Boston University

Boston University

Name: Ellie Lucash

Hometown: Charleston, SC
Class Year: 2011
Major: Business Administration
Extracurriculars: PE classes such as ballet and springboard diving, Fashion and Retail Association, BU Hillel, Work at the FitRec Center, Riding the T, Exploring Boston, BU Hockey!

Career Goal: either wedding planning or marketing the fashion industry

Contact Info that you wish to be included (optional, of course!)
Facebook message me!!
Email: elucash@bu.edu

What is the reputation of your school? Is it true?
Not to be confused with our Catholic college rivals, Boston College,
BU is known as an urban, large, competitive school. I would say that the reputation of the school is true. The academics are very competitive, especially in the colleges/schools of business, communications, and engineering. College of Arts and Sciences is great too. In some cases the reputation of the school hasn’t caught up with it, but BU definitely competes with schools like NYU, Emory, BC, etc.

What should a prospective freshman know that is not on the tour?
Tour guides will tell you that there are a million things to do on campus, from concerts to sports events to clubs to intramurals. And there are! But no one is going to make announcements every morning to remind you of meetings. No one is going to make play dates for you or drive you to practice. It’s completely up to you to find out what’s happening on campus and GO.

I strongly encourage anyone at any school to get involved from day one. A LOT of people say that they regret not getting involved from the beginning. Join a club, sign up for a PE class (I took beginning ballet my first semester and springboard diving my second), or put on a college sweatshirt and go to the game. I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times, but everyone else really is new…or at least ¼ of the school is. Try something new even if no one you know is. Nine times out of ten, you’ll immediately latch onto another new person who has the same interests.
Also, don’t worry about putting too much on your plate. The adjustment isn’t that difficult and for some people, having things outside of class to do helps them manage their time. You can always “drop out” of a club. Most do not require a huge time commitment.

Describe the students at your school.
In a school of 16,000 undergrads, there’s no one type of student. That said, there are about 4,500 international students who are from every country you could possibly think of. There are also people of every race, religion, culture, and background you can think of. That said the majority of students are Caucasian or Asian-American. Domestically, a majority of students are from New England, New York, and New Jersey, followed by California.

Describe the Jewish students.
There are roughly 3,000 Jewish students at BU, so it’s pretty hard to give a profile of the average Jewish student. There are kids who come from a non-observant background who don’t participate much, there are very-religious kids who are active in Hillel and Chabad, there are Conservative students who are very involved in Hillel and are very Zionistic, and there is every combination of the above and then some. I can guarantee that you’ll find at least one other Jewish student that you can identify with.

Also, as a side note, there are Reformed, Conservative, Sephardic and Orthodox services for Shabbat and the High Holidays and there are also minyans that meet daily.

Describe the Jewish scene —What’s cool? What’s lame?

I personally am Conservative, not very observant, and I’m pretty involved in Hillel (which is amazing, by the way). I get along with people also involved at Hillel, but I’ll admit that at first I felt that it was a little cliquey. But people are mostly friendly and I made a few friends and kept going to events and now I spend a lot of time at Hillel and have lots of friends through it.

I don’t know much about the Chabad house near BU, except that it isn’t a BU Chabad house, it’s the Boston Chabad house. I’ve been the Harvard Chabad house though, and it was pretty cool. There were a lot of people there for Friday night dinner and the rabbi is very nice.

There is Kosher food for lunch and dinner every day of the week in Hillel’s amazing dining hall. There are also Friday night and Saturday lunch Shabbat meals that you can sign up for even if you don’t have the Kosher meal plan.

As far as Jewish Greek life goes, there are plenty of Jews involved in Greek life at BU, but the historically Jewish sororities and fraternities such as AEP, AEPhi, SDT, and ZBT are not exclusively Jewish and many of the other chapters of other houses have a large Jewish population. The Jewish fraternity, Sigma Alpha Mu is also rebuilding and many of the brothers there are Jewish.

