B R A N D E I S U N I V E R S I T Y ' S C O M M U N I T Y N E W S P A P E R T H E H O O T . N E TN O V E M B E R 1 3 , 2 0 0 9

VOL 6, NO. 13

Women’s and men’s basketball preivew

Impressions, page 18

Visit our Audio ArchieVes!Friend us on facebook!Follow us on Twitter!

IN THISISSUE:

Friedman wins Fourth Estate Press Club Award

Features, page 6

Check out THEHOOT.NET

Students crossing boundaries: H1N1 vaccine arrives, high risk students vaccinated beginning today

Al Quds community members share stories at Brandeis this week

PHOTO BY Author Alan Tran/The Hoot

SHARING CULTURES: ICC Staff serves Al-Quds University student Ban Muwaswes a meal in an event focused on displaying Brandeis student life to visting Al-Quds University commnity members.

BY LEAH FINKELMANStaff

In a Ridgewood suite, visitors to Brandeis have slightly redecorated in order to feel more at home, including brewing a fresh pot of strong Turkish coffee and hanging a Palestinian flag in the window.

The visitors are students and recent graduates of Al-Quds University, one of the few Arab universities in Palestinian-

controlled East Jerusalem, students of the university were at Brandeis this week with other Al-Quds community members as part of a partnership between Brandeis and Al-Quds meant to encourage understand-ing and acceptance between community members at the Palestinian university and a historically Jewish-sponsored university. To reach these goals, Al-Quds and Brandeis community members have participated in exchanges since 2006, when administra-

tors, faculty and students from Al-Quds visited Brandeis both at conferences in Is-tanbul and during a trip to East Jerusalem. This is the second time students from Al-Quds have come to Brandeis.

For the past week, five Palestinian Al-Quds students, and eight administrators have been at Brandeis, getting to know students here and attending classes, includ-ing an Arabic language class and a class

See AL QUDS, p. 4

Faculty senate to select members of Pres. Advisory Committee next week

The university faculty will select its members next week to represent the faculty in the search for a new president, as announced at last Thursday’s faculty meeting.

The positions on the Faculty Ad-visory Committee to the Presiden-tial Search Committee will be run by an electronic election still being drafted.

The proposal now moving for-ward allows for all Arts and Sci-ences Schools to be represented with additional at large members.

“There will be eight members, and each faculty member will get three votes,” Prof. Sabine von Me-ring (GRALL), the Faculty Sen-ate chair, said, “one vote for their school by the people in that school

Students who are under 24-years old and have the following conditions are at “high risk” for H1N1 and are eligible to submit the “high risk request for flu shot” form:

• Pregnancy• Caregiver to an infant of less than six-months old• Chronic pulmonary diseases in- cluding asthma and cystic fibrosis• Cardiovascular diseases such as valvular heart disease• Chronic renal or liver disease• Transplant recipients• Neurologic or neuromuscular conditions that cause breathing or swallowing problems• Hematologic diseases or current cancer• Diabetes or adrenal disease• Suppressed immune systems

BY NATHAN KOSKELLAStaff

and two for the at large seats.” Faculty members were able to

nominate professors not in their departments, and von Mering re-ceived over 80 responses. Since some professors have declined, however, there will now be at most “seven or eight nominees for each seat,” or 56 to 64 people total nomi-nated, she said.

The Advisory Committee will serve in addition to the faculty on the Search Committee itself and provide a broad, elected set of rep-resentatives for more open com-munication. “Obviously, we know about many of the main issues,” von Mering said. “We know we must have a new direction, and people really want to see change.”

For facilitating the transforma-tion of what members want and what can be done, von Mering has drawn up a survey that will be at-

tached on this week’s ballot. “The Faculty Handbook per-

mits the Senate to address faculty concerns, which can be brought directly [to the Senate] or at faculty meetings, but they also can be initi-ated by electronic means,” von Mer-ing said.

The survey will help the Senate and the Advisory Committee on current faculty issues of most im-portance, and assist in the stated goal of a new direction.

As one of the goals of faculty on the Search and Advisory Commit-tee, the faculty hopes to use its in-put for things that have lacked in the past.

“I think there’s a general con-sensus on campus that we need a change, we need a different kind of communication, more openness, and a more consultative leadership style,” von Mering said.

The university will begin inoculating “high priority” high risk students with the H1N1 vaccine today. The university has already inoculated Brandeis healh care workers with the H1N1 vaccine ear-lier this week, and will now begin to in-oculate high risk students.

Director of the Health Center Dr. Deb-ra Poaster wrote in an e-mail message to The Hoot that the Health Center con-tacted students whom the Center knew to have medical conditions that put them at “high priority” high risk of being se-verely infected by the virus.

High priority students were notified in an e-mail message from Tobey Fidler, a nurse at the Health Center, that they should go to the health center today be-tween 9:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. to be in-oculated.

“We will not be able to hold doses for an undefined time period as we need to get to the next tier of priority students,” the e-mail, which was forwarded to The Hoot by an anonymous recipient of the e-mail, said. “Keep in mind that MANY other students would like to be getting their H1N1 vaccine asap, so I’d like to ask for your sensitivity in not publicizing your vaccine status.”

In accordance with Department of Public Health guidelines, health care workers were vaccinated first in order to diminish the spread of disease, followed by those at high risk of contracting the disease and of suffering most from the

BY ARIEL WITTENBERG Editor

See VACCINE, p. 2

2 The Hoot November 13, 2009

N E W S

PHOTO BY Author in Yuan Yao/The Hoot

PANEL: A group of international undergraduate and graduate students discuss the culture shock faced when a foreign student first encounters American culture.

International students reflect on experiencing American culture on the Brandeis campus

BY JON OSTROWSKYStaff

Five international students from several undergraduate and graduate programs spoke about their experiences regard-ing American culture at a forum sponsored by the International Students and Scholars Office in the Levin-Ross room in the Has-senfeld Conference Center on Tuesday evening.

The panel featured Georiga Luikens, a PhD student from Australia, Vinodini Murugesan, a PhD student from Malasia, Nadir Daudi ’10 from Pakistan, Vilma Horca, a graduate student in the Sustainable International Devel-opment program from the Phil-ippines, and Tenzing Sherpa ’12 from Nepal.

The students discussed many differences between their na-tive cultures and American life hat have made their experience at Brandeis challenging ranging from the large workload to the language.

“These are things that you no-tice from the time you’re here but you can’t express them,” Sherpa said.

“Just because you speak the language doesn’t mean that you understand the culture,” Luikens said.

There are appoximately 1,000

international students from 115 countries at Brandeis said David Elwell, the director of the Inter-national Students and Scholars Program.

Elwell said that the diverse student body at Brandeis allows students to learn about different cultures from their real life expe-riences of meeting and forming friendships with international students.

“At a college or university, this is really an opportunity for you to get to know the world,” Elwell said. “That’s one of the really amazing things about Brandeis – that you want to meet people who are different than you.”

“I tell people that I have the best job in the world because on any given day I get to meet people from all over the world,” he said.

Murugesan found this to be true during her beginnings at Brandeis because when people would ask her “how are you?” she would of-ten respond in detail, and didn’t realize “how are you is just a way of [saying] hello.”

Daudi found himself a bit lost when students were always talk-ing amongst themselves about pop culture and all of the televi-sion shows they watch.

Luikens also voiced that in Australia people tend to live in one place much longer than they do in the United States. Com-

menting on how often young peo-ple move around the country to go to college and graduate school, “there is really this concept of re-ally moving around this gigantic country,” he said.

In Australia, students usually go to university in their home city while living with their parents.

Another common theme men-tioned by the students was the fast paced life and difficult amount of homework at Brandeis.

“This is like a big day everyday. It was hard to step back and relax,” Daudi said. “I think the overall attitude towards work or life [in the U.S] is that people are very driven to do things.”

Murugesan felt that although students do not take a large num-ber of courses, each course has a significant portion of work.

“I could hardly cope in my first year,” Horca said. She addressed the fact that although long read-ings are often assigned, she did not realize that some of them were to be read quickly and just skimmed through to get a general understanding.

“Where I come from in Nepal we have a very different attitude. Time don’t mean anything,” Sher-pa said.

Daudi also said he found Americans to be very friendly, “for the most part it’s been a fan-tastic experience,”he said.

Brandeis gets first H1N1vaccine drop, gives shot to ‘high risk’ students

virus.After high priority students

are vaccinated, the Health Cen-ter will vaccinate “high risk” stu-dents.

High risk students must fill out a “Request for Flu Shot” available in PDF form on the Health Center’s website in order to qualify for the first round of H1N1 vaccines, Sawyer wrote in a campus-wide e-mail message to the Brandeis community on Tuesday.

High risk students include those who are under 24-years old and are pregnant, caregivers to an infant less than six-months old, have chronic pulmonary diseases including asthma and cystic fibrosis, cardiovascular diseases such as valvular heart disease, chronic renal or liver disease or transplant recipients, neurologic/neuromuscular con-ditions that cause breathing or swallowing problems, hemato-logic diseases or current cancer, Diabetes or adrenal disease, or those whose immune systems are suppressed.

Poaster wrote in her e-mail to The Hoot that the Health Center has con-tacted students who have medical conditions that put them at high risk.

Students who complete the form and turn it in by hand to the health center will be contacted via e-mail when the Health Cen-ter is ready to dispense the vac-cine.

The H1N1 vaccines are being distributed to the university by the federal government through the Commonwealth of Massa-chusetts and do not cost the uni-versity money.

Because vaccinations for high-risk students will be dispensed through the Health Center and by its staff, vaccinations will be free for high-risk students. Once the Health Center receives enough doses to dispense to the larger student body, however, the Health Center will have to outsource the clinic-style vac-cinations, and therefore will have to charge students for the vaccines in order to cover labor costs.

Sawyer said this cost “will be minimal.”

“We certainly do not want to do anything that discourages students from getting the vac-cine if they want it.”

If a high risk student becomes ill with flu-like symptoms be-fore they receive the vaccine, the Health Center will treat that stu-dent with Tamiflu--the prescrip-tion drug used to treat the flu.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the university has had 154 cases

of flu-like illness since the be-ginning of the semester, none of which have been treated with Tamiflu.

Sawyer said in an interview with The Hoot that the Health Center is reserving its supply of Tamiflu for high risk students who become infected with the virus so as not to run out and to avoid the H1N1 virus becoming resistant to the drug.

All students who have had flu-like symptoms this semester have been treated with ibuprofen and were either sent home or isolated on campus for the duration of their illness in order to avoid the spread of disease.

“154 sounds like a lot of stu-dents, but compared to other schools, we’re pretty well off--knock on wood,” Sawyer said. “We’ve been able to manage this so well because of the coopera-tion of students.”

Students who have already had the flu, no matter what strain of the virus, should still seek the vaccine when it is available and when they qualify, Sawyer said, adding that because the universi-ty has not been testing students, there is no way to know whether they have immunity to H1N1

without getting inoculated.

Sawyer wrote in the e-mail that he hopes all students who want to will be vacci-nated by late November or

early December; however, in an interview with The Hoot he said he is unsure of the students’ in-terest in the vaccine.

“Every night on NBC news I see lines of people waiting to get vaccines at clinics all over the country,” he said, “but here we’ve only had the occasional inquiry by parents about the vaccines. There has not been a lot of in-quiry.”

This year, the health center held three to four clinics to dis-tribute the seasonal flu vaccine and students “showed up at the normal pace” Sawyer said.

“We’re all wondering what the reaction to the H1N1 vaccine will be,” he said.

Poaster of the Health Center wrote in her e-mail that stu-dents should “follow the simple guidelines we have previously described” to avoid the spread of disease while waiting to get vac-cinated.

“Wash your hands. Don’t touch your face. Don’t share drinks or cigarettes. Self-isolate if you are sick,” she wrote.

Students with additional ques-tions should contact the Health Center at (781)-736-3677.

The Request for Flu Shot form is availible at http://www.brandeis.edu/studentaf fairs/health/forms/RequestH1N1.pdf

VACCINE (from p. 1)

Wash your hands. Don’t touch your face. Don’t share cigaretts. Self-isolate if you are sick.

-Doctor Debora Poaster

A panel of experts on autism spectrum disorders discussed the possible causes of autism in a medi-cal discussion that was held in con-junction with Autism Awareness Week on Monday.

The panel consisted of Dr. Mar-tha Herbert, Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medi-cal School, Dr. Elizabeth Sajdel-Sulkowska, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Director of the Center for Non-In-

vasive Brain Stimulation at Harvard Medical School and Mark Blaxill, Vice President of Safe Minds, a non-profit organization targeting mercury-induced disorders.

All members of the panel refuted the currently accepted belief that autism is genetic, and blamed it instead on chemicals in food and vaccines.

“The genes that we have iden-tified contribute to only a small amount of [cases of autism],” Her-bert said.

Autism has become 12 times more common in the past 20 years.

The panelists acknowledged that part of this increase has been linked to changes in diagnostic practice. Herbert maintained, however, that more than half of the increase could not be linked to such changes.

Herbert presented research that indicated that autism could be linked to environmental factors within the placenta. Herbert ex-plained that the concordance of au-tism in identical twins is 60 percent, which she attributed to the sharing of a placenta—and the possible

Experts discuss causes of AutismBY SEAN FABERY

Staff

See AUTISM, p. 4

November 13, 2009 N E W S The Hoot 3

Solar panel installation under way on Gosman roof

PHOTO BY Max Shay/The Hoot

SOLAR: Pressure cleaning of the roof of Gosman Sports and Convocation Center and construction of the solar panels began Thursday..

BY SEAN FABERYStaff

The installation of solar panels on the roof of the Gosman Sports and Convoca-tion Center began Thursday and is expect-ed to take three weeks. The system, which will be one of the largest solar panel arrays in the state, will be fully operational by the end of December.

