Month: September 2008

The Brennan Center for Justice (great org run out of NYU) just came out with a “guide to explain the rights of student voters”. Their website is here. Their press release:

ith thousands of young and new voters expected to participate in the 2008 election, today the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law launched an online legal guide to student voting. Students across the country will face unique challenges when they register to vote and cast ballots this November, and the interactive
Legal Guide to Student Voting provides an easy-to-use state-by-state analysis of voting laws tailored specifically to college students.

The Brennan Center Guide also dispels common myths about the registration process that can impede student voters—particularly students attending college away from home—as recently described in the New York Times.

With a thorough synthesis of the voting regulations in 50 states and the District of Columbia, the Guide features a clickable map of the United States with concise guidelines about the often complicated registration, residency, voter ID, and absentee laws that vary in each state. By scrolling over a given state, the Guide allows students to
quickly determine how to cast a ballot whether they are voting in their home state or out of state.

There are so many resources for youth voting this year, it’s ridiculously easy to vote / register to vote. And kudos to Brennan. This goes beyond “how to register to vote” and instead attacks people’s legal questions and the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) surrounding Student Voting head-on.

This post is about the power of electoral activism. As the readers of this blog are well aware, Innermostparts.org campaigned pretty heavily against Andrew Brooks last spring in his campaign for Senator at Large (as well as Vice President). We charged he was right-wing, opposed to social justice, we even called him a ‘dinosaur’ and a few other mean and nasty things. Ultimately, whether due to us or to Brooks’ lack of popularity amongst the student body, we won. Noam Shuster, the write-in candidate, succeeded in receiving more votes than both Brooks and Sulsky. It was a clear mandate by the Student Body that we wanted a Student Union that advocated for Social Justice, both here at Brandeis and around the world.

A few moments ago I received an invitation to the Facebook group ANDREW BROOKS FOR VICE PRESIDENT, where Brooks outlines his platform and his experience in his current campaign to fill the seat vacated by progressive activist and former DFA member Mike Kearns. He writes, ” Andrew Brooks has spent most of his time at Brandeis working to change our campus for the better. As an activist leader on campus, Andrew has worked to stimulate interest in a variety of activist issues in order to change the world around us.” Of the six bullet points he includes, three of them relate to his social justice work:

*Sponsoring and passing legislation to expand the Union’s nondiscrimination law to include preventing discrimination on the basis of “color, gender identity and expression, national or ethnic origin, and disability”

*Pushing for gender-neutral housing on the Residence Life Advisory Committee

*Signing onto and successfully supporting legislation to make the Student Union more environmentally friendly

His first of three platform points is entitled “ACTIVISM” and it reads: “Andrew wishes to bring an activist spirit back into how the Union does its business. He will work to make sure the Union is involved in issues that not only effect our campus, but the world around us. Andrew supporters the “Brandeis Votes” initiative and has helped collect donations to provide assistance to hurricane victims in the Gulf Coast.”

Continue reading “Andrew Brooks the Activist!”

Message for you:

Drinking liberally tonight.
Chums, 11pm.
We’ll have a chums challenge competition, if enough people come.

Before drinking liberally, you might want to …
a: go to chums open mic night at 9pm
b: do the SEA bonfire (show up at shapiro atrium at eihter 8pm or 9pm)

See you TONIGHT

Did you know we had a Kiva.org group set up for Brandeis University? You can join here.

Kiva.org is an easy online way to give out international, no-interest microloans. Here’s an excerpt from their about page:

We Let You Loan to the Working Poor

Kiva’s mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.

Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world.

The people you see on Kiva’s site are real individuals in need of funding – not marketing material. When you browse entrepreneurs’ profiles on the site, choose someone to lend to, and then make a loan, you are helping a real person make great strides towards economic independence and improve life for themselves, their family, and their community. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates and track repayments. Then, when you get your loan money back, you can relend to someone else in need.

Good news, everyone:

Hello Everyone!

Whereas many people within the activist community at Brandeis have expressed frustration and discomfort with the lack of collaboration, organization and cooperation between activist groups on campus

Whereas activism can only grow to be more effective and inclusive in an environment that fosters the sharing of skills and resources

Whereas many activist efforts could use a place to store, share and meet in a constructive manner

I have proposed to Jason Gray (Student Union President) the establishment of a physical space tentatively called the Activist Resource Center to serve and support the activist community.

