The Brandeis Hoot - 9-04-09

VOL 6, NO. 2

SEPTEMBER 4, 2009

University starts interviews for new SVP of Communications

BY ARIEL WITTENBERG Editor

The university began conducting interviews on Wednesday to fill the position of Senior Vice President for Communications, in the hopes of finding a replacement for Lorna Miles by the end of the fall.

The position was vacated when, in June, Miles left the university to work for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. Since Miles’ absence, the Office of Communications has reported to the office of Peter French, the executive vice president and chief operating officer for the university.

The university received 25 applications, and narrowed the pool down to three finalists, the first of which was interviewed Wednesday at five p.m., university President Jehuda Reinharz said at a faculty meeting yesterday afternoon. The Faculty Senate Council, a student panel, senior administrators, Reinharz, and the Board of Trustees conducted the first interview, French said in an e-mail message to The Hoot.

The other two candidates will be interviewed next week.

French would not name any of the candidates being interviewed.

“With any search process there is a need for strict confidentiality with regard to the disclosure of specific candidate information,” he wrote.

Sydney Reuben ‘10, one of seven members of the student panel interviewing candidates, said the student panel was instructed to keep information confidential.

The student panel was not told how many candidates they would be interviewing.

“We received a very large number of applications from an array of impressive and extremely qualified candidates,” French wrote.

The student panel was given a packet at the beginning of their interview with the candidate’s resumé and a job description for the Senior Vice President of Communications.

Of the first candidate, Reuben said, “she was very qualified.”

“I felt very involved in the process,” Reuben said, adding that after the interview, panel members submitted written comments to Arlene Carey, French’s chief of staff.

French would not say exactly how the panel’s comments would factor in the final decision, but did say that “the opinions of the members of the student panel will be considered in the decision making process.”

IN THIS ISSUE:

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

From canvases to copy machines:

BY ARIEL WITTENBERG Editor

Thousands of Rose docs restricted since May, suggesting early intention to sell art.

PHOTO BY Max Shay/The Hoot

CANVAS TO COPIES: The Lee Gallery, once occupied by works of art, now houses a lone Xerox machine.

The copier is being used as part of the process to restrict access to documents pertaining to the Rose Art Museum.

Though the Rose Art Museum officially reopened in July, the Lee Gallery at the Museum has been empty of art since May 17. The gallery that used to house vibrant works of art now acts as a waiting room for over 7,000 documents pertaining to the Museum’s artwork.

The documents are waiting to be copied by a Xerox machine - now the gallery’s sole occupant - before before they are transfered to Brandeis’ Office of the General Council, where they will be reviewed by the university’s lawyers in preparation for a lawsuit filed against the university in July.

But the university’s May decision to restrict access to all materials related to the Rose Art Museum may signify university administrators are more willing to sell the museum’s collection than they previously admitted.

The university’s counsel is “currently engaging in a thorough review of all [the university’s] documents pertaining to the Museum” in preparation for the lawsuit filed by three Rose benefactors, university General Counsel Judith Sizer wrote in an e-mail message to The Hoot explaining the restriction.

In reality, the lawsuit, which was filed by Meryl Rose, Jonathan Lee, and Lois Foster in order to obtain a court injunction preventing the university from closing the Rose Art Museum or selling its collection, was filed on July 27, a full two months after the documents were restricted.

Meryl Rose, who is a member of the muSee ROSE DOCS, p. 3

Redesigned website live, but not integrated

BY ROBIN LICHTENSTEIN Staff

The new Brandeis undergraduate recruiting website has been accessible online since Friday Aug. 28. The website is a result of recommendations made by the Curriculum and Academic Restructuring Steering Committee (CARS) Admissions and Recruiting Subcommittee in a report last spring.

Currently, the new website stands on its own at www.brandeis.edu/areas. Eventually, the new site will be accessible from the Brandeis homepage, www.brandeis.edu, explained Ken Gornstein, assistant vice president of communications, in an e-mail message to The Hoot.

The new site is made up of 95 percent new material and was conceived and built over the course of six months with the help of several dozen faculty members, administrators, professional staff and students, Gornstein wrote.

Faculty members and professional staff in the Office of Communications wrote most of the content, and the site build-out was done under the auspices of the Department of Web Services and Library and Technology Services “It was an all hands on deck effort,” Di-

Mourning the loss of the Liberal Lion Impressions, page 6

rector of Integrated Marketing Audrey Griffin said.

Griffin said the site could have taken up to 12 months to build, but “all the moving parts came together. Everyone on every team really rallied and came together and did it.”

In their initial report, the CARS Admissions and Recruiting subcommittee, a group of nine students, administrators and professors, expressed the need for a new website that better relayed the core values of a Brandeis education. “[The website] was doing a poor job of communicating who we are, what we do, and why students should come here,” the report said.

The last web redesign was in early 2008 and involved a complete makeover of Brandeis web presence to make the website more user friendly, and to allow faculty

Flaming Lips graces Boston with its presence Diverse City, page 8

Screen shot

and staff to keep with university branding standards and more easily update content, explained Gorstein.

The committee identified three elements, “Community,” “Opportunity,” and “Social Justice” as well as eight additional themes they felt “organize and highlight the undergraduate curriculum, while emphasizing See WEBSITE, p. 3

AUDIO @ THEHOOT.NET Tech Talk: iPODS, pizza machines, Stephen Colbert, space, and more Off the Beaten Path: Stumbling out of Grendel’s Den.

2 The Hoot

September 4, 2009

N E W S

Court sets date for Rose motion hearing

BY ARIEL WITTENBERG Editor

Almost three months after three Rose Art Museum benefactors filed a lawsuit against the university, lawyers for both sides will finally see the inside of a courtroom at a motion hearing to be held Oct. 13.

The motions, one filed by the university to dismiss the suit and the other filed by the plaintiffs for a preliminary injunction on the sale of any museum art, will be heard in Suffolk Probate Court.

The suit, filed July 27, is the plaintiff ’s response to university President Jehuda Reinharz’s January announcement that the university Board of Trustees authorized the closing of the Rose Art Museum and the sale of its art.

The plaintiffs are suing the university for a court issued injunction that would prevent the university from closing the museum and selling its artwork.

At the time the suit was filed, university outside counsel Thomas Reilly wrote a statement calling the suit “frivolous and without merit,” and said the university “look[s] forward to aggressively defending our position in court.”

Now, Reilly has filed a motion to dismiss the case, which, if granted will quash any hope the plaintiffs

Actions imply intent to sell art ROSE DOCS (from p. 1)

PHOTO BY Max Shay/The Hoot

have of preventing its closure.

“If they win that, we’re done,” Jonathan Lee, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said.

The plaintiff ’s motion, on the other hand, seeks a preliminary injunction, which would prevent the university from closing the museum and selling the artwork for the entire duration of the suit.

Lee said the lawsuit was the plaintiff ’s last resource in convincing the university to leave the museum open.

“Nobody sues universities, but

By Alex Schneider

what they are doing is so bad in and of itself, and for the university, that we had no other choice,” Lee said, citing the media firestorm that followed Reinharz’s January announcement that the university was considering closing the museum.

If the judge does not grant the defense’s motion to dismiss the suit, the process of discovery will begin. During discovery, both sides are required to disclose documents pertinent to the suit, regardless of whether the docu-

ments help or hurt them. Additionally, each side will have to provide a witness list.

At that time, the university may be compelled by the court to turn over currently restricted documents to the plaintiff ’s lawyers, and a trial date may be set.

The trial date may be months or years in the future, however, as is often the case in civil lawsuits.

As Lee said in an interview, “lawsuits are choreographed dances.”

seum’s Board of Overseers and a plaintiff in the suit, said the concept that the documents were being reviewed for the suit “is a complete and total lie.”

“How would they know we were going to sue? They were planning to sell,” she said.

Many of the documents in question outline donor intent of corresponding works of art, and would be crucial in determining if the university is legally able to sell individual pieces. Other restricted documents deal with the intent of donors who helped build the Rose, which is an underlying issue in the current suit against the university.

Either way, the notion that the university was moving ahead with plans to sell artwork in May is incongruous with the events of last spring.

Reinharz retracted his statement about selling the museum’s art in a Jan. 28 town hall meeting in which he said “we have no particular mandate from the Board [of Trustees] as to when to sell or how to sell.”

“Nothing impels me, nothing impels us, to do anything,” he said.