Nothing specifically is “cool” or “lame”. Everyone does what they are comfortable with.

Why should Jewish teens come to your school?
Because it is a competitive university in academics and athletics, is in the ultimate college town, and there are thousands of other Jewish students at BU and thousands more at other schools in the area.

Why should they stay the heck away?
They shouldn’t!!

10 words that best describe your school:

career-oriented
college-town
diverse
expensive
fun
friendly
hard-working
school-spirited
urban
well-rounded

Texas A and M

An anonymous post:

How would I go about publishing a not so positive review on this blog? I am a Texas A&M student (Jewish of course) and I really want to tell the world that if you are Jewish, in my opinion.. you should go somewhere else! I wish I had picked UT but my friends from small town Texas all wanted to go to A&M so that’s where I went. I was like the lone Jewish kid in my home town (maybe there was like 3 in my High school but I never met the other ones) and I guess I never really felt discrimination before. I never even dreamed a college could be so Anti-Semitic. There have been a number of “incidents” since I have been here, the first one coming to mind was a front page huge picture in the school newspaper (The Battalion) of a white board on a girls dorm room door where someone had written “JEW” in big letters and drew a bunch of swastikas around it.. There have been other incidents as well of course. Plus it’s really great to overhear every country bumpkin who has never even met a Jew sit in class and tell some of the worst Anti-Semitic jokes/slander/exc. you can imagine CONSTANTLY! Have you ever REALLY felt completely unwanted and out of place before? I’ve felt that way for 3 years now!!

Please, if you are Jewish, or look like you are Jewish.. or even have a last name that sounds a little too Jewish… GO SOMEWHERE ELSE!!!


jewish@tamu said...
I did some research to verify what I could find out about the Jewish community at TAMU. Below are my results and sources. Please feel free to verify! Sorry about the length but its good info.
According to Hillel.org approximately 3% of the campus is Jewish. Good luck finding them! Rabbi Yossi and Manya Lazaroff moved to town in October and leased out a small building next to their home which is now the “Chabad Jewish Student Center” which is funded in part by a generous grant from the Rohr Family Foundation (not the University). Before the Lazaroffs arrived, Jewish Aggies did not have a regular Shabbat dinner and lunch program at the university. According to Manya Lazaroff, between 25 and 40 students attend each Friday night gathering at the Chabad Jewish Student Center. The Texas A&M campus has approximately 45 thousand students!

According to generous estimates, there are about 1,500 Jewish A&M students in a student body of some 45,000. The overwhelming majority of the Jewish students are Texas natives from Conservative, Reform and secular families.
I believe the average Jewish student on campus tries as best as possible to keep the fact they are Jewish a well kept secret. Rabbi Yossi Lazaroff has been quoted in many of the recent articles relating to Jewish students and I praise him for his work. I’m glad to see somebody standing up for the Jewish community of Aggieland. I do however, sadly doubt that one very well intentioned Rabbi is enough to make a difference. Did you get the point that he is the ONLY one (and his wife of course)?

Some quotes from them:
"I mean, we are all living here, let's get along. There's a lot of issues and we can all make a difference," Manya Lazaroff said. "It sounds grandiose, but it's true. Nothing happens for no reason, and there's a tremendous value in everyone."

Yossi said he and his wife were living in New Jersey when they decided to move to Aggieland to serve those in need of a home away from home. He said there was a great need for a Chabad center for Jewish Aggies.

