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“Aside from art being just an expression of your ideas and expression of who you are and what you think the world is about, I think it’s just also a connection tool,” Jonathan Joasil ’22 said when asked how he defines art during our April 7th Zoom interview. Jonathan is a Black painter and visual artist whose work has been featured in the senior exhibition at the Dreitzer Art Gallery in Spingold Theater.
On Thursday, April 7, Brandeis’ Take Back the Night returned as an in-person event for the first time since 2019. A global movement with a long history, Take Back the Night is an annual stand against sexual violence which has taken place all over the world for decades, and has been held on campus for over 15 years. Hosted as a collaborative event by the Prevention, Advocacy and Resource Center; the Intersectional Feminist Coalition; the Black Action Plan; the Gender and Sexuality Center; the Disabled Students’ Network; and students from other organizations, the event began as an evening march from the Light of Reason to the Rabb steps.
On April 10, the third race of the Formula One season was underway in Melbourne, Australia. As the lights went out and the race began, Carlos Sainz experienced issues within the first lap. Starting ninth, Sainz had a lot of work to do if he was going to catch up to his teammate who was sitting in pole position. As Sainz was reaching the end of his second lap, his tires lost grip and he ended up in the gravel forcing him to retire. Due to Sainz spinning out, a safety car was released. By lap 7, the cars were racing full speed again. Verstappen, the Red Bull favorite, tried to make a quick move on race leader Charles Leclerc, but was unsuccessful. By lap 10, Leclerc was able to build the gap up to 1.5 seconds making sure to keep the defending world champion at bay. On lap 12, Max Verstappen complained about the poor state of his tires, causing the team to consider pitting him earlier rather than later. Considering the Australian Grand Prix is 58 laps long, the well being of the tires is of highest concern for the engineers. As Leclerc continued to lead the pack, the gap between him and his Red Bull rival grew to just over six seconds.
Following promptly after the All England Championship was the last tournament of the Badminton World Federation (BFW) World Tour’s European leg, the Swiss Open. In the Yonex Swiss Open 2022, which began March 22 and ended March 27, there were multiple big names missing, particularly from Asia, including Kento Momota, Chou Tien Chen, Lee Zii Jia, and All England runner-up Lakshya Sen, most likely forfeiting one European tournament in preparation for the tournaments in Asia. Viktor Axelsen fans may also have been disappointed by Axelsen’s retirement in his game on day two due to fatigue.
As most students are more than aware of at this point, we are currently experiencing unprecedented levels of COVID-19 cases within our student body. As of press time, Brandeis’ 7-day positivity rate is 2.34%, nearly two and a half times as high as the reported rate for Massachusetts higher education institutions and slightly higher than the overall state positivity rate. The recent spike in cases that has led to the tightening of precautionary guidelines by the administration has come as a disappointing surprise to many of us. We have spent the majority of the past semester-and-a-half enjoying a relatively normal college experience by pre-pandemic standards, thanks to decreased pandemic-related restrictions and a relatively low risk of being exposed to COVID-19 on campus. For many of us, this has made it especially difficult to adjust to the level of caution that must be taken in the midst of the sharp uptick in the positive case rate that is happening now within our community and makes it all the more frustrating when being cautious leads to missing out on the fun and important parts of our everyday lives.
The Yonex All England Open is the fifth tournament in the 2022 Badminton World Federation World Tour and the oldest badminton tournament. The champions of the tournament will earn 12,000 points counted towards World Rankings, as well as gain eligibility for the World Championship and the Paris Summer Olympics 2024.
The Disabled Students’ Network, run by Luca Swinford ’22 and Zoe Pringle ’22, got its start in April 2021, a year after Swinford and Pringle met in the course “Disability Policy” taught by Prof. Monika Mitra (Heller) in spring 2020. It was during this class that they discovered that there wasn’t a space for the disabled community at Brandeis, and this inspired them to create one themselves. Unfortunately, these plans were put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic; however, it was during this time that Swinford and Pringle realized there needed to be a community more than ever. According to Swinford, “It was because of the conditions of COVID, how isolating it was, that we sort of realized, like, there's no better time than to start this club right now. And so, in one way [the pandemic] delayed it, but it also kind of reinvigorated the idea for us to start a club like this.” Thus, the Disabled Students’ Network was created in April 2021 and officially chartered in December of 2021.
On March 16, Andrea Dine, assistant vice president of student affairs, sent out an email to the Brandeis community with a subject line of “Important update: Increase in Testing Frequency for Students.” The email announced that as of March 17, the required testing frequency was once again every 96 hours. Students must submit on-campus PCR tests roughly twice a week, a quick turnaround from the previously announced relaxation of requirements that reduced testing to once a week. The email specified that the update in the testing policy was due to an increase in positivity and quarantine rates on campus. It also stated that as of that Thursday, they expected the University to “have the highest number of students in isolation or quarantine since the pandemic began.”
On Friday, March 11, following a student sit-in, workers and students gathered for a student-organized rally to push Brandeis to agree to the demands of the Brandeis Leftist Union’s “Petition to Support Union Dining Workers” ahead of the upcoming dining vendor bid decision.
MEDICAL EMERGENCY
Prior to entering the field of higher education administration, University President Ron Liebowitz was deeply entrenched in the study of the former Soviet Union. His grandfather emigrated to the U.S. right before the Russian Revolution and “instilled in my brother and me a fascination with the history,” said Liebowitz in a March 7 interview with the Justice.
On March 7, the University amended its COVID-19 health and safety regulations as cases and hospitalization waned in the state of Massachusetts. As a part of the new rules, Brandeis now requires students only to be tested once a week, given they are fully vaccinated, and faculty and staff are no longer required to be tested.
Seventy-six students and 15 faculty and staff members tested positive for COVID-19 in the weeks leading up to and throughout the February break. Dozens of students were placed in quarantine and isolation, but cases dwindled towards the end of break.
Brandeis undergraduate students pay, on average, $7,070 on meal plans per year, according to the Office of Student Financial Services. Since 2013, students have paid this price for Sodexo as stated by the Food Service Director website. Sodexo’s contract was meant to end in 2020; however, due to the pandemic, they received a two year extension, which is set to end in June 2022, the Office of the Executive Vice President, Finance, and Administration said.