Eight days later, at a student press conference, Reinharz reiterated that the university was not required to sell the art and that it would only do so if it was financially necessary, saying “The Board never talked about selling the collection, they gave us the option to sell.”

Then in March, Provost Marty Krauss instated a Future of the Rose Committee in order alleviate community concern that the university was planning to sell the museum’s art.

Sizer denied that the university’s review and restriction of Rose-related museum records, library archives, and internal university records, had anything to do with preparations on the part of the university to sell artwork from the Rose.

Sizer also denied that the university’s May restriction was made in anticipation of a lawsuit.

Full access to Rose-related documents, which are now being housed in the Office of the General Counsel, will be reinstated when the university has finished its review process, Sizer wrote in her e-mail; however, Sizer would not give a date.

The university’s restriction of the Rose materials also applies to the plaintiffs of the lawsuit.

While Jonathan Lee, Director of the Board of Overseers of the Rose and a co-plaintiff in the case, said the restriction does not hinder the plaintiff ’s case, he did say, “we may have to get a subpoena further down the road, if the university does not cooperate in the future.”

NEWS

September 4, 2009

The Hoot 3

Website redesigned to give prospective students fuller view of Brandeis WEBSITE (from p. 1)

our strengths.”

“We needed to get these themes accessible for the 16 and 17 year olds that will be looking at these sites” said Griffin of the theme’s integration with the new site. “We had an existing template in the new content management system that lent itself extremely well to showcasing the three values.”

The CARS report also identified eight themes, or areas of study, that would represent a new aspect of recruitment efforts.

The themes, “Physical and Computational Sciences,” “A Global University,” “Health and Society,” “The Humanities: Reason and Imagination,” “Jewish Studies,” “Justice and Public Life,” “Visual and Performing Arts,” and “Preparation for Professional Life,” were

all given their own page on the new site. Each page features a section for each of the elements and profiles t h e staff, s t u dents, a n d alumni w h o were or are involved in the departments a n d programs that fall under each theme.

“The architecture and content of the site was jointly decided by a committee comprising members

We

from the Department of Web Services, undergraduate admissions, and the CARS Subcommittee on Admiss i o n s and Recruiting” said Gornstein.

Dean Jaffe sent out a series of e-mails over the summer to keep faculty informed and involved. “A total of three e-mails went out as each site was finished. The faculty [were] able to view and react and post comments to a discussion

needed to get these themes accessible for the 16 and 17 year olds that will be looking at these sites.

- Audrey Griffen

board,” said Griffin.

This remodel was conducted in two phases. The first defined the areas of study, listing the majors and minors and giving examples of jobs held by Brandeis graduates of a given program or major.

Phase two focused on integrating the marketing themes created

by CARS into the eight areas of study. The page is the first of its kind with regards to the Brandeis web presence explained Griffin.

The top menu bar of the page is not found in any other Brandeis page layout. “You can get to each site [for the themes] by clicking,” explained Griffin. Most of the Brandeis site use side bar navigation and it is not as easy to jump between different sites.

Additionally, the color scheme introduced on the new site, each

theme having its own color, has been integrated into other admissions and recruiting material.

Griffin explained that the new viewbook, the booklet given to high school students containing pictures and fast facts, reflects the new themes and the look of the new website.

The ultimate goal is to revitalize the Brandeis homepage. According to Griffin, the picture on the homepage of three students walking through a fall-hued campus will be replaced with a new movie, which will link to the new site. But for the time being, they will take measures to make the new site more visible from the Brandeis home page and other areas of the Brandeis site. Places that “make sense from a strategic standpoint,” said Gornstein.

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4 The Hoot

September 4, 2009

E D I TO R I A L

Litigation would vindicate detractors

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

Alison Channon Editor in Chief Ariel Wittenberg News Editor Bret Matthew Impressions Editor Chrissy Callahan Features Editor Hannah Vickers Sports Editor Alex Schneider Layout Editor Jodi Elkin Layout Editor Max Shay Photography Editor Leon Markovitz Business Editor Vanessa Kerr Business Editor Danielle Gewurz Copy Editor Max Price Diverse City Editor Samantha Shokin Diverse City Editor Senior Editors Sri Kuehnlenz, Kathleen Fischmann

FOUNDED BY

Leslie Pazan, Igor Pedan and Daniel Silverman

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

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

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

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

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

Our mission is to give every community member a voice.

Letter to the Editor

Forget the bookstore, use Interlibrary Loan Upon reading Chrissy Callahan’s article, “Books for classes: Less is more,” (Aug. 28, 2009) I am surprised to find that the most convenient alternative to book-buying is not mentioned at all: Interlibrary Loan.

This process is fairly simple, and it allows you to obtain your textbooks from the library without being tied to reading them in the library.

How does this work? Start at the LTS website, and click “Find Books and More.”

From here you will see a link for “Other Library Catalogs,” and then World Cat. Simply search for your textbook, click on the title, and press “Get it.”

If Brandeis has a copy, make sure to make a note that our copy is checked out or you need it for more than the 2 hours that reserves allows (only if this is true, of course!).

The ILL department will order your book and deliver it to the main library for a loan period of about a month. Note, however, that you need to order it early - the process can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.

While this is not a viable alternative for textbooks that are used throughout the semester, I have found it very useful for those books that we only read and discuss for a short period of time. If you’re never going to use a book again, why buy it when you can get it from the library?

-Dev Singer ’11

O

n Oct. 13, the university will find itself in Probate Court facing the ire of three Rose Art Museum benefactors. The benefactors, who filed suit against the university in July, are seeking an injunction preventing the sale of the museum’s art. The university is hoping the suit will be dismissed.

If the Rose benefactors are successful, and the court refuses to dismiss the case, it is in the university’s best interest to settle with the plaintiffs.

While the university’s outside counsel Thomas Reilly has dismissed the suit as “frivolous” and has expressed

determination to fight it “aggressively,” to do so would only further damage our national reputation.

Last January, after President Jehuda Reinharz announced that the Board of Trustees had authorized the closing of the museum and the sale of its artwork, our university’s formerly good name was dragged through the mud in local and national publications alike.

We were decried as philistines who looked at a Warhol and saw only dollar signs. The university administration was understandably horrified by our vilification in the press, and took pains (and spent money) to reverse the damage.

If Reinharz and the university’s counsel choose litigation over settlement as Reilly has indicated, they are not only agreeing to the possibility of years of court battles, and the wasting of hundreds of thousands of dollars, they are sending the message that the university’s detractors were in fact correct.

The public relations finessing we saw over the last eight months, would be for naught. Pursuing the lawsuit would broadcast once and for all that the cultural and educational value of the Rose Art Museum’s collection is lost on the university’s administration.

The importance of thinking before speaking

T

his week, the university began interviewing candidates to fill former Senior Vice President of Communications Lorna Miles’ vacancy. Though it would save the university a substantial sum to leave the position empty, the financial gain would not offset the potential disaster a vacancy might cause.

With the possibility of litigation on the horizon with a lawsuit from Rose Art Museum benefactors, the university can ill afford to be with-

out a communications expert on staff. Certainly, the presence of such a person did not prevent the public relations debacle that was the Rose Art Museum, but matters would certainly have been worse had President Jehuda Reinharz been entirely on his own.

Hopefully, the new hire will learn from the mistakes of last semester and will enable us to make a fresh start in our relations with the local and national press.

A new communications vice

president must not be willing to fall back on the discourse of misunderstanding and miscommunication that Reinharz employed last spring.

If the university is to rehabilitate its image once and for all, the new communications vice president must not simply be present for damage control, but must be active in shaping the messages we send to the world. Communications should not fix what is broken in our message.

It is time for the university to think before it speaks.

The Hoot 5

September 4, 2009

IMPRESSIONS Book of Matthew

The Clearing of a Rainbow

BY BRET MATTHEW Editor

For 26 years, host LeVar Burton of PBS’s “Reading Rainbow” used his show to do what some would consider difficult, if not downright impossible in this increasingly technology-soaked world—teach children the joy of reading.

First aired in 1983, the show’s episodes had a simple, but reliable pattern.

Each one featured a children’s book chosen in accordance with a certain theme, which was then narrated by a celebrity guest and accompanied by animations. After the story was finished, Burton would embark on a journey of his own, introducing the viewer to real people whose stories and occupations corresponded with the show’s theme. Then, at the end of the show, Burton would have several children appear and recommend related books to the audience.

