Most would consider being in the same room as a former U.S. President to be a unique opportunity, and in that respect, many who spent the 2007 to 2008 academic year at Brandeis were doubly privileged. After a crowd of 1,700 last January witnessed the 39th President, Jimmy Carter, defend his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, less than 11 months later, 5,000 students, faculty and staff heard the 42nd president, Bill Clinton, advocate for civic engagement in the honor of Eli J. Segal '64, his former adviser.While Clinton's pleas to bridge growing social inequalities, solve the sustainability crisis and form a common humanity were received with seemingly unanimous approval and enthusiasm among the crowd at the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center, Carter's visit sparked a semester-long controversy.

"My bottom line was that the Palestinians are horribly treated, and their treatment is not known or minimally known in the United States," Carter said of his book, which is critical of Israeli policy. "I chose that title knowing that it would be provocative." Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz immediately rebutted the former president's speech, addressing what he called blatant inaccuracies and oversimplifications in Carter's book. Dershowitz added tension to the atmosphere when he responded to one student's question by commenting that she would have supported keeping Adolf Hitler in power because he was democratically elected by the German people.

Carter wasn't the only president who made headlines through his visit to Brandeis, as University President Jehuda Reinharz garnered attention first for not attending the event because of a previously scheduled fundraising trip, and then by criticizing the committee that invited Carter for leaving the University with a "huge bill" of $95,000 in security and logistical costs.

The price tag for the visit initially seemed much higher when The Jewish Week quoted now former trustee Stuart Eizenstat last February as saying that there were "more than a handful" of Jewish donors who informed the University that they would withhold their contributions because the school had hosted Carter. In reporting the concerns of University donors, Nancy Winship, the senior vice president for institution advancement, said the e-mails "kept coming and coming." But fear of a financial catastrophe was squelched over the summer, when the University announced that it raised a record of $89.4 million in cash donations for fiscal year 2007, topping the previous year's record of $81.3 million by 10 percent. Winship went on to confirm that no major donors withheld contributions because of Carter's visit.

The man who introduced himself at Clinton's speech as "the other president" was thrust back into the spotlight in September, as Reinharz made the landmark decision to arm campus police officers after a firearms advisory committee of students, staff and faculty, which met over the summer, made that recommendation. Campus officers had argued on several occasions, including after last April's tragic shootings at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, that they should be armed to best protect themselves and the Brandeis community.

Student opinion was sharply divided over Reinharz's decision. One camp argued that arming officers was a necessary measure to ensure campus safety; the other protested that the presence of guns would create a culture of fear on campus and opposed the fact that Reinharz didn't incorporate enough student voice into his decision-making process. A new campus organization, Students Opposed to the Decision to Arm, brought Reinharz a petition in October signed by 830 undergraduates, 16 staff and 20 faculty members expressing their displeasure.

"The burden of proof is on you, and any decision pro or con arming has to be thought out and discussed in the larger community; it just has to," SODA organizer Ben Serby '10 told Reinharz during his office hours. Reinharz, who made a commitment at those office hours to keep students informed about procedures involving the arming, followed through in November, forming a firearms advisory committee responsible for writing arming policies, the three student representatives of which were chosen by the Student Union.

Students again protested an administrative decision in December, as approximately 150 people gathered outside of the Bernstein-Marcus and Gryzmish administration buildings to protest Senior Vice President for Students and Enrollment Jean Eddy's approval of a proposal that will allow the department of Student Activities to allocate Student Events funding. The proposal, approved by Eddy on Nov. 26, allows Student Events to bypass the Finance Board when receiving 17 percent of the Student Activities Fee, which amounts to one percent of each student's tuition.

The Union said the proposal is unconstitutional and detrimental to the ideas of student autonomy and financial oversight, while Student Events representatives upheld that the money will allow them to react faster and with greater flexibility in planning events.

The Union also found itself embroiled in internal controversy, as former Secretary Michael Goldman '08 admitted to hinting at vote tallies to candidates during an election period during the fall and releasing tallies last spring. The Senate debated his actions in a seven-hour closed session Sept. 23; it unanimously censured Goldman and removed his ability to view the elections software after an unofficial, nonbinding straw poll to decide whether to hold an impeachment vote failed by one vote. In an ensuing Union Judiciary case, the court ruled that Goldman's actions were unconstitutional because he breached implied constitutional standards of fairness. The UJ ruled to dissolve the creation of a Technology Assistant to the Secretary position because that is outside the powers of the secretary's office. Goldman's appeal of the decision was rejected.

Issues of race also came to the forefront in 2007. In April, campus humor publication Gravity Magazine printed a racially charged, fake advertisement, which was met with strong rebuke from the Student Union and other campus groups. The controversial ad featured "BlackJerry"-a black man dressed in a zoot suit-which many students thought was a minstrel outfit, offering to drive clients to the airport as a play off the communications device, the BlackBerry. The magazine pledged last May to take the semester off from printing and improve its editorial process, but the staff then decided to continue producing material online.

In October, Donald Hindley, a tenured politics professor in his 47th year at the University, received word from Provost Marty Krauss that he had violated the University's nondiscrimination policy for allegedly racially insensitivecomments he made in a Latin American politics course. Krauss assigned Assistant Provost Richard Silberman to monitor Hindley's classes and ordered Hindley to attend anti-discrimination training as sanctions. The case is still under appeal. As for our campus' state of diversity, Associate Dean of Student Life Jamele Adams in October revealed the results of a campuswide survey that gauged how Brandeis students respond to aspects of campus life outside their own backgrounds. "We can do better, but we are not doing hardly bad at all," Adams said in his address about campus diversity in the Shapiro Campus Center.

We said goodbye in 2007 to former longtime Transitional Year Program Director Tony Williams, who died at 68 from lung cancer in November, and well-known campus creative writer and activist Bernard Herman '08, who took his own life at the age of 21 in his hometown of New Orleans, La. in May. Alex the parrot, a bird who could make sentences for Prof. Irene Pepperburg (PSYC), died at 31 in September. They will all be missed.

Judges' basketball reached unprecedented heights, as the men's team made its first NCAA tournament in 29 years while the women's team made its second NCAA tournament in a row last season. Both teams lost in the second round, and this season's men's team is currently 11-1 and ranked No.2 in the nation.

The campus also rumbled in 2007 with construction projects at every corner, including ongoing work on the $35 million reconstruction of Ridgewood and the $154 million Carl J. Shapiro Science Center. More major upheavals to Brandeis' physical landscape are on the way, as the University received donations of $14.3 million for a new admissions building and $20 million for a new humanities center.

Now, will there be a visit by a third former president in 2008? We'll be waiting for an announcement from "the other president".