Issue 15

THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868

THE AMHERST

STUDENT

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VOLUME CXLIX, ISSUE 15 l WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2020

AMHERSTSTUDENT.COM

Anthony Jack, Tara Westover Address Role of Inequality in Higher Education Natalie De Rosa ’21 Editor-in-Chief

Photo courtesy of Olivia Gieger ‘21

Multiple student groups have sprung up to support the various candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Amherst for Warren, depicted above at the McIntyre-Shaheen Dinner, is the largest of these groups.

In Primaries, Student Organizing Takes Center Stage Ryan Yu ’22 Managing News Editor As the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary election winds down and the Massachusetts primary inches ever closer, students on campus are getting increasingly involved with campaigns for the 2020 general election. Student groups for the four most major Democratic candidates — former Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Bernie Sanders, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Senator Elizabeth Warren — have each ramped up their operations, with individual activists for other candidates also getting involved in the fray.

The college vote is considered important by many campaigns, es-

pecially after the national student voting rate more than doubled in the 2018 midterms. At Amherst, the change in voting rate was even higher, exceeding a threefold increase in part due to the Amherst College Votes initiative, which was focused on facilitating campus civic engagement. On-campus activism has likewise surged in recent years, whether in protests, lobbying or, in this case, political campaigns.

The Campaigns Amherst for Warren is the largest and perhaps the most continuously active of the campus campaigns, with over 60 members. Started by Harry Brussel ’23 in September of last semester, the student group has been actively canvassing for months,

making frequent weekend trips to campaign in New Hampshire and calling potential voters in early voting states.

According to Brussel and Laura Gottesfeld ’23, a Warren supporter who has gone canvassing on over 10 separate weekends in the past academic year, one of the key reasons — apart from policy agreements — why they and many others are so enthused about Warren is due to a speech she gave at the Massachusetts Democratic Convention last fall, an event that saw many attendees from Amherst. “We saw Elizabeth speak at the convention, and we all just totally fell in love with her and her message,” said Brussel.

Although other candidates may not have the home-state advantage

that Warren does, many of them have nonetheless found large pools of support. Amherst for Bernie, for example, started organizing over interterm and has since amassed a team of core organizers and around 30 nominal members. The group has also started actively campaigning, having canvassed in New Hampshire two times and phone-banked several more.

The group’s organizers expressed a wide range of reasons for their support of Sanders: for Yosef Ibrahim ’23, “on any given issue, Bernie has the best position;” for Arman Azad ’21, “Bernie can talk to disaffected Trump voters,” granting him the electability needed to win; and for

Continued on page 4

Authors Anthony Jack ’07 and Tara Westover discussed their routes to higher education, the costs of leaving home for college and the challenges low-income students face on campuses in a conversation on Feb. 6. The event, which was titled “What Would Equality in Education Look Like?,” took place in Johnson Chapel.

Jack is an assistant professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His book, “The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges are Failing Disadvantaged Students,” compares the experiences of the “privileged poor”— low-income students with boarding or prep education under their belts — and the “doubly disadvantaged” — low-income students who transitioned to college without those resources — at elite institutions.

Westover is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Educated,” her memoir detailing her path from a Mormon survivalist household that opposed public education to earning multiple degrees from institutions including Brigham Young University and Cambridge. Westover is currently a senior research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center.

Continued on page 5

News Joshua Baum Feb. 3, 2020 – Feb. 9, 2020

>>Feb. 3, 2020 2:04 p.m., Boltwood Avenue An officer observed a minor motor vehicle accident with no injuries. >>Feb. 4, 2020 12:21 a.m., Moore Dormitory An officer responded to a report of marijuana smoke in the residence hall.

2:24 p.m., Boltwood Avenue A boot was placed on a vehicle on the book list and parked in violation of parking regulations. >>Feb. 5, 2020 8:15 a.m., Pratt Field House An officer responded to an alarm and found it was set off accidentally by an employee.

1:30 p.m., Campus Grounds A table was stolen from the campus center. >>Feb. 6, 2020 11:37 p.m., Alumni Gym A window pane was broken accidentally.

11:07 p.m., Moore Dormitory An officer responded to a report of an odor of burnt marijuana inside the building. >>Feb. 7, 2020 8:31 p.m., Lipton House Officers confiscated a large volume of alcohol left unattended in a common area.

11:33 p.m., Hitchcock

Staff Spotlight

Dormitory Officers responded to a noise complaint and found an unauthorized party.

11:53 p.m., North Hall Officers responded to an alarm and found it was set off by burnt popcorn. >>Feb. 8, 2020 12:49 p.m., Plimpton House An officer observed a group in the woods during inclement weather and checked in on their well-being.

1:28 p.m., Hitchcock Dormitory An officer took a report of a phone stolen from a common area in a building. >>Feb. 9, 2020 12:13 a.m., Hitchcock Dormitory Officers responded to a report of an individual breaking exit signs.

