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This week is Bronstein Week. Who was Bronstein? Why do we celebrate him, or better yet, why do we celebrate him with making slime and learning about “Rugrats”? I loved Tommy Pickles just as much as anyone else, but I don’t have the time or the interest to pretend I am six years old again. Every year Brandeis has a spirit week called Bronstein Week run by Student Events, and every year it is kind of pathetic. Some of the events are somewhat cool, but overall, it just does not do the job of getting everyone excited and fired up about Brandeis.

Back in high school, homecoming week was my school’s big spirit week. Mondays were when seniors wore formal dress, and the underclassmen had pajama day. On Friday was the pep rally, and the days in between were anything from Wacky Wednesday to Superhero Day to Safari Day. The point was that everyone was excited. Everyone was decked out every day, and on Friday, the only visible colors were green and gold, our school colors. The week ended with the outdoor dance and the indoor semi-formal dance, highlights to everyone’s year.

Brandeis already lacks spirit because we do not have a football team. This is not to say that students do not love coming here. Quite the contrary, as far as I know, most people love it here. However, there are few times where we all come together and cheer as a unit. Last year, when “The Today Show” crew came to video us for a contest, there was such a measly crowd that the cameraman told everyone to squeeze in to make it look like there were a lot more people than there actually were. This was our chance to get on national news. Did we actually have a chance against schools as big as Syracuse and Ohio State? No, probably not, but we should have been more excited about our school than that.

The whole point of a spirit week is to, as its name suggests, promote school spirit and remind people why they chose to come to this school in the first place. Something here is not right. First of all, Bronstein Week is in the spring. At this point in the year, professors are piling on the work leaving little time for other activities like making slime, as enticing as that sounds. Second of all, even though the weather has started to get nicer, it’s still sort of cold and dreary. It even hailed the other day. People would be much more excited about activities were they in the warm weather. Warm weather would also be conducive to many more exciting activities.

Furthermore, why is Bronstein Week at the end of the semester anyway? We have been here all semester, and now Brandeis wants us to get excited? Bronstein Week should act like homecoming week and take place about a month after the beginning of the semester, to get people keyed up to start the new semester.

These are all small problems though. If we really want to make Bronstein Week a week worth celebrating, then it has to be bigger. A few tables in the SCC is nothing, and forget laser tag. In high school we had a fireworks display. If my high school could pull that off, then Brandeis should be able to do much better. If Student Events put more money into a couple of really good events rather than a bunch of all right events, they could really make a difference in how Brandeis students feel about this school. Yes, they love the academics and the atmosphere, but there should be more than that. Bronstein Week in its current state is a waste of time, money and energy. We need to go big or go home. Right now, no one is doing anything wrong, but since when is the bare minimum good enough for Brandeisians? Bronstein Week has the potential to be great if Student Events can take what they already do and crank it up to the max.