If you are interested in discussing this possibility, if you want to have a say in what a place such as the one proposed would look like or do, OR if you think this is an unecessary effort and would like to discuss why, you are invited to a meeting with Jason and I and anyone else who shows up to begin this process. I have been in countless conversations over the last few years about how to better support the activist community, and I think this is a very possible solution towards building better connections between our groups. I am not aware of other efforts to create a similar space, so I apologize if I am stepping on anyone’s toes. Please reply to this email and let me know which meeting time (Wednesday September 17th at 7pm or Thursday September 18th at 7pm) is better for you. Whichever date gets the most replies will be the time of the meeting and I will send out another email.

PLEASE forward this to anyone you think should be involved because I did not send this to every club! Thank you so much.

Peace.

Etta King

Etta can be reached this way.

Did anyone catch Ariel Wittenberg‘s article in the Hoot (the August 2008 issue). It’s called “God Bless You”: A personal story and it’s about what she did over the summer. Damn it’s good. Read it. It’ll make your day. It sure made mine.

Here’s a brief excerpt:

His mom had shown me his picture. In it he was all dressed up in his army fatigues with his helmet and riffle. Derek wanted to be a police officer when he got back from the war.

His face was young. He was my age, but being 19 and working behind a desk for the summer made 19 too young to dress like a GI-Joe and to be shipped off to a foreign desert to risk your life for your country.

I’m a patriot. And for me, that means speaking up against a war you disagree with.

But for this kid, who was a patriot too, it meant paying back a country that lets you speak out whenever you want with his body, maybe his life.

You can tell that Ariel wrote this from the heart, and not as a quick hack job to beat a deadline. This work was honest. A Brandeis Virtue.

Got an email from Jason Gray today; I’m sure you did too. Looks like the Student Union EBoard is trying to do its bit to help out the victims of Gustav.

What their effort boils down to is this: Tabling for donations, backing a student volunteer group, and persuading International Club to donate some funds from Pachanga.

Well, that’s good I guess. Way to use the bully pulpit for some good. I remember in High School, after the Southeast Asian Monsoons, a kid named Adam Sax raised 10,000 from students for charity. So this donation drive definitely has promise. I don’t know why, it just feels…underwhelming.

Maybe the students who join the National Collegiate Volunteers could do some video interviews with some residents and bring back their stories? How about we get the University to invest some of its endowment in no/low-interest micro-loan programs for hurricane survivors. Or maybe we as a student body could raise a ruckus about the failed conservative policies that got us into this mess…again?

I dunno. This isn’t meant to be a criticism of the Student Union. They’re just people on a busy schedule doing what they think is right. I just think there is a capacity at Brandeis for so much more. Those are just some quick ideas I had. This is a good first step, but imagine the possibilities of all else we could do.

You can read the email under the flip:
Continue reading “Student Union vs Hurricane Gustav”

Maybe it’s because localities put so many barriers in front of students registering to vote?

Late last month, as a voter-registration drive by supporters of Senator Barack Obama was signing up thousands of students at Virginia Tech, the local registrar of elections issued two releases incorrectly suggesting a range of dire possibilities for students who registered to vote at their college.

The releases warned that such students could no longer be claimed as dependents on their parents’ tax returns, a statement the Internal Revenue Service says is incorrect, and could lose scholarships or coverage under their parents’ car and health insurance.

[snip]

Last fall, in Statesboro, Ga., in a hotly contested city council race, there were challenges to the registration of about 1,000 Georgia Southern University students who had used dormitory addresses. “We threatened suit, but the issue went away when they figured out that the challenges weren’t going to affect the results of the election,” Mr. Greenbaum said.

In 2003, in Waller County, Tex., the district attorney wrote a column in a local newspaper threatening to prosecute students at Prairie View A&M, a historically black university, for illegal voting. The project sued, and the district attorney backed down

This happens all across the country. In many places, students have to change their voter reg information every time they switch dorms. Oftentimes, towns don’t want students from other states to mess with their local elections, so they pull shit like this to make it hard for students to vote. On one hand, you don’t want large Universities overpowering the small towns they’re adjacent to. On the other hand, you don’t want to disenfranchise anyone. It’s a problem.

Applications to join the Steering Committee of the Brandeis Pluralism Alliance (which basically means giving out grants and so forth for deserving clubs, etc) are due at midnight tonight.

Here’s what I wrote for my application:

Q: How would you describe the issues and challenges related to pluralism and unity at Brandeis?

A: Brandeis, as I’ve said before, has a very fractured social scene. The glut of clubs serves to divide, rather than unite, many students on campus.

For instance, the members of Students for Environmental Action and the members of the Brandeis Democrats may have much in common and benefit from working together, but the clubs meet at around the same time and one can’t be in *all* the activist clubs on campus.

Similarly, the “identity clubs” (mixed-heritage, ahora, etc) have little contact with clubs which are not under the ICC umbrella. This is a problem which should change.

