Author: Sahar

In a stunning show of support, students overwhelmingly voted for for former- (and now, future-) Union Secretary, Diana Aronin. Diana was impeached by the Senate (and the Judiciary unanimously voted to approve) for some bullshit. The Union Senate (as well as perhaps the Union Judiciary) have just been handed a giant slap in the face by a vote organized by a facebook group called “Vote Diana Aronin and say Screw the Student Union.” She received over 75% of the vote.

Honestly, a week ago I didn’t even consider the possibility of a write-in campaign for Diana – but what brilliance it was! For better or worse, the most visible face of the Student Union is the Senate. Now the Senate is basically a body charged with chartering clubs – but they manage to spend 2-5 hours every week arguing about it. And the excesses of the Senate poison the stature of the rest of the Union – you know, the part that actually gets shit done.

Lev really said it better than I ever could. There is no way you could interpret today’s vote as anything other than a giant “Fuck You” to the Senate, the Union Judiciary, and possibly the rest of the Union Government.

Imagine all those people who played a part in kicking Diana out of office. How will they deal with her in the future? Will they avoid eye contact, and mutter something apologetic as they scurry past? Perhaps they will have no shame. Perhaps they will not change their pattern of behavior, even though the student body, in no uncertain terms, told the Senate and Judiciary that this whole impeachment fuckpile was bullshit?

And now, the results:
Continue reading “WRITE DIANA ARONIN AND SAY SCREW THE STUDENT UNION”

I was reading back issues of The Justice and I came across this story. It’s really touching – I advise you to read it.

I was reading back issues of The Justice and I came across this story. It’s really touching – I advise you to read it.

Last year, when MJ Rosenberg ’72 attended a conference for the pro-peace, pro-Israel lobby group J Street in Washington, he expected to mingle among upper-middle-class politicians and peacemakers from the United States and diplomatic officials from the Middle East. Instead, Rosenberg spent time with someone who was neither an American nor a diplomatic official. Rosenberg forged a relationship with Yousef Bashir, a 20-year-old Palestinian who had been shot by an Israeli soldier at the age of 15 and was the only person at the conference from Gaza.

“[Bashir looked] like a prosperous, athletic Jewish kid; like any Brandeis student,” thought Rosenberg, who is a writer for Media Matters, “a web based, not-for-profit, progressive research and information center,” according to its Web site.

…
Bashir wanted to go to Brandeis to prove to fellow Palestinians that Jews and Arabs can learn together in peace.

“I wanted to be a Palestinian who graduated from a Jewish school to go back and help his own people,” Bashir says.
…

Bashir’s was motivated by an interest in politics and his father’s message of peace to interview for a spot at a Seeds of Peace camp in Maine. Seeds of Peace is an organization that, according to the mission statement on its Web site, “[empowers youth] from regions of conflict with the leadership skills required to advance reconciliation and coexistence.”

In summer 2005, Bashir attended the camp with 12 other teenagers from Gaza.

The camp houses teens from all over the Middle East, specifically from areas of conflict. The camp also houses American students who are interested in learning about international conflict.

That summer Bashir lived in a cabin with Daniel Acheampong ’11. At the beginning of the summer, Acheampong said that he felt a lot of hatred among his peers in his cabin made up of Israelis, Jordanians, Palestinians and Americans. Bashir’s message of peace immediately transformed the feeling of animosity in his and Acheampong’s cabin.

“Speaking to Yousef and [hearing] his ability to forgive really inspired me,” says Acheampong.

Acheampong and Bashir are still close friends today and see each other often.

Inspiring! Read it!

So it looks like we were hacked by some sort of spam robot thing. All should be normal now, but I’m checking to see if any nasty stuff is left, how this happened, etc/

Polls just closed for the Associate Justice position on the Union Judiciary. Here are the results: Continue reading “Ryan Martin is a new Associate Justice”

In case you weren’t aware, we just had ourselves an election.