The solar panels are being built as part of a power purchase agreement, with the financing for the panels being provided by EOS Ventures. The university will buy the energy produced by the panels from EOS instead of from a regular electrical utility.

The contract with EOS is expected to save the university nearly one million dol-lars over the lifetime of the array.

“If we had bought the system outright, we would be paying millions of dollars,” Brandeis Sustainability Coordinator Janna Cohen-Rosenthal ‘03 said.

The actual installation of the panels will be done by Alteris Renewables, a firm that recently installed similar panels at Yale University. Disruption during construc-tion will be minimal, and only the parking lot at the back of the building, usually used for the athletic department vans, will be closed during construction.

Cohen-Rosenthal discussed the possibil-ity of further solar panel installations cau-tiously.

“[The Gosman roof] is the best roof for solar—it’s the largest roof. That’s why a power purchase agreement [there] makes

sense,” she said.“For our smaller roofs, a power purchase

agreement may not make sense, and we don’t have the resources right now to pay for something upfront.”

Once the system is operational, a website displaying the amount of energy produced by the array will become public.

The panels are expected to provide 10 percent of the total energy needed to power Gosman, though the percentage will fluc-tuate depending on how much energy the center consumes each month.

The solar energy system will prevent 11.6 million pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere over the next 25 years.

“You can see that it’s not going to pro-duce as much as our energy needs,” Co-hen-Rosenthal said, “but it’s a wonderful educational opportunity to think about our electricity use and our overall energy use.”

Cohen-Rosenthal also stressed the uni-versity’s commitment to its Climate Action Plan, which was presented in September and commits the university to attaining carbon neutrality by 2050. The exploration of alternative renewable energy formed a large component of the plan, though she noted that “they’re only part of the solu-tion.”

“I want to emphasize that this is a serious project. It’s not just a demonstration proj-ect by any means,” she said.

“It’s taken a considerable effort, and it’s a big accomplishment.”

A broader definition of the word ‘mother’BY JON OSTROWSKY

Staff

Marguerite Bouvard, author of Mothers in All But Name, and Dr. Stephanie Wasserman, a foster parent and Professor of Psychology at Merrimack College, spoke Tuesday in Liber-man Miller Lecture Hall about the role non birth mothers can play in a child’s life.

Bouvard’s book, based on several inter-views that she conducted, deals with the issue of mothers who did not give birth to their children, and their experiences raising children.

Bouvard, who raised her sister’s daughter for reasons she did not specify, explained that the term mother can apply to women, bio-logically related or not, who lovingly raise a child.

“For millennia, grandmothers, aunts, sis-ters, and strangers have taken on the respon-sibility of mothering, and we don’t recognize them for some reason,” Bouvard said.

She also discussed the difference between kinship mothering, where a woman related to the child takes on the role of the mother, and mothering where a woman not biologi-cally related cares for the child.

“There’s a whole area that we don’t know where friends step in in times of crisis and families are made out of love, not biology,” she said.

An open supporter of gay marriage, Bou-vard said that “we have a narrow view of mothering and we need to open up,” and called gay marriages “wonderful,” explaining that throughout history ten percent of people have been, and are, homosexuals. Explain-ing the challenges she faced researching her book, Bouvard commented that while there was some information on grandmothers who took the role of a mother, there was no information available on aunts, friends, and strangers who accepted the role of a mother.

In order to account for this lack of re-search, Bouvard was led to conduct several in -depth interviews with many of the mothers in her book.

Speaking about the difficulties she faced when choosing between her sister and her niece in court, Bouvard made clear that she considers her niece her daughter regardless of what others say.

“She is my daughter, but nobody gives the recognition of our society,” Bouvard said. “There are women that have children [who] are not mothers and there are women [who] do not have children who are excellent moth-ers.”

Referring to one of her foster children, Wasserman at one point called the child her baby, then said, “it’s hard–the terminology– the language, because it’s just not there,” she said.

Wasserman researched the foster care system before writing a chapter of Bouvard’s book, she focused on the powerful women she has met as well as the problems with the foster care system. The foster care system is composed of two types of foster parents, according to Wasserman. There are those who were part of a loving and nuclear family growing up and those who are “able to over-come the pains they felt [growing up].”

“I do not want to idolize the foster care sys-tem, [but] within the system, are some pow-erful women who change the lives of young people,” Wasserman said.

Wasserman said she was proud to be able to tell people about her experiences and the truth about foster parents.

“It’s the fulfillment of a dream come true,” Wasserman said in an interview following the event.

“Children need someone to love them and it doesn’t matter who it is,” Bouvard said.

Give a Hoot!Read The Hoot!Join The Hoot!

E-mail eic@thehoot.net

4 The Hoot N E W S November 13, 2009

Al-Quds community visits concentrated on the events of the Iranian Revolution.

Brandeis’ guests include current Al-Quds students Abdelrahman Aqel, Marwan Aqel and Hasan Odeh, and recent graduates Ra-neen Hadeed and Ban Muwaswes. With the exception of Muwaswes, who lives in East Jerusalem, they live in the West Bank, a dis-puted but Palestinian-controlled territory.

Living in an incredibly politically volatile area has had an effect on them, even if the Al- Quds students don’t all consider themselves politically active compared to their peers and classmates. Abdelrahman is active in the Stu-dent Union, even serving as president when the Israeli government arrested his predeces-sor. Two of them, Odeh and Marwan, express themselves through music and poetry.

One of the intents of the partnership is to learn about each other’s schools, therefore the five students also joined the Student Union at their meeting on Sunday. After Student Union President Andy Hogan ’11 explained the system used at Brandeis, Ab-delrahman Aqel, who is deeply involved with the student government at Al-Quds, shared his experiences, including his three-month tenure as president after the Israeli government arrested his predecessor.

The primary difference Aqel gave be-tween the Brandeis student government and his own was the causes it supports. While Brandeis students run with cam-paign promises of better cell phone recep-tion and more convenient meal plans, the Al-Quds student government has to re-member where they are. Odeh described the students’ protests as being political, rather than social, citing the example of check points between Israeli- and Palestin-ian-controlled territories.

The Al-Quds students know that by be-ing here, they aren’t changing everyone’s beliefs or ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They do, however, know that they are making a small but important differ-ence in the way people think.

“Obviously we are not in the govern-ment, and we don’t have the magic power to change things,” Hadeed said. “But we can meet our supposed enemy, and know him better, and know the human side of him. We can chill with him and know that we have many things in common, more than what we think.”

The significance of Brandeis’ historically Jewish background is not lost on them, but they choose to view it as a teaching experi-ence for all involved, rather than an imme-diate barrier.

“When we meet [people from Brandeis] we understand they are not Israeli people, but that most are Jewish,” Hadeed said. “We suppose that Jewish people are more pro-Israel, more than pro-Palestinian…they know about Palestine from statistics and other, but when they meet Palestinians,

they see it as a human side of the story…We know they will understand stories bet-ter because they see it from another point of view.”

On the other hand, they generally agreed that they would feel far less comfortable participating in the exchange if it was with an Israeli university, even one in the United States.

“I don’t have any trouble with Jewish people. I believe in them as a religion, and I believe in them as humans,” Abdelrahman said.

“But we all have troubles with Israel,” Hadeed added.

They went on to describe the destruction caused in their homes by Israelis, but im-mediately after expressed hope for possible peace.

“There will [be peace], but how will it come? If you want to have peace, there must be constraints, no, foundations,” Ab-delrahman said. “You can’t have peace, say you want to talk about the future, you can’t make peace when Israelis attack cities ev-eryday, when there are check points every-where, when there are more than 10,000 prisoners in the Israeli’s jails.”

“I don’t think it’s impossible to have peace,” Hadeed said. “But it will not come when we can not control anything.”

“We can’t just say we want peace,” Odeh said. “It needs to be real peace. In my opin-ion, there’s not going to be a real peace in Palestine.”

Odeh went on to say that he does not think that they as individuals can change the government, but Hadeed interrupted him saying, “Governments don’t always do the best for their own people…but if people are educated about peace, they will vote for people who bring peace. You should have faith in people,” Hadeed said.

Their solution to educating people, both Palestinian and Israeli, enough to vote for a government that will choose peace? Hu-manization. The five of them are here to learn, but they are also here to teach.

“There are two narratives that people know, the Israeli one and the Palestinian one,” Hadeed said. “People listen to the differ-ent points that people make, but they aren’t understanding of why [things happen]. That would help them be more understanding of other people. Sometimes you educate your-self and the other side, and that helps the fear to be removed. You can’t have peace with people that you don’t trust.”

There are two sides to every story, and the students from Al-Quds know that. They also know that they are human, just like the Israelis. They are not all suicide bombers, just as not all Israelis have destroyed homes and families in Gaza and the West Bank.

The unanimous conclusion of their visit was that the best part of being here was they people they have met, and seeing the people they met when they were in Istanbul and at Al-Quds.

The annual Lillian L. Rolde Memorial Lecture series continued Monday with a lecture delivered by Professor John Burt (ENG) entitled, “Abraham Lincoln and the ‘Dred Scott’ Decision.”

The Farber Library’s University Archives and Special Collections Department host-ed the event, which included an exhibit from the collections on the varying histori-cal depictions of Lincoln.

“The goal of the Rolde lecture is to con-textualize specific works of Special Collec-tions for the purposes of learning,” depart-ment member Sarah Shoemaker said.

The lecture focused on Lincoln’s response to the Dread Scott Supreme Court Deci-sion, which occurred before he ascended to the presidency and its importance in the modern United States.

Shoemaker said the Dred Scott Decision is especially important “for a university named for a revered Supreme Court justice itself.”

Burt’s lecture addressed some technicali-ties and background of the case and offered a look into the mind of the then-younger Lincoln, and was aided by the Special Col-lections’ historical organization of pictures and other representations of the president.

Prefaced with the nation’s founding doc-ument, Burt’s lecture proceeded with a re-view of Lincoln’s debates on slavery, espe-cially after a famous (and later overturned) precedent from the Court.

“We have a traditional way of looking at the promises Jefferson made in the Decla-ration of Independence…for Lincoln, the decision’s [sticking point] was that it meant the federal government could not prohibit slavery,” Burt said.

The significant factor, Burt’s lecture ad-

vised, was that the decision denied citizen-ship to those of African descent.. There were many free blacks in the United States at the time, yet then-Chief Justice Roger Taney, Burt said, intimated that these free men could not establish standing in court.

“Lincoln was [an adherent] to the belief that all persons, not just legal citizens, owe each other certain respects, namely equal-ity of [point of view]—they owe each other moral autonomy,” Burt said.

Burt explained that Lincoln, in respond-ing to a decision that in Burt’s summa-tion, “declared unconstitutional the very platform of his [Republican] Party,” had to argue correctly to have a chance at future holes in the Supreme Court’s interpreta-tion.

If Lincoln had attacked the power of the Supreme Court itself, it is likely he would not have succeeded in politics, Burt ex-plained. And to defeat Senator Stephen Douglas in their famous debates on the subject, Lincoln could not sound partisan and accusatory “like how the Democrats had accused Republicans beforehand,” Burt said.

“He had to do it without an anarchic re-sponse and without highhanded politics,” he said.

Burt presented Lincoln’s eventual success as one recognizable to both believers in the Founders and contemporary followers of democracy, asserting that Lincoln’s percep-tion is what should matter.

“We had free black voters—so it was threat to the values of the Declaration of Independence [the assumption of moral autonomy] that most concerned Lincoln,” he said.

He also argued that Lincoln’s reasoning applies even in modern life, with the Dec-laration’s “promise of unalienable rights a stumbling block to despotism.”

“The meaning [of its promises] continues to unfold—and not all of these meanings could have possibly been on the minds of the Founders,” Burt said. “Respecting the concepts of the Founders—the rights—is more important than following the exact intentions of them.”

“My interest is in the failure to accurately represent the expectations at the time—it gives us a sense of the difference between the 1860s and today,” Jonathan Sudholt (GRAD), the designer of the exhibit, said, adding that cartoonists and the media thought they were accurately representing the events of the day as well.

It was this attention to detail that gave significance to this part of the Rolde series.

“This is a continuation of our series—last semester we celebrated Lincoln’s 200th birthday,” Shoemaker said, “and we wanted to delve into both the political and social aspects, and incorporate our collections.”

BY NATHAN KOSKELLAStaff

AL QUDS (from p. 1)

Archives celebrates Abe Lincoln

sharing of a contaminated environment.She then discussed a study done on new-

born cord blood which found 287 unnatural chemicals present, with 208 of them linked to birth defects. Over 200 of them had been banned years before, yet they still appeared in the blood.

“We’re looking at a situation that’s far broader than autism and far broader than the human species,” Herbert said, adding, “our feeling of security… is a little bit unjustified.”

Herbert also suggested that there might be a link between autism and neuro-inflamma-tion, which counters long-held notions about the disorder.

“We used to think that the brain was nor-mal [in children with autism]—that it was just wired differently,” she said. “What I’m advocating for is a different model of autism

than what we have.”Sajdel-Sulkowska also presented research

on the connection between autism and envi-ronment. She addressed the possible role of mercury, among other chemicals, in autism. Pregnant women are now cautioned against consuming too much fish because it contains mercury. Vaccines also contain mercury, with some pannelists arguing that vaccinations are behind many incidences of autism.

Dr. Pascual-Leone discussed the role of neuroplasticity—the changing of neurons and their networks through new experienc-es—in relation to autism.

“Plasticity is nature’s invention to overcome the limitations of the genome,” he said.

Blaxill, a parent of an autistic child, chal-lenged what he called the “prevailing nar-rative”—the belief that autism is caused by a gene and that there is “absolutely no con-

nection between mercury and vaccines and autism,” Blaxill said. “Everything about that narrative is wrong—every inch of it,” he said, noting that it had been advocated by a profit-motivated medical industry. “This notion of a genetic explanation is a lie.”

