

The Board of Appeal’s dismissal of the first charge throws Darwish’s suspension into question, said Paternostro. When his case was heard for the first time, with both charges as part of the same

hearing, Darwish was given probation for each offense, explained Paternostro. “Double probation equals suspension,” he said.

“The way he’s been suspended is not valid because it’s based off double probation,” Paternostro stated.

Lamarre explained, “physical altercations or assaults on most campuses, including this one, result in some type of suspension.”

The Board of Appeals will meet today to discuss Darwish’s appeal for the fight case before him, Cohen explained. “If they decided that Mamoon’s rights were violated, that there is new evidence, that there was procedural error or that fraud occurred during the disciplinary process, the Board will grant Mamoon a new hearing and the fight case will be reheard,” wrote Cohen in her e-mail.

She continued, “a new hearing can be granted for the fight case only if the Board of Appeals believes that the four criteria above have been violated. If the Board decides to grant Mamoon a new hearing, it is up to [Assistant Direc-

tor of Student Life] Maggie Balch and the Office of Student Life to schedule a new hearing.”

Darwish commented, “hopefully the favorable outcome [of the first appeal] will carry over to my next appeal and find that [Director of Student Development and Conduct Erika Lamarre used old, nonrelated charges to greatly manipulate USBC and ultimately worsen my case on faulty allegations.”

In recent weeks, students have expressed concern over the fairness of Darwish’s hearing and appeals process. Darwish himself alleged that he was denied due process in a Facebook note. Students organized a demonstration Thursday protesting Darwish’s treatment along with other grievances.

“This process is fair,” said Lamarre, “if anything, we err on the side of the accused student.”

“So many of the details of the process or the incident itself,” as described on Facebook, student blogs, and in the student media, are “inaccurate or outright false,” said Lamarre, “it’s difficult to see because I can’t correct it.”

14

April 11, 2008

The Hoot

SPORTS

Men’s, Women’s Track begin seasons at Stonehill Skyhawk Track and Field Invitational Men finish 10th and Women finish 8th against strong competition

BY JORDAN ROTHMAN Editor

The Men’s and Women’s Track and Field teams opened up their spring season this past Saturday as they competed at the Stonehill Skyhawk Track and Field Invitational.

The weather was cold and damp throughout much of the day, but the Judges had relatively good individual performances nonetheless.

The men eventually claimed tenth place of the twelve teams competing at the meet on Saturday. The competition was strong and included such squads as Boston College and Northeaster University. The women were able to fare somewhat better. They finished in 8th place out of the 11 teams competing on the women’s side this Saturday.

The men performed well both in the sprints and the longer distance events. Co-Captain Patrick Gregoire ’09 was able to place in the top ten in both the 100-meter and 200-meter events, putting the Judges on the scoreboard in the short sprints. Teammate Ned Crowley ’10 also fared well in the 400-meter event as he finished in less than 52 seconds to

place 4th in the event. Brandeis had a strong showing in the 1500-meter event as Matt Jennings ’09, Mike Stone ’09, and Ben Bray ’11 all finished around 4:05 minutes to place 6th, 7th and 8th respectively. Freshman Dan Anastos ’11 competed in the 10k event and was able to place first. He finished with a time of 15 minutes and 38 seconds, a full 12 seconds ahead of his closest opponent. He also claimed the arena record in the event as this was the first home meet at Stonehill’s new track stadium. The team got disqualified in the 4 by 100-meter event, but still had a strong showing on the track to bring them to a 10th place finish among the strong competition.

The women also did well this past weekend at their season opener on Saturday. In the sprints, Olivia Alford ’08 was able to place 4th in the 400-meter event, finishing with a time of just over 60 seconds. First year Marie Lemay ’11 had a great finish in the 800-meter run, placing fifth with a time of 2 minutes and 22 seconds. Teammate Grayce Selig ’11 almost broke her personal record in the 1500 meter run; she finished

with a time of 4 minutes and 56 seconds, enough to place 3rd overall in the event.

Katy Agule ’09 was also able to place fifth in the 3-kilometer steeplechase, an event that combines a track run, hurdles, and jumping over a water ditch each lap. She placed fifth with a time just under 12 minutes. In the jumps, Suzanne Bernier ’10 and Bessie Bianco ’08 both placed fifth with a jump of just under 5 feet. Desiree Murphy ‘10 also put the Judges on the map in the throwing events with a third place finish in the discus.

