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Brandeis University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1949 | Waltham, MA

Finding togetherness in dissonance: New group aims to create community for neurodivergent students

by Anika Jain | 10/25/2022

“When you’re younger, you don’t really notice you’re that different,” Hannan Canavan ’25, student leader of Deisvergent, said. “The adults did, because they could see you from the outside, but your peers, they really didn’t. Then, as you get older, there starts to become this barrier, this invisible wall. Others begin to progress and understand things that you don’t. That’s a very isolating experience.”

See you in the pit

by Natalie F. Kahn | 10/04/2022

The pandemic brought the Boston area’s active live music scene to a grinding halt. Over the past year, local venues gradually reopened as artists went back on the road. Brandeis students have been making the most of the return of concerts in (and around) Boston.

Waltham skaters ‘ollie’ into advocacy for a better skatepark

by Natalie F. Kahn and Cayenn Landau | 09/20/2022

At around 3 p.m. on a sunny Saturday afternoon, the Waltham Skatepark at Jack Koutoujian Playground is the place to be. Some skaters hang out next to the half pipe. Others stand atop the ramp on the opposite side of the park with their boards hanging over the edge. They watch their fellow skaters attempt tricks, hyping them up and offering tips as they wait to “drop in” for a turn.  

Waltham Farmers’ Market: Global flavors, local community

by Ariella Weiss | 09/13/2022

On a sunny Saturday morning in downtown Waltham, excited customers are lined up at the edge of a parking lot filled with stands displaying colorful produce, crumbly pastries, and exotic plants. At 9:30 a.m. sharp, a bell is rung. The Waltham Farmers’ Market is officially open for the day.  

At home on the campaign trail

by Noah Risley | 08/30/2022

Like many New Yorkers, Rachel Landis ’23 could be found at her local voting booth on August 23, this year’s primary election day in the state. But Landis wasn’t there to cast her ballot. She had voted early because she knew she’d be busy on Election Day.

On B Connect, students and alumni Rise Together

by Mirabell Rowland and Mina Rowland | 05/23/2022

Earlier this semester, B Connect celebrated the one-year anniversary of its launch with a party on campus, providing merch and cupcakes for the students and alumni who joined to celebrate a year of B Connect. This event was both a celebration and a way to increase student and alumni awareness of the new online network in the hopes of encouraging more members of the Brandeis community to get involved.  

‘We created something beautiful’: Two years of the Black Action Plan

by Natalie F. Kahn | 05/23/2022

In the summer of 2020, as Black Lives Matter protests against systemic racism and police brutality erupted across the globe in response to the murder of George Floyd and other high profile police killings of Black people in the United States, Sonali Anderson ’22 began thinking about ways to make change happen on an institutional level at Brandeis.

’Cause you’re there for me too: a conversation with ‘Friends’ co-creator Marta Kauffman

by Isabel Roseth | 05/03/2022

When Marta Kauffman ’78 H’20 enrolled as a student at Brandeis, there was no way for her to know where her four years at the University would take her. Since her time at Brandeis, she has amassed Emmy nominations and critical acclaim, but before she was the co-creator of the hit television series “Friends” and “Grace and Frankie,” among others, she was a student, figuring out who she was and what she wanted to do with her life.  

Are the Kiwibots out for blood?

by Cayenn Landau | 05/03/2022

On April 26, Leah Timpson ’22 was walking past Upper Usdan when she felt a sharp, jabbing pain on her heel. A Kiwibot — one of a fleet of at least 15 food delivery robots brought to Brandeis by Sodexo — had driven into her foot from behind her. “I was wearing flats, so when it hit my foot it pulled my shoe down,” Timpson told the Justice on April 30. “I kept walking, and I got to the SCC and looked at my foot and it was bleeding a little bit. My foot was red, and I have a bruise now.”  

Artists of our time

by Mirabell Rowland | 04/12/2022

“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.  

A march for safety, intersectionality, and empowerment

by Cayenn Landau | 04/12/2022

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.  

From the lab bench to the For You page

by Jack Yuanwei Cheng | 03/29/2022

The year was 2019. Alex Dainis ’11 had just graduated from Stanford University with a doctorate degree in genetics. Many of her peers stayed in academia to continue their research, and others joined the biotech industry. Instead of taking one of those traditional paths, Alex took a leap of faith and started making science videos on YouTube full-time. She also started her own video production company and named it, in classic biology nerd fashion, Helicase Media, after a protein essential for DNA replication in cells. At this point, she had been making science videos on YouTube since 2012, a year after she graduated from Brandeis. Now, she just needed to make it a real job. 

The Disabled Students’ Network: Creating a community for all

by Maddy Dulong | 03/22/2022

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 

Illuminating the problematic history of Louis D. Brandeis

by Draken Garfinkel | 03/22/2022

Standing atop Fellows Garden with the sun to his back, a bronze Justice Louis D. Brandeis watches over the campus bearing his name. It is a heroic statue, triumphant even. The Justice withstands an adverse wind, his gaze fixed on the heavens like the statues of classical antiquity. It also resembles the numerous statues of the American South which depict Confederate icons in similarly honorific poses. Like them, Justice Brandeis helped advance caustic ideology tied to many of the 20th-century’s tragedies.  

Quarantined on campus

by Isabel Roseth | 03/15/2022

Five semesters ago, it likely would have been difficult for students at Brandeis to imagine quarantine ever being an integral part of college life. Since Brandeis reopened and welcomed students back to campus following the near-complete shutdown of campus in spring 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the University has had to devise plans and strategies for when students contract the virus. Over the past two years, terms like “contact tracing,” “quarantine,” and “isolation housing: have become a standard part of Brandeis students’ vocabulary. However, quarantine and isolation on campus due to exposures and positive tests have proved to be a struggle for many students who have faced difficulties concerning food, classes, and communication from the University. 

What the heck is in the woods behind ‘Grad’? An architectural mystery, solved

by Cayenn Landau | 03/08/2022

While looking at a map will tell you that the wooded area just beyond the southeast edge of campus is Fox Park, most Brandeis students probably know it as simply the woods by “Grad,” the colloquial name for Charles River Apartment student residences. The woods — a two-minute walk from “Grad” and a twenty-minute walk from central campus — contain about a half-mile worth of public trails. With swampy inlets surrounding the forest on one side and campus housing on the other, the forest is mostly contained to a small strip of land that extends out from Mt. Feake cemetery. The woods are small, but the mysteries within them are anything but.

Work-Study, but no work?

by Mirabell Rowland | 02/15/2022

When she first arrived on campus after the break, Assia Hamana ’25 hoped to have employment in the new year. However, to her surprise, most employers had fulfilled their quota. “Everyone else was getting jobs and it felt like I was getting left behind,” she told the Justice on Feb. 11. Hamana explained that in high school, she wasn’t planning on working in college. She wanted to enjoy her time, especially as a first-year, exploring her interests in various activities. It was not until her senior year of high school that she learned about Work-Study.  

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