Blaxill described genetic studies on au-tism as “one array of confusing information” involving genes that have been present in only 10-15% of autism cases. In his view, the current belief that autism is a heritable trait is false, and that research should expand be-yond simple genetics.

He also pointed to the possible connection between vaccines and autism.

“I can tell you as a parent that there are hundreds of thousands of cases of children regressing after vaccines,” he said.

He admitted that the evidence for a con-nection between vaccines and autism is

“mixed and complex.”Blaxill also pointed to the “dramatic expan-

sion in childhood immunization” as the cul-prit of the increasing rate of autism, pointing out that “something like 30 different immuni-zations are administered to infants.”

“The debate is not about vaccines. I’m not anti-vaccine,” he said. “I do want other par-ents to be concerned. It’s about health. It’s about safe products.”

Blaxill has called for studies to be done on differences between vaccinated and unvacci-nated children, but he expressed doubt about the prospects of it, condemning the medical industry as “an orthodoxy… almost a reli-gion” that has decided to “pit science against crazy, irrational parents.”

“[Unlike the prevailing narrative], the new narrative is simple,” Blaxill said. “Autism is new.”

AUTISM (from p. 2)

Autism panel of experts links possible causes of disease to fetal environment

PHOTO BY Fizz Ahmed/The Hoot

November 13, 2009 N E W S The Hoot 5

E D I T O R I A L

Established 2005"To acquire wisdom, one must observe."

FOUNDED BYLeslie Pazan, Igor Pedan and Daniel Silverman

Ariel Wittenberg Editor in Chief

Destiny D. Aquino News EditorBret Matthew Impressions EditorChrissy Callahan Features Editor

Hannah Vickers Sports EditorJodi Elkin Layout Editor

Max Shay Photography EditorLeon Markovitz Advertising Editor

Vanessa Kerr Business EditorDanielle Gewurz Copy Editor

Leah Lefkowitz Backpage EditorSamantha Shokin Diverse City Editor

Senior EditorsSri Kuehnlenz, Kathleen Fischmann

Alison Channon

The Hoot welcomes letters to the editor on subjects that are of interest to the general community. Preference is given to current or former community members. The Hoot reserves the right to edit any submissions for libel, grammar, punctuation, spelling and clarity. The Hoot is under no obligation to print any of the pieces submitted. Letters in print will also appear on-line at www.thehoot.net.

The deadline for submitting letters is Tuesday at 8:00 p.m. All letters must be submitted electronically at www.thehoot.net. All letters must be from a valid e-mail address and include contact information for the author. Letters of length greater than 500 words may not be accepted.

The opinions, columns, cartoons and advertisements printed in The Hoot do not necessarily represent the opinions of the editorial board.

The Hoot is a community student newspaper of Brandeis University. Produced entirely by students, The Hoot serves a readership of 6,000 with in-depth news, rel-evant commentary, sports and coverage of cultural events. Our mission is to give every community member a voice.

SUBMISSION POLICIES

Alex Schneider Managing Editor

CORRECTIONS

The Brandeis Health Center will shortly receive its first shipment of H1N1 vac-cines to be distributed to the student body. While only high-risk students will be able to receive the first dose of inoculations, Dean of Student Life Rick Sawyer says he hopes to have all wanting students vacci-nated before December break.

When the H1N1 vaccination does be-come available to all students, The Hoot strongly encourages students to take ad-vantage of the supply and get vaccinated.

While it may seem like a no-brainer to protect yourself against a virus that the Center for Disease Control categorizes as “widespread” in 48 out of 50 states (Ha-waii and Mississippi being the exceptions), when it comes to the seasonal flu, the stu-dent body has a shabby track record of get-ting vaccinated.

Out of 3,200 undergraduates, only 600

students were vaccinated for the seasonal flu at the Health Center this year.

A 19 percent vaccination rate isn’t exactly something to be proud of, and though we acknowledge that many students avoid vac-cination because they either do not have the time or are not willing to make the time to get protected from what they see as a risk more microscopic that the virus itself, students should make the time to get vac-cinated for H1N1.

According to the Center for Disease Control, H1N1 is more dangerous than the seasonal flu because it has not been seen since the 1950’s.

This means the probability that students already have built up anti-bodies to the disease is slim to none, unlike the seasonal flu to which they are exposed every year. So while students might get the seasonal flu and shrug it off, the chances of feeling

the symptoms of H1N1 if infected are far greater.

The university’s policy on H1N1 requires students infected with “flu-like symptoms,” to miss a week of classes–an especially tough predicament when finals are fast ap-proaching.

The opportunity cost of the few dollars and minutes it will take to get vaccinated surely outweighs being sick and confined to bed for a week, not to mention that get-ting vaccinated stunts the spread of the vi-rus to one’s peers.

Students don’t have to break out the med-ical masks and disinfect their hands before and after touching shared surfaces, nor should they stampede to the Health Center the first day of vaccinations; but, sharing isn’t always caring–be responsible, and get vaccinated.

Last week, The Hoot editorial board lamented the lack of actual learning op-portunities on campus in regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This week, it appears there is a cure to the afore-mentioned problem in the form of the 13 Palestinian students, faculty and staff visiting Brandeis from Al Quds Univer-sity in East Jerusalem. Unfortunately, no one knew about this opportunity until it was too late.

In 2003, Brandeis formed a partnership with Al Quds University intending to “fos-ter cultural understanding and provide ed-ucational opportunities for students, facul-ty and staff.” The last time students from Al

Quds came to Brandeis was in 2006, with all the subsequent exchanges occurring when Brandeis students visited the Pales-tinian university.

While Israeli-Palestinian relations is cer-tainly a hot-topic on campus, oftentimes debates and arguments take place in an academic setting, and result in the two sides clinging to their ideals without tan-gible progress toward understanding their differences. And even when the debate oc-curs outside of the classroom, the results are much the same.

The visit from the Al Quds community members, who will leave the university today, marks a great learning opportunity

for members of the Brandeis community not only to discuss the conflict in a real-world arena, rather than an academic one, but also allows community members to hear a point of view not often available at Brandeis.

However, the arrival of our Al Quds part-ners was virtually unadvertised to the com-munity at large, with many events involv-ing the Al Quds students being restricted to only those Brandeis students who par-ticipated in the exchange.

How can students be expected to learn from the Al Quds visitors if the are un-aware of their presence? You can’t have an open mind with closed doors.

Learning should be a university-wide activity

Sharing isn’t always caring: Get vaccinated for H1N1

In response to the editorial entitled “What is a debate when no one listens?” published in the last issue of The Brandeis Hoot, it is necessary to emphasize that the forum was not, in fact, a debate.

From the opening statement made by Daniel Terris, the director of the Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life, “this is not a debate…The goal is illumination.” There-fore, the purpose was to be an exploration of a specific situation and the principles involved. As Reinharz and Terris said, at the end of this conversation “we will not take a vote.” For The Hoot Editorial Staff to treat this forum as such and criticize it because no solution was found, nor com-promise made is not appropriate. Just be-cause “Justice Goldstone and Ambassador Gold went into the debate knowing what the other would say, and neither budged from their beliefs,” does not mean it did not lead to “learning and open discussion,” as The Hoot claims, but rather it enhanced the discussion since both speakers were able to demonstrate their knowledge as well as assert their opinions. While we do agree that there were flaws in the structur-ing of the event, for instance the adversarial roles Gold and Goldstone were forced into by placing the two presenters on opposite sides of the issue, the event nevertheless served its purpose: to inform the audi-ence of the findings of the report and allow them to decide for themselves what they thought of it. The Hoot editorial’s most se-rious flaw was the great over-simplification of the speakers’ stances. In fact, Goldstone presented a very even-handed and objec-tive argument, pointing out the flaws in his

report, such as the discrepancies between the two U.N. mandates, and the possibil-ity of biases amongst committee members. Goldstone stated from the start that he was not condemning Israel alone, but rather his study had found both Israeli Defense Forc-es (IDF) and Palestinian Militants guilty of war crimes, and so to have Gold–a fiercely biased ambassador from Israel–speak after him was neither logical nor appropriate. From the point of view of two students who knew very little about the U.N.’s Gaza report going into the event, we felt that the forum served as a wonderful source of information, and watching Gold and Goldstone present their differing under-standings of the report was a great learning experience. It is over-ambitious for anyone to expect that the result of the two-hour forum would be for the speakers to come to some sort of a conclusion, or even “find common ground,” as The Hoot calls for. In last week’s panel each party presented its viewon the report, along with the protes-tors who peacefully presented their point of view as well. The forum produced many interesting ideas and many “truths,” which The Hoot so eagerly searches for, did come out. The brief presentation achieved its goal, which was to engage the audience in an exploration of ethics and principles, after having established the facts of the re-port, and the controversial “truths” which arose will not disappear simply because the event is over, nor must it be the “last chance for the Brandeis community” to discuss these issues. We are just getting started.

~ Elly K., 2013 and Eve M., 2013

Letter to the Editor

An article printed last week entitled “Maestro of dis-sent: Campus media should cover competitive academic clubs” incorrectly identified Andrew Husick as a Hoot col-umnist. Aditionally, Andrew Husick and Jack Bouchard made the quarterfinals, not the octofinals, and came in second, not fifth at the Debate Team’s tournament at Smith College.

6 The Hoot November 13, 2009

F E A T U R E S

Having graduated 35 years ago this May, Thomas Fried-man ‘75 is not only one of Brandeis’ most famous alum-ni, but also one of the world’s foremost columnists, journal-ists and authors.

“Tom Friedman changed the way America views the world, so it’s only fitting that we honor him,” said Donna Lein-wand, the club’s president.

According to the Press Club’s Web site, “each year the National Press Club honors a journalist for his or her life-long contributions to the pro-fession.”

Friedman, who transferred to Brandeis in his junior year, majored in Mediterranean studies with a focus on Arabic

and the Middle East – simi-lar to the current Islamic and Middle Eastern studies ma-jor. He chose to transfer to Brandeis after speaking with one of his older sister’s friends.

“[The decision] wasn’t any-thing really scientific,” Fried-man said. “I had a friend of one of my older sisters (we’re from Minnesota), and he had really liked [Brandeis], I sort of ad-mired him, and that was one reason. The other one, vaguely, [was] I thought it would be a fun place to study about the Middle East.”

Though he’s an acclaimed journalist now, Friedman nev-er took a journalism class at Brandeis, feeling that one class he took at his hometown high school in St. Louis Mo. was more than enough.

“I had a legendary high

school journalism teacher… Abby Steinberg. I took her journalism course, the great-est, and that’s the only journal-ism course I’ve ever taken or needed,” Friedman said.

During his years here, Fried-man only wrote a few Op-Ed pieces for the Justice, and con-centrated on his studies.

“I had a wonderful art his-tory teacher, Elaine Loeffler. She taught a wonderful ap-preciation of art of Greece; I loved her course. I took a great course with Prof. Brow, in Marxism and Ben Halpern was a great historian of Zionism and [also] my advisor,” he said. “I had great experiences with all of them; they all enriched my education in very different [ways].”

Friedman always had a vague idea that he would go into di-

plomacy or journalism but concentrated primarily on his grades until he got into gradu-ate school. He attended St. An-thony’s College at Oxford on a Marshall Scholarship where he received a Master’s of Philoso-phy in Middle Eastern Studies.

After graduate school Fried-man applied to both the Asso-ciated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI), feeling that it was the fastest way to reach his passion of the Middle East.

“Quite honestly I saw [ap-plying] as the quickest way to get out there and to be able to engage with the kind of raw re-ality of it, so it was really for that purpose,” he said. “I could have easily gone into academ-ics or diplomacy, but journal-ism seemed the quickest way to get out and really get im-mersed in the area, and I chose that route.”

The AP had no job to offer Friedman when he applied, but UPI was another story.

They offered him a job and he “got out [to Lebanon] pretty quickly.”

After a stint as a foreign cor-respondent for the New York Times, Friedman would later became a Times columnist, something he saw as the logical next step in his journey.

“I always had a thing for opinion writing, and it was just a way to evolve as a writer,” he said. “I’d felt I’d already done everything that I’d wanted to do: daily reporting, being a foreign correspondent for the NYT [etc.]. There wasn’t a heck of a lot left for me to do. It was a new challenge and it’s one I’ve enjoyed.”

Having had such an exten-sive career as a journalist, Friedman certainly has a lot of articles to look back on and be proud of. Yet, out of all his works, Friedman believes the three that have had the great-est impact and of which he is proudest were the three pieces that won him the Pulitzer: but not for the prize.

The first piece of writing is his real-time recreation of the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1982, for which he won the ini-tial Pulitzer.

Next is a series he wrote while in Beirut: “I did a di-ary of my summer in Beirut, and it’s one of the things I won the Pulitzer Prize for. It really captured better than anything some of the bizarre things I saw that summer…it may be the single best article that I’ve

ever written in my whole life, my absolute favorite, a diary of the summer of 1982, August-September.”

Finally, his columns follow-ing the 9/11 terrorist attacks, (responsible for Pulitzer num-ber three), were also among his most personally meaningful.

Although Friedman has had much success and happiness as a journalist, he has also faced challenges that characteristi-cally come along with the job. The most difficult yet as a writer was his choice to sup-port the Iraq war.

“The biggest and hardest call I ever had to make as a colum-nist was whether or not to sup-port the Iraq war, which I ended up doing, but not for Weapons of Mass Destruction reasons but for democracy reasons. And it was a very hard call and it was one that upset many of my read-ers, many of them to this day, but I had my reasons and [stuck to them] through thick and thin,” he said. “It would have been easier there to not support it; I would have saved myself a lot of grief… I wouldn’t say I re-gret it, but it was certainly the most painful.”