Beyond these structural problems, there are simmering tensions below the surface of calm. Voluntary segregation is still an issue. Anything to do with the Middle East is sure to raise hackles. Affirmative action is like religion and politics – not spoken about in polite company. There are only 7 Black professors on campus, and goodness knows how many Latin@s, etc.

Pluralism, Diversity, Tolerance. These things are stressed during Orientation (and the Mosaic pre-orientation program) and hardly ever spoken of again. As Ben Brandzel put it, this University was created to tear down the walls between members of humankind. We were explicitly created to challenge unjust admittance quotas in other colleges. I don’t believe that we’re institutionally living up to that legacy.

So that’s what I think? What about you?

As you probably know by now if you read your email and received your free water bottle, Jehuda has decided to ask Aramark to “discontinue the use of bottled water at catered events on campus”. In addition there is going to be a committee to investigate the advantages and disadvantages of having bottled water on campus. I think Jehuda’s decision is a good one, and it represents the strength of SEA, who has been lobbying the administration for a ban of bottled water on campus since at least last semester. Although SEA hasn’t yet achieved its full goal, I think this is a good start and probably the best they could hope for as a first step from the administration.

Hopefully the committee will do a good job, unlike the committee to investigate whether or not BranPo officers should have guns. That committee made a terrible recommendation to the administration and they unfortunately, but predictably, took it. Personally, I am very suspicious of the quality of the research that committee did, although I have hope for this committee because the question they are confronting doesn’t seem as complicated. At least to me.
Continue reading “The Legacy of Our Generation”

Over the last year or so, I’ve been getting this amazing email newsletter from the International Center for Ethics, Justice & Public Life (notice how everything at Brandeis is some sort of center or another? Seriously. Even Volen is the “Volen National Center for Complex Systems”).

Anyways, it kicks ass. As does the Ethics Center website.

Point is, the listserv rocks. But it’s a bitch to be added to. Here’s how you do it:

Send your name, email, and mailing address to

Sample email from the listerv under the fold…
Continue reading “A Cool Brandeis Publication”

Announcing the newest, hottest, rawest, most swashbuckling club on campus.

That’s right. Drinking Liberally.

Long Story short?
Every Thursday. 11pm. Chums. Chill with other liberals.
Also, sign up here to get announcements for parties, movie screenings, and other events we might put on.
Continue reading “Drinking Liberally”

[Sahar here. Please welcome Jessica, our even-newest contributor].

I had quite the experience this summer, thanks to funding from the Peace Awards here at Brandeis.

In short, I went to India for two months and taught English and World Religions to underprivileged Buddhist nuns in the Himalayas.  I went through the Jamyang Foundation, which has many projects in remote Himalayan regions dedicated to providing education for ordained Buddhist women.  This education spans a wide variety of subjects, from Buddhist philosophy to hygiene to English and more.

Before I continue, let me just say that there is no way in hell I will ever be able to completely convey this entire experience to you.  Writing this gives me the same feeling I had when taking pictures of the Himalayas: knowing the picture you take will never be able to capture the tremendous beauty and majesty of those mountains, or the feeling you get when you’re surrounded by them.  So, if I ever sound frustrated in my writing of this, or if this ends up being ridiculously long in an attempt to fit everything in, please understand my dilemma.
Continue reading “Some summer revelations, and an opportunity to help!”

I just happened upon this using my handy dandy google news-about-brandeis generator:

the Brandeis International Business School is rolling out a new MBA program centered around social and environmental responsibility in business.

The program is built on principles espoused by Justice Louis Brandeis a century ago. Brandeis advocated that businesses address broader social purposes beyond profits. The new MBA in Socially Responsible Business allows students to incorporate into their business study issues such as economic and social development, corporate governance, and environmental policy. They will do this in a uniquely global setting, with fellow students from over 60 countries and a curriculum rooted in international economics, finance, and business. Continue reading “Cool green program at IBS”

A personal message from Ingrid Schorr, Program Administrator of the Office of the Arts

The Office of the Arts and Student Activities is hosting an all-arts barbecue on the afternoon of September 11. We would like to acknowledge that this is also the anniversary of the 2001 attacks on the United States. Those events affected our community in many different ways; some students were 11 years old at the time; some did not live in the United States. Others lost family members in the attacks, were displaced from their homes, jobs, or schools, or experienced trauma in other ways.

As artists, how might we mark the day at this gathering? I don’t mean to say that the barbecue itself will be a memorial. I would like to find an appropriate and meaningful way to acknowledge the date. We might have a period of silence; a prayer book or other place to write a response; a collaborative gesture such as a song or building a cairn. What do you all think? I welcome your suggestions and leadership.

