THIEVES IN "HIGH" PLACES: When last week's entire press run of Brandeis' Justice newspaper was mysteriously stolen, the original fear was that, in the wake of the Daniel Passner brouhaha that brought (negative) national attention to the Non-Sectarian Jewish-Sponsored University, the theft had been carried out for political purposes.
The answer, however, turned out to be even more sinister: the person who stole the newspapers was merely some asshole who did for no apparent reason- other than just to be an asshole!
But since said asshole was a duly elected member of Brandeis' esteemed Student Union Senate, he was made to go before that body and offer his resignation. The Justice's account of that Senate meeting is among the highest of unintentionally comedic moments in recent U.S. media history. I won't do a full fisking, but a few comments on the more egregious parts:
In his resignation speech, [Senator Mark] Brescia criticized the Senate for excessively emphasizing procedure and politics. "It makes me sad I'm leaving the Senate," Brescia said as he resigned. "This is a game. When it stops being fun, it's not worth doing anymore."While it's unquestionably true that any deliberative body that spends 11 hours debating about something that appeared in a newspaper column certainly does take itself too seriously, I really don't see how their punishment of an admitted thief "stops it from being fun." Assuming it was ever fun in the first place… I wonder how the city government in New York would react if Brescia decided to take off with a few thousand copies of the Post. Then again, I'd imagine the mobbed-up delivery truck drivers would want to have a word with him first.
Brescia said his decision to take the Justices "wasn't a long thought- out process. I was checking my mail and they were all sitting on the loading dock and thought this would be kind of funny if the Justice disappeared for a little while," Brescia said. "It was just a joke, a prank that I didn't give much thought to it at all actually."This, unquestionably, is the sketchiest part of the story. If we are to believe Brescia's story, it is that he saw 4,000 newspapers lying around, made the spur-of-the-moment decision to steal them, and then carried all 4,000 of them halfway across campus, with his bare hands, in broad daylight, without anyone else noticing. The 4,000-issue press run of the Justice is distributed in 40 stacks of 100 newspapers each, or perhaps it's since been modified to 80 stacks of 50 or something like that. We used to carry 2 or 3 stacks of them at a time from the loading dock to the office, and even that was heavy. We're supposed to believe that Brescia carried all 40 stacks at once? More likely, he at least brought his car around, and more likely than that, he had four or five friends helping him.
"I think it's a terrible thing," University President Jehuda Reinharz said Thursday.Nice to see Jehuda has a newfound respect for the integrity of the freedom of the campus press. 'cause a few weeks ago he was prepared to shut down the paper for the semester.
But the majority of his speech criticized the Union government, particularly the Senate. He criticized a lack of cohesiveness within the Senate, contrasting it with the cohesiveness of the Justice Editorial Board. "(The editorial board) back up their people until the end... right or wrong... and I see them as a good group of friends,"Could that have possibly been because the Justice editors, in the Passner affair, honestly believed that the editor-in-chief did nothing wrong, whereas Brescia unquestionably did something wrong? The Justice, after all, was pretty quick to throw Passner himself under the bus; Brescia's now lying there right next to him.
I don't take student government ultra-seriously," Brescia said in an interview. "I just find it's a good venue to voice my opinion." Brescia concluded his speech pointing to specific Union officials and quoting the movie "Half-Baked." "Fuck you; fuck you; you're cool; fuck you; I'm out," he said.Evidently he does not take it so seriously- and not so wittily either, since he considered it a funny idea to parody "Half Baked"'s parody of "Jerry Maguire" in his supposedly dignified resignation speech. And he delivered the "fuck you" speech in front of the entire Senate, a dean, and a university vice president- what a classy guy. Besides, perhaps his apparent reverence for "Half Baked" tells us something about his "state of mind" on the day he took the papers, huh?
Though WBRS usually airs the weekly Senate meeting from 7 p.m. until 10 p.m., this week it did not begin its live broadcast until Brescia had finished speaking. "I know a lot of the things that have to go with the legal requirements of a broadcasting station… I had alerted (WBRS) to this beforehand."I'm amused by Brescia's selective interpretation of media rules- as he claims not to be aware of the "legal requirements" that say you're not allowed to steal newspapers. Brescia may or may not be brought up on charges and/or disciplined by the university; I was originally inclined to support letting the theft slide, but his arrogance has made me think twice. Then again, we also learn from the article that he was one of the senators who was hardest on the Justice during the Passner affair, and "felt disempowered" when the Senate refused to explicitly call for the editor-in-chief's resignation. So, maybe, he decided to take matters into his own hands... Posted by Stephen Silver at November 19, 2003 04:25 PM