The results:
Say hello to your new Senators:
Charles River: Abaham “Abby” Berin
East: Melissa Skolnik
2012: Abby Kulawitz
Village: Albert Feldman

Heading into the run-off for Associate Justice:
Ryan D. Martin and Deena Glucksman.

Full results:
Continue reading “Election Results”

I’m back in my Social Movements class. We’re talking about collective action problems – if you’re interested in a collective goal, there will be free riders: people who think “if I bother helping out towards this goal, it won’t make much difference, but I will have to sacrifice. Therefore, I can just not join in working towards this goal, and reap the benefits if it is reaped.”

Does that make sense? Ask your econ friends about the free rider problems: that’s what’s going on.

In the context of social movements, however, there have arisen a class of tools that try to deal with this.

One way: “Why don’t Americans litter as much as others?” A foreign student remarked about how she was surprised that in the US there is a lot less littering. Why? The key insight – littering is observable, and tied to morality. You don’t want to litter because its thought of as a morally wrong thing, and you don’t want others to castigate you as a litterer.

Same thing with, say, the Montgomery Bus Boycott. When you ride on the bus, it’s very visible! Your peers will look down on you!

Unions are good at dealing with this: in any given shop, you don’t need 100% of the workers to be part of the union for the union to have bargaining power. If 10% of the workers not in the union get raises as well as the union workers (and they don’t have to pay dues), that’s another example of the free rider problem. Unions deal with this by offering union-only health care plans, cookouts, etc.

In general, the way to deal with a free rider problem is to give selective incentives to those in the “in-group” (of those actually working for teh broader social good). That way, the focus is not on the overriding social goal, but in the intermediate benefits that accrue to the participants. These benefits might be psychic, social, etc, but they are important.
Anyways, I was thinking about voting. Voting is a big example of the free rider problem: your individual vote is very unlikely to be decisive, yet it takes a lot of hassle (and lost work time) to vote. Yet clearly if a bunch of people didn’t vote for this reason, we’d have problems. And this does happen!

Why not make pacts? Take 10 non-votes. Introduce them all (through the internet?) to each other, and perhaps they will make a pact that either all 10 of them vote, or none of them do. Now, in a sense, they’ve each increased their individual voting power by 10.

It’s also harder to explain to your 9 new acquaintences that you’ve let them down re-voting than to feel vaguely guilty about not voting.

Just a thought.

This semester I’m taking a Social Movements course with the esteemed Professor David Cunningham. I’m trying to take insights from his class and apply them to Brandeis.

He’s talking about the Montgomery Bus Boycott and how the participation of churches meant so much. One reason – churches had an established hierarchy with leaders. Instead of organizing and convincing every churchgoer, organizers had to get the organic leaders in the community (the ministers or whatever) on board, and then the congregations, which already liked and trusted those ministers, were much more likely to follow along.

At Brandeis, we have no such similar network. We’re so transient that we have a dearth of established, respected leaders, that people are comfortable following. Every campaign has to start from scratch.

What do you think? Is this analysis true?

Want to participate in the 2nd annual world Pillow Fight day? It’s going down in Boston, on April 3rd. Do you want to go? Let us know in the comments. If enough people are interested we can carpool or whatever.

Info:

Date: Saturday, April 3rd. 2010.
Time: 3:00PM, at the sound of the airhorn (Show up at least 5 minutes early)
Place: TBA on Banditos Website (misteriosos.org) on April 2nd at 11:55PM

Continue reading “Pillow Fight!”

I didn’t think they would do it.

The Union Judiciary has just decided to side with the Union Senate in kicking out Union Secretary Diana Aronin from office. You can find our earlier coverage here.

You heard it here first. Here’s the court’s Ruling in re Aronin.

The gist of it is this: Diana really should’ve put the amendment up for a vote. Legally, she had to, and she can’t hide behind Andy Hogan or the fact that the person who gave her the petition graduated soon after.