Reflecting on his past awards and the upcoming Press Club award, Friedman expressed his gratitude for the honors his peers have bestowed on him.

“There’s nothing better than to be recognized by your peers, so that’s a great thing. So it’s both a great recognition, but also of course a lot of pressure. You have a reputation you have to live up to [and] you have to keep up you work,” he said.

Although he’s grateful for the awards, Friedman says they’re just extra icing on the cake. Af-ter all, he prefers to take it one step at a time.

“They’re great things, but I’m not really ever in this for the awards. I really only focus on frankly what my column for Wednesday [is] going to be about,” he said.

He may be good at focusing on the short-term deadline ahead, but Friedman is also a man who likes to look ahead to the long-term, and said he wor-ries about the current state of journalism from time to time. The lack of a clear economic picture of where the newspa-per decline will end concerns Friedman, and he said he can see the effect of this decline in his own place of employment, the New York Times. Recently,

An interview with Brandeis University’s most recognized alum

“I love newspapers, I love newspapering, I love news- rooms, I’m a newspaper junkie.”- Thomas Friedman

BY DESTINY D. AQUINOEditor

PHOTOS BY Max Shay/The Hoot

See CONTINUATION, p. 3

November 13, 2009 F E A T U R E S The Hoot 7

Friedman said, the paper laid off 100 people.

Looking to the evolving face of journalism, Friedman says he thinks the blogosphere is a won-derful addition to society since a more informed public is always for the best; however he warned against putting too much faith in this new platform.

“I don’t think [the blogo-sphere] can substitute for the kind of journalism the Times does, or the Chicago Tribune does, or the LA Times does or the Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal. But both can be helpful,” he said.

Friedman said he has the same advice for future jour-nalists that he would have had 20 years ago if you asked him: “Write write write, get printed…it doesn’t matter if it’s your neighborhood shop-per, The New York Times, The Hoot, the Justice or The Bos-ton Globe, it doesn’t matter, write and get printed. Be able to develop an archive of your stories that show your own growth and development.”

“What I can’t tell you is where

you’re going to get that journal-ism job. I know there will be a demand for journalism, because people need to have the news, but what I can’t tell you is what the outlet is going to be,” he said. “I know that if you develop your skills, if you’re a great writer, if you’re a good reporter and you can develop a portfolio of ar-ticles that demonstrate that to someone, there will be a job for you out there.”

Friedman said he encourages young people to pursue what they love because it will pay off in the long-term – even if it won’t literally pay off in eco-nomical terms

“I’m a big believer in it, and it’s a cliché, but it’s true, do what you love, because you’ll always love what you do,” he said. “A hundred percent of people who love what they do are happy, and they’re well re-warded, whether financially or emotionally, and I did what I loved and therefore I brought an extra passion to it, and you just never know what’s going to happen.”

“I love newspapers, I love newspapering, I love news- rooms, I’m a newspaper junkie.”- Thomas Friedman

Friedman @ Brandeis — Through the years

THIS THING (from p. 1)

MEET THE PRESS: Above: Friedman discusses his first book“ From Beirut to Jerusalem” at the Miami Book Fair in1990.

Right: The cover of Brandeis alum Thomas Friedman’s latest book, ”Hot, Flat, and Crowded.” The book, published in 2008, discusses the effects of climate change on globalization.

Below: Friedman last came to Brandeis on a book tour for “Hot, Flat, and Crowded” last fall. In his speech, Friedman outlined the book for students.

Bottom Left: A clipping of a Brandeis-made advertisment following Friedman’s appointment as a five year alumni term trustee to the University.

Top Left: A clipping of a Justice article concentrating on Professors’ opinions of Friedman and his recently received Marshall Scholarship. PHOTOS COURTESY Stephen J. Whitfield/The Hoot

PHOTOS COURTESY Stephen J. Whitfield/The Hoot

PHOTOS FROM internet source/The Hoot

PHOTOS FROM internet source/The Hoot

PHOTOS BY Max Shay/The Hoot

8 The Hoot F E A T U R E S November 13, 2009

This JBS will focus on how the environment influences the health of individuals, and the role social justice plays in environmental health. Students will be studying in the community by working with several agencies in both Waltham and the Greater Boston area.

In the classroom, students will explore the background necessary to complete their fieldwork efficiently, according to the proposal sub-mitted and approved by professor Laura Goldin. (AMST)

“Students will explore the law, policy, science, history and social impacts of current environmental health issues challenging individuals, families and communities today,” the proposal reads. “We will focus on low-income, immigrant populations, and challenges ranging from exposure to contaminated water and food to dealing with the effects of climate change. Students will become involved first-hand with the topics studied through field trips and visiting speakers, discussions with the stakeholders themselves, field observation, research, writing and reflection.”

Students will work in the Waltham area with the Waltham Alliance to Create Housing’s “Tenant Advocacy Clinic,” in collaboration with the Boston College Law School Legal Assistance Bureau and Greater Boston Legal Services. Students will become trained advocates at the Advocacy Clinic, meeting with clients to provide legal assistance and knowledge regarding issues the community is facing and the relation-ships between housing and toxic exposure.

Through classroom instruction, students will become skilled at monitoring, analyzing and documenting potential hazards in homes through the use of specific equipment. This will prepare them for the fieldwork they will be doing. Goldin is currently working with many agencies to create partnerships geared towards their needs for the summer.

Goldin stressed the mutual benefits of the program in an e-mail message to The Hoot.“I would really like students to focus on the community engagement of this program and how it can be rewarding for both them and the

community,” she wrote.

In conjunction with the Shuster Institute for Investigative Journalism this JBS will explore a problem with the current criminal justice system: wrongful conviction.

Through classroom exploration of basic criminal procedure, including the constitutional laws associated with criminal cases and post conviction options, students will learn the ins and outs of the legal system. They will also study specific cases and evaluate and research what can be done to right them.

All three classes in this JBS are classes already offered in the curriculum, but their topics will be redirected to bet-ter fit the JBS theme.

The JBS will also include an internship that will allow students to research and discuss cases, and possibly even attend courtroom proceedings. In class, students will also spend a large amount of time discussing and examining documents pertaining to a specific case they will be working on.

Unlike other JBS programs, this JBS is specifically geared towards students majoring in Health, Science, Society and Policy (HSSP), and will allow students to complete four of their required course for the major.

Also unlike other JBS programs, two of the three classes that will be offered– HSSP 100: Introduction to Epide-miology, Biostatistics, and Population Health and HSSP 102: Global Perspectives on Health –are already part of the existing curriculum.

The program would also include trips to local Boston Healthcare institutions as well as guest lectures and focus on a preparation for the intense internship over the fall semester. It is already a requirement of the HSSP major to partici-pate in an internship, however, the JBS would allow a student to have a double-credit internship that would include the internship class and an independent research course.

The internship would be an expected component of the JBS and will be selected for the list of HSSP priority intern-ships or chosen by the student and then approved. The student could choose to complete their internship in their hometown.

Inside Criminal Law: Restoring Justice to the System

Environmental Health and Justice

Health and Society Field Semester

The Horstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program, with the assistance of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies and the Steinhardt Social Research Institute, will operate a JBS focused on the American Jewish Community as a whole.

This JBS will run similarly to a graduate program, offering undergraduates an opportunity to work with faculty and two research centers. According to the proposal submitted by Professor Len Saxe of the Heller School, “Understanding the American Jewish Com-munity aims to infuse an intensive undergraduate seminar with the academically rigorous and contemporary research and policy environments in which the Cohen Center and Hornstein Program routinely operate. These are exciting, relevant, and integrated learning models that change the world, and fit the university’s goals of education for social justice and global citizenship. This JBS program is designed to have each of its three courses overlap, and build coherently one to the next.”

Classroom sessions will allow for students to discuss broad concepts regarding religious and cultural issues. In addition the profes-sors are currently working on a set of field research projects that will take place towards the middle of the JBS session. After the field research is conducted through interviews supervised by research center staff, students will meet with their advisors and professors to discuss and write research reports. Students will then be expected to create an oral presentation of their findings and present them at a public presentation at the culmination of the program.

There are no prerequisites for this JBS, thought it is meant to interest humanities students and specifically any majors that focus on cultural and social discovery such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, history and Near Eastern & Judaic studies.

Understanding the American Jewish Community

JBSSneak:By Destiny D. Aquino

Peek

November 13, 2009 F E A T U R E S The Hoot 9

Only available to students who have taken the first three computer science classes in the major sequence, this JBS will also re-quire a fall internship. Unlike other programs, this may be a JBS program that master’s students are interested in as well.

According to the JBS Web site and the proposal submitted by Professor Tim Hickey (COSI), “The goal of this JBS will be to teach the fundamental concepts behind database management and Web-based application development and to combine this theory-based curriculum with an extended experiential component in which the students put these ideas into practice, both in a project of their own design and in a full-time fall internship.”

In an email to the Hoot, Hickey elaborated: “We’re planning for a ‘startup feel’ for the course, where students and faculty are fully engaged for eight weeks rapidly learning the conceptual materials (Web services and mobile apps) and applying that knowledge to build interesting and useful projects.”

During the fall internship, students will take an independent study in which there will be a reading list related to their intern-ship, as well as a LATTE-based component where all students completing their internships will respond to questions posed by the professor in addition to commenting on responses by other students.

This JBS is geared towards students with an interest in both journalism and politics. While the focus will be on report-ing skills needed for reporting politics, the program will allow students to explore the inner workings of the Massachu-setts Governor’s race, the state budget and other political and policy matters that occur over the summer.

Students will also have the opportunity to go into Boston communities and view first-hand the effects of decisions made on Beacon Hill, allowing them to understand the ramifications of the issues they are covering.

According to the approved proposal submitted by Professor Eileen McNamara (JOUR), “In addition to developing a deeper understanding of the journalistic challenges of covering complicated policy issues and campaign strategies, students will acquire critical skills in research, interviewing and writing on deadline.”

In addition to writing shorter news-style pieces, students will write longer magazine-style pieces in a group environ-ment that will allow them to collaborate and develop their skills of writing in a narrative form.

Classroom instruction for this JBS will be concentrated towards the beginning of the program in order to prepare students for their time in the field. Required reading will also help to prepare them with background information and the basics of political reporting so that they may be a more informed reporter.

The JBS is geared toward students with a strong passion for journalism. The Journalism Program hopes that taking classes over the summer will free up students to take full-time internships at newspapers and magazines during the semester.

This is the only creative arts focused JBS for this summer. It allows a student to write, direct and star in a personal essay. This would be a narrative of self-reflection.

There is a prerequisite of Introduction to Theater (THA2A) and Acting: The Vocal/Physical Connection (THA4A), or equivalent practical personal experience to be evaluated by the department.

According to the JBS Web site and the proposal submitted by Adrianne Krstansky (THA), “The writer is struggling with a question, challenges conventional forms, exposes something of him/herself and speaks from personal [experience]. The essay is not meant to expose or judge others, is not political or didactic in nature, nor the author speaking from a place of authority. The author speaks from a place of self-revelation, questioning and vulnerability.”

The class time will focus on developing the tools and techniques needed to create the final piece, which will be a performance of the created essay. Assignments, such as creating smaller essays of others’ stories through an interview as well as participating in a theater lab, will develop the background necessary to create a won-derful final project. The program may also include a guest artist.

Ideally the pieces will be performed at a public festival as a culmination of the JBS program. Students may also use their work from the JBS as a basis for a theater thesis. This program would also be open to students outside of the Brandeis community.

This JBS is geared toward anthropology majors and minors. It would allow a classroom experience focusing on the tools needed to conduct an independent research project through fieldwork; this could also include working with human sub-jects.

The JBS would meet for the first five weeks in the classroom session and then once a week as a group and also indepen-dently with the professor to discuss the progress of their research project. Students will be accepted to the program on the basis of their proposed project, however, in case some of these projects do not come to fruition the professor is prepared to have backup projects.

According to the JBS Web site and the proposal submitted by Elizabeth Ferry (ANTH), “In addition to completing 12 credits of coursework within anthropology (which can count towards the Brandeis major or minor), students would par-ticipate in a video JBS symposium that would be circulated to the Brandeis community and/or on YouTube. This would give them the opportunity to show their work to a broader audience.”

Some students may also choose to use this research as a basis for their senior thesis. Most of the research will be con-ducted in Waltham or Boston, although accommodation may be made for highly independent and dedicated students who wish to do their research out of the area. In this case, the students would communicate with the professor via email and LATTE. This program will also be open to students outside of Brandeis.

Ethnographic Fieldwork

Web Services, Mobile Apps and Cloud Computing

The Beacon Hill Summer

Collaborative Theater and the Theatrical Essay

On Nov. 6, Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe approved eight Justice Brandeis Semester (JBS) programs for. Below is an overview of the JBS programs that have been approved for summer 2010. Specifics about the programs, such as classes that must

be created, are still being finalized.JBS is an opportunity for students to develop close working relationships with professors and gives them hands-on experience in their field of choice, en-

abling students to show future employees that they can shine in a real world atmosphere, as well as in the classroom. JBS programs are meant to interest students who either major or minor in the subject of the program, but all students are encouraged to apply regardless of their academic concentrations. A JBS summer program will supply a student with at least 12 credits and can fulfill certain requirements for various departments.

Each JBS can accommodate, and therefore accept, a different number of students, although the estimated range is between 10 and 20. JBS programs are meant to offer immersion learning in small groups where students and professors can interact on an individual level and, ideally, create life-changing experiences.

Applications for JBS will be similar to a study abroad application, and will include an essay and faculty recommendations.

GRAPHICS BY Ariel Wittenberg/The Hoot

I M P R E S S I O N S14 The Hoot November 13, 2009

The release of the controversial Goldstone Report has once again focused the world’s attention on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The true nature of this conflict is fairly muddled depending on the bias of the particular news outlet.