The show was beloved by children, parents, and teachers alike, and I’m willing to bet that many of you watched it when you were younger. I know I did. Unfortunately, it will no longer be available to today’s youth. Filming of new episodes ceased in 2006, and last Friday, PBS stopped airing re-runs for good.

In an interview with NPR, John Grant, Chief Program and Production Officer for “Reading Rainbow’s” home station (WNED Buffalo), said that the show had to end for cost reasons. The cost of renewing the show’s broadcasting rights, he said, had been estimated to be “several hundred thousand dollars”—a price that neither PBS nor its owner, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, were willing to pay.

Grant claimed that part of the problem had to do with funding. In recent days, some of PBS’s stations have faced a drop in private donations and corporate underwriting (together, these sources contribute just over half of public television revenue). This has left PBS with a budget shortfall in the ballpark of about $3.4 million, which has in turn forced the network to cut its staff by ten percent and employee salaries by almost four percent. Needless to say, it doesn’t have a lot of money lying around.

The other part of the problem, however, is more intriguing. PBS is partially funded by the federal and state governments. Grant claimed that during the Bush administration, the Department of Education worked with PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and adjusted their funding, taking money away from “Reading Rainbow.” Apparently, the Department of Education wanted to see more federal money spent on programs that teach children how to read, instead of a program like Reading Rainbow, which assumed that its viewers already knew how to read and simply encouraged them to read more. Grant said that a new program would likely include a stronger focus on “the basic tools of reading,” such as phonics.

This approach concerns me, and not just because I have nostalgic memories of a television show that has been taken away. I believe encouraging a child to read from a young age is one of the most important ways to help that child succeed later in life. The best way to do this is to teach a child to love reading, and to give them a reason to pick up a book. “Reading Rainbow” did this, by presenting stories in a pleasing manner, giving real-life meaning to those stories, and then suggesting even more stories for viewers to peruse on their own time.

Phonics lessons are certainly important, but there is a difference between teaching children how to read and teaching them why. Teaching children how to read by emphasizing the alphabet or spelling may very well help to facilitate the act of reading, but this doesn’t mean they will actually want to read (let’s face it, phonics can be boring). On the other hand, teaching children why to read by introducing them to the pleasure of written stories will keep them coming back for more. And since reading, as any reader will tell you, is one of the greatest methods of self-teaching available to any person, a child who reads not only enjoys a good story, but also learns “the basic tools of reading” by example. This isn’t just speculation; studies have shown it to be true. Basically, consistent reading eventually defeats the purpose of phonics lessons.

To be fair to the new show being encouraged by the Department of Education, I won’t pass judgment on something that hasn’t aired yet. But unless the show will teach viewers more than just the basics, I don’t see how it could ever be considered a worthy successor to the Peabody Awardwinning, 26 time Emmy Award-winning, third-longest running children’s television series in PBS history. And that is terribly unfortunate, especially now, when so many books are being left on the shelves to collect dust by owners who think reading is a chore.

Reinharz scoots over student rights

BY DANIEL ORTNER Staff

Over the past couple of years, Brandeis University's administration has shown itself to be an enemy of liberty and consistently untrustworthy through its arrogant abrogation of student and faculty rights. The policies under President Jehuda Reinharz have led to disastrous relations between the administration and those whom it represents. As a new school year dawns, Brandeis has yet to reverse its attacks against the rights and privileges of students, faculty, and supporters. Indeed, the lack of accountability and disregard for others outside the administration seems to continue unhindered.

Over the past few years at Brandeis, many administrative decisions have put a strain on the effective running of the university and caused outrage among faculty and students. First, the Donald Hindley case, in which a nearly 50-year veteran professor was found guilty of harassment for offending a single student while explaining the origins of and criticizing the use of a racial epithet, and the dramatic decision to close the campus’s Rose Art Museum and auction off its art to meet a budget deficit, both of which received a great deal of external media coverage, are just two among many egregious violations of rights and privileges on campus. (The Rose benefactors have recently sued the university.)

In the Hindley case, the administration violated its own stated policy and ignored its obligations to Brandeis students as well as Brandeis faculty. A major problem in the controversy was that students in Hindley’s classes were not allowed to testify. The administration might even have relied on indirect or even fabricated accounts of students taking offense, for Hindley was never given any written account of what he allegedly said that had gotten him in trouble.

The Faculty Senate’s criticism of the administration’s actions was ignored, for its official findings that the charges were both wrongheaded and handled badly was declared to be merely the statement of an advisory committee without any real voice. This led to a standoff between faculty and the administration and a near two-year shutdown in the hearing of grievances by the Committee on Faculty Rights and Responsibilities.

Prof. Richard Gaskins (AMST), the Faculty Chair at the time the Hindley incident broke, deserves to be commended in particular for his vigilance on behalf of faculty rights and prerogatives. Un-

fortunately, the administration has yet to admit any fault in the Hindley case and has failed to articulate a clear policy for the investigation of incidents of harassment or shown any inclination to follow its stated policy.

At the end of last semester, finally a joint statement was issued by the faculty and the administration affirming the vital role of the Faculty Senate in all proceedings against faculty. Such tentative steps toward a balance of power, while promising, are yet incomplete.

Second, the furor over the decision to close the Rose Art Museum is another example of what happens when Reinharz's administration disregards the very people t h e administration should be supporting. The outcry was s o

loud that the university had t o hire a public relations firm to deal with the publicity. The university’s lack of consultation with anyone, including those who had bequeathed large donations of art (and who have now sued the university), its Board of Directors, or even the director of the Rose Art Museum (who discovered that his services were no longer needed through the same media release that informed the rest of the community), made the university a national laughingstock.

In last week’s article on the Rose lawsuit, Ariel Wittenberg reported that this is the second lawsuit against Brandeis for allegedly failing to use donor funds properly.

In May, a donor’s nephew sued to keep Brandeis from demolishing the Julius Kalman Science Center and said, “there just seems to be a general disconnect between the university and its donors.”

Fortunately, the opinions of employees, students, alumni, donors and outside media all converged to successfully influence administrative policy. After students and others organized protests and under the threat of lawsuits, the university relented and allowed the museum to reopen while a

committee formed to examine options. Yet, there have been challenges to the legitimacy of this committee, and many have declared it a mere puppet for the administration.

The grave concern underlying this pattern at Brandeis is that students and faculty continue to be in a state of complete uncertainty.

The administration has maintained its ability to do anything it wants, violate any agreement regarding rights or privileges, and overstep its acknowledged powers. Students or faculty members are at best entitled to an ex post facto explanation and perhaps the ability to tweak or have input into some of the finer details, but should never expect to have advance notice or anything remotely resembling an apology. Student and faculty victories, while admirable, seem short-lived and rarely enshrined as principle so that the same abuses will not happen again. This abusive system is untenable.

Fortunately, the admirable cases of students and faculty members standing up against the administration and demanding better treatment have been increasing over the past years. Just as the faculty took a brave stance in the Hindley case, students have been vigilant in fighting for their rights. Brandeis students have been led

by Student Union Presidents Jason Gray ’10 and Shreeya Sinha ’09, both of whom have actively pushed for the protection of students’ rights.

The Stud e n t Union has moved to write and ratify a Student Bill of Rights and to create a student-led organization to assist fellow students charged with violations of the Student Rights and Responsibilities rules. The Union has organized rallies, attended by hundreds, in opposition to administrative abuses.

Students have also shown that they can have some impact on administrative decisions through activism and dedication. When the decision was made to arm campus public safety officers without consulting students, a student organization, Students Opposed to the Decision to Arm, formed and began collecting petition signatures.

In a meeting with President Reinharz they submitted a petition signed by 830 undergraduates, 16 staff, and 20 faculty members.

The administration then agreed to form a committee that would be composed of students, faculty, staff, and administrators in order to discuss how to best implement the new policies. In part due to See RIGHTS, p. 7

6 The Hoot

Summer changes at ‘Deis

BY EMILY MASKAS Staff

Welcome back. How was your summer?

Did you go to Israel? Well, I was here over the summer, and was privy to many of the changes that the campus underwent.

So, it isn’t finished yet, but the new Admissions center is looking pretty good. Not necessarily in terms of style, but in terms of the bigger campus picture, the aesthetics of the new building are a nice fit. Before, the unique style of the campus center stood out amongst the blocks of brick and cement. Now it has a nice little link to another part of the campus.