She finished with a hurl of just under 113 feet, ranking high among the 16 competitors in the event. The women exhibited strength at the meet this past Saturday.

Teammates had mixed comments about their performance this Saturday. “As the meet this past weekend was our first competition of the outdoor season, I feel that we showed pretty solidly,” explained Co-Captain Katy Agule ’09 about the recent competition. She also saw the Stonehill Invitational as a warm-up for later competitions. “With a few more workouts, I think that we should running a lot better once the championship

season rolls around starting with UAAs in 2 weeks.” She also said that the team’s next meet “at UMass-Lowell should give us one more time to race well before UAAs. I think we’re all very excited about our potential for this season as we are all feeling pretty strong.”

Teamate Marie Lemay ’11 described the recent competition in her own words.

“Overall, the meet was pretty laidback,” said Lemay. She continued by saying, “We were looking to get comfortable, to get our first meet out of the way so we would be ready to perform when it really mattered. The weather held out, so everyone was able to have solid performances.”

The Judges will travel to the UMass-Lowell Invitational next weekend before going to the UAA Championships the weekend after that. This competition served as a prep meet for the squads so that they can get ready for future competitions that are just around the corner.

BY JOSH GELLER Staff

est center in New York Knicks history. After a tremendous collegiate career at Georgetown, the Knicks won the rights to Ewing in the first ever NBA draft lottery. Ewing revitalized the struggling franchise and made it a perennial contender. He may not have won an MVP, a championship, or a scoring title, but he scored 20 points per game for 13 straight season and was a premier defender as well. It is fitting that Ewing goes into the Hall with the coach who brought him to the 1994 Finals.

Hakeem Olajuwon was a tremendous center for many years in the NBA. He is intertwined with Michael Jordan in two major ways. First, Michael Jordan was drafted third in the 1985 draft. Everybody remembers Sam Bowie, who failed to produce after being taken second. But nobody brings up that #1 pick, because that was Olajuwon.

Second, Jordan won 6 championships over the course of 8 years in the 1990’s. Olajuwon won the other two, one against Ewing. Playing all but one season for Houston, he averaged 22 points, 11 rebounds, and 3 blocks a game. And who could forget the Dream Shake?

Vitale has been a premier college basketball sportscaster and analyst for over thirty years. Dantley was a six-time all-star who led the league in scoring twice while stabilizing Utah Jazz basketball in the 1980’s. Davidson has owned the Detroit Pistons for 34 years, buying the team from the original owner in 1974. Cathy Rush is a basketball coach.¬

Men’s Baseball Riley, Ewing, Olajuwon, four others elected to defeats Tufts, loses Basketball Hall of Fame slugfest with WPI

BY ZACHARY ARONOW Staff

Brandeis baseball went through a busy burst of baseball, with two road games back to back. It was a chance for boom and bust, and they ended up walking out of it with a “boust” if you will. Brandeis triumphed over Tufts 3-2 but could not out-slug WPI on the 9th, failing to protect a fragile lead in the last inning and falling 13-12.

Pitching and defense were not in style in Worcester as both sides combined for 30 total hits and eight errors (WPI surviving six of them). A home run by Drake Livada ’10 and RBI’s from James Likis ’10 and Artie Posch ‘10 gave the Judges a 3-1 lead, but WPI hammered rookie southpaw Justin Duncombe ’11, who had been called into relief for starter Craig Letendre ’08, for two home runs in the bottom of the third to take a one run lead.

From there on, no lead was safe as Brandeis climbed back from a three run deficit and took advantage of three Engineer errors in the seventh to claim a 10-8 lead. WPI designated hitter Mike Swanton immediately took the lead away with his second homer of the game off Kyle Ritchie ’10 to tie it up, but the Judges took a 12-10 lead thanks RBI’s from Dave Almeida ’09 and Pat Nicholson ’11.

The Engineers cut it to one going into the last inning where a costly throwing error by Livada set the tables for Mark Dignum to end it with a walk-off two-run single to left field.