Unanimous Decision.

Anyways, whatever. Will there be a special election?

Student Union Prez Andy Hogan is circulating a survey to students that asks one question: “What do Brandeis students need in dining that we are not getting right now?”

Go fill it out.

Here’s my response, if you find it useful

1. Good, healthy food. What do I mean by good? Simply this: Food made from scratch.

2. The faculty club should be open for longer. I have class from 12-1, or 12-1:30, every day. I love the faculty club – they have the best food on campus, hands down. Can’t there be a way for me to still eat there?

3. Healthy food. See point 1. I don’t mean “health food”, but simply creating food from ingredients, not, for example, heating up pre-made frozen food.

4. It is really hard to keep a good diet at Brandeis when fruit costs over a dollar a piece. Down the road at Hanneford’s it costs roughly that much *per pound*! I need cheaper healthy food.

Hey all. We’re at the much-maligned Union Judiciary trial. The Senate is trying to impeach the Union Secretary, Diana Aronin, because she forgot to put up a constitutional amendment for a vote or something.

Honestly, I approach this trial with mixed feelings. On one hand, it’s bullshit. On the other hand, we should probably cover it. We’ll see if it lasts.

Read on for a running commentary on the trial

Continue reading “The Senate/E-Board showdown begins”

The announcement:

President Reinharz Holds Student Office Hours – Spring 2010 Schedule

President Jehuda Reinharz will be available to meet with students for approximately 10 minutes per student on a first-come, first-served basis beginning THURSDAY, January 21 – 3:00 to 4:30 p.m.  Following is the complete schedule of dates for the Spring 2010 semester:

** Thursday, January 21 – 3:00 to 4:30 p.m.
** Monday, February 22 – 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
** Tuesday, March 16 – 2:00 to 3:30 p.m.
** Wednesday, April 7 – 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
** Friday, April 30 – 3:00 to 4:30 p.m.

This schedule is posted and updated on the “My Brandeis Campus Calendar”  http://my.brandeis.edu/btime/day-view.  Please call x63001 on the scheduled date to confirm that no unforeseen changes have been made. The President’s Office is located in Irving 113 (Bernstein Marcus / Gryzmish Administration Bldgs.).

Remember college admissions? Remember how stressful that was?

We passed through that cruel gauntlet, but our brothers and sisters still have to go through it. I want to start talking about how destructive some of the components of the process are.

One famous example – the SAT’s are weighed towards class and race.
Another – Legacy admissions: affirmative action for rich people.

There’s a big op-ed in the Boston Globe today talking about this sort of stuff:

NOW IS the winter of high school seniors’ discontent. But then every winter is one of discontent as seniors file their college applications with a mix of dread and hope – mainly dread. Those applying to the most selective schools have the odds stacked against them no matter how sterling their high school records, though college admissions officers typically offer the cold comfort that rejection is not equivalent to failure and that, as one Yale admissions officer put it, “It matters far less which strong college admits you than it matters what you do with your opportunities once you are there.’’ To which most high school seniors would say, “Hogwash.’’

They know that it does matter where you go to college, if not educationally then in terms of social recognition and opportunity. They know that America, for all its professions of meritocracy, is a virtual oligarchy where the graduates of the Ivies and the other best schools enjoy tremendous advantages in the job market. They know that Harvard or Stanford or MIT is a label in our “designer education’’ not unlike Chanel or Prada in clothes.

So here is another, more realistic comfort to those anxious seniors who will soon be flagellating themselves as unworthy: The admissions system of the so-called “best’’ schools is rigged against you. If you are a middle-class youth or minority from poor circumstances, you have little chance of getting in to one of those schools. Indeed, the system exists not to provide social mobility but to prevent it and to perpetuate the prevailing social order.

