Swim Notebook

This past weekend was the Wesleyan Invitational. Brandeis took part in the meet, along with Wesleyan University, Bentley College, and MIT. Both the men and women had 23 events each.

Fencing Notebook

Last Sunday the Brandeis fencing team welcomed Vassar, Yale, Brown, and St. Johns to the Gosman sports complex to participate in the first Brandeis Invitational of the season. Both the mens and womens teams produced some highlights during the day, but the final results were ultimately disappointing. The mens side went 2-2, with an 18-9 victory over Vasser and a 17-10 win over Yale coupled with 14-13 and 16-11 losses to Brown and St. Johns, respectively. The women only managed to generate a 20-7 win over Vasser while losing their other three matches, including a 21-6 blowout at the hands of St. Johns.

Track Notebook

Both the mens and womens indoor track teams spent last Saturday at Northeastern University participating in the New Balance Winter Carnival. The meet was the only one scheduled for the Judges before the upcoming winter break, so the coaching staff used it as an opportunity to see where the teams fitness stood without having to worry about scoring, which was not kept. The indoor track season officially resumes Jan. 14, when the Judges travel to an invitational meet at Bowdoin University in Brunswick, Maine.

Club Hockey Report

While the Brandeis club hockey teams record of 5-4-2 may not seem as good as one might expect of a team who won the NESHL Championship last season, the club is still playing exceptional hockey thanks to the contributions of players like forward Josh Levine 06, goalie Jeff Wieskopf 08, and forward Alex Botwick 08. The team has hit a somewhat rough patch with a 1-2-1 record in the last four games, despite an impressive 8-3 victory over the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Nads. This can be attributed to the team not always playing a full roster for various reasons. Wieskopf, who led the division in goals-against average at least through the first nine games, said, Overall, things are going well, but without consistent rosters, its hard to build up team chemistry. All things considered, were all happy with where we are right now, near the top of our division.

Perhaps not Broadway-ready, but an enjoyable evening nonetheless

Last weekend, The Two Orphans, penned by Theresa Rebeck (M.A. '83, M.F.A. '86, Ph.D. 89) with music by Kim D. Sherman and lyrics by Rebeck and John Sheehy (M.F.A. 89), began its world-premier run as the Brandeis Theater Companys first mainstage musical, under the direction of Dennis Garnhum. There will be slight spoilers in this article. None of the major plot twists will be revealed, but those seeing the play this weekend may want to observe the warning before reading on.
True to its roots in melodrama, The Two Orphans has a particularly deep (although fairly easy to follow) plot that gradually comes to connect all of its major characters. Heres the quick rundown of the major characters without giving away anything that happens after the first twenty minutes: Two ex-slaves, Henriette (Lindsey McWhorter GRAD) and the blind Louise (Nicole Brathwaite), arrive in New Orleans shortly after the Civil War. Henriettes fiery spirit arouses the interest of The Marquis (Robert Serrell GRAD), who enlists the aid of his ex-slave sidekick Stone (Sheldon Best 08) in his quest to sleep with her. The action of the play soon grows to involve the family of La Frochard (Liz Terry THA), a small-scale crook with two sons, the crippled Pierre (Eli Schneider 06) and the violent Jake (Josh Mervis 08), as well as the family of post-war Reconstruction official Bloodgood (Luis Negrn EQUITY) and his wife Diane (Jennie El-Far 07). Other key characters include Bloodgoods nephew Armand (Aaron Costa Ganis 06) and Jakes battered mistress Marianne (Jordan Butterfield 07).

The top 10 of 2005

With remixes, collaborations, comebacks, reunions, and double albums, 2005 has presented one of the better years of music in the last decade. Although there was still a considerable amount of mediocre (Dave Matthews Bands Stand Up) and downright terrible (50 Cents The Massacre) releases, the past year has seen an extensive rise in well-thought, brilliantly composed releases. In the hundreds of releases that come out every year, a small number take the proverbial music cakehere are the top ten for 2005.

E pur si muove: Themanwhosawthroughthedarkness

First Light: It is the moment when a new telescopes lens is first exposed to the light of the heavens. Light, made of photons, particles that have no size, travels through space fast enough to travel in a second seven times around the world. It could reach the moon in under two seconds. The time it would take to reach us from Jupiter: Forty-five minutes. Thus, long ago, did photons travel from there to the eyes of a man in Italy, through a small tube he had fashioned and now held in his hands, gazing at the sky

Deadly snow safety tips

Today we will discuss: Snow. In my experience, I have found that after you have been outside in a blanket of falling ice for twenty minutes merely trying to get from point A to point A-and-a-half on foot (I say on foot and not on feet because by minute seventeen, the other foot has broken off and shattered into thousands of frozen fleshy Terminator 2-like shards,leaving, inevitably, one solitary foot left), you slowly start to realize that the reason you are suffering from worse brain-freeze than had you just wolfed down a bucket of soft-serve in three seconds is because you are trying to inhale air that freezes your lungs to the point that they begin to form a spider webbing series of cracks.

Fresh Perspectives on Dating

Ok girls, lets be honest. Correct me if Im wrong, but I think that most of us want a boyfriend. Part of us wholeheartedly believes in that I dont need a guy to be happy mantra, while the other part looks with a mixture of jealousy and longing at those couples who hold hands while walking around campus. (At the same time, let me also condemn those who feel the need to express their carnal affection by the salad bar in Usdan;

we all know these couples and I dont think any of us want to see it!) So, if so many are looking why is it that not so many are finding?

Letter to the Editor: A welcoming campus: Truth or exaggeration

To the Editor:
I just wanted to note that as a long-time Brandeis faculty member, and a former Brandeis student, I found Kevin Montgomerys article, A Memoir of a Goy at Brandeis, very disturbing. I am disturbed not because I believe he is exaggerating or misrepresenting the situation of various minorities at Brandeis, but because he is telling the truth, and outlining a situation that I have seen all too often, concerning how various groups have been treated on campus. This is true of non-Jewish students, of students from the Middle-East (outside of Jewish students from Israel), and of ethnic minorities. All too often students who were minorities before they came to Brandeis are so relieved at being in the majority that rather than having empathy for other minorities, they simply ignore or mistreat others.