There are some who purport that Israel utilized a policy of collec-tive punishment in an attempt to destroy Palestine, during its latest offensive. Others state Israel was simply offering a proportional re-sponse to the rain of rockets that rocked northern Israeli towns dur-ing the 2009 Gaza War.

Heated debates erupted in politi-cal forums across the world about how to react to this conflict. The Goldstone Report was the United Nation's attempt to shed some light on the matter. Unfortunately, the report only further complicated the situation. I cannot attest to the factuality of the report itself, but the fact that it was initially only tar-geted at investigating Israel for war crimes certainly would appear to belie any chance of impartiality.

Obviously, both sides of the de-bate have relevant points. The Is-raeli response to the Palestinian rocket fire was somewhat dispro-portionate in the amount of de-struction it wreaked in Gaza. How-ever, one has to realize that constant bombardment of a nation by any organized group will generally lead to that nation fighting back.

Also, there are the conflicting reports of whether Hamas used hu-man shields or whether Israel spe-cifically targeted civilians. Natural-ly there are reports of brutality on both sides, but I’m not here to talk about any of these investigations.

Regardless of what you believe on the matter, the cause of this con-flict will never truly be relevant in its resolution. Israel and Palestine, for better or for worse, find them-selves at each other’s throats, and no amount of finger pointing will solve the problem. I believe everyone with any opinion on this situation would agree that peace is nowhere in sight. This is the problem I will try to address.

Now, the question of how to cre-ate peace between the Israelis and Palestinian is a quandary that’s vexed a myriad foreign policy ex-ports. I will not pretend to offer a quick fix—I’m merely presenting a practical solution that I believe, if implemented, could steadily erode the foundations of this senseless bloodshed.

My plan is quite the antithesis of current policy suggestions on the issue. Firstly, I believe that Israel should provide more humanitar-ian aid to Palestine than it currently does. The state of the Palestinian people is currently deplorable and this leads to insurrection that can only favor Hamas. The second part of my suggestion would involve Is-rael lifting the blockade on Palestine and instead investing infrastructure there to bolster its economy.

Some may deride this solution as a pointless gesture which will only waste Israel’s time and money, while others will criticize it as miss-ing the heart of the matter. How-

ever, I believe that the extremism in Palestine is based largely on the lack of economic stability there, along with the Palestinian perception that Israel is isolating it via the blockade.

The Palestinians believe that Is-rael is trying to drive it into the ground through its blockade. Israel claims that this is simply a precau-tion against Hamas. By dropping the blockade, Israel could foster at least some economic development in the currently depressed Pales-tine.

After lifting the blockade, hu-manitarian aid is the most pressing part of the plan, as time is of the es-sence. Thousands are suffering in Palestine and this much-needed aid would not only save these people, but also strengthen the relation-ship between the two states and hopefully in some way repair much of the damage incurred from the fighting.

Meanwhile, with humanitarian and economic aide rolling in, the people of Palestine would get a clear message that Israel does indeed care about its neighbor. This would help Israel, as Palestinians who believe Israel is helping rather than hurting Palestine will be far less likely to en-gage in violence (i.e. firing rockets).

This would also help defeat or at least weaken Hamas, as an extrem-ist organization is not propped up by times of economic prosperity. The reason that the Palestinian peo-ple are buying into such an extrem-ist ideology is mostly because they have nowhere else to turn. One can raise countless examples of how poverty leads to terrorism.

Infrastructural investment would not only spur a more stable Pales-tine, but also help tie the two states closer together. If Israel and Pales-tine could develop a profitable eco-nomic relationship, it would help forge better relations between the two. Today, the economic relation-ship the two states share is not mu-tually profitable. If my solution is implemented, this future would be inevitable.

Of course, the obvious question for this plan concerns how this would stop the violence.

To the Israeli supporters, I would state that this would strongly lessen the chance of violence. The idea of basically isolating the Palestin-ian people will only strengthen the Palestinians’ perceptions that the Israelis truly hate them and po-lice actions will only create more animosity. One does not generally defeat terrorists through military campaigns alone.

Currently, no matter what your opinion is, you cannot deny public support for Hamas (in Palestine) higher because of Israel’s military approach. If Israel took this more humanitarian approach, it would be much harder for Hamas to re-cruit others into its hardliner ideol-ogy and harder for it to draw world support.

Please don’t misinterpret this so-lution as involving Israel adopting pacifism. If it is attacked, it should still respond. However, much more moderation should be employed in responses (a massive offensive will most likely create more members of Hamas than there were before).

There is no need for complete in-vasions of Gaza—simple precision strikes have been proven to be a much more effective and much less costly (both in terms of human life and expenditure) way to uproot ter-rorists.

Also, if precise military action was taken in addition to the hu-manitarian and infrastructural aid, much of the negative effects on Palestinian perception of Israel could be avoided. Hamas’s main recruiting tool is the image of an Israeli tank rolling into Palestinian territory and inevitably killing in-nocent civilians. However, if pre-cision strikes were employed, and aid was immediately delivered by Israel to fix any collateral damage, the negative externalities associated with such strikes would be greatly lessened.

In addition, if Hamas continued attacking Israel after this plan was adopted, they would be condemned worldwide, as well as by their own people. Today, their actions are condemned but the responses by Israel always overshadow the initial acts of violence. Eventually, Hamas would lose all legitimacy as it would literally be undermining the main force of economic recovery in Pal-estine.

Just in case one thinks this solu-tion is too heavily predicated to-wards Israel’s wellbeing, I would propagate that this solution would provide a myriad of benefits for Palestine as well. The economic gains alone would make this solu-tion a godsend for the Palestinians. In combination with humanitarian aid, this would transform Palestine from a poverty-stricken state to a thriving country. The net benefits for the Palestinians in this plan are enormous.

This is the main strength of this course of action—there is little chance of downside. In fact, the worst outcome of this solution would be the possibility that it could be a waste of money for the Israelis. In light of all the benefits I’ve laid out, there are no real harms in pursuing this solution.

At the very least, it will gain Israel more worldwide support and at least some more support from the Palestinians. Out of all the solu-tions proposed, this seems to have the most upside. As a final part of this plan, Israel should curtail the spread of new settlements in Pal-estine–these new establishments can only lead to conflict and are an anathema to peace.

Other solutions proposed today have little merit. Further expansive military solutions by Israel will not actually solve the problem but only satisfy it temporarily at best, and aggravate it at worst. Further par-titioning Israel would only increase tension between the two–the re-drawing of maps has gone on long enough.

Instead, this solution would sup-port a relationship between the two countries that doesn’t involve a blockade. Rather, the ideal end-point of this solution would have two economic partners with high GDP and low poverty rates. This

In the famous novel 1984 by George Orwell, we are introduced to a totalitarian society where everyone is brainwashed to believe everything their master tells them. One of the many things they believe is that they are in a constant state of war. Why? Because in a constant state of war the citizens become fearful and it becomes easier for the government to ex-pand—even more—their powers, raise nationalism and most importantly to distract the population from the problems at home. This may be some of the reasons why the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has once again sent troops to the border with Colombia.

Colombia is a stone in the shoe of Chávez’s revolutionary project for Latin America in many ways: They fight constantly against the FARC (Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia), which has been proven to receive funds from Venezuela; they are pro-capitalism; they have excel-lent relations with Israel (Venezuela with Iran, and they no longer have an Israeli embassy); they refuse to join the group of countries for the “Boli-varian Alternative for the Americas;” they returned their ambassador to Honduras (where Mr. Zelaya, a follower of Chávez ideals was ousted). The list goes on. Nevertheless, the history of these two countries goes back to Bolívar and beyond, these two countries were, are, and will remain broth-ers…and brothers do not go to war. According to recent polls 79.9 percent of Venezuelans disapprove of Chávez’s threats of war, despite a 40 percent approval rate of the government policies.

Of course, the diplomatic excuse from the Venezuelan government on this latest friction is the recent military agreement between Bogotá and Washington. For those of you living in a cave, the August negotiations took place on a deal that will give Washington a 10-year lease access to at least seven Colombian bases–three air force, two naval and two army—not only to continue the counter-narcotic operations on the region and to fill-in the gaps left by the eventual cutting of military aid to Colombia, but also to replace the recently closed military base in Manta, Ecuador. Although Chávez and his allies were the most vocal opponents of this deal, most of the region was also against the agreement, a fact that has certainly hurt the Obama administration’s credibility in the region in attempts to set a new path on U.S.–Latin America relations.

But this diplomatic excuse is worthless when taking into account the friction that began before this deal. Furthermore, the U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said there was no intention to expand the number of permanent personnel beyond the maximum permitted by Congress: 800 military and 600 civilian contractors. My main argument remains. Threats of war are a political strategy to divert attention from the national prob-lems. However, not all threats should be taken lightly. Last year Chávez promised to bring bi-national commerce to zero, and this year trade is half of what it was from last year. And although nothing may happen, military expenditure has increased substantially, slowly gearing the region for an arms race.

The scariest reality, however, is not the friction between Colombia and Venezuela, but rather, what Chávez is trying to hide back home. Years of lack of infrastructure investments and planning in the water company (Hi-drocapital) has led to water rationing in this tropical-country with one of the mightiest hydroelectric systems in the world. The same is true for elec-tricity, with power failures plaguing the country and forcing the govern-ment to control electricity consumption in certain regions, limit imports of air-conditioners (high-energy consumption) and other economic mea-sures. Such measures are a consequence of the lack of responsibility and rampant corruption from the officials. Instead of assuming responsibility, Chávez prefers to appear as an environmentalist by mocking the lifestyle of the Venezuelan people, especially the opposition. But this also is far from the truth, because energy-renewable projects are stagnant after the govern-ment decided to nationalize, and in turn doom, the few that were in pro-cess on a country with large solar and wind potential. Even more absurd is that one of the houses of the Minister of Electric Energy was photographed clearly showing how it steals electricity from the cables on the street. I do not know if I should laugh or cry.

In addition, poverty is increasing under this so-called socialist govern-ment. As a consequence, crime is rampant and corruption is insurance for criminals. Kidnappings happen daily, they are called “kidnap-express,” in which the victim gets kidnapped and released in a couple days after the ransom is paid. The amount of crime is such that one of the chief organiz-ers of “Safe Caracas” was murdered by criminals who stole his weapon and vehicle while he was heading to work on the project to keep Caracas safe.

I do believe that there are some great projects that Chávez has done to help the poor and improve the social welfare. Sadly though, his govern-ment is filled with corruption and most of the projects end-up bankrupt, inefficient, or in some cases never materialize. This week, we remembered the fall of the Berlin wall. What we should learn from this is that a totali-tarian state that attempts to control most of the economy will fail. Instead of raising fears of war or pointing fingers at others, Chávez should accept responsibility and concentrate on the actual problems that Venezuela is facing. See PEACEFUL SOLUTION, p. 15

BY LEON WIENEditor

Parity for peace: Solving the Middle East crisisThe Self Shelf

BY ALEX SELFColumnist

Brothers don't go to war with brothers

November 13, 2009 I M P R E S S I O N S The Hoot 15

Give a hand to the House of Rep-resentatives.

By a vote of 220-215, the House boldly went where no Congress has gone before on Saturday, approving the greatest overhaul of the health care system since the inception of Medicare over four decades ago.

Democrats who supported the measure hailed the Affordable Health Care for America Act of 2009 as “historic,” pointing out that in the long history of American health care, we have never been this close to a system that actually works for everybody.

No kidding. As far as real re-form is concerned, members of the House could have passed a bill written in wingdings and still have surpassed the work of many of their predecessors. So perhaps calling the thing “historic” is a bit of a given. My question is: Are the specific provisions in the bill the kind of rules that we need to govern health care?

My answer? Yes and no. First, let’s take a look at some of

the bill’s brighter spots: It contains a public option. Yes,

you read that right. Despite the claims of countless Republicans that the public option was “dead” and unworthy of further consid-eration, (and despite a collective “Woe is me!” from panicked, ready-to-cave Democrats) the bill calls for the creation of a government-run insurance plan to compete with existing private plans. With this in place, millions of Americans who previously could not afford or could not qualify for health insurance will now be able to get coverage.

The bill also calls for the creation of the health insurance exchange that was so frequently touted by President Obama and other Demo-crats during the campaign season. The idea is to create a pool of insur-ance-seeking customers for insur-ance companies to compete over, thereby forcing the companies to lower costs and improve services. It operates under the same prin-ciple that large businesses use to get deals on bulk health insurance for their employees, and it should, in theory, reduce costs for everyday Americans as well.

The bill even addresses the prob-lem of private health insurance companies treating their customers poorly. It prohibits insurers from charging a patient different rates of even denying coverage altogether simply because of that patient’s “pre-existing conditions.” This is

a particularly welcome change, considering that in the insurance world, the term “pre-existing con-dition” covers just about everything a person could ever imagine going medically wrong.

Finally, the bill has received a favorable rating from the Congres-sional Budget Office (CBO), or at least as favorable a rating as an of-ficially non-partisan federal agency can offer. The CBO found that over a period of ten years (2010-2019), the House bill, if enacted into law, would actually reduce the government’s yearly budget deficit by about $109 billion.

So far, so good. But like any piece of legislation, especially one this enormous (1990 pages), the bill is far from perfect.

The first problem is that all pub-lic options are not created equal. While many progressive Demo-crats would have preferred to in-clude a “robust” public option—that is, a public plan that pays for care at Medicare rates plus five percent—conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats pushed for a watered- down version that will instead negotiate payment rates with doc-tors and hospitals. This version, which was adopted into the final bill, will likely offer rates that are more closely tied to those of private insurance companies, thereby hin-dering its ability to compete with the industry.

