Innermost Parts

Brandeis’s website is trumpeting a new set of college rankings released by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP) that has our little ol’ school rated No. 21 among national universities in the United States. And while I typically look at these ranking systems with a skeptical eye, this one is designed to give much more weight to academic results and student satisfaction — in short, the things that actually matter.

The most widely used and well-known college rankings are put out by U.S. News and World Report. Despite their popularity, the rankings serve more as measures of prestige than as actual indicators of academic quality. They heavily weigh criteria like alumni giving and financial resources, categories that are not necessarily correlated to overall academic performance (though they can be indicative) and that put relatively young schools like Brandeis at a disadvantage. They also tend to put great value on the quality of incoming classes with metrics like applicant acceptance rate and percentage of freshmen graduating in the top 10% of their high school class. While these are indicative of a more accomplished incoming student body, they say nothing about the college’s actual performance. High performances in all of these categories make a university look elite, thus guaranteeing it even more donations and wider pools of applicants. Thus, the highest ranked schools reap the benefits of a cycle that makes it very difficult for lower ranked schools to rise.

How does the non-profit CCAP try to avoid these problems? Its director, Richard Vedder, explains the methodology in Forbes magazine:

Our measures begin with student evaluations posted on Ratemyprofessors.com, a nine-year-old site with 6.8 million student-generated evaluations. We look at college graduation rates (as does U.S. News). We also calculate the percent of students winning awards like Rhodes Scholarships and undergraduate Fulbright travel grants. For vocational success we turn to Who’s Who in America. Though imperfect, it is the only comprehensive listing of professional achievement that includes undergraduate affiliations.

Their criteria are geared towards measuring actual results. The inclusion of Rate My Professors data introduces statistical uncertainty through potential sampling bias, but it also gives actual students a hand in determining how well their college performs. Overall, their model comes much closer to measuring what students searching for a school really want to know.

Does that mean that CCAP has created the definitive guide to judging colleges? Of course not. I think most students are interested in more than just a number when it comes to choosing which school to attend; I know that Brandeis’s combination of location, sensitivity to social issues, a different cultural environment, and a strong academic reputation made it the school for me regardless of whether it’s number 21, 31 (its U.S. News and World Report ranking), or anywhere else. For students who are interested in such rankings, they’ll probably turn to the more famous News and World Report numbers, and if they really want to attend a school with an “elite” reputation, that guide will serve them better anyway. Vedder himself admits that his system is imperfect, so I think it mostly shows that making a definite ranking system is an exercise in futility. That being said, CCAP’s heart is in the right place, and overall, they do a pretty good job. I would recommend CCAP’s rankings as one of many tools for anyone going through the applications process, though the reasons for a college’s position are more helpful than the school’s actual net rating. As for Brandeis’s performance, twenty-first is a very strong showing, and I think the administration is justified in doing a little bragging about it.

Or would you rather have them keep going on about imitation butter?

The distinguished senior Senator from Massachusetts, Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor today.

This is bad:

“High-grade glio-malignancies” such as Senator Kennedy has “are unfortunately the most common kind of brain tumor in this age group, and they have a poor prognosis for long-term survival,” he said.

They can also be very debilitating during treatment, Madsen said, and Kennedy’s tumor is in an area where it may well eventually affect his speech.

This makes me sad.

Robert Byrd just burst out sobbing on the senate floor and had to call for an absence of a quorum to compose himself. Now he is railing against the war.

The only member of congress with more seniority in the Senate than Sen. Kennedy is Senator Robert Byrd.

I sent my best wishes to the Senator through his official Senate Site. You might want to do the same.

We’ve just gotten a hold of the unanimous decision by the Union Judiciary to rule in the favor of Noam Shouster and Nelson Rutrick in the Brooks case. There was one concurring opinion by Justice Judah Marans.
Here’s the relevant graf -

Therefore, on all counts the members undersigned of the Union Judiciary find for the Elections Commission, and hereby lift the injunction against Noam Shouster. We request that the Secretary certify as official all results from the Second Round of the Spring 2008 Elections and that the President of the Union swear Noam Shouster in as Senator-at-Large at the next regularly convened meeting of the Senate.

Summary of the opinion follows

Read the rest…

According to Ken Mollins (a good friend of Brandeis Students Against the Judge Rotenberg Center) and an anonymous source who works for the state, Massachusetts state police raided the Judge Rotenberg Center and left carrying boxes of evidence.

This is the beginning of the end for the Judge Rotenberg Center. More information to follow as we know more.

