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Brandeis University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1949 | Waltham, MA

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Take action against racism and acknowledge white privilege

(05/23/17 6:02am)

On May 1, Adam Jones, a center fielder for the Baltimore Orioles, was subject to racist taunts from a fan during a game at Fenway Park. The story made national headlines, partially due to the fact that this was not an isolated incident. According to a May 2 ESPN article, Jones stated that this was not the first time that he had been the target of such racist abuse during a Boston game, although he has not provided any details about the other incidents. Carsten Charles “CC” Sabathia, a Yankees pitcher and 16-year veteran of Major League Baseball, supplemented Jones’ comments by saying that Boston is known among African-American players for this type of abuse from its fans: “There are 62 of us, and we all know that when you get to Boston, expect it,” he said, according to a May 2 New York Post article.


Recognize the negative effects of animal consumption

(05/23/17 5:58am)

Though active, the environmentalist movement on this campus has been almost blind to one issue in particular — animal consumption. While it tries arduously to curb electricity usage, encourage recycling and fight for divestment from fossil fuels, it misses the point that mitigating climate change and its effects must include a plan to reduce our reliance on meat, fish and animal products. Brandeis will never be taken seriously as an environmentally friendly campus until the institution, the faculty, the students and the environmental movement on campus start to seriously grapple with the fact that what we put on our plates every day is a large catalyst for climate change.


Reject hypocrisy in conservative criticism of activists

(05/23/17 5:50am)

If you have heard the complaint that today’s college students are too sensitive, you are far from alone. It seems the latest moral panic for conservative talking heads is this idea that American colleges have become a hypersensitive hellhole of safe spaces and trigger warnings, utterly delusional and separated from the outside world. These modern-day doomsday prophets warn that anything that dares to so much as resemble objectionable thought is pounced on by a veritable army of critics and silencers. “A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense,” wrote Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in “The Coddling of the American Mind,” the September 2015 cover story of The Atlantic. You really do not have to go far to find examples of conservative media outlets trying to make an example out of college activist efforts and the supposedly suffocatingly liberal atmosphere on college campuses. In fact, Brandeis University, known for its social justice pedigree and activist proclivities, manages to find its way into the headlines from time to time. Tucker Carlson, now best known for taking the time slot once held by the disgraced Bill O’Reilly, seemingly made it a point to go after our dear university in his time running the online newsletter, The Daily Caller. In addition to describing the University as “one of America’s foremost lairs of leftism” in its list of the “13 Most Rabidly Leftist Politically Correct Colleges for Dirty Tree Hugging Hippies,” the Daily Caller also found it fit to run headlines like “Fancypants, $60,000-A-Year College Student: ‘No Sympathy’ For Brutally Executed Cops” and “Asian Kids At $60,300-Per-Year College Find Exciting New Ways To Feel Insulted By ‘Microaggressions’” as legitimate news content. This is hardly surprising when you consider that the Daily Caller also claims that “a Brandeis student uncovered a huge listserv used by Brandeis professors containing several scary exchanges bashing conservatives, Jews, Christians, and basically anyone who views America as a force for good,” per the first article. A little tip for Eric Owens, the writer who brought us that last paragraph and whoever wrote all those lovely headlines for him: Brandeis is not a secret “lair” where conservative Christians are tortured night and day, and neither is any other college.


Urge police departments to become representative of communities

(05/23/17 5:46am)

On May 19, a jury in Columbus, Ohio refused to indict Officer Bryan Mason for the Sept. 14, 2016 killing of 13-year-old Tyre King. During the incident, police were called in response to a robbery in the area involving three Black males. Mason chased King into an alley before opening fire after mistaking the child’s BB gun for a real one. According to a May 19 ABC News article, Mason was only recently appointed to patrol the neighborhood at the time of the incident. This event is also eerily similar to the 2014 shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. Rice was in a park playing with a BB gun when a 911 call was placed, reporting that someone was brandishing a weapon. The individual making the call also mentioned that the person was “probably a juvenile” and that the gun was “probably fake,” according to a March 15 CNN article. The negligence of the dispatcher to relay the additional comments likely contributed to yet another innocent life lost.