Ironically, our friends at the CBO found that the watered-down public option will actually save the government less money than the “robust” version. And yet, the Blue Dogs championed the diluted plan as part of their effort to cut the final bill’s costs and make it more “bipar-tisan.”

(I never quite got the logic be-hind this move. Perhaps the Blue Dogs figured that if they weakened their plan so that it merely looked like it involved less government spending, they would make the bill more inviting to the government health care skeptics out there. Or perhaps, being more pro-business than the average Democrat, they liked the idea of giving the private industry more of an edge. Or per-haps they’re just stupid.)

But possibly the most ridiculous aspect of the bill came in the form of an amendment put forward by Representative Bart Stupak (D-MI). The Stupak Amendment prevents government money—ei-ther in the form of public option payments or subsidies for private insurance coverage—from being used to pay for abortions. This was put forward as a way to pick up a

few more votes in favor of the bill, by calming the hearts and minds of Congressmen who claimed to be “morally opposed” to taxpayer money going toward the funding of abortions.

(With that in mind, I've got a few quick questions: What if anti-war legislators were to band together and prevent government money from being spent on the military? What if states ended the use of the death penalty en masse? What if Representative Pete Stark (D-CA), Congress’ only openly atheist mem-ber, introduced legislation ending the tax-exempt status of religious organizations? Would any of that count as "moral opposition?")

Anyway, I'm beginning to di-gress. The point is, although this is certainly not the worst bill that could have been passed, it's not the best either. Regardless of what conservatives say about this bill sat-isfying top-secret liberal goals (of killing freedom, if you must know), we’re actually dealing with some-thing that is pretty moderate over-all. Most of the bill’s provisions are compromises that were worked out after weeks, if not months, of delib-eration. Of all the ways to reform health care, this should have been one of the least controversial.

And yet, take a look at the vote count. On the left, 219 Democrats supported the measure, while 39 voted against it (presumably Blue Dogs who were allowed to vote freely by Speaker Pelosi once it was certain that the bill would pass). On the right, 176 Republicans voted no, leaving only Represen-tative Joseph Cao (R-LA) to brave the inevitable storm of right-wing public opinion and vote yes. With these numbers, you would think that they were actually voting on whether to rename the country the United Socialist States of America. (Actually, I think Glenn Beck men-tioned something like that…)

If it was that difficult to pass a bill like this in the House, I can only imagine what will happen when the Senate gets its 200 hands on it. Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) keeps telling the press that it will be “dead on arrival.” Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is threatening to filibuster. Countless other Demo-crats, yes, Democrats, are calling for the removal of the public op-tion and the insertion of even more anti-consumer, pro-health industry provisions.

Sounds like fun. Time for some heavy paraphras-

ing of Robert Burns: The best-laid health care plans of Congressional men are often cast astray.

Examining the House health care billBook of Matthew

On Thursday November 5, 2009, Justice Richard Goldstone and for-mer Israeli Ambassador Dore Gold faced off in an educational forum. Justice Goldstone proceeded with his presentation without a hitch. Un-fortunately, the same could not be said for Ambassador Gold. Around four minutes into his speech protesters disrupted him, standing up and refusing to sit even after being surrounded by the police.

Not only did the protesters disrespect Ambassador Dore Gold as well as Justice Goldstone, but they also represented everything that is wrong with the peace process. They represented the lack of willingness—on not just the Palestinian side but the Israeli side as well—to openly listen to one another. In this case they claimed their protest was symbolic of their lack of representation in the forum. Yet the signs they wore on their bodies did not represent that at all. Some signs had names of children who died during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, but other signs read, “Hold Israel Accountable”, “Where is justice for Palestine?” and “Human Rights violations stemmed from the Holocaust.” To use the Holocaust to imply that Israel committed war crimes is extremely insensitive and degrading to the six million who perished because of hatred.

These protesters demanded a Palestinian voice, but, to quote Dore Gold, “If you had invited Palestinians you would have to make a choice on who to invite, a representative of Hamas or a representative of the Palestinian Authority, Fatah.” Hamas is the governing body in Gaza and a noted terrorist organization recognized by the United States and the European Union, among others. The governing body in the West Bank is currently Fatah, a corrupt government that stemmed from the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization), which was once considered to be a terrorist organization led by Yasser Arafat.

It’s true that there wasn’t a Palestinian representative, but at the same time, Justice Goldstone was extremely critical of Israel in his report. This was an event that involved a discussion of the report in a forum where there was a top Israeli official there to give Israel’s side—a side that is seldom represented in the world, the U.N. and especially in the Goldstone Report.

It’s also important to stress that Israel did not target civilians or act with malice towards the Palestinian people just because of their reli-gious or ethnic denomination. The people of Gaza were not victims of “collective punishment” due to Hamas’ terrorist acts against Israel. They were victims of their own government that used them as human shields. Unfortunately, that is not true for Hamas. Over a span of eight years Hamas maliciously targeted civilians, firing Qassam rockets into Israeli towns on a daily basis. Where was Justice Goldstone’s voice then? Where were these protesters when the Israeli’s suffered? It’s obvious that not only did these protesters operate on a double standard, but so did the U.N. for years. When the Israelis suffered the world was silent. Their voices and cries for justice fell on deaf ears for eight years, nationally and internationally.

Ambassador Dore Gold was in no way unbiased, but he represented the passion and helplessness of the Israeli people. Even after he showed video evidence in his presentation, the close-minded group of people, the ones who had protested and demanded justice for the Palestinian people, left with that same mindset, completely unwilling to accept that Israel had done so much in order to avoid civilian casualties. These pro-testers had a complete disregard for the integrity of the event. They had a lack of respect for both Goldstone and Gold as well as for the audi-ence in its entirety. They wanted their voice to be heard by undermining others.

But I want my voice to be heard this way: In a respectable forum and through my appreciation for all those who have dedicated their time and efforts in the name of peace and justice.

BY BRET MATTHEWEditor

would inevitably help lower ex-tremism as economic prosperity has always been the enemy of fun-damentalists. Also, this solution would help turn the hearts and minds of Palestinians away from hatred of Israel as it would lessen the perception of Israel as an an-tagonist.

It’s time that Israel employed a different solution to this age old problem. Some would argue that the answer lies in negotiations. However, while the negotiation process could possibly bear fruit, there would be no harm in imple-

menting this solution as well. If anything, my solution would help the negotiations as it would allevi-ate tensions between the two.

The main problem with the sta-tus quo is the stagnation of Pales-tine. There will always be extrem-ism in Palestine as long as the miserable conditions within the state provide a breeding ground for insurrection.

By building up Palestine’s econ-omy, Israel could simultaneously build up relations with its belea-guered neighbor and provide a different ending to a story of vio-lence that’s repeated itself for the past six decades.

PARITY FOR PEACE (from p. 14)

A peaceful solution

BY SHIREL GUEZSpecial to The Hoot

Protests symbolic of ailing peace process

PHOTO FROM Internet source/The Hoot

16 The Hoot I M P R E S S I O N S November 13, 2009

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on Tuesday announced its support for an anti-discrimination ordinance that would provide homosexuals with protection from housing and employment discrimination. The ordinance was ultimately approved by Salt Lake City. Although the church had is-sued several statements in the past declaring that it would support such measures, so long as they contained robust religious freedom protections, this was the first time the influ-ential church actually threw its weight in fa-vor of a specific piece of legislation.

In the wake of Proposition 8, the LDS church has acquired a reputation as homo-phobic and hateful. Its members have been targeted for boycotts and terminated from jobs by purportedly liberal Jewish organiza-tions merely for being Mormon. Its meet-inghouses have been subject to graffiti and protests. A no on Proposition 8 advertise-ment hatefully depicted caricatures of Mor-mon missionaries entering to a couples house and ripping up their marriage license. A large advertisement campaign in the northeast warned that the ‘Mormons were coming’ to take away rights. These hateful tactics have to some measure discredited the gay rights cause and turned some potential supporters, such as myself, away.

Indeed, the results of this city ordinance as well as the election night contrast between the successful amendment in Maine taking away gay marriage and the successful amendment in Washington State granting robust domes-tic partnerships reveal that current feelings towards gay rights are much more nuanced than a simple divide of the world into a pro-

and anti-rights camp. Of course, there are some virulent homophobes and they do not have my sympathy, but contrary to the writ-ings of some such as Hoot Editor Bret Mat-thew last week, those that voted to oppose gay marriage do not merely need to ‘grow up.’ Indeed, they have some valid fears about the decaying state of marriage in society as well as legal protections for religious groups. Gay rights movements would be more successful if they were able to understand these fears and strive to show how their cause would actually help rather than hurt the stability of marriage.

It’s been noted that those most likely to op-pose gay marriage are likely to come from states with high divorce rates, single parent households or teen pregnancies. One can be cynical and use these measures as evidence of hypocrisy, or more realistically I think one can view the struggle over ‘traditional fami-lies’ as a representation of the failure between dreams and reality. Many rightfully want to stop the collapse of families and have, right-fully in my view, linked this goal with the need to return sacredness to the concept of marriage. We have become a culture where love is treated like a magic state of being rath-er than a spiritual relationship that requires hard work. Kids have all too often become a disposable commodity.

Somehow, voters in every state in the nation that has voted on gay marriage are convinced that changing the definition of marriage to include homosexual pairings would further dilute the meaning of marriage. It seems that they have grabbed on to this as some way to heal all of what is very wrong in reality and ‘protect the family.’ Yet, this seems to me to be a mistaken idea. Gay marriages bring no

more or less stability than heterosexual mar-riages, but allowing them certainly does more to promote cultural values of monogamy and stability than forbidding them. Indeed, con-servatives should be reminded that a genera-tion ago the gay rights movement rooted in the free love culture of the Castro district of San Francisco mocked the pursuit of mar-riage as a heterosexist delusion. The desire for marriage rights is profoundly a conservative one. Indeed, the gay rights movement should in my view focus less on the individual rights aspect of gay marriage and more on this rath-er traditional focus on stability. Voting down gay marriage will not end the high divorce rate or lower the teen pregnancy rate. Instead, it just makes things worse.

Likewise, while some of the catastrophic legal impacts emphasized by the campaign against gay marriage are likely overstate-ments, it is absurd to suggest that religious expression rights will not be adversely af-fected at all. Churches would not be required to perform gay marriages, but they might be required to lease out space to gay couples to perform their marriages, for instance. Since legalizing gay marriage, Canada has seen many cases of arrests and law suits for ac-tions that would clearly be considered legal under U.S. law. Yet, gay marriage is only at most a peripheral legal issue. We cannot al-low, as Canada has, expansive notions of ‘hate speech,’ and political correctness to take away individual freedoms. The disturbing trend of prosecuting hate speech is rightfully viewed as an ill portend for religious individuals that hold biblical objections to gay marriage.

The broader move towards mandatory tolerance thus rightful makes individuals paranoid and less likely to compromise on

matters of clear discrimination. Likewise, this is part of the reason why the distinction be-tween civil union and marriage is treated as so significant. It seems to many that the main reason that gay marriage, rather than civil unions, is pressed is not for varying rights, but in order to force acceptance. The civil rights language of the movement rightfully gives the impression that opposition to homosexu-als will soon become the equivalent of racism and carry the same legal consequences. Re-ligious individuals fear more than anything else being told that they can no longer ex-press their biblically based viewpoint freely in society without liability. We must make a promise and a commitment that acceptance and respect will not become mandated.

This brings me back to the referendums and Salt Lake City’s ordinance. The referen-dum in Washington and the vote in Salt Lake City have gained religious backing in large measure because legislatures in the state ex-pressly worked to protect religious protec-tions. The Maine legislation also was initially successful in passing because of attempts to do so, but fears of religious persecution were able to convince many to vote for the repeal referendum. Making it clear that religious speech and association ought to be protected is the kind of light that will disinfect some of the false rumors and allow voters to truly evaluate the costs and benefits of gay mar-riage. We can also see that it will take time for voters to fully evaluate these claims and come to these conclusions. Expecting instant re-sults and change will only result in additional feeling like the goal of a whole movement is to impose its ideas and values rather than the actually conservative goal of preserving strong families.

I really don’t want to write about health care. Partly because it's been done a billion times before, partly because it shouldn’t be my place to cover any issue which is dominating the political sphere, but mostly because there are a lot of crazy people just itching for a fight. So I am not going to write about health care. Instead I wish to explore a much more subtle issue: The law.

Amidst all of the news coverage of the health care bill narrowly approved by the House of Representatives this week: The newspaper articles, radio advertisements, television exposés, and a strange whooshing sound that may have been Ron Paul escap-ing back to the dimension from whence he came, I noticed a rather innocuous post by a friend of mine on Facebook. He wondered if, quite apart from the bill being a good or bad idea, a mandate by the government that people carry some form of health insurance was a legitimate exercise of state power. I shall not take a position on the bill, but I do believe that there are four ways to theoretically justify this government action.

As I understand it, this requirement func-tions as a necessary prerequisite to abolishing pre-existing conditions as a reason for denial of care. As we have all heard by now, a pre-existing condition is any sort of medical is-sue that can be used to deny health insurance coverage to a patient in need of care. It is a way to prevent people from buying insurance after they need an MRI or expensive drugs. It's the same reason you can’t buy auto insur-ance after you have had an accident, or flood insurance when your basement is half full of

water. The basis of insurance is purchasing risk protection in advance, a practice that should be a reasonable one.

The problem is that the premise of pre-existing conditions is being abused to deny coverage in legitimate cases. Patients found that the health insurance they had been buy-ing for decades suddenly did not cover them, mostly either for issues beyond their control, or unrelated to their current needs. In an at-tempt to eliminate pre-existing conditions as a reason for denial, the government has pro-posed that everyone must carry coverage in advance, or there would be nothing to stop someone from buying a policy after they get sick.