1:43 p.m., Merrill Science Building An individual entered a building not open to general access.

3:12 p.m., Hitchcock Dormitory An officer took a report of a stolen coat from a common area after a party.

The Feb. 5 edition of the The Student incorrectly listed Professor Lauren J. Leydon-Hardy as a visiting professor.

In fact, she is an assistant professor.

Film, Video and Photography Coordinator

Joshua Baum is the manager of the Fayerweather Cage photo, video and film equipment collection. He has coordinated the production equipment for the art and history of art department since 2017. Baum also oversees the darkroom, digital lab and black box studio spaces.

Q: What do you do as the film, video and photography coordinator?

A: I manage the film, photography and video equipment for the art department. I am in charge of the cameras, tripods, lighting equipment and sound equipment for all those classes and make them accessible for both students and faculty. I also oversee the digital lab and the darkroom which is for photos and videos which is in the basement of Fayerweather.

We also have a space next door that’s more of a studio space for video, film and photos that students use for doing more studio based work.

Q: What interested you in a career in film, video and photography?

A: My training is actually in film production, but what originally drew me to it was photography and music.

And when I was in college, I found that film was a way for me to combine all those things, to tell stories.

This led me to start experimenting with personal filmmaking and make some of my first films in college. Later, I went to grad school for it. Because I was interested in teaching, I started multimedia services here at Amherst where I did more technical work. When a position opened in the art department, I decided to take it.

Q: What brought you to Amherst?

A: I grew up in the area, so I had that connection. Though I didn’t know a lot about the college before I worked here, I was aware of its reputation as an excellent school. I knew that it was certainly the kind of place that I was interested in working. I had been away from home for several years — in grad school in Wisconsin — so I

welcomed the opportunity to come back home.

Q: Where did you work before coming to Amherst College?

A: When I was in grad school, I did some teaching work alongside my full time job. I’ve also done freelance stuff, including commercial work and videography for individuals or companies and organizations. Before that, I worked for a media education and for a production nonprofit in the Hudson Valley of New York. This gave me the opportunity to work with high school aged youth and teach them media production skills.

Q: Have you changed anything about the photo, video, and film equipment system while you’ve been here?

A: Definitely! When I first got here, there were a couple part-time people doing my job functions, so I decided to reorganize our equipment to make it more systematic. Now, check-out and check-in is faster and more efficient. As time has gone on, the system has evolved to meet the needs of the faculty and any given class. One general trend is that we’re moving towards more digital forms of equipment. However, what’s super cool about Amherst is that we also still support analog equipment. We do 16 millimeter filmmaking and we do analog photography, meaning we use chemicals to develop physical film and motion in 35 millimeter, medium format and even large format photography. No matter the type, I have tried to offer the best equipment and facilities for the artists here at Amherst.

Q: We heard that you recently published your third album — what inspired it?

A: The word is out — how exciting! I guess it all started when I was a teenager when I started playing the guitar.

That prompted me to start writing and composing when I was twelve or thirteen [years old]. Honestly, music was my first art. After the guitar I started to pick up some other instruments, and eventually, I decided to take it to the next level and publish an album. They take a long-time to put together because I have to do the initial recording and writing by myself.

Then I recruit other musicians and friends to fill out the arrangements.

I really enjoyed making those, so I kept at it. Now, I’ve just published my third album called “Let in the Light.”

Q: What kind of music is yon our album?

A: It’s singer-songwriter, but the genre is old-folk. Some examples of musicians — and my favorite bands — who publish similar work [are] Fleet Foxes, Wilco and Sufjan Stevens.

Q: Is there anything else you would like the Amherst student-body to know about you?

A: If you’re interested in music, stop by and say hi! I love talking about creative stuff. I’m also always trying to make the campus feel more friendly. Also, if you are thinking about taking a film or photo class, do it! It’s a lot of fun, it’s hands on, and it’s unlike any other experience you’ll have on campus. Also, feel free to look up my music on Spotify (Joshua Baum).

—Sophia Wolmer ’23

News 3

The Amherst Student • February 12, 2020

Imam Kazerooni Discusses Human Rights, Islamic Law, Soleimani Zach Jonas ’22 Managing News Editor Content warning: The following article contains explicit remarks regarding sexual assault that may be sensitive for some readers.

Imam Ibrahim Kazerooni gave a talk titled “Islamic Law and Human Rights” on Feb. 4. The talk, which was held in Pruyne Lecture Hall, was a part of the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life’s Interfaith Harmony Week.

Kazerooni is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Detroit Mercy and is the imam of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan, the largest mosque in North America. He holds an M.B.A. and a master’s of theological studies from the University of Denver, where he also earned his Ph.D. In 1974, Kazerooni was detained by Saddam Hussein’s regime for over five months. After his release, he completed his theological studies in Iran. Fearful of the Hussein regime’s secret police, he fled Iran for England before settling in Michigan.