It is also nice think of the Admissions center as the campus center turned on its side, which is essentially how I think of the design of Ridgewood compared to the Village. It actually would be kind of awesome if Brandeis’ theme for new buildings were flipping and distorting the shapes of existing buildings in space. But that is mostly because I don’t think that anyone would ever be down for making the theme classically attractive buildings that do not look thick and heavy enough to withstand nuclear disaster.

As much as I enjoy the feeling of traipsing through a field on my way to class from the Village each morning, it seems foolish to get rid of a parking lot when we are all too aware of Brandeis’ parking problems. As a lowly student worker in the Office of Development and Alumni Relations I am all for pandering to prospective students, but there are definite qualms I have with permanently taking away resources from students, faculty and staff to do so. Yeah, yeah, cars are bad, I know. But people do drive around campus, and they need places to park, and limiting the access to spaces will not solve that problem. Whoa, abstinence-based sex-ed parallels. Which obviously leads me to…

I was a bad Catholic in the going-to-Mass department this summer. But I can certainly get excited about the church at Brandeis. The Bethlehem Chapel is going to be renovated soon. Such was the big news at Mass last week, aside from the fact that paper cups apparently come with collapsible handles now. I’m sure the other chapels will get spruced up as well.

But one of the main differences between traditional Catholicism and Protestantism is the quality of the house of worship (St. Peter’s vs. someone’s barn), so I am just putting it out there that maybe we should get some pews and pretty, pretty windows. With the ever increasing size and diversity of our first-year classes, it seems that those lovely buildings by the pond will be getting more traffic anyway, and it only makes sense to make them more welcoming.

Oh, and then there’s the Rose. The Rose Art Museum is basically just a box with amazing art hidden in it. There is an installation of slowly decaying garbage, glue and creepy body parts outside of it that says more than I could. Go sit on the tiled bench though, it’s fun.

On sort of a final note, it is not cool that Brandeis gets around building elevators by building first floors of residence halls as semi-basements or labeling them as ground floors. The A house in the Village has an elevator because it has a fourth floor, but the C house does not because it has three floors and a basement. It is the same number of stairs.

East is a nightmare as well, but I no longer live there, so it doesn’t matter as much.

I wish you all the best for the upcoming year. It seems like the school is emerging from its hardships and returning to some semblance of normalcy. Have fun before you drown under the burden of your course loads. Don’t stress too much. Go build a pillow fort or something and hope that Brandeis has a better year than last year.

IMPRESSIONS

September 4, 2009

A tribute to Senator Edward Kennedy

BY MATTHEW KIPNIS Staff

When Edward M. Kennedy, Senator from Massachusetts, died last Wednesday morning from brain cancer, America lost a true giant, a man both highly gifted and deeply flawed, one who knew triumph and tragedy in equal measure. While there have been many eulogies both great and small in the days and weeks following his death, I wanted to take this opportunity to memorialize a very particular aspect of Ted Kennedy: the senator as a man who had what has been called “the courage of his convictions.”

Others have and surely will eulogize Ted Kennedy’s skill as a parliamentarian in brokering compromises – an ability for which the entire country will have cause to mourn the senator – but the note I wish to strike is that of Ted Kennedy as a proud, unwavering liberal. In an age when so many politicians have fled that label for the less charged title of “progressive,” Ted Kennedy was never ashamed by his association with liberal causes and the word itself. Indeed, so steadfast was his championship of liberal causes,

Borde-nough

from health care to education to civil rights, Republican political ads long ago took to using the senator as a measure of other liberals’ liberalism.

When Ted Kennedy first assumed his seat in the senate in 1962, many attacked the post as nothing more than a family sinecure; in a famous exchange one of Kennedy’s opponents declared that, “If your name was simply Edward Moore instead of Edward Moore Kennedy, your candidacy would be a joke.” And it’s certainly true that Ted Kennedy didn’t face many of the same electoral pressures as many of his colleagues. In the 1955 Pulitzer Prize winning study “Profiles in Courage,” Ted Kennedy’s brother, and president to be, John F. Kennedy, quoted an old senatorial anecdote wherein one senator says to another, “The great trouble with you is that you refuse to be a demagogue. You will not submerge your principles in order to get yourself elected. You must learn that there are times when a man in public life is compelled to rise above his principles.”

Ted Kennedy never felt compelled to rise above his political principles. This steadfastness on his core issues, his real dedication to

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minorities, to children, and to the poor, more than earned him the moniker “The Liberal Lion.”

Not for him the halfhearted commitments and wavering allegiance that the mid-century political columnist and New Republic founder Walter Lippmann derided when he declared that for most politicians “The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular – not whether it will work well and prove itself, but whether the active-talking constituents like it immediately.”

Perhaps, though, the most astonishing thing about Ted Kennedy was not his liberal convictions, but how he put them in action.

A liberal alone atop the mountain is a fine thing, but Ted Kennedy spent the span of his career finding ways to accomplish his goals.

In “Profiles in Courage,” JFK, then a senator himself, observes, “We should not be too hasty in condemning all compromise as bad morals. For politics and legislation are not matters for inflexible principles or unattainable ideals” – there is courage too in compromising, as well as sticking to your guns, and Ted Kennedy knew both.

An abundance of advice

BY CHRIS BORDELON Columnist

There was an abundance of policymaking advice available for sampling earlier this week as various experts uncorked their wares and invited decision makers and the media to take a sip. Their produce came from fields far and wide-- climate change, public health and Afghanistan.

The general public is not formally excluded from these tastings of the sometimes heady wines of policy. Written to persuade, reports and recommendations of expert bodies are often publicly available, and sometimes attract media attention. But the complexity and length of the work product of expert bodies, their sometimes vague, evasive, or jargonladen content, and the sheer numbers such reports that are released on a regular basis have the effect of keeping out the hoi polloi.

That’s a shame. The public is not itself expert in fields like climate change or US-China relations. But when it comes to paying for ill-conceived policies, sending its children to fight in the boondocks, watching a few of its number make fortunes while the rest try their best to get by, and being pushed around by ambitious officials and the jack-booted fellows on whose violence official authority rests, the public’s expertise is second to none.

Bringing that kind of expertise to bear before a recommendation becomes policy would save a great deal of trouble. Too often, however, reports that go unnoticed by the public influence official thinking, and a sickened country finds itself regurgitating policy choices that leaders in better touch with public opinion might never have allowed it to imbibe.

One can only hope that our leaders think before drinking in the recommendations offered this week. One report on climate change showed how easily a skillful drafter can translate the material interests of an expert body’s membership into recommendations delivered in the public interest. The United Kingdom’s Royal Society, an organization of British and Commonwealth scientists, did a remarkable job of broaching the subject of “Geoengineering the Climate” without openly appearing to be a Christmas list of demands for funding for big, dangerous science projects.

But such a list is certainly the next logical step. The Society noted that deliberate human intervention to alter the Earth’s climate would not have to be invoked “unless future efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are much more successful than they have been.” But the aim of the report-- which was about geoengineering rather than how to avoid it-- was to prod governments into allocating funds for research into the science of purposefully

altering the world’s environment.

The report’s authors did not emphasize this self-interested goal. They would no doubt point out that their report acknowledges “major uncertainties regarding [geoengineering’s] effectiveness, costs, and environmental impacts.” Professor John Shepherd of the University of Southampton, the chairman of the Society committee that prepared the report, called it an “unpalatable truth” that geoengineering “will be the only option left” to control climate change if other options fail.

But Shepherd and other scientists don’t really think geoengineering is “unpalatable.” Why else would they take pains to point out that it was “likely to be technically possible and... potentially useful,” and to call for “further research and development” of geoengineering-- which, they warned, “could be our only hope”?

For some people, the very possibility of geoengineering reduces the incentive to forgo environmentally destructive behavior. Paying scientists to create a geoengineering pharmacopeia will seem to politicians to be an easier task than applying the preventive medicine of persuading states to concede a small aspect of their sovereignty to allow for global climate change rulemaking. At the end of the day, we will be left more dependent on scientists’ abilSee POLICY, p. 7

IMPRESSIONS

September 4, 2009

The Hoot 7

So, what’s the deal with the economy?

BY LEON MARKOVITZ Editor

By the end of Spring ’09 after the collapse of several banks and insurers, the dozens of Chapter 11 filings, the more than $30 trillion that got vaporized on Wall Street (or a decade worth of gains), the huge stimulus package by the government, the Ponzi schemes, and of course, the media paranoia, everyone was talking about the coming depression and the end of the world, at least the financial world. Now, everything seems to be coming back to normal. So what is really going on?

