(10/06/09 4:00am)
Last week, Hollywood's legal troubles took a drastic turn from the usual DUI to a question that is making a lot of celebrities very uncomfortable: does a person's artistic record put him above the law?Obviously, the answer is no-as director Roman Polanski learned when he was arrested at the Zurich Film Festival in Switzerland on the basis of a 1978 arrest warrant.In 1977, Polanski pled guilty to the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl. Polanski, now 76, left the U.S. before his sentencing and is considered a fugitive here. In recent years, he has tried to have the rape case dismissed, claiming the judge, who is now dead, arranged a plea bargain but later reneged. Polanski has been to Switzerland before, but this time U.S. authorities knew of his trip in advance. That gave them time to send an arrest warrant to Swiss authorities, judicial officials said.Zurich Film Festival jury president Debra Winger demanded Polanski's release from jail. "We hope today this latest [arrest] order will be dropped. It is based on a three-decades-old case that is dead but for minor technicalities," she said. "We came to Zurich to honor Roman Polanski as a great artist, but under these sad and arcane circumstances we can only think of him today as a human being uncertain of the year ahead."Hollywood celebrities have rallied around Polanski, starting a "Free Polanski" petition. Signers include Woody Allen, Diane von Furstenberg, Wes Anderson and hundreds more. The backlash has been immediate, calling the signers "rape defenders," and many online communities have started petitions to boycott Polanski's work.Samantha Geimer, who identified herself as Polanski's victim long ago, is asking that the case be dismissed. If Polanski is brought to an American court, Geimer, who now lives with her husband in Hawaii, cannot be forced to testify. What she really wants, she says, is for the case to be over. She has already sued Polanski and reached an undisclosed settlement.Whether Polanski will be tried or not, the entire affair brings up a scary question-do people really think that a person's artistic achievements excuse him from the consequences of his actions? Hopefully not-but this case is still unfolding.
(05/19/09 4:00am)
Students from Brandeis University and Babson and Bentley Colleges, as well as Waltham residents, protested against the controversial visit of Bill Ayers, co-founder of the Weather Underground and professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago April 30. Protesters who were not Brandeis students were banned from entering campus, but college students from neighboring institutions still protested inside the Shapiro Campus Center. However, Director of Public Safety Ed Callahan told the Justice that non-Brandeis students should not have been allowed on campus. Callahan added that he did not know why Babson and Bentley students had been allowed on University premises. Waltham residents gathered with protest signs on South Street near the Main Gate early in the morning, but Brandeis police told them that they could not enter University premises. Waltham residents tried again later in the evening to enter campus, but police said they could not enter the premises without a Brandeis student escort. Brandeis students protested against the visit outside the campus center and then outside the Carl J. Shapiro Theater. In the late 1960s, Ayers co-founded the Weather Underground, a radical group that opposed the Vietnam War. The group was notorious for rioting and for bombing several government buildings including the Pentagon and the New York City Police Department. The country's attention shifted toward Ayers again last year, when rumors of Barack Obama's ties to Ayers surfaced during Obama's presidential campaign. Although Ayers and Obama served on two nonprofit boards together, investigations by major news organizations concluded that Obama had little connection to Ayers.Many protesters were outraged with the University's decision to allow a former terrorist on campus."I believe what [Ayers] did in 1970 was appalling," said Mark Maclay, a junior at Babson College. "I don't believe he should be here speaking and perpetuating his message of hate," he added."The worst part [of Ayers' visit] is, he's unrepentant about [his past]," said Allie Smith, a junior at Babson. "He doesn't care and he's proud of it-that's what kills me. He's extremely proud of what he's done."In light of Brandeis' traditional Jewish affiliations, many protesters compared Ayers' involvement with terrorist organizations to anti-Semitic movements."Imagine . that you had a Nazi collaborator who was speaking at Brandeis," said Joe Manzoli of Shrewsbury, Mass., who stood protesting outside the main gate. "Do you think that people should not be offended by what occurred 60 years ago? We're talking about something that occurred 40 years ago.""I don't understand why Brandeis would host a terrorist who is probably against everything that Israel stands for," said Evelyn Reilly, a 68-year-old Waltham resident."[Ayers] should be in a jail cell, not a classroom on any campus," her husband Joseph Reilly, 78, added. "He is a convicted felon." Some Brandeis students supported Ayers' visit as a representation of free speech on campus."If we're going to talk about free speech, we should let anyone say whatever they want to say," Mairin O'Donnell '11 said."Education is seeing different perspectives from people you sometimes disagree with [and] sometimes you agree with," said Matthew Kupfer '12, who also heard Ayers speak at the event. Other students were inspired by Ayers' reflections on his activist past."[Ayers] showed . appropriate consciousness of what he had done and his mistakes, but also I think [the speech] was more about the future than about the past," said Lily Adams '09. - Brian Fromm and Miranda Neubauer contributed reporting.
(05/19/09 4:00am)
When Cory Booker came into office as mayor of Newark, N.J. in July 2006, his job could not have been considered an easy one. A host of problems had long been eating away at the core of the city, with rampant crime and government corruption the two most visible and distressing among a host of related issues. Of course, Booker was only one man, and these problems wouldn't disappear the night he assumed office. The previous mayor, Sharpe James, was mayor for a full two decades, and Booker has only been mayor for slightly less than three years. His achievements are particularly noteworthy in light of the comparatively short tenure of his mayorship and the considerable operational and historical obstacles to his goals.Newark's tragedy has always been one of potential: It is the largest municipality in New Jersey and only 15 minutes from Manhattan. It should be viewed as a lower-cost suburban alternative to New York's crowded and expensive urban character; it should be awash in economic enterprise and, one would hope, civic pride. But its unemployment and poverty are twice the national average, and its median family income is half the national average. Newark was labeled "the Most Dangerous City in the Nation" by Time magazine in 1996; its murder rate is significantly higher than nearby (and much maligned) New York City's. Five of its past seven mayors have been indicted on criminal charges of corruption, including all three mayors preceding Booker. James' chief of staff and police director were both jailed on corruption or corruption-related charges.Enter Cory Booker. Booker was educated at the University of Oxford in England and at Yale University; while at Oxford, he became president of the L'Chaim Society, a group founded by now-celebrity Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, as a testament to his commitment to ending tensions between Jews and African Americans. He was elected to Newark's City Council in 1998 and immediately set about his own particular brand of visible activism for the sake of his constituency. He went on a 10-day hunger strike in 1999, living on the street in areas known for blatantly public drug dealing. Many of his reformist proposals were shot down by the city's council by votes of 8 to 1.Booker was nothing if not persistent. He ran for mayor in 2002, losing to James after a campaign challenging his faith (on the evidence of his involvement in L'Chaim while at Oxford), his suburban background and his African-American identity (des-pite James himself being African-American), but the margin was close enough that James opted to run for the New Jersey Senate in 2006. Booker subsequently won 70 percent of the vote and got to work fast.Newark's police department didn't even include a narcotics department until Booker took office, and he brought in a top New York Police Department officer, Garry McCarthy, to restructure and lead the new department in Newark. Crime is really the sine qua non of Newark's problems, and Booker has instituted a zero-tolerance policy to help combat it. In light of endemic ineptitude or historical corruption within various sectors of the city government, Booker has sought outside reformers to aid in reviving the city regardless of their racial background. He has otherwise simply fired city employees, for example, in the Newark Housing Authority, which had become notorious for political cronyism and nepotism.Booker has sought to reform Newark's education system as well, although he has had less control there given the state government's intervention in Newark's schools following the state Education Department's 1994 report. But here, too, he has gone against the grain, challenging entrenched (if well-intentioned) groups like teachers' unions and seeking to close or restructure failing schools. In the past, Booker has supported bipartisan efforts to expand school choice, which, even if untested, were generally shunned outright without being given an opportunity to succeed.The importance of Booker's work is not lost on others. President Barack Obama proposed an Office of Urban Policy during his candidacy that would have helped to target federal aid to cities effectively and aimed to improve job creation and economic development. Obama created a similar Office of Urban Affairs in February to achieve nearly the same purpose. It is not unreasonable to think that Obama, Booker's friend, has taken note of the mayor's progress and continuing efforts. His push to renew the urban pride of Newark's past and bring his city back to its feet are laudable, and Newark's success may depend on his ability to deliver. His commitment bodes well for his city's future.