The Muslim Student’s Associa-

tion began the process of bringing Kazerooni to speak on campus after Ala Kaymaram ’21, a member of MSA, met Kazerooni over the summer and asked him to speak on campus. “We wanted to invite him before, but we had to work with the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life to do it,” Kaymaram said.

Director of Religious and Spiritual Life Harrison Blum began the event with remarks about the importance of interfaith dialogue. By engaging across differences, he said, we may learn more about ourselves and others.

At the beginning of the talk, Kazerooni remarked how he was initially surprised to see the offer to speak at the college. “I’d like to start by thanking the organizers. It took me back eight or so years ago when I applied for a position on the faculty. I didn’t hear anything back from Amherst at all. It was strange to get the invitation,” he said wryly.

Kazerooni then proceeded to address the event’s topic of human rights, noting the ways in which its implementation at times proves difficult. “There is not a country in the world that exists and doesn’t violate human rights. If not economic hu-

Photo courtesy of Matai Curzon ‘22

Imam Kazerooni’s short 30 minute talk focused on the realtionship between human rights and Islamic law.The following Q&A session featured questioning the Imam’s views on General Soleimani. man rights, then political or social rights,” he said.

He recited a short anecdote to prove that no country, including the U.S., is innocent with regards to human rights violations. “Recently, [the U.S. has] new laws. The FBI, as well as the TSA, have been informed that any passenger who arrives at

the border, [has] to … [be] screened to see if they are Muslims,” he said.

“If they are, you must ask if they are Shias; if so, they must be dealt with separately. And yet, we are good at preaching to the rest of the world about human rights.”

“We preach well, but we do not practice,” he added.

Kazerooni concluded his lecture by touching upon the issue of justice. In the modern day, he said, scholars must turn to the religious texts to answer questions regarding justice and the law in a time when the Prophet Muhammed does not

Continued on page 4

“No Identified Risk” From Possible Coronavirus Cases at Smith Anna Agathis ’21 and Ryan Yu ’22 Contributing Writer and Managing News Editor Two students at Smith College were put into isolation as a precaution after potentially coming into contact with the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). According to a statement from Smith, the first student is currently symptom-free and out of isolation, while the second student is not yet cleared and remains in isolation. There are currently no confirmed cases of coronavirus at Smith or in the five colleges.

The coronavirus epidemic, which originated from Wuhan, China, has claimed the lives of over 1,000 people and infected many more. However, the outbreak has been largely limited to China, and incidents in the U.S. are comparatively low, with only 12 people infected, including a student at UMass

Boston. No Americans have died yet from the disease. Comparatively, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that between 12,000 and 61,000 people have died from influenza in the United States each year since 2010.

The Department of Public Health (DPH) and the CDC have advised that there is “no risk of coronavirus to either Smith students or the community,” said Stacey Schmeidel, the director of public relations at Smith, reiterated.

The first student suspected to come into contact with coronavirus at Smith reported “cold-like symptoms” on Feb. 2 and expressed a fear that she was possibly on a plane with another individual exposed to the virus. However, this has not been confirmed. The student was “never considered at risk by DPH or the CDC for the virus,” Schmeidel said.

The student “voluntarily self-iso-

lated for several days” until she was no longer showing symptoms. In an email interview, Amherst Director of Student Health Services Emily Jones wrote that the student “does not have novel coronavirus and never did.”

The second Smith student in isolation reported cold-like symptoms on Feb. 4 after having traveled through Hubei Province, China, which contains the city of Wuhan. The “DPH directed her to an emergency room for evaluation,” Schmeidel said. The DPH did not recommend testing for coronavirus because the student’s “symptoms did not meet CDC criteria.”

According to the criteria to guide evaluation of persons under investigation (PUI) for 2019-nCoV published by the CDC, persons must have a fever and lower respiratory illness in addition to “a history of travel from mainland China within 14 days of symptom onset” before

the CDC may designate them as a PUI and test for the virus.

The student is currently in isolation per CDC guidelines. However, Jones emphasized that “according to CDC novel coronavirus clinical guidelines, there is no identified risk to that college’s community. We still have no reason to believe anyone on the Amherst College campus is infected with, or at an increased risk for, the coronavirus.”

“We nevertheless continue to be vigilant about evaluating students who come into the health center with cold-like symptoms and have all of the necessary procedures in place to keep our campus as safe as possible should a member of the community be diagnosed with coronavirus,” she added. “If we had reason to believe that someone on campus has coronavirus we would alert the community as soon as possible.”

While reiterating that the coro-

navirus posed no risks to residents of Massachusetts, President of Smith College Kathleen McCartney highlighted the effect that the coronavirus had on the college’s Asian and Asian American community members in a letter to the Smith community.

