ARTS Page 21
FORUM Recognize structural racism 12 SPORTS Judges travel to regional tournament 16 The Independent Student Newspaper
the
JOHN ALTOON of
B r a n d e is U n i v e r sit y S i n c e 1 9 4 9
Justice
Volume LXVII, Number 7
www.thejustice.org
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
LEMBERG CELEBRATION
DINING SERVICES
Sodexo employees see reduced hours ■ Sodexo labor practices
have been in question since the release of a Brandeis Labor Coalition open letter. By HANNAH WULKAN JUSTICE EDITOR
Sodexo has been accused of violating union contracts by cutting employee hours, not responding to filed grievances and allowing for management to bully employees who step outside of their job descriptions, according to the Brandeis Labor Coalition’s open letter to Sodexo, published in the Brandeis Hoot on Oct. 5. Sodexo employees agree with these claims, while Sodexo management refutes them. The issues the BLC is most concerned about are workers’ hours being cut, resulting in workers doing the jobs of other people, manage-
Univeristy President Frederick Lawrence and City of Waltham Mayor Jeannette A. McCarthy attended the Lemberg Children's Center opening on Tuesday morning.
IN-DEPTH REPORT: FIRST INSTALLMENT
The Brandeis House Alumni Club of New York is officially on the market with an asking price of $33 million, and the proceeds of the sale will go toward the University’s endowment, according to an email to New York City-area alumni from University President Frederick Lawrence. The property, which is located on the Upper East Side at 12 East 77th Street, has been used to host alumni events in the area. The property was officially listed for sale about 24 hours prior to Executive Director for Integrated Media Bill Schaller’s Oct. 9 email to the Justice. Lawrence wrote that the Brandeis House is too small to accommodate the growing number of alumni in the area and that the building has also been underutilized. John Burger, a broker at Brown Harris Stevens, who has the listing along with Ghislaine Absy, said in an Oct. 7 Wall Street Journal article that he expected strong interest from buyers “seeking a single-family residence, which is what the house was built for."
Title IX holds colleges accountable for assault handling of sexual assault has been in question, the law holds schools responsible. By MARISSA DITKOWSKY JUSTICE EDITOR
With the recent swell in Title IX investigations aimed at colleges and universities around the country this year, the question of whether colleges and universities are equipped to handle cases of sexual assault has been in the national spotlight. As of September, Brandeis has been added to this list of over 75 colleges and universities that are cur-
rently under federal investigation by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights for potential violations of Title IX rights. The Office of Civil Rights will be investigating alleged mishandling of a case on behalf of an accused student—who was found guilty of sexual misconduct after a Special Examiner’s Process took place—after the student filed a complaint against the University for non-compliance with Title IX.
History of Title IX
Title IX originated in the Educational Amendments of 1972, amendments to the Higher Education Act of 1965. Title IX bans gender discrimination in educational programs and
institutions that receive federal funding, which includes Brandeis. “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance,” the section reads. Since the implementation of Title IX, a succession of court cases have upheld the legality of universities being obligated to handle sexual assaults that are reported to them or occur on their campuses. A June 6 Chronicle of Higher Education article highlights several of these cases. The 1980 case Alexander v. Yale
See SODEXO, 7 ☛
The house was built in 1895 and has had several owners, including Reginald Vanderbilt, father of Gloria Vanderbilt, according to an Oct. 10 article on The Real Deal, a real estate news source, Nate B. Spingold, who was a top executive at thenColumbia Pictures Corporation, purchased the house in 1934, according to an Oct. 7 Wall Street Journal article. The house was donated to the University by Spingold’s widow, Frances Spingold. Although Schaller wrote that the University received the property as a gift in 1964, the Oct. 7 Wall Street Journal article notes that the property was donated to the University in 1960. According to Schaller, Spingold’s gifting the house to the University did not come with any conditions. Schaller wrote that the University owns other properties, but no other properties in New York. He did not respond to requests for comment on which properties the University owns by press time. —Marissa Ditkowsky
See TITLE IX, 7 ☛
Provost’s policy
Forward run
Outlining violence
Newly appointed provost gives a Tuesday Talk on labor economics and her new role.
The No. 20 women’s soccer team dropped a UAA contest to the University of Rochester on Saturday.
A student group drew chalk outlines around campus to draw attention to the shooting of black people.
FEATURES 9 For tips or info email editor@thejustice.org
ment creating a stressful and hostile work environment, grievances not being addressed by Sodexo within five days as required by their contract and an increase in the hiring of temporary workers. A Sodexo worker at Brandeis, who requested to remain anonymous to protect his job, said of Sodexo, “They cut the hours and change everything. It’s not the same anymore.” He said that since Sodexo took over food service at Brandeis he has lost many benefits. According to him, Aramark would add six percent of his salary to his 401(k) payments, while Sodexo now adds only one percent. He also said that he can no longer afford to keep his health insurance now that he works for Sodexo, as the amount he is required to contribute has increased. “Right now there is nothing we can do, even though we are union
BRIEF Brandeis House NY currently on the market for $33 million
MORGAN BRILL/the Justice
■ Though the University’s
Waltham, Mass.
Let your voice be heard! Submit letters to the editor online at www.thejustice.org
INDEX
SPORTS 16
ARTS SPORTS
17 16
EDITORIAL FEATURES
10 8
OPINION POLICE LOG
10 2
News 3
COPYRIGHT 2014 FREE AT BRANDEIS.
2
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2014
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THE JUSTICE
NEWS SENATE LOG
Food Recovery Network recognized On Sunday, the Senate convened for its weekly meeting and recognized two clubs—one on a contingency—and made some general announcements. At the beginning of the meeting, Student Union President Sneha Walia ’15 announced that the InterUnion Meeting will be held next Wednesday, Oct. 22. She announced that a Dean’s Night with several of the deans will be held on Nov. 13 in Ridgewood Commons and will be open to all students. A roundtable, the first of the semester, will be held Wednesday, Nov. 5 from 6 to 8 p.m. with Senior Vice President for Students and Enrollment Andrew Flagel and other administrators. The first Community Enhancement Fund meeting will be held this week, she announced. Walia announced that the Student Union will be co-sponsoring an event in Waltham with Brandeis Academic Debate and Speech Society. Addressing the senators, she said that those who missed the Student Union retreat will need to complete bystander training. She also mentioned a project underway for adding a blue light for the Charles River Apartments. Two clubs approached the Senate—the Food Recovery Network and the Student Language Exchange—both asking for recognition and charter. Students from the Food Recovery Network explained that it is a part of a national organization that donates leftover food items from dining services. The students said that they have a year-long plan worked out, which includes two recoveries for fall and works toward weekly recoveries in the spring. The group said that other universities that use Sodexo are participating in the Food Recovery Network and that Sodexo has preexisting protocols for cooperating with the organization. The Senate then had a closed discussion about recognizing the club. The senators expressed several concerns, namely that the dining services has already been working to reduce waste. Some senators worried that the group had not yet been in communication with Randi Kates-Peirce, the senior director of operations for Sodexo, or Shawn Monaghan, the resident manager of Sodexo. Several senators were concerned that legally, dining services would have to throw out what is already being served. The senators wondered if, given current policy, the group would be able to carry out their goals the way they wanted to. The senators questioned whether a Brandeis chapter of the Food Recovery Network would work with other clubs and if recognizing this club would be possible, considering a potential duality of purpose with Dining and Sustainability. The senators took a vote, with a majority in favor of recognizing the club, and recognized it on the contingency that the club will meet with Monaghan, Kates-Peirce, Chair of the Dining Committee and Class of 2017 Senator Ben Margolin and Chair of the Sustainability Committee and Class of 2015 Senator Anna Bessendorf. The club can be officially approved for recognition once those meetings occur and it is decided that the club’s goals are plausible. Thus, the Senate did not vote on whether or not to charter the club. Next, the Student Language Exchange approached the Senate for recognition and charter. The members stated that international students teach languages not taught on campus. They gave examples of Bengali and Cantonese, both taught last semester, and noted that the plan is to hold 80-minute lessons weekly with teaching fellows. The Senate unanimously recognized the club without discussion. The group said that it wanted to be chartered in order to be able to procure textbooks and teaching materials and gave the example of a program started at Brown University, saying that Brandeis was the second campus to launch this sort of program. The Senate voted to charter the group. Senator-at-Large Brian Hough ’17 proposed a change to the Article V in Section 6 of the Student Union Constitution, asking to move the agenda section to the top, so that the Senate could discuss clubs earlier in the Senate meeting. His proposal was unanimously approved. The Senate voted to skip senator reports.
POLICE LOG Medical Emergency
Oct. 6—A student in Gordon Hall reportedly hurt her neck after “tumbling.” A head injury also may have resulted. University Police and BEMCo responded, and Cataldo Ambulance transported the party to NewtonWellesley Hospital. The community development coordinator was notified of the incident. Oct. 12—A party in Shapiro Hall stated that she was breaking out in hives all over her body and requested BEMCo. She had no known allergies, and her breathing was normal at the time. BEMCo treated the party on-scene with a signed refusal for further care.
Burglary
Oct. 9—Residents of Usen Castle reported experiencing an attempted breaking and entering while they were occupying the room the previous day. University Police compiled a report on the incident.
Disturbance
Oct. 11—A community advisor reported that he broke up a party in Ridgewood B and that there was a large group of people outside the building. University Police checked the area and found a group of about 20 people outside. There was no breach of the peace, and no further action was taken by University Police.
Drugs
Oct. 11—A party in Ziv Quad called to report a problem with his roommate who had been smoking marijuana in his room for three days. University Police notified the CDC who handled the incident with officers on standby.
Miscellaneous
Oct. 6—A staff member reported two male individuals were lighting unknown objects on fire in North Quad Lot. University Police found that the students were light-
ing a memorial to a deceased family member, which, according to one of the students, is a cultural tradition. The memorial was contained and extinguished on its own. University Police took no further action. Oct. 6—A caller reported that a suspicious-looking person was looking into various cars in Theater Lot. The suspicious person was reported to be a male in his early twenties, wearing blue jeans, a fleece zip-up jacket and black-rimmed glasses. The caller stated that when he spotted the male, the male seemed to “stare him down.” University Police checked the area and spoke to several people there, but no one matching the description was found. Oct. 10—A staff member reported that a female was sitting in a parking space in Tower Lot. University Police found the individual, a student, who stated that she was meditating and that she would be in the spot un-
BECOMING BRANDEISIANS
Prof posts anti-Israel tweet
CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS n A News article titled “Students arrested during New York climate protest” stated that Prof. Sabine von Mering did not attend the People’s Climate March in New York City when she, in fact, did. (Oct. 7, pg. 5) n The photograph on page 2 captioned as a Hiatt Career Center business program was actually a picture from the Break the Fast. (Oct. 7, pg. 2)
n In the statistics box in the Sports section, Ashley Piccirillo-Horan’s ’17 name was misspelled. (Sept. 23, pg. 23) The Justice welcomes submissions for errors that warrant correction or clarification. Email editor@ thejustice.org.
Justice
the
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The Justice is the independent student newspaper of Brandeis University. The Justice is published every Tuesday of the academic year with the exception of examination and vacation periods. Editor in chief office hours are held Mondays from 2 to 3 p.m. in the Justice office. Editor News Forum Features Sports Arts Ads Photos Managing Copy Layout
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—Compiled by Tate Herbert
WIRE BRIEF
—Marissa Ditkowsky
n A Forum article titled “Evaluate differeing narratives in Israel-Palestine discourse” said that Shani Abromowitz is a member of the class of 2015 when she is actually in the class of 2014. (Oct. 7, pg. 12)
til 12:01 p.m. The student reported that she could only meditate in that exact place. University Police took no further action. Oct. 11—University Police received a report of four student-aged people “running around” inside Mandel Center for the Humanities, at around 2:30 a.m. Police discovered four Brandeis students looking for a place to study and advised them to go to the Shapiro Campus Center. The students had entered the building through a door left ajar in Olin Sang. Oct. 12—University Police discovered a white Toyota Camry with Massachusetts plates parked in the softball field area. Officers placed the vehicle’s owner, Jasper Grassa, 23, in protective custody due to alcohol intoxication and transported him to the Waltham Police station. Ramsey’s Towing towed the vehicle. Police compiled a report on the incident.
MIHIR KHANNA/the Justice
Dean of Students Jamele Adams (center) and Executive Director of Admissions Jennifer Walker (right) spoke about Brandeis to prospective students on Sunday in the Spingold Theater during the Fall Preview Day.
Controversial professor Steven Salaita, who lost his job offer from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign after criticizing Israel on social media, lashed out at university administrators Monday for overreaching in their decision not to hire him. Salaita, in a speech at Northwestern University, focused on academic freedom and the recent conflict in the Middle East. He made comparisons between his own situation and the subject of colonialism that he studies, saying that the university was suppressing a minority position. In early August, UIUC chancellor Phyllis Wise revoked Salaita’s job offer, a tenured position in the American Indian studies department, weeks before he was to start and after a series of controversial tweets he posted over the summer about Israeli military action in Gaza, some of which contained vulgar or inflammatory language. The UIUC board of trustees backed her in an 8-1 vote, a decision that led to criticism from faculty nationally, who say UIUC is violating free speech and academic freedom. On Monday, Salaita, a PalestinianAmerican who studies colonialism and the Middle East, criticized UIUC board members, who he said “have zero qualifications to evaluate my teaching or scholarship,” and universities more broadly for everything from “siding with Israel” to high administrative salaries and the reliance on part-time adjunct faculty. He said he is not anti-Semitic, as some have said, but that he “opposes the policies of the state of Israel.” Salaita has described his tweets as “passionate and unfiltered,” and many of the ones preceding his job revocation focused on the number of children killed in the conflict this summer. One of his more controversial posts was written in June, soon after three Israeli teens were kidnapped and later found dead. He wrote: “You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the (expletive) West Bank settlers would go missing.” Salaita, 38, had resigned from his tenured job at Virginia Tech University last spring in preparation for the move to Urbana-Champaign, and now he and his family are living with his parents in the Washington, D.C., area. —Tribune News Service
ANNOUNCEMENTS Ending Cycles of Violence
This discussion will focus on understanding the impact trauma has on the survivors and families REACH Beyond Domestic Violence serves but also the impact on those of us who are in healing and supportive positions in our professional and personal lives. Today from 12:30 to 2 p.m. in the Epstein Center Multipurpose Room.
Workshop: Job Search Strategy
Identify and implement the top job search strategies to use to pursue a professional life after Brandeis. This workshop is geared towards rising seniors, but all class years are welcome to register. Today from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. in the Hiatt Career Center.
Physics Department Colloquium
Hydrodynamics is the theory describing the collective behaviors of fluids and gases. It has a very long history and is usu-
ally considered to belong to the realm of classical physics. In recent years, it has been found that, in many cases, hydrodynamics can manifest a purely quantum effect—anomalies. This lecture will examine how this new appreciation of the interplay between quantum and classical physics has emerged, unexpectedly, through the idea of gauge/gravity duality, which originates in modern string theory. It will briefly mention the possible relevance of the new findings to the physics of the quark gluon plasma. Today from 4 to 5 p.m. in Abelson 131.
Prospect Hill Center Ribbon Cutting
Volunteer or come celebrate at the grand opening of the new Prospect Hill Community Center, which supports the families and children of the Prospect Hill low-income community. Learn how to volunteer in after school programs and join Brandeis upper administration, Bentley University and city of-
ficials for the service event of the semester. Friday from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at Prospect Hill Terrace on Prospect Hill Road in Waltham.
Connect With GPS Networking Event
Connect with the Brandeis Graduate Professionals Studies online community in person. Take this opportunity to share business cards, swap industry tales and enjoy some cocktails and appetizers. Join Brandeis GPS staff, faculty, advisory board members, corporate partners and students of the past and future at this networking event. Thursday from 6 to 9 p.m. in the Faculty Club.
Athletics Homecoming Weekend
Come join past and present Judges in a day filled with sporting games and events all around campus including a barbecue, carnival, career panel and more. Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center.
THE JUSTICE
violence, a student group shared stories of black Americans who were shot. By SHERRY SIMKOVIC JUSTICE STAFF WRITER
GRACE KWON/the Justice
RAISING AWARENESS: A flag hangs on the Catholic chapel for LGBTQ History Month.
Chapel displays gay pride flag By Sarah Scott JUSTICE STAFF WRITER
This month, a rainbow flag was draped across the Bethlehem Chapel and a pink cloth across the altar. They are on display to recognize both Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer History Month, as well as Breast Cancer Awareness Month throughout October. In an interview with the Justice, Rev. Walter Cuenin, the University’s Catholic chaplain and coordinator of the Interfaith Chaplaincy, explained the chapel’s display and its significance in detail. He described the flag right beside the chapel as an “enormous gay pride flag.” He also mentioned that a pink cloth covers the altar and added that there are also pink candles in the chapel. Cuenin said that he wanted students to be aware of issues regarding discrimination pertaining to the LGBTQ community and breast cancer awareness and research. Regarding breast cancer awareness, Cuenin expressed concern that women’s health has not garnered enough attention in society, and said that he hopes that the displays in the chapel will help students to become more aware. Cuenin acknowledged that a priest hanging an LGBTQ pride flag outside of the chapel might be a bit of a surprise, stating that many believe “a priest would never do that,”
3
Chalk figures bring attention to black shootings in America ■ To raise awareness of
a pink cloth across the chapel’s alter for Breast Cancer Awareness month.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2014
Student activism
SHOWING SUPPORT
■ Rev. Walter Cuenin draped
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given the Catholic Church’s stance that homosexuality is morally wrong. He said he feels deeply that there needs to be more focus on how people act outside of the Church as opposed to good deeds and social activism being confined to the Church. He went on to say that he also wants to be able to welcome the LGBTQ community into the church at Brandeis, which includes students, faculty and members outside of the Brandeis community. Cuenin mentioned that students were very passionate about seeing the LGBTQ pride flag displayed beside the chapel, specifically noting Noah Litwer ’15. Cuenin said that Litwer was instrumental in helping to initiate the campaign. In an interview with the Justice, Litwer said that he was glad that the chapel is now displaying the LGBTQ Flag. He stated that many of the voices from student organizations and administration bring a “limited scope of perspectives.” Litwer said that he hopes that with the display of the pride flag outside the chapel, the voices of the LGBTQ community will be heard by students, faculty, administrators and other visitors to campus. He also said that he hopes the LGBTQ community will feel welcome in the Catholic chapel. He said that religious leaders are responsible for representing all of their followers and congregants. Litwer described Brandeis as “one big community” and noted that the pride flag is a visual symbol for the LGBTQ community to feel included in Brandeis Catholic life. “At the end of the day, diversity is really what makes human innovation possible,” Litwer said.