I think the first, and broadest justification for government mandated health coverage is basic social contract theory. All citizens give up certain rights in return for protec-tions by the government. It is reasonable for the government to act in accordance with what rights rational people would give up in return for other protections. Specifically, people seem willing to abandon their right to not have health insurance in return for bet-ter health care. Certainly this swap burdens some people more than others, but not many laws apply equally to all people. Although very theoretical and nebulous, the idea that people would give up this right to a govern-ment, at least in part, legitimizes this action.

The second, slightly narrower justifica-tion for this action is democracy. President Obama, a third of the Senate, and all of the members of the House of Representatives were elected in 2008. One of the key issues of that election was health care, and people voted on who their representatives would

be based on a number of issues, health care among them. Many of the proponents of this bill were sent to Washington D.C. specifically to reform healthcare. Exercising the will of the people is an important function of a re-publican government. Just because Glenn Beck starts crying, or yelling really loudly, or holding his breath until he turns blue, does not mean that there is no longer widespread popular support for this idea. Surely the le-gitimate role of government is to enforce the will of the people, and to promote the general welfare. To that end, an appropriate exercise of state power should be in accordance with the general will.

Third, I think that there is a legitimate case to be made that the insurance companies have not been competing, and have de facto been colluding with each other, which justi-fies some form of anti-trust reform. They all deny coverage in the same manner, and for the same reasons. Unfortunately health care is not a real “market” decision because people can not rationally decide not to have health care. (I should note: People could ra-tionally decide not to have health insurance, but only in a case where they are assured protection. Essentially, you cannot ask some-body to gamble with their life and expect a rational decision. Even people who claim to not want insurance still expect to be treated in an emergency room if hit by a bus). As a result, there is no length to which the insur-ance industry could go in the status quo that would cause people to not seek health insur-ance. The government has a legitimate role in protecting the people from corporations large enough and important enough to exert coercive power on the people.

Finally, and most importantly, the federal government is authorized to regulate com-merce among the several states in the Con-stitution. Congress is given the authority to make laws necessary and proper for carry-ing into execution the forgoing powers. Cer-tainly the health insurance industry is subject to congressional action. This part of the law seeks to remedy a commercial issue: The de-nial of coverage based on pre-existing condi-tions. The provision that requires people to carry insurance is a necessary prerequisite to curing that particularly harmful action in a manner that is not subject to abuse.

I believe that there is an argument to be made that health insurance carried by a single person (mandated by the government) is not interstate commerce. It sounds like a great ar-gument, and a usual fallback of pretty much anyone with a brain. It would logically, seem to be the case, but unfortunately, the court feels differently–and for some good reasons. The actions of a single citizen would affect the whole of a company’s insurance pool, an action which does not fall within any single state. Accordingly, the Supreme Court ruled in Wickard v. Filburn that actions taken by a single citizen within a state can have an effect on interstate commerce, and that the govern-ment can regulate them.

I am sure that as the government pro-gresses with its legislative process, more legal challenges will be mounted. These should be adjudicated based on their specific facts by the court. The important question for com-mon citizens should now become whether the congressional policies are a good idea, and how we should model a reformed health care system.

Special to The Hoot

BY DANIEL ORTNERColumnist

Maestro of Dissent

Opposing gay marriage does not a bigot make

MORE THAN THE GENERAL WELFARE

BY ANDREW HUSICKColumnist

November 13, 2009 The Hoot 17

S P O R T S

As the minutes ran down the Judges stepped up their offensive pressure. It paid off in the 88th minute when Corey Bradley ’10 made the final goal of his collegiate ca-reer off an assist by classmate Jamie Batista. Bradley was open in the box and after get-ting a pass from Batista, he knocked the ball into the lower right corner. Brandeis wasn’t able to tack another one on, however, and when the clock ran out they fell to the visit-ing New York University Violets 3-2.

The Violets struck first, getting on the board in the 27th minute. Brandon Hintz slammed a shot into the net from 20 yards out for an unassisted goal. It took Brandeis 25 minutes, but they got on the board shortly into the second half in the 52nd minute. Rookie Sam Ocel put up his second goal of the season off an assist by classmate Lee Russo. Ocel’s first shot was blocked by Violets keeper Marek Urbanski, but Ocel got the rebound and sent it home.

The Judges lead wouldn’t last for long,

BY HANNAH VICKERSEditor

Men’s soccer finishes season with a loss

though. NYU pulled ahead again 15 min-utes later. Violet Kyle Green ’13 took a shot in front of the net after Adam Fein ’12 sent the ball across the goal-mouth. Green got to the ball before Brandeis goalie Matt Lynch ’11 and put NYU in the lead by one.

The game-winning goal for the Violets came in the 76th minute. Hintz tacked on his second goal of the game off a cross from Fein and gave NYU a two goal lead.

Brandeis stepped up the pressure at that point and while Bradley connected with a little less than three minutes left in the game, the Judges weren’t able to get another goal. Bradley took a shot with 22 seconds remaining, but the ball went wide and end-ed his final season with three goals.

With the loss the Judges fell to 6-10-2 on the season and 1-5-1 in the UAA, put-ting them in seventh place in the league. As Head Coach Michael Coven has men-tioned all season, and this game epito-mizes, Brandeis was frustrated by numer-ous one-goal losses. Of the ten games they dropped, seven were decided by one goal. NYU finished with a 7-8-2 record overall, 2-3-2 in Association play, and tied for fifth in the UAA.

PHOTO BY Lien Phung/The Hoot

USING YOUR HEAD: Jamie Batista ‘10 looks on as rookie Matt Hauser goes head-to-head with an NYU player to get control of the ball.

PHOTO BY Lien Phung/The Hoot

BREAKAWAY: Jamie Batista ‘10 makes his way up the far side on a breakaway play.PHOTO BY Lien Phung/The Hoot

MOVING IN: Mike Silberstein ‘10 starts to move in on the ball as an NYU player clears it away.

PHOTO BY Max Shay/The Hoot

GOING FOR THE BALL: Jamie Batista ‘10 tries to move past the NYU defense with support from classmate Alex Zenerovitz ‘10.

18 The Hoot S P O R T S November 13, 2009

As the Judges return to the court after a record year last spring, the team seems ready for action. The women made it all the way to the Elite Eight in the NCAA Division III tournament for the first time in the program’s history, coming just short of the Final Four. Based on that perfor-mance as well as high expectations for this season, the Brandeis women’s basketball team has been ranked ninth in the country in the d3hoops preseason poll. According to the NCAA website, the Judges also hold the ninth spot in the USA Today/ESPN/WBCA Division III Coaches’ preseason poll.

The Brandeis women lost four players at the end of last season as Lauren Goyette, Cassidy Dadaos, Amanda Wells and Lau-ren Orlando all graduated. Orlando and Dadaos started every game in the 2008-09 season, as well as nearly every game in the previous season. Combined the two averaged 17 points per game. Wells also played in every game last season, coming off the bench to contribute an average of 3.8 points in each game with a .363 per-centage.

While those losses are certainly im-portant, Brandeis does have a number of great players returning to the team this year including co-captain guard Jessica Chapin ’10. Chapin received an honor-able mention in the All-America selec-tion last season, but was recently named a fourth-team pre-season All-American. She is currently second on Brandeis’ all-time career leaders list in trifectas with

BY HANNAH VICKERSEditor

Women’s basketball season preview121 and fifth all-time with 190 steals. Last season she set the single-season re-cord with 46 three-pointers.

Chapin is one of two returning play-ers who ranks in the top 10 for scoring, rebounds, assists, and steals in the UAA. Last season she led the Judges with an average of 14.1 points, 6.7 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 2.9 steals per game.

Classmate Lauren Rashford ’10 will be returning to the court as well for the first time since Feb. 1. Rashford started the first 17 games of the season before being sidelined due to a knee injury which she had surgery on during the off-season. As of Feb. 1 she had 44 assists and 21 steals on the season, in addition to averaging 8.1 points in each contest.

Guard Morgan Kendrew ’12 stepped in at that point to start the last 11 games of the season. Kendrew was the only rookie to play in every game last sea-son and averaged six points per game as well as putting up 31 assists, 15 steals and 80 rebounds over the course of the season. After she took over for Rash-ford she was third on the team with 8.1 points per game and 21 assists.

Another returning starter is guard Diana Cincotta ’11 who averages 6.9 points per game, 62 assists on the sea-son, and 21 steals. She also put up 31 three-pointers over the course of the year.

There are still holes that need to be filled on the team with the loss of so many front-court players. Co-captain and center Kasey Gieschen ’10 came off the bench in 23 games last season, while forward Amber Strodthoff ’11 played in

every game.In addition to

the strong return-ing players, the women also have six rookies on the squad. Guard Mi-cha Broadnax from Bowie, MD, guard Shakara Scott from Philadelphia, for-ward/center Sa-mantha Anderson from Johnsonville, NY, forward/cen-ter Courtney Ness from Norwich, VT, forward/center Angie Miller from Sicklerville, NJ, and forward Shannon Ingram from Flo-ral Park, NY. The size of the recruit-ment class will give Coach Carol Simon many options and some depth off her bench.

The Judges will take aim at their 5th straight NCAA Di-vision III bid through the guidance of Coach Simon, now entering her 23rd year as head coach. Simon has an overall record of 124-36 with the Judges, includ-ing five 20-win seasons. Before earning spots in the NCAA Tournament for the past four years she helped lead Brandeis to back-to-back ECAC Tournament championships in 2004 and 2005.

In October, Simon’s leadership was rec-ognized when she was inducted into the New England Basketball Hall of Fame.

Brandeis will open their season on the road against WPI on November 15 at 1 p.m. Last year the Judges beat them 67-54. Their home opener will be the Brandeis Tournament on November 20-21 when they will face Wentworth on Fri-day the 20 at 6 p.m.

PHOTO BY Max Shay/The Hoot

ON THE ATTACK: Co-captain Jessica Chapin ‘s ‘10 powerful presence on the court last season helped move Brandeis all the way through to the Elite Eight in last year’s NCAA Division III Tournament.

The Judges had a perfect week, shutting out both their opponents to finish off the regular season with a win and take the quarterfinal round of the Eastern Confer-ence Athletic Conference (ECAC) Division III New England Tournament.

In Saturday’s game against UAA rival the New York University Violets, the Judges needed just one goal to get the job done. Brandeis held an 8-7 shooting advantage in the first half, but was unable to get on the board. The game-winner came just over a minute into the second half when Mimi Theodore ’12 headed a cross from Melissa Gorenkoff ’10 into the net.

From that point forward the Judges were on the defensive, with the Violets ending the half outshooting Brandeis 12-4.

They posted five shots on goal in that stretch. Brandeis keeper Hillary Rosenz-weig ’10 had six saves overall for the 21st shutout win of her career. Two of those saves came just a minute apart. The final one of the game came in the 89th minute and with it Rosenzweig secured the win.

With the win Brandeis finished 9-6-3 overall on the season and 3-3-1 in UAA play. NYU fell to 9-8-1 overall and a dis-appointing 0-6-1 in the UAA. Later in the week the Judges learned that they are the top seeded team in the ECAC Tournament.

“We always hope to make the NCAA,”

Women’s soccer advances to semi-finals in ECAC

TournamentHead Coach Denise Dallamora said. “Our conference is tough, we tied for fourth, just short of accomplishing our goals.”

Brandeis took on the Castleton State College Spartans on Wednesday night and took them down 3-0 to move through to the semi-finals.

The eventual game-winner came in the 13th minute courtesy of Tiffany Pacheco ’11 off a cross from Gorenkoff.

The Judges tacked on another Pacheco goal in the 39th minute, this one with an assist from classmate Sofia Vallone ‘11. Vallone sent the ball through the defense where Pacheco took her shot and tacked another goal on the board.

In the 67th minute Brandeis added on the final goal of the game. Alison Maresca ’12 put the ball into the box where Kelly Doolittle ’12 put it into the back of the net before Spartans keeper Ericka Davis had a chance to respond.

Rosenzweig had four saves on the night for her 22nd career shutout and 37th win while Davis had 12 saves in the loss.

Brandeis will host their semi-final game against Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, ranked fourth, at noon on Saturday. MCLA defeated fifth-seeded Emmanuel 3-0 to earn their spot.

When asked about the team’s chances of a three-peat to take home the ECAC crown, Coach Dallamora was confident in the abil-ity of her players.

“We are a very good team, we know we can win it,” she said.

BY HANNAH VICKERSEditor

For about a year I have volunteered on Saturday afternoons at ACEing Autism, a non-profit organization that teaches tennis to young children with autism.

When I first signed up for the program, I didn’t know anything about autism, but I thought that the idea of helping young chil-dren learn to play tennis sounded like a fun way to give back to my favorite sport.

Last fall, I started helping out at the pro-gram during a time when I was very busy. Or, at least by my standards I was. It was my senior year of high school and I was busy with schoolwork, SAT’s, tennis tour-naments, and college applications. Yet for some reason I decided to fit another activ-ity into my schedule.

I realized very quickly not only was I able to help other children, but also the program provided an escape from my so called “hectic” life. It meant two hours on Saturday afternoons where all I had to do was run around with young kids and teach them the game I knew so well. It was an escape, a relief, a break from the everyday busyness and hurry of my life.

I enjoy the program because it is a chal-lenge, and for each kid it is different. For some, the goal is to get them hitting a few balls in a row over the net, and for others the goal is simply to get them to stand still and swing the racquet, even if they do not make contact.

One week last year, I spent 30 minutes out of the 45-minute clinic chasing the child around the court, calling his name, simply trying to get him to stand still, so I could give him directions.

