Month: November 2009

This is big news.
Andy Hogan, Union President, will be a (non-voting) member of the Presidential Search Committee.

It’s been a hard slog to get to this point. And let’s be clear – it’s not enough.

But still, it’s nice to finally have a student representative on the actual committee to choose the next University President.

Edit: Plus, there’ll be one town hall and an online forum and such

We’re at Andy Hogan’s state of the union address right now. He’s just announced some cool news:

Starting this January, there’ll be a new place to get food in upstairs Levin Ballroom, in the Gluck Lounge. Cold Sandwiches, no seating, “higher quality”, and you can use either meals or points. After the Mandel Center is finished, it’ll either move to Mandel or some other cafeteria will be created in Mandel in its stead.

More news coming.

Anger at tuition increases, staff and faculty cuts, and the corporatization of education has led to major actions across the University of California system in the last few months. As the UC Board of Regents meets this week, students at several schools have staged protests and occupations to demand greater access to education (as promised in the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education) and democratic decision-making.

Students at UC Santa Cruz and Berkeley have (attempted?) occupations. At UCLA, students have taken Campbell Hall and renamed it Carter-Huggins Hall in remembrance of Black Panthers murdered there in 1969. Although cops have tasered at least three students and beaten others, the occupation as a whole is still going strong.

More updates as they come in!

– Some students and faculty from Al-Quds University came to Brandeis. This is because we’ve had a partnership with them since 2003. While the article talks about them interacting with Brandeis students, let’s be serious here. They only interacted with small percentage of the Brandeis population. I might be a bit upset because I wanted to meet them, but couldn’t.

– There’s going to be a new committee on Faculty Workload.

– The Provost’s Committee on the Assessment of Student Learning is moving along. The Brandeis push for individual and departmental learning goals is continuing.

– Trisk is big.

– You know the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism? The person who donated that money is going to be the US ambassador to the UN General Assembly. Cool!

– Students can’t choose the next University President. We do have an official student advisory panel on all this, however. They are going to hold a “Town Hall” style of event where students will lay out their vision of what a good presdient will be. This is a good step in the right direction. More on this later.

– The Student Union will soon debut a new money-management system, mandatory for all clubs. Also, a new website by thanksgiving.

– The Constitutional Review Committee met, didn’t really decide anything. A lot of stuff will be decided in the next meeting this Saturday.

– The Justice has an editorial called “Refocus Louis Louis Week”. I agree with them up to a point, but my main complaint about LL week is that it seems to involve throwing around our money for not much reason. Free food is a great way to use our money. Free trinkets? Not so much. That said, they’ve been a lot better this year; I can’t point to any example of flagrant waste this year. Good job! Also, this is probably just me being curmudgeonly, but I would like to see some sort of talk of Louis Brandeis. We’re celebrating his brithday, but not talking/learning about him at all. Why?

As you might know, I’m on the Consttitutional Review Committee. I get to be one of 17 people who will attempt to rewrite the Union Constitution this year.

As your representative, it behooves me to let you know what sort of changes I’m thinking about proposing. I welcome your feedback.

Snatches of thought:

• The Senate has historically, well, sucked. How can we fix this?
• The Problem: Senate is set up as a legislative body, but it can pass no real “laws”.
• Lets take an analogy from like real life: a person in NYC has so many people that they elect: county eeec, local council member, borough rep, major, assemblyperson, state senate, governor, comptroller, state AG, House rep, 2 senators, + president + more local politicians that I forget. In theory, having all those positions be elected increases accountability. In reality, normal people can’t keep track of all those people they vote on, so those politicians are not accountable to anyone, since they don’t have bosses, only voters. A solution is to decrease the number of directly electable positions, but instead allow the recall. That way the people voters vote on are more likely to actually be scrutinized.
• We could decrease the number of senators, so that each election is more important, the “quality” of senator goes up, etc.
• People have a low opinion of the Union because their interaction with it is usually the senate. So many people have come up to me and said something along the lines of “At first I thought you were just exaggerating or crazy when you talked about how bad the Senate was, but I went to a meeting yesterday and now I understand completely.”
• Does the Senate have a function, really? All it really needs to do is charter/recognize clubs.
• Let’s be honest; all the power in the Union is found in the E-Board and F-Board.
• Let’s ignore F-Board for the purposes of this conversation: it seems to work more-or-less fine.
• If all the power is really in the E-Board, and most of the E-board is unelected, we seem to have a problem here.
• There are alternate models to democracy than just representational voting.
• Brandeis has less citizens than Athens did. Brandeis isn’t that big.What’s wrong with direct democracy?
• Voting costs nothing, and with the internet, is so easy.
• The Union doesn’t legislate. What power does it have? It’s power lies in interaction with adults, appointments to committees, and in controlling the flow of our money.
• If you want to reform the Union, reform the process of appointments.
• Logically, the answer to all this is to allow the Senate to confirm all appointments, or to even make the appointments themselves.
• But! The Senate sucks!