“I urge you all to remember that the human toll of this virus extends beyond those who have been infected,” she wrote. “Many within our community are watching from afar as the borders to their homeland are closed; as their families navigate cities under quarantine; and as fear of the unknown fuels growing xenophobia.”

The Smith College Health Center is asking for “any individuals who have recently traveled to Hubei Province in China or to other risk areas as identified by the CDC,” to be cognizant of these symptoms and call the health center.

The Amherst Student • February 12, 2020

News 4

Canvassing Bridges Campus Activism With National Politics Continued from page 1 Shoshanna Peifer ’23 and Meenakshi Jani ’23, “the way [Sanders] does politics,” specifically in “bringing people into politics and empowering them,” is particularly attractive.

The other student groups — Amherst for Pete and Amherst for Biden — are both somewhat smaller, sitting at around five active members each.

Both Mason Quintero ’23 and Ryan Kyle ’23, the chairs for the Buttigieg and Biden groups respectively, attributed the disparity in part to the left-leaning nature of Amherst students.

“I’ve gotten great support from the [Amherst College Democrats (ACDems)] leadership, but I sense that the group as a whole is not as welcoming.” said Kyle. “When I sent out a text about the group, a friend of mine texted me, ‘You were so courageous to start Students for Biden!’

I’m a moderate Democrat — how can this be such a novelty?”

Kyle started Amherst for Biden on Feb. 4 and has since canvassed for

Biden once in New Hampshire. She cited electability as the main reason she supports Biden, along with ideological agreements.

Quintero described how he initially viewed Buttigieg as “a joke,” but after listening to him speak on a podcast, he found himself agreeing with Buttigieg’s policy ideas and impressed by his rhetorical style.

Despite Amherst for Pete having been founded in November, it has been less prolific than other groups when it comes to campaigning, having only conducted phone-banking events due to technical and transportation issues with in-person canvassing.

Quintero is not the founder of Amherst for Pete, however. That title falls to Felix Stetsenko ’20, who recently stepped down after changing his candidate of choice to tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang. “I liked [Buttigieg], and I still like him. But then, I think his message became too focus-grouped, and some of the genuineness wore off with Pete,” said Stetsenko. “I was always a fan of uni-

versal basic income, and it was that policy that specifically brought me to Yang.”

Stetsenko has frequently canvassed for Yang in New Hampshire with fellow supporters, but views Yang as highly unlikely to win the nomination. Still, Stetsenko views canvassing as a good way to “start a dialogue about politics” and to “promote Yang’s policies.” As for why he hasn’t started an Amherst for Yang group, Stetsenko views it as being too late to be productive. Yang has since officially suspended his campaign on Feb. 11.

According to the Associated Press, Sanders is projected as the winner of the New Hampshire primary, with Buttigieg and Senator Amy Klobuchar coming in second and third respectively. Klobuchar does not have an affiliated student group on campus.

What They’re Doing While all the student activists are campaigning for different people, they’re engaging in the same core

activities. Notably, they have spent days and weeks canvassing in New Hampshire, either trying to convince undecided voters to support their candidate or getting out the vote among already decided voters.

Most commonly, students travel to Keene — the New Hampshire city closest to Amherst, just over an hour’s drive away and with a population of slightly under 25,000 people — to canvass.

Beyond the opportunity of garnering more support for their candidates, canvassers expressed a wide range of secondary benefits to their campaigning. For some people, the act of canvassing represented a new way of connecting with their candidate.

“Anecdotally, we definitely met some Bernie supporters who I felt had experiences that really informed their support for Bernie and really how I viewed Bernie,” Jani said. “Seeing people who are, on a daily basis, affected by these issues was very eye-opening in terms of what Bernie can do for inspiring people.”

For others, it represented a reason for optimism in a polarized political climate. “It’s heartening to meet people who are engaged in politics, who take the job of deciding who to vote for that seriously,” said Stetsenko. “It made me more hopeful, meeting these people and going to New Hampshire, because I think it’s easy, if you’re on Twitter or watching CNN, to lose hope about politics.”

A common refrain among canvassers was voters’ receptivity and engagement with their respective campaigns. Kyle, for example, described how she was “just struck by how kind people were, even if they were committed [to a different candidate] already.”

“Even if the person we came up to weren’t leaning towards Biden, they would still invite us in and talk to us, and just have a really interesting conversation,” she said.

“People are usually pretty nice when they open the door,” added

Continued on page 5

Kazerooni Comments Questioned by Students at Interfaith Event Continued from page 3

walk the Earth.

“This is a challenge before all of us. We need to work together. We must reflect on the texts … and start again,” he said. “Where is the concept of justice? Does it heal the law or does it fracture it. In Iran, there is a huge movement regarding repealing some of the old laws vis-a-vis gender [inequality]. It’s about time.”

Sabir Meah ’21, who attended the talk, said that Kazerooni’s talk made him reexamine the U.S.’s double standard of who is and isn’t a human rights violator. “It makes me think of why we don’t think of figures like George Bush in the same vein as Soleimani when his actions based on false pretenses led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians,” he said in an email interview.

