the
Justice www.thejustice.org
T h e I n d e p e n d e n t S t u d e n t N e w s p a p e r o f B r a n d e is U n i v e r sit y S i n c e 1 9 4 9 Volume LXXV, Number 2
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
Waltham, Mass.
STUDENT UNION
WALTHAM MOVIE THEATER
Students create first political party after over ten years ■ The Justice spoke to
current Union members about the upcoming elections. By MAX FEIGELSON
JUSTICE STAFF WRITER
On Sept. 8, Student Union Secretary Ashna Kelkar ’24 announced the candidates for the upcoming fall election. Students will vote on Sept. 14 for senators, associate justices, and an allocations board representative. For the first time in over a decade, multiple candidates for Student Union positions organized themselves into a political party known as “New Frontiers.” Seven candidates are running under this banner, two of which are running unopposed. According to the party’s website, it supports “cooperative government and new leadership, hand-inhand with, but not subservient to old.” The last time a comparable block existed in the Student Union was
JACK YUANWEI CHENG/the Justice
CINEMA CLOSING: A theater employee updates the marquee to announce the theater's closing date, Sept. 5.
Historic Waltham cinema shuts down ■ After nearly 100 years, the
only movie theater in Waltham has shut down permanently with just three days notice. By JACK YUANWEI CHENG AND ARIELLA WEISS JUSTICE EDITORS
Embassy Cinema opened in 1928. On Monday, Aug. 5, the almost century-old Waltham staple, once advertised as “Waltham’s Wonder Theatre,” closed its doors for good. “We had seen it coming for a while, but we thought we had more time,” assistant manager Andrew “Andy” Johnson ’17 told the Justice on Aug. 3, two days before the theater shut down.
JACK YUANWEI CHENG/the Justice
Johnson is a middle school teacher. He managed the theater as a side gig after he graduated from Brandeis. Johnson said Embassy, like many movie theaters, had been struggling to make ends meet before the pandemic. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic delivered a final, fatal blow. “Movie theaters have been struggling for years, but [COVID-19] really sped it along,” Johnson said. Even once things started to open back up later into the pandemic, the Embassy stayed closed. Johnson said Embassy’s parent company, Landmark Theatres, opened their theater in Cambridge, one of their two Massachusetts locations, and used it as a test run. “They thought if Kendall Square wasn’t doing well, they weren’t ready to open us,” Johnson explained.
The news of the theater’s closing did not come as a surprise for Mazzi Ingram ’25, who worked at the theater up until it closed. She’s been working there since Dec. 2021 and said it has never been busy. “COVID has really impacted this place,” Ingram said. Coworkers told her Brandeis students used to come “all the time” before the pandemic. Ingram said the theater could have done a better job of “public outreach and being modern,” and explained how it never had a strong presence on social media. However, she said the biggest factors impacting ticket sales — COVID-19 and streaming services — were out of Embassy or Landmark’s control. Lauren, a Waltham resident, found out Embassy Cinema was closing two days before its last day.
See MOVIES, 9 ☛
in 2008-09. In that year, a popular student-run blog called “Innermost Parts” endorsed several candidates who began to refer to themselves as the “Progressive Party.” The Progressive Party ended the fall 2008 elections with a slight majority in the Senate, though short of the twothirds majority required for passing resolutions at the time. Even though the candidates had strong support from Innermost Parts, the creation of the Progressive Party movement polarized opinions between those who supported the Progressives’ goals and students that preferred to stay unaligned. Despite this precedent for political parties, Union President Peyton Gillespie ’25 expressed concern with the creation of New Frontiers in a voice message to the Justice on Sept. 9. Even though he said he was happy to see students participating in student government, Gillespie said that he "doesn't think the formation of political parties is necessary since we’re such a small cam-
See ELECTIONS, 7 ☛
Justice elects new editor in chief, managing editor ■ The new editors discuss
their time at the Justice, goals for the year, and highlights of their experience in the newsroom. By LEAH BREAKSTONE JUSTICE EDITOR
Jen Crystal ’23 and Jane Flautt ’23 will lead the Justice during the 2022-23 academic year as editor in chief and managing editor, respectively. They were unanimously elected last spring following Q&A sessions addressing their times at the Justice and goals for the year. Crystal joined the Justice during the spring of her first year at Brandeis in 2020. She wrote for the news section and was training to be editorial assistant when COVID-19 disrupted the school year. She spent the following year leading the news section remotely. Once the University returned to mostly in-person classes in the fall of 2021, Crystal became an associate editor, before being trained to become editor in chief under the incumbent at the time, Sofia Gonzalez ’23. Flautt began her time at the Justice during the fall of her first year,
working as a staffer for the copy section before being asked to take the position of editorial assistant during her sophomore year. She then served as copy editor until the fall of 2021 when she became an associate editor for a brief time before beginning training under former managing editor Cameron Cushing ’23. Crystal and Flautt emphasized their desire to build on the office culture, “in some ways just continuing where Cam [Cushing] and Sofia [Gonzalez] left off, but also, Jane and I want to create more of a community here especially for writers and photographers who aren’t editors,” Crystal said. Fostering more of a community and collaborative aspect to the Justice has been a goal of editors since students returned on campus after the beginning of the pandemic. Flautt reflected on Cushing and Gonzalez’s efforts to make the newsroom more of a social environment: “I think that [staff socializing and making connections] strengthens our journalism — when people care about our fellow editors and we like to hang out with each other, it makes it a lot easier to create the content we want.”
See EDITORS, 7 ☛
Farmers’ Market
Love on Tour
PAD advocates for free menstrual products
The Justice spends a day at the market and finds that it is an integral part of the local community.
The experience of Harry Styles’ "Love on Tour" may be more costly than people believe.
Univ. must recognize student activism
By ARIELLA WEISS
By RIVER SIMARD
Serena Williams announces retirement
ARTS AND CULTURE 18
By PRATEEK KANMADIKAR
FEATURES 8
Photo courtesy of CREATIVE COMMONS
For tips or info email editor@thejustice.org
Make your voice heard! Submit letters to the editor to letters@thejustice.org
By ANIKA JAIN
By EDITORIAL BOARD
COPYRIGHT 2022 FREE AT BRANDEIS.
NEWS 3 FORUM 10 SPORTS 16