Conclusions:

• I want more direct democracy at Brandeis! I just don’t know how to fit that ideal into reality. I need ideas, here!
• Non-monetary power in the Union is concentrated in a mostly-unelected e-board and in the people they appoint to University Committees.
• Committees are where policy is made: let’s focus on that.
• IRV voting is a more democratic form of voting, and is easy to implement and understand. We have to switch to that. Tufts, MIT, Harvard, and a bunch of other schools have already switched to that system.

What do you think should be changed about the Union Constitution?

So I was looking at the online poll on the Justice last week.

The whole story is that at the Rose re-opening this semester, a bunch of students wore “save the rose” buttons, and Shula Reinharz (wife of Pres. Reinharz and a Sociology Professor in her own right) was all “dude the Rose is saved. Get rid of those buttons already.” The Poll basically asked “was this thing that Shula did ok?”

Now, lets put aside the fact the allowed poll responses were awful. Actually, let’s not. For the “No, that was not OK” response, they put “No; the right to free speech should not be challenged.”

Um, if the right to free speech should not be challenged, why challenge Shula’s right to ask people to not wear buttons? A possible real “No” response might read “No; Shula acted inappropriately and rudely”, or “No; in fact, the Rose is not yet saved.”

The point is this: I don’t think whoever made that poll understands why those students were wearing those buttons in the first place. You see, the Rose still isn’t saved. The Rose is under attack, and quite possibly not actually a museum any more.

Fact: “The Rose, if it continues to function as a museum, would almost certainly be excommunicated from the community of other art museums for breaching a code against selling works (unless it is for the purpose of buying other art). It could be unable to secure loans of work from other museums. This would have a huge impact on its ability to mount exhibitions, and on its ability to attract a replacement director, if it seeks to do so.”
Fact: The Rose currently has no curator, educational director, or permanent director.
Fact: The University is in a big legal battle with the Rose trustees, and is claiming that they are of course entitled to sell whatever the hell they want

Claim: Without visiting art works or a director, the Rose would be a gallery, not a museum.

The Rose is still not saved, and the University is still trying to crush it legally.

And that, my friends, is why the Rose needs saving.

Today, I and a number of other students (the exact number I do not know – I estimate conservatively around twenty) stood briefly during Dore Gold’s speech during the debate (regardless of what the organizers say, this was a debate). Surely many believe that this was inappropriate and rude – and for the most part I agree, but I also think that we had an important message.

Justice Richard Goldstone is one of the most credible sources on the matter of War Crimes. He’s investigated crimes in South Africa, Rwanda, the Balkans and other hot-spots of violence. If anyone knows what a war crime is, it’s Justice Goldstone. To further add to his credibility as a neutral investigator, he is a long-time Zionist. Yet this man was pitted against a “pro-Israel” speaker – putting him in the uncomfortable position of being “anti-Israel,” which he most certainly is not. Just two weeks ago Dan Meridor was allowed to speak uncontested by a speaker from a different narrative – Goldstone should have been afforded the same respect. I am certainly not opposed to discussion and debate, but this event lopsided the discussion. No Palestinians were invited to speak and thus the Palestinian narrative was excluded from this event.

This is what we were protesting. Taped to our shirts we had the names of both Israeli and Palestinian civilian victims of the Gaza War. We stood silently – for just a few moments to let the audience know our discontent.