Meah also pointed to Kazerooni’s “call for the discardal of old precedent and reinterpretation of Islamic law” as particularly intriguing.

A Q&A session followed Ka-

zerooni’s talk and it quickly grew heated when Abraham Zuraw ’22 asked Kazerooni to elaborate on his past-comments regarding Iranian retaliatory measures against the U.S. following the assasination of Soleimani. Soleimani was the leader of the Quds Force, a unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) notorious for its clandestine operations. The Quds Force was declared a terrorist organization by the U.S. in 2007. The Trump administration claims that Soleimani holds responsibility for the deaths of thousands of American soldiers, and assassinated him in a drone strike in Iraq on Jan. 3.

During a sermon given on Jan. 5, which sparked Zuraw’s question after he’d seen it online, Kazerooni stated that “the strategy for challenging the United States has already been set … We have no quarrel with American citizens. Our goal and target is American soldiers and American military people. All actors in the region must understand this be their strategy, although they have the free will to adjust their

methodology of going about it …

American soldiers become the sitting ducks.”

Kazerooni gave a sermon on the same day of Soleimani’s death at the Islamic Center of America. “The cowardly and heinous act of assassinating General Qasem Soleimani changed the plot [of my original sermon], and I would be doing a disservice if I did not address that issue first,” he said. “[Soleimani’s] presence brought hope to the marginalized and to those who were afraid, and it brought hatred and fear to the enemies of Islam, particularly the United States … his importance was felt in the war in 2014 and 2015 against ISIS in Iraq in Mosul, where ISIS became an extended arm of American foreign policy,” he added.

Kazerooni responded to Zuraw’s question by asking the student, “if a martian battalion came down into your country and took your sister and your mother and they gang raped them, took pictures of them, of what they did to them, what is your response to it?”

“Those who have been violated in such a way want to take revenge, that is the natural way,” he added.

“My political analysis of the situation is correct, and I stand by it.”

Blum, acting as the moderator of the discussion, intervened during the exchange. “I sadly don’t think it’s appropriate to use specifics, because specific violence has happened … If we could tone down the language of these acts toward women, not because they didn’t happen, but because … some language may be triggering … and certain people may want to continue this conversation,” he said.

Later in the Q&A session when asked how he felt about Soleimani’s human rights abuses, Kazerooni replied, “As [he was] somebody who was subjected to tyranny, I understand how he reacted.”

Zuraw ultimately expressed dismay towards Kazerooni’s answer to his question. “I don’t believe I should have to imagine my mother and sister being raped by martians after asking a challenging, but legitimate and civil question,” he said.

Meah thought the exchange of words took time away from other students who came to ask “thought-provoking” questions.

“While I do not agree with the Imam’s decision to not assign Soleimani individual blame because he is just a part of the colonization machine (and additionally I think his rape example was uncalled for and inappropriate), I think this long and heated exchange took much of the valuable time away from the students who wished to use the limited time we had for questions on the actual keynote topic,” he said.

“The students in the exchange were predominantly not even asking the Imam questions, but telling him how supposedly wrong his viewpoint was,” Meah added.

In an email exchange with Zuraw obtained by The Student immediately following the event, Blum said, “I did find Kazerooni’s line of questioning on the more pointed side, and believe there are other ways he could have expressed those ideas. I apologize for not stepping in sooner to reframe the conversation.”

The Amherst Student • February 12, 2020

News 5

First Generation Students Centered in Jack, Westover Conversation Continued from page 1

Chair of Anthropology and Sociology and William R. Kenan Professor of American Studies and Sociology Leah Schmalzbauer moderated the conversation, first asking Jack and Westover to describe their books and their motivation to write them.

“I wrote a book about myself, very modestly,” Westover joked.

“I had an unusual path to education — I was able to go to Harvard and Cambridge — and I thought I should write about it.”

“I had no idea why I should write about it so at first I didn’t … I took it up again and realized I couldn’t write about the experience of education without writing about my family. I’m not sure how I thought that could work but I was convinced that I could do that,” she added.

Before turning to talk about his book, Jack first quipped that “when I first heard that this was going to be in Johnson Chapel, I was scared — I have seen some of the best talks of my life in this room.”

“When I first saw people write about first generation and low-income college students, I thought, ‘they get the story about half-right.’

Then I realized that I was experiencing the consequences of people

getting the story half-right. I was inheriting the consequences of people who were setting policy at colleges and universities but were not dealing with the full complexity of understanding our experiences,” Jack continued.

Schmalzbauer moved the conversation to compare Jack’s and Westover’s vastly different home communities, with Jack hailing from the Coconut Grove neighborhood on Miami and Westover from rural Idaho. She asked the two to elaborate on the ways in which these experiences have shaped their perceptions of educational equality.