A new group on campus, called REAL: Re-Establishing Active Liberty, initiated a campaign on Sept. 28 which included drawing chalk outlines on campus and sharing stories of black victims of violence to raise awareness. Flyers were distributed, describing shootings of black youths, with a brief synopsis of each person’s death and last words as well. In an interview with the Justice, five of the founding members, Shemira Pennyman ’15, Malika Imhotep ’15, Aliya Nealy ’15, Jhanezia Stevens ’16 and Khadijah Lynch ‘16, discussed how the creation of REAL came about. Pennyman explained that a town hall vigil was held on Sept. 4 in memory of the lives lost to institutional racism in the United States and of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager was shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. At the vigil, based on efforts to be more proactive, attendees who were interested being a part of a new movement, calling for more action in terms of dealing with racial social injustices, were encouraged to sign up. According to Imhotep, at their first meeting, about 20 to 26 people attended. At that meeting, REAL was founded, and they began to think of future events to further the on campus awareness of recent social injustice toward the black community.
“Talking is important, but action is ideal. Our goal in forming this group and establishing a presence on campus is to make people listen and aware and to talk about things that are uncomfortable,” Pennyman said. The mission statement reads, “We will inform, educate, and act as mediums to move from discourse to direct, feasible action. We recognize the detrimental social, political and economic ramifications of Institutionalized racism as a result of White Supremacy. We believe in the power of unity and alliance to create poignant change on our campus and the broader community.” They explained that they compiled a list of 40 names of black men, women and children. The list was compiled by choosing stories that they thought people would respond to and best understand. They then chose to print fliers about and draw chalk outlines of 20 of those 40 victims. “Our goal is to challenge Brandeis and the campus population to take accountability. It’s less about having specific responses and more about dealing head-on with the anti-blackness on campus and the structured racism which extends from centuries of oppression,” said Imhotep. On one of the flyers, the story of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old who was fatally shot by a police officer on Jan. 1 2009, is printed. In San Francisco, Officer Johannes Mehserle was called to the Fruitvale Bay Area Rapid Transit station because of a supposed fight. When Officer Mehserle arrived on the scene, he detained several passengers including Grant. According to the flyer, Officer Mehserle claims that he meant to subdue Grant by using his Taser device but instead pulled out his service pistol and
shot Grant in the back, killing him. According to the flyer, Grant’s last words were “You shot me! You shot me!” “We want to promote an oncampus focus of what’s happening outside of campus and show that crimes have an affect on us and the entire Brandeis community,” Pennyman said. Until this interview with the Justice, the group had chosen to remain anonymous, mainly because members did not want students to automatically categorize the issue as “black,” said Imhotep and Pennyman, both of whom are heavily involved with other black student organizations on campus. When asked about any specific racist incidents on campus, Nealy explained that no one had ever vehemently acted racist but that she felt people tended to act a certain way. She explained, “When people see TYP [Myra Kraft ’64 Transitional Year Program] or Posse, they automatically see black.” Stevens added that “[t]here is such a lack of knowledge of black life on campus. I’ll be sitting in a sociology class, and when discussing different races, I feel as though I’m the token black person.” “We hope to provide an outlet on campus that would help people engage in black lives, not just black culture that everyone is exposed to,” said Pennyman. “We hope to combat the global disregard for police brutality and to actively engage in blatant responses to the immense injustice that black people face today.” The founding members of REAL said that they do not have any plans for the group to become chartered or recognized by the Student Union in the future.
BRIEF Elevator licenses appear expired Despite multiple elevators on campus appearing to have expired licenses, all of the University’s obligations have been filled, according to Vice President of Operations James Gray. The University is simply waiting for the state to inspect the elevators, Gray explained in an email to the Justice. “We have made all the required requests for renewal, and because of that we are compliant with law until the inspections happen, and thereafter when we
pass the inspections,” wrote Gray in an email to the Justice. “The inspections are often months late because there are not enough state inspectors to keep up, and we don’t get the new certificate until after the inspections, hence the seemingly expired certificates in elevators now,” Grey wrote. Some of the elevators listed expiration dates of Aug. 31, and others listed Oct. 1. —Sam Mintz
MORGAN BRILL/the Justice
OUTLINING ISSUES: A student group drew chalk figures memorializing black people who lost their lives due to institutional racism.
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THE JUSTICE
CAMPUS SPEAKER
Historian holds talk on WWI ■ Adam Hochschild of the
University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism discussed illusions in the war. By ARIANNA UNGER JUSTICE STAFF WRITER
As this year marks the centennial anniversary of the start of World War I, the History department hosted historian Adam Hochschild of the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism to speak about his research on the war yesterday. Hochschild said at the lecture that World War I “had been an obsession of mine from a young age.” He said that the war “remade our world for the worst in every conceivable way.” He highlighted the fact that more than 20 million military and civilian deaths resulted from the war—more than six times as many people than had been killed in any war in Europe previously. Hochschild explained that World War I was “started very easily because people had several illusions.” He first mentioned the illusion of “quick and easy victory.” This was the illusion—particularly among the Germans and French—that men sent off to battle would return home quickly and unscathed. The second illusion, he explained, was “the belief that you would be shooting at the enemy, but the enemy would not be shooting at you.” To illustrate his point, Hochschild presented photographs of French and Austro-Hungarian military battalions dressed in brightly colored combat uniforms. He explained that these uniforms were a reflection of the prevailing belief that the war would be a peaceful demonstration of national pride, rather than a bloody conflict. The third illusion that Hochschild identified was that of “the cavalry itself, the idea that men on horseback could play a role in warfare in the industrial age.” Because cavalry had previously been a source and symbol of military glory, several armies, especially the French army, invested enormous funds and efforts to bolster their cavalry units, he said. Many Western European nations encountered a harsh reality when faced with machine guns, flamethrowers and poisoned gas. Hochschild also pointed out that, just as had been the case in earlier European wars, it was primarily the nobility and members of the upper class who occupied the front lines of combat units. Military careers were highly encouraged by the upper classes, and, as a result, huge numbers of the elite were wiped out in battle. He continued on to say that World War I brought with it the “beginnings of a totalitarian control of civilian populations that we really hadn’t seen before.” Many countries
refused to allow refugees to flee national borders, governments initiated mass propaganda campaigns, and many nations denied their citizens basic civil liberties. European imperial powers with colonies in Africa and Asia—such as those of Germany and France—conscripted millions of people in their occupied territories to work in war industries. Hochschild also cited the practice of governments to draft boys under the age of 18 into their national armies. Hochschild described World War I as the “first major propaganda war,” showing the audience images of cartoon propaganda compelling men to enlist. “If you didn’t volunteer to fight, you were cowardly and guilty, and worst of all, you were effeminate,” explained Hochschild. “In the face of this ceaseless barrage of propaganda, it is important for us to remember … the people who spoke out against it,” Hochshild said of the war. He asserted that many tragedies of the war could have been prevented if citizens and governments were more vocal about achieving peace. He then proceeded to list a few individuals and groups from various countries who did take active measures to oppose the war. Hochschild mentioned political activist Eugene Debs and women’s rights leader Jane Addams as vocal American opponents of the war. He also cited German socialist Rosa Luxemburg’s and French social democrat Jean Jaurès’ grave disapprovals of the war. Hochschild remarked that individuals from Great Britain were the most outspoken against the War. He noted that more than 20,000 men refused to join the British forces when drafted and that more than 6,000 of those men were sent to prison. Hochschild also named a number of notable British anti-war activists, such as journalist E.D. Morel, welfare campaigner Emily Hobhouse, suffragist Charlotte Despard and philosopher Bertrand Russell. Hochschild closed by saying that “[m]y hope when we look back on this period is that, in this centenary year, we’ll remember not just the politicians and not just the generals, but also the people who tried to stop the carnage, even if they were not successful.” He concluded the presentation by showing the audience a silent documentary that depicted scenes from World War I. While the documentary played, he put on the song “No Man’s Land” by Scottish songwriter Eric Bogle, explaining that Bogle was inspired to write the song while visiting one of the vast World War I military graveyards in France. After his presentation, Hochschild opened the floor to questions from the audience. Hochschild was a winner of the American Historical Association’s Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson Award, and has authored several books including his most recent title, To End All Wars.
MORGAN BRILL/the Justice
WORLD WAR TALK: Adam Hochschild spoke about World War I and the illusions that allowed it to begin easily on Monday in the Rapaporte Treasure Hall.
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TUESDAY OCTOBER 14, 2014
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BRIEF Professors receive grants from BRAIN initiative Profs. Sacha Nelson and John Lisman (BIOL) have received research grants from the National Institutes of Health under President Barack Obama’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, Initiative, according to an Oct. 7 BrandeisNOW article. Nelson and Lisman were among the first researchers to receive research funds through the BRAIN Initiative. Nelson’s team received $3.4 million “to research how neuronal cell types evolved,” according to the article. Lisman’s team received $1.95 million “to explore how brain cells work together to remember a sequence of events, like a route,” BrandeisNOW reported.
Prof. Eve Marder (BIOL) is a member of the Initiative’s advisory board, “charged with defining the project and its goals,” according to BrandeisNOW. She Lisman joined 13 other scientists to form the “brain trust” to direct the project, according to an April 9, 2013 Justice article. As a part of the trust, she helped to formulate some of the funding plans on NIH’s part of the initiative. “I think this confirms that despite the small size of our University,
Brandeis competes favorably with the top programs in Neuroscience across the country,” Nelson wrote in an email to the Justice. The purpose Nelson of the BRAIN Initiative is to research all levels of brain function and to provide insight on diseases and disorders such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and autism, according to the Justice article. —River Heisler
ACCURACY COUNTS
GUILLERMO NARVAEZ/the Justice
ON HERETICS: Prof. Chris Miller (BIOL) discussed issues with scientists who do not let go of theories after they are disproved.
Biology professor lectures on scientific “crackpottery” ■ Prof. Chris Miller (BIOL)
discussed scientific heretics who cling to their theories. By ABBY PATKIN JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Prof. Chris Miller (BIOL) might be a biologist by profession, but in a lecture he gave on March 3 2014 at Oxford University, he tackled a subject that he said, in the opening words of the presentation, he had wanted to study for years: scientific crackpots. Last Friday, Oct. 10, Miller reprised his lecture “Mountebanks, Con-men, and Heretics: An Epistemology of Scientific Crackpottery” at Brandeis in an event sponsored by the Biochemistry and Biological Physics departments as well as the Office of the Provost. At the event, Miller delivered the presentation to a mixed audience of students, faculty and fellow scientists. The lecture, which he had originally devised for his work as Oxford’s Newton-Abraham visiting professor in medical, biological and chemical sciences, was several decades in the making. “I really had a hard time in coming up with a topic for what would be appealing to a public British audience,” Miller said during Friday’s lecture. “I somehow came up with this idea of talking about scientific crackpottery, and in fact, it’s a subject that I have been more or less subconsciously kicking around in my head for the last 40 years, from the time when I was a graduate student with an adviser, who, I came to realize during the course of my graduate studies, was a classic scientific crackpot.” Merriam-Webster defines crackpots as those “given to eccentric or lunatic notions.” Scientific crackpots are similar in a sense and, as Miller describes
in his lecture, are heretics that cling to their theories, failing to remain open to the process of peer-review and criticism that is essential to the scientific community. According to Miller’s lecture, the idea of crackpottery boils down to recognizing what he calls the three types of “scientific outliers”—mountebanks, or eloquent public speakers, or, as he called them, “hot air artists;” con men, or non-scientists who often fabricate data; and heretics, or suppliers of unwelcome opinions that go against the status quo. Miller cited many examples of con men and heretics, providing examples such as William Summerlin—a dermatologist who fabricated successful skin transplants in genetically unrelated mice by painting the “grafts” on—for con men, Barbara McClintock—who pioneered the notion of chromosomal crossover—for the heroic heretic and Gilbert Ling—who has sought to disprove that cells contain sodium-potassium pumps, among many other things—as an example of a crackpot heretic. Additionally, while he did not give specific names of mountebanks in his lecture, Miller cited common claims such as “we will understand the human brain within a few years” and “we have almost found the cure for cancer” as examples of phrases used by mountebanks in the present-day. That being said, Miller put emphasis on the fact that his lecture did not mean to elevate any one “phenotype” of scientific outlier over another but rather to cross-examine them and consider the characteristics of each. “This is not really about bad versus good science,” Miller was quoted as saying in a March 4 BrandeisNOW article. “Rather it’s an examination of what I see as four different outlier scientific phenotypes: the mountebank, the con man, and two types of
heretics.” Miller focused the brunt of his lecture on these heretics, searching for the fine line between what he calls “heroes”—those scientists who acknowledge the possibility that their theories might be false—and their opposites, the “crackpots.” In searching for the fine line, Miller said that he tried to “identify features common among crackpots and distinguish them from the features common to heroes.” While Miller acknowledged that there is no one feature that “infallibly” makes a scientist a crackpot or a hero, he claimed that “there are certain indicators that are signifiers that might raise one’s suspicions” about a scientist’s research and theories. Drawing on many cases of scientific “heroes” and “crackpots,” Miller pointed out several features common to each type of scientist. According to Miller, most crackpots hold a theory or belief long after their peers’ research and the scientific community has denounced the belief.Yet, Miller told the audience, being incorrect is not a trait unique to the crackpot. “You don’t have to be right to be a hero,” Miller said. “You just have to be open and willing to amend your beliefs as information from nature comes in.” Ultimately, Miller’s presentation, though scientific in both nature and subject, was not without the occasional quip and use of humor as he attempted to highlight the differences between the two types of heretics: heroes and crackpot. “Crackpots often offer syllogisms like, ‘Einstein was laughed at; Einstein was a genius. I am laughed at, therefore I am a genius.’” Miller said. “To paraphrase Carl Sagan, I would just like to point out: they laughed at Barbara McClintock, they laughed at Lewis Heilbrunn, they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
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CONTINUED FROM 1 University led many campuses around the country to develop sexual harassment policies. Although the district court in Connecticut ruled that the plaintiffs in the case had not been subjected to sexual harassment, the court set the precedent that sexual harassment is, in fact, considered a form of discrimination. Yale was forced to implement a grievance procedure at that point. Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools, a 1992 case, set the precedent for considering sexual assault a form of harassment and that educational institutions must address this issue. However, the case did not involve universities and focused on a student-teacher relationship. It was not until Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education in 1999 that schools were deemed liable for student-on-student sexual assault, although, again, universities were not mentioned in the precedent—public elementary and secondary schools were the focus.
Procedural Changes at Brandeis
JEREMY PERLMAN/the Justice
Dr. Ashmita Khasnabish, author of Negotiating Capability and Diaspora, discussed her book at an event last Tuesday. The book focuses on Amartya Sen's theory of capability.
SODEXO: Dining managers reject claims of practices workers,” the Sodexo worker added. “We go to the union, and the union can do nothing. I don’t know, because they cut the hours and don’t want to hire people, so we are working harder than before.” Unite Here, a union under which most Sodexo employees unionized, representatives did not respond to requests for comment by press time. The Sodexo worker said that due to the decrease in hours of labor in the dining halls, he is often asked to do the work of two people by himself. Andrew Nguyen ’15, a member of the BLC, said that he learned from the Brandeis Unite Here union representative, Michael Kramer, that in comparison to last semester, workers’ hours have been cut by about 288 hours per week cumulatively and it has affected about 45 workers. He said that he spoke to one worker who normally works 40 hours per week, but had his hours cut down to 20 for one week. However, Nguyen said that from what he has heard, it has been more common for many workers to lose just a few hours each week, for example to work 37 hours instead of 40. “I don’t think it’s fair to say Sodexo cut their hours,” Resident Manager for Sodexo at Brandeis Shawn Monaghan said in an interview with the Justice. He explained that since hours of operation have changed at many locations on campus, it may seem as though the workers’ hours have been cut. He added that Sodexo workers on campus are able to choose which location they would like to work at, and if they do decide to switch locations, a change in hours will naturally occur. However, the anonymous Sodexo worker did not change locations. “These cuts were often done without the knowledge of workers,
leading to increased stress for those struggling to support themselves and their families,” the open letter read. “Understaffing forces workers to juggle multiple jobs at once without rest. In some cases, this increased stress has escalated to mental and physical harm.” The letter continued, “It has come to our attention that the managerial staff actively disrespects workers through public and private intimidation, coercion to do tasks not formally stated in their job classification, paternalistic treatment, and by decreasing worker hours without prior notice.” Nguyen said that “one of the workers described management as treating them like dogs.” It also said that even if a worker files a grievance with Sodexo about treatment, it is often not addressed within the required time period of five days. Nguyen said that he learned from Kramer there is a backlog of grievances dating back to April of this year. Sodexo management did not respond to request for comment on this issue by press time. “This creates a hostile environment where workers are devalued and their legitimate concerns are ignored. By refusing to address the grievances of the workers, higher management enforces a climate of fear for workers and allows abuses to escalate. This unchecked injustice is unacceptable, immoral, and violates the Union Contract,” the letter read. The letter ended with a list of demands for Sodexo, which included showing an active willingness to cooperate with workers, honoring their union contract, treating workers with respect and dignity, addressing concerns regarding the rights of new workers as well as non-union workers, responding to
TUESDAY, October 14, 2014
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TITLE IX: Focus shifts as law adds obligation
DIASPORA DISCUSSION
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issues of transparency about work qualifications and prioritizing hours of union workers over hiring temporary workers. On May 22 of this year, the Boston Globe published a column titled “Sodexo drops health care benefits for some, blaming Obamacare.” This column claimed that Sodexo was using the Affordable Care Act as an excuse to cut employee benefits. The columnist also wrote that Sodexo changed the way it calculated which employees were full and part-time in order to minimize the number of people who would receive full-time benefits. These accusations were largely directed toward several local schools, including the University of Massachusetts Boston and Suffolk University. While none of these reports were directly about Brandeis, they came out just as the University switched to Sodexo for dining services on campus. While this has been a largely publicized issue at other schools, similar issues have not occurred at Brandeis, according to Jason LaPrade, residential district manager for Sodexo, in a phone interview with the Justice. “At Brandeis, unionized employees have health benefits through Unite Here, which will not change as part of the collective bargaining agreement,” he said. LaPrade said that the employee contracts will next be renegotiated in June 2016. Monaghan said that the Affordable Care Act has not affected employee benefits and wages at the University. Several representatives from Unite Here did not respond to request for comment on their concerns or actions by press time despite multiple emails and phone calls. Monaghan also did not respond to requests for a follow-up interview about the open letter and employee concerns by press time.