As his father came out on the court to try

My experiences volunteering at ACEing Autism

to help me, it was then that I realized what he has to go through each day. He loves his son unconditionally, but clearly having a child with autism presents challenges to a parent. There is an enormous amount of time and attention that must be devoted to helping the child focus and pay attention.

And suddenly I realized that compared to these parents, my life really wasn’t that hectic. They have a lot more to deal with, and from what I can tell, they are doing a remarkable job raising happy and caring children.

I thought about what it would be like teaching those two 45 minute clinics 24 hours a day seven days a week, and realized that is what these parents live with. They are truly unbelievable people to be able to sacrifice so much time out of their own personal life so that their children can have the best experiences possible.

Each week that I go to ACEing Autism, I learn something new about the kid I am working with, and what helps them focus best. I try to teach them as much as I can about tennis and make sure that they have fun as well.

But it seems that they have taught me a far more important lesson. I have learned that my life is not nearly as busy as it seems compared to others lives in society, like their parents.

Most of the children at this program are too young to know what autism is, and clearly it doesn’t bother them. They run and laugh and play the entire clinic, and are forever grateful for what they have.

It seems they have far more to teach me than I can teach them. Maybe it’s time I stopped complaining about how busy I am.

Maybe it’s time to be grateful for what I have.

BY JON OSTROWSKY(Staff)

November 13, 2009 S P O R T S The Hoot 19

Saturday afternoons seem to be a time for college kids to rest. Some people sleep right through it, or if they’re up early, they go do something fun with friends like a trip into the city or some time at the mall. For both the men’s and women’s Brandeis tennis teams, Saturday is a day for something else: giving back.

At 4 p.m. while their peers might be catching a movie, these Brandeis students gather in Way-land to teach tennis to autistic children. The program, called ACEing Autism, was started by Richard Spurling and his wife Shafali Spurling Jeste, a pediatric neurologist who specializes in au-tism.

“She and I had always wanted to start a nonprofit,” Spurling told The Hoot, “and when she learned that many of her patients’ parents were driving all over to find pro-grams for their kids we decided to start to offer a tennis program for children with autism.”

“The Brandeis tennis players have been a great partnership for

BY HANNAH VICKERSEditor

Tennis teams work on ACEing Autism on the weekendsour program,” he added.

Along with other volunteers, the Brandeis tennis teams help run the clinics as tennis pros. Once they break off into small groups, each player usually has two or three kids. They focus on teaching the basics, which, as men’s captain Seth Rogers ’10 pointed out, can be quite difficult at times.

“Some of the lower functioning kids provide some more excite-ment,” Rogers said. “They will run around the courts in circles for 15 minutes straight, or put their foreheads on the handle of the tennis racquet and spin around in place until they get so dizzy they fall over.”

When things like that happen Rogers and the other players try to refocus the child to the task at hand and do their best to get them engaged in the game. “In most cases, by the end of the 45 minute session the child has hit some tennis balls and had a lot of fun,” he explained.

Not only do these children get to learn the game of tennis, but they work on their hand-eye co-ordination and improve their health and fitness. In addition to

the physical benefits the clinics also teach them social skills and help build their self-confidence.

“It is a program that is great for these kids on so many levels,” Spurling said

The benefits for the children are immediately recognizable. For Rogers and the other Brandeis students, it’s rewarding to see the results of their efforts. Being able to share something they’re pas-sionate about and see some of their love for the game come alive in these kids is one of the greatest parts for the team.

“Seeing these kids enjoy being active with other autistic kids and learning tennis basics is great, and what it’s all about,” Rogers said. “Also, ACEing is an outlet for parents who may feel frustration at times, which is completely un-derstandable when raising a child afflicted with an autism spectrum disorder.” As Rogers pointed out, autism is not something that merely affects the child, but also has a lasting impact on the family. Many parents with autistic chil-dren struggle to find programs for them to participate in as it can be difficult for some to par-take in sports activities with what

one parent called “typical peers.” There can be a real sense of frus-tration when their child is missing on out such a normal part of their development as learning a sport, but with ACEing Autism, they are given that chance.

“I see the excitement in her eyes when she runs onto the court and the pride in her face when she makes contact with the ball. As a parent, it gets me every time,” Mira Spiegel said in a testimonial on the program’s website. “Each week, ACEing Autism is help-ing us to get back a little piece of what we were so afraid autism had taken away.”

A new study from the Ameri-can Academy of Pediatrics’ jour-nal published in early October found that the rate of this disor-der is increasing, with an esti-mated one in every 91 children in the United States affected by the some form of autism. With num-bers like these, the importance of programs like ACEing Autism be-comes even more apparent.

While this is an organization currently only the Brandeis ten-nis teams are involved in, Spurl-ing encourages anyone inter-ested in learning more to contact

him. To do so please visit www. aceingautism.com.

“If there are other Brandeis stu-dents interested in volunteering with our program we ask them to come and view the program and also get in contact with the ten-nis team to learn of their experi-ences,” he said.

Through participating in the clinic, Rogers and the rest of the Brandeis team have gotten to bet-ter understand autism and see the change these children have made in their lives.

“ACEing has been an incredible experience for me,” Rogers said. “It makes me feel proud and op-timistic; proud of my teammates and the other volunteers who make this possible- that people can really get together and make a difference in others happiness.”

By giving back, Rogers has also learned to value what he has in his life. “I’ve become more aware of how fortunate many of us are, and what we have- that is the ability to play a varsity sport, hell to play a sport at all, and go to college, and simply be a member of the world who is able to perceive, hear, see, and feel so fully- is a gift. A very special gift.”

The Judges finished out their regular sea-son last weekend in Chicago in the UAA Tournament where they went 1-3 to finish sixth. They went on to be seeded second in the East Coast Athletic Conference (ECAC) Division III New England Championship tournament and faced Colby-Sawyer on Wednesday night. In a surprising turn, the Judges dropped the match 3-2 and were knocked out in the first round.

On Friday Nov. 6, Brandeis faced two of the toughest teams in the tournament: Em-ory and Chicago. Emory, the second seed in the UAA tournament, was the defending UAA and NCAA champions while Chicago was the seeded third for the weekend.

In the match against Emory the Judges fell in straight sets, 25-16, 25-21, 25-21.

BY HANNAH VICKERS AND SARAH BLOOMBERG

Editor & Staff

Volleyball team ends season with loss in first round of ECAC ChampionshipOutside hitter Paige Blasco ’11 led the of-fense with a .258 percentage and 12 kills. Blasco also had six digs. Twin sister and setter Abby Blasco ‘11 had 26 assists while Rookie libero Anna Homitsky had seven digs.

The Judges fell in straight sets for the second time that day when they faced hosts Chicago, though it was a much clos-er game. Each set came down to just two points which the Maroons squeezing by 25-23, 27-25, 25-23. Middle Blocker Nicole Smith ’11 paced Brandeis with a .562 per-centage with just one error in 16 attempts and 10 kills. Abby Blasco, Paige Blasco, and outside hitter Piera Carfagno ’10 each had eight digs. Abby also added 27 assists.

Brandeis came back on Saturday with an unexpected win over Carnegie Mellon in four sets, 25-13, 25-18, 27-29, 25-16. Paige Blasco dominated the play by putting up 20 kills and 11 digs for her 10th double-double of the season while sister Abby had

46 assists and 10 digs for her 14th double-double of the year. Bridget McAllister ’10 had no errors in 30 attempts in addition to 11 kills for a .367 percentage. With the win the Judges moved through to the fifth-place match.

The Judges were unable to keep their mo-mentum going after their win over Carn-egie Mellon and fell to Case Western Re-serve in five sets to finish in sixth place. The set scores were 25-22, 20-25, 25-22, 22-25, 15-12. Again, despite the loss, the Brandeis players performed well. With 42 assists, 12 digs, and 11 kills Abby Blasco recorded her first triple-double of her career. Paige Blas-co put up her second double-double of the day with 17 kills and 17 digs.

With the weekend Brandeis finished off their regular season at 18-16, 2-9 in UAA play.

The volleyball season ended Wednesday night with a loss to the Colby-Sawyer. The second-seeded Judges almost rallied back

from a two set deficit in the ECAC Division III New England Volleyball champion-ships, but they were not able to come past the seventh-seeded Chargers.

The Judges had a major obstacle to over-come without second-team All-UAA hitter Paige Blasco, who was out with a sore knee. Piera Carfagno ’10 had to play as setter as Abby Blasco was unable to serve as setter due to a sore foot. Because of these changes it took the Judges a while to settle into their grove, and by the time they got there it was too late.

Colby-Sawyer won the first two sets 25-15, 25-16; Brandeis answered with the next two 25-14, 25-16. In the fifth and final set the Judges were up 8-7 at one point, but the Chargers rallied back to win 15-10.

This was the last game of the season for the Judges. Carfagno had a career-high of 34 assists while McAllister had a season-high of 14 kills and 17 digs.

When people think of a catfight they tend to think of high school hallways, generally with some-one shouting, “You took my boy-friend!” When they think of hair-pulling, a soccer field usually does not come to mind. Unfortunately, this was exactly what happened last week in the Mountain West Women’s Championship game between the Brigham Young Uni-versity Cougars and the Univer-sity of New Mexico Lobos.

BYU was leading the game 1-0 when Lobos junior defender Elizabeth Lambert seemed to lose control. While fighting for posi-

BY SARAH BLOOMBERG Staff

Hair-pulling on the field garners national attentiontion a BYU elbowed Lambert, and she responded with a punch in the back. She followed with a lot of physical play; she was trip-ping and kicking other players. It looked a little more rough than usual, but nothing extreme.

Then Lambert crossed the line and did not look back. In response to a girl pushing her, Lambert yanked the BYU player, Kassidy Shumway’s, ponytail. She pulled so hard that Shumway’s head snapped back, and she fell to the ground. That somehow went unnoticed by the referees, but Lambert was not finished. Lam-bert kicked the ball into the face of a BYU girl who had just been tripped. For this Lambert finally received a yellow card. At the end

of the game all of her dirty plays did not matter as BYU won the game 1-0, and the Lobos season was over.

After the game, it was an-nounced that the New Mexico coach had suspended Lambert in-definitely. This was not a response from the NCAA, simply from the university. Lambert issued a state-ment where she apologized for her actions, saying they were un-called for and she let her emotions get the best of her.

In her statement Lambert said, “This is in no way indicative of my character or the soccer player I am. I am sorry to my coaches and teammates for any and all dam-ages I have brought upon them. I am especially sorry to BYU and

the BYU women’s soccer players that were personally affected by my actions.”

The apology is great, but it is one thing to let you emotions get the best of you and to play a little dirty. I do not think there is any-one who can watch the video of Lambert yanking this girl’s hair, or for that matter later slapping and punching another girl in there the head, and not think that is something much more serious happening. Shumway’s head does not just snap back; she completely crumples to the ground and does not move. It looks like a serious injury, and if the referees had seen the incident Lambert would prob-ably have been issued a red card and removed from the game.

Even with this apology there has been a massive amount of cover-age of the game. This is partially as it was nationally aired by ESPN. Whatever the reason women’s soccer has not gotten this much attention since Brandy Chastain ripped off her jersey in the 1999 Women’s World Cup. And it is even more unfortunate for the BYU players as their win against New Mexico, and their following wins, are overshadowed by Lam-bert’s personal actions. BYU went on to the finals of the Mountain West Championships, losing 1-0 to San Diego State. Even with the loss in the finals, BYU advanced to the NCAA Tournament where they play University of California- Santa Barbara Friday Nov. 13.

W E E K E N D

Saturday, Nov. 14, 11:00 p.m. - 2:00 a.m.Levin Ballroom.

W E E K E N D20 The Hoot November 13, 2009

What's going on at Brandeis?

5W!TS presents TOMB

For an interactive experience try TOMB, where you pretend to be an archeologist trapped in an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb, complete with the ghost of the pharaoh! Buy ticket for $20 ahead of time at http://www.-5wits.com/home.

Boston Jewish Film Festival

Hoot Comic Strips

Screw Your Roommate

Saturday, Nov. 14, 1:00 p.m. - 9:10 p.m.Ridgewood A Commons

Spotlight on Boston

For some fun, ethnic food, come join Rus-sian Club to cook and eat a traditional Rus-sian meal! For more information, email mkupfer@brandeis.edu

Can you draw and write comics? Want to see your work in print? Or do you know of any

exciting Brandeis or Boston events?

E-mail lelefko brandeis.edu

Sunday, Nov. 15, 1:00 p.m. Museum of Fine Arts

Sunday, Nov. 15, 12:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.Levin Ballrom

Have some fun this weekend at a carnival, brought to you by Student Events. You will find inflatables, foods and crafts.

The Game of Love and ChanceFriday, Nov. 13, 8:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.Saturday, Nov. 14, 8:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.Laurie Theater, Spingold

Editor's Pick: Backyard Wonderland

This Sunday come see the last day of the Boston Jewish Film Festival at the MFA. Films being shown this Sunday include To Life, The Tale of Nicolai and the Law of Return, How to Be: Be or Not to Be, and Within the Whirlwind. Tickets are $20 because it’s the closing night.

As part of Louis Jr. Weekend, set your room-mate up on a blind date for “Screw Your Roommate.” Or, if you don’t want to do the blind-date thing, just show up with some friends and have a fun night of dancing!

Sleazy By Matt Kupfer

Friday, Nov. 14, 1:00 a.m - 11:00 p.mSaturday, Nov. 15, 11:00 a.m - 11:00 p.m.Sunday, Nov. 16, 11:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.

By Ian Pricelaughingwarlock

Russian Club “Cooking Culture Night”

Humor is Dead By Xander Bernstein

Originally written by Marivaux, translated by Christopher Wadsworth, and now directed by Janet Morrison, The Game of Love and Chance is coming to Brandies. Tickets are $20, unless bought by Brandeis Students for $10, or other Brandeis affiliates for $15.