“It’s very rare that we bring [both] the rural and urban into this conversation,” Schmalzbauer said.

For Jack, he noted that a range of circumstances — from the presence of gunshots to discriminatory redlining practices — as “built into the fabric of urban life.” These attributes, he said, have a significant impact on students’ schooling.

“You have this innate fight or flight as your norm,” Jack said. “I experienced that on a much lighter level than … other cities across the country. But that was something that I thought about and was how I moved through school.”

Westover highlighted that educational issues in rural schools tend to go unnoticed, partially because

high school graduation rates are high. One issue prevalent in many rural communities, Westover said, is that students are not prepared for the steps after high school.

“The kids in my town where I grew up, three-quarters of them would have been farmers and they were happy with that … the problem is that they can’t really do that anymore,” she said. “They haven’t really received the education they need to know that they can’t stay.”

After reading short excerpts from both “The Privileged Poor” and “Educated” that emphasized the cost students pay when leaving home for college, Schmalzbauer asked Jack and Westover to elaborate on their perspectives on the cost of educational mobility and identify ways to lower that cost.

“Human beings are naturally very lost. We don’t like to lose things, and losing your home is one of the hardest things you can possibly do, to risk what you have to get ‘I don’t know what,’” Westover said.

“I don’t know how to address it, but the thing that I always harp on is this will not be the last time [to lose things].”

“This is why I love the term ‘first generation college student’ as a name, because for me it naturally evokes an immigrant narrative. You are leaving one culture, one place

for another; you are learning new norms, a new culture, new rules, a new way of being. But we focus too much on getting to America, to Amherst, that we don’t know what’s next,” Jack said.

Schmalzbauer afterwards gave Jack and Westover the opportunity to ask each other questions.

Westover asked Jack how he came up with the seemingly oxymoronic term “privileged poor,” to which Jack recalled a moment in graduate school when he reread a paper he wrote for Professor of English Marisa Parham while at the college and rediscovered the joy of writing beyond prescribed boundaries.

Meanwhile, Jack asked Westover about common perceptions of rural America as a place absent of people of color; Westover responded that these ideas of the midwest are “outdated.”

To conclude the conversation, Schmalzbauer asked Jack and Westover to offer advice to students on how they should approach their education. Jack stressed the importance of taking advantage of the college’s resources — like therapy, study abroad opportunities and internships — while Westover urged students to imagine what experiences they would want their hypothetical children to have and create those for themselves.

The event was followed by a Q&A session, which covered topics like the role of gender in schooling and navigating home life while at school, and a book signing.

For Jeremy Thomas ’21, who attended the event, while he saw Westover as having “blindspots” on issues like race, he thought the event illustrated how “none of us, even at the conclusion of Amherst … should strive to consider ourselves to be ‘educated.’”

“We should work toward continuously educating ourselves because there will always be something we don’t know, and a time when that lack of knowledge will be expected of us, even if it is to only later be criticized, fairly or not,” he said in an email interview.

Sam Grondin ’21 found Jack’s and Westover’s conversation about navigating family life while at college especially pertinent.

“I’m a first gen college student so definitely there are different worlds having Amherst be one world and home be another world, and trying to bridge the gap between those worlds is very difficult. And I think that both of the speakers really hit home with that,” he said.

Olivia Gieger ’21 contributed reporting to this article.

Political Engagement Ramps Up As Mass. Primary Nears Continued from page 4 Gottesfeld. “There was one time when we were canvassing, and someone was undecided, so we gave them our little spiel about why we supported Elizabeth Warren, and they invited us in for coffee and hot chocolate — we didn’t go, but it was just really nice.”

Going to New Hampshire to canvass still often poses many difficulties, however. For one, several canvassers noted how chilly conditions impeded their ability to quickly move from house-to-house, while many also noted the large time commitment that canvassing presented.

Nevertheless, most of the student organizers deemed it necessary despite those costs due to the perceived

importance of the primary.

“I think you just have to make the time. I think we’re at a time where, politically, it’s very important to make sure your voice is heard, and that you’re active, and that you’re fighting for what you believe in.” said Peifer. “For me, there’s definitely some crunch time this week, because I spent a whole day canvassing where I was like, ‘Ooh, I don’t know if I’m going to get my work done,’ but that’s the sacrifice you need to make to make sure you’re working your future a place that you want to be living in,” he said.

Still, canvassing is far from the only option for those wanting to get involved. Both phone-banking and on-campus organizing are common activities among the campaigns, as

well as other off-campus events like rallies or events for Democrats. For instance, students from the Warren and Biden campaigns attended the McIntyre-Shaheen 100 Club Dinner in Manchester, New Hampshire on Feb. 8 — an event that featured every major Democratic candidate as a speaker — to show their support for their respective candidates.

Undecided and unaffiliated students also have a chance to stay in the conversation. “We don’t endorse in the primary, so we have focused on events to learn about the candidates and ways to watch what’s happening,” said Anna Kanengiser ’21, president of ACDems, in an email interview.