Student Union University Committee applications are due tomorrow at noon.
(Read our previous coverage about them here)

Being on a committee means you have a real position to act and change campus for the better. Better fill out your application quick.

Brandeis Pluralism Alliance Steering Committee applications are due Sunday at Midnight. Don’t forget those either.

Technical Support Help Desk Analyst at GE Healthcare.  Sounds thrilling and rewarding, doesn’t it?  Forced into working for “the man” out of financial necessity, that was my title this summer at my job back in Western Mass.  I admit that I needed a break from politics and working for my values after many months of hard-fought campaigns at Brandeis, but something was missing.  It was hard to live without living my values daily, so I took the opportunity this summer to look inward to reform my own habits and lifestyle choices.  Looking back at all of my accomplishments, I feel pretty confident that I made my lifestyle significantly greener.  Interested in how I did it?  Follow the jump.

Continue reading “How I Greened My Lifestyle–and How You Can Too!”

You! Yeah you!

Do you like money?

Do you like giving it away? What if it’s someone else’s money? What if you could give it to kickass people and clubs that you like?

Sounds good, eh? Why don’t you apply to join the Brandeis Pluralism Alliance Steering Committee?

Confused? Here’s what’s going down:

The Brandeis Pluralism Alliance (BPA) invites applications for new members to join the Steering Committee, which is responsible for advising all of the initiative’s community-building activities and for
selecting student and faculty grant recipients for projects addressing issues of identity, pluralism and unity at Brandeis. Applications are due Sunday, September 7, 2008 at midnight, and are available online at www.brandeis.edu/das/programs/bpa.

I’m listening to a DFA NIght School Session right now and they’re talking to a Yale Law professor about Voter Turnout.

Here’s some info:

Follow-up calls to those that have expressed interest work beautifully.
Here’s a refrain we’re hearing a lot this year – the more personal, the more local, the better.

Social Networks, in other words, are key.
“Many local, low-budget campaigns operate as if they were headquartered in a far-away city and parachuted into this local race. Use your friends, your community members, your social networks” they are great social networks!

So the 50 cent version of this two-hour session: “Stay local! Use personal connections! Distant methods like robocalls and lit drops are bleh.”
Continue reading “Voter Turnout – What works and what doesn’t”

It’s weird, isn’t it? The more local an election, the lower the turnout rate. Yet the more local the office, the greater an impact it will have on the lives of electors. The Executive of Monroe County had much more power to advance or retard my fame, my fortunes, and my family than Governor Paterson ever will.

Same goes for Brandeis. Sometimes, the elections and appointments with the lowest buzz are the most important. This is one of those times.

The Student Union is accepting applications for University Committees. This is actually pretty important. Being on a committee may not be as sexy as being Vice President, or Senator at Large, but if passionate people control those commitees, we can push good policy through to the University. I plan on applying, and I hope all readers of Innermost Parts do too.

Confused?
Continue reading “You can haz the power”

Please extend a warm welcome to Carrie, our newest contributor here on Innermost Parts. – Sahar

As a first year here at Brandeis, I was overwhelmed by the turn-out this past Thursday night in the Shapiro Atrium as Barack Obama gave his acceptance speech for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. While I am fully aware that this is a fairly liberal campus of individuals, there was something very reassuring about such a large group. While I suppose that it is entirely possible some were simply passing through for a trip to Einstein’s, there is no doubt that so many went out of their way to be there.

And as I sat there, in awe of our future president’s words, I thought: What if everyone in this room made an effort to help elect this man? What if, apart from their own vote, they helped to get out the vote of others, both on and beyond this campus?

Sure, we all have things that need to get done – things that perhaps rank above helping to elect the future leader of this nation – but what else is stopping you? Are you afraid of being labled a “crazy liberal?” Are you afraid of reaching outside of your comfort zone? Are you afraid of putting yourself out there? Well, my friend, some fears rank secondary to the fear of four more years of a failed war, four more years of the same failed policies.

So I urge you to break free! If you cared enough to take in Obama’s words that night, care enough to pass the message. Care enough to help change the country because if you won’t, who will?

The very first DFA meeting of the year is occurring this Tuesday at 9 pm, in Pearlman 201 202. For those of you who don’t know, DFA is the sweetest activist group on campus among many sweet activist groups (and yes, I may be slightly biased).

Our very own Sahar made a short, kickass intro video highlighting our work last year and showing new people what’s up.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OogT5m31po0[/youtube]

The saga is over. Congratulations to the now official Senator at Large! Now all she needs to do is learn the fast-talking Senator lingo.

I don’t quite get it either.