Innermost Parts

If I had a million dollars, I’d buy you a house.

If we had $100,000 dollars, we could buy us:

- Brandeis 10-Member Delegation to Rwanda
- New Weight Room in Gosman Athletic Center
- One-Day Carnival
- Peace and Social Justice Week
- Radio Transmitter for WBRS
- Renovation of Chums
- Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) Free Testing for approximately 300 students
- Solar Panels for Brandeis Building

We should build Solar Panels.
The office of the Treasurer sent out the following announcement:

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please bear in mind that this is an one-time opportunity only. This type of voting will NOT occur in the future. Therefore, it is our strong recommendation that students choose a one-time investment that will be sustainable and benefit the student body and the community for years to come.

(emphasis mine)

Of these options, only Solar Panels, a Weight Room, antenna for WBRS, and renovating Chums will benefit the student body for any length of time. While ideally the school should pay for all of these, I contend that only Solar Panels and renovating Chums will benefit the broad Brandeis community. Given the choice of the two, I definitely want Solar Panels, especially since renovating Chums costs much less than 100 grand. Therefore, my original endorsement still stands: Go Go Gadget Panels!

Vote here.

I recieved an email from newly appointed Chief Justice Rachel Kagan early this morning. Basically, it says that the UJ will hear Brooks’ case before the end of the semester, probably tomorrow. It also names Kaamilla and Noam as defendants in addition to Nelson Rutrick in his capacity as elections commissioner.

Both Brooks’ original compaint and the UJ response are below.
Read the rest…

On Friday, April 11, then-Student Union President Shreeya Sinha wrote a campus-wide email soliciting ideas on how to spend the approximately $100,000 it had accumulated in roll-over funds.

Well, the proposals have been submitted, and we’ll all be able to vote on how to spend the money from noon today to noon Thursday.

While I won’t know what all the submissions will be until students receive the official email at noon, I do know what three of the submissions will be:
- Build a weight room.
- Install Solar Panels on the roof a prominent building on campus.
- Fly 10 students to Rwanda.

I think each of these proposals has strengths and weaknesses, but I propose that, out of these three options that we know about, solar panels are the best option. They provide a benefit to the campus and environment in terms of less energy costs and less pollution, they are semi-permament fixtures that will serve the community in years to come, and they serve as an important signal and symbol that Brandeis is getting serious about this whole Global Warming thing.

In a few years, imagine bragging “So your campus has some tunnels? That’s nice I guess. Us? Oh, our campus isn’t that special. Unless you count the Solar-Powered-Castle! f’zyeah!”
Read the rest…

Sorry to be a hypocrite and add another post on this tired and beaten subject, but some clarifications on stuff people seem to be confused about…

From the Student Union Bylaws:

Should a candidate be disqualified during balloting, the election shall be voided and a new election for that position shall be held. Should a candidate be disqualified after balloting has been completed, a new election for that position shall be held if the disqualification affects the outcome of the ballot.

From the Union Constitution:

The Union Judiciary may order an election to be re-run if it finds that the Constitution or other elections rules have been violated so as to unfairly negatively impact the campaign of one or more candidates, or if an election rule itself is found to have unconstitutionally negatively impacted the campaign of one or more candidates. An order to re-run an election must be issued within five academic days of the original election.

So the best Andrew Brooks can hope for is a new election, which I would hope he recognizes will be exceedingly difficult for him to win (and which will be necessarily drawn out to next year?!?). Regardless of what the UJ decides, I find it difficult to believe many, if any, people’s vote was swayed by the statements he deems libel. SImply put, it seems like he just isn’t wanted by his constituency anymore…

But let him do as he will.

So some folks doing a journalism project made themselves a blog. Welcome!
It’s called “Unto Its Innermost Parts“? Scandal!

You know what they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery; looks like our influence is spreading.

Seriously though, welcome y’all. U-IP, as I call them, is the web presence of a radio show. They review notable events on campus and give a summary report, as far as I can tell. I know some of the creators - Kalynn, Pat, Claire, Kara. They’re cool people; hopefully they’ll make this a success.