“We watched many debates together and have had a few events to

hear the candidates speak in New Hampshire. We are also focusing on activism surrounding specific issues in the meantime.”

What They’re Planning With the New Hampshire primary finished, each student group now intends to turn its attention to the Massachusetts primary, which will be held on March 3. The date, which is known commonly as Super Tuesday, will see the primaries of 14 states and Democrats Abroad, representing around a third of available delegates for primary candidates.

In preparation, organizers are beginning to plan canvassing activities around Massachusetts, as well as on-campus events. The Office of Environmental Sustainability is plan-

ning an environmental policy forum with representatives from each of the student groups on campus on Feb. 28, in coordination with ACDems.

According to Kanengiser, ACDems plans to hold a voter registration drive concurrently with the forum.

Many campaigns are also emphasizing primary voter registration in the days before the Massachusetts deadline. For citizens wanting to vote in the Massachusetts primary, they will have to be registered as a Democrat or an independent before Feb. 12.

“I think it’s very easy to be cynical about politics, but when you get out there, and you go to people’s houses, it definitely restores my faith in the system to a certain degree, for all its flaws,” said Kyle. “I’m optimistic.”

Opinion

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Combating Coronavirus Racism On Feb. 1, the novel coronavirus (2019-nCov) made national headlines as it infected one patient in Massachusetts. This patient, a University of Massachusetts Boston student from Wuhan, China where the virus was first identified, highlights the degree to which this virus has spread across the globe.

At publication time, 2019-nCov has infected more than 40,000 people and taken the lives of over 1,000 others, many of whom had fought tirelessly to combat its spread.

In an opinion piece last week, contributing writer Jiajia Zhang ’22, a Wuhanese American, highlighted the degree to which Asian Americans, specifically Chinese Americans, have been the targets of xenophobic and racist comments, rhetoric and jokes both in-person and online. It is despicable that people have exploited this tragedy as a means to justify xenophobia. Taking this into consideration, the Editorial Board urges the college to take steps to support those who may be directly affected by the racism and xenophobia fueled by this viral outbreak.

In the United States alone, a wave of hateful antiChinese and anti-Asian sentiment brewing from the virus’s outbreak demonstrated severe implications for Asians across the country in the past month. In New York, a woman wearing a face mask was brutally assaulted in a subway station and called “diseased” by her attacker. In Los Angeles, residents reported racist comments directed towards Asian passengers from TSA agents, the Los Angeles Times reported. Even Wilbur Ross, the current U.S. commerce secretary, blatantly and ignorantly touted this outbreak as an opportunity to bring back jobs from China to the United States.

Colleges, unfortunately, have not been immune from this trend of xenophobia. As Zhang mentioned in her op-ed, the University of California, Berkeley recently released an infographic about 2019-nCov on its official Instagram page that cited xenophobia as a “normal reaction” to the viral outbreak. While the university ultimately apologized for this racist gaffe, it is just one indication of how the xenophobic atmosphere fueled by this epidemic has placed colleges at the forefront of the fight against the racism dealt to international and domestic Chinese communities.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, there are more than 369,000 international Chinese students currently studying in the United States, making up the largest portion of students from a single country. Fears of racist backlash on college campuses have led many students, including those not of Chinese descent, to re-evaluate the role that they play in their college communities. Reports have shown that hundreds of students in college and universities across the United States have been forced into isolation

in their dorm rooms by their college administrations in an attempt to prevent potential outbreak on campuses. While quarantine is a reasonable response to the threats of 2019-nCov, college administrators must find a way to balance these safety measures with the threats that global panic and xenophobia have on the livelihoods of students. In a piece from The New York Times, a Princeton University student reported being “prescribed” isolation by his roommates, despite being cleared by the university to attend his courses.

Evidently, as the coronavirus has highlighted, there is a fine line between well-intentioned safety measures and camouflaged racism. The intricacy of this distinction in the context of this virus can potentially detrimentally impact the dynamics of a college community.

As a result, colleges and universities across the United States face a delicate balancing act to mitigate the risk of 2019-nCov while working to combat xenophobia against Chinese and Asian students.

According to an email sent by Dean of Students Liz Agosto on Jan. 28, there are no reported cases of the virus at the college and the risk of transmission in our community remains low. Still, the college must work to promote an environment of inclusivity to ensure that students of all backgrounds feel welcome in the context of this outbreak.

Other colleges and universities have taken the lead in encouraging their communities to recognize the harm that the xenophobic outcry prompted by the virus has on Asian students. In an email sent out by the administration of Syracuse University, the college’s students, faculty and staff were told to be respectful and inclusive to Asian community members as a result of the outbreak. While the Amherst administration’s 2019-nCov notification email was informative, it made no mention of the xenophobia faced by millions of international and Asian American students in the United States, impugning our college’s dedication to an inclusive environment.