(02/03/09 5:00am)
In its mission statement, the American Repertory Theatre describes itself as a "vital cultural resource" for its community. But, the role of any cultural resource, as Brandeis is beginning to understand, must be battled for, as it cannot merely be proclaimed. So ART's mission, much like that of any public arts institution with ambitious scope, involves a constant struggle for relevance among the very community it hopes to serve. As the more traditional theatergoing community (wealthy, white and venerably aged) becomes busier and busier with kicking their own buckets, this has meant a deeper focus on the young, the trendy-and the typically-uninterested-in-plays. It means, in other words, that they are marketing to us. This newfound ploy is both unexpected and unavoidable upon entering ART's Loeb Drama Center. The Brattle Street Theater maintains a veneer of cultured worldliness in leather and glass, but its publicity banners look like indie album covers. The staff is consciously hip and wants to pointedly ask where you bought your skinny jeans. One is inundated with a newly printed scheme of posters, shouting in block text that this is "NOT YOUR PARENTS' THEATER."Which, indeed, it isn't. The ART's recent production of Anton Chekhov's masterpiece The Seagull, will not be accused of pandering to anyone's outdated mores nor of leaving any aging subscribers snoring -for one thing, the Guns 'n' Roses music blared into the audience tends to ward off sleepiness. Director János Szász introduces his audiences to a Chekhov who rips himself free of the preciousness of historicized staging, eschewing samovars and high collars for a gritty and surreal David Lynch atmosphere. Here, crumbling, frescoed ceilings leak rain onto the stage, fading velour seats are swung out of their rows into crazy diagonals, and skinny girls careen in five-inch heels through standing water and cigarette smoke. Szász has exploded the bourgeois sitting rooms of classical Chekhov staging for his production, leaving both the stage and characters constantly exposed. "Sometimes," Szász writes in his program notes, "Chekhov is like the Greeks- so much happens offstage and between the acts. We're trying to make everything visible and immediate in this production. We're trying to put everything on the table-the lies, the affairs, the betrayals, the shame, the compromises, the sex and the passion."And everything is visible. Szász is also a film director, notable as he builds his narrative into a series of haunting images: white feathered wings, enormous piles of luggage, real rainstorms, sex acts that are somehow architectural. One would be amiss, though, to call The Seagull filmic; the images have a depth and mobility in the space that can only be theatrical, as if an understanding of both media brings into focus the unique strengths of each. We wonder almost voyeuristically at the nature and immediacy of these strange people and the apocalyptic dreamscape in which they live. Karen MacDonald as Arkadina (the play's paradigmatically monstrous mother figure), throws herself into unglamorous sexual theatrics that are almost embarrassing to watch. Nina Kassa's Masha (who, according to the script, "always wears black") sulks around the edges of the stage in full goth, clutching a bottle of Stolichnaya, smoking too much. And Jeremy Geidt as Sorin (perhaps the most likable character onstage; also the most senile and immobile) is often covered in crumbs of something and keeps falling asleep with his mouth open. With no real exits, the characters have to sit around, bored and waiting, without any real regard for an emergent plot. But, for this play, it works. The poetics of real exposure that were Chekhov's concern find an outlet in the constant visibility that Szász allows his actors. The treatment of the play pushes on naturalism and makes it daring again.That notion of daring, though, is one that we have to acknowledge deeply when we talk about this play. ART-again, perhaps eager to attract a young and tech-savvy audience base-has set up a blog on its Web site, where audiences can post and discuss thoughts on the production. The reactions, if not uniform, have been uniformly strong. The production is, for some, "phenomenal"; it "creates a communal space, a collective spirit that exists only once, a social body that is immediately created and destroyed in a climactic two hours but whose life will remain in the eternal space of memory." For others, it is "like being in jail with waterboarding. So self-indulgent and nonengaging."And these reactions, to some extent, are both spot-on. Szász frames his production in the consciousness of Konstantin, a young writer with a tortured vision of the world who is eventually driven to suicide. The first act of The Seagull centers around a play he's written-a bleakly symbolist musing that's largely unintelligible. But Szász is fascinated by Konstantin and by the truth that comes through in his imperfect expression of the way he sees the world. "Konstantin's play is not a perfect play, but it is an honest play," he writes, "Everyone around him has developed routines in order to survive. And those routines involve a lot of lies. Lies in their relationships with each other. Lies about their art. Lies to themselves. ... They've all managed to survive by lying. But Konstantin can't lie."Ought we, then, to accept opacity and self-indulgence for the sake of artistic truth? The boundary-pushing production seems to raise the question with every free-form saxophone sound cue. And Szász, though perhaps identifying with Konstantin's plight, offers no answer. What he has offered in The Seagull is a space where that question can expand, and where we're forced to deal with the opacity of experimentation in a very immediate way. Indeed, as audience members left the theater, their responses were oddly aligned with what had happened onstage: wives complaining to husbands about how loud the music was, college students in trendy glasses talking ecstatically about the artful subtleties of the concept, thirty-somethings who just wondered where the female lead's shoes came from. The Seagull is, in some ways, a play about the strange relationship between art and life. And staged at ART this year, in an economic climate that makes us preoccupied with the relevance of art, among a community so necessarily concerned as its audience evaporates into the margins, that issue becomes deep-deep and awkwardly real.
(11/25/08 5:00am)
Frankly, I was prompted to go to Hillel Theater Group's production of Inherit the Wind because of a class-related obligation to do so. However, I am being sincere when I say that I had other options, and my choice to see this live production is one that I do not regret.Before going to the show, I was surprised to find so many people who were familiar with Inherit the Wind, either in its cinematic incarnation or its literary form. Most, however, hadn't seen it performed and were walking into this production with visions of Spencer Tracey and Gene Kelly. I was not afforded this prejudice and am grateful for it. HTG's production does not stir images of Tracey or Kelly, whether or not the film resides somewhere in your subconscious. And while as an ensemble it falters at times, it provides moments when it combines all of the merits theater has to offer to engage an audience the way a film simply cannot.Inherit the Wind, written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, captures the drama of a small town wrestling with the issue of creationism and evolution in the early 20th century. Hillsboro (said town) becomes the site of controversy when a schoolteacher, Bertram Cates, presents Darwin's theory to his seventh-grade science class. Enter Matthew Harrison Brady, a politician and champion of restrictive religious thought, and Henry S. Drummond, an agnostic, renowned lawyer known for his well-fought but mostly lost legal battles. The town unravels along with the case as citizens contemplate the ideals handed down to them and the possibility of thinking without the confines of religion.There was a range of performances among the cast, some astounding, some more or less pleasing and others generally lackluster. The cast affirmed the long-held tenets of theater and roles, the ones about small versus large, role versus actor. Jordan Warsoff's '11 rendition of Meeker, the slow-witted jail keeper, was endearing, and though his lines were few, he established his presence whenever he walked on stage. Similarly, as the illiterate Bible-seller Elijah, Ernest Paulin '09 shook the set with the coarse reverberation of his voice, calling to mind the Hallelujah-shouting holy men who inhabit the corners of Times Square. Adam Patterson's '11 E.K. Hornbeck was initially promising, and though he played the part with the smugness of a big-city journalist, his performance lacked refinement. He delivered his lines with an impressive rhythm, but he failed to emphasize the importance of his words, speaking through pauses and relying on variations of a few hand gestures to convey the message.Daniel Katz '12, on the other hand, suffered from too much refinement in his character. As the Reverend Jeremiah Brown, Katz moved well on stage and his voice boomed with some authority, but it lacked the overbearing quality one would imagine a reverend would have. As Rachel Brown, the woman with the spiritual and emotional burden of being both Bertram's love interest and the Reverend's daughter, Suri Ellerton '10 acted with an assured sense of sympathy and supplied the role with plenty of emotion. However, she did not provide the character with a defining moment when Rachel finally presents some conviction, supplying little motivation for her character's turning point.As far as the performance of the two male leads, there is little for me to critique-in fact, I may have to actively contain my enthusiasm. I much appreciated Daniel Liebman '12 as Matthew Harrison Brady and his relative subtlety, as he provided his character with enough nuance and variation that no action seemed out of place. Had he presented a more overblown character, it could have teetered into a series of uncomfortable and unnecessary bouts of shouting, which would taken away from his consistent and solid performance. And, though I don't mean to take away the importance of this play as an ensemble piece, I cannot underscore enough the brilliance of Avram Mlotek's '09 portrayal of Henry S. Drummond. Mlotek's combination of pace, projection, speech stylization, physical mannerism and movement on stage from the moment he was introduced made him the central figure on which all eyes fell. The control in his delivery and conviction in his stride alone thrust him into a category of the uncommonly good undergraduate theater performers who are rarely seen. As I have said before, I do not regret choosing to see HTG's production of Inherit the Wind over the acclaimed film version, and one scene specifically relates to this rationalization: When the court undermines all of Drummond's efforts in presenting scientific evidence and witnesses, he calls Brady to testify as a biblical expert. As one would expect a man of Drummond's cleverness and capabilities to do, Brady leaves the stand shed of his greatness, and as the court participants disperse, the strength of the ensemble is realized as the sounds of laughter and disinterest fill the stage. The offstage shrills of childish giggles, the shuffling of chairs, the clambering of chatter and the clutter of bodies assembled in the courtroom-combined with the knowledge of the physical presence of all of these factors in front of you-embodies failure in such a way that makes it difficult not to turn away. Turning away, however, is less of a privilege in a theater, whereas a screen is all too permitting for such weakness.