Though I myself was not harmed or attacked in anyway – many of my fellow protesters were physically violated for their peaceful protest. One protester commented that after she sat back down, the person in front of her repeatedly pushed their chair back against her. Another said that she was repeatedly slapped lightly by her neighbors. Yet another said that while standing she was shoved and her hair was pulled. This is most certainly a disturbing use of force, and in my mind takes away any sort of moral high-ground the right-wing might have gained from us being ‘rude.’

All of this makes me think. We live in a world where culture dictates that when we feel ‘wronged’ it is acceptable to use violence to make things right.

I have a lot of sympathy for the people of Sderot who lived in terror due to the rockets fired by Hamas from Gaza. When Israel invaded Gaza this winter – it did so to put a stop to the rocket fire. It did so under the assumption that it is acceptable to use force to right a wrong. Whether or not the invasion of Gaza did temporarily stop the rocket fire, but it did nothing to bring about a long term peace.

Hamas and other terrorist organizations fall into the same problem. They feel wronged by Israel and then think it is acceptable to use violence to make things right. Sixty years of on-and-off war has proven that this method does nothing – it hardens your enemies hatred of you and leaves behind a trail of dead civilians.

The people of Israel are scared and angry. The people of Palestine are scared and desperate. Both sides must come to realize that a failure to recognize how they have wronged the other and the use of violence will only prolong the conflict. Regardless of whether or not Israel acted ethically in Operation Cast Lead, the invasion angered Palestinians and destroyed their already weak economy, infrastructure, and usable farmland. The people of Gaza have nothing, there is very little work, very little food, very little to do. It does not surprise me that many of them turn to terrorism.

As a proud Zionist, I am determined to see the State of Israel survive this conflict. The use of force is simply a short-term strategy for creating an uneasy peace. To end the conflict, Israel must work to improve economic and living conditions in the West Bank and the Gaza. The first step is to lift the crippling economic blockade of Gaza. They must withdraw all settlements from the West Bank and East Jerusalem so that Palestinians can also have the right to self-determination. Though many may claim that these actions are counter-productive to Israel’s short-term security (they are not), in the long-run they are absolutely critical to creating a lasting peace.

Both the Israeli Government and the Palestinian people must cease using force as a means to achieve change. It cannot and will not work.

This is why I stood up today – to protest the use of violence. In using force against us, the right-wingers who opposed us achieved nothing. Yes, we were antagonistic, but we stood up for what we believed in and then peacefully sat back down.

When are we all going to start talking about the really high cost of going to Brandeis? I know a bunch of people who are being forced to drop out because Brandeis simply keeps raising tuition and costing too much.

This is not cool.

I don’t know why, but it seems like no one on campus is talking about the increasingly high cost of living here. Maybe people are uncomfortable discussing these sorts of things, or feel ashamed talking about how many loans they took out to get here? Honestly, I have no idea.

Enlighten me: how are you dealing with paying for college? Are you noticing a bunch of your friends leaving Brandeis early, or is it just me?

Taisha Sturdivant, next time I see you in person I want to give you a big hug and take you out to dinner. I am so proud to be in the same college as you, and I want to wish you a happy birthday. I really look forward to meeting you in the future.

The story:

Taisha Sturdivant grew up around Four Corners, in Dorchester, on a dead end called Harvard Park that looked nothing like a park and was home to no one who went to Harvard. The gangsters sold their drugs and fired their guns and Taisha winced at the pop-pop-pop and kept her head down.

Her brother started running with a gang, and then one day he wasn’t running anymore: He was standing, in a courtroom, in front of a judge, because he sold drugs.

“First time I was in a courtroom, I was 12. It was to show support for my brother,’’ she said. “He’s still incarcerated.’’

Taisha Sturdivant grew up around Four Corners, in Dorchester, on a dead end called Harvard Park that looked nothing like a park and was home to no one who went to Harvard. The gangsters sold their drugs and fired their guns and Taisha winced at the pop-pop-pop and kept her head down.

Her brother started running with a gang, and then one day he wasn’t running anymore: He was standing, in a courtroom, in front of a judge, because he sold drugs.

