The Hoot predicts the Oscars

Best Picture Will win: “The Artist” Could win: “The Descendants” There’s little chance “The Artist” won’t win, as it has swept almost all the awards for which it has been nominated. It will become the second lowest-grossing Best Picture winner, which is unsurprising considering it’s a black-and-white silent film. Best Director Will win: Michel Hazanavicius, […]

View from the Top: Yael Katzwer

When I look back at my past three and a half years at Brandeis, a lot of things stand out. One thing that truly stands out to me is the differences I see between myself and a lot of my classmates. Often when I speak to people, they will tell me how all the way […]

Posse program supports student achievement

This academic year marks the 14th year that Brandeis University has worked with the Posse Foundation, which works with public high school students in urban areas that have great potential for academic achievement, founded in 1989 by Brandeis alumna Deborah Bial ’87. The Posse Foundation has joined up with 39 top colleges and universities in […]

Pests infest dorms, to students’ ire

In many residence halls across the campus, students have found themselves at odds with all manner of pests. They include but are by no means limited to spiders, flies, mice, beetles, cockroaches and the “East Bug.” East Bugs, otherwise known as house centipedes (scutigera coleoptrata), can most often be found on the first through fourth […]

Student misconduct rarely brings consequences

Official crime reporting at Brandeis highlights only a trace amount of severe misconduct in recent years, which the university routinely deals with internally, rarely referring incidents to outside law enforcement. “We’re like our own little city here,” Associate Dean of Student Life Maggie Balch said of Brandeis’ student conduct management. Crime itself is very rare […]

Coping with tragedy, one year later

One year after a student suicide rattled the Brandeis community, Feb. 15 holds a new meaning for Manny Zahonet ’14. On his birthday last year, Zahonet returned to his first-year residence hall to find district attorney investigators questioning students and chaplains escorting others to the Psychological Counseling Center in the early morning hours. For Zahonet, […]

Clayborne Carson accepts Gittler Prize

Professor Clayborne Carson of the African-American Studies Department at Stanford University came to Brandeis on Tuesday to receive the Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize. The award, named in honor of the late sociology professor Joseph Gittler and his mother Toby Gittler, recognizes “outstanding and lasting scholarly contributions to racial, ethnic and/or religious relations” according […]

Housing policy puts Brandeis in small group

Gender-neutral housing is a recent addition to Brandeis but one that makes it rather unique among colleges, allowing for any students, regardless of gender, to share a dorm room on campus. “Brandeis saw an opportunity a few years ago to implement gender-neutral housing as one further step along our social justice journey. Over the years […]

Brandeis ranked among best-value colleges

Princeton Review has once again listed Brandeis as one of the “Best Value” colleges in America. The average student, the survey claimed, graduated Brandeis with $21,000 in debt. Nearly 70 percent of students receive financial aid, the same percentage that borrows money in loans. While Brandeis has significantly higher tuition than the national average for […]

Students weary about fallout from transit cuts

In preparation for a March 1 Waltham hearing on MBTA cuts, Student Union President Herbie Rosen ’12 and Vice President Gloria Park ’13 organized a Town Hall Forum on Monday night for members of the Brandeis community to voice their concerns and hear the university’s response to the recent MBTA plans. Brandeis University’s Senior Vice […]

Brandeis graduate convicted in terror plot, appeals case

Lawyers for Brandeis graduate Aafia Siddiqui PhD ’01 have appealed her conviction, saying that the testimony the 39-year-old woman gave during her trial was involuntary because she was not mentally stable at the time. In 2010 she was sentenced to 86 years in prison for opening fire on U.S. soldiers in a police station where […]

Midyear senator elected, Charles River still vacant

Derek Komar became the first midyear senator after the election Monday night with 37 percent of the vote. He is intent on effecting change in both the student body’s perception of the Student Union and the Union itself. While he concedes that many before him have tried and were largely ineffectual, he believes that his […]

Gates Foundation gives $500,000

Donald Shepard, a professor at the Schneider Institutes for Health Policy at the Heller School, has been awarded a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to pursue research on malaria prevention in Kenya and Tanzania. According to an article on BrandeisNOW, the professor and his collaborators will receive $500,000 during the course of […]

AMST’s Whitfield on ‘Jews, Racial Justice, and Democracy’

Professor Stephen Whitfield (AMST) gave a lecture Sunday titled “Jews, Racial Justice, and Democracy,” speaking at Temple Shalom in Medford, Mass. The event, open to the public, emphasized the “role of Jews in promoting black culture and therefore promoting racial justice” before and during the civil rights movement, Whitfield said. Specifically, Whitfield focused on African-American […]

Two students found tech start-up, showcase newly-made app

Brandeisians are the type of people who color-code their closets and keep files in extremely complex subfolder systems. It’s little wonder then that two of them have invented a mobile organizing application. Sahar Massachi M.A. ’12 and Adam Hughes ’12 will design and present the official app at the RootsCamp conference in Washington D.C. next […]

Oh Megan puts the ‘Oh’ in orgasm

For the second time this year, the Brandeis Vagina Club brought back “Oh Megan!” to impart her knowledge about the female orgasm. Held in Lown Auditorium, the workshop quickly became standing room only as Brandeisians learned about themselves, their partners and how to stimulate their sex lives. Megan is a nationally certified sexuality educator who […]

Who’s annoyed with ‘Ordinary’ Virginia Woolf?

To be fair, I have read about two pages of Virginia Woolf’s work, specifically two pages of “Mrs. Dalloway.” From those two pages, I gathered that party planning was a big deal way back when. This was the only knowledge I had about Woolf when I went to watch “Ordinary Mind, Ordinary Day,” a play […]

Vagina love for ‘The Vagina Monologues’

“The Vagina Monologues,” performed on-campus last weekend, was a beautiful show. “Monologues,” presented this year by 30 young women, is an annual tradition at Brandeis, as well as at many colleges across the United States. It corresponds with V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women. All proceeds from the show went toward three […]

Romantic movies, please; hold the schmaltz!

Just because Valentine’s Day has come and gone—as it is wont to do—does not mean that the romance needs to end. But let’s save the fancy dinners and expensive jewelry for the special occasions. What if it is just date night and neither of you really wants to get dressed up and go out. No […]

‘Soul Calibur V’: Have the swords rusted?

“Soul Calibur V” is the latest game in Namco Bandai’s “Soul” series, which tells the tale of two semi-sentient legendary swords. There’s the cursed sword, Soul Edge, and the blessed sword created to destroy it, Soul Calibur. Each game in the series features 20 characters who set out either to obtain or destroy one of […]