"At A&M, there's definitely a considerable number of Jewish students, but their choices are very limited," Yossi said. "We want to provide a more family-like connection for the students."
Well… that’s the best I could find out about good things for Jews at A&M. Now the not so good…
(From “Anti-semitism at Texas A&M” article)
Last week a preacher invited to the Texas A&M University by a student organization slurred two Jewish students to their faces.
Tom Short, an itinerant evangelist brought to campus by the A&M Christian Fellowship, told one student that, because she is Jewish, she is going "to burn in Hell." He told another Jewish student that "Hitler did not go far enough."
The Battalion, student daily at Texas A&M, reported the incident in a letter to the editor over the headline "Preacher violates common courtesy."
“PREACHER BRINGS ANTI-SEMITISM TO A&M -- UNIVERSITY LISTED AS NATIONAL CENTER OF HATE” (this is different than the one above b.t.w.)
…"I was unfolding my prayer shawl, and Short said, `Here we're going to have some self-righteousness,'" Myers said. "He started to rant about how my prayers were wrong, how I shouldn't pray in public. But Jews have to pray in public."
Myers, an associate professor of English, addressed the crowd, telling the gathered students that "every man should have a right to choose how he's going to worship his God." The crowd applauded Myers, who walked away, telling Short, "You're not worth listening to."
The A&M Christian Fellowship brought Short, a professional "campus preacher," to speak on campus on March 20 and 21.
The confrontation between Short and Myers punctuated a growing national controversy over religious intolerance on the Texas A&M campus. Short's last appearance at A&M, last semester, made national news when he told Jewish student Lisa Foox that "Hitler did not go far enough" and that Jews were condemned to "burn in hell." The incident led to A&M being listed as a major center of hate by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a civil rights organization for Jews. Rabbi Peter Tarlow of the Hillel Foundation said Short is an anti-Semite. "He's done A&M a lot of harm," Tarlow said. "This reconfirms the stereotype that A&M only cares about white Christians."

Well.. that’s the spectrum of things I could find on google to back up or break my case. All I can say is I hope others have had a different experience here than me.
- Jewish@tamu
Ref:
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/texas-am-antisem-1196.html
http://www.hillel.org/HillelApps/JLOC/Campus.aspx?AgencyId=17768
http://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/606281/jewish/Lone-Star-Students.htm
http://antiracistblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/chabad-at-texas-university-is-truly.html
http://www.jewishweek.org/news/newscontent.php3?artid=10860&print=yes
http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/081506campusantibrief07.pdf
January 30, 2008 5:23 PM

Wherever we stand, we stand with Springfield

From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Monday, Jan 28,2008

Hillel got a shoutout on last night’s episode of the Simpsons, which had some sort of weird flashback thing going with Marge attending college in the ’90s.

The image above appeared as she mentioned “fraternity pledges in their beanies.”

A Home Away from Home

I must admit that I do not go to Hillel as much as I should. It is not that I do not enjoy myself at Hillel, it is just that when Friday evenings come around, I forget where the time went. By the end of the week, I am so exhausted from studying and reading that all I want to do is lie in my bed without a book in hand or an alarm set on my phone to wake up super early. Friday evenings are, unfortunately, my naptime. I wish that was not the case, because I have realized that U of M's Hillel is just an amazing place to go.

Last year, the Hillel at Michigan started a finals week studying program. The Hillel is open 24 hours a day during finals week, and offers us all the candy, coffee, tea and kosher sandwiches we could ask for. There are designated quiet rooms, group study rooms, and chill out rooms. Last year I did not need to go to Hillel to study because many of Finals were papers that I could just as easily get done in the confines of my own room. This year however, I am a normal college student with normal exams and Hillel is the place to go.

What is even more convenient about studying at Hillel (for me at least) is that it is right behind my house. I don't know what it is, but there is something about being 50 yards from my room that is comforting, reassuring and calming. Unlike the library, where I must admit I feel inadequate and stupid half the time, Hillel truly sticks to its motto of being "a home away from home for Jewish students".

I am sure that U of M's Hillel is unique in this aspect, but I confident that other Hillel's offer similar programs and study sessions. If not, I know for a fact that it is a wonderful place to go as a getaway from the stresses of your normal week. With that said, I think it really is VERY important to look into the Hillel at a school you are planning to go to; it is not just your parents urging you to do this, because in fact, it is incredibly important to find a place on campus that is a gathering for all Jewish students at the University, be it religiously based or not. Hillel will be my safe haven this week, and I hope that it can be yours at whatever school you choose to go to.