In theory, it sounds like a brilliant idea: students voluntarily teaching other students anything they want. When I found out about this opportunity, my eyes lit up at the chance to teach others about modern music, an obsession of mine. As I sent in my proposal, I had grand delusions of a gigantic room of enthusiastic music listeners discussing the parallels between emo and gangster rap. To my jubilation, my course was accepted, and I began planning for my ultimate Communiversity. Unfortunately, the program's lofty theory-that Communiversity will truly move students to participate more in the Brandeis community-has ultimately failed. Despite the high idealism that inspired the resurrection of Communiversity, there is practically nothing noteworthy to its name. True, the wide array of courses is intriguing, but the biggest error is that most people hadn't heard about the program. Fliers were scarce and placed in obscure parts of campus. A brief public service announcement for Communiversity was crammed within a large list of other announcements that was read sparingly on WBRS. And the program's biggest advertisement, the campus-wide e-mail, proved nothing more than trash fodder for many students who frequently delete similar messages.

Because of the low publicity, many classes suffered from low attendance. After hearing about the sparse attendance at other programs, I was happy to have five people attend my first class, four of whom are my friends. By the third week of the program, however, my students had evaporated. The brilliant and tantalizing discussions about the meaning of music today that I dreamed of disappeared as I sat in a room at the top of Shapiro Campus Center, staring at a door, waiting for others to arrive.
Rachel Pfeffer's '08 course on making lamps from Styrofoam cups was used to advertise how great and unique the Communiversity program was supposed to be. But it saw a turnout of only four students, three of whom were Pfeffer's friends. In addition to the low attendance, Pfeffer also had to buy class supplies herself without knowing if she would be reimbursed for her expenses. Similar problems persisted with other Communiversity teachers: We were barely informed about the location or time of our classes until a few days before the program kicked off. That the program was also delayed a week didn't allow us to reorganize class schedules and make up for lost sessions.

Yes, Communiversity is a good idea. Unfortunately, it seems to have turned out to be a failure. Fortunately, there is still time to improve. It's the last week of Communiversity and the last week before break. Why not learn how to tango before hitting the clubs in Florida?