(11/25/08 5:00am)
This year, incidences of students covering their smoke detectors have been reported at a much higher rate than usual, causing University officials to consider revising the punishment for such actions.On Nov. 5 and 6, the University Environmental Health and Safety Department, along with Facilities, Public Safety, Residence Life and the Waltham Fire Department, conducted biannual fire drills.Director of Public Safety Ed Callahan told the Justice that it appeared that many people were not evacuating the buildings during the fire drills in Rosenthal Quad. He explained that when the Waltham Fire Department went into different suites, they found several smoke detectors that were covered. He said that their curiosity peaked when they realized that students were violating fire safety procedure.Erika Lamarre, director of student conduct and development, told the Justice, "The University has the potential to be fined $1,000 per covered smoke detector [by the city of Waltham]." She said that the amount of danger that it poses to the entire building when even one smoke detector is covered "is enormous. And the possibility of injury or death in case of a fire with a smoke detector that's covered is something that I can't emphasize enough."Dean of Student Life Richard Sawyer said that Brandeis has been fined.Callahan told the Justice that since the University was in violation 23 times for each of the covered smoke detectors, it is possible that the city of Waltham could "cite us $23,000 worth of fines." He said that during the drill that took place over Nov. 5 and 6, the "majority of the violations" were in Rosenthal Quad.Lamarre wrote in an e-mail to the Justice, "The fire chief is not happy with us right now."In an e-mail to the Justice, Lamarre revealed that Waltham Fire Chief Richard Cardillo sent a letter to Vice President of Campus Operations Mark Collins summarizing the concerns of the fire drill. Cardillo elaborated that the letter included details about the $1,000 fine per covered smoke detector that the University will have to pay. He also explained that individuals responsible for disabling fire protection may face a year in jail according to the state law. Cardillo confirmed the 23 violations and explained that the "smoke detectors were covered with bags in rooms and hallways." Andrew Finn from University Services, who was present at the drills, revealed in an e-mail to the Justice that covered sprinkler heads, propped-open fire doors and a variety of decorating lights hanging on sprinkler pipes were also found. Finn wrote that the "University Environmental Health and Safety Department and the Waltham Fire Department were dismayed and very concerned when the scope of the covered smoke detectors was realized by the end of [Nov. 6]."Sawyer revealed that [Student Life] "has been concerned with covered smoke detectors for a while." Lamarre explained in her e-mail that five times as many students "have been referred for fire safety violations" this semester than for the fall semester of last year. Sawyer said that students in the past who covered their smoke detectors were referred to the student judicial process.Daniela Montoya-Fontalvo '11, who lives in Rosenthal East, told the Justice that she and her suitemates were written up for covering their smoke detector this October when they were throwing a birthday party for a friend. She explained that they covered it because they didn't want the birthday candles on the cake to set the alarm off.Brian, a member of the Class of 2009 who wished to remain anonymous, said that he covered his smoke detector during the second half of his sophomore year and again in his junior year. He said that he covered the detector so that he could burn incense and smoke inside his room. He recalls being told by the police to uncover the smoke detector, but admitted, "then we put it right back on." Although Brian was aware of the "irresponsibility" of the act at the time, he reasoned that "if there's a real fire, the bag [covering the smoke detector] would actually probably melt and the sprinklers will go off first." However, Finn wrote, "Keeping the smoke detectors uncovered is critical to the early-warning nature of the detectors in discovering smoldering fires for the safety of all building occupants." Finn elaborated in his e-mail that on Nov. 14 of this year, Fire Safety Think Tank, a panel hosted by Lamarre and attended by representatives from various departments, discussed the "root causes and methods to help educate students." The issue was also raised at the Personal Safety Committee meeting. Callahan, who is the chair of the committee, said that the committee is interested in creating posters to make the student body aware of the fire safety procedure, wrote Finn. Callahan explained that the University is exploring a variety of different options in order to respond to the smoke detector issue. He said, "I believe that the office of student affairs is looking to initiate fines for situations when they discover that people have covered their smoke detectors.""Everyone should understand that disabling, bypassing, destroying or tampering with a life safety device is not only against the law but it puts everyone in the building at risk," wrote Finn.-Rebecca Klein contributed reporting
(11/18/08 5:00am)
According to a recent report, ex-quarterback Michael Vick's finances have deservedly, and in more ways than one, gone to the dogs.In 2006, Vicks garnered a yearly salary of nearly $15 million as the quarterback for the?Atlanta Falcons. Now, however, Vick is working in a Kansas jail for 12 cents an hour, which means he'll probably have to pick up a second job when he's released in order to pay the $1 million in back taxes he owes the IRS and the state of Georgia. Fortunately, Vick's unwilling business partners in Bad Newz Kennels have faired much better; the ex-quarterback's fighting dogs are starring in a National Geographic Channel television special that examines their comfortable life on a Utah ranch. The dog's well-deserved retirement was provided by the $928,000 extracted from Vick for their care following the discovery of his dogfighting ring.However, it seems that Vick has drunk too much Vicktory Dog wine (a brand founded in honor of the fighting dogs that bears their pictures on its label); Vick has stated that he believes he will "be able to earn a substantial living" as an NFL quarterback upon his release. In other animal-oriented news, Lindsay Lohan was doused with flour by an angry anti-fur protester as she and girlfriend Samantha Ronson arrived at the VIP Room Theater in Paris. The protester, who dusted the pair on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, was apparently provoked by Lohan's fur stole and called her a "fur hag," according to a statement given by PETA to Access Hollywood.Ronson issued a statement of her own, stating in a blog entry on her MySpace profile that "Today I'm pissed at the bag of flour thrown on Lindsay last night. Not because I got powdered down, but because the girl who threw it acted like an animal herself," she wrote. "It's a pity that some groups feel the need to assault people as opposed to fighting with words. I don't wear fur, but I don't think I have the right to ATTACK those who do. No one has that right." (www.omg.yahoo.com)
(10/28/08 4:00am)
With the election only days away, most coverage focuses on the two presidential candidates, a contest seen by many as an epic face off of cosmic proportions. However, ballots around the country will be filled with other important questions, and voters will make decisions that will arguably affect them more directly than the outcome of the presidential race. Here in Massachusetts, we have only three binding questions (Californian students would be stunned by the brevity of the Massachusetts ballot), but they are very important. Out-of-state or underage Brandeis students may be subject to changes in law even if they cannot vote on them. That is all the more reason why those of us native to Massachusetts should vote and vote wisely.A particularly balanced, reasoned and yet controversial proposal is Question 2, which would partially decriminalize marijuana possession in the commonwealth. If the question passes, possession of less than an ounce of marijuana would result in its confiscation and a small fine, a civil rather than a criminal offense. Under current law, even possession of small amounts can result in criminal charges, which appear on one's permanent record and could put everything from job prospects to college loans in jeopardy.Marijuana possession currently can incur a six-month jail term and a $500 fine. A criminal offender record information report, better known as a CORI, is routinely checked by employers, especially for positions that involve working with children. A criminal record is also a major obstacle to anyone interested in a career in law enforcement. That didn't stop the district attorneys for Suffolk County, the Cape and Middlesex County, the latter of which includes Waltham and my hometown of Framingham, from trying marijuana as youths. According to the Boston Globe, all three tried the drug but are now chief opponents of Question 2.This doesn't exactly make them hypocrites, as many supporters of the decriminalization feel that it does. People change their minds between the time they are college students and when they are DAs of large urban and metro areas. Many people involved in law enforcement tend to support laws banning drugs, although not all do, as Jack Cole of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition made clear at a recent event at Brandeis.However, the experience of the DAs demonstrates a major reason that marijuana should be decriminalized. Those men literally are successful attorneys today because they weren't caught using drugs decades ago.The use of weed didn't seriously damage or alter these men's lives but getting caught and charged criminally would have. It isn't hypocritical to oppose something in theory just because you've done it in the past, but it is unreasonable to support prohibition and excessive penalties for something that you tried without lasting detriment to your health or success. The experience of using marijuana and avoiding any real harm just by not getting caught is shared by many of the 100 million Americans who admit to having tried the drug.Opponents such as these DAs argue that loosening drug laws will just encourage drug use, creating an impression that it is culturally acceptable. One need only refer to a list of movies and songs that explicitly feature marijuana use to see that the drug is already culturally prevalent. It's true that some studies indicate declines in drug use among minors in recent years, but at the same time, studies by the Federal Office of National Drug Control Policy indicate that marijuana potency is at its highest point in history.According to the World Health Organization, the United States still has the highest rate of marijuana and cocaine use in the world. These facts stand despite the prohibitionist efforts pushed by our current laws.A yes vote on Question 2 still allows for rigorous prevention efforts among minors, who, if caught, would face civil penalties and be required to complete a community service and drug education program. The idea that the threat of incarceration is the appropriate tool to prevent marijuana use among minors, let alone adults, is preposterous. A yes vote supports a humane and balanced approach to marijuana regulation.
