Features

Simon Malls … Who is Simon?

Jenna Lewis April 17, 2026

This article has been a personal interest of mine for a while now. I grew up constantly going to malls. When I was a kid in Los Angeles, malls were equivalent to meeting at the playground; you went with your friends, ate at the food court, and used a few bucks to buy a “buy two get 50% off one deal” on one tchotchke or another at a chain retailer. As I got older, malls became a way for me to bond with my mother, choose from a variety of inexpensive food options in the food courts, take walks inside to escape the snow in the Massachusetts winter, and to shop, of course. A few years ago, I believe at the Cape Cod Mall in Hyannis, MA, I noticed the

Brandeis Festival of the Arts introduces new 24-hour marathon format

Michael Sun April 17, 2026

The Brandeis Festival of the Arts—a longstanding campus tradition—is being reformatted this year to a continuous, 24-hour arts marathon named “Art Never Sleeps,” which will take place from six p.m. on April 18 to six p.m. on April 19. The

An Open Letter to the Brandeis Mathematics Department

Sarah Baskin March 13, 2026

Note: the following statement is made all in good fun and is not meant to critique the functioning of the Mathematics Department (or any other department at Brandeis) in anything more than a surface-level way. Professors and staff work incredibly

Everything I Learned As A Freshmen

Ethan Prior March 13, 2026

Being a freshman certainly happened. I was blessed to avoid the culture shock that some experience when coming to college, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t face my share of hurdles. These hurdles helped me to learn some harsh truths

What Really Is Plan B, and How Do I Use It?

Plan B is a type of emergency contraception, not your regular birth control. It’s meant for situations like unprotected sex, a condom breaking, or missing multiple birth control pills. The good news is there’s no strict limit to how many times you can take Plan B in a month, and

SSIS March 13, 2026

FAB: The Newest Activist Group on Campus

Some students might have noticed a set of protests at the beginning of the semester. These protests were not organized by any of the usual groups associated with activism on campus; instead, they were held by a new group, Fight Authoritarianism Brandeis (FAB). FAB was originally started by Professor Sabine

Chloe Ballew February 27, 2026

ChatGPT Might be Making Your Vibrator More Expensive

Nothing has captured the stock market quite like the advent of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). It is being integrated into almost every website the average internet user visits. Predictions put the percentage of internet content that was A.I. generated at 50% or more. 32% of the S&P 500 and 41% of

Chloe Ballew February 27, 2026

Ask SSIS: Can I get pregnant from period sex?

Thanks for your question! Yes, but the answer is more complicated than that. If we think about the whole menstrual cycle, the phase during which you’re least likely to get pregnant is the menstruation phase, when you’re bleeding. This is because the menstruation phase occurs separately from the ovulation phase,

SSIS February 6, 2026

Just Dance is back, baby

I have recently purchased the 2025 edition of “Just Dance” for the Nintendo Switch since it was on “rollback” at Walmart for ~$14. How did I justify this purchase of what some may consider a game of childhoods long past from an antiquated franchise? Well, I began by getting my

Jenna Lewis February 6, 2026

So you’re Pre-Law: The Pre-Law Society

Brandeis University has a substantial number of students on the pre-law track and, as such, has collected a number of pre-law-focused clubs across campus. With a variety of options for students in this area of study, The Hoot sat down with one of the Co-Presidents of the Brandeis Pre-Law Society,

Chloe Ballew January 26, 2026

All out of content? Next Issue will be out soon!

To acquire wisdom, one must observe