In a 2012 video titled “Sh*t Brandeis Students Don’t Say,” and its sequel “Sh*t Brandeis Students Don’t Say Part 2,” students act out situations and conversations that they suggest are antithetical to Brandeis culture. The first video has accumulated 81,843 views, and the sequel has accumulated 37,360 views. One of the conversations depicted in the second video is still frequently brought up on campus and has raised some controversy about its accuracy. Terrell Gilkey ’15 says “You know Rachel? Brown, curly hair? About 5’ 2? From Westchester County/Northern New Jersey? Went to Camp Ramah and Israel one summer?” implying that there are actually many people who fit that description. Many students on campus specifically reference that quote when talking about the number of “Rachels” that attend Brandeis. But how many Rachels are actually on Brandeis’ campus today?
The university’s Gmail directory reveals that there are 59 total names that match the search “Rachel” and 57 names that have “Rachel” directly listed in the contact name. There are 9,690 total contacts listed in the directory, so “Rachels” account for slightly over 0.6 percent of the total number of server contacts named “Rachel.” This number, however, includes faculty contacts who wouldn’t fall under the umbrella of “students” that Gilkey was referencing in 2012.
The Brandeis Hoot contacted the registrar, who declined to release the Brandeis People directory. When “Rachel” is searched on the university’s online directory, the result returns a message that reads, “That search would return 20 or more results. This is not allowed for privacy reasons. Please refine your search and try again.”
After The Hoot narrowed the results by doing a separate search for undergraduate students whose names begin with “Rachel” respectively followed by each letter of the alphabet, the directory revealed that 34 undergraduate students are named Rachel. The Hoot also looked up “Rachael,” a variant of the name Rachel, on the Brandeis directory. There are two undergraduate students with the name Rachael.
As of December 2018, Brandeis had an undergraduate enrollment of 3,621, according to a self-study completed by the university in September 2018. While this number has presumably changed in the past year, according to this figure, current undergraduates named Rachel or Rachael account for about 1 percent of the total undergraduate student body. So from one undergraduate Rachel to the other 35 of you, maybe we should start a club.