(09/16/08 4:00am)
So, it turns out that Jesus walks, but Kanye West has to do jail time.On Sept. 11, the egotistical rapper and his partner in crime/manager/bodyguard Don Crowley were booked for felony vandalism and taken into custody after throwing a colossal hissy fit at the Los Angeles International Airport. During said tantrum, West rushed a photographer and broke a camera reportedly worth more than $10,000. Crowley, wanting to get in on the action, proceeded to go on his own spree of destruction, confronting a TMZ cameraman and smashing his equipment. However, fortunately for us, West and Crowley's reign of terror didn't prevent footage of the attack from reaching the Interwebs. For shortly after the incident, a video of the two assaulting the first photographer and spiking his equipment appeared on the TMZ?website, inciting well-deserved mockery of their actions. However, unfortunately for us, West is loaded and thus was able to post the $20,000 bail required to spring Crowley and himself from the clink. They are now walking the streets, looking for more cameras that they might send to an early grave. Regardless, if we have learned anything in the wake of this incident, it is that West didn't anticipate that being an attention whore comes with being followed by paparazzi. Maybe he'll plea na'veté in his Oct. 2 court appearance. In other, less frightening celebrity news, train wreck Amy "Wino" Winehouse lived to see her 25th birthday. However, the perpetual partier failed to show up to her own celebration, which was held at the Jazz After Dark Club in Soho, London. This is just the latest in Winehouse's most recent string of public missteps, which include showing up trashed for a DJ gig at the Monarch Lounge in?Camden, backing out of a Paris show and advance ordering 48 bottles of Jack Daniel's for her performance at the Bestival festival on the Isle of Wight. Amazingly, Winehouse was able to stand during the?Sept. 6 Bestival performance, though she was 45 minutes late. But, then again, better late than passed out.
(09/09/08 4:00am)
David Gurwitz '76 still recalls the moment when his athleticism, mathematical logic and then-undiscovered musical talent converged.An American Studies major and Math minor, 19-year-old Gurwitz was a little intimidated by the idea of taking "Finite Dimensional Vector Spaces." At some point, he recalls, the professor found that even the most skilled math students were struggling to comprehend the complex second-year calculus material.Gurwitz laughs as he narrates the short sequence of events he sees now as a sort of revelation. "The professor brought up [the music-math connection] when he saw at some point that everyone in the class-we'd all hit a wall," he says. "'Let's take a break and let me show you that music and math are related,'" he recalls the professor saying.It was the first time Gurwitz had ever considered the significance of math in music theory. "I couldn't believe that music was math," he remembers.Impatient to test the validity of this new discovery, Gurwitz says he "ran down to the music room" and, ecstatic, began to play, finding that his hands traveled up and down the keyboard with unexpected ease."Playing piano," he realized, "was like dribbling."When Gurwitz released his first album, Hear the Children, this year, he focused on the ways he could help children around the world. He was especially moved by physically disabled children and the children injured in the Sichuan earthquake last May.The album's debut motivated Gurwitz to reintroduce Terrie Williams '71, a Brandeis classmate, to John Rinka, a former basketball coach, in light of the fact that both individual's current careers also center on enhancing the lives of children and adolescents.Although Gurwitz had kept in contact with each individually since graduating from Brandeis, it had been nearly 40 years since Rinka had heard from Williams.After a five-year stint as basketball coach, Rinka left Brandeis in 1975 to fulfill his long-standing goal of becoming a teacher.Now the coordinator of a program for struggling students at a high school in North Carolina, Rinka employs many of the same mentoring skills he used as Gurwitz's basketball coach four decades ago.Williams currently operates the public relations and communications firm she established in 1988 after a continued struggle with undiagnosed depression that plagued her initial transition to Brandeis. Since founding her agency, Williams has published several books for adolescents and young adults documenting her journey to success.Gurwitz's own success in releasing his first album at age 60 and his interest in helping children speak to his refusal to ignore the talent he first recognized four decades ago in Slosberg Music Center.David GurwitzOnly after Gurwitz uncovered his musical potential did he find out that his mother had once played piano at Carnegie Hall, leading him to believe that it was his genetic fate to become a musician.Still, he found little time for more than the occasional visit to the music room, instead focusing on a rigorous class schedule, disc jockeying at the radio station, holding down several jobs and playing on the Brandeis basketball team. Following graduation, Gurwitz pursued his athletic ambitions and traveled to Europe, where he played semiprofessional basketball in Madrid for a year. "They didn't know how to play basketball then," he jokes. "I'd pass the ball to them, and they'd kick it back." Upon returning, he enrolled in Boston College Law School, where he received his J.D., and then business school at New York University, where he earned his M.B.A.A lawyer responsible for selling research to hedge funds and a father of four in New York, Gurwitz seemed an unlikely target for sudden musical inspiration when, about seven years ago, he was struck by the urge to compose his first song."Hear the Children," the title song of Gurwitz's first album, was conceived as a tentative melody while Gurwitz was sitting in the park with one of his children, struck by the image of a child in a wheelchair.But it would be another seven years before the cassette recording of "Hear the Children" became the nine-song album Gurwitz released this year.Though he can laugh off his insecurities now, when he initially began composing, Gurwitz was uncertain about the value of his music."I gave [the tape] to my cousin," Gurwitz explains. "He said, 'Don't think you're such a big shot! Your mother played better.'"Still, Gurwitz was not to be dissuaded. Unwilling to lose this second opportunity to fulfill his musical potential, he hired a piano teacher to help him transfer the tentative tunes he heard in his head to notes on a page.Since launching his music career, Gurwitz has used his melodies to support childrens' causes internationally. Focusing on the idea of helping physically disabled children that inspired Hear the Children, Gurwitz is planning a benefit concert in Connecticut this Thanksgiving to raise funds for the Special Olympics.Gurwitz's music has had an impact on populations in areas such as China and India. "China," a song on the Hear the Children album, captures the tragedy of the children injured in the Sichuan earthquake last May.Gurwitz donated some of the proceeds from the song's sale to the American Red Cross China Relief Fund. Gurwitz's music will be featured in an upcoming concert in India.Ironically, Gurwitz's age and inexperience in the music business further motivated him to compose."It's inspiring to someone older," he says, reflective. To his peers who say they can't do anything anymore, Gurwitz invokes his own success and says, "See, you can."With his 50-hour work week peddling research plus his obligations as a father and a husband, Gurwitz says it can be challenging to find the time to practice music. Instead, Gurwitz finds material for songs in his everyday life. "A couple of my songs were generated by walking in traffic," Gurwitz says, from sounds like the sound of a horn, a truck muffler or someone screaming "Yo!"Hurried excitement creeping into his tone as he describes his unconventional method of composing, Gurwitz explains, "I'll pull into a [parking lot] and call my answering machine and hum the song." Once home, he'll listen to the recorded melody and pick out the tune on the piano.Gurwitz's musical career gives him the satisfaction of touching the lives of children across the globe as well as the invigoration of playing music."Kids are just one aspect of it," he says. "Music makes you feel young, excited."John RinkaWhile a member of the Brandeis basketball team, Gurwitz established a relationship with his coach that has served as the foundation of a lifelong friendship. The entire