Why is college admissions messed up? The op-ed provides these arguments:

• “the so-called “best’’ schools give heavy preferences to the wealthy; as many as one-third of admissions, he writes, are flagged for special treatment at the elite universities, one-half at the elite liberal arts colleges, and the number of open spaces for the non-privileged is reduced accordingly. “
• Affirmative action for the rich comes in through three vectors:

Legacy admissions

Athletes, who are “primarily wealthy white kids who are adept at lacrosse, rugby, crew and polo.”

Admissions slots for kids with parents who pledged to donate to the school

• Early admissions is great for the rich, because they don’t have to worry about being saddled with inadequate financial aid if they do get in. Thus, they are more likely to apply early, and applying early increases your chances of getting in.
• “A well-rounded student body” means lots of people who are exceptional at different things. Yet, become a great musician, for example, implies a lot of money sunk into lessons, instruments, etc.”

The full quote: Then there is the “well-rounded student body’’ argument, which any parent accompanying his child on the college tour rounds has heard ad nauseam. According to this approach, colleges are not looking for the well-rounded individual student. They are aiming instead for a diverse student body: an exceptional athlete, an exceptional musician, an exceptional scientist, an exceptional poet. Except that exceptionality, as most parents can attest, doesn’t come cheap. Athletes require coaching and often traveling teams; musicians require lessons and instruments; scientists require labs and internships; poets require classes and opportunities for publication. None of these things is readily available to the average middle-class family, to say nothing of the high school student who must work at McDonald’s to earn spending money (even though colleges say they take this into account).

• “Racial Diversity” usually means admitting African students instead of “African Americans” (instead of a good amount of both, you get a lot of one group disguised as another)
• “Need Blind” admissions aren’t as great as you might think:

“Any admissions officer, she said, could tell from your zip code whether you were likely to need aid or not, and students needing aid were much less desirable than those who didn’t need it.”

• The SAT reflects class biases: “SAT scores correlate highly to family income – an average of 12 point increments for every $20,000 of income, which this year amounted to a 130 difference on critical reasoning, 80 points on math and 70 on writing between the lowest income and highest income groups.”

I’m going to call Brandeis tomorrow and ask what percentage of their admissions is set aside for legacy admissions. My goal: getting it down to 0%. Beyond that, I’d love for someone from Brandeis to reassure us on how they’re aware of these problems, and the extent that Brandeis is working to ameliorate this rigged system.

During the whole Budget-cut craziness of the Spring 2009 semester, I remember Jehuda telling people that he would look into putting the budget (or parts of it) online, and I also remember reports that the SAT would be optional for admissions in the future.

Did “the administration” really say they would do that, or is my memory off? If they did say that, has anything happened on that front?

I’m concerned. Martha Coakley, the Democrat to replace Ted Kennedy, might, incredibly, lose against a Republican challenger in freaking Massachusetts.

The reason? The vote takes place on Jan 19th, on a special election. Special elections are notorious for super-low turnout, which means that the outcome is only in doubt. If Republicans vote and Democrats don’t, then we are kind of screwed.

Up till now, this was a theoretical worry. But now polls are coming out showing that Coakley could lose.

The vote is on the 19th, the first day of school at Brandeis. Someone should organize them all to vote.

So students at Rutgers kickstarted a campaign to overthrow the incumbent local Democratic machine and as a result are really shaking things up.

These students created a legitimate organization that is composed of residents across the city. They do community organizing by day, electioneering by night, and (electorally) they’ve been remarkably successful.

Rutgers site:

A group of Rutgers University students and graduates have brought their brand of social-justice activism off campus and into the streets of New Brunswick, winning seats on a key political committee and starting a movement to change the way city elections are held.

“We’re community organizers,” said Charles Kratovil, a 2009 graduate. “We think it’s the best way to effect real change – just like when Barack Obama got out of college, he became a community organizer.”

Kratovil and his fellow students are members of Empower Our Neighborhoods – a group that performs a range of social-justice projects and also spawned an offshoot organization, Democrats for Change to mount a direct challenge to the established Democratic Party that dominates New Brunswick politics.