Two years after Alexander v. Yale, in 1982, Brandeis formalized its own procedure for handling sexual assault, according to an April 29, 1982 Justice article. The previous procedure, according to a March 16, 1982 Justice article, had been an ad hoc grievance procedure—one without a formal or well-defined process. The solidified process involved first filing an informal complaint and attempting conciliation. If an agreeable solution was not reached, the complaint could go through a formal process. More recently, in April 2011, the Department of Education clarified schools’ responsibilities with a “Dear Colleague Letter.” The letter expresses in more specific detail the rights of survivors and individuals involved in the process and explains Department of Education preferences and requirements for grievance and investigation procedures. At the time, the University’s decision-making process for sexual assault and harassment cases was run through the Student Conduct Board. Students on that board expressed concerns, according to former Senior Vice President of Communications Ellen de Graffenreid in a June 30 email to the Justice. “At the same time, reviewing practices of our peers and national discussions on the issue, there were strong indications that it would be far more supportive of accusers to create a mirror process for issues of sexual misconduct, a process that would include investigations led by individuals deeply experienced in the field,” she wrote. As a result, the University implemented changes consistent with both the directives of the Department of Education and the perceived best practices in higher education during the 2012 to 2013 academic year. Brandeis created the Special Examiner’s Process, for which “generally outside consultants were employed for the complex investigations of sexual misconduct,” wrote de Graffenreid. A “preponderance of the evidence” standard was also adopted. The decision-making process remained with the Dean of Students, or the Vice President for Student Affairs, “but without a Conduct Board, faculty members raised concerns about decisions being made by a single individual,” wrote de Graffenreid. Therefore, the process was changed once again for the 2013 to 2014 academic year. The decisionmaking role was now designated by the senior vice president for students and enrollment, and the process was amended to include a panel of three staff and faculty who recommend disciplinary sanctions to that decision maker. “Brandeis staff members have striven in every way to meet the spirit and letter of all of these changes, including the ongoing interpreta-
tions of Title IX and directives of the Violence Against Women Act,” wrote de Graffenreid. “We continue to constantly evolve our entire conduct code and process, for compliance as well as seeking the best ways to support our student community.”
Perspectives on the procedure
The accusing party in the recent case that drew national attention and has led to the Title IX investigation on Brandeis called attention to the importance of a system at the University. “I didn’t want to start a police investigation because, statistically, … very few cases of sexual assault that go to the courts are found in favor of the survivor,” the student said in an interview with the Justice. “The number of cases that are successful in the LGBT community are even fewer, so I didn’t think that it would really be worth [it].” The accused party in this particular case argued, however, that the University is not at all equipped to handle the issue of sexual assault. “This is evident from the experience of both the Accused and Accusers. Neither feel as though their rights are being respected,” the accused party wrote in an email to the Justice. “No one at Brandeis is properly trained enough or well equipped enough to handle this matter. Therefore, only law enforcement, which can convict and imprison those found guilty of rape and sexual assault, should have jurisdiction over this matter.” Chairman of the Student Conduct Board Matthew Chernick ’16 said in an interview with the Justice that “[the new process] provides a higher level of privacy, security and safety for everyone when it’s done through a professional.” However, the University remains cognizant of its limitations. “No process on such complex matters will be perfect, and universities are not designed as criminal justice systems. That being said, the process that has been established at Brandeis exemplifies the best practices as they are currently understood,” de Graffenreid wrote in an email to the Justice. Chernick added that such limitations are reflected in the language and terms used by the Student Conduct Board and the University in sanctions and the decision-making process. Students, he said, are found “responsible for,” and not “guilty of,” certain actions. “[T]he conduct board is not a court of law,” said Chernick. “None of our educational-based sanctions are meant to have legal implications. The Board is supposed to be creating educational discourse about violations of what we hold as our standards as a community at Brandeis, and part of our idea is to educate the person that is held responsible.” The University, while undergoing a Title IX investigation, has continued to amend the process and the contents of the Rights and Responsibilities handbook. A draft of the updated 2014 to 2015 handbook clarifies that the dean of students plays a role in the process as opposed to a senior student affairs officer or designee, avoiding future confusion over who is responsible for undertaking which aspects of the process. The draft also includes more specific definition of consent, as well as a set list of punishments depending upon the findings. “Forcible non-consensual intercourse” has been placed in a class of its own, and is the first and only violation of sexual conduct that has a required punishment of dismissal from the University should a student be found guilty, according to the updated handbook. “There will always be issues involving definitions—they’re definitions. But we are working with the best possible definitions, most handed down through the government and worked out through the professionals we brought onto campus,” said Chernick.
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THE JUSTICE
VERBATIM | OSCAR WILDE One should always be in love. That’s the reason one should never marry.
ON THIS DAY…
FUN FACT
In 1982, U.S. President Ronald Reagan proclaimed a War on Drugs.
Reseachers have developed facial recognition software for cats.
JEREMY PERLMAN/ the Justice
JEREMY PERLMAN/ the Justice
BODY CHECK: Eric HaavindBerman ’15 (right) and James Hayward ’16 competing at Saturday’s lacrosse practice.
ACTION SHOT: Eric HaavindBerman ’15 (left) and James Hayward ’16 are co-captians of the club lacrosse team.
Bringing lax back Eric Haavind-Berman ’15 and James Hayward ’16 founded a club lacrosse team to continue playing the sport they love By CASEY PEARLMAN JUSTICE STAFF WRITER
JEREMY PERLMAN/ the Justice
AT EASE: Igor Berman ’17 joined club lacrosse in the spring of 2014.
In 2012, when Eric Haavind-Berman ’15 and James Hayward ’16 arrived on campus, Haavind-Berman as a transfer and Hayward as a firstyear, they were disappointed to find that their favorite sport, lacrosse, did not have a club team. HaavindBerman and Hayward both played lacrosse in high school and wished to continue in college. Hoping to find a few players to join them on the field, they put up flyers around campus. Even though they were aware of club lacrosse’s patchy history of activity, they were optimistic about creating a successful team. By fall 2013, they had gathered enough support to charter an official club and received about $16,000 for the year in funding from the Allocations Board. “It was not easy to get people to come and play but at the end of the fall semester we had a couple of guys who would go throw around,” Haavind-Berman said. “We became a club last year and it’s mostly been just throwing.” Now they are starting to play in a league that offers them the opportunity to play in some games. According to the co-captains, it was really difficult to gain support at first. However, with the help of the dedicated alumni, the boys a r e hopeful that the club can become a success. The lacrosse team has had a rocky history. The club was originally founded in the late 1980s, but did not last very long and slowly faded out in the early ’90’s. The club later re-formed in the mid-2000s but disappeared yet again by 2009. Despite its shaky history, the club does have a lot of support from lacrosse team alumni. “We have a really big alumni network,” Haavind-Berman said. “So far, they’ve donated some money and have given
us advice as far as how to get people and keep them coming.” They have received approximately $1,000 from alumni. Additionally, some of the alumni are possible coaches for the up and coming club team. “The alumni offer support, motivation, all the way to even talking with university administration and lending financial support,” Hayward added. “There really are no parameters in which we define our alumni, but they do fulfill things in certain areas, which is important.” “The alumni have had experiences and are able to provide seasoned advice, which is definitely critical to the success of a club and a team,” Hayward added. “We were extremely close like a family. 25 years later, we still keep in touch and get together on occasion,” lacrosse team alum Dr. Alex Tepper ’88 said in an email to the Justice. “Without a doubt my best Brandeis memories are lacrosse ones. We’ve all grown up to become doctors, lawyers, bankers, and entrepreneurs but will never forget Brandeis lacrosse.” The help from the alumni has been critical to the young club’s success so far. One alumn, Marc Kiredjian ’14, who is now working at the Heller School, gave Hayward some sound advice about practices, saying that they all need to be big events so a lot of people want to come and play. What does this mean for the team? “We have to use foresight and good judgment to make the calls and say ‘ok, we have to put our chips here because its gonna get us our biggest return’,” Hayward said. In other words, they need to know what to do in order to get more people to come out and play. This idea is especially important when it comes to participation and getting students to come to practices regularly. To attract more players and encourage them to return, the team put together a plan. “We have jerseys that we give out to players who have come to four or more practices so they can wear them around campus and get everyone to know we exist,” Haavind-Berman explained. “We’re also working with the girls’ team to have a social part of the team
and we plan to have a men versus women game which will be really fun and we’re going to heavily publicize,” he added. Other ideas they have considered include fundraisers and creating team T-shirts. Although the alumni provide exceptional help, Hayward added, “of course that’s not to say that we’re not gonna do things our way.” For example, the team is trying to improve its social experience. “As much as we’re here for school and for extracurricular activities, the whole premise is to learn and that takes place both inside and outside the classroom,” Hayward explained. “This type of experience provides good skills for the real world.” The club has definitely used and appreciated the support of alumni, but realize that they have to do some work on their own as well. Attracting guys who have never played lacrosse has been difficult for the founding members but not impossible. “Lacrosse is a very easy sport to pick up and get the hang of ... however, there are a lot of barriers to entry—it requires a lot of gear,” said Hayward. This is very different from some of the other club teams like Men’s Ultimate Frisbee and Men’s Rugby Club that only require soccer cleats. Despite the fact that these other club teams may have fewer “barriers to entrance,” Haavind-Berman hopes that rather than competing for players, the teams can share. HaavindBerman himself plays for both the lacrosse club and the rugby club. Despite the fact that other club teams on campus have more players, the captains don’t see it as competition amongst the sports. Rather, they hope to get people from those teams to join and play lacrosse. Although the club has had a slower start, the co-captains envision a big future for the team. “It is my hope that we can establish a program on the club level that is solid enough to eventually become recognized as a varsity sport,” Hayword explained. “It’s definitely a long term goal— I know I won’t see it in my time here.” Haavind-Berman agreed, “Who wouldn’t want a varsity team?”
THE JUSTICE ACADEMIC LEADER: Lynch brings a combination of field experience, as well as academic and administrative expertise to the provost position. MORGAN BRILL/ the Justice
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TUESDAY, october 14, 2014
An
afternoon
with the
future provost Lisa Lynch, dean of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, discusses labor economics and her new position By MAX SHPILMAN Justice staff WRITER
“This isn’t where I thought I was going to be, looking back just four months ago,” remarked Lisa Lynch, reflecting on her recent appointment to become the next University provost. Lynch is set to assume the provostship on Oct 29. She will continue to serve as the dean of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, a position she has occupied for the past six years. An expert in economics, Lynch brought her knowledge of the subject to her positions of dean and faculty member at Heller. Tuesday Talks, a series sponsored by Heller that allows professors to present their research in their respective fields to their colleagues and students, gave Lynch a platform from which to demonstrate her expertise to the wider Brandeis community. This past Tuesday, Oct. 7, Lynch participated in the series and spoke about her study of labor markets. Her presentation, titled “Labor Economics Research in Monetary Policy and Decision Making,” reflected on her time as chair of the board of directors for the Federal
Reserve Bank of Boston. “There were days when I felt like I was more of an anthropologist than an economist,” said Lynch, speaking to the fact that the full impacts of the Federal Reserve system’s monetary policies are not fully realized until months after being instituted. Members of the Fed often try to predict future economic behavior to determine the outcomes of these policies. Serving at the Boston Fed at the height of the recession in 2008 and 2009, Lynch noted that the economic implications of the policy decisions she was involved in making were magnified during that time. During the next part of her discussion, Lynch clarified that the Federal Reserve System is unique in comparison to central banks in other countries due to its dual mandate. While most central banks are dedicated to maintaining stable prices in the economy, she noted that the U.S. Federal Reserve System concerns itself with both national price levels and maintaining high levels of employment. Lynch recalled one particular instance as a member of the Fed during an annual economic policy symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo.,
when she and other members convened to discuss the prospects of future policies. According to Lynch, a vast crowd of protesters showed up at the resort to voice their concerns regarding the potential of rising interest rates. “Janet Yellen, one of my professors at the London School of Economics and current Chair of the Federal Reserve went right up to them and said, ‘We understand the issues that you’re talking about and we’re doing everything we can.’” These policies clearly matter to the public. The next portion of the discussion analyzed how factors such as wages and labor force participation rates are critical for determining the full level of national employment. However, Lynch observed that this so-called “level” is highly ambiguous. She reiterated that one must attempt to predict future economic behavior to be able to translate previous trends of employment levels into future ones. One notion that Lynch focused on, pertinent to current issues of national employment, is the concept of creative destruction. The concept details how old jobs are replaced by more efficient and less
expensive innovations that put employees out of work. “Technology seems to hamper ‘middle class jobs,’ replacing labor that performed routine tasks,” Lynch said. Although technology has not quite replaced tasks concentrated in high manual labor or “lower class jobs,” according to Lynch’s estimates technology does account for slightly less than half of the increasing levels of wage inequality in today’s economy. “Technology is a really important factor, but other trends that we see, including a decline in the real minimum wage and the decreasing amount of unionization, are also considerable factors that heighten the wage disparity,” Lynch said. Lynch then went on to talk about how the decrease in unionization—the amount of workers whose wages are negotiated by labor unions—is one indicator of deteriorating employer-employee relationships. Lynch discussed that, in today’s labor market, the relationships between employers and employees have become more distant because an increasing number of jobs do not require physical interaction at the workplace.
Lynch likened today’s labor market to Amazon’s “Mechanical Turk,” a marketplace for certain tasks that workers can complete from the confines of their home. However, these workers are not guaranteed compensation by Amazon, and they have little control over their job security. Lynch explained that these are the same characteristics one observes in the overall labor market. “The bargaining powers of workers are changing in a fundamental way,” said Lynch, which explains why labor income inequality continues to widen. Many workers lack job security and maintain poor bargaining positions in relation to their wages. Lynch took some time during her presentation to reflect on her continued presence at Heller. “As a University administrator, I have the best job in the whole wide world,” noted Lynch, who expressed enthusiasm for maintaining her faculty position at Heller. One trait that Lynch will bring to the provostship is her understanding of the importance of interacting with the student body. According to Lynch, “one can only understand an institution by meeting and engaging with students.”
MORGAN BRILL/ the Justice
TUESDAY TALKS: The Heller series featured Lynch‘s research on labor economics, which focuses on the relationship between employers and employees.
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10 TUESDAY, october 7, 2014 ● THE JUSTICE
the
Justice
Brandeis University
Established 1949
Rachel Hughes, Editor in Chief Tate Herbert, Senior Editor Glen Chagi Chesir, Managing Editor Jessie Miller and Sam Mintz, Deputy Editors Jaime Kaiser, Associate Editor Marissa Ditkowsky, News Editor Hannah Wulkan, Acting News Editor Rose Gittell, Acting Features Editor Max Moran, Forum Editor Avi Gold, Sports Editor Emily Wishingrad, Arts Editor Morgan Brill, Photography Editor Rebecca Lantner, Layout Editor Brittany Joyce, Copy Editor Aliza Kahn and Talia Zapinsky, Acting Advertising Editors
Martha Coakley for Governor With Nov. 4 only three weeks away, the 2014 Massachusetts gubernatorial race is still too close to call. Democratic candidate Martha Coakley leads Republican candidate Charlie Baker by a mere 1.6 percent of voters, according to a Sept. 20 compilation of various polling data by RealClearPolitics. The race thus far has been defined by only a few key issues. Although both Coakley and Baker are pro-choice and support marriage equality, fiscal and education policies have drawn the sharpest differences in their campaign platforms. This board endorses Martha Coakley for governor of the state of Massachusetts. We believe that Coakley’s extensive platform on key issues will best serve both Massachusetts residents and the student population. Specifically, we have limited our assessment of the gubernatorial race to the issues that we find most compelling and important—education, health care, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual and Queer rights and gender equality. We feel that these issues best speak to the interests and needs of Brandeis students. On all of these topics, Coakley stands out as a strong candidate. A key platform of Coakley’s campaign has been to promote universal early education, especially in the state’s poorer “Gateway” cities. Coakley has called on the state to provide gap funding for children forced to leave preschools due to a parent losing his or her job. As a board, we recognize the significance of early education—students in preschool programs are two and half times more likely to enroll in college later in life, according to the American Youth Policy Forum. These benefits are most needed in low-income homes, as the American Psychology Association reports that children from poor families are 10 times more likely to drop out of high school. Coakley’s focus on expanding early education for low-income cities will ensure that all students have a greater chance at achieving a high school diploma and a college degree. Coakley’s education platform also addresses key issues in some of Massachusetts’ poorest cities: according to her campaign website, only 30% of three and four-year-olds in Lawrence, Mass., for example, are enrolled in early education programs. In addition, Coakley plans to institute a full-need financial aid program for students attending any of Massachusetts’ 15 community colleges. According to her plan, if a student enrolled at a community college demonstrates clear need and cannot afford school with traditional financial aid, the state will pay the remaining expenses. Coakley has also called for families contributing to Massachusetts’ 529 College Savings Plan to receive $5,000 in tax deductions. Both of these proposals will significantly assist the people of Massachusetts in affording to receive a college diploma. According to Coakley’s campaign website, by 2020 70 percent of jobs in the state will require a college degree. Coakley’s prioritization of higher education is a worthy investment in the future of Massachusetts. As for Coakley’s health care platform, she hopes to bring down the cost of healthcare for working families and businesses while upholding the high-quality care for which Massachusetts is known. Specifically, this board recognizes Coakley’s dedication and previous work for expanding access to mental health care. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s latest report,
Prioritize education issues one in five Americans suffer from some form of mental illness. Even more people go untreated every year—making universal access to mental health care even more important. While serving as attorney general, Coakley implemented a $1.7 million Access to Mental Health Services Grant, which provided funding to five non profit organizations working in this field. Coakley has spoken about the profound impact of her brother’s suicide, and how it has motivated her to fight for stronger mental health care for the people of Massachusetts. Coakley’s platform also addresses civil rights—more specifically, rights and equality for the LGBTQ community. We strongly support Coakley’s affirmative stance on this issue and support her campaign platform that calls for fighting against unequal treatment in the workplace, advocating for the rights of transgender individuals and implementing bullying prevention programs in schools. While Baker is also supportive of gay marriage, Coakley comes to the issue with a strong history of fighting for equality. As attorney general, Coakley filed an influential lawsuit against the federal Defense of Marriage Act that helped the Supreme Court strike down the law. Coakley has also received the endorsement of MassEquality, an advocacy organization that that fights against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Coakley’s campaign platform also highlights gender inequality and the unequal treatment of women in the workplace. She has worked for greater protection of sexual assault and domestic violence survivors since the 1990’s, most recently coordinating with law enforcement to provide greater resources to fight perpetrators and support survivors. She also worked to implement a law that criminalized human trafficking for both sex and labor purposes. Despite Baker’s health care and managerial experience as the chief executive officer of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, we have concerns about his campaign promise to freeze state taxes at their current level. The Massachusetts tax rate has consistently increased over the past 20 years, and especially given Baker’s proposed expansion of social services like addiction therapy and veteran’s affairs, it is dangerously naive to assume taxes will not need to be raised. Coakley has made no such promise, and as she also prioritizes critical social issues, her willingness to face the hard fact that taxes will need to continue rising in Massachusetts shows a realism that this board applauds. This board is not alone in favoring Coakley on education and health care issues. A WBUR poll found voters prefer Coakley over Baker on health care by a five point margin, despite the latter’s experience in the health care industry. Additionally, voters favor Coakley on educational issues by a 16-point margin, a wide lead in an extremely close race. While Baker’s experience in executive business roles is a laudable trait for a governor, this board endorses Martha Coakley in the race for governor of Massachusetts, hoping she will follow through on campaign promises and will continue to improve governance in the issues this board finds most relevant.