team, Gurwitz says, looked to Rinka as a role model and a friend who influenced more than just their athletic lives."A basketball coach can tell you things a professor can't," Gurwitz says.Rinka's tenure coaching Brandeis basketball from 1970 to 1975 marked the "rejuvenation of the basketball program," Rinka explains. He recalls bonding with a unique group of intellectual students, several of whom he's still in touch with.Rinka describes how the team spent significant amounts of time together and grew to appreciate each other as people, not just teammates."We'd take long road trips," Rinka reminisces. "It wasn't all basketball."Soon after he began working at Brandeis, Rinka found that he "didn't find enough purpose" in coaching. Although he was named an All-American basketball player, inducted into the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame and was at the time under consideration for the position of head coach of the Tufts basketball team, Rinka began working toward a master's degree in teaching from Brandeis.Today, Rinka uses the same counseling skills he used to lead the Brandeis basketball team more than 30 years ago to help struggling high school students. As the coordinator of the Advancement via Individual Determination program at Hoggard High School in Wilmington, N.C. since 2003, Rinka puts needy students on a path toward a four-year college."We look for students who would fall through the cracks," Rinka explains. This year's 108 AVID program participants included a student who has been in foster care since the age of four, one whose mother is currently in jail and a student who recently had a baby.For AVID students, the program's significance extends beyond academics. "The kids form a really strong bond with each other," Rinka explains. "It's a peer group that supports each other in going to college" and whose positive encouragement counteracts the influence of gangs and other negative peer groups.During the four years that students spend in the program, Rinka plays the roles of teacher, mentor, friend and advocate; he acts as a stable source of support and motivation. "The classroom is open for the kids anytime, even if they want to eat lunch up here," Rinka explains. "It's a real unique situation."The majority of the participants in the AVID program are minority students, and nearly all face significant economic obstacles to pursuing any form of higher education. But for the four years they spend in AVID, "everything is pointed toward 'We're gonna go to college,'" Rinka says. All students are enrolled in honors courses and juniors and seniors in Advanced Placement classes. Program administrators instruct students on how to sign up for SATs and financial aid and apply to college.Their academic efforts pay off; out of last year's 22 AVID graduates, 21 were enrolled in four-year colleges. Several students were awarded athletic or military scholarships.The former basketball legend has never for a moment doubted his decision to sacrifice the opportunity to be a professional coach in order to become a teacher, echoing the satisfaction Gurwitz and Williams expressed with their current careers."It's amazing to see what these kids can do," he says, "what they overcame and what they can overcome."Terrie WilliamsWilliams' current career as the founder of her public relations firm, The Terrie Williams Agency, is the manifestation of her determination to overcome her battle with depression and fulfill her humanistic objectives.Even before she arrived at Brandeis, Williams knew she "wanted to save the world.""To help people," Williams explains. "To help develop their inner passion, their voice and help them understand who they are."Yet Williams' tumultuous transition to college proved that it would be some time before even she developed a true understanding of who she was. At the start of her Brandeis career, Williams says she had already been struggling with undiagnosed depression for several years. "During college there were signs of [my depression] that I really hadn't identified yet, and it worsened in graduate school," Williams says.Williams has published several books in which she writes about her own life story and explains the successful business strategies she used in founding her firm; other books highlight the importance of educating American adolescents. Black Pain: It Just Looks Like We're Not Hurting, published this year, details the story of Williams' struggle with severe depression and explores the issue of depression among black teens.Williams encourages current Brandeis students to explore their strengths in order to gain better insight into their own ambitions. "Listen to your inner voice," she says. "It always tells you the right thing but we are always second-guessing it."Each encouraged by the others' achievements, Gurwitz, Rinka and Williams seek to combine their creative and benevolent inclinations. Rinka intends to distribute copies of Williams' books to students in the AVID program; Gurwitz plans to play some of the songs from Hear the Children at a concert at Hoggard this fall.Reflecting on her path from Brandeis to her current career, Williams acknowledges that she made the most of her weaknesses, channeling her difficulties and frustrations into a more proactive means of benefitting society."Blessings," she says, "have a way of disguising themselves.
(04/08/08 4:00am)
Mimicking his long-shot campaign for the White House, Alaskan Sen. Mike Gravel took a roundabout route to campus for a speech Sunday night. Despite a three-hour plane delay, the dogged presidential contender drew a crowd of about 90 to the Lown auditorium for a talk that ran into the early morning hours.Gravel, who competed for the Democratic nomination before joining the Libertarian Party last month in an attempt to run as a third-party contender, began his speech around 11 p.m. and stayed late, taking pictures, answering questions and signing books.Gravel discussed his decision to switch partisan allegiances. The Democratic and Republican parties are too large to be truly controlled by the people, he said. "The Libertarian Party really is closer to the American people than is the Democratic Party or the Republican Party," Gravel said, adding, "I have always been a closeted libertarian, ... but now I am free at last, free at last."True power in the United States lies in hands of military leaders and the industries that supply weapons, Gravel said. "The military-industrial complex owns this country lock, stock and barrel, and the media is handmade [for] the military-industrial complex," he said.To redistribute political power, Gravel suggested limiting the terms of elected officials. At present, members of Congress can serve an unlimited number of terms, and federal judges are appointed for life. Gravel also advocated for his "National Initiative for Democracy," which would allow citizens to propose ideas and then vote them into laws during elections.Gravel insisted on the inadequacy of the remaining presidential candidates, which include Democratic Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and Republican Sen. John McCain, his party's presumptive nominee. Gravel said he is the only candidate who would end the war in Iraq."Obama, Hillary and McCain are all war people," he said, adding, "There's not going to be major change if these people are elected." Obama and Clinton have each said they would begin to withdraw troops from Iraq once elected. McCain has supported an extended troop deployment.Gravel blamed the current Democrat-controlled Congress for what he labeled deficient environmental policies. "Maybe if Hillary, Obama and all the other Democrats weren't such pussies, something would get done," he said.Even former Vice President Al Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize this year for his advocacy in against global warming, did not escape Gravel's criticism. Gore only informed the public, who are powerless within the current political framework, Gravel said.Gravel also said he would end the war on drugs and legalize marijuana, citing government studies conducted under the Nixon administration that, he said, determined that marijuana is neither addictive nor a "gateway" drug. All the war on drugs accomplishes is putting thousands of otherwise innocent people in jail every year, he continued. When Gravel offered to field questions, a student asked what the point of Gravel's "Rock" video on YouTube, in which the candidate throws a rock in a pond and then stares into the camera. "I was forced to make up my own explanation," for the video, Gravel said. The ripples in the pond are a metaphor for life, he said.Alex Epps and Adriani Leon contributed reporting.
