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

Tate Herbert


Articles

Suspect in custody after a city-wide lockdown

A day of anxious waiting in lockdown at Brandeis came to an end Friday evening as police captured 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the remaining suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings. A mere two hours after Gov. Deval Patrick declared the lengthy "stay in place" lockdown over, allowing Bostonians to go back to their usual business, state and local police announced that Tsarnaev was taken alive.


Former professor dead at 86, colleagues reflect

Former American Studies Professor Lawrence Fuchs, a leading immigration scholar, the founder of Brandeis' American Studies department and an admired faculty member for 50 years, passed away on March 17 at his home in Canton, Mass., due to complications from Parkinson's.


Univ anticipates increasing cost by four percent

Amid the process of finalizing next year's budget and the release of a draft of the strategic plan, Senior Vice President for Students and Enrollment Andrew Flagel announced at a briefing Thursday that University administration is anticipating a financial model that would raise the cost of attending Brandeis by about four percent for the second year in a row and maintain this annual increase for the next several years. The Board of Trustees will vote on a budget for fiscal year 2014 at its March meeting. For the average entering first-year, the four percent increase model would bring the total cost of attendance, including tuition, fees, room and board, to nearly $59,000, up from about $56,500 last year. While the sticker price is steep, said Flagel, "The reality is, the kind of education we're providing ... is not possible to run as a less expensive institution unless there was a radical shift in other support." Flagel said that financial aid is expected to "rise very robustly along with this, as we did last year." However, it could be much higher or even lower, depending on the financial profile of the class that enrolls next year, said Flagel. Last spring, tuition and fees were raised by 4.1 percent for returning undergraduates and 4.85 percent for new students. In May of last year, the Boston Business Journal ranked Brandeis as the second most expensive college in Massachusetts.


Snow storm halts campus activities

Brandeis facilities staff and students continue to dig out from over two feet of snow in the aftermath of Winter Storm Nemo, the blizzard that forced the University to cancel classes on Friday and prompted Gov. Deval Patrick to call for a 24-hour driving ban starting Friday and ending on Saturday. Although the University resumed classes on Monday, with only light rain slicking the campus paths, Waltham and Boston public schools remained closed. The greater Boston area recorded about 25 inches of snow, according to the Weather Channel. University President Frederick Lawrence sent out a thank-you email on Monday, commending the "heroic efforts" of Brandeis staff over the weekend, including facilities and dining services workers. Facilities Services staff, as well as additional support staff from Antico Snow Removal, were shoveling out campus during the storm on Friday and well into Sunday. "I think we got through a very difficult weekend due to the collective efforts of a lot of people across all the units within the University," wrote Collins in an email to the Justice. Collins added that there were "a few isolated facilities issues (pipe breaks)" over the weekend, but they were a result of deferred maintenance, not the storm.


Criteria change to affect Phi Beta Kappa eligibility

An adjustment in the admission requirements to Phi Beta Kappa, the national collegiate academic honor society, will require students to complete a minimum of one mathematics course and demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language, first taking effect with the Class of 2015. Brandeis' own foreign language requirement satisfies the latter guideline, but there is a much more narrow scope of math courses that will qualify a student for Phi Beta Kappa consideration. The new selection criteria was adopted this summer, according to the president of Brandeis' chapter of Phi Beta Kappa Prof.


Graddy named endowed chair

In a recent shift in sponsorship of visiting professors and fellowships, the Richman family provided gifts that established an endowed chair in politics or economics, replacing the Fred and Rita Richman Distinguished Visiting Professorship.


Student group urges University to divest

The fossil fuel divestment campaign that has received national attention is starting to take off at Brandeis. The University's chapter of Students for a Just and Stable Future, a Boston-based organization that promotes sustainability and climate change awareness, held a meeting Thursday night to kick off its efforts to remove Brandeis' endowment funds from investment in fossil fuel companies. SJSF, which falls under the Students for Environmental Action umbrella, drew about fifteen students to the meeting, where they screened an informational video on climate change, explained their goals and presented a timeline of protests and meetings with University administrators. On a poster, next to the timeline, was written the ultimate goal: for "Brandeis to immediately freeze any new investments in fossil fuel companies and to divest within five years from direct ownership and from any commingled funds that include fossil fuels." "It's really a great opportunity for us to come out and say, 'this is not okay, these companies are not okay, we don't want to have anything to do with them, we don't want our money to have anything to do with them," said SJSF member Dorian Williams '13 at the meeting.


Dietician hired to revamp dining

In early December, Brandeis Dining Services added Registered Dietician Kate Moran to its staff, in the hopes of increasing healthy options in the dining halls and meeting the demands of students with dietary restrictions. Moran confirmed that she has already implemented a number of changes in her short time at Brandeis, including the addition of healthy options such as made-to-order salads in Usdan Boulevard, a whole-wheat pizza option, tofu at the Liquid Lunch station in the Boulevard and whole wheat pancakes. Moran has also worked to post signs in the dining halls with nutritional information, such as the ingredients in each dish and "allergen statements along with icons that indicate whether the item is vegan/vegetarian or conforms to specific healthy criteria," according to an email from Laura O'Gara, who is the nutritionist at the Brandeis Health Center. "To me dining services is all about customer satisfaction-the student being our customer," wrote Moran in an email to the Justice.


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