GABRIELA YESHUA/the Justice
Views the News on
Last Tuesday, Twitter, Inc. announced a lawsuit against the United States government, demanding the right to publicly disclose the extent of government surveillance on its user’s accounts. Twitter hopes for government statutes that prohibit the company from stating the extent of government court orders to be struck down as violations of the First Amendment. Other tech companies, including Microsoft, Google and Facebook, have released their own transparency reports with government cooperation. Twitter is expected to win the case, but some question whether the lawsuit is being used as a public relations tactic to make users believe Twitter protects their privacy. Do you believe laws prohibiting public statements about government spying on social media websites are unconstitutional?
Prof. Pito Salas (COSI) I am not a lawyer and certainly not a constitutional lawyer. I think the way you phrased the question—“Do you believe laws prohibiting public statements about government spying on social media websites are unconstitutional?”—is already biasing and spinning by using the term “government spying on social media websites.” It’s a tricky question, as usual. I would like to know what kind of information the government is seeking from Twitter. Is it focused or is it a dragnet? Is it about the user’s email address, or is it about their GPS location? Is Twitter even collecting information that we don’t even know about that they fear we will find out about? I can say that I don’t believe that every instance of a government demand of secret information from a corporation is inherently unconstitutional. So I am giving you a big “it depends.” Just like a lawyer would, which I am not. Prof. Pito Salas (COSI) is an associate professor of Computer Science, and teaches COSI 152bj: “Web App Development for Social Networks.”
Joshua Brikman ’16 Laws that prohibit public statements related to spying on the part of the government are not only unconstitutional, they are also unenforceable and unwise. The First Amendment is murky to some? Let me induct some logic to refute this contemporary push for censorship. If there was no such thing as nasty speech, there would be no need for a law to protect it. The First Amendment is designed to protect the vilest of the vile, prima facie. The law is unenforceable because with each passing day comes better privacy technology. If the Communist Party cannot keep people from using Tor and VPNs in China, then the U.S. federal government certainly cannot either. For those who care for democracy, nothing is more pernicious than efforts to limit speech—an act which has a detrimental effect on the marketplace of ideas where civilized non-violent human beings solve issues peacefully and without the force of law. Joshua Brikman ’16 is the President of Brandeis Libertarians.
David Schwartz ’16 There exists a clear dichotomy between national security and freedom of speech. Ever since 9/11, the United States government has used those tragedies as an excuse to intervene on our daily lives and arguably breaching our Fourth Amendment rights. Now the government wants to use national security as a justification for limiting Twitter’s First Amendment rights to free speech. In the end of the day, the government must decide between protecting our freedom and severely limiting it for the purpose of national security. The last thing the United States needs is another McCarthyist movement. I do not pretend to have all the answers for how we can possibly maintain our national security while protecting our constitutional rights. However, I am concerned by the government’s statutes that forbid Twitter from merely releasing statements about the spying program. While protecting our national security, these laws go overboard and illustrate a worrisome lean toward authoritarianism. David Schwartz ’16 is a co-President of the Real Estate club.
Shikha Chandarana ’17 I am not an American citizen and am not very familiar with the First Amendment of the Constitution. As a person that cares about human rights, though, the actions of the National Security Agency may be, in some manner, infringing on them. [sic] NSA surveillance is not limited to citizens of the U.S. but also affects international societies. Surveillance on the actions of innocent citizens violates the human rights of expression and privacy. Privacy is integral to personal identity, liberty and dignity, and every person should have the right to control the information that they want to share and protect. If surveillance needs to be done, a legitimate justification must be provided, and complete transparency should be a critical part of the process. Without transparency, the act of surveillance can be seen as a controlling activity by a government, which takes away from the freedoms of the global population. Shikha Chandarana ’17 is the co-President of Amnesty International Brandeis Chapter.
THE JUSTICE
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TUESDAY, october 14, 2014
Organic and Natural marketing perpetuates social divide By MICHELLE BANAYAN JUSTICE contributing WRITER
I recently went grocery shopping at Hannaford for the first time. Hannaford is your classic grocery store, stocked with all the food essentials a college student on a limited budget can ask for. While slowly filling my cart up with snackable necessities such as chocolate-covered cranberries and crackers, I stumbled upon the last two aisles in the store. They had a sign above them titled “Organic and Natural,” written in golden brown against a green background using an elegant font. The “Organic and Natural” section took almost all the food the market had to offer—the breads, cereals, bars and fruit snacks available in abundance elsewhere—and condensed the selections of each of those food types to fit solely a couple of aisles. However, the difference between the pasta in aisle four versus the pasta in the “Organic and Natural” aisle is that which the label of the latter implies: it is, by title, organic and natural – certified by the United States Department of Agriculture and enriched with more nutrients. Stock in these aisles is limited, so shopping in this section makes one feel as if what he is buying is special, as if these food selections are a rarity. Not only were there fewer, supposedly healthier and more expensive options of all the major food categories in these aisles, but the ambience was substantially different. Whereas the other supermarket aisles were filled with items packaged in bright, eyecatching reds, oranges and yellows—colors usually used by fast-food franchises as marketing techniques to trigger one’s appetite— the design of the “Organic and Natural” section takes a different approach. These aisles’ foods were packaged in green, brown and gold undertones—reflecting a message of health, wellness and prosperity. Also, the items were arranged with more finesse, as different bins and customized labels categorized specific granola bars, teas and vitamins. There was also a social ambience. I noticed that those who were browsing these two aisles appeared to be people able to afford these pricier “natural” selections: urban professionals, the upper-middle class mother. Also present were the more seemingly health-conscious customers, dressed in yoga pants and gym shoes, water bottles in hand—perfecting the facade of natural and healthful simplicity. Those shopping the rest of the store’s aisles seemed not to be as affluent: lower-middle class citizens, students.
While my observations were merely generalizations I had made, they tended to coincide with a 2011 study performed by the University of Washington, which found that about 15 percent of American households claim to not be earning enough money to eat the way they would like to be eating. Approximately 49 million Americans are making their food decisions based on cost. The study further explains that while it may not be relatively expensive to eat the necessary nutrients the body needs, what is costly are the additional restrictions put on the way one meets his dietary needs—whether that be eating organic, purchasing locally grown produce. The contrast between the “Organic and Natural” section and the rest of the supermarket reminded me of a text by Dr. Janice Williams. In the beginning of her piece, Williams writes about how health “has become increasingly seen as a matter for self-control and self-discipline… The assumption is that there must of necessity be some congruence between the social body, the psychological body and the physical body. Thus health is no longer something to do with inheritance or luck, but rather an achieved status which must be worked on and striven for.” Society has slowly grown into this notion that one’s health is not based in large part on genetic luck—such as how strong her immune system is or if he is born with a slow metabolism—but rather on self-control and willpower, and as a result, those who are unable to meet today’s standards of what is deemed healthy often being considered inferior, regardless of why. “Health”—once a concept socially discussed in biological terms—now connotes a sort of evaluation. Poor health is equated with one’s inability to properly take care of oneself, although that’s not always the case, for genetic makeup and financial stability are also key factors. And the fact of the matter is that the foods stocked into the “Organic and Natural” aisles are not necessarily better for one’s health, diet or wallet. An independent UK-based research project reviewed articles published in peer-reviewed journals from 1958 to 2008 on over 3500 comparisons of government certified organic versus non-organic crops. These researchers were unable to find any evidence to prove differences in nutrient content that signified a change in nutritional quality between the organic and inorganic foods—except for the fact that organic livestock products (dairy, eggs and meat) recorded higher levels of overall fats, including trans fats.
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GABRIELA YESHUA/the Justice
Thus, shoppers buying foodstuffs solely in the “Organic and Natural” section, which are sold elsewhere in the store, are paying double the price for foods that have no proven records of actually being “better” and can actually be worse. The success of the organic and natural franchise is in the marketing. Oftentimes those who purchase organic products are not fully aware of the composition of their food or what is the exact variation between organic and inorganic, such as the pesticides that are considered organic versus those that are not. More often, it is because the organic and natural foods seem better. If it has an organic label, it appears to have been more regulated. If it is pricier despite its smaller quantity, it looks as if it is made with better quality ingredients deserving of a higher price tag— also adds to the esteem of higher status for the consumer purchasing this product. All these considered, it is reasonable to believe that something nestled in the aisles dubbed “Organic and Natural” has to be better, right? These components are taken into account by the company’s marketing team in order to sway the consumer by falling for these subtle brand imaging techniques, the consumer is often caught spending more for what really is the placebo effect. A study performed by the
University of Southern California this year concluded that “labeling a food as organic yielded improved taste perception, regardless of its true identity. It can be seen how the placebo effect can be extended to the field of marketing.” Despite taking these perspectives into account, I suddenly felt second-class standing in the “Organic and Natural” section in my jeans and sneakers with a shopping cart filled with Skippy peanut butter and instant soup. I wrongly felt like I did not fit in, as if all the other customers in that aisle were judging me based on my food purchases that just so happened to be practical for my current lifestyle, like I had a lack of self-control—immediately falling victim to the layout psychology of supermarkets and the bright, appetizing colors in the middle aisles. I knew better, but the stigma around the title of “organic” often tends to be much stronger than one’s sense of reality versus façade, especially if one is able to afford the “healthier” option. So I unnecessarily swapped my Chewy Bars for Kind Bars, my Corn Flakes for oatmeal, my moderately priced food for over-priced substitutes. Because, for some reason, I preferred succumbing to trivial expectations over owning up to the practicalities of my lifestyle.
Assess fraternity culture’s role in women’s wage and confidence gaps By Rose Gittell Justice Editor
In Naomi Wolf’s famous 2002 work, The Beauty Myth, she asks a startling question—where are women at elite universities going? Women finally make up half of the student population, so why are they choosing to quietly fade into the background? Twelve years later, the same question should be asked. Although women in the developed world today have more say over their reproductive rights, have overtaken men in higher education enrollment and are catching up in the labor force, few women make it to the top in business or politics. Of 197 heads of state, only 22 are women. Of the top 500 companies by revenue, only 21 are headed by women. In politics, women hold just 19 percent of congressional offices. Successful integration in the university has not translated into success in the “real world.” The psychological aspect of women’s professional failure is evident even in college women who have not yet entered the labor force. According to the research of social psychologist Jean Joseph Goux, millennial female college students are less likely than their peers to agree with the reflective statement: “I aspire to a leadership role in whatever field I ultimately work.” Women are also less likely than male peers to characterize themselves as “leaders,” “visionaries,” “self-confident” and “willing to take risks.” So what is wrong with colleges today? What about the social structures of academic institutions cause women to give up before they even try? Wolf’s answer in 2002, which is now standard in feminist discourse, is the impossible beauty and weight standards perpetuated by the media and obediently swallowed by women of all ages. Wolf argues that the media sets the standard for female weight below what is healthy, subjecting
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women to a constant state of listlessness and hunger, which results in a lack of productive behavior. In her words, “a quietly mad population is a tractable one.” Women today may very well suffer under these impossible standards, just as their mothers did. However, there is another aspect of college social life which can also be destructive to females’ perceptions of themselves as self-confident or leaders: fraternity culture on college campuses. At a traditional fraternity party, women who are considered to be sexually desirable are given free alcohol. As the old saying goes, though, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Anthropologists and economists theorize that gift exchange is always born from the expectation that something will be given in return. In this case, the “service” that the women provide is a bolstered social status for the fraternity due to having the hottest women at their party. Even if this exchange is consented to by both parties, the question begs to be asked—is this a fair exchange of value? For fraternities, the social status gained by having beautiful women at parties may be well worth a few free drinks—bolstered social standing could lead to more respect from peers, leading to more party-goers at future events and, in the future, more potential career opportunities or higher income for fraternity brothers. However, this gift exchange might actually lead to those same opportunities being denied for women who take part. In a five-year study published in the book Paying for the Party, sociologists Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Laura T. Hamilton found that working-class women who socially invested in fraternity life dealt with not only higher risk of sexual assault, but worse financial and professional futures overall. Hamilton and Armstrong, through extensive interviews with undergraduate women over a five-
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The opinions stated in the editorial(s) under the masthead on the opposing page represent the opinion of a majority of the voting members of the editorial board; all other articles, columns, comics and advertisements do not necessarily. For the Brandeis Talks Back feature on the last page of the newspaper, staff interview four randomly selected students each week and print only those four answers. The Justice is the independent student newspaper of Brandeis University. Operated, written, produced and published entirely by students, the Justice includes news, features, arts, opinion and sports articles of interest to approximately 3,700 undergraduates, 900 graduate students, 500 faculty and 1,000 administrative staff. In addition, the Justice is mailed weekly to paid subscribers and distributed throughout Waltham, Mass. The Justice is published every Tuesday of the academic year with the exception of examination and vacation periods. Advertising deadlines: All insertion orders and advertising copy must be received by the Justice no later than 5 p.m. on the Thursday preceding the date of publication. All advertising copy is subject to approval of the editor in chief and the managing and advertising editors. A publication schedule and rate card is available upon request. Subscription rate: $35 per semester, $55 per year.
year period, discovered that women who were first generation college students faced a unique predicament. The women in the study came to college mostly with boyfriends back home and the expectation of an early marriage and a life similar to their parents’. They found the hookup culture at fraternities initially alienating but felt if they did not participate they would remain isolated from an institution at which already they felt they did not belong. They were faced with a choice—marry the guy back home and eventually join the same socioeconomic bracket as their parents or join a sexual culture that made them uncomfortable. Hamilton and Armstrong’s research emphasizes that the choice women make to be involved in fraternity life is entirely calculated based on the belief that these social relationships will result in more economic success in the future. However, the opposite turned out to be true.
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What about the social structures of academic institutions cause women to give up before they even try? The more popular they perceived that they were at frat parties, the more difficult their economic futures were. No similar correlation existed for men. The study also showed the gradual eroding of self-confidence experienced by these women throughout their college years as a result of
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their involvement in fraternity life. Armstrong and Hamilton hypothesized that this decreased self-confidence was the factor that mediated the worsened academic and economic futures they ultimately observed in these women. Wolf already found that media representation of women is detrimental to gender integration in positions of leadership, but fraternity culture appears to be yielding similar results: lower self-esteem, worse body image and frozen socioeconomic class. Education is idealized as “the great equalizer” and the mechanism by which economic mobility occurs. However, when social integrating and equalizing occurs through social structures such as fraternities, this mobility may occur at the expense of female’s selfconfidence. Meanwhile, men continue to prosper both socially and later economically, not facing a trade-off between one or the other. A parallel situation is studied by Ashley Mears, a professor of sociology at Boston University. Her research refers to nightclubs where models don’t pay cover fees and receive free perks and drinks from club promoters. A successful nightclub may make $20 million dollars per year, completely relying on the presence of these models for their success, and what do the often under-paid models receive from this deal? A few free drinks. Although the exchange of value is entirely consensual, it is an uneven exchange which benefits one party more than it benefits the other, guided by a lack of information. If a female chooses to engage in fraternity life out of the belief it will lead her to a better economic future or just for fun, it is entirely her choice. But what may seem like a choice made in a vacuum for just one night is actually an important political and economic statement that could be detrimental to a women’s sense of herself as a self-confident leader.
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Zachary Reid, Rachel Sharer, Sherry Simkovic, Arianna Unger Features: Brianna Majsiak, Casey Pearlman, Max Shpilman Forum: Aaron Dvorkin, Jennie Bromberg, Mark Gimelstein, Jessica Goldstein, Kahlil Oppenheimer, Jassen Lu Sports: Noah Hesstorf, Daniel Kanovich Arts: Carly Chernomorets, Kiran Gill, Brooke Granovsky, Ilana Kruger, Nate Shaffer Photography: Hannah Chidekel, Mihir Khanna, Abby Knecht, Bri Mussman, Guillermo Narvaez, Jeremy Perlman, Abigail
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TUESDAY, october 14, 2014
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THE JUSTICE
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Question US News and World Report college rankings By abe clark JUSTICE contributing WRITER
If you’re a Brandeis student, chances are you applied to one or two “reach” universities during the college application process in high school. Maybe you applied to Yale or Harvard, knowing that while the chances of admission were slim, any chance at a degree from one of those top-tier universities was worth a shot. But what makes one school more prestigious than the next? Are they really the best universities out there, or is there something more to this? Perhaps the most common metric comparing research universities in the United States is the U.S. News and World Report, a national ranking of universities published by the U.S. News corporation toward the beginning of every school year. A degree from a school that ranks highly on this list is seen as valuable or prestigious. These rankings are also very important to potential employers, who often use the rankings as a metric of that candidate’s potential and work ethic. The importance of the U.S. News rankings is both broad and profound: the report’s web page receives over 10 million views within three days of its being published, and a study conducted by the University of Michigan in 2008 found that the rankings fundamentally influence which schools high school students will apply to. For this reason, a university will often spend considerable resources in an attempt to improve its rankings. However, if we examine the actual categories U.S. News uses to rank schools, we find that the list is actually in no way an accurate representation of school merit and in fact deceives students into applying for out-of-reach schools. In their own description of their method of measuring college excellence, the U.S. News and World Report states that they use “outcome measures that signal how well the institution does its job of educating students.” The first and most heavily weighted measure employed by U.S. News in their annual college rankings is a subjective measurement of university prestige, which they call “undergraduate academic reputation.” Schools are ranked on a scale of one to five by their “peer institutions”—academics at their competitor universities—based on how prestigious peer institutions find a certain college. These rankings are then compiled into an overall ranking of how highly a university is regarded by its peer institutions. This is a completely subjective method of determining the relative “prestige” of an institution, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the way a
university educates its students. That is not to say that subjectivity has no place in determining academic integrity, but the general term of “prestige” has nothing to do with a school’s academia. Only faculty and students attending classes at a school from day to day are qualified to judge a school’s academic merit. This use of the term “prestige” is especially troublesome because U.S. News and World Report rankings themselves are the primary driver of perceived prestige among universities; a school ranks highly and is therefore respected, so it ranks highly again the next year. Practically speaking, the list is driven by inertial prestige, where high-ranking universities are consistently rewarded with high rankings and fame.