(10/30/07 4:00am)
Ko Ko Lay, an exiled Burmese activist currently residing in the United States, spoke to an audience of approximately 30 students and guests in the Lurias room of the Hassenfeld Conference Center about the conflict in his home country and the steps that are being taken to find a resolution. Lay was one of the student leaders who organized an uprising in Burma against the military-dominated Socialist Program Party on August 8, 1988, known as the 8.8.88 Revolution. He was invited by the Southeast Asian Club as part of a weeklong promotional program for the group, which also received support from the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life and the Brandeis Pluralism Alliance for the event."We believed it was our duty [to revolt]," Lay said during his speech. "It was time to change, but the regime kept down the movement."On September 18 of that same year, the Burmese military ended the popular revolution through brute force, killing more than 3,000 students and civilians in the process. Students leaders like Lay were either persecuted or fled the country. "So many of my friends-the other leaders-have been in solitary and will stay there for the rest of their lives," Lay said. "If I go back, I will be jailed for life." Lay also spoke about Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Laureate and leader of the non-violent movement for human rights and democracy in Burma who was put under house arrest in May 1990 after the National League for Democracy won an election that would have made Suu Kyi the prime minister. Instead, the militaristic regime intervened and reassumed power. After the military quelled the 1988 uprising, the organization split into two segments, an inside group and an outside group. Lay is part of the latter, a system of leaders and activists working to educate the world about the movement. "We have a student army ready to fight back, made up of more than 10,000 students, but it is my job to try to make sure we don't need to use militaristic tactics," Lay said.Lay is also a U.S. Congressional intern and speaks about the situation in Burma with U.S. representatives. He said the U.S. should put pressure on China to stop aiding the Burmese government and on the U.N. Secretary to take peaceful actions. "We want to find a peaceful solution and effective solution," he said.Lay travels to various college campuses to speak to students about the conflict. His recent trips have included the University of California at Berkley and San Francisco State University, where he is currently working on his Master's Degree in Social Change Design and Conflict Resolution. "It is my responsibility to study for my country," Lay said. "We must use education to better our own world."Lay cited technology as a necessary resource and said the reason the conflict in Burma is not as widely known as those in other regions is due to a lack of communication. He now works as the secretary of information for his activist organization.SEAC co-President Kayla Sotomil '10 said the group invited Lay as part of an effort to spread awareness about Southeast Asian countries. "We have the basic facts [about the situation in Burma], but we wanted him to share his experiences so we could relate on a more personal level," said Krystal Khine '10, the other SEAC co-President and a native of Burma.In an interview after his speech, Lay explained his motivation behind speaking on college campuses. "Who is going to solve our problems?" Lay asked. "The youth of this world possesses the future. That is why I speak at universities.
(10/23/07 4:00am)
Benjamin Pogrund, a former South African journalist who was jailed for his writings on apartheid, condemned labeling Israel as "the new Apartheid" in the first event sponsored by the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies Wednesday afternoon. Around 65 students and members of the public attended the event, "Is Israel the New Apartheid State?" held in Golding 110.Pogrund, the founding director of the Yakar Center for Social Concern in Jerusalem, emphasized the difference between his experience growing up in Apartheid South Africa, the system of government-sponsored racial segregation, and the experience of Arabs and Palestinians under Israeli control. While minorities in Israel are oppressed, he said, the system under which they live doesn't resemble Apartheid and any comparison between the two is offensive. "Anyone who knows South Africa would laugh if you said Israel is an Apartheid state," Pogrund said. The motive for making this comparison, he said, is to delegitimize Israel. While Pogrund criticized Israel for its control in the West Bank and its discriminatory policies toward Arab citizens, ultimately, he said the two societies are incompatible."The vote is there. The vote means power and they have the ability to apply it," he said of Arabs in Israel. During Apartheid South Africa, Pogrund said blacks weren't citizens and couldn't vote.While it has evolved over time, the definition of Apartheid, always denotes white supremacy and racial segregation, he said. In Israel, Jews and Arabs both range in skin color and the comparison is misunderstood, he said."To compare Israel to pre-1994 South Africa is simply not valid," Pogrund said. "Apartheid relates to the color of your skin, a means of separating race by a physical contrast. End of story." The United Nations convened an anti-racism conference in 2001, adopting a resolution denouncing Israel as an Apartheid state and calling on nations to adopt an international policy of isolation toward Israel. Pogrund criticized the United Nations for cheapening the experience of Apartheid by applying it erroneously."It's just not a valid comparison," he said. "Not remotely."Reflecting on a personal health scare four years ago, Pogrund, who has lived in Israel since 1997, said his time staying in a Mount Scopus hospital encapsulates the difference between Israeli society and South African Apartheid. "When I first came to the hospital, I noticed that my doctor was an Arab, the nurse was a Jew, the secretary was an Asian; basically, every person of status was of a different race. And that my friends, is not Apartheid," Pogrund said.Between the West Bank and Israel proper, he made it clear that checkpoints serve as a security measure rather than a means solely to discriminate against Arabs."The occupation is brutalizing and corrupting both Palestinians and Israelis," he said, but it's up to the majority to decide how it will treat the minority. Israel isn't unique in this case, he said.Following the lecture, Prof. Ilan Troen (NEJS), the director of the Israel Studies Center, opened the floor for questions. Lisa Hanania '11, who identified herself as a Palestinian who lives in Israel, said she experienced discrimination when she was unfairly detained by Israeli police officers when her identification card used to say "Arab." She challenged Pogrund's assertion that Israel's security measures are warranted and that the state's treatment of minorities is improving. Pogrund resonded, saying, "It's wrong. It's changing." Pointing to improvements in the field of health, he cited Arab infant mortality rates and life expectancy as examples of ways the Israeli government has increased Arabs' standard of living. As a journalist for the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg, Pogrund wrote about the experience of black South Africa. After being imprisoned for his writing, Pogrund left South Africa for London where he worked for several papers. Pogrund is working on a book that argues against likening Israel to an Apartheid state.
(10/16/07 4:00am)
Recently, I've focused on the social repercussions of what's on television; as viewers, we have a responsibility to maintain our personal integrity. That's not to say that we should judge a show purely on its production quality or even by its intelligence, but when we are shown something that we perceive as wrong, we should recognize it. After an abysmal couple of weeks, it seems like there may not be anything worth watching. It seems like it's about time that we start talking about some of the good stuff that's on right now. If I had to pick one night of television to watch, I would definitely choose Wednesday night. Boasting a balanced set of great shows, there are programs both new and old, comedy and drama (And "dramedys," if you want everything all at once). No matter what you like, there's something for you to watch.While there are some great returning shows, Wednesday is also filled with a cadre of fresh, exciting new stories. For fans of Tim Burton, fairy tales and sappy romances, Pushing Daisies (ABC, 8 p.m.) might legitimately be this season's best new show. Daisies is a well-constructed show that is honestly heart-warming, a rare experience in television today. Guided by a fairy tale narrator, the story recounts the life of a man named Ned (Lee Pace) who, as a child, learned that he has the supernatural ability to bring dead people back to life just by touching them. Ned helps private detective Emerson Cod (Chi McBride) solve murders by bringing the murdered back to life and asking them how they died so Cod can catch the killers and get the handsome reward. The show is shot so viewers feel close to the characters. While it may seem superficial, using the camera to make silly little visual jokes for the viewers' entertainment gives the show a playful quality that is rare in this medium. Also, the show has a great supporting cast. In addition to the grumpy, yet cuddly Chi McBride, Anna Friel and Kristen Chenoweth both give great performances, transposing vibrant personas in just two episodes.Meanwhile, people with insatiable appetites for crime dramas should check out Life (NBC, 10 p.m.). The show follows a detective who has been released from prison after serving 12 years for a murder he didn't commit. As part of the terms of his lawsuit, Detective Crews (Damian Lewis) rejoins the police force to start rebuilding his life while trying to solve the case that got him put in jail. Life is the perfect example of a show whose value lies in its overall concept, rather than the literal plot. Though the individual stories don't cover any ground that Law and Order hasn't already, the show pulls free from the rest of the police-drama pack by focusing on how a single event completely changes the way you perceive the world and the way you're perceived. Life is extraordinary because every scene, every conversation is filtered through Crews' experience. There is something clearly wrong with Crews, and tension builds in even the most casual situations because you can never tell when he's going to snap.In spite of all the good stuff, there are also a bunch of duds. Kid Nation (CBS, 8 p.m.), which I've discussed before, is a waste of airtime. There is also the infamous Private Practice (ABC, 9 p.m.), the Grey's Anatomy spin-off. Being a man and a Grey's Anatomy fan is a very conflicting experience, but I know, and hopefully others do as well, that the show's quality comes not from the medical or the personal drama, but from the way the two worlds become entangled, making the medical stuff more personal and the personal stuff seem more important. Based on this, Private Practice has done an unbelievable job of stripping away everything that makes Grey's good, leaving a sappy pile of garbage in its place. Avoid the pitfalls, and your Wednesday night will be that much more enjoyable.