Well, it is really hard to explain what is going on. The best economists are always trying to explain why everything happens after it happens, not before.

But one thing is for certain; we were never close from reaching an economic decline similar to the one from the Depression Era. The decline in real GDP (Gross Domestic Product adjusted for inflation) since the beginning of the crisis was “only” 3.8% and we reached an unemployment rate of 9.5%.

During the 1937-1938 Depression, the decline in real GDP was 18.2% and unemployment a mind-blowing 20%.

Don’t get me wrong, the economy did in fact get sick, but not as much as the media made it seem to be. The crisis was very similar to the one 30 years ago (73-75) where decline in real GDP was 4.9% and unemployment reached 9% and 20 years ago (81-82) where real GDP decline 3%

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and unemployment reached 10.8%. None of this crisis brought about the end of the world, so do not worry, yet.

In the table above you can clearly see how fast the major indexes reached bottom during this crisis. It is finally beginning to stabilize, at a fast, bullyish speed. But is it a real recovery?

Although the chart seems to be heading for good grounds, many financial gurus are suggesting that the end is not near, but rather, that the economic decline will continue for at least one more year. Robert Rodriguez, chief executive of First Pacific Advisors in Los Angeles, says that in March, investors feared getting crushed in a further decline. Now all they seem afraid of is missing an even greater rally. Therefore investors worldwide are buying up stocks at bargain prices right now and pushing the

stock market to a recovery. But that does not mean that the actual economy is recovering. Factories keep shutting down, and people are still being fired. Add to all of this the increasing inflation due to the constant printing of money to keep the American (and the rest of the world) economy afloat.

Economist Jason Zweig writes for the Wall Street Journal: “The Dow had an uncannily similar 46.5% gain in the 117 days that ended April 9, 1930; it lost almost 51% over the next year. Another 47% upswing in 1971 led to a long, choppy decline of more than 37%.”

And don’t forget about the American economy addiction to oil. Right now, a barrel of crude oil is trading at around $67, but it will surely go up as demand worldwide goes back to a pre-crisis level. Will this stop the recovery? This is just another reason to

go green and create jobs while doing so.

It seems like investors worldwide are following the advise of Baron Rothschild, a British banker, who famously said “The time to buy is when there’s blood on the streets”. And indeed, Rothschild made a fortune buying in the panic that followed the Battle of Waterloo against Napoleon.

People always tend to move in flocks, and it is common knowledge for investors these days that going against the stream (and being risk-loving) usually brings high dividends. This is contrarian investing at its heart - the strongly held belief that the worse things seem in the market, the better the opportunities are for profit. Or, in the words of investing guru Warren Buffett "You pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus."

This basically means, that if everyone agrees with you in the stock market, then you are most likely to gain very little, if anything, from it, as everyone else is doing the same, and the opportunities for profit would be gone.

Therefore, I just hope that the people investing now are aware that this economic recovery may be a “W” shaped recovery, with an impending decline on the way, or a square-root (√) recovery, or even be followed by continues ups and downs for a couple years.

It is good to go against the crowd, just be sure to hold on to your horses and be prepared to have the ride of a lifetime, because this ride is far from over.

Students, faculty must stand up to administration RIGHTS (from p. 7)

the advocacy of Sinha, also a member of the committee, open forums and discussions solicited the opinions and perspectives of members of the community.

Student outcry was also instrumental in overturning the sudden decision to limit the application of merit-based aid to study abroad as well as in the formation of committees to seriously consider and debate proposed academic changes in times of a budget crisis.

In all of these instances, student involvement pressured the administration to at least reconsider its policies and allow some student input. Yet, in almost every instance the decision had already been made, and students were only allowed a minimal role in the shaping of the ultimate policy and its implementation. This is quite disappointing for a school with such a storied history of student activism. Brandeis could do much, much better.

Thus, I am not especially sanguine about the possibility of true reform at Brandeis University. Even though the administration seems to blunder from crisis to crisis and has brought the school close to financial ruin, there does not seem to be any sort of accountability for the Reinharz administration. Without concerted efforts by students and faculty to actively petition trustees and donors—those to whom Reinharz might actually be accountable—so that they know

the real state of disorder on campus, I don't see any substantial changes in the future.

The continued efforts of groups such as FIRE to bring attention to abuses of rights is vital, but I fear that without a more prolonged and intensive campaign to finally overthrow this administration, we will keep reeling from outrage to outrage.

Editor's Note: Daniel Ortner worked as an intern at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Not all policy recommendations should be followed

POLICY (from p. 6)

ity to produce effective geoengineering technology, and more beholden to the methods that do emerge, even if the environmental and political side effects of this treatment are equivalent to the those of chemotherapy on individuals.

While the climate change report spoke to big issues, another report dealt with little ones-- who, in the estimation of the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, are in fact too big. The group of health experts who prepared the report are convinced that “local governments can play a crucial role in the fight against childhood obesity.” After citing well-known findings that the incidence of obesity in children has increased and that this has increased health care costs, they recommended measures that they believe would help reverse the trend.

What is troubling is the extent to which, in practice, the recommendations are likely to be implemented oppressively. To be sure, some of them, such as reducing junk food sales and advertising around schools and using police resources to increase opportunities for walking to and from school, seem difficult to mismanage, and would appear not to create heavy burdens for targeted communities.

But the committee also proposed to implement taxes on an undefined list of “high-

calorie, low-nutrient foods and drinks,” and to offer “incentives to lure grocery stores into underserved neighborhoods.” In tandem, these initiatives will likely drive up the cost of food for people living in the affected communities. Taxes will directly increase prices of “bad” foods. Efforts to “lure” supermarkets may fail because disincentives to business in some communities are simply too great, or because they will “lure” only one store that will enjoy a local monopoly. The report devotes little attention to how cash-strapped communities can finance such schemes, or where individuals will come up with the money to pay higher grocery bills. Strangely, it largely avoids the subject of adult obesity.

The health report’s local focus was most intriguing. If childhood obesity is a national problem, why should these regulations be adopted piecemeal and (inevitably) incompletely by local governments? I suspect that it’s because these health experts are looking for guinea pigs. In their minds, the poorer a community is, the less likely it is to resist an arrogant social engineering effort imposed from outside. Although the report does not specify particular communities as targets, the tenor of the report and the substance of several of the recommendations leave little doubt that the poor ones are targeted. Never mind that food costs will go up, that failed ef-

forts to lure grocers in combination with new taxes may leave communities even more underserved by grocers than before, and that the suggested policies could easily be enforced in ways that unfairly burden some groups in a given community more than others (as by taxing foods commonly eaten by a particular ethnic group ostensibly on account of their unhealthiness). For these experts, having a human laboratory is the primary concern; too bad for you if you wind up trapped in one of their cages.

President Barack Obama received plenty of advice this week concerning relations with a bigger human laboratory, Afghanistan. In what has become a familiar ritual, General Stanley McChrystal, commander of American and allied forces in Afghanistan, delivered a confidential report to the president arguing that “success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort.” He wants more American troops.

At least since the Vietnam War, presidents have been using generals to do the dirty political chore of calling for more resources and men, basing their demands on information that, conveniently, they cannot reveal to the public. Even if one deems this practice acceptable, however, it is a charade if politicians do not spell out for the generals what victory

means, and set reasonable time frames for either achieving it or going home. Obama has been no more interested in doing this than his predecessor in office. Preferring the powers of a “war president,” he will stand behind his man McChrystal-- even if following this expert’s advice means an indefinite commitment to a combined deployment of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan that is no smaller than that made by George W. Bush.

McChrystal’s recommendation was not given because the general woke up one day with brilliant new ideas about Afghanistan and decided to share them. Like other reports from generals demanding new commitments (how many have there been pertaining to Afghanistan, much less to Iraq?), McChrystal’s report was a product of political imperatives.

The president needed a reasonable basis for telling those of his supporters who hoped he would reduce or eliminate America’s involvement in wars to talk to the hand. McChrystal, Obama’s expert, gave him what he needed.

Not all of the recommendations made in these reports will emerge as policy. But some will. The consequences may be bad. But those with a strong belief in the value of education can count on at least one benefit, if it can be called that. The public’s expertise in paying, struggling, and fighting will surely be deepened.