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Only faculty and students attending classes at a school from day to day are qualified to judge a school’s merit. Another important factor in the U.S. News and World Report’s rankings involves a school’s selectivity. Schools with lower acceptance rates are ranked higher, based on the assumption that schools with the lowest acceptance rates are schools with the most applicants, and thus the most desirable qualities. In reality, this becomes another measure of school prestige, as schools which rank highest receive the most applicants. According to the New York Times, in order to increase their rankings in this regard, top-tier schools spend more and more every year on marketing and outreach, in order to get more and more students to apply. This allows top universities to reject more students, thereby increasing their rankings. Obsession with college rankings, particularly those put forth by the U.S. News and World Report, has the potential to be quite harmful to our academic environment. Harvard, Yale and Princeton have topped the list of best universities nearly every year, largely for reasons of fame and finance alone, while consistent high rankings disincentive top-tier universities from experimenting with new educational tactics and embracing change. Additionally, the rankings incentivize other schools to focus on their place on the list instead of their student body. Belmont Uni-
MOZELLE SHAMASH-ROSENTHAL/The Justice
versity’s president recently stated that his top long-term priority will be to raise Belmont to the top 5 in the college rankings by 2015, while Arizona State University tied its president’s salary to the university’s rankings. Funds that could be going towards research and teaching improvements are instead going towards marketing and outreach, while top-tier schools are discouraged from making changes that could benefit students. In short, the U.S. News and World Report rankings are little more than a ranking of the financial standing and subjective prestige of a school and have little or nothing to do with the actual effort the university puts into educating students and fostering young minds. Rather than assume that reputation, wealth and selectivity correlate to a university’s merits, U.S. News and World Report should
reform its rankings to include more relevant metrics of university achievement, like the contributions to research undertaken by a university or the student body’s perception of the quality of classes. This would incentivize universities to improve on their educational capabilities, remove unwarranted elitism that is so engrained in top-tier university degrees and better help students to apply to schools which best suit their academic needs and are not merely high-ranking. Still, the best change will occur when we as students stop caring about the U.S. News and World Report rankings. If you have siblings in high school warn then against considering these rankings, and encourage them to focus on more tangible measurements of college success instead.
Recognize and evaluate hidden dangers of structural racism Kahlil
oppenheimer unedited justice
This past summer my three-year-old nephew told me, “I don’t want to become any darker, I just want to stay white.” His father is white and his mother is black, so his skin was very light when he was born and has only recently started to get darker. I love my nephew, but when he said this, I couldn’t help but feel shocked, angry, and sad. I didn’t actually know how to respond. I knew that what he was saying was so horrifyingly wrong, and it was a prime example of racial prejudice. But I also couldn’t blame him. As a threeyear-old, he’s incredibly impressionable and has only really had enough time in the world to absorb the thoughts and ideas of people around him. That goes to say that he had to have absorbed these ideas from somewhere else. He lives with his mom and his older sister, both of whom are black and neither of whom would ever promote the superiority of any race over another. He visits my siblings, my parents and me often, all of whom (including myself) are white. But we too would never promote the superiority of any race over another. If his feelings don’t come from his family, the most influential group of people for any child, then they must come from his general experiences and interactions with society. Yes, I know, this sounds remarkably like the over-attacked and vague “society” that we all seek to salvage, deconstruct or write BuzzFeed quizzes about, but specific examples may help to clarify what I mean. Let’s start local to my nephew’s life. His favorite TV shows, like Bob the Builder, only have white protagonists. His favorite picture
books, often about trucks and trains, only feature white train conductors, mechanics or engineers. His favorite superheroes and their respective action figures, like Superman, Batman, the Flash and Spider-Man, are also all white. Now, I’m not saying that every TV show star, literary protagonist and superhero is white. But the majority and the most popular ones are, which is incredibly alarming. Some might argue that even if that were all true and my nephew’s fictional role models were all white, it still would not be enough to induce a racial prejudice. To address that claim, we’ll shift our lens from local to macro. Last year I did some research on racially color-blind attitudes (i.e. how post-racial we think we are) and how they correlate with discrimination. I published a piece in The Justice that reflected much of this research, but I’ll quickly summarize for clarity. The popular television channel MTV generated a nationally representative sample of people ages 14 to 24 (millennials) and found that a majority believes that we are post-racial as a society, with 67% believing that Obama being president is proof. Research conducted by Brandescha M. Tynes, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, found a strong correlation between racially color blind attitudes and discrimination on social media by examining participants’ reactions to racially obscene pictures (like white actors wearing “blackface”) on sites like Facebook. In other words, she found that there was a correlation between how post-racial we think we are and how willing we are to discriminate. If a majority of us believe we are post-racial, and if thinking we are post-racial means we’re more likely to discriminate based on race, then a majority of us discriminate based on race in some capacity. Even still, some might argue that there are exceptions to the rule. In fact, I’ve heard many argue that we at Brandeis are this exception, because we’re in
the liberal Northeast on a liberal college campus or because we go to a “diverse” school (according to fall 2013 enrollment: 5.1% African American, 12.4% Asian, 6.5% Hispanic, 50.0% white, 14% nonresident alien, and 11.0% multi ethnic or race, ethnicity unknown).
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It may not be our faults that we harbor racial prejudices, but it is our responsibility to try to
I ran my own study at Brandeis to see how we compared. I took 64 students’ Color Blind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS) scores and then had the same students give three-word responses to several videos from Vine that I had selected for their notoriety of being racist. I analyzed the three-word responses using methods described in a study by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a Duke professor of sociology. The study is titled “The Linguistics of Color Blind Racism: How to Talk Nasty about Blacks without Sounding ‘Racist.’” I found exactly the same correlation that Tynes’ study found: that people’s CoBRAS scores correlated strongly with their demonstrated racial prejudice, as determined by Bonilla-Silva’s study. Regarding “diverse” schools, I examined this same phenomenon at my high school, Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, a school with a staggering amount of diversity. The demographic breakdown by race during the 2013/2014 school year was 33.2% African American (compared to 8.7% in the state), 11.7% Asian (compared to 6.1% in the state), 14% hispanic (compared to 17% in the state), and 37.5% white (compared to 64.9% in the state). You would expect such a statistically di-
verse school to model the perfectly post-racial society.But it only struck me during my senior year of high school, when we could finally choose most of the classes we were taking, just how segregated the school was. Classes like AP Physics, AP Chemistry, and AP Calculus were over 90% white, which, given that only 37.5% of the student body is white, indicates a serious racial achievement gap. On the first day of my psychology class, which was exactly 50% white and 50% black, we were told we could sit wherever we wanted in the two rows of available seats. It took me a moment to realize that after everyone had sat down, the entire front row of the classroom was white and the entire back row was black and that no one else had noticed. Many of us feel personally exempted from the idea that we harbor racial prejudice. We’ll often point out that we have black friends or that we know that George Washington had slaves to prove our innocence. We misunderstand structural racism. It’s not nearly as obvious or simple as supporting slavery or not. Structural racism is often much more insidious and pervasive, manifesting as subconscious judgements, opinions and thoughts. It’s easy to excuse ourselves from the more conscious and obvious racism, but it’s a lot harder to examine ourselves for those subtleties that are most often ignored. I do not believe in feeling guilty for things that are out of our control. We were all born into this society, and we didn’t create it. But we do need to be cognizant of the problem. It may not be our faults that we harbor racial prejudices, but it is our responsibility to try to destruct them. Doing so doesn’t have to change our lives drastically. We can simply question ourselves and reflect. Was the joke I just made racist? Is it weird that I hang out with mostly people from the same racial background as me? We’re responsible for more than just ourselves. We’re responsible for everyone with whom who we live and everyone who will soon be living with us. We’re responsible for my nephew and for yours.
THE JUSTICE
WSOCCER: Team drops road game to UAA opponent CONTINUED FROM 16 mid-week matchup for the Judges—last Tuesday’s 1-0 home victory against the Eastern Nazarene College Lions on Gordon Field. The Judges broke the deadlock early on in the 18th minute through an exhibition of individual skill. After waltzing through the midfield, midfielder Sapir Edalati ’15 launched the ball to the left flank, where she found the forward Samantha Schwartz ’18. Schwartz continued her run forward before cutting in and proceeded to fire the ball into the top corner of the net from the cusp of the 18-yard box to give the Judges an early 1-0 lead. Brandeis came close to finding the
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october 14, 2014
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MIDFIELD ATTACK
back of the net another six times, only to be denied each time by Eastern Nazarene sophomore goalkeeper Kristen Farley. The Lions found it difficult to make any offensive impact on the game, with only two attempts on goal in 90 minutes, both of which were collected by the Judges’ goalies. The one goal cushion was more than enough to secure the win. The Judges will look to return to the win column with games against Carnegie Mellon University and Emory University at home this weekend in pivotal divisional matchups. Brandeis will welcome Carnegie Mellon on Friday night at 7:30 p.m. and Emory on Sunday afternoon, beginning at 1:30 p.m.
TENNIS: Judges end fall season at regional meet CONTINUED FROM 16 Granoff eventually went down in the semifinal round of the A Singles bracket to Middlebury sophomore Ari Smolyar, the bracket’s top seed, to cap off an impressive showing at the tournament with a run to the semifinals on Sunday. Granoff was not the only one who saw wins on the day. Ryan Bunis ’17 made quick work of his first opponent in the A Singles bracket, Bates senior Henry Lee, winning 6-3, 6-0. His day came to an end in the next round, where he was defeated by the bracket’s second seed, Colby sophomore Carl Reid, 6-3, 6-0. Ethan Saal ’18 was also able to make it out of the first round of the tournament, playing in the D Singles bracket, getting a win over Skidmore freshman Teddy Berkowitz to move out of his first round matchup. His day also came to an end in the next round, where he fell to Middlebury freshman Will De Quant 6-3, 6-0. Michael Secular ’15 was the only other member of the team to earn a singles win. Secular got the win against Tufts freshman Justin Brogan 6-3, 6-2 in the first round of the D Singles bracket, but he fell in the next round as well. Matthew Zuckerman ’14 M.A. ’15, Eric Miller ’16, Michael Arguello ’17, Danny Lubarsky ’16 and Siegel all fell in the first round of singles play in the four singles brackets. In doubles competition, three of the four pairs to participate managed to move on past the first round of play, but none of them managed to get further than that.
Jeff Cherkin ’17 and Arguello teamed up in the A Doubles bracket as the top seed to take on the Tufts pair of freshman Zain Ali and senior Brian Tan, and they came away with the 9-7 win. Cherkin and Arguello fell by an identical 9-7 score in the quarterfinals in their matchup with Trinity junior Ford Traff and senior Musyoka Mbithi. The pair of Lubarsky and Granoff got a win in the A Doubles bracket as well, winning comfortably against the Middlebury team of Smolyar and senior Peter Heidrich by a score of 8-3. Like their ranked teammates, Lubarsky and Granoff fell in the quarterfinals, to the pair of Skidmore Sanderson and junior Nick Tong by a 9-8 (3) final score. Siegel and Saal teamed up for a win as well in the B Doubles bracket, taking down a pair of Bowdoin players with a 9-7 final score but then went down to Trinity in the next round by an 8-5 final. The doubles pair of Eric Goldberg ’18 and Secular could not get past the first round of the B Doubles bracket, going down to Middlebury juniors Jackson Frons and Allen Jackson by a score of 8-2. Siegel says he has high hopes for the spring season, anticipating a strong year for the team when they return from the break. “This is the closest team I've ever been a part of,” he said. “There are no bad seeds and not too much in terms of friction. We're mostly on the same page and I'm excited to see what we can do this spring.” The Judges’ season will resume on Feb. 17 with their annual midwinter trip to California.
MORGAN BRILL/Justice File Photo
LONG PASS: Midfielder Josh Ocel ’17 (right), who scored in Tuesday’s 1-0 win, battles a Wheaton College (Mass.) player on Sept. 30.
MSOCCER: Squad unable to produce late equalizer in tight loss on the road CONTINUED FROM 16 2-0 lead. “[Rochester] just had two very lucky shots, but it's soccer and the ball cannot always bounce your way,” remarked Vieria. The Judges got a goal back in the 86th minute when midfielder Foti Andreo ’15 netted his first goal of the season at a pivotal moment. The midfielder tucked the ball inside the right post from 25 yards out to pull the Judges within one goal and nearly scored an equalizer just two minutes later, but could not finish a pass from close to the net. The Judges walked away with their first loss on the season inches from forcing extra time. Earlier in the week, the Judges
JOIN
took down MIT in a close game, using a 45th minute goal from midfielder Josh Ocel ’17 to sneak past the Engineers 1-0 on Tuesday. After a scoreless first half that saw the Judges outshoot the Engineers 8-4, Ocel collected a pass from Savonen near the top of the 18-yard box and chipped it over MIT senior goalkeeper Sam Cannon. The goal, which ultimately stood as the game-winner, was Ocel’s fourth on the season and was his second game-winner of the year. The Engineers did their best to produce an equalizer after Ocel’s quick goal, outshooting Brandeis 7-5 in the half—five in a row over an eight-minute stretch that were all turned away by Graffy. The Judges ended the contest with
a 13-11 shot advantage, including two of the final three shots in the game. With the loss to Rochester, the Judges fall to 11-1 overall on the season and 1-1 in UAA play, but Vieira says he does not think the loss will affect the team too much as the season progresses. “We play a 19-game schedule so we were going to lose eventually,” he said. “We need to learn from this and move forward and work harder so it doesn't happen again.” The Judges will look to resume their winning ways tonight against Massachusetts Maritime College at 7 p.m. before welcoming Carnegie Mellon University on Friday afternoon at 5 p.m. and Emory University on Sunday morning at 11 a.m. in a pair of UAA matchups.
Contact Rachel Hughes at editor@thejustice.org
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THE JUSTICE
jUDGES BY THE NUMBERS
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ATHLETE OF THE MONTH
Men’s Soccer UAA STANDINGS 2014-2015 Statistics Carnegie Chicago JUDGES Emory NYU Rochester Case WashU
UAA Conf. W L D 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 2 0
TEAM STATS Goals
Michael Soboff ’15 leads the Overall team with six goals. W L D Pct. Player Goals 7 3 1 .682 Michael Soboff 6 7 4 1 .625 Tyler Savonen 5 11 1 0 .917 Josh Ocel 4 11 1 1 .885 Zach Vieira 4 10 2 0 .833 Assists 6 3 2 .636 Josh Ocel ’17 leads the team 7 4 2 .615 with six assists. 6 4 1 .591 Player Assists Josh Ocel 6 Evan Jastremski 3 Foti Andreo 2 Mike Lynch 2
UPCOMING GAMES: Tonight at Mass. Maritime Friday vs. Carnegie Mellon Sunday vs. Emory
WOMen’s Soccer UAA STANDINGS
TEAM STATS
2014-2015 Statistics
Goals
NYU WashU Carnegie JUDGES Chicago Rochester Emory Case
UAA Conf. W L D 2 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 2 0
W 9 10 9 11 10 5 7 7
L 3 0 1 2 2 4 1 3
Overall D Pct. 0 .750 2 .917 0 .900 0 .846 0 .833 3 .542 3 .773 2 .667
UPCOMING GAMES: Friday vs. Carnegie Mellon Sunday vs. Emory Fri., Oct. 31 at WashU
Sapir Edalati ’15 leads the team with nine goals. Player Goals Sapir Edalati 9 Samantha Schwartz 7 Cindey Moscovitch 3 Lea McDaniel 2
Assists Holly Szafran ’16 leads the team with seven assists. Player Assists Holly Szafran 7 Sapir Edalati 6 Samantha Schwartz 3
VOLLEYBALL UAA STANDINGS
TEAM STATS Kills
2014-2015 Statistics Overall UAA Conf. W L W L Pct. Emory 3 0 22 2 .917 Chicago 3 0 19 8 .704 WashU 2 1 23 4 .852 Carnegie 2 1 17 4 .810 NYU 1 2 16 8 .667 Case 1 2 11 7 .611 Rochester 0 3 11 14 .440 JUDGES 0 3 5 13 .278
UPCOMING GAMES: Saturday vs. Case Saturday vs. Carnegie Mellon Sunday vs. Emory
Maddie Engeler ’16 leads the team with 120 kills. Player Kills Maddie Engeler 120 Liz Hood 113 Jessie Moore 107 Summer Koop 79
Digs Elsie Bernaiche ’15 leads the team with 288 digs. Player Digs Elsie Bernaiche 288 Julie Kim 146 Shemira Pennyman 145 Liz Hood 86
cross cOuntry Results from the Keene State Invitational in Keene, NH on Oct. 4.
TOP FINISHERS (Men’s)
TOP FINISHERS (Women’s)
5-Mile Run RUNNER TIME Jarret Harrigan 26:33 Ryan Stender 26:34 Matt Doran 27:18 Liam Garvey 27:27
5-Kilometer Run RUNNER TIME Maddie Dolins 18:46 Kelsey Whitaker 18:54 Lydia McCaleb 19:44 Ashley Piccirillo-Horan 20:07
UPCOMING EVENTS: Friday at the Connecticut College Invitational Sat., Nov. 1 at the Universtity Athletic Association Invitational
PHOTO COURTESY OF JONATHAN BURDEN/SPORTSPIX
FAST START: Ryan Stender ’18 runs at the UMass Dartmouth Invitational on Sept. 20, where he placed 19th out of 255 runners.