(10/09/07 4:00am)
Some special needs children and adolescents have behaviors that are so self-abusive, aggressive or destructive as to be life-threatening. Consider only one category, self-abuse. Children referred to the Judge Rotenberg Center have displayed behaviors including but not limited to: banging their heads to the point of brain damage; biting off their fingertips; starvation through refusal of food; biting holes through their cheeks; biting off part of their own tongues; cutting off their own earlobes with scissors; swallowing X-acto knives; and cutting their skin so often that the skin becomes too tough to suture.Children with such behaviors are referred to nonpublic schools that often fail to treat them effectively, and eventually expel them. They are then sometimes referred for effective treatment to JRC, which has a wider range of behavioral treatment procedures than is available elsewhere. The JRC has a unique near-zero rejection, near-zero expulsion policy, accepting students who have been rejected and expelled from other programs. The JRC's treatment, based on modern behavioral psychology, owes much to the work of psychologist B.F. Skinner, under whom I studied, and can be described as follows:1. Under the guidance of a psychiatrist, we remove or minimize the use of psychotropic medication. JRC students have sometimes been so heavily drugged at their previous schools that they sleep most of the day, fall face-first into their food, cannot even recognize their own parents or go into a drug-induced coma. The effectiveness of such drugs is so lacking in proof and fraught with peril that the Federal Drug Administration has not approved most of them for use with children.2. The JRC substitutes, in place of such drugs, a unique and comprehensive system of rewards-for example, an arcade-type reward room, a store where students can purchase items with the money or tokens they earn for displaying desired behaviors, a reward corner inside many classrooms, a reward afternoon with a barbecue once per week, etc. 3. JRC teaches new skills to replace the problem behaviors, making use of computerized self-instructional software that students access with their own computers. 4. The JRC tries these powerful rewards and educational procedures for an average of 11 months. For about half of our school-age students, they suffice. For the other half, we offer the parents the opportunity to supplement the rewards and educational procedures with aversives (punishments). If the parent and a probate court judge-in an individualized "substituted judgment" proceeding-approve of this plan, an aversive, in the form of a brief, two-second skin shock typically applied to the surface of an arm or leg, is added to the student's treatment and applied after each problem behavior. The procedure feels like a hard pinch and-unlike the drugs that it replaces-has no negative side effects. The skin-shock procedure must also be pre-approved, on an individual basis, by the child's school system, the parent, a physician, a psychiatrist, a human rights committee and a peer review committee. Currently, only 43 percent of JRC's school-age students receive the combined reward and skin shock therapy; even in these cases, it is used less than once per week in the average case. In many cases students progress so well that the aversives can eventually be removed, and the students can return to their school system and family.Every surgical, dental or medical treatment involves discomfort, risks or costs on the one hand and expected benefits on the other. A reasonable approach is to weigh the former against the latter in deciding whether to undergo or approve the treatment. Opponents of aversives are unwilling to weigh risks and benefits, preferring to simply declare that the use of skin-shock is "wrong" and to try to prevent any special-needs children from availing themselves of this therapy.Without aversive therapy, many JRC students would otherwise be drugged with life-shortening medications, warehoused in institutions or jails, confined and restrained in padded isolation rooms, bounced in and out of psychiatric hospitals, left to kill or maim themselves or others or end up homeless. With aversives however, many are able to obtain an education for the first time in their lives, reunite successfully with their families, and have hope and optimism for their future where none had previously existed. We invite readers, including those who have formed an anti-JRC club to visit the JRC and see that we offer a life-saving treatment that deserves to be protected.The writer is the director and founder of the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, Mass.For more information, see http://www.judgerc.org/introtojrc.html For a complete response to the biased and one-sided Mother Jones article on JRC, see http://www.judgerc.org/ResponsetoGonnermanArticle.pdf. For the parents' perspective, see http://www.judgerc.org/parentletters.html.
(10/02/07 4:00am)
Does David Letterman have an audience anymore? I certainly hope not. Call me cold hearted, but I don't know or care what Buttafuco is. Just thought I'd state that. Anyway, the staple of pseudo-comedy added another notch on his well-worn belt Friday night when he welcomed everyone's favorite pseudo-media baby and pop culture favorite (read: abomination), Paris Hilton (God, I hate writing her name).In what was perhaps a misguided attempt to spark an intelligent debate with the hotel heiress over the politics of a decaying American penal system, Letterman peppered Paris with a barrage of hard-hitting questions regarding her own whopping 22-day jail sentence. (Videos of her vicious prison beatings have yet to surface, sadly.)Letterman mercilessly tore into his poor guest, begging the question, "Uh, how'd you like being in jail?" To which she retorted, "Not too much." Fascinating. When Letterman refused to let up, Paris declared that she was "sad that I came here." Letterman apologized by offering to buy her a parakeet (some kind of prison lingo?). It's a shame that the debate never really took off. It could have changed America. Now, as long as we're harping on the pain of brain dead celebrities, let's drag our slop buckets over to Britney Spears' corner of the ring. Believe it or not, the innocent school-girl who stole our hearts with her fuzzy pigtails and tiny plaid skirt (and asked us to hit her over and over, I might add) has just lost custody of her kids. Both of them! On Monday, California Judge Scott Gordon declared that Spears must hand over custody of her two boys, Sean Preston, 2, and Jayden James, 1, to her ex-husband Kevin Federline (who already has a five-year-old daughter, Kori Madison, with actress Shar Jackson). Spears had shared custody with their children since their 2006 divorce. The judge cited her "habitual, frequent and continuous" use of alcohol (or was it her "performance" at that award show that no one watches anymore?) as evidence. Apparently, one mentally invalid, drug-abusing, fast-fading celebrity is as good as another. Judge, King Solomon doesn't have squat on you.
(09/25/07 4:00am)
In 1989, Shawn Drumgold was convicted of the murder of 12-year-old Tiffany Moore and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. But in 2003, Drumgold was released from prison, largely thanks to Dick Lehr, an award-winning investigative reporter for the Boston Globe who uncovered evidence that proved Drumgold had been wrongfully convicted.This June, Lehr joined the University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism as a journalist-in-residence with the Justice Brandeis Innocence Project. Lehr will also be assisting Schuster Institute's co-founder and director, Florence Graves, in finding a new associate director for the project after Pamela Cytrynbaum left last year to teach in Oregon. Lehr, who teaches a journalism course at Boston University, will remain in the position until December.Lehr worked for nearly 20 years as a reporter for the Boston Globe and has won several awards for his investigative reporting. Yet he describes the beginning of his journalistic career as casual, almost accidental. During high school in New England and his undergraduate studies at Harvard College, Lehr wrote for student newspapers, but says he never seriously considered pursuing journalism professionally until after college."I didn't know it was a passion," he confesses.After he graduated, Lehr moved to Connecticut, and his future in journalism really got its start. Lehr met two recent graduates of Yale University and the University of Virginia who were starting their own newspaper in the town of Old Lyme. They were looking to hire a reporter for their Old Lyme Gazette, Lehr says, and they hired him almost instantly. Lehr says this first job as a reporter made it "really click" that he wanted to become a professional journalist."We were trying to make a difference in small communities," he recalls.After working for this original publication, Lehr went on to work for two years for the Hartford Courant.As his enthusiasm for journalism grew, Lehr also began to explore his fascination with the criminal justice system. Driven by the belief that a better understanding of the law would "help [him] become a better journalist," Lehr began attending law school at night while working for the Courant during the day."I didn't expect to complete law school," Lehr says. Although he planned to attend for only one or two years, Lehr ultimately graduated from the University of Connecticut School of Law. Earning a degree in law proved highly beneficial for Lehr as he began his journalism career. Lehr says attending law school helped him understand the relationship between the legal system and the media and encouraged him to focus on the criminal justice system as his area of specialty. More importantly, Lehr recalls feeling more confident as a young reporter sitting in on trials in criminal court because of his background in law. Reflecting on his work at the Courant, Lehr recalls with pride and disbelief one of the "wildest" investigative pieces he worked on. After one year at the paper, the Ku Klux Klan began leafleting colleges around the Hartford area.Lehr says the Klan's activity was a source of chaos and confusion for the Hartford community. "[The event] was getting a lot of news coverage and getting a lot of headlines, but there were a lot of unanswered questions," he says.Excited by the idea of unravelling the mystery surrounding the Klan's activity, Lehr volunteered to work on the story with a senior reporter. Lehr's voice still contains the eager anticipation of a new reporter working on his first extensive investigation as he recounts how he enlisted in the Klan under a fake name and attended a Klan meeting."We exposed them," he says, "and wrote the