And they won!

Democrats for Change, a coalition of moderate, progressive, and revolutionary democrats inspired by Obama’s campaign, shocked the political establishment in New Jersey’s recent primary election winning twenty-five out of fifty-six Democratic Party committee seats against New Brunswick’s entrenched Daleyesque political machine.

The election marks the first time New Brunswick’s conservative Democratic Party machine suffered a defeat at the polls. “For far too long the administration has heard only the voices of commercial developers and business,” said life-long New Brunswick resident Charlie Renda, “Yesterday’s vote signals the beginning of a renewal of democracy in New Brunswick” he added.

For many organizers this is the beginning of a larger political project. “It is time for progressives and radicals to get out of protest mode and to start taking power at the local level. It can be done. We are proving it,” said Keith Joseph a campaign organizer, “we hope to start uniting with progressives who are struggling for political power in other cities” he added.

We should do something like this here at Brandeis!

Random Thoughts:
This is really cool, and Social Justice is our thing, you know? I firmly believe that a sustainable organization of Brandeis grads and students working for positive change in Waltham/Boston would be good for students, a great place to work after you graduate, and, most of all, great for the community.

More than Words and the various Waltham Group projects are arguably a good place to start. They already have ties to the community and Brandeis proper.

We don’t have to /copy/ the Rutgers crew, but the point is that we can and probably should get involved in our community more, and in an organizing sort of way, not just a service sort of way.

I am a member of the Waltham City Democratic Committee. On one hand, the current committee isn’t very fearsome or entrenched. On the other hand, they don’t seem corrupt either. They’re just normal, decent, people, you know?

This is my point. We have so much opportunity to do good. Let’s not forget that. Also, compare and contrast that with Student Union shitshow. Which is more worth praise and attention?

In the comments, “George” calls me out: (He writes “Innermost Parts” instead of” Sahar Massachi” but I speak only for myself here)

It’s amazing how innermostparts would freak out when student leaders last year and the year before did minuscule things you disagreed with, yet now you don’t care to hold any of the current leadership accountable? Please do us all a favor and either admit that you are a hypocrite or that you were wrong in the past for writing incessantly about “meaningless bullshit” and demonizing past leaders.

Yo George, that’s the thing.

Last year, I cared *so much* about these sorts of things. Now, I can’t summon the enthusiasm to even write about this sort of stuff, most of the time.

I don’t really know why; I guess I’m going through a personal journey of sorts, and you’re watching it in real time.

Does Diana deserve to be impeached? Would be better off if she was? Maybe. In fact, I’m even sympathetic to the pro-impeachment side of things. Intellectually, I do feel these sorts of struggles are important, that proper running of the Union is important, that the Senate has the power and responsibility to do such things.

Still, I just can’t summon the energy to cover it, or to try to affect the outcome at all.

We’re all just students here, ok? Andy and Diana messed up, but they weren’t mendacious. They’re just kids. We’re all just kids. (In my mind, 20-ish is still a “kid”. You can replace “kid” with “young adult” if you want) They work hard, or don’t, doesn’t really matter. They were intimidated by the voting system and kept putting it off, then forgot about the whole matter. Rather than remind them, the Senate freaked out and impeached Diana.

Or maybe that’s not what happened at all. If that’s the case, we’ll find out at the trial.

Look, Innermost Parts was founded to uphold Brandeis values and uphold Social Justice. I want to get back to that vision of what we’re supposed to be. The internal power struggles of the Student Union, however much they matter to those inside the Union, look so boring now.

By focusing so closely on the Union for the past I-don’t-know-how-long, Innermost Parts hasn’t been able to grow in scope. We should be talking about funding decisions for the University, Board of Trustees affairs, about Dining and Aramark. We should be boosting worthy clubs and events, and we should help keep Social Justice a meaningful thing, not just a phrase that everyone bandies about.