Stender paces Judges in early season races ■ The first-year runner placed second in the Keene State Invitational on Oct. 4, his third collegiate race. By AVI GOLD justice editor
In his first season as a collegiate cross country runner, Ryan Stender ’18 has run three impressive races thus far. Stender has helped lead the Judges to two wins on the season, placing within the top-20 finishers in all three races and eclipsing the 27-minute mark in both eight-kilometer races in which he has participated. “I went into the eight-kilometer [race] thinking it was going to be a whole lot harder than the fivekilometer [race] in high school,” he said. Stender said his biggest challenge has been the last part of the eight-kilometer race, thinking, ‘how am I going to run an extra two miles after I just raced really hard,” he said. “But I’ve adjusted well into it. It hasn’t been as bad as I thought they’d be and the races go just as quick as the five-kilometer [race] went,” he continued. Stender raced to a fifth-place finish at the Emmanuel Invitational
on Aug. 30, finishing the five-kilometer race in 15 minutes, 35 seconds. He followed the impressive finish with a 19th-place finish at the UMass Dartmouth Invitational on Sept. 20, his first showing at an eight-kilometer race. Stender finished that race in 25:49.85, an average mile of 5:10.0. In the third race of his career, Stender took second place at the Keene State Invitational on Oct. 4 in 26:34. Stender’s time at the UMass Dartmouth Invitational would have placed him within the top-five at the sub-varsity race of Saturday’s Open New England Championships. The race is not usually attended by the Judges but serves as a good indicator of the region’s top runners. His average mile time would also have placed him within the top-100 of the varsity race, which was run almost exclusively by Division I runners. Even with his successes so far this year, he says he is quick to not let them get to his head. “I always look at [success] as ‘never take a great race for granted,’ because you never know what could happen,” he explained. “You could trip in a hole or something, so you always have to be working hard and you can’t get ahead of yourself and can’t get cocky because you don’t know what’s going
to happen.” The key, he said, is to “go out there and try your hardest and that keeps you from getting ahead of yourself,” he continued. “You have to always put in 100 percent and never assume you’re going to do amazing.” Stender’s second-place finish at the Keene State Invitational helped the Judges take first-place overall, a race at which there was just a 1:10 spread between their top finisher and their final scorer. Stender credits their strong races so far this year to the team dynamic. “We all have our own personalities and we all complement each other and we all love to run,” Stender said. “From my recruiting trip until now I’ve never gotten a bad vibe, they’re a great group of friends to have.” With a pair of impressive performances so far in the eight-kilometer race, Stender has set a high bar for success but says he wants to keep turning in strong races as the season continues. “I don’t really know [what the goals are],” he chuckled. “Keep doing what I’m doing, keep running well. As a team I want us all to succeed and be the best we can be and be the best team we know we can be.”
PRO SPORTS BRIEF Mississippi State University jumps to top-ranked spot in the country following stunning win over Auburn In the 78-year history of the Associated Press poll of college football, no team had ever gone from unranked to No. 1 in five weeks. With their win on Saturday afternoon over Auburn University, the Mississippi State University Bulldogs did just that, rising from their third-ranked spot in last week’s poll and jumping over the previously top-ranked school. Defending champion Florida State University had been the No. 1 team in the country since the preseason and has yet to lose a game this season, but they could not stop the meteoric rise of the Bulldogs to the top spot in the country over the last few weeks. Tasked with playing in arguably the toughest division across college football with five other ranked teams, Mississippi State was an afterthought
at the beginning of the season. They quickly established themselves as one of the country’s best teams in the season’s fourth week in a matchup against then-No. 8 Louisiana State University Tigers. The Bulldogs stormed into Baton Rouge, La. and jumped out to a 17-3 halftime lead over the hosts. They added 14 more points in the third quarter and staved off a 19-point rally by the hosts, intercepting a lastsecond Hail Mary to win in Louisiana for the first time since 1991. The win vaulted the team to the No. 12 spot in the country, setting up a conference showdown with the No. 6 Texas A&M University on Oct. 4. Junior quarterback Dak Prescott accounted for five total touchdowns in a 48-31 thrashing of Texas A&M, a trio of rushing touchdowns and a pair of
passing touchdowns. The quarterback now has 14 passing touchdowns and eight rushing touchdowns on the year and is entering the conversation for the Heisman Trophy—awarded to the most outstanding player across college football at the end of the year by a panel of voters. In last week’s poll, the Bulldogs jumped all the way to third in the country but were faced with their third-straight ranked opponent in the Auburn Tigers, ranked No. 2 in the country last week. The Bulldogs quickly established dominance in the contest with Auburn, intercepting the first Tigers drive and scoring a touchdown on their ensuing possession. Mississippi State forced a fumble on Auburn’s next possession and needed just three plays to find the
end zone again, grabbing a 14-0 lead over the game’s first three-and-a-half minutes and three posessions. Prescott would add his first of two rushing touchdowns later in the quarter for a seemingly insurmountable 21-0 lead over the Auburn squad.. Auburn would climb back into the game with a 13-point second quarter but were still faced with a 28-13 deficit at the halftime break. An early touchdown in the third quarter gave the Tigers some hope of catching Mississippi State, but a pair of stalled drives killed their momentum, and the Bulldogs put the game away in the fourth quarter with a 10-play, 75-yard drive that resulted in a 25-yard field goal. Mississippi State added a touchdown after yet another Auburn
fumble in the middle of the quarter, solidifying the victory and setting up the Bulldogs ascension to the top spot in the country. Mississippi State also became just the fifth team ever to take down three straight top 10 teams, but no other team had ever ended the run in the No. 1 spot in the country. Though the team has earned their ranking, they will have to prove their mettle twice more over the rest of the season, squaring off against the No. 7 University of Alabama on Nov. 15 and the No. 3 University of Mississippi on Nov. 29. For now, the team will surely relish in their win, pulling off a feat nobody could have seen coming at the beginning of the season.
— Avi Gold
just
Sports
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QUICK STEP Ryan Stender ’18 has run three impressive races for the men’s cross country team as a first-year, p. 15.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Waltham, Mass.
WING PLAY
Men’s tennis
Men take on New England opponents ■ Brian Granoff ’17 advanced to the semifinals of the Wallach Invitational, hosted by Bates College. By Daniel kanovich JUSTICE STAFF WRITER
The men’s tennis team traveled to Bates College on Saturday to take part in the Wallach Invitational, a two-day tournament with participants coming from all over the New England region. The tournament included players from Amherst College, Middlebury College, Colby College, Bowdoin College, Trinity College, Skidmore College, Bates College and Tufts University and concluded on Sunday afternoon, though only one member of the Judges played on Sunday. The team was well represented in the tournament overall, with nine participants in the singles matches and four pairs participating in the doubles matches. The tournament also marked the end of the fall season for the men’s tennis team, which will pick up again during the winter with a series of meets in the middle of February. Co-captain Alec Siegel ’15 reflected on how he has handled the break in the past, saying it is a time to work on training. “The break between seasons is bittersweet,” he said. “It's a great time to work on our fitness, since during the season we have limited time for off court work. “It's weird not having the coaches around, but we'll all have our fill of them come springtime, so a brief hiatus is healthy for all,” he continued. Over the weekend, the team was focused on putting in a strong showing at the tournament. Brian Granoff ’17 had the most successful run, seeded fourth in the A Singles bracket. Granoff started off with a win against Tufts freshman Rob Jacobson 7-5, 6-1 in the first round and moved on to face Skidmore junior Kit Sanderson in the next round with similar success, winning in two sets 6-4, 6-0.
See TENNIS, 13 ☛
GUILLERMO NARAVEZ/the Justice
THROUGH BALL: Forward Holly Szafran ’16 (right) dribbles down the wing with two Eastern Nazerene College defenders in pursuit during the Judges’ 1-0 win last Tuesday.
Judges’ winning streak ends at 11 games with conference loss ■ The squad only gave up a
pair of shots in the second half of Saturday’s loss to Rochester but both went in for goals. By Siddharth mehra JUSTICE contributing WRITER
The 20th-ranked women’s soccer team’s winning run was brought to an abrupt end last Saturday, when the visiting Judges fell to the University of Rochester Yellowjackets by a 2-0 score. The result takes them to 1-1 in
the University Athletic Association, while retaining an impressive 11-2 in all competitions. The squad had defeated Eastern Nazarene College 1-0 last Tuesday to push their winningstreak to 11 games. The first half of Saturday’s game proved to be a relatively even affair with no shortage of attempts on goal. The Judges’ strikers were matched by that of the Yellowjackets in the half as each side attempted five shots on goal. However, it was the Rochester strikers who came closest to breaking the stalemate with two headers directed at goal in quick succession of each other,
both of which clattered against the woodwork and bounced away. The two teams went into the break level at 0-0. The first mark on the scoresheet came in the 57th minute, when Rochester freshman midfielder Laura CowieHaskell slotted home a long pass from midfield to give the hosts a 1-0 lead. The Judges came close to drawing level in the 68th minute, when striker Lea McDaniel ’17 worked her way into an opportune position but fired a little high, letting the out-of-position Yellowjackets keeper off the hook. Rochester senior defender Claire
Kowalcyzk wrapped up the contest in the 78th minute by capitalizing on a loose ball in the Brandeis box, firing home the ball for a 2-0 lead. When the final whistle blew Brandeis had recorded 11 shots opposed to Rochester’s seven but could not find the goals needed to equalize the game. “It was a great game; we had opportunities that did not end up in a goal,” said coach Denise Dallamora. “We outplayed them in most of the game but gave up two goals in an opportunity to score.” The result came off the heels of a
See WSOCCER, 13 ☛
MEN’S Soccer
Team handed first loss of the season by Rochester ■ Midfielder Foti Andreo ’15
scored his first goal of the season in the Judges’ 2-1 loss on Saturday. By Colin warnes JUSTICE contributing WRITER
The fourth-ranked men’s soccer team continued on their road through the tough University Athletic Association with two away games last week in nonconference action at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a conference game at the University of Rochester.
After extending its 10 game winning streak against MIT last Tuesday, the team was unfortunate to end its run against Rochester on Saturday. The Judges began Saturday’s game facing a very resilient Rochester team coming off a UAA loss against New York University and were unable to climb out of a two-goal deficit, falling 2-1 to the hosts. In the first half, Rochester proved to be a very even match for the Judges, matching each of Brandeis’s four shots. Both teams found themselves in very good areas throughout the first half but were unable to finish their chances. The first scoring opportunity came
from a ninth-minute throw- in for the host Yellowjackets. An impressively long throw-in reached the head of Rochester senior forward Alex Swanger. However, he only managed to direct the point-blank header straight at goalkeeper Joe Graffy ’15, who easily made the save to keep the game level at 0-0. In the 33rd minute another golden chance came about, this time for the Judges. Forward Mike Lynch ’17 was put through on net by a cross from forward Tyler Savonen ’15. One-onone with the keeper, Lynch failed to get the ball through with Rochester sophomore goalkeeper Michael Shatkin reaching it just in time to clear
away. With those two chances wasted, the half ended 0-0. “The best player in my eyes was Savonen, because he held the ball up really well and really created a lot of offense while [forward] Michael Soboff ’15 was out,” said forward Zach Vieira ’17. “He put in a lot of work and showed why he is a leader on the team.” In the second half, the play began to open up much more for both teams. One of the best chances of the game came quite early on, with Swanger once again gathering in a long throw in the 49th minute but was unable to convert as his shot hit off the crossbar.
The deadlock was finally broken by Rochester sophomore midfielder Ben Swanger in the 57th minute, when the ball made its way through some confusion to the right side of the pitch and reached the midfielder, who curved the ball into the far post and left Graffy no chance of producing a save. Though the goal produced prolonged pressure by the Judges to score an equalizer, they were quickly deflated by a second Rochester goal in the 71st minute. Rochester junior defender Jeffrey Fafinski swung in a corner toward goal that managed to sneak past Graffy into the goal for a
See MSOCCER, 13 ☛
JustArts Volume LXVII, Number 7
Your weekly guide to arts, movies, music and everything cultural at Brandeis and beyond
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Waltham, Mass.
‘Dead Man’s Cell Phone’ >>
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‘The Lion King’ - Off-Broadway show creates an immersive musical and visual experience » 23
INSIDE
Mid-Autumn Festival Southeast Asia Club celebrates autumn traditions in various Asian countries » 19
JustArts Exhibit Dreitzer Gallery exhibit puts faculty and staff artwork on display » 19
John Altoon Rose Art Museum acquires new exhibit featuring works from Los Angeles-based artist. » 21
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justARTS
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2014 | THE JUSTICE
CALENDAR
INTERVIEW
$
What’s happening in Arts on and off campus this week
ON-CAMPUS EVENTS
BAASA Film Screening: Seeking Asian Women
Brandeis Asian-American Student Association will be screening a documentary about the dangers of exotification and fetishization of Asian women. This film revolves around a white male with “yellow fever” and his unhealthy relationship with a newlyimmigrated Chinese woman. Tomorrow from 6:30 to 9 p.m. in the Intercultural Center Lounge. This event is free and open to the public.
‘Spring Awakening’ Presents: Where the Arts Meet Social Justice
Spring Awakening director, Rachel Liff ’16, will moderate a panel discussion on how the arts intersect with social justice. The panel will feature Dean of Students Jamele Adams, Prof. Adrianne Krstansky (THA) and Prof. Jennifer Cleary (THA). The dialogue will include, but is not limited to, a discussion about the themes of Spring Awakening and how they reflect society, culture and Brandeis. Themes and potential triggers include sex education, general education, emotional/physical abuse, sexual assault, mental illness and suicide. Dr. Joy Von Steiger from the Psychological Counseling Center will also be attending as additional resource. Thursday from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Mandel Center for Humanities, G03. This event is sponsored by Tympanium Euphorium, Brandeis Theater department and Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation minor program. Free and open to the public.
Prof. Adrianne Krstansky (THA) Professor directs BTC production
RACHEL HUGHES/the Justice
This week, justArts spoke with Prof. Adrianne Krstansky (THA), who directed Brandeis Theater Company’s latest production, Dead Man’s Cell Phone. justArts: Why did BTC choose to produce Dead Man’s Cell Phone? Adrianne Krstansky: Well, it’s a play by Sarah Ruhl, and she is really interested in this particular play—the question of technology and the way that technology affects our lives, affects our ability to connect with each other, to be present with each other. Although the play was written in 2007, it doesn’t really address texting, iPads or things like that. It does talk about our inability to be present because we always have a cell phone on. We’re never actually where we are because we’re always electronically connected to other things. As somebody who is a professor here [at Brandeis] and always telling students to put away their cell phones, stop texting, be here, I thought that would be a really interesting question. The play itself doesn’t say it is bad. In fact, the main character manages to keep the memory of this man alive by continuing to answer his cell phone after he’s gone. I thought that was really interesting. Also, Sarah Ruhl’s characters are kind of quirky. The world is a little quirky. It’s very imaginative, not your basic realism. It’s very dreamlike … I really wanted to see Brandeis art students do this play. I think it was a good match-up for our students. JA: Can you tell me about the minimalist set? AK: The play itself was inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper…the subject of his paintings is isolation—worlds that are drained of life. The subjects of his painting are waiting, so people who are in suspension ... In my imagination, I kept picturing that the play imagined on the head of a pin—that the only things you saw on stage were the things that were absolutely necessary to suggest the location. But because the location changes so radically during the course of the play— if you put an entire café up there [on stage] with the dishes, tables and chairs and an entire dining area and then you put an entire airport up there, you would have these massively long set changes. She says in the script all that’s required for this play are two tables, two chairs, a bowl. She sort of says that it’s not about the stuff. I think the way that minimalism works in a painting, which is why we eventually started looking at a lot of Mark Rothko paintings, is that it suggests the story to the audience but you are allowed to fill in the blanks. JA: What was your biggest challenge in directing the show? AK: This really has nothing to do with the play or the people I did it with, but I started this fall being chair of the [Theater] department, so I think just my energy level. I took on a really big job, and I’m still teaching a full load of classes. It was such a joy to go to rehearsal and be in this really creative space where other people were doing the administrative work. I think also solving those challenges and those problems of how do we get from one world to the other. There’s so little for the audience to hold on to, so specifically, what do I give them to tell the story of this play. I feel like directing is about that. It’s really about making choices and whittling away what’s not needed and trying to get to the essence of something. JA: What is the most important message you wanted your audience to take away from the play? AK: I think, for me, it’s not so much of a message, but if the audience can just be a little bit—just think about the question of what it means to be present. And does your technology impede your ability to live your life in a very present way? When I saw the play over the weekend, there was a young man who spent a couple of scenes during the show with his iPhone hiding behind his program, and he was on the Internet while the play was going on ... And so I very quietly went behind him and put my hand on his shoulder, and I asked him to please turn off his iPhone and watch the play. At that very moment, there was a monologue that got the very point that we are not present in our lives because we are always in two places at once, and it’s hard to be in a room. I don’t know if he had to watch the play for class, or maybe he had a family emergency—I really don’t know. But it was a very meaningful experience like that. I just think that’s the big question—it makes all of us think. I’m not immune to the question either—what is that pull, that email and that [idea] we have to be 7,000 places at once. —Emily Wishingrad
Nightmare on South Street: Halloween Costume Ball
Come out in your finest costume to the Nightmare on South Street Halloween Costume Ball. There will be costume contests and prizes. The
categories are: Best in Show, Most Innovative Use of Materials, Best Makeup and Creepiest Costume. Awards will be announced around 11 p.m. Friday at 9 p.m. at Cholmondeley’s Coffee House. This event is hosted by the Fine Arts Undergraduate Department Representatives and Dish Jockey BJ at Chums and is free and open to the public.
Film Screening of ‘Obvious Child’
Come join the Women and Gender Studies Undergradute Department Representatives and Student Events for a special screening of Obvious Child. The film tells the story of Donna, a twenty-something comedienne whose unplanned pregnancy forces her to confront the realities of independent womanhood for the first time. Saturday from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. in the Mandel Center for Humanities, G03. This event is free and open to the public.
The Electro-Acoustic Piano
The Electro-Acoustic Piano is an ongoing project which supports and promotes new works for piano and electronics. Started in 2009, the project has so far commissioned over twenty different composers, and the program has been presented throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Belgium, Germany and England. Saturday from 8 to 9:30 p.m. in Slosberg Music Center. This event is free and open to the public and is hosted by the New Music Brandeis Concert Series.