story."In retrospect, Lehr admits he may have tried a different approach. "I would probably do the story differently now," he said. "I haven't used deception an awful lot" he says.It was while working as a Globe reporter that Lehr undertook what is possibly his most well-known piece of investigative reporting. In 2003, he proved the innocence of Shawn Drumgold."Journalists should always keep their eyes and ears open for a tip about another [story]," Lehr advises. His investigation into Drumgold's case actually began while he was working on another story about a man who had been recently released from prison.With a casual tone, perhaps to convey the unplanned nature of the investigation's beginning, Lehr recalls a Harvard lawyer mentioning to him, "I keep hearing this guy Drumgold is in [jail] wrongfully."At that point, Lehr knew relatively little about Drumgold's case. But once he began researching the conviction, "one thing led to another," he says."I didn't believe he was innocent right from the beginning," Lehr recalls. Over the course of four months, however, working full time on Drumgold's case, carefully examining his conviction and interviewing him in prison periodically, Lehr says he changed his mind."New evidence suggested strongly that they got the wrong guy," Lehr recounts. In 2003, Lehr's investigation ultimately led to Drumgold's release from a sentence of life without parole.Right now Lehr is working on his fourth book, The Fence, based on a case of police brutality in Boston in 1995. He is also the co-author of The Underboss: A Dramatic Inside Look at the Rise and Fall of a Mafia Family and Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance between the FBI and the Irish Mob, both with Gerard O'Neill, and Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders, with Mitchell Zuckoff. Lehr says all of his bookd have flowed from stories he published while working at the Globe.Currently, Lehr teaches a course called "Media Law and Ethics" at Boston University. He also organized an investigative reporting seminar for BU students to investigate real cases and get their reports published in Boston media.At Brandeis, Lehr works with undergraduate research assistants for the Innocence Project. Assistant Will Friedman '09 says that working with Lehr is a good experience because Lehr "knows what he's doing.""He has insightful and intelligent things to say at every turn," Friedman says.The Justice Brandeis Innocence Project, one of three projects within the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, addresses what the Schuster Institute Web site describes as an ethical crisis in the United States: the wrongful imprisonment of innocent people, especially lower-class minorities. Thanks to innocence projects across the country, some based at universities, hundreds of innocent people have been released from wrongful convictions. Many of these cases are solved after DNA evidence is introduced into the case, but the Brandeis branch accepts cases with no DNA evidence from the New England Innocence Project. These are cases that generally involve sloppy police work, unreliable eyewitness accounts and courtroom errors. The Brandeis Project is the third journalism-based project in the country. Currently, the Brandeis Project is investigating its first case, which involves the potentially wrongful conviction of a man convicted of homicide and is now serving a life sentence in prison, Lehr says. His case has no DNA evidence and was referred to them by the New England Innocence Project. The individual, a native of the Dominican Republic, speaks very little English, and Lehr says his case is complicated by the fact that he needs a translator."[The case] turned out to be an extremely difficult one," Lehr says. Undergraduate interns have been investigating this case alone for almost two years now, since the Innocence Project opened at Brandeis.It's necessary to keep anonymous the man they're investigating, Graves said, to protect the fragility and progress of the case.The Innocence Project's investigations are perhaps less glamorous than people might believe. "Sometimes people don't understand that much of investigative reporting is paper documents, not being out in the field," Graves says.Nevertheless, Lehr proudly says that, "When you've gotten someone out of jail who doesn't belong there, you've done it all.
(09/18/07 4:00am)
I was eight years old when a man inexplicably named after a delicious beverage came into my life. I didn't know who he was or why he ran (or rather, drove like an old lady), but his face was on every channel and every magazine for grown-ups. Having two hard working, often- absent parents, The Juice was as warm and friendly a sight to me as either of their faces. Every day he stood in front of the nation, smiled politely and claimed he was innocent. This charming cuddle-bunny could do no wrong. When they announced the verdict of Simpson's murder trial over the radio to my tightly huddled fourth grade homeroom class, I was quivering with fear for his safety. When they told us he was innocent, I ran laps around the room. Meanwhile, my teacher uttered an obscenity that we can't here. Growing up, I became keenly aware of his obvious guilt, but my inner child still had a soft spot for The Juice. Though he was spared the punishments of our legal system, I thought 12 years of public ridicule and scorn was punishment enough. People can be really mean, after all. Still, he got lucky, and he should have kept his head down. For those of you who are too young to have bonded with the vitamin-rich fruit man, Orenthal James "O.J" Simpson was a successful NFL athlete who, after separating from his wife, Nicole Brown, was accused of murdering her and a poor waiter, Ron Goldman, who was returning her sunglasses to her from a restaurant. A snoozer of a police chase and a year of over-hyped litigation followed. Life dealt Simpson another near-fatal blow to the cranium this week when he was arrested for the suspected armed theft of a collection of sports memorabilia kept in Las Vegas' Palace Station Hotel. Though he initially denied the allegations, calling the incident a "misunderstanding," his accomplice, Walter Alexander, was later detained and questioned by police. Unfortunately for The Juice, Alexander confessed, and Simpson is now sitting in jail, awaiting a trial that could land him in prison for up to 30 years. If that weren't enough, the family of victim Ron Goldman, has purchased the rights to O.J's cancelled pseudo-confessional book, "If I did it," and plans to re-distribute it under a new title, "If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer." Harsh.
(09/17/07 4:00am)
I was eight years old when a man inexplicably named after a delicious beverage came into my life. I didn't know who he was or why he ran (or rather, drove like an old lady), but his face was on every channel and every magazine for grown-ups. Having two hard working, often- absent parents, The Juice was as warm and friendly a sight to me as either of their faces. Every day he stood in front of the nation, smiled politely and claimed he was innocent. This charming cuddle-bunny could do no wrong. When they announced the verdict of Simpson's murder trial over the radio to my tightly huddled fourth grade homeroom class, I was quivering with fear for his safety. When they told us he was innocent, I ran laps around the room. Meanwhile, my teacher uttered an obscenity that we can't here. Growing up, I became keenly aware of his obvious guilt, but my inner child still had a soft spot for The Juice. Though he was spared the punishments of our legal system, I thought 12 years of public ridicule and scorn was punishment enough. People can be really mean, after all. Still, he got lucky, and he should have kept his head down. For those of you who are too young to have bonded with the vitamin-rich fruit man, Orenthal James "O.J" Simpson was a successful NFL athlete who, after separating from his wife, Nicole Brown, was accused of murdering her and a poor waiter, Ron Goldman, who was returning her sunglasses to her from a restaurant. A snoozer of a police chase and a year of over-hyped litigation followed. Life dealt Simpson another near-fatal blow to the cranium this week when he was arrested for the suspected armed theft of a collection of sports memorabilia kept in Las Vegas' Palace Station Hotel. Though he initially denied the allegations, calling the incident a "misunderstanding," his accomplice, Walter Alexander, was later detained and questioned by police. Unfortunately for The Juice, Alexander confessed, and Simpson is now sitting in jail, awaiting a trial that could land him in prison for up to 30 years. If that weren't enough, the family of victim Ron Goldman, has purchased the rights to O.J's cancelled pseudo-confessional book, "If I did it," and plans to re-distribute it under a new title, "If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer." Harsh.
(07/12/07 4:00am)
The driver of the car in which David Halberstam died pleaded not guilty Tuesday to a charge of misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter, the Palo Alto Daily News reported July 11. Halberstam, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and five-time bestselling writer originally selected by the University to deliver the May 2007 commencement address, was killed in a three-car accident in Menlo Park, Cali., April 23. Kevin Jones, 26, a first-year graduate student in journalism at UC Berkeley, was spoken for in San Mateo Superior Court by his lawyer Laurel Headley. Jones could be jailed for up to one year and charged $1,000 if he's found guilty. The judge set his trial date for Nov. 13 at 8:30 a.m.Jones was making a left-hand turn on a red light and hit another car with a green light, local authorities said. The two cars slammed into a third due to the impact of the crash. Halberstam died of massive internal injuries.Jones and the two other drivers were in stable condition, none were speeding or under the influence of any substances, local authorities have reported. Halberstam had just given a lecture titled "Turning Journalism into History" at UC Berkeley, and was on his was to an interview for his new book, The Game, about the 1958 Super Bowl between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants, as his widow Jean Halberstam told the Associated Press; Jones had volunteered to drive him. Mrs. Halberstam has called on universities not to permit students to chauffer guest lecturers."Mr. Jones has been distraught since the moment of the accident, and he continues to be distraught," Headley told The San Jose Mercury News last month. "He lost his mentor in that accident, and obviously the notice of charges is not welcome. It just adds to the tragedy of the whole situation.