…

By the time Taisha Sturdivant enrolled at Brandeis, many of the kids she grew up with were dead, in prison, or, like her sister, single parents living in the projects.

“No one I grew up with went to college,’’ she said. “No one.’’
…

She is 20 years old, going on 40. She’s a junior at Brandeis and she’s been on the dean’s list every semester. She writes poetry and knows a lot about the world. She spent last summer on the Mexican border, working with immigrants. She’s going to Ghana in January, for six months, to put into practice some of her ideas on education.

She’s going to finish up at Brandeis next year, go to law school, and then Taisha Sturdivant is going to change the world.

Believe it.

The Constitutional Review Committee is a strange beast. “We”, the student body, are reviewing/revising/rewriting the Union constitution, but no one is elected, anot too many people are appointed by the Student Union, either. (Full disclosure – I was appointed by the Union to this committee).

Instead, members of the Constitutional Review Committee are selected by constituent clubs and organizations themselves, such as “secured non-media” or “club sports”. The result is interesting: most of these people don’t seem like they’d normally have much to do with the union at all, yet here they are rewriting the constitution.

That reminds me: The members of the Constitutional Review Committee so far are:

ICC – Kenta
Club sports – Benjy cooper
religious organizations – Matthew Feinberg
Secured media – Andrea Fineman
Secured non-media – Jessie Steinberg
Senate – Ryan fanning
performance and artistic- andrew litwin
eboard – Jenna Brofsky
f-board Julia Cohen
non-sports competition – Nipun
division of student affairs – Steph Grimes
CA- Tamar Brown
at large – Sahra Massachi and Alex Schneider

Aaron Swartz, a sharp mind (and technically my ex-boss), doesn’t really like the institution of college. A very successful soon-to-be 23 year old activist, hacker, and thinker, Aaron co-invented RSS at age 14, and now he’s the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and on the Board of Change Congress. He’s also created a bunch of other cool stuff that I won’t get into now.

So this is a very impressive guy who knows his shit, if you pardon my french.

He’s recently written about a phenomenon called “Disciplinary Bubbles”. Brandeis Professors, do you have any insight to this phenomenon?

His point:

The academy is often thought of as the ideal for developing knowledge: select the brightest minds in the country, guarantee them jobs, allow them all the resources they need to research anything, don’t interfere with any of their conclusions. On some issues, these independent-minded academics form a consensus and we tend to give their consensus very heavy weight. They can’t all be wrong, can they?

And yet, in my empirical research, I find they very often are. A short blog post is no place to do a careful study, but I can mention some examples. The classic works in industrial relations turn out to be complete hoaxes, yet they’ve dominated the teach of the field for over half a century. (See Alex Carey’s book for details.) In political science, the most respected practioner’s most famous work shades and distorts his own findings to support a theory wildly at odds with the facts. (See Who Really Rules?) The whole field of fMRI studies are so flat-out ridiculous that journal articles are even making jokes about them. And, maybe most blatantly today, economics was dominated by a paradigm that believed substantive unemployment was impossible, despite that notion having been famously and thoroughly debunked by Keynes and, of course, reality.

To become a professor of X, one must first spend several years receiving an undergraduate major in X, then several more years going to graduate school in X, then perhaps work as a postdoc or adjunct for a bit, before getting a tenure-track position and working like mad to make enough of a dent in the field of X to be seen as deserving of a prominent permanent position. When your time is called, a panel of existing professors of X passes judgment on your work to decide if it passes muster. Can you imagine a better procedure for forcing impressionable young minds to believe crazy things?

This makes perfect sense to me, but I didn’t spend most of my life in the academy. I’m really interested in hearing what our professors have to say. Students – maybe you should ask them about it during/after/before class tomorrow.

From The Hoot:

– Shula Reinharz (wife of President Jehuda Reinharz) thinks the Rose is saved. Then why is Brandeis University engaged in a costly legal battle to crush it and sell the spoils?

President Reinharz’s wife, Professor Shulamit Reinharz (SOC), approached the students and said, “If you want to keep doing something damaging to the university and the museum, then keep doing what you’re doing.” “They are misguided,” she later said. “They should be saying ‘I support The Rose.’ The Rose has already been saved.”