A Tribute to Erwin Bodky
Come honor Eriwin Bodky, Brandeis’s first Professor of Music and founder Cambridge Society for Early Music, with a performance featuring Brandeis faculty members Profs. Daniel Stepner (MUS) on the violin, Pamela Dellal (MUS) singing soprano, Evan Hirsch (MUS) on the piano and James Nicolson, president of the Cambridge Society for Early Music (CSEM). CSEM will host a reception following
the performance in the lobby of the Slosberg Music Center. Sunday from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Slosberg Music Center. This event is free and open to the public.
OFF-CAMPUS EVENTS ‘Conversation Piece’
Contemporary works on view in Conversation Piece invite interaction by serving as platforms for dialogue. By taking everyday objects as a starting point for conversation—such as a curtain, television, table or chairs— these works tease out novelties from the mundane and disrupt viewers’ expectations of what they would find in a museum. Blurring the lines between art and everyday life, each of these works asks viewers to reconsider the world around them through the lens of art. Pointing to individual and collective agency and how we perform in our everyday lives, this installation highlights art’s ability to mobilize us. The exhibition is open at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston through March 15 and is located in the Eunice and Julian Cohen Galleria (Gallery 265). Admission is free with a Brandeis ID.
UnderScore Friday Evening: Brahms and Nielsen
Esteemed Austrian pianist Rudolf Buchbinder joins the Boston Symphony Orchestra for Brahms’s vast, emotionally intense D minor piano concerto, which the Viennese composer wrote over the course of several years, in part as a reaction to the tragedy of his mentor Robert Schumann’s attempted suicide in 1854 and his death two years later. They will also play a piece by Danish composer Carl Nielsen who chose to write his Fourth Symphony, an expression of the “Elemental Will of Life,” as one large movement. Friday at 8 p.m. at Symphony Hall in Boston. Tickets are available at www. bso.org and range from $30 to $104.
POP CULTURE n !
wwfew weeks ago I wrote about the A upcoming fall television season. Now that most new and returning shows have premiered, I’m seeing the most diverse lineup of main TV characters to date. Remember when the most popular show on television centered around six white, heterosexual Friends? Today, that is far from the case, with complex characters that are the opposite of cookie-cutter. Women have been taking on starring roles on TV for decades, but the characters have a tendency to be white, middle to upper class, straight women (Desperate Housewives, anyone?). Women of color are finally taking their place in primetime television, thanks in part to showrunner Shonda Rhimes, creator of successful shows including Grey’s Anatomy. Two of her current shows, hit show Scandal and the new How to Get Away with Murder, feature black female leads. ABC’s newest show, How to Get Away With Murder, stars Oscar nominee Viola Davis as a criminal law professor and defense attorney who becomes involved in a murder plot with her students. The show premiered on Sept. 25, in the slot after Scandal, and is already a hit with both viewers and critics. The hit sitcom The Mindy Project, currently in its third season, is another show with a female star of color. Created by and starring The Office vet Mindy Kaling, whose parents are both Indian, the show follows Mindy Lahiri, an OBGYN in New York City and her misadventures in love and work. Mainstream TV is now also embracing gay and transgender characters. In 2013, the Australian import Please Like Me had to switch to a network viewed by younger audiences due to the show’s homosexual content. The show, equal parts drama and comedy, focuses on Josh who is dealing with his mother’s suicide attempt, his girlfriend breaking up with him and his new realization that he is gay. The show is now reaching American audiences through new digital cable and satellite network Pivot,
By Ilana Kruger
CREATIVE COMMONS
TRUE SELF: Jeffery Tambor plays a transgender character, Maura, in Amazon’s Transparent. and its relatable theme of wanting to be liked is helping the show to gain a steadily growing following. Perhaps the most groundbreaking TV roles today are for transgender characters, which up until now have been rare. Laverne Cox’s supporting role on Netflix’s Orange is the New Black as transgender woman Sophia Burset made Cox the first openly transgender person nominated for an acting Emmy award. Now Transparent, starring Jeffrey Tambor, is the first show to have a transgender character as its protagonist. The aptly-titled drama, created by Amazon Studios, features Tambor as Maura, formerly Mort, as his family copes with the announcement
that he is transgender. The show’s 10-episode run, already available in full on Amazon, has critics raving about Tambor’s performance. It is important to note that both Orange is the New Black and Transparent are on online streaming platforms, not traditional network television. If online is the new face of TV, then networks should follow in Amazon and Netflix’s lead and create roles for all kinds of characters. It is almost 2015, so it is appropriate that television is finally acknowledging how beautifully diverse society is. There are infinite stories to be told about different types of people, and this is hopefully just the beginning of a more varied TV era.
ARTS COVER IMAGES: MICHELLE BANAYAN, HANNAH CHIDIKEL and MORGAN BRILL/the Justice. DESIGN: JEREMY PERLMAN and MORGAN BRILL/the Justice.
ON CAMPUS
THE JUSTICE | TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2014
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EXHIBIT
Exhibit highlights art of faculty and staff By ANNA STERN
JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER
At times, students forget that professors are not just people who grade papers. The current exhibit in the Dreitzer Gallery in Spingold Theater proves that the lives of the people who teach us day in and day out are interesting beyond what we see in class. JustArts: Brandeis Faculty/Staff Art Exhibition, sponsored by the Office of the Arts, features original works of art from current and former Brandeis faculty and staff, showcasing what they do in their free time. Art pieces range from intricate fabric designs to mixed media paintings, sculptures and a multimedia presentation featuring two short films that appeared perpen-
dicular to each other. There was even a children’s book titled The Brie That Brought Sunshine to Chicago by Prof. Martin Levin (POL)— a witty tale describing the journey of French cheese to America. Other pieces showed off hobbies such as knitting, jewelry and scrapbooking. In an interview with the Justice, Jennifer Wolff ’07, a research specialist and lab manager in the Neuroscience department, said that she was encouraged to submit her knitting and jewelry pieces to the exhibit by a friend who had organized this exhibit in the past. Wolff says that for her, knitting is a hobby that is “fun and soothing.” Monika Bach Schroeder, assistant director of marketing and communications at the Hiatt Career Center, is a freelance pho-
tographer who does portraits and weddings. Every so often, she accompanies non-governmental organizations and international organizations on trips to developing countries to help them document their journey. The exhibit featured photos of children and babies from her first trip to Malawi. The beautiful photos reflected the everyday life in the country and the interesting people who live there. Some of the most beautiful works in the exhibit were impressionist style paintings by Jane Lin, former budget analyst at the University. Lin wrote in the description about her paintings that when she retired she wanted to focus on her art and her garden, painting Monet-like paintings of her garden. Her paintings are bright and colorful and transport the viewer
into a technicolor universe. One of the more unique pieces in the exhibit was entitled “What Remains” by Prof. Karen Klein (ENG). Klein started her career at Brandeis in 1964 and is now a professor emeritus. She taught literature at Brandeis for 37 years and then made her second career as a modern dancer. “What Remains” depicts a fish skeleton made out of a tree stump and its bark. The very uniquely textured design helps emulate the movement of the fish. David Weinstein, communications specialist for the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life, got his second grade daughter, Ava, involved in his art. They each create pictures that draw inspiration from her drawings and his photographs. The results are filled with depth and
shadow and show off the similarities in light between two types of visual media. Carla Underwood, exhibition committee member from the office of the arts, said in an interview with the Justice that the purpose of the exhibition was to show off the hobbies of faculty and staff. She mentioned how it was nice to see how a “biologist can be an artist.” She enjoys how this exhibition shows the different sides of Brandeis’ faculty and staff. The exhibit showed how unique art does not have to be made by people who are artists by trade. Art can be made by anyone with a passion for creativity. The JustArts: Brandeis Faculty/ Staff Art Exhibition will be in the Dreitzer Gallery in Spingold Theater through 26.
HANNAH CHIDEKEL/the Justice
AFTER SCHOOL: The Brandeis community gathered on Wednesday for an opening of a new exhibition in the Dreitzer Gallery that displays the artwork of faculty and staff.
CULTURAL EVENT
SEAC festival highlights a variety of traditions By CATHERINE ROSCH JUSTICE EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
What do decorating lanterns, eating fresh fruit and traditional Asian pastries and lion dances have to do with each other? Brandeis’s Southeast Asian Club, a club dedicated to educating about and celebrating multiple countries in Southeast Asia, combined these things at their annual Mid-Autumn Festival on Wednesday. In an email to the Justice, SEAC co-president Megan Chan ’16 explained that while the Mid-Autumn Festival is not unique to one Asian country or culture but to countries including China, Korea, Burma and Vietnam, SEAC wanted to “give our members a taste of what Asian communities all over the world gather to celebrate.” Chan explained that in years past, SEAC has hosted celebrations for Loi Krathong, a traditional autumnal celebration in Thailand, Laos and Burma and Tet Trung Thu, a harvest festival in Vietnam. While all of these festivals and traditions are different, they do take place at roughly the same time each year, and Chan thought integrating various elements of each tradition would provide “[each country’s] own special meaning and different celebratory customs” to the celebration. This year’s Mid-Autumn Festival was a community gathering to celebrate family and friendship, according to Chan. SEAC’s Event Coordinators Tony Tran ’17 and Maryanne Cai ’17 started the event with a brief presentation about the Mid-Autumn Festival and some traditions at events like Tet Trung Thu, including parades, lion and dragon dancers and decorating pa-
per lanterns. As Chan explained in her email, each culture has their own Mid-Autumn Festival traditions, such as in China, where “the consumption and gift-giving of mooncakes, a well-known pastry eaten during the festival, is prominent.” Chan shared that “Korea also celebrates the Mid-Autumn festival, but calls it ‘Chuseok’ instead,”a celebration that is similar to American Thanksgiving. Following the presentation, the participants were split into two groups, one group to eat and the other to decorate SEAC’s take on traditional lanterns. Unfortunately, lion dancing did not turn out to be on the evening’s menu, but the food that was served was delicious. Students enjoyed home-cooked chicken and vegetarian pad mee—a traditional stir-fry noodle dish—and milky Thai tea. Members of the SEAC executive board prepared apples, peaches and grapes and purchased mooncakes from local Waltham favorite, Tom Can Cook. The mooncakes came in a variety of flavors, including red bean and sweet gourd. Some of the mooncakes had a special surprise in the form of a hard-boiled egg in the middle. While the flavors were unusual, the cakes themselves were delicious and reminiscent of American pie. Students mingled around tables as they ate, trying to solve pre-prepared riddles and writing messages to family members and loved ones. Other students gathered around a table in the middle of the room to make a simplified version of paper lanterns. It was an easy process. Students took foam paper and cut them into any shape of their choosing. Popular shapes were hearts, circles and stars, although there
was one impressive cutout of Mario from the Mario Kart franchise. Once the base shape was cut out, participants would take shredded crayons and sprinkle them over large pieces of wax paper. Members of the SEAC e-board would then use a hairdryer to melt the crayon pieces so the colors mixed and swirled over the waxed paper. Once the waxed paper cooled down, students would fold
and tape it around the base shapes and put an electric tea light in the center. The homemade lamps were beautiful, casting lights and colors all over the room. Chan wrote to the Justice that the goal of the Mid-Autumn Festival was “to actively immerse the [attendees] in the event itself (so we aimed to make everything authentic, like it would actually be
in China or Vietnam)” and to present an interactive event that would help the Brandeis community learn more about a variety of cultures. As someone who came into the Mid-Autumn Festival with very little knowledge about the Southeast Asian traditions, I thought SEAC did a great job of presenting a variety of cultures in a delicious and crafty way.
MORGAN BRILL/the Justice
MOON MUNCHINGS: The event provided traditional mooncakes from Waltham restaurant, Tom Can Cook, for attendants to sample.
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TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2014 | THE JUSTICE
THEATER
PHOTOS COURTESY OF MIKE LOVETT
TOGETHER WE STAND: The ensemble, headed by Samantha Laney ’17 (middle), participated in various dances and acts during set changes.
HOLDING ON: Jean (Samantha Browne-Walters ’15) grabs the hand of Gordon (Alex Davis ’15), the man who’s life she assumes through answering his phone after his death.
BTC play examines the themes of life and loss By RIVER HEISLER JUSTICE STAFF WRITER
LIFE AFTER DEATH: Gordon, a character who passes away at the beginning of the show, is depicted in the second act in the afterlife.
Brandeis Theater Company’s production of Dead Man’s Cell Phone, directed by Prof. Adrienne Krstansky (THA) brings up deep questions about life after death and technology’s place in our world through many aspects of production. The show opens with Jean (Samantha Browne-Walters ’15) sitting in a café across the stage from Gordon (Alex Davis ’15), who she soon realizes has quietly passed away while sitting at the table. His phone is on the table, ringing incessantly. Once she realizes that he is dead, Jean decides to answer his phone, drawing her into Gordon’s life and his family. Through the lies she tells to various people in his life in order to comfort them, she finds herself becoming more and more of a part of Gordon’s family and ultimately, his life. In the second act, the play shows what has happened to Gordon in the afterlife. Within the logic of the play, when one dies, they spend all of time with the one person or being, such as the animal they loved most. Browne-Walters’ and Davis’ acting is remarkable in the show. Browne-Walters’ Jean is very clearly out of her element in this new environment—“I hardly knew him,” she says, and now she finds herself a major part of his family. Throughout the show, the audience can see how uncomfortable Jean is in her new role as the person to whom it has fallen to “keep Gordon alive.”
Despite what one might expect, the role of Gordon is actually a fairly large role. Gordon has a long monologue to start the second act, which is expertly performed by Davis. Through the monologue, the audience learns a fair amount of Gordon’s backstory, including his job, which is shrouded in secrecy, both for the audience and other characters, until this point. Gordon is very self-involved—it becomes clear when he first arrives in the afterlife that the person he loves most is himself. But Davis conveys this trait in a way that makes Gordon fairly sympathetic, while staying true to the character as it was written.
“
The entire show is a bit of an experiment, one based on various questions of life in. modern times.
The scenic design of Dead Man’s Cell Phone, created by Cristina Todesco, a lecturer in scenic design at Boston University, masterfully conveys the setting of the show. The place and time in which the action of the show happens is not specified (the playbill notes “Time: The present, Place: A city), but Todesco’s scenic design suggests a quaint Victorian setting, which fits with dramaturge
Zoe Golub-Sass’ ’16 description of Jean as a “modified version of the archetypal Victorian orphan.” Included in the scenic design are the light fixtures themselves, which add a Victorian feel to the play even though it is set in the present-day. The lights used are ceiling light fixtures and chandeliers that drop down on flies. Former Prof. David Wilson’s (THA) light design adds a certain air of mystery to the production, which helps to convey the message of the play. While the audience is taken on a journey that includes Johannesburg, the lighting is a significant part of what takes the audience there through flashing lights and sound effects to simulate the noise of an airplane. Throughout the show, most of the lighting is very dim, though the stage is fully lit at times for emphasis. Overall, Dead Man’s Cell Phone is a provocative production that prompts the audience to consider deep questions in life, such as what happens after we die and how technology has affected or even eliminated our ability to have meaningful relationships with others. The entire show is a bit of an experiment, one based on various questions of life in modern times. “If anything, this play shows our own coming of age in the modern age,” Golub-Sass writes in the dramaturge’s note in the playbill, “As we are offered the opportunity to go faster—travel, Amazon orders, WiFi—we must find the time to pause and connect, to stop time—and make an imprint.”
THE JUSTICE | TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2014
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ROSE ART MUSEUM
‘John Altoon’ reflects artist’s ecclectic style By BROOKE GRANOVSKY JUSTICE STAFF WRITER
The Rose Art Museum’s newest exhibit, John Altoon, is a collection of works by the titular artist which opened last Wednesday. The collection is on loan from Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and its exhibit will run through Dec. 21. The exhibit is ordered chronologically and flows from his earlier abstract and Pop Art works in the ’50s to his pieces on sexual imagery in the later ’60s. The exhibit’s drawings, sketches and paintings feature oil paint, watercolor, airbrush and pastels. Some of the paintings are drawn on canvas, while others are on spare illustration boards that Altoon likely picked up at his job as a commercial illustrator. Altoon frequently contrasts pastels with white backgrounds and uses bright oils against darker backgrounds. His commercial artistry is most evident in his Pop-Art style works and in his satirical paintings. For instance, one of the artist’s paintings mimics a Colgate toothpaste advertisement. Although he was one of Los Angeles’s premier artists, Altoon was known as an “artist’s artist.” While painters and illustrators working in the ’60s admired his work, the public was less likely to have heard of Altoon until after his death in 1969. One of the exhibit’s descriptions mentions how many of Altoon’s pieces could be interpreted through a feminist lens. The women in his drawings are not passive objects, even in paintings focusing on sexual concepts and imagery. The fact that these paintings were crafted during a turbulent time for women’s rights—the ’50s and ’60s saw the rise of birth control and renewed interest in feminist move-
ments—further supports the idea that Altoon’s work could be taking an informed stance on feminism and the beginnings of gender equality. The Colgate picture mentioned above, “Untitled (F-24)” from 1962-63, depicts a woman and a man standing in front of a nude female figure bound to a cross. Religions often refer to god(s) as male, and in this light, Altoon’s image of the crucified, god-like woman alludes to the idea of female empowerment. One of the exhibit’s not-to-be-missed pieces is the LIFE Magazine drawing, officially called “Untitled”, from 1964 that features two unnamed men. The drawing is framed like the cover of LIFE magazine, with the red LIFE symbol in the top right corner and a caption at the bottom left. The drawing features two male figures, one dressed in hunting gear and one shirtless, standing side by side in front of a garden landscape. The hunter is holding the lower half of a gun that the shirtless man is bending into a garden hose. The entire scene mimics the infamous “backyard photos,” pictures of Lee Harvey Oswald in his backyard with his rifle that the Warren Commission used to convict him of the assassination. Underneath the two figures is a dark box encasing the caption, “Tarzan and I were watering the lawn the day it happened. Especially for LIFE by Lee Harvey Oswald.” According to the accompanying blurb at the museum, the caption and the overall appearance of the drawing—with Oswald and Tarzan harmlessly tending to their lawn—are meant “to skewer depictions of the infamous assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.” The majority of Altoon’s drawings, however, do not have such a clear
message. His works can be subtler, as illustrated by the variety of works that walk the line between the imagined world and reality. In “Untitled (Dior: Paris Evenings),” from 1962-63, three men and one woman engage in a dreamlike imitation of a Dior fashion show. Each man is missing an item of clothing, while the female model wears only high heels. The drawing’s inscription is “Paris: Dior Evenings— Sleeved, Straight, Covered,” which is both innuendo and a pun on the figures’ clothing (or lack thereof). The woman’s Jackie Kennedy-inspired hairstyle and the painting’s faded pastel colors evoke a ’60s mood and contribute to the its sense of a hazy reality. Altoon often adds in his own characteristics to his works, be it with his signature drooping mustache or his bright striped pants. The exhibit includes an untitled watercolor drawing depicting Altoon’s green pants and brown belt, drawn clearly. The images are surrounded with red shapes that are more open to interpretation. The piece’s ambiguity makes observers question how they see and interpret their surroundings. John Altoon truly offers something for every viewer. For those who love the abstract, abstraction is evident in nearly all of Altoon’s works. Even in his more realistic pieces, parts of Altoon’s figures can be unclear, fade into other elements of the drawing or be drawn so that they resemble multiple objects and leave the viewer to interpret their identity. The exhibit offers political satire and pokes fun of t artists of the time who believed in sticking to one style of work. In contrast, Altoon’s exhibit begs the question: why stick to one form when an artist has a talent for so many?