Appearing in the final two-thirds of the inning, Pat Nicholson took the loss, surrendering two runs on two hits, none of them earned. WPI used four pitchers to Brandeis’s six; Brian Duncan claimed the victory for

with 1.2 innings of scoreless relief pitching.

Both teams feasted on the pitching with WPI clean up hitter Scott McNee outdoing Swanton’s two home runs by launching three out of the yard. Rookie Tony Deshler ’11 had a strong day at the plate for Brandeis, going 45 with a solo home run in the fourth.

The hitting clinic was a stark contrast to the tight game played the day before at Tufts as Drake Livada’s solo shot in the last inning broke the 2-2 tie and gave the Judges their tenth victory of the season.

Livada also scored Brandeis’s first run after reaching base on an infield single; he was brought home three batters later on Nicholson’s RBI single. Catcher Artie Posch ’10 gave the Judges the lead after being balked home. Tufts tied it up in the fifth but left two stranded.

Pat Nicholson got the win, throwing 3.1 shut out innings of relief following starter Drew Brzozowski ’10. Both pitchers had three strikeouts. Jumbos’ reliever Jack Dilday took the loss, Livada’s home run being the only major blemish in three innings of relief pitching.

With the split, the Judges are now 10-8 and return to home action today, hosting Bridgewater State at 3:30 pm. Brandeis then plays Jack Kerouac and goes on the road, taking on Keene State on April 13th, Suffolk University on the 15th, and Johnson and Wales on the 17th. Keene State is a 1 pm game, and the others are at 3:30.

The Brandeis baseball team has shown themselves to be capable of many things.

This upcoming swing should tell us whether this team sustains success on the road, a trait that separates the champs from the alsorans.

This past Monday, the Basketball Hall of Fame announced seven new members to be inducted this September. The cast of the seven to be enshrined may be one of the deepest in recent memory. The seven are Pat Riley, Patrick Ewing, Hakeem Olajuwon, Dick Vitale, Adrian Dantley, Bill Davidson, and Cathy Rush.

Pat Riley enters the Hall of Fame after a solid career as a bench player and a superstar coach. Riley was marked for fame after being one of two star players for Kentucky’s 1966 team that lost in the NCAA Finals to Texas Western, depicted in the movie Glory Road.

Riley was then a backup on the Los Angeles Lakers in 1972 when they won their first title after leaving Minneapolis. For the 1982 season, he became the Lakers’ head coach, a position he held for 9 years and four NBA Championships. While there, he developed such players like Magic Johnson, Byron Scott, James Worthy, and A.C. Green. Then he moved to the New York Knicks for four years, including their 1994 trip to the NBA Finals. He has spent the last 13 seasons with the Miami Heat as coach and team president.

With acquisitions of Alonzo Mourning and Dwayne Wade, Riley has greatly shaped the Heat franchise. Overall, Riley has won 5 championships, coached 21 playoff teams, and has won the third most games of any coach in NBA history.

Patrick Ewing has been called the great-

Visit www.thehoot.net to listen to The Hoot’s weekly sports panel

April 11, 2008

SPORTS

Softball sweeps pair of doubleheaders, allows three runs in four games

BY ZACHARY ARONOW Staff

Hall of Fame baseball manager Earl Weaver famously eschewed small ball in favor of “Mr. Longball”, the home run. In their most recent home match up, the Brandeis Judges softball squad took that to heart as home runs from Chelsea Korp ’10 and Melissa Kager ’11 helped power a 10-1 victory and double-header sweep over visiting Suffolk. Strong pitching also paid a role as Kaitlin Streilin ’08 surrendered only two hits in a nail-biting 1-0 victory earlier in the day.

Game One proved to be a pitcher’s duel with Streilin scoring the only the run she needed in the bottom of the second, coming home on Samantha Worth’s RBI single.

The Judges had more opportunities to score, but Suffolk starter Jess Ferreira worked her way through the jams and helped strand six in the complete game she pitched.

The Rams, however, had no answer for Streilin, who found seven to be a truly lucky number – seven innings, seven strikeouts, and her seventh win of the season.

Any ideas that the second game would be a similar affair were quickly dashed as Suffolk scored in the first. Brandeis’s first three batters had two doubles and a firstpitch home run fromChelsea Korp in that order. Catcher Erin Ross ’10 had an RBI triple later in the inning and was brought home on a single by rookie Danielle Lavallee ’11. After picking up a run in the second, a grand slam by rookie Melissa Kager allowed Brandeis to end the game two innings later thanks to the eight run margin rule.