12 The Hoot

September 4, 2009

FEATURES

Away on sabbatical: Not your average ‘vacay’

BY ROBIN LICHTENSTEIN Staff

What do an American Studies professor’s interviews with feminist activists have in common with a computer science professor’s Stradivarius-model cello? And what does a Legal Studies professor’s research on Icelandic literature have to do with any of this?

On the surface, not much. But none of these things would have come to be if not for each professor’s opportunity to take a sabbatical.

Sabbatical is the time academics are granted to take a break from teaching or research at their home institutions. They spend this time cultivating other interests or strengthening current projects, sometimes working with other institutions.

The work professors do during a sabbatical is often very useful. But in light of students’ constant complaints of limited course offerings and talk of reduction in faculty, letting the 31 faculty members on sabbatical this year depart from both the undergraduate and graduate programs for any amount of time may seem counterintuitive. Yet, if you ask the professors on sabbatical, there’s real value to the idea.

And contrary to public opinion, many professors argue that sabbatical is much more than a paid vacation. Take it from someone who would know: Prof. Richard Gaskins (LGLS). “Vacation is just a strange way to explain it,” he said.

And just because a professor is on sabbatical doesn’t mean the work stops. Gaskins, who took his sabbatical in spring 2009, spent his time pursuing other academic interests he had pushed aside during traditional academic years. Gaskins’ sabbatical allowed him to spend April of 2009 in New Zealand, where he began working as a new faculty member in 1975. Since then, he has been back more than a dozen times studying New Zealand law, including a visit as a Fulbright Lecturer at the Victoria University of Wellington Law School in 1999.

“Having sabbatical has been a lifeline to maintaining scholarly activity and scholarly connections,” he said.

Unlike Gaskins, Prof. Joyce Antler (AMST) spent last academic year closer to home as the Goldstein-Goren Fellow, a visiting research appointment at New York University’s Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History. Antler took advantage of this time to jumpstart a new project that will, as she explained, “take a second look at radical feminism.”

“For me and many others [sabbatical] is an opportunity to do research and to spend the time [on other projects] that you can’t when you are fully engaged in teaching,”

she said.

Gaskins echoed Antler’s sentiments: “There is this kind of momentum to [research and work done on sabbatical] that gets broken during the typical teaching semester. Work goes forward, but because the momentum get broken it never rises above a certain level — it slows everything down.”

But while a professor may have plans for sabbatical, there are other considerations that determine whether the time off is even possible. Sabbatical is granted by the Provost’s office in conjunction with permission from a professor’s department chair. When staff in a given department is limited, a professor may have to postpone a sabbatical; Gaskins had to postpone his sabbatical a year due to the relatively small size of his department.

Finances must also be taken into consideration. Professors can go on sabbatical for one semester at full pay or two semesters at half pay, however, benefits are taken care of with either option. Both options play a role in determining what a professor can and will do during his or her time off. Antler noted that her plans were made smoother upon receipt of a Goldstein-Goren fellowship.

Prof. Harry Mairson (COS), who is on sabbatical for the current academic year, also pointed out what is probably one of a professor’s most important considerations when taking sabbatical – family concerns.

“When spouses have careers and professional commitments, spending a year in another place is complicated,” Mairson wrote in an e-mail to The Hoot.

It has been 14 years since Mairson’s last sabbatical, in 1995, and that was the only other one he’s taken since beginning his Brandeis career in 1987. His work during this sabbatical was mostly the same as that he did in a regular year.

“It was the same stuff – I just wasn’t teaching or going to meetings,” he wrote in an email to The Hoot.

This year, Mairson will be continuing his research on logic and programming languages. He spent this past May as a visiting professor at the Institut de Mathématiques de Luminy in Marseille, France, but will be spending the rest of his sabbatical local so as to cause “less disruption to the family.”

Gaskins also spent his sabbatical in the area, with the exception of the month in New Zealand. His proximity to Brandeis led to a different sort of sabbatical experience.

The best thing about being on sabbatical, Gaskins said, is leaving Brandeis entirely.

“Anything short of that makes you vulnerable to short term controversies and crises, and spring 2009 was a semester of crises at Brandeis,” he said. “If you care about the university and care about your department

PHOTO BY Max Shay/The Hoot

RADICAL SABBATICAL: While on sabbatical at NYU, Prof. Joyce Antler (AMST), began work on her new book on feminist activism.

you can’t avoid these crises.”

Despite his proximity to Brandeis, Mairson is making the most of his sabbatical.

He sees it as a time to do “unusual, creative things” and that’s exactly what he’s doing – in addition to his research, Mairson is building a Stradivarius-model cello.

Though recreational in nature, even the instrument building will ultimately serve a larger academic purpose for Mairson: “I’m an enthusiast for Dean [Adam] Jaffe’s initiative in experiential learning, and my cello project is all about that. I’d like to set up an instrument-making shop at the university.

“Building musical instruments is the perfect combination of science, art and creative learning experience,” he said.

Turning a sabbatical project into something usable for the traditional academic

year is fairly common. Antler has turned her work this past year into a new course being offered this semester, “AMST 125A: History of United States Feminisms.”

And after his last visit to New Zealand, Gaskins was able to see his work continued through a series of conferences in Wellington, New Zealand that were successfully carried out thanks to the time sabbatical allowed him to spend in the country. He planned two more this time around. “[Sabbatical] is one of the joys of academic life: your work continues everyday and you don’t try to get away from it,” Gaskins said.

Of course, that being said, it certainly doesn’t hurt that you can take the occasional hike in New Zealand or catch a show while in New York City when the desire strikes.

F E AT U R E S

September 4, 2009

The Hoot 13

New program opens Gateway to knowledge

BY CHRISSY CALLAHAN Editor

Only two first-year students had initially signed up to be in the talent show. It was the end of the summer and several Brandeis students were gathered with their instructors for an ice cream social, coupled with a talent show.

It had been a summer filled with intense academic rigor and cultural enrichment, and this seemed like the perfect way to top it off.

Since there were 39 students present, the small number of talent show participants was surprising. Call it shyness or stage fright, but whatever it was, it quickly melted away.

Soon, everyone had joined in, sharing their unique talents. There were classical pianists, acrobatics, skits, and a blended chorus of national anthems, sung in Mongolian, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Thai and Panamanian.

It was the climax of a summer filled with cultural studies and academic exploration.

It was the ending of the summer portion of the Gateway Scholars Program.

Brandeis prides itself on being a global university. This summer, the university aimed to continue that trend, initiating the Gateway Scholars Program. The pilot program brought 39 international firstyear students from across the globe to the Brandeis campus for a crash course in all they would need to prepare themselves for the fall semester.

During this six-week intensive summer program, students immersed themselves in everything English. They read, wrote, spoke and debated in English, and they explored the educational differences between American culture and their own.

The 39 Gateway scholars come from China, Taiwan, Panama, Korea, Thailand, France and Japan, and boast impressive backgrounds. The group includes a Chinese golf expert who has had a lesson with Tiger Woods, a hip hop dancer, a speed skater, a ballet dancer and several classical pianists.

They are different in impressive ways, but they all have one thing in common – they are part of a program that has been a long time coming.

Year after year, Brandeis’ admissions staff had read the applications of countless talented students who were every bit as smart as their accepted counterparts, but were lacking in one area – full mastery of academic English.

Noticing this trend, Senior Vice President for Students and Enrollment Jean Eddy decided to create a special program that would provide these talented students with the perfected English skills they needed. This is where the idea for the Gateway Scholars Program originated.

“These are full Brandeis students. From the moment they enter the Gateway program, they enter as full Brandeis students,” Gateway Director Nancy Nies said. “So this is a program to give them a head start on acculturation and full mastery of academic English.”

All of the scholars spoke English before entering the program, which continues through the end of the fall semester. But speaking English in their own countries and functioning in an intense collegiate environment in America are two different things for these scholars.

The English skills international students pick up in their own countries often are not strong enough to cut it without having also had prolonged exposure to native English speakers and American academic writing standards, Nies said.

To help the scholars, the Gateway intensive summer program – spanning six weeks – involved 20 hours a week of in-class in-

PHOTO BY Max Shay/The Hoot

PAVING THE WAY: International first-year students on the Gateway program arrived on campus a month early to brush up on their academic writing.

struction coupled with cultural enrichment. The program is currently continuing with a fall session during which students take either one undergraduate course and 16 hours of English immersion, or two undergraduate courses and 12 hours of English immersion, based on their demonstrated progress.