One problem, though. They registered the name “innermostparts” on youtube. Not cool.

Three Rutgers students have been issued summons to appear in the illustrious courts of my home state of NJ because of their efforts in organizing a walk-out last month against the Iraq war. From the NJ Star Ledger:

Three Rutgers University students who participated last month in the annual walk-out against the Iraq War, where about 350 people marched along Route 18 in opposition, have been issued summons’ for disorderly conduct by city police. 

Suzan Sanal, 21, Erik Straub, 20, and Arwa Ibrahim, 21, were issued summons’ on April 10 for their behavior during the March 27 event. They will appear in New Brunswick municipal court this afternoon to request an adjournment until after the Rutgers semester ends next month, Straub said, and have received advice pro bono from the National Lawyers Guild.

…

By law, the charge could carry a 30-day prison sentence and a $500 fine.

I have always been of the firm belief that the moment an activist movement or presence begins to be taken seriously is the moment at which it begins to be attacked. Therefore, the entire Innermost Parts community owes a big thank you to Andrew Brooks for validating our site and its mission.

Seriously, one would think that after failing to break 40% of the vote as an incumbent in a two-seat primary election in which you are one of two candidates, having your complaints about libel dismissed without punishment by a duly elected third-party elections commissioner, and going on to lose by 80 votes on the final ballot would be enough to convince you that your constituents have decided in a fair election that they want someone else doing your job. However, that would only be the case if you have any respect for the democratic process.

Unfortunately, former Senator Brooks seems to lack that respect, so before Noam Shuster can take her rightful place on the Brandeis Student Union, we will have to deal with the injunction Brooks filed with the Union Judiciary to have this election invalidated. It is my firm belief that this case has absolutely no merit and that Union Judicial precedent shows that there is no reason why this injunction should not have been dismissed immediately. Read the rest…

I’m sitting in the Senate meeting right now and the new Vice-President Mike Kerns has just announced that Noam Shuster will not be allowed to swear in as Senator-at-Large

Andrew Brooks has filed an injunction against Noam Shuster asking that she be not sworn in. The former UJ has accepted the injunction and has left the final decision up to the next UJ and Noam cannot be sworn in for at least five days. Brooks is accusing Shuster and her campaign of slandering Brooks on this website and possibly elsewhere. For the record, we would like to state that nothing published on Innermost Parts was written, approved or influenced by anyone but its stated authors.

More information to follow in the coming days.

John Ashcroft gave a speech at Knox College the other day. Then came the student question and answer period. It is instructive to see how the students there dealt with him:

Chalking Stairs! This looks just like Rabb.

Clever.

As to the questions, I’ll quote a few - Read the rest…

Tonight is the first night of Passover, and I’m with the Hirschhorn family in Philadelphia. My mother’s brother, Larry, is an alumnus of Brandeis University; he now works as a high-priced business consultant here in Philly. I’m spending a few nights here before moving onto New York with Liza. My cousin Dan Hirschhorn, Larry’s son, is also an alumnus of this fine institution.

Unlike Larry, who went here in the 1960s, Dan graduated just last year. In his junior year, he was the editor-in-chief of the Newspaper of Record at Brandeis University, The Justice.

At dinner tonight, we discussed, at length, Brandeis politics and future careers. He mentioned in passing that while at The Justice he did a story on race relations at Brandeis that had gotten him fascinated in the issue of discrimination. I decided to snoop through The Justice’s records to see what I could find.

Here is the the main story he wrote, and the two sidebars (equally fascinating) can be found here and here.

The thesis of the set of articles is that Brandeis’ institutions designed to promote diversity and inclusivity are partly responsible – along with racism – for the segregation and racial tensions at the University.

Dan argues that as minority students feel unwelcome by the majority white community at Brandeis, they turn to people who have similar experiences in institutions like the Intercultural Center, the Posse program and TYP. It creates an environment of self-segregation.

“‘The way our campus is, people that are not of the majority feel like they need to find their own community because they don’t fit in,’ said Christina Khemraj ‘09, the Student Union’s senator for racial-minority students.” Read the rest…