That’s what I’m talking about.

Before anything else, we’re fellow students here. Sometimes I feel we act out these roles – blogger, journalist, “senator”, whatever, and forget that fact. Let’s just take a step back and remember that, come on, let’s not take ourselves so seriously here.

You know what really matters?

Many of my friends and acquaintances here at Brandeis right now are struggling to find a way to pay for college. They might graduate early, they might drop out. Some have already taken a semester or two off, and might not be able to return.

What the fuck?

I just talked to an absolutely cool prospective student I met last year. She was certain she wanted to come to Brandeis, but it turned out that she couldn’t pay and had to settle for for a different (inferior) school.

Why?

Not only are my friends being forced out of Brandeis due to its astronomical tuition, but many of us will be saddled with huge debt once we graduate, and face an even greater challenge paying for grad school.

I’m really frustrated because this is all happening in front of my very eyes, and I can see things get worse every month. I don’t know what to do about this. Please, anyone, if you are listening, help us!

A little while back the Student Union senate voted to impeach Diana Aronin, Union Secretary, and censure president Andy Hogan. Why? The Senate voted on an amendment to add a midyear Senator position to the constitution, and Diana/Andy didn’t put it up for a vote. You can read the Hoot if you want more information.

A year ago I would have been really interested in covering this.

Honestly? This is all meaningless bullshit. I really don’t much care anymore. The only thing worse than a powerless, meaningless senate is one that tries to flex its muscles in an unproductive, petty way.

This latest development, however, puts a smile on my face:

Petitioner Name: Deena Glucksman
Party against whom the case is being brought: Jenna Rubin, Executive
Senator of Student Union
Complaint: As of December 6, 2009, Student Union Secretary Diana
Aronin ’11, was impeached by the Senate for “willfully corrupting and
violating the duties set forth to her in the Union Constitution.”
According to the Union Constitution, Article X, Section 2, “A
two-thirds vote of the Senate is required to impeach an elected Union
Government official.” According to the Senate Resolution F09-3, 11
senators voted to impeach Secretary Aronin. There are currently 20
Senators seated on the Senate out of a possible 24. Neither an 11 out
of 20 nor an 11 out of 23 vote is greater than or equal to a
two-thirds vote. As a result, the impeachment was voted upon and
enacted unconstitutionally.

If this is true, Jenna Rubin comes out looking really dumb.

Update: Nope. Ms. Glucksman’s got it wrong. I’ve got many emails last night regarding this post. I love it when that happens. It turns out that 14 people voted for impeachment, but 11 people signed the articles of impeachment, and you need 2/3 of senators present when you have a quorum, rather than 2/3 of all total senators who are seated. I wrote this post in haste last night. Normally I’d do my due diligence on this. Thanks for keeping me honest.

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.

– 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.

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.

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?

As my girlfriend might tell you, the best part of Halloween is definitely wearing costumes and Trick or Treating.

You know what would kick so much ass? Trick or Treating to save gay marriage.

It works like this:
A. Go to DriveForEquality.org to hitch a ride (or drive yourself) to Maine.
B. Stand in wonder at the beautiful Maine foliage.
C. By day, work with the No on 1 campaign to organize people to vote against an amendment getting rid of same-sex marriage in Maine.
D. By night, rock out, pull on your bitchin costume, and Trick-or-Vote! It’s like a treating, but in addition to giving you candy, people vow to vote to save gay marriage.
E. High-Five! You just saved Gay Marriage.

Explanation of Trick-or-Voting:The thing about canvassing (going door-to-door and talking to people about politics) is that people don’t want to be bothered, really. Here’s the good part: what’s the one day in the year when people sit around at home waiting for people to knock on their doors? Halloween. Here’s where you come in: you knock, you yell “trick or vote!” and then ask them to vote NO on amendment 1 to save Gay Marriage. Plus: Candy!

For more ways to help Maine Equality go here.