In case anyone missed it, today the California Supreme Court ruled that a statute limiting marriage to a man and a woman was unconstitutional, legalizing same-sex marriages in the state. Previously, only Massachusetts allowed gay marriage, and today’s action will hopefully represent a key turning point in the battle to eliminate institutionalized discrimination based on sexual orientation.

I strongly encourage everyone to learn what the status of same-sex couples in their home state is (this map, courtesy of Wikipedia, comes in handy). Aside from California and Massachusetts, seven states and the District of Columbia recognize some form of civil unions or domestic partnerships, a good step forward but still uncomfortably reminiscent of the “separate but equal” legislation that darkened race relations until the Civil Rights Act. The Defense of Marriage Act mandates that the federal government does not recognize any same-sex marriages, even those in MA or CA, thus denying all federal benefits of marriage from any gay couples.

TAPPED, the award-winning blog of one of my favorite magazines, The American Prospect, just wrote about an online effort, led by Brandeis’ own Mike Kerns and Jamie Ansorge, to have a national gas/carbon tax. Here’s what they had to say:

Having college kids argue on the Internet in favor of a $1/1 gallon of gas tax is probably not the best way to convince folks that higher prices at the pump won’t unduly hurt the rural poor. But that’s what a new Facebook group is all about:

Amazingly-and counter-intuitively-a tax on gas consumption will not hurt consumers, but rather will be a definitive stroke of government policy that causes America to lead the world into the cost-efficient, environment-friendly, democratizing era of alternative energy. And amazingly still, this is, via probability, as plain as fact!

Simply enough, there will be less of a market for gas, meaning less consumption and less pollution, while there will simultaneously be a new, direct form of funding for alternative energies, which will be demanded more highly relative to gas with the price increase. And, Voila!

And with the communicative power of technology, here it is possible. If 1,000,000 people simply click “join,” we can literally change the world, and, in a deafeningly defining way.

The enthusiastic group was founded by Brandeis student Michael Kerns. He links approvingly to the idea that revenues from a gas tax should be contributed to the Social Security Trust Fund, which would then allow for cuts in payroll taxes. The problem with that, though, is that if the gas tax truly succeeded in decreasing demand for oil, eventually there’d be a shortfall on Social Security contributions.

This as been the latest episode of Brandeis kids do the darndest things.
Facebook Group here, by the way.

Hi everyone, I hope you’re all looking forward to a great summer, and thank you so much for reading Innermost Parts and making us more successful in our first full semester than any of us thought possible.  Over the past few days, I’ve been talking to Sahar about what our summer posting schedule should look like.  I’m perfectly willing to keep posting new content at a regular rate over the summer, but we question whether anyone will be as interested.  So I’m posing the question to you, our readers.  What directions do you think Innermost Parts should move in over the summer, and will you keep reading?  Any ideas or suggestion would be great; I’ve got a few ideas myself that I think could turn out to be intriguing.

Once again, have a great vacation everyone, and I’ll see you all in August!

This is not a joke… really.

Brandeis Students At Odds Over Israel

Yes, that’s right, our tiny little campus scandal has turned into a major scandal! Soon CNN analysts will be discussing how the UJ will rule, and how the result will affect the world.

I find it pretty silly that the Globe is touching this. It’s such a silly problem here at Brandeis, it’s even less of an issue for the rest of the Boston area.

Either way, Innermostparts.org has now been mentioned in a major media publication. Awesome.

Whenever I order cage-free eggs at Usdan, they force me to use styrofoam trays.
Why? Because in order to make sure I pay the extra 20 cents, cafeteria workers have to write ‘cage-free’ on my food, and marker doesn’t take well on ceramic plates.

Isn’t that something? A victory for animal rights is negated by increased environmental damage. Buying local often precludes buying union-made. Buying used makes it much harder to order sweatshop-free. Even buying political television advertising feeds millions into the mega-corporations that control the airwaves.

Life doesn’t have to work this way.

Read the rest…

Please welcome Nelson Rutrick, who is the newest member of the Innermost Parts team. He starts off his tenure here with a special report. ~ Sahar

As a former member of the Student Union Executive Board, as the only EBoard to attend nearly all Senate meetings although it was not mandatory (besides the VP and Executive Senator), and as the only student who attended Senate meetings regularly who didn’t “have” to be there - I, sadly, have a lot of experience with the procedures of the Brandeis University Student Union. Sure, maybe attending all of these meetings makes me a loser in some sense, but it also gives me the ability to speak knowledgeably about what goes on in our Student Union.

I am working on finals right now, but I am a bit bored writing about the morality of political assassination and instead would prefer to clue in the non-insiders of the Student Union as to what really goes on there on this relatively new blog which often deals with the Student Union.

Read the rest…