A moment of Balm

Jordan Butterfield 07, who is the dramaturg for the Brandeis Theatre Companys upcoming production of Lanford Wilsons Balm in Gilead, was kind enough to talk to The Hoot about the upcoming production…

Letter to the Editor: An open letter to Professor Dershowitz

Dear Professor Dershowitz,

In your talk at Brandeis University on January 23, 2007, you reiterated the offer of $15,000 to anyone who could cite a single prominent Jewish leader who has equated criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. We are writing to claim that reward.

Walking the line of censorship

This week, the Brandeis community was introduced to two committees, one to address and advise the Provost's office on “controversial” art exhibits and other events and another being created by the Student Union to review and establish a collective of Middle East events this Spring. The administration and the Union have every right to create these committees. After the controversy's surrounding the “Voices of Palestine” art exhibit last spring and the confusion from the Carter event, it is fair to suggest that there be an advisory board. However, there is a thin line that these committees must be careful not to cross: censoring ideas.

Union update

– Student Union President Alison Schwartzbaum 08 and Union Director of Communications Brian Paternostro 07 announced that the party reimbursement plan is in its first week, having given $50 to its first two applicants. – The Union has begun the final stages of its new alcohol policy, Schwartzbaum added. The policy will be finalized after […]

Punk turns the big 3-0

2007 marks the 30th anniversary of the emergence of the punk music scene in the mainstream culture. It is strange for many to imagine their parents moshing as they might have 30 years ago during the very beginning of the movement. As the legendary and perhaps the most well-known punk group of the era, The Clash, put it best in their song, 1977: There were no Elvis, Beatles, or The Rolling Stones in 1977. Author Roger Sabin declared 1977 as year zero in reference to the rise of punk. In memory of the 30th anniversary of this influential movement, here are ten groups definitely worth checking out (besides the big three of The Ramones, The Clash, and the Sex Pistols) that may pique your interest as much as the best of todays prototypical pop punk oriented musicians…

Too much of a good thing?

Is it possible to masturbate too much?

When God played with matches

They settled these atolls, finding their way by charts made of sticks tied together. The people of the Marshall Islands invented three kinds of stick-charts: The mattang and medo, depicting the wave patterns around island clusters;

and the rebillit, showing the positions of islands relative to each other. They populated two parallel island chains, which they called Ratak and Ralik: Sunrise and sunset.

Bikini Atoll acquired notoriety far beyond becoming the namesake of the two-piece swimsuit when our nation, after relocating the local population to nearby Rongerik Atoll, began a long series of atomic tests in 1946. It would be temporary, the Bikinians were told, and for the benefit of mankind…

The[n-y-c]files: Themanwhodrovethebumsout

Come find out what you cant know;

you know where.
These are the [n-y-c] files.(Third in a series)

Picture, if you possibly can, a nation fallen on hard times such as our generation has never known, a quarter of its workforce unemployed. Imagine its largest city, home to millions of new Americans, their hard-won financial gains immeasurably set back in the worst economic cataclysm of the century. Suppose there lives a stocky man, barely five feet tall… Winning the hearts of millions and a permanent place in a citys history and collective consciousness, he becomes a figure whose very name remains a household word to New Yorkers, young and old alike, to this day. The name: LaGuardia.

$5 million donated to Journalism Institute

Philanthropists and longtime Brandeis supporters Elaine and Gerald Schuster recently donated $5 million to the Universitys Institute for Investigative Journalism. Founded in September of 2004 in order to explore social and political problems and uncover corporate and government abuses of power, the newly-renamed Elaine and Gerald Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism is the nations first investigative reporting center based at a university.

Brandeis: Peace, not alienation

The Brandeis Chaplaincy has announced the start of a weekly series of peace vigils to be held at the peace memorial near Usdan. Billed in a campus mailing list announcement as a weekly vigil to be mindful of the war in Iraq and to express together our hope for a just and speedy resolution, the open-ended event serves a legitimate and widespread need in the community to express the universally-held hope for an end to the conflict in Iraq.