Spring Break
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: Reaching out to Waltham
by Jacob Kamaras
Senior Editor
Columnists | 4/8/08
Posted online at 2:51 AM EST on 4/8/08
Sometimes in our "Brandeis bubble" it's hard to remember that we actually live in Waltham. Not surprisingly, as a newspaper with finite resources serving a highly active campus community, it's often difficult to fit coverage of Waltham into our pages. But last Wednesday when I attended a program called "Justice Continues at Home: Building Brandeis-Waltham Community Partnerships," I realized that there is so much more that this newspaper can disseminate about this suburb of Boston of which we are a part.
I had heard about the Community Engaged Learning program before, but never like this. CEL, started last year, combines Brandeis' dedication to academic excellence and social justice with its obligation to be a part of its surrounding communities. At Wednesday's program in the International Lounge, I heard from two panels of students about the partnerships CEL participants have been forging with the Waltham community, including language enrichment programs, after-school programs, tenant advocacy clinics, support for immigrants and computer literacy training, as well as various programs for children and adults at Prospect Terrace, a state-owned development off Prospect Hill Road that students from nine Brandeis courses are now involved in.
During a breakout session called "Covering Waltham" with fellow student on-campus media leaders, journalism program faculty and communications staff, I discussed how the Justice has already been reporting on issues beyond Brandeis. I talked about our consistent coverage of Prospect Terrace events, an editorial in November encouraging students to register to vote in Waltham elections, front-page feature stories about CEL and local non-profit job-training bookstore More Than Words.
But then I learned that we can do so much more to be part of Brandeis' commitment to its immediate surroundings. Someone in the discussion threw out the idea of creating a Waltham section in the Justice that would feature profiles of community members, news coverage, restaurant reviews and off-campus event announcements. Other suggestions included helping Prospect Terrace's teens to create a newsletter and reaching out to Waltham residents to write pieces for us about pressing community issues.
I had heard about the Community Engaged Learning program before, but never like this. CEL, started last year, combines Brandeis' dedication to academic excellence and social justice with its obligation to be a part of its surrounding communities. At Wednesday's program in the International Lounge, I heard from two panels of students about the partnerships CEL participants have been forging with the Waltham community, including language enrichment programs, after-school programs, tenant advocacy clinics, support for immigrants and computer literacy training, as well as various programs for children and adults at Prospect Terrace, a state-owned development off Prospect Hill Road that students from nine Brandeis courses are now involved in.
During a breakout session called "Covering Waltham" with fellow student on-campus media leaders, journalism program faculty and communications staff, I discussed how the Justice has already been reporting on issues beyond Brandeis. I talked about our consistent coverage of Prospect Terrace events, an editorial in November encouraging students to register to vote in Waltham elections, front-page feature stories about CEL and local non-profit job-training bookstore More Than Words.
But then I learned that we can do so much more to be part of Brandeis' commitment to its immediate surroundings. Someone in the discussion threw out the idea of creating a Waltham section in the Justice that would feature profiles of community members, news coverage, restaurant reviews and off-campus event announcements. Other suggestions included helping Prospect Terrace's teens to create a newsletter and reaching out to Waltham residents to write pieces for us about pressing community issues.
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James Sanders
posted 4/08/08 @ 1:57 PM EST
In 2002 the Justice had a short-lived city section. You may want to contact editors from that time to see why they stopped and where things went wrong with it. (Continued…)
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