It's the first week of school, and tonight's a big night for Joe Brandeis. In English class, Joe got up the nerve to ask out Susie Judges on a date, and to his gleeful surprise, Susie accepted. But like many of his friends, Joe doesn't have a car, and the commuter train is too hard to catch. Joe and Susie meet at the front entrance of campus, awaiting the arrival of the Brandeis shuttle ... right?Guess again. Without the slightest measure of curiosity, bypassers watch as Joe and Susie raise their right arms with a forceful "thumbs-up" gesture of the hand, signal a passing car, and accept a ride from a stranger into Boston.

The year is 1972, and Joe and Susie are hitchhiking rides from campus-yes, even on a date. Hitchhiking was normal for students at one time, as Darlene Kamine '73 recalls from her experience as a Brandeis undergraduate in the early 1970s.



Who are Brandeis students?

Barbara Kravitz '57 arrived at Brandeis in September 1953, five years after the University's founding. Kravitz, who came to Brandeis from Brooklyn, found that many other students came from the Northeast. Brandeis was still relatively unknown and without any considerable reputation.

"Everyone who was there was taking a tremendous risk," Kravitz said. "The University had no reputation. We couldn't really see what was going to happen."

The years brought increasing recognition of Brandeis, and with that, increasing diversity of students in terms of location and background.

"I believe that the undergraduate student body at Brandeis is more broadly diverse than at any prior time in its history," Brandeis University President Jehuda Reinharz said in a recent email. Reinharz has been at Brandeis for over 30 years, either as student, professor or administator.

Professor Gordon Fellman (SOC), who recently celebrated his 40th year at Brandeis, said he has witnessed definite changes in the student body. He mentioned gradual increases in the numbers of black, Asian and Hispanic students, occuring as "the larger culture has a bigger emphasis on diversity."

More than 100 nations are now represented in the student body, according to John Hose, executive assistant to the president.

Religion has also shaped Brandeis' student body. The school is a strictly non-sectarian university with a continuing connection to its Jewish founding. Fellman said there has been an increase in the number of Orthodox Jewish students since his arrival, although the overall proportion of Jewish students at Brandeis has decreased over the years.

Brandeis continually works to reconcile its Jewish background with an aim for diversity. Kravitz, for example, remembered when the central controversy on campus was the design of the three chapels on Chapels Field. The debate was whether all three should be housed in the same building and which shape each structure should take.

Professor Jacob Cohen (AMST), who taught at Brandeis from 1960-1964 and then continuously since 1968, recalled a "Brandeis first" just last year, when the Shapiro Campus Center was host to the University's very first Christmas tree. He said that this event marks a chain of progress and evolution in describing the religious identity of Brandeis and its students.

"It's everybody's university, and that's something we're really committed to," Cohen said. "I don't think [Brandeis] is less Jewish. I think it's more other."



Students in the classroom

Former Brandeis students, as well as Brandeis faculty and administration, said the academic rigor at Brandeis has remained consistently high over since the University's birth.

Hose said that prospective Brandeis students today face a lower admission rate, due to both higher levels of interest in Brandeis and an increased academic caliber of applicants.

Kamine, whose daughter recently attended Brandeis, noticed a striking rise in the level of interest and awareness in a future beyond Brandeis. She was impressed by the web of resources today that provides career advice, alumni networking and internship and job information to students.

"We were just much more naave with what came next," Kamine said.

Victor Ney '81 remembers a similar experience. A history and politics major, he found himself a pioneer in the trend in double-majoring and in attending business school after graduation.

"[Students today] are much more business and entrepreneurial-oriented than we were," Ney said.

Cohen too said he has observed this change in his students over time, but maintained that students continue to believe in the Brandeis notion of "learning for its own sake," which he said was almost a mantra among students when he arrived here.



Students in Politics

Brandeis students have never ignored the outside world; political engagement and advocacy has consistently been a way of life at the University.

"[Brandeis students] continue to exhibit, as they did in the past, a sense of social activism and social justice," Reinharz said. He added that the activism is "more effectively expressed" today than in the past.

At the highpoint of activism in the 1970s, about half the students on campus engaged in a strike against the Vietnam War, according to Fellman. Other causes have included civil rights, the release of Soviet Jews, women's rights, divestment of University funds from South Africa in protest of Apartheid and gay rights.

Although confident that some students at Brandeis will always carry on the tradition of social justice, Fellman said the propensity toward activism has waned significantly. He connects this decline to a post-Vietnam downward shift of students' sense of empowerment to evoke change.

"The media have poo-pooed activism since the end of the anti Vietnam protest, as a way of diminishing any sense that activism has meaning and power," Fellman said. He added that the larger culture, with a growing emphasis on consumerism, also led students away from activism.

Cohen, too, recognized a shift from a time when Brandeis students took such pride in their degree of activism that they bragged that four of the most wanted criminals in the nation had attended Brandeis.

"I think there's still a lot of that," Cohen said, "but I don't see it as so much of a defining characteristic."



Brandeis Living

There's more to college than classes and political protests. Was Brandeis ever the rowdy weeklong party in Hollywood depictions of frat life? Brandeis has never officially recognized fraternities and sororities, though a few off-campus Greek organizations do presently exist.

Davida Scher '69 remembers a laid-back social scene, with interactions often centered around the dining halls and dorms. Then too, the coffeehouse Cholmondely's was a hotspot, with the occasional concert or event.

There was general consensus that a student's social life depended on what he or she made of it.

"It's just how you define it," Ney said, referring to happiness at Brandeis.

Like Scher, Ney remembers a social scene centered around the dorm and his hall, where he made his best friends playing games of frisbee and soccer in the hallway. Recounting concerts on Thursdays nights that had people "packed from wall to wall," Ney described a vibrant social scene at the Stein, at times followed by a drive to then-popular Steve's ice cream parlor.

In general, alumni speak of this social life positively, including the absence of the fraternity and sorority scene often tied to what many people call "the college experience."

Cohen cited a change in the sentiments of Brandeis students, from the school's beginning when there was "a point of pride...in not being a frat school." At that time, while relishing their experience, Brandeis students knew and did not mind that students of other schools might depict Brandeis students as "nerds." Now, according to Cohen, students have begun to less proudly describe themselves in that manner.

"Brandeis has the feeling of trying hard to be typical," Cohen said, "while at one time [there was] a powerful ethos of being different and wanting to be different.