“I wasn’t in the first game, so coming into the second game I knew I had to come off strong.

Being the lead off hitter, I have to get things started for our team,” Kager explained. About the home run, she added, “You always have to be aggressive, and she gave me a good pitch to hit.”

Brandeis Coach Jessica Johnson added about the rookie, “She’s a kid who does it all, she can lay down the bunt or she can go over the fence for four runs; so that’s what we expect out of her even though she’s a freshman. She knows that and she handles it well.”

Allie Mussen ’10 kept the game out of reach on the mound, going four innings and surrendering only one run and one hit. Emily Vaillette ’10 finished with an inning of shut out relief, coughing up only one hit.

The double header sweep is Brandeis’s fourth victory in a row following an unusual double header on April 8th that saw the Judges triumph over Lasell College 2-0 and come from behind to defeat Trinity College (Conn.) 5-2.

First baseman Courtney Kelley ’11 provided both runs against Lasell with a suicide squeeze in the third inning and a home run in the sixth. Natalie Volpe ’08 earned the win, going six innings and mowing down the Lasers with seven strike outs, and Mussen earned the save with a shutout inning and added two K’s of her own. Picking up the loss was Alexandra Shackford of Lasell; she surrendered one run in four innings pitched.

Trinity proved to be a tough foe of their own as the Bantams opened the scoring with a solo

blast from centerfielder Jessica Tait. The Judges, however, finally got through pitcher Gabrielle Sergi, loading the bases for Erin Ross who responded with a two out, bases clearing double that proved to be the game winner. Ross would later drive in the final run of the game with an RBI double in the sixth while Trinity could only claw out one more run.

“She [Ross] definitely made the adjustment from the first game to the second game,” Coach Johnson stated. “She was pulling her head out quite a bit so she made sure that she was seeing the ball off the bat and she came through, actually had four of our five RBI’s.”

Kate Streilein went the distance for Brandeis on the mound, giving up two runs on five hits and getting five strikeouts. Trinity pitcher Sergi was charged with only one earned run and also picked up five strikeouts.

“She does it all,” Coach Johnson said about Streilein, “and she’s supposed to do it all. She knows that, the team knows that, so it’s her job, and she gets it done for the most part… Overall it was a full team effort, a lot of kids did a lot of different things that really got us both wins. It was one through 16 which was nice, just the way we like it.”

Brandeis’s long stretch continues with Amherst College coming to visit this afternoon at 4 pm, and they next take on Salve Regina on April 12th at noon. The Judges then get a few days of rest before returning to action on April 15th as they take on Smith College in a home doubleheader starting at 4 pm before hitting the road on April 16th as guests of MIT at 3pm.

The Hoot 15

NHL playoff preview: Bruins face daunting task against top seed Canadians

BY JOSH GELLER Staff

It’s April, which means it’s time for warmer weather and sunny skies. Well, everywhere but in 16 arenas in North America, where the hockey season is getting colder for the playoffs. Sixteen teams, spread out from Boston to San Jose and from Washington to Calgary, will fight for Lord Stanley’s Cup and bragging rights for the rest of their lives. If we’re lucky, we’ll even see a brawl.

The match up the majority of readers will care about is the hometown Boston Bruins taking on the Montreal Canadians. Montreal earned the #1 seed with the best record in the conference. But that is not the only adversity that the Bruins must overcome. All-star center Marc Savard is still hurting from back problems stemming from a hit he received the last time these two teams faced off. Forward Chuck Kobasew has a broken leg from a shot by teammate Zdeno Chara a few weeks ago. The defensive corps are still hurting. There is some hope on the horizon as one of the team’s stars, Patrice Bergeron, has been cleared for full-contact practice after sustaining a devastating concussion back in October and is only a matter of days away

from returning. The team played their first game Thursday and play twice more this weekend.

There are three other match ups for the Eastern Conference. One pits the New Jersey Devils against the New York Rangers. The two teams are bitter rivals from across the Hudson River. The Rangers won the first game, defeating superstar goalie Martin Brodeur. The #2 seeded Pittsburgh Penguins look to defeat the Ottawa Senators after Ottawa won a series between the same teams in last year’s playoffs.

