the Brandeis Hoot – Innermost Parts

A Tribute to President Andy Hogan

How many of you have eaten in Sherman since Passover break? I am right now. I’ve been eating at Sherman a lot more since the latest round of improvements, and it’s become more crowed than it used to be since word has spread about the changes. There are more options, more food cooked to order, and everything seems fresher and more appetizing. All of a sudden, Sherman seems like less of a joke and more of a decent place to enjoy a meal. And while credit should go to the Brandeis administration and Dining Services for their responsiveness to the community’s complaints, we should also remember what helped get the ball rolling on the path to large-scale dining reform: the advocacy and hard work of former Union President Andy Hogan.

I’m living in the Charles River apartments next year, as I’m sure many of you are. If someone had told me before this semester that I’d wind up in Grad, I’d have been sorely disappointed; visions of leaky buildings and broken appliances would have crossed my mind. However, I’m now excited for next year. Grad is receiving a thorough renovation, and I’ll be one of the first to inhabit the fresh new living space. Once again, I, along with the rest of the student body, owe a thank you to Andy Hogan for making this happen.

I feel that Andy often received an undeserved bad rap during his time in office. He was censured by the Union Senate over the insignificant midyear senator amendment, and though he avoided the impeachment that Diana Aronin suffered, she at least got a public validation through her decisive reelection. Despite the fact that he did everything he could to minimize the issue and keep it from becoming a distraction, he bore the brunt of the bad press the Union received in the wake of the impeachment fiasco. The nadir came in the February 5th Hoot, which featured an editorial cartoon cruelly depicting the Student Union as a beheaded chicken. The symbolism was tacky and completely uncalled for, particularly as the “head” of the Union continued succeeding in his advocacy projects and improving campus life.

Adding additional BranVan service during high traffic times? Thanks, Andy. Working to eliminate wasted energy by shutting off after-hours lights? Thanks, Andy. Expanding the awesome Clubs in Service project? Thanks, Andy. Getting a student voice on the powerful Presidential Search Committee? Thanks, Andy. The Union’s focus on student surveys this year allowed it to keep a finger on the pulse of the Brandeis community, and it used that knowledge for tangible results in many small but tangible ways, improving everything from our dining to our bathrooms.

Jason Gray definitely left some massive shoes to fill as Union President, and I can’t pretend I agree with every decision Andy has made over the past year. But his term in office was punctuated with success on a number of levels, and I hope that the student body recognizes that. Despite the manufactured controversy, a lot of us were looking only for results, and I think that Andy Hogan delivered. I hope Andy knows that his hard work didn’t occur in a vacuum; I, at least, was watching, and I appreciate what he was able to do.

Help Improve the Hoot

Do any of you read the Hoot (you all should)? Does anyone have any problems with it?

Well, no more will you concerns go unheeded. The Hoot is currently running a reader survey designed to help it be more responsive to the community. This is really cool, and more clubs should do it. They all receive community funding; the least they can do is try to meet the community’s needs.

Go ahead and take it. It’s only eight questions and shouldn’t take longer than a few minutes.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Cultural Productions

At today’s meeting, the Board of Trustees will make the final vote on the Brandeis 2020 Committee proposals that Provost Marty Krauss approved earlier this month. So far, I think the process has gone as well as we could hope for, and I generally approve of the decisions that the Committee made. However, one program in particular has suffered from particularly unfair treatment at the hands of the administration, and regardless of what happens at today’s meeting, I think its participants deserves a better explanation and an apology.

If you haven’t read Ariel Wittenberg’s piece on the Cultural Productions Masters’ program from the March 5th Hoot, check it out right now. It’s a great piece of campus journalism, thoroughly researched and well-constructed, and the narrative is very important in understanding the administration’s relationship with the rest of the university. Basically, Adam Jaffe, the Dean of Arts and Sciences and the chair of the Brandeis 2020 Committee, justified the decision to cut the program by saying “the overall costs of the program exceed the revenues” despite the fact that “the program generates revenue that exceeds its direct costs”.

The problem is that someone forgot to tell the program’s head, Professor Mark Auslander:

When asked what the overall costs were, Jaffe wrote, “I prefer not to share those numbers.”

This secrecy is “dumbfounding” to Auslander, who said, “I’m baffled at what these ‘hidden costs’ could be.” Auslander also said that his knowledge of the program’s revenue comes from conversations with Jaffe himself.

“Up until they wanted to cut our program, the Dean has said we are revenue positive,” Auslander said. “To cut us would be foolhardy.”

While Jaffe wrote in his e-mail that “the ‘direct costs’ do not include the time of any faculty other than the director,” Auslander said the Cultural Productions Program does not employ any faculty other than him.

So Jaffe misled Auslander about his program’s cost, basically lied to the Hoot about the program’s faculty, and made absolutely no effort to justify cutting the whole program to its director, let alone to the Brandeis community. Three days later, Marty Krauss released her report, and Jaffe was contradicted again:

I have heard the argument that this program produces net revenue for GSAS, and while that is true, I am convinced that the University would have to make additional fiscal commitments in the long run to ensure that this program achieves and maintains a level of excellence that we would expect for any master’s program.

Is the program currently revenue-positive? Everyone seems to think so but Adam Jaffe, and he doesn’t seem willing to share whatever facts he has.

Making these academic cuts is a very difficult process, and I appreciate the fact that the motivations for cutting the Cultural Productions Program might be more complex than a straightforward cost-benefit analysis. However, any cuts that are made will be painful to a portion of the Brandeis community, and the faculty and students within the programs deserve an explanation. Withholding information and offering lies and half-truths only increases their pain. We need complete faith in our administration as Brandeis makes these tough decisions, and Dean Jaffe has harmed that trust.