EDITORIAL: Congratulate Class of 2017 Justice graduates

(05/23/17 4:15am)

Over the years, the Justice has been fortunate to have many dedicated editors, and this year, we must bid farewell to four of the best. These editors have been an invaluable contribution to the paper, and as they leave Brandeis to begin the next chapters of their lives, this board reflects on their time here and commends them on their achievements.


Views on the News: Sanctuary Cities

(05/02/17 6:30am)

On April 25, President Trump’s proposal to reduce funding to sanctuary cities was denied by a judge in San Francisco on the basis of it being unconstitutional, according to an April 25, New York times article. If enacted, the order would force the city to comply with federal immigration laws at the risk of losing over $1 billion in funding. As a result, San Francisco, among other cities, has sued Trump’s administration. What do you think of the proposal and the ability to regulate immigration policy in a sanctuary city?


Condemn the poor planning of some recent music festivals

(05/02/17 6:30am)

Imagine spending several thousand dollars to attend a music festival in the Bahamas, only to be greeted upon arrival by disaster relief tents, cold sandwiches and no music. While there are easier things to imagine than having that kind of discretionary income, that is exactly what happened to many music fans — primarily millennials — who shelled out up to $12,780 for tickets and lodging at Fyre Fest, a luxury music weekend on an island previously owned by Pablo Escobar, according to an April 28 CNN article. Dreamt up by early-2000s rapper Ja Rule and social entrepreneur Billy McFarland, Fyre Fest was marketed exclusively on social media and promoted by the likes of Instagram icons such as Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid and Emily Ratajkowski, according to an April 28 New York Times article. On Thursday, April 28, the commercialization of music festival culture and the exponential rise of social media’s influence collided in the Exumas, and there was not an Instagram filter that could make it look good.


Improve care for students suffering from mental illness

(05/02/17 6:29am)

Tomorrow, on your walk to class, look around you. Blooms break from the earth in a brilliant display of color as the end of the semester draws into our collective consciousness. It should be a happy time. People certainly will seem happy, laughing and enjoying the new spring warmth, waiting for summer to whisk them away. But joyful as the scene is, a tough truth hides in the people you see. Behind one out of every five of those sun-stained faces, perhaps laughing along with the others, is a young adult struggling with a diagnosable mental illness. This statistic is supplied by the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Some estimates suggest that the ratio is even higher, at nearly one in four, according to the World Health Organization. Though attitudes on mental health are softening in the United States, there still exists a stigma against seeking the proper help. This rings somewhat true even among Brandeis’ forward-thinking student body.


Acknowledge growing troublesome US relations with North Korea

(05/02/17 6:29am)

Throughout these last few weeks, tensions between North Korea and the United States have reached a new high, bringing out fear and proliferating anxiety among individuals across the globe. While the U.S. and North Korea have had a strained relationship since the Korean War, the different presidential administrations have created a historical timeline with a wide array of stances regarding international relations. The Bush administration labeled North Korea as part of the “axis of evil” in 2002, according to a Dec. 19, 2011 article by ABC news. Since then the U.S. has chosen a policy of strategic patience, where the U.S. administration attempts to diplomatically end North Korea’s nuclear program, as it poses significant threats to the U.S. mainland, but also because this conflict has the ability to endanger crucial allies in South Korea and Japan where thousands of U.S. troops are stationed. Seeing the historical trends in the relationship between the U.S. and Iran in regards to nuclear power, the regime of Kim Jong-un is attempting to prevent history from repeating itself by advancing the nuclear weapons program, because it understands once these weapons are developed they will gain a hegemony in a region that is critical to U.S interests. Thus, while the U.S. could strategically target the regime of Kim Jong-un, the repercussions of such a strike are what makes this foreign policy dilemma extremely complex.



EDITORIAL: Recognize graduate students’ desire to unionize

(05/02/17 6:29am)

Since the National Labor Relations Board ruled on Aug. 23, 2016 that graduate employees at private universities had the right to unionize, graduate students at several universities have endeavored to establish unions at their respective schools. Brandeis is included in this number. Today, graduate students who provide instructional services will vote to determine whether to be exclusively represented by the Services Employees International Union Local 509.


