Innermost Parts

Liquid Latex is happening this Thursday, 8pm, in Levin. It is really cool!

Brandeis students will be painted in latex paint, and then dance or parade on stage. The surface point is that the paint looks really cool. The real point that is matters is this: Liquid Latex is a demonstration for real Brandeis School Spirit.

Sometimes, especially in discussions in a union or administrative setting, people will say something to me like “we need sports because Brandeis needs school spirit”. Now, the problems with the idea of sports as a cure for all our ills aside, this statements really rubs me raw.

Brandeis has tons of school spirit! We love our school, and we affirm each other and valuethe community we’re creating – we just always show it by cheering on our (atmiddtedly impressive) basketball team.

Did you go to Musica Rox last weekend? There were hundreds of students, cheering on and affirming their friends on stage. Before each performance, a student would get up and introduce the next act, and then you’d hear things like “wooo kaamilah” and “we love you guys” as teh performers got ready.I felt like i was in high school again, where everyone knew everyone else and the bond of community was strong.

That’s school spirit!

Liquid Latex, the Vagina Monologues, MELA – these too are ways in which you can see a real face of our unique and strong Brandeis Spirit. It’s there – some people only think to look for it in the narrow confines of Gosman.

You know, I miss sophomore year. I miss Castle explorations, crazy mustache parties, hanging out in the Sky Dungeon and on the Roof. I miss bonfires in the woods and the lucky accident that gave me two beds in my dorm.

Dear Brandeis Diaspora, Juniors abroad across the world – I miss you!

I miss my freshman year. The excitement. I was in college, wow! I miss tea parties in my room, the people down the hall playing Rock Band, the fierce ambition I had when I joined clubs and created Innermost Parts. I miss the feeling that I had this whole vista of opportunity.

I am pretty sure I’ll miss my Junior year, too. And my senior year as well. In a year from now, will I have nostalgia for the mundanities of right now, nostalgia for furious typing on my netbook and an open window overlooking Ziv Quad?

Why not take that nostalgia I’ll have a year from now and shift it towards the present – a pre-nostalgia? Today, walking up the stairs to my dorm, I had this thought (not as fully formed, of course), and thought “will I miss these stairs? Better enjoy them now!

Ever since then, I’ve tried to look at life a different way. It’s hard to explain how. The made-up word “prenostalgia” comes closest. I know that I’ll be nostalgic for this moment in the future, so I appreciate it even more right now!

Perhaps this is the essence of how all life should be approached, or something unique to college, or maybe I’m just happy because it’s a beautiful day out. Still, I wanted to share.

Dear person or persons unknown who vandalized the Muslim Student Association Lounge:

Fuck you, you bastard.

one third of the homeless men in this country are veterans/ and we have the nerve to Support Our Troops/ with pretty yellow ribbons/ while giving nothing but dirty looks to their outstretched hands… no senators’ sons are being sent out to slaughter/ no presidents’ daughters are licking ashes from their lips… our eyes are closed, america/ there are souls in the boots of soldiers, america/ fuck your yellow ribbon/ you wanna support our troops/ bring them home/ and hold them tight when they get here. -Andrea Gibson

Andrea Gibson’s visit on Friday and VOCAL the Friday before, reminds one, as it reminded Oveous Maximus, that “the power of words is still very much alive.”

The way artful words can inspire the activist out of me is something that I can never quite explain, but always bear witness to. On stage, these poets weren’t being ‘balanced,’ ‘objective,’ or ‘politically correct,’ yet their honesty was enlightening in a way that lectures from important historians can’t quite achieve. The audience was testament to this: their applause and enthusiasm at lighthearted wordplay, their complete silence at heartbreaking revelations, and the sincerity with which they listened. Not everyone agreed with some  of their sentiments, but the earnestness with which they performed resonated with everyone.

It’s easy for activists to get discouraged when they delve into the intricacies of actually creating the change they aspire to create. They run into logistical, political and financial problems.  Clubs with enthusiastic and sincere mission statements end up being swallowed by procedural crap like filling out grant applications, finding enough people to help out, advertising everywhere in order to make the cause/event known and other stuff like that. While those types of things are certainly means to an end, they can be obnoxious and unnecessary obstacles to your awesome activisty envisioned hopes and dreams.

When that happens, watch some spoken word. Getcho powa back on.

A big thank you to VOCAL, Rachel McKibbens, Anis Mojgani, Phil Kaye, Oveous Maximus, Simone Beaubien (Brandeis alum!) , Regie Cabico as well as Jason, Usman, Jordan, Kass and Rachel for sharing such power with our campus.

Earlier today, Provost Marty Krauss released her decisions regarding the 18 proposals that the Brandeis 2020 Committe submitted to narrow Brandeis’s projected operating deficit.  With one minor alteration, she chose to accept them all, meaning that they all will go to the Board of Trustees for approval later this month.

I imagine that there are a lot of disappointed students and faculty members at Brandeis today, and I can completely understand why.  If you’ve devoted your life to a specific program, or if your job security is incumbent on a program’s existence, the last thing you want to hear is that the program has been deemed unworthy of the money that Brandeis has put into it.  Each of these 18 cuts will affect some future students or current faculty members in serious ways, and the ramifications could be felt sooner than we might expect.  Can we really trust the administration to properly prioritize departments they’ve already singled out for termination?

Still, I have to say that I support the decision that Provost Krauss released today.  The Committee recommendations are the result of a exhaustively researched and debated process that incorporated a wide range of Brandeis community members.  The Committee took every effort to understand completely the ramifications of each of its proposals.  Yes, all of these cuts hurt, but Brandeis has already cut all of the easy stuff, and we’re truly out of options.  I find it stunning that Brandeis 2020 was able to reach its financial goals while leaving almost the entire undergraduate experience intact and preserving so much that is central to the Brandeis mission.  Faced with a bunch of bad options, I feel that the Committee members did the best job they could possibly do.

The strongest reaction against the Brandeis 2020 recommendations came from the Theater community in protest against the proposed phasing out of the Graduate School Theater Design program.  Their organization was quick and effective, and their Facebook group currently has over 2,000 members.  This decision was much closer to me than most others; I’ve worked on a Department show before, and I had an opportunity to interview two students from the Design program for a Brandeis Hoot podcast.  I think they have some very strong arguments for preserving their program, and it’s sad to think that the resources that led to the amazing design of the recent Funnyhouse of a Negro production will no longer be available.  But I also think that the Committee knew what it was doing when it recommended scaling back on this very expensive program.  One of the signatories of the Brandeis 2020 report is Theater Arts Department Chair Susan Dibble; do you really think she would have put her name on a report that unfairly and irreparably weakened her department?

The members of the Brandeis 2020 Committee should be recognized for work they put in over the past two months.  Every one of them had to bite the bullet on a very personal sacrifice, and they know they face condemnation for the cuts they made but no commendation for the programs they saved.  In the upcoming years, Brandeis will have to tighten its belt to the point of discomfort, but we will be left with a university finally able to see beyond its darkest hour to a future with its core principles firmly intact.

Marty Krauss, the Provost, just sent out an email detailing her response to the Brandeis 2020 committee’s recommendations. In short: she’s approved all of them (with a minor change regarding anthropology).

You can read her response here.

You can read the original report here.

More analysis later (when I get out of class etc :-P)