Three instructors, Ethan Sewall, Bob Moir and Brandeis Associate Professor of German Sabine von Mering, taught the scholars integrated skills in the morning for two hours, and literature and writing for two hours in the afternoon.

During classes, students summarized articles from the New York Times and various periodicals, participated in debates, and honed their literary analysis and writing skills.

Many college first-years have trouble enough making the jump from high school to college-level writing without the added challenge of working in a different language. After all, with each new level comes new expectations, new guidelines. But for the Gateway scholars, learning to keep up with a heavier work load wasn’t the only novelty college in America offered them.

They not only had to adjust their writing skills, but their whole way of thinking as well.

Non-native English writers face two main problems when they initially enter an American classroom, Nies explained.

And if you’ve ever been involved in a classroom debate that quickly turned into a heated argument, you’ll recognize the first – American students tend to be much freer with their opinions than their international counterparts. In fact, the participatory aspect of the American classroom – the emphasis on individual creativity and the democratic sharing of ideas – can often come as a bit of a shock for international students.

“There’s a fierce individualism in the way that we deal with ideas here that’s very exciting for new students and also challenging if they’re not used to it,” Nies said.

The second challenge involves the method of starting an academic essay that your University Writing Seminar instructors most likely drilled into your head – start with the thesis. While other cultures are often much more indirect in their writing, the American educational model favors boldness and directness, Nies said.

Adapting to this difference requires a lot of practice. “If you’ve been raised in one culture and you go to another, it challenges all your ways of thinking,” Nies said.

But if you ask Gateway instructor Ethan Sewall, the scholars seemed up to the challenge this summer.

“They reacted positively to [cultural differences in the classroom], so they were expressing their ideas, you know they were doing a lot of stuff that maybe they hadn’t had opportunities to do before,” Sewall said.

“These students are brilliant students.

They’re great kids…they just needed the jump start on the English, and that’s what they got,” he said.

For Gateway scholar and China native Boru Zhang ’13, who has lived in the United States the past two years, adapting to the structure of the classroom itself wasn’t so challenging. But getting used to the intense class schedule was. In the end, though, he says the structure helped to keep him on the right track.

The intense course schedule proved surprising for Gateway Scholar Zoe Zhang ’13 as well, whose initial experience with the program turned out to be different from her original expectations.

“I thought this program was like a summer school [or] a summer program; it’s all about fun things. We play together, we communicate with professors and other international students, she said. “But when I got here [things were] a little bit different.”

Zoe Zhang, who comes from China, said it was difficult to keep up with the course load at first, but with time she got used to it and immersed herself in the work. “We really take the courses seriously,” she said.

It also helped that the scholars had each other to understand any challenges they faced, and the opportunity to form friendships before the actual school year began helped them to adjust more quickly.

“It’s a really good experience to actually meet a lot of [other students] before the school year begins [because then] you feel comfortable,” Boru Zhang said.

The scholars might have worked hard, but Nies also made sure they played hard. To supplement the academic focus of the program, she worked with several other people to add a cultural enrichment component.

The students went on academic site visits each week, including trips to the John F. Kennedy library, the MIT museum and the

Harvard Museum of National History. They also visited Boston’s beloved Fenway Park and took a Duck Tour.

Community Service Director Lucas Malo and Director of Orientation and First Year Programs Michelle O’Malley also organized weekly outings for the scholars. These included trips to Six Flags and Salem, rounds of bowling and karaoke and a trip to the play, “Shear Madness.”

Though fun in nature, these activities also served an educational purpose, Nies explained; “The trips exposed students to both American culture and fast speech from native speakers to help them push themselves to adapt.”

In the end, Zoe Zhang said, the students were also thankful for the field trips: “The trips made me know more about Boston and also about American culture. I am trying to find the [similarities between] Boston [and] my own hometown.”

By the end of the summer, the students’ progress was evident in the grades on their transcripts, but more importantly, it was obvious in their newborn attitudes. Case in point: At the end of the summer, one Gateway Scholar returned home to China for a few days before the start of the fall semester.

At the onset of the Gateway program, this particular student had felt somewhat intimidated by the way American students discussed strongly – and sometimes argued – various issues in the classroom.

While at home, though, the scholar found herself arguing with her parents about various intellectual ideas; something she never would have done before her Gateway experience. Back at Brandeis, the scholar shared her parents’ pride in her intellectual confidence with Nies.

“She stopped me and she said to me, ‘I want to learn about everything. I want to read about all kinds of ideas. I just am so excited about being here,’” Nies said.

Like her fellow scholars, this student had been transformed. And when offered the challenge, the scholars all accepted enthusiastically.

“It’s a really great opportunity that they really seized this summer to immerse themselves in every aspect of learning about Brandeis academic culture and [the] exchange of ideas so that they’re prepared come fall,” Nies said. “So I’d say watch out if you’ve got Gateway students in your classes because they’re going to really shine.”

14 The Hoot

September 4, 2009

SPORTS

Life after Ben Premo: the men’s soccer team looks forward

BY HANNAH VICKERS Editor

It’s not every day that a player comes along who will end up in the record books as one of the all-time leading scorers for your team. It certainly isn’t every rookie who can put up ten goals and four assists in a season. Nor could it be expected that the same rookie would go on to score 16 goals and register ten assists in his sophomore year. Then again, not every player can be Ben Premo ’09.

Premo graduated in May as the fifth highest scorer in the history of Brandeis men’s soccer with 38 goals, 22 assists, and 98 points. Despite those impressive numbers, the team did not do as well as Coach Michael Coven would have hoped. “Everybody relied on him too much,” he said. As a result they became, “a one man team.”

While every team struggles to adapt to the changes that inevitably come every year, losing a player like Premo is an especially big hit for the soccer team. With that said, however, the “one man team” couldn’t do the job alone. Other teams began to recognize him on the field and double-team him, leaving Brandeis out of options. In the 2007 season, Premo’s third on the team, he scored only two goals and had five assists. “We hadn’t developed alternatives,” Coven told The Hoot.

Keeping in mind some of the mistakes of the past, Coven and Assistant Coach Gabe Margolis are looking forward to what they hope will be a brighter future. “We have a much more balanced attack this year,” Margolis said.

That balanced attack comes from returning players stepping up to their roles as well as the first-year players acting as “a cohesive unit,” Coven explained. In addition to the new faces on the team, there is also midfielder Steve Keuchkarian ’11 who has rejoined the team after taking time off last season. His return could certainly help the Judges and gives them more options on the field.

One player many have been waiting for is midfielder Jaime Batista ’10. Batista’s career at Brandeis has been plagued with in-

juries and illness, playing only seven games his rookie year, five his sophomore year, and fifteen last year. Provided he can stay healthy, both coaches expect him and Corey Bradley ’10 to “carry the burden” this season.

Coven’s game plan was thrown off by the recent illness of goalkeeper Taylor Bracken ’10. A perforated ulcer in his bowel has sidelined Bracken and may force him to take the semester off from Brandeis. Everyone on the team is happy Bracken has made it through the worst of it and will recover, but his presence will certainly be missed this fall. “It was a real dogfight between him and [Matt] Lynch [’11] for the starting goal spot,” Coach Coven told The Hoot. “The competition made them push harder.”

Lynch will be the starting goalkeeper this season and both coaches have the utmost confidence in his abilities to guard the net.

Blake Minchkoff ’13 will serve as backup goalkeeper. Despite his inexperience, both Coven and Margolis expect he will pick things up quickly. “All freshmen are inexperienced playing at this level,” Margolis said.

The Judges did catch one lucky break this season, though: a late start. The men play their first game this weekend at Wheaton College in the Adidas Kick-Off Classic.

This extra time has allowed the team to work out some kinks, and has also given some players time to recover from minor injuries. Mike Silberstein ’10 is coming back from reconstructive knee surgery and David McCoy ’12, the starting center back, is returning from a sprained groin. The late start is “really lucky,” according to Coach Margolis.

Both coaches are cautiously optimistic that this season will produce better results than those in recent history. While the team might still be, “a work in progress,” the groundwork has been laid for a successful team capable of bringing the Judges farther than they did in the days of Premo.

“Come out and support us,” Coven said.

“There are a lot of night games.”

The men will play their first home game Wednesday Sept. 16 at 7 p.m.

PHOTO BY Max Shay/The Hoot

ATTACKING THE BALL: Alexander Farr ‘12 playing in a game against WPI last year.