– That Harper’s article was sort of dumb, and Ariel Wittenberg has numbers to prove it.
– The Constitutional Review Committee is still forming.
– There’s a new committee on endowment transparency (CEER): “Sara Robinson ’12, Josh Hoffman-Senn ’12, Evan Green-Lowe ’10, Beau Bonness ’11, Amy Mandel ’10, Nipun Marwaha ’12, Matt Gabrenya ’13, and Coleman Mahler ’13”. Hopefully CEER will be more effective this year than last.

We often contrast “private” schools (like Brandeis) with “public” schools (like the SUNY System in NY). Let’s not forget the third category: for-profit colleges.

They’re often run in a predatory fashion and are in cahoots with the private loan industry. We’re lucky not to go to one.

Cross-posted from my blog.

This past Friday evening I participated in an event called Critical Mass, with the purpose to celebrate cycling and assert cyclists’ right to the road.  In Boston, bicyclists hold a ride on a last Friday of every month, starting at Copley Square in the Back Bay.  There are no organizers.  I heard about the event from some fellow Brandeisians through Facebook.  I’d never done any real urban riding before, so naturally I felt anxious as I sat with my Schwinn on the Commuter Rail, waiting to arrive in Boston.  Since I work at WalkBoston Fridays, I rode the bike over to Old City Hall and locked it up outside the office.  Making it from North Station without incident felt like quite an accomplishment!

After work when it came time to ride over to Copley, I realized how disoriented I felt bicycling rather than walking around the city.  Suddenly I had to deal with a bunch of one-way streets and I lacked the time to think about my direction at each intersection.  When I arrived at Copley Square there were already a number of cyclists, many with single-gear or fixie bikes, others with modified road cycles, and a whole bunch of people in costume for Halloween.  I felt silly with my mountain bike.  I ran into a fellow I met at the HONK!Fest and we chatted for a bit.  Again, no one was in charge, so we just had to wait until someone started riding and then follow.

With over 100 cyclists, we took over the streets of downtown Boston.  It was simply amazing and brought a huge grin to my face.  Instead of being pushed to the margins, we owned the road.  Collective action gave us the right to ride in freedom.  Instead of thinking about the car behind me or the intersection ahead, I could actually take in the sights and lights of the city.  And the pavement–so smooth!  The automobiles have it so good.  We blew through the red lights, with people physically blocking the cars along the way.  It was brilliant, and sooo satisfying to stick it to the faceless, polluting cars.  Still, the whole thing was rather self-indulgent.  We made it nearly impossible for pedestrians to cross the streets, and that brought on a little guilt.  While it’s not right to act as the automobile drivers do and selfishly take up the entire street, I don’t think it really hurts anyone to do it for an hour or two once a month.  I’ll be sure to participate again.

Reminder: Meeting tonight, 8pm SCC.

An invitation: Do you want to join the new improved Innermost Parts?

The Board of Trustees has set the wheels in motion for the most momentous decision in our tenure at Brandeis: choosing the next President. Meanwhile, the faculty are architecting the new face of Brandeis academics, and the Student Union is rewriting our constitution.

We need a platform to advocate our vision of the future – and hash out how to get there.

Introducing – the 2009 relaunch of Innermost Parts.

We need a strong voice advocating for students on campus, and we need one that’s read by faculty, students, and staff alike.

I want to work with you to make Brandeis better.

Innermost Parts is the student progressive blog on campus. We’re read by the administration and treated as an authentic student voice. We write about change we want to see on campus, and sometimes – especially if we work hard for it – it happens. We’re starting over – do you want in as well?

We’re going for a fresh start: using time-honored community organizing techniques with cutting edge blogging tactics.

It’s time to speak truth to power. It’s time to let the Board of Trustees know that we students will demand a voice in the process of choosing the next President of Brandeis – and the fate of the University as well. It’s time to start holding the Union accountable, the media accountable, the administration accountable.

We’re meeting this Monday at 8pm at the Shapiro Campus Center (atrium).
Can you make it?