MICHELLE BANAYAN/the Justice
SURROUNDED BY ART: On Wednesday, visitors to the Rose Art Museum attended the opening of the new John Altoon exhibit in the Foster Gallery.
COLORFUL PONDERINGS: John Altoon’s “Untitled” (1961), is painted with water-based paint on an illustration board. In a style typical of the artist, the painting represents both figuration and abstraction. PHOTO COURTESY OF MUSEUM ASSOCIATES/LACMA
GALLERY TALK
LACMA curator speaks about artist on view By EMILY WISHINGRAD JUSTICE EDITOR
It is clear that from her gallery talk on Wednesday that Carol Eliel knows something about art and, specifically, a lot about Los Angeles-based artist John Altoon (1925 to 1969). Taking the audience in a guided tour through John Altoon, the new exhibit that opened at the Rose Art Museum that same evening, Eliel spoke gracefully and knowledgeably about the life and work of Altoon. Eliel curated John Altoon at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which ran from the beginning of June through mid-September of this year, and was then transferred to the Rose. The exhibit was “the first major retrospective devoted to this little known but important artist,” the LACMA website notes. John Altoon was scaled down a bit to fit the space in the Rose, but the current exhibit uses works all
acquired from the exhibit in Los Angeles. Eliel helped to facilitate the curation at the Rose—choosing which pieces to carry from the museum in Los Angeles and approving the layout of the Rose exhibit. During her talk, Eliel took the audience from piece to piece as she discussed the vast array of Altoon’s work at different moments in his life. The exhibit is structured chronologically by different phases in the artist’s lifetime, and Eliel went through the exhibit in the same fashion, weaving in some details about his life throughout to give context to the chronological nature of the exhibit. Although Eliel gave some details about the artist’s life in order to contextualize his art at the beginning of the tour, she said that her main focus in the talk was not to put too much emphasis on his personal history. Many critics take a biographical standpoint, explaining his works through a lens of the
artist’s bipolar disorder. But in her talk Eliel said she wanted to strive to get away from that and instead to look at the pieces in terms of their own content. Altoon’s work is not easily placed in any genre, Eliel said. He was interested in both figuration and abstraction and used both simultaneously in his work—something that was not common during the time of his career in the middle of the last century. Altoon “broke the mold of people like Warhol,” Eliel said. Eliel talked about one of Altoon’s earliest pieces, “Jazz Players,” (1950) as an example of his different interests. The piece, which shows a figuration of two jazz players, does not fit into one genre. The piece also exhibits Altoon’s interest in abstraction—a closer look will reveal that that it is made of mosaic-like tiles. The Ocean Park series came next. Apparently, Altoon named his collections by the studio he was working in at the time of their cre-
ation—in this case, Ocean Park in Los Angeles. In this series, Altoon plays with advertisements and popular culture and makes them comical in a subversive way. Having been a commercial illustrator, Altoon knew how to draw mercial images. For this series, Altoon did his own drawings but hired professionals to do the lettering on his recreations of advertisements. Eliel describes it as an “early iteration of conceptual art,” art in which an artist creates the idea for the work and then uses professional builders, architects or other specialists to actually create the work. Throughout her talk, Eliel addressed and attempted to debunk classic scholarship on Altoon that sees some of his artwork as misogynistic. Eliel argued just the opposite, however. She says that in many of his paintings we see that women are empowered—they are looking directly into the eyes of the
viewer while, by contrast, most of the men are looking away. In “Untitled” (1966), Eliel noted the domineering quality of the woman—a female figure with an animalistic, bear-like head looking down at the animal-like male figure crouching at her feet. Eliel spoke about Altoon as an “artist’s artist,” meaning that he was not very well-known during his time and is still not very famous outside the artistic community. Eliel decided to pay homage to this fact by placing quotes by other artists about Altoon on the walls of the exhibit. It is very clear that Eliel admires Altoon—his disregard for fitting into a clear genre and the lightness and humor he displays in his work. His work is “never overdone or underdone—he just hits it where he wants it to be,” she said. Her admiration was reflected in her talk and the audience was all the more knowledgeable for it.
TALK TIME: Carol Eliel, curator of modern art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and curator of the exhibit, spoke on Wednesday evening during the opening of John Altoon about the titular artist. MICHELLE BANAYAN/the Justice
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TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2014 | THE JUSTICE
TELEVISION
New ABC show breaks barriers in television By MARISSA DITKOWSKY JUSTICE EDITOR
How To Get Away With Murder, which premiered on Sept. 25 and is coming up on its fourth episode this week, has already been proven guilty—of being one of the most pop ular shows on television, of course. With foreseeable end of Grey’s Anatomy, How To Get Away With Murder is a necessary ad dition to ABC’s programming so that I can continue to get my weekly fix of ShondaLand. The show follows criminal de fense lawyer Professor Annalise Keating (Viola Davis, who teaches a criminal law course—nicknamed “How To Get Away With Murder”— at a fictional elite university. In the show, Keating selects several stu dents to assist her in taking on cases at her firm. From what viewers can tell thus far, the students become a little too personally involved in a case; understanding how to get away with murder becomes a necessary skill for them. The show continu ously flashes forward to show the future, where the students are decid ing how to hide a body. As the sea son progresses, it is presumed that viewers will be given some answers. Davis portrays Keating as a strong and determined woman who does not lose in court—or in gen eral. Davis’ performance and abil ity to give viewers an inside look at the emotions of such a strong female character is superb. Davis also of ten subtly hints at a moral conflict, proven by her decision to take on one particular case over another.
She always seems to have a way to get around any wrenches thrown at her during a trial—similar to Shon da Rhimes’ character Olivia Pope (Kerry Washingon) in Scandal. Not only are these successful black women at the top of their fields, but they are also among the stron gest female personalities in televi sion currently. These shows break through stereotypes about black people, black women and all women in general to provide inspiration. Wes Gibbons, played by Alfred Enoch, is an idealistic and driven student in Keating’s class. Although it is unclear why he is selected to assist Keating in her firm because he seems initially unprepared, it becomes clear that he complements Keating’s character. He seems to remind her of the moral conflict that she has seemingly forgotten in all of her years as a defense at torney. Keating and Enoch will certainly continue developing as characters and become more complex as the series proceeds. Sexuality and the role it plays in the show is also quite impres sive, and at a point at which all shows should be currently. Con nor Walsh (Jack Falahee), one of the students working for Keating, has been shown openly having in timate relationships with other men—although it is questionable if he is only using some of these individuals to get information for his cases. Other shows currently continue to show a disparity, while Walsh’s sexuality is not treated any differently from Keating’s. In ShondaLand shows, female
sexuality is portrayed just as pre dominately as male sexuality. This show continues trend of shows por traying women as dominant and in control, as Keating is portrayed. One predominant lesson in the
show is that nobody can be trusted. “Do you know who anyone really is?” Keating asks her class. She even suggests that students be careful of whom they marry. From what we know, this might be an example of
foreshadowing a predicament in her own relationship, or perhaps this statement reflects her cynicism af ter defending clients who so often lie to her for so many years. At this point, we can only tune in to find out.
CREATIVE COMMONS
IN DEFENSE OF MURDER: ABC’s How To Get Away With Murder stars as a criminal defense lawyer Annalise Keating, pictured above.
THEATER
‘The Lion King’ brings artistry to Boston stage By VANESSA ALAMO JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER
“Being brave doesn’t mean you go looking for trouble!” says King Mufasa, played by L. Steven Tay lor. Young adult Simba’s (Jelani Remy) contagious curiosity takes you through a jaw-dropping jour ney in Julie Taymor’s musical adaptation of Disney’s The Lion King at the Boston Opera House performed by an Off-Broadway national touring company. The first scene begins with the memorable sunrise as giant anteaters begin singing “Circle of Life” from the side balconies looking over the audience. Rafiki (Tshidi Manye) leads prancing ze bras, a waddling rhinoceros and a variety of other animals onstage. Rather than having the actors dress up like animals and walk on all fours, their bodies are incor porated into specific parts of the animals so they have no option but
to become their role. For example, the actors playing giraffes walk on stilts attached to their hands and feet while wearing large head pieces that represent the giraffes’ long necks and small heads. In the final part of the scene, an appara tus representing Pride Rock rolls onto the stage while unraveling into a high staircase leading to the top of the cliff. At the top are King Mufasa and Queen Sarabi (Tryphena Wade), watching Rafiki present their child, Simba (Tre’ Jones), to the entire kingdom. Not only was this scene visu ally captivating, but it was also incredible to see all the animals come together for the presentation of Simba at Pride Rock. The ac tors portrayed their characters so well that I forgot there were people on stage controlling the puppets. From the use of puppetry to choreography to music, Taymor goes beyond her role as director to ensure that the popular musi
cal is more than just a show but an experience. At the beginning of the very first scene, giraffes and elephants walk through the audience aisles before entering the stage. During the second act, dancers come out into the audi ence with birds to include the spectators in the show. Due to her involvement in costume designing and co-designing masks and pup pets with puppet designer Michael Curry, Taymor’s vision brings the characters to life from the mo ment they step into the spotlight. The intricacies of each cos tume piece and the way the ac tors danced and embraced their wardrobe made it nearly impos sible to look away. From the col ors and patterns chosen for each character to the fabrics and tex tures worn by the animals, Tay mor truly thought of every detail to ensure the audience felt like a part of the animal kingdom. Simba’s fearless character leads
him to trouble when later facing the hyenas in the Elephant Grave Yard. Although an elephant skel eton is the only piece of the set on stage, the simplicity added an un settling visual to the scene—sim ple yet disturbing. The use of rock music for Scar (Patrick R. Brown) and instrumentals from an electric guitar for the hyenas set an eerie tone while fog filled the stage floor. Music director, Rick Snyder, used a wide variety of genres that I never imagined would come to gether to tell a story. Each type of character was identified through a specific sound. The comedic duo Timon (Nick Cordileone) and Pum baa (Ben Lipitz) were tied to an up beat and exotic jungle instrumen tals while young and adult Nala (Nya Cymone Carter/Nia Hollo way) jumped and turned to upbeat African drums. The unforgettable Rafiki was often musically rec ognized through his own wide range of vocal sounds and music.
Many scenes blended puppetry, costumes, music and choreogra phy, which gave a new twist to sto rytelling within a musical produc tion. Rather than just using songs to move the story along, these dif ferent forms of art were used to portray parts of the story without verbal communication. Musical sequences like “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” maintain a sim plicity in set and props in order to draw the audience’s attention to the characters’ body language and spoken or sung message. I appreciate the balance be tween the chaotic and the simpler scenes because The Lion King has so many elements within the story that it would have been easy over whelm the audience by present ing too much on stage at once. The innovation presented by this production through the use of cho reography, puppetry and other art forms will without a doubt capture audiences throughout the nation.
CREATIVE COMMIONS=
REACH TO THE SKY: The Off-Broadway production of The Lion King is currently showing at the Boston Opera House. This photo shows the Broadway production.
24 “
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2014 | THE JUSTICE
TOPof the
ARTS ON VIEW
Brandeis TALKS
CHARTS
Quote of the week
for the week ending October 12 BOX OFFICE
“[T]he conduct board is not a court of law,” said Chernick. “None of our educational-based sanctions are meant to have legal implications.”
1. Gone Girl 2. Dracula Untold 3. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day 4. Annabelle 5. The Judge (2014) 6. The Equalizer 7. Addicted 8. The Maze Runner 9. The Boxtrolls 10. Left Behind
—Matthew Chernick ’16, chairman of the Student Conduct Board (News, p. 1)
Which professor would you nominate for a Nobel Prize?
NYT BESTSELLERS
ABIGAIL ROTHSTEIN/the Justice
Jodecy Colon ’15 “I would say I definitely like [former professor Jason] Pontrello. He taught organic chemistry lab lecture. I just think he was a really good teacher and really down to earth and was really helpful to students.”
Jon Jacob ’16 “So, I think one professor on this campus that has inspired me and changed the way I think about things is [Prof. Grace] Zimmerman [(BUS)]from the [International Business School]. I had marketing with her last semester, and it’s just fascinating how I used to look at things in one dimension, and now I’m very open to new ideas.”
Mariella Tejada ’15 “I would probably say [Prof.] Steuart Altman [(HSSP)]. He’s extremely knowledgable and has already had a huge impact in the American health care system.”
SLAM DUNK: Justice photographer Abigail Rothstein ’17 took this photo, looking through an eroded basketball hoop in the woods. “Sometimes, you just have to look up to see a unique perspective,” she says.
THE JUSTICE WANTS TO SEE YOUR ORIGINAL ARTWORK! Send works to photos@thejustice.org for a chance to be featured in next week’s issue.
CROSSWORD ACROSS 1 In an innovative and memorable way 10 There’s a point to it 15 Dangerous element 16 Get to the point? 17 Site of 1890s gold rushes 18 “Your wish is my command” 19 Fort Laramie hrs. 20 Kirshner of “The LWord” 21 Audited 23 __ en scène 25 Cartoonist awarded a Congressional Gold Medal in 2000 27 AEC successor 28 Poetry slam, e.g. 30 “__ for me” 31 Coordinate nicely 32 Almost went down 34 Make milk 36 Game with checks 38 Brand of attachable rotary mower 40 Job seeker-to-be, often 44 Shut (up) 45 First to be called up 47 Israeli statesman Dayan 48 36-Across great 49 Rhoda’s sister 51 Brae toppers 52 Issue 54 Pro-__ 56 Well-connected co.? 57 Israel’s southernmost city 58 First stroke for many 61 Whoops 62 Line on New York’s state quarter 63 Christopher Hitchens work 64 “Lend a Hand. Care for the Land!” spokescritter DOWN 1 Modern junk dealer? 2 Hard to pin down 3 It’s highly touted 4 Sitcom cousin 5 Benchmark 6 First name in erotica 7 Sweet-smelling bloomers 8 That guy, to Guy 9 Singer known as the “Peruvian songbird” 10 Bearcat maker 11 “How __ to know?” 12 Dramatic 36- Across finalminute situation 13 Contrition 14 Saturate 22 Smart ones? 24 Join 26 Fluorine or iodine 29 Texas __ 31 Lack permission to 33 Make safer, as livestock 35 Overflow
iTUNES
1. Taylor Swift—“Shake It Off” 2. Meghan Trainor—“All About That Bass” 3. Jason Aldean—“Gonna Know We Were Here” 4. Jessie J, Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj—“Bang Bang” 5. Florida Georgia Line—“Sun Daze”
BILLBOARD
1. Blake Shelton—Bringing Back the Sunshine 2. Lady Antebellum—747 3. Barbra Streisand—Partners 4. Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga— Cheek to Cheek 5. Prince—Art Official Age 6. Kenney Chesney—The Big Revival 7. Maroon 5—V 8. Prince and 3rdEyeGirl— Plectrumelectrum 9. Chris Brown—X 10. The Script—No Sound Without Silence Top of the Charts information provided by Fandango, the New York Times, Billboard. com and Apple.com.
37 Muskmelon cultivar 38 Smoothie sweeteners 39 Presents for display, as blueprints 41 Emphatic turndown 42 Current principle 43 Edit, in a way 44 Robin Williams title role 46 Slowly 49 Title auto in a 1978 Harold Robbins film 50 Pumped (up) 53 Big party 55 Pouches 59 Número atómico 79 60 One might be lazy
STAFF’S Top Ten
FALL SPECIALS By RIVER HEISLER JUSTICE STAFF WRITER
Solution to last issue’s crossword Crossword Copyright 2014 Tribune News Service, Inc.
SUDOKU INSTRUCTIONS: Place a number in the empty boxes in such a way that each row across, each column down and each small 9-box square contains all of the numbers from one to nine.
Sylvia Lin ’18 “So far, I’d say [Prof.] Timothy Hickey [(COSI)]. He tries to make the class very interactive and answers the students’ questions as best as possible even though it’s a big lecture.” —Compiled and photographed by Grace Kwon and Guillermo Narvaez/the Justice.
Fiction 1. Burn— James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge 2. Edge of Eternity—Ken Follett 3. Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good—Jan Karon 4. Personal—Lee Child 5. All The Light We Cannot See— Anthony Doerr Nonfiction 1. Killing Patton—Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard 2. Not That Kind of Girl— Lena Dunham 3. What If?— Randall Munroe 4. How We Got To Now—Steven Johnson 5. The Sense of Style— Steven Pinker
Solution to last issue’s sudoku
Sudoku Copyright 2014 Tribune News Service, Inc.
Though fall is most definitely a distinct season back home (Wisconsin), there is something special about fall in New England. Driving to pick apples today, I was moved to consider my favorite things about fall. Here they are: 1. 60 degree weather in October 2. The incredibly beautiful foliage 3. Pumpkin stuff at Dunkin Donuts 4. The foliage along the Charles River 5. The community break fast on Yom Kippur 6. No snow on the ground (there is back in Madison, Wis.) 7. Sukkot 8. The leaves falling in the small pond by Sherman (no, I don’t mean Massell pond) 9. BuzzFeed articles about Pumpkin Spice (blank) 10. Midterms!!!! (I’ll let you decide if that’s sarcasm or not.)