Golf team in tough spot

BY HANNAH VICKERS Editor

The Brandeis men’s golf team has returned this fall thanks to a hard fought battle to stay alive last spring. Coach Bill Shipman has returned for his eighth season as head coach in addition to his role as head coach of both men’s and women’s fencing. Lee Bloom ’10 has taken over the role as captain.

“We return our three best players from last year, and expect a solid season from the golf team,” Coach Shipman said. “Bloom played very well last fall. We hope he can show that form again.”

Charles Sacks ’11 and Aaron Cusato ’12 are consistent, steady players who Coach Shipman expects can “go low.” Two other solid, though less experienced players, return in the form of Dan Goldsmith ’11 and Kyle Mangan ’12.

“Even though we did not actively recruit any players due to the uncertain future of the team,” Coach Shipman told The Hoot, “several new players have come out.”

While it was certainly understandable not to seek out new recruits for this year, the team could suffer as a result. “Two or three very good players were high on attending Brandeis,” Coach Shipman added.

However, without the active recruiting process in place, Brandeis missed out.

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It remains unclear what the precise future of the team will be, but for now the players and Coach Shipman are dedicated to the cause. “Some alumni are looking into large fundraising possibilities,” he said. “So we will see what happens as the fall progresses.

The golf team has their first tournament, the Bowdoin Invitational, next weekend, Sept. 12 through 13. They will travel to the Brunswick Country Club in Brunswick, ME to compete.

The Hoot 15

September 4, 2009

ABOVE LEFT: Brandeis midfielder Alanna Torre ‘12 (No. 24, left) takes a shot on goal in the first period of Brandeis’ 2-1 season opening victory.

ABOVE RIGHT: Senior forward Melissa Gorenkoff (No. 19, pictured), dribbles the ball upfield during Brandeis’win.

BELOW: Mimi Theodore (No. 8, right), a Brandeis midfielder, passes the ball, setting up Brandeis’ first goal of the season by fellow midfielder Sofia Vallone (No. 13, left).

Women’s soccer wins season opener

BY HANNAH VICKERS Editor

Women’s soccer started off their season with a big win against MIT. Sofia Vallone ’11, scored in the first eight minutes of play for the Judges, assisted by Mimi Theodore ’12, and Brandeis would not fall behind again for the rest of the game. In fact, MIT would not even get on the board until the 88th minute of play, but the Judges held on for a 2-1 win over the Engineers. This was the season opener for both teams.

Hillary Rosenzwig ’10, served as goalkeeper for the Judges for the full game.

She was perfect through the entire game, seemingly headed for her 17th career shutout, but in the 89th minute MIT midfielder Lauren Hernley, ’11, drove the ball past Rosenzwig into the net. The Engineers turned up the heat for the final five minutes of the game, with the big payoff being the goal by Hernley, and came just short of tying the game in the last few seconds when a

header by Emily Kuo ’13 went wide.

Despite the push by MIT in the last few minutes, they could not change the outcome. The Judges clearly outmatched their opponents consistently throughout the game. Brandeis led in shots attempted (11 to 9), shots on target (5 to 3), shots blocked by defense (2 to 0), and goals scored.

The game-winning goal for the Judges came in the 61st minute by midfielder Alanna Torre ’12. MIT goalkeeper Katie Olesnavage ’11 punched out the ball but obviously misjudged her effort as the ball landed right at Torre’s feet just outside the box. Mimi Theodore, Melissa Gorenkoff ’10, and Kelly Doolittle ’12 also had shots on goal, though they were unsuccessful.

Brandeis faces Nazareth College at home Sunday September 6th at 1PM. The Golden Flyers are 0-1 on the season so far after being shut out by William Smith on Tuesday. They will play MIT on Saturday before coming to Brandeis the following day.

Nadal changes do... can he seal the deal?

BY SARAH BLOOMBERG Special to The Hoot

Many people have heard of Rafael Nadal, the Spanish tennis player, if not for his style of play on the courts then for his haircut. The one thing that has kept me from jumping on the Nadal train for all these years was the shoulder length locks that, by the end of every match, looked more like he had been swimming than playing tennis. For the U.S. Open, which began Monday, Nadal sported a new haircut that looked very similar to that of Swede Roger Federer.

Now I am not one to judge players’ personal appearance – especially ones who are as amazing as Nadal, but I am not sure how I feel about this new look. It must be cooler for Nadal. I never could understand why anyone, let alone one of the best players in the world, would want to run around for hours in sweltering heat with hair at their shoulders (believe me, I’ve had to do it and it is not fun). So maybe Nadal finally wanted a “cooler” look. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that Nadal has yet to win a U.S Open title and Federer is trying for his sixth straight Open Championship. It was time for a change and the hair was the first thing he thought of. For his sake we can only hope that does the trick and the shorter ’do will

lead him to victory.

Through the first round of the Open there have been no major upsets. Federer is top ranked and breezed through his first match 6-1; 6-3; 7-5 over Devin Britton from the US. Nadal, third ranked, won 6-2; 6-2; 6-3 over Richard Gasquet of France. Andy Roddick is the top ranked American, at number five, and beat Bjorn Phau of Germany 6-1; 6-4; 6-2.

And for news in other sports, former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling has expressed some interest in running for the Massachusetts Senate seat previously held

by Senator Edward Kennedy. Schilling is a longtime Republican supporter, but is a registered independent. He was a member of three world championship teams: first in 2001 with the Arizona Diamondbacks, in 2004 with the Red Sox, and again in 2007 with the Red Sox. While he won the hearts of Boston fans by pitching Game 6 of the 2004 World Series with a bloody, injured ankle which helped the Sox win their first championship in 86 years, that same year he campaigned for George W. Bush. He was also involved in John McCain’s campaign in 2008. This is hardly the political track record one would expect from Kennedy’s successor. Let’s just hope this religious fan base takes a few moments to consider his politics and not just his athletic achievements.

PHOTOS BY Max Shay/The Hoot

Volleyball off to a strong start

BY HANNAH VICKERS Editor

It seems the successful preseason training has paid off for the Brandeis women’s volleyball team. The girls won their game Tuesday against Babson 3-0 to start off the season with a win.

The set scores were 25-18, 2522, and 25-14, all in favor of Brandeis. This win was especially significant because it was the 100th career win for Coach Michelle Kim. There are three returning seniors this year: Piera Carfagno, Bridget McAllister, and Lauren Polinsky. Nicole Smith, Abby Blasco, and Paige Blasco, all class of 2011, are also rejoining the team. Carfagno and Abby Blasco will share the duties of captain.

In addition to the more se-

nior members of the team, “we have a group of talented first years joining us,” Kim told The Hoot. Becca Fischer, Lauren Berens, Anna Homitsky, Kristee Montijo, and Susan Sun of the class of 2013 are rounding out the team this year.

Homitsky led all players in Tuesday’s match with 14 digs.

Ten kills from McAllister and eight each from Paige Blasco and Smith also aided the Judges. Abby Blasco had a matchhigh 30 assists while her cocaptain Carfagno had six kills, four assists, and seven digs. The Judges are away this weekend at the Springfield Invitational in Springfield, MA but will host the Brandeis Invitational next weekend, Friday Sept. 11 and Saturday Sept. 12. Action for that will begin at 4 p.m.

16 The Hoot

September 4, 2009

WEEKEND Spotlight on Boston

Willy Wonka in Smellavision

Boston Comedy Festival Finals

Friday, Sept 4, 6:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Union Square Plaza, Somerville, MA Kick off a viewing of the 1971 classic by enjoying some scent experimentation!

Sponsored by the Somerville Arts Council.

Rain date: Sept. 5.

Saturday, Sept. 5, 8:00 p.m.

Hard Rock Cafe, Boston This week-long competition of 96 comedians reaches its climax as the final eight compete for a $10,000 prize. Tickets $20.

What's going on at Brandeis?

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

24 Hour Mystery Musical

Friday, Sept. 4, 9:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m.

Chum's

Sunday, Sept. 6, 8:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.

Shapiro Campus Center Theater

The Punk Rock n' Roll club kicks off the school year in full gear in a concert

by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart.

Unless otherwise noted, photos are from Google images.

Check out the end result of only a day's worth of preparation! Everything in this surprise musical, from casting to production, is put together in only 24 hours.

Sleazy

By Matt Kupfer

Hoot Comic Strips Sleazy

laughingwarlock

By Xander Bernstein

By Ian Price