A letter to Brandeis students: Stop! Stop your crying and lamenting. Stop lethargically bemoaning the fact that Brandeis is a young, unattractive, unimpressive place. Stop trying to look cool by telling me that Brandeis is uncool. Take off your Penn sweatshirts, your Michigan shorts, and your Stanford sweatpants. And then consider the following.

Leonard Bernstien never took breaks from Carnegie Hall to help create a music program at Harvard. Albert Einstein did not give a minute of time to consider Yale's development as an institution. Pete Seger did not decide to play intimate concerts for students at Michigan numerous times in the 50s. But all of those people did such things at Brandeis.

Is it too hard for your ego to swallow the trek up campus walk in the morning? Allow me to list a few people whose egos did not preclude them from traversing our paths here at Brandeis: The Dalai Lama, Henry Kissinger, John Updike, John F. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Madeleine K. Albright, Marc Chagall, Robert Frost, Shimon Peres, Eugene McCarthy, Allen Ginsberg, Barbara Streisand, Martin Luther King, Jr., Adalai Stevenson, Whoopi Goldberg, Steven Spielberg, Arthur Miller and James Baldwin.

I apologize, but you'll have to excuse Anita Hill, Eleanor Roosevelt, Robert Reich and Dennis Ross for deciding to stay for a bit longer and teach.

Does your skeptical eye need to contextualize Brandeis' excellence? In a recently published London Guardian ranking of top research universities and their impact on various fields, Brandeis ranked fifth in the world in both physical and medical sciences. General research achievements at Brandeis have ranked 9th among our nations top universities.

Are you math majors keeping up with me? 98 percent of full time faculty at Brandeis hold a Ph.D. or the highest degree in their field. How many spots away from that is Harvard? You do the math and pick the farthest it could be.

Do not complain about Brandeis if you are ignorant of what goes on here. Since I am largely guilty of this very ignorance, I did a simple LexisNexis search to find out just what goes on here at Brandeis. The results are shocking, and while I encourage you all to do this search yourself, here are some cheap thrills. Sponsored by the Unites States Navy and the Department of Defense, the Brandeis Dynamical and Evolutionary Machine Organization (DEMO) lab is housed in our very own Volen science building. Heading the program at Brandeis, Dr. Jordan B. Pollack is at the forefront of his field of robotic evolution.

On a more natural note, Brandeis has now become the home of scientist Irene Pepperberg, leading parrot intelligence researcher and scientist. After earning a masters degree in Chemistry from Harvard University and being dubbed the Jane Goodall of birds, Pepperberg and her lab at Brandeis are making groundbreaking discoveries on parrot intelligence.

"But Brandeis isn't cool" exclaims a group of complainers.

Are you the type who likes bad- ass cool? In 1970, four of the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted were Brandeis graduates. You want college cool? Playboy Enterprises are now headed by Brandeis grad Kristie Hefner. For god sakes, it was Brandeis alums Marta Kauffman '78 and David Crane '79 who met at Brandeis later to go on and create the famed hit TV show Friends!

But no article would do justice (pun?) to Brandeis pride without a reference to our University's name itself. In 1946, as Albert Einstein took his thought off of relativity and placed it firmly on Brandeis' future, he spoke words that clearly demonstrated the respect and anticipation that he had for the budding university he was helping to create. Into the ears of the great Abraham Sachar, George Alpert, Norman Rabb and first board of trustees, Einstein uttered words that are embedded in the foundation of this fine university: "Brandeis is a name that cannot merely be adopted. It is one that must be achieved."

Special thanks to the Goldfarb Library archives and Brandeis Admissions.