EDITORIAL: Acknowledge implications of the tuition hike for students

(05/02/17 6:28am)

This past Friday, University President Ronald Liebowitz announced a 3.75 percent increase in comprehensive undergraduate charges. This follows a similar tuition hike of 3.9 percent last year and a 3.7 percent increase the previous year. This board understands the necessity of such hikes to the University’s various educational and extracurricular initiatives. However, this board urges the University to continue its transparency with regard to the allocation of tuition funds and to work toward a stable, non-increasing tuition structure.


Recognize the ignorant nature of the Trump administration

(04/25/17 2:27am)

A Feb. 13 article in Vanity Fair reported that two of President Donald Trump’s top advisers, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and former campaign chair Steve Bannon, were getting along very well. Kushner even went so far as to propose knocking down the wall that separated his office with that of the notorious right-wing agitator. The report was met with widespread surprise as the backgrounds of the two would lead one to assume that they would be diametrically opposed to one another.


Acknowledge the social limitations of political correctness

(04/25/17 2:27am)

Much like immigration and health care, political correctness was a point of contention in America’s 2016 presidential election. In one of his many infamous Twitter rants, President Donald Trump said that former President Barack Obama and his administration “put political correctness above common sense, above your safety and all else,” according to a Dec. 7, 2016 Washington Post article. Though the term’s origins are unclear, it entered mainstream consciousness after it was the subject of a series of articles in the New York Times in the early nineties, such as 1991’s “Political Correctness: The New Bias Test.” The article describes the employment of specific language, policies or measures intended to avoid offense or disadvantage to members of particular groups in society.


Views on the News: Mother of all Bombs

(04/25/17 2:26am)

On April 13, the United States deployed the Massive Ordinance Air Blast, nicknamed the "Mother of All Bombs," on an Islamic State-controlled cave in eastern Afghanistan. Despite the bomb's capabilities, the Islamic State's local radio outlet remained unaffected by the bombing. Officials in Nangarhar are also questioning why "American forces are not letting anyone visit the site of the bombing" according to an April 18 New York Times article. What is your reaction to the use of the bomb and the U.S.'s secrecy?


Reconsider the growing detrimental nature of social media

(04/25/17 2:26am)

In light of recent events such as the live-streamed killing of Robert Goodwin Sr., an important discussion needs to be held on the role of social media in today’s society. While sites like Facebook or Twitter were created with the intention of connecting individuals and creating a platform for sharing ideas, we have collectively strayed from these ideals and turned to more malignant use. With the addition of a feature to broadcast live video, it has become easier for individuals to find an audience for their actions, be it beneficial or not.


Educate students on the issue of food waste on campus

(04/25/17 2:26am)

You enter Sherman and examine each food station to determine what appears the most edible. Disappointed with the selections, you grab a little of everything. “What’s the harm?” you ask yourself. As you eat your dinner, you quickly lose your appetite. With a pile of half-eaten food on your plate, you shrug your shoulders and slide your plate onto the conveyor belt. Although this is a semi-regular event for most students, how often do you consider the impacts of wasting food?


EDITORIAL: Improve the University’s scope for prospective students

(04/25/17 2:26am)

On Sunday, the University welcomed admitted students and their families to campus, seeking to attract those students who will hopefully make up the next class of Brandeisians. While we welcome all new members of the Brandeis community, this board urges the University to focus efforts more on diverse admissions to campus.


Letter from the Editor: Acknowledge and account for oversight in Liquid Latex review

(04/05/17 2:42am)

Following the Justice’s publication of “Lots of Latex, limbs and laughs,” we received a great deal of feedback from the Brandeis community that drew our attention to one particular line in the otherwise positive review: “However, the moves from the models while on the catwalk more resembled those seen by girls in fraternity basements than the representation of each zodiacs [sic] characteristics.” This statement should have received greater scrutiny during the Justice’s initial editing process, and publishing it was a regrettable oversight.