SODA’s stance on guns

Chrissy Callahan recently had an editorial in The Hoot about the public safety officers at Brandeis University (“Give the police a chance,” Nov. 9). This is the only way I can characterize the piece;

it did not seem to really address the issue of arming said officers. She proved her points very well, but they did not seem to respond to the criticisms of Students Opposing the Decision to Arm (SODA) and others. As a member of SODA, I would like to address Callahans article and the framing of the argument in general.

Book of Matthew: Special Edition: Guns

Welcome to a special edition of the Book of Matthew. As promised, I would like to take the time to reflect on letters and articles written on an issue that has divided our school. Im talking about guns.

We all know that this world is not perfect. Violence occurs everyday, and a large portion of it is gun violence. Unfortunately, this violence has caused our society to view all guns as evil implements of death. While it is true that gun crimes are terrible tragedies, murder in cold blood is not the sole purpose of guns. Guns can be used a powerful deterrent to stop tragic crimes, without even being fired. Yes, there are people who should never be allowed to hold guns, but there are also people who should never go to work without them.

Our friend the dictator

Pakistan has a brutal history of military dictatorships, but when General Pervez Musharraf instituted a state of emergency a little less than two weeks ago, Pakistanis got to experience something unprecedented in their political history. For the first time, heavily armed Pakistan police besieged the countrys courts. Musharrafs megalomaniacal move was designed to prevent the Supreme Court from ruling that his reelection last month was illegitimate.

Impeach abstain for Off-Campus Senator

As the position of Racial Minority senator has been scrutinized and could possibly be removed for its violation of Title VI, other positions that are completely valid have gone unrepresented. Most specifically, I am referencing this years senator for off-campus students, who goes by the name abstain. While students on campus have been pestering the administration about noise, arming the cops with guns, and other issues that occur on the Brandeis campus, our brothers and sisters who live in the real world in Waltham currently have no representation.

Decades after Davis, racism still a problem

While abroad I have devoted the time that I usually spent in the US watching TV towards reading in the semi-comfortable setting of my home here in Dakar. While escapism is partly behind this renewed interest of mine, the sparse library at my school has provided a few gems, and the paperback version of Angela Davis autobiography provided me with the weekend entertainment that badly dubbed Brazilian soap operas could sadly never completely supplant.

The unbearable whiteness of being

Hey blackie, whats up?

This greeting (Che, negro;

como andas?) was as common a phrase as I heard during my semester in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The fact that Im as white as Conan OBrien or that there are almost no black people in Argentina didnt change things one bit. Negro was simply a term of greeting or endearment, as harmless as dude or man. For women, obviously, the feminine version negra was used, with the diminutive negrita if one wanted to be affectionate.

Letter to the editor: Response to Nov. 9th letter

Dear Editor,

Wow, Mr. Hogan did an absolutely tremendous job of missing the point of my article (Letter to the Editor, Nov. 9). Im not even mad, thats amazing. Lets just break this down piece by piece and try to make sense of his response.

Letter to the editor: Response to human apparatchiks

Dear Editor,

I was distressed to read that the administration is assigning human apparatchiks to monitor Brandeis classrooms to assure linguistic conformity and political orthodoxy. Surely, the administration knows that the technology of authoritarian surveillance has advanced far beyond the primitive methods employed by the likes of J. Edgar Hoover and Erich Honecker.

Letters to the editor: Response to Hindley

Dear Editor,

When I first read about the accusations made against Prof. Hindley, I was quite surprised. I took one of his Latin American Politics classes, and as someone who can understand the need for racial sensitivity, I was shocked at the allegations. Yes, Prof. Hindley is not an average professor. He does not just brush over the material as many other professors at Brandeis do as he lulls the class to sleep. He says interesting and provocative things that keep the class alert and involved. I will not say that he has been my favorite professor in my four years here, but he definitely added to my Brandeis education in a positive manner. But in its infinite wisdom, the Brandeis Administration has tried to make him conform to the cookie cutter image of a professor who cannot teach past the books that he reads. If this is what we want our professors to be like, then why exactly are we paying over $45,000 a year to attend one of the top universities in the country.

Editorial: Student Union should practice what it preaches

For the past six weeks, the Student Union has proudly publicized the Brandeis Citizenship Campaign, which values diversity, community, and respect above all else. Yet last weekend showed a different side of the Union, when it voted by a wide margin to table indefinitely the resolution regarding an email sent by TYP Senator Kamarin Lee that addressed comments by Asher Tanenbaum 08, chair of the Unions Ways and Means Committee.

Tanenbaum stated, based solely on the wording of the clubs written constitutions, that the committee found potential dualities of purpose between the Brandeis Black Student Organization and the newly-chartered African Culture club. In response, Lee emailed several minority members of the Senate, as well as members of the Executive Board, saying that Tanenbaums opinion sounds like something that would come from a White, Jewish Middle-Class Conservative.