Pittsburgh won the first game. The red-hot Washington Capitals take on the Philadelphia Flyers in the final match up. Washington won 11 of their last 12 games and may be the team to beat in the Eastern Conference.

In the west, the Detroit Red Wings will take on the Nashville Predators. Detroit was the team with the best record in the NHL and should make the Stanley Cup finals. The #2 seed San Jose Sharks will take on the Calgary Flames.

Calgary won the first game on San Jose’s home ice. The Minnesota Wild will take on the Colorado Avalanche. Colorado won the first game. The Anaheim Ducks will take on the Dallas Stars in the final Western match up.

'Deis Board: Baseball

4-6: Springfield 5 - Brandeis 3 4-6: Brandeis 5 - Springfield 3 4-8: Brandeis 3 - Tufts 2 4-9: WPI 13 - Brandeis 12

Golf

4-7: 7th place at Babson College Invitational

Softball

4-8: Brandeis 5 - Trinity (Conn.) 2 4-8: Brandeis 2 - Lasell 0 4-9: Brandeis 1 - Suffolk 0 4-9: Brandeis 10 - Suffolk 1 4-10: Brandeis 14 - UMass-Boston 0 4-10: Brandeis 9 - UMass-Boston 0

Men’s Tennis

4-5: Trinity 7 - Brandeis 1 4-6: Amherst 8 - Brandeis 1

Women’s Tennis

4-5: Tufts 5 - Brandeis 2 4-10: Wellesley 9 - Brandeis 0

PHOTO BY Zachary Aronow/The Hoot

SOFTBALL: Carly Shmand ‘11 hits against Suffolk University.

CORRECTION: Last week’s article about the women’s tennis match vs.

Roger Williams stated that the contest was an away match for Brandeis.

The match was played at Brandeis.

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April 11, 2008

The Hoot

WEEKEND FUN Spotlight on Boston

BU Spectrum Arts Festival '08 Saturday, April 12, 2008, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

The Prudential Center, Boston

Love Aerosmith? Joe Perry? See his kids perform at the opening night of Boston University’s Spring Arts Festival. His sons formed the band TAB in early 2007 and it has already received some critical acclaim. TAB turns classical rock on its head. Love in Stockholm, a BU student-based band, will perform. Free for everyone.

For more information visit http://www.bu.edu/cfa/spec-

First Annual Bookish Ball

Saturday, April 12, 2008, 3 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Harvard Square, Cambridge

Are you a bookworm? Have you checked out the latest Tom Clancy in the “pleasure reading” section of Goldfarb library?

If you answered yes, then you should go to this “Community Celebration of the Bookstores of Harvard Square.” On Saturday, participating bookstores, newsstands, and comic bookstores will have author readings, performances, music, and refreshments.

For more information visit http://www.harvardsquare.com/

What's going on at Brandeis?

Disorderly Conduct

PHOTO BY Napoleon Lherisson/The Hoot

Friday and Saturday, April 11 and April 12, 2008, 8 p.m.

Carl J. Shapiro Theater

Isn’t it a crime to be this funny? Boris’ Kitchen’s sketch comedy show of thievery, piracy, murder, social injustice, and swear words, will make you laugh so hard that it’s practically a felony.

EarthFest '08

Sunday, April 13, 2008, 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Rapaporte Treasure Hall

Do you want to be part of the “green revolution”? Do you like having some green (money)? U.S. Rep. Edward Markey will speak about the profitability of sustainability in this main event of EarthFest ’08. After his speech there will be refreshments and then a panel discussing economic opportunity and the green revolution.

Culture X 2008: Under Construction

Saturday, April 12, 2008, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Spingold Theater

Come see “identities at work.” Enjoy this celebration of Brandeis’ multicultural community with performances of dance, rap, music and poetry. Tickets are free for Brandeis students, but seating is reserved, so make sure you stop by Spingold’s Box Office to pick up a ticket (10 a.m. to 4 p.m.). There’s a free after party at Sherman Function Hall following Culture X, featuring a battle between two DJs. Get your dance on.

PHOTO BY Napoleon Lherisson/The Hoot

Judge B. Owl

By Ian Price

Insert Comic Here

By Anthony Scibelli