Yet, the task of fighting xenophobia should not be placed on the shoulders of the administration alone. The rise of 2019-nCov has led to a plethora of harmful memes and jokes regarding the virus on social media. Despite the proliferation of anti-Asian rhetoric related to the outbreak on social media, students must consider whether their participation in these harmful jokes may hurt those who are directly or indirectly affected by the virus. Both the college and students must think deeply about their role in this outbreak and the level of support, or lack thereof, that they provide to students who may be affected by the racist offshoots of this virus.

Unsigned editorials represent the Editorial Board (assenting: 13; dissenting: 0; abstaining: 0)

THE AMHERST

STUDENT E X E C U T I V E B OA R D Editors-in-Chief Natalie De Rosa Olivia Gieger Managing News Zach Jonas Ryan Yu Managing Opinion Jae Yun Ham Rebecca Picciotto Managing Arts and Living Seoyeon Kim Arielle Kirven Lauren Kisare Managing Sports Jack Dove Henry Newton Camilo Toruno Managing Design Zehra Madhavan Anna Smith S TA F F Publishers Emmy Sohn Mark Nathin Digital Director Dylan Momplaisir

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The Amherst Student • February 12, 2020

Opinion 7

It’s Time to Recommit to Asian American Studies

Jiajia Zhang ’22, Emily Ye ’20, Maggie Wu ’22 and Sabrina Lin ’21 Amherst AAS Working Group Formerly among the NESCAC schools with the most resources for Asian American studies (AAS), Amherst College has fallen behind its peers. In the 2017-2018 academic year, Asian American students from Williams College reached out to members of Amherst’s AAS Working Group to learn about our activism and grow their own accordingly. Their photo campaign, “Williams Doesn’t Teach Me,” was modeled after and cited our “Amherst Doesn’t Teach Me” campaign, which highlighted the content missing from the college’s curriculum without AAS. By 2018, Williams students had created their own working group and as of this year have successfully advocated for the hiring of two tenure-track faculty in AAS in addition to the three already at the college.

AAS is an academic discipline that critically examines the histories, experiences, identities, cultures and politics of Asian

Americans. Although AAS is often confused with Asian Studies, the two in fact constitute distinct academic fields.

AAS emerged during the civil rights movement as a product of pan-racial advocacy to acknowledge the histories, experiences, identities and cultures of people of color. AAS comprises a critical component of what it means to be American, and for decades, its interdisciplinary nature has drawn students of all backgrounds into the few classes which Amherst offers in this subject. Asian Americans continue to make vital contributions to the rich tapestry of American socio-cultural life. Amherst College’s curriculum must recognize such contributions or risk remaining fundamentally incomplete.

The origins of some of today’s most salient socio-legal issues can be traced to Asian-American history. Specifically, Asian Americans have had a long-standing past of engagement with the judicial system, not infrequently as litigants in some of the Supreme Court’s landmark cases. To name a few exam-

ples, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), an Asian American man was able to establish the recognition of birthright citizenship for all Americans. The court’s contemporary doctrine of subjecting laws that rely on “suspect classifications” such as race to “strict scrutiny” originated in the challenge of a Japanese-American man to wartime incarceration in the now infamous case Korematsu v. United States (1944). Furthermore, contemporary restrictions on immigration based on nationality originated from the Chinese Exclusion Acts (1882-1943), the first act in American history to ban a group of immigrants based on race.

In fact, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services was founded in the 19th century for the express purpose of denying entry to Chinese Americans, and debates over its exclusionary practices remain relevant today. Present deportations of undocumented immigrants and refugees bear a striking resemblance to the extrajudicial incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. The 20 per-

cent rise in victims of anti-Asian bias from 2016 to 2016 (and a 300 percent rise in anti-Sikh hate crimes between 2016 and 2017, according to the FBI annual report) are reminiscent of the mass-murders and expulsions of hundreds of thousands of Asian Americans throughout history — including the Chinese Massacre of 1871, the Rock Springs Massacre of 1885, the anti-Sikh Bellingham Riots of 1907 and the 1982 lynching of Vincent Chin. Understanding Asian Americans is crucial to understanding the role of race in the United States.

Any study of race should recognize the ways that the state racializes minorities in order to maintain control.

Specifically, Asian Americans have been constructed as the “model minority.” This pernicious myth has prevented coalition between Asian Americans and other minority groups and reasserts the fanciful image of America as a meritocracy where all groups have equal opportunity for socio-economic success.

Encounters with AAS often

prove to be formative experiences which encourage students to participate in civil society, engage in public service and pursue careers in academia. Cynthia Alcantar, an assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, has found that students’ aspirations for public service increased by 15.7 percent after engaging with an ethnic studies program. Jenn Fang, writer and founder of Reappropriate.co, one of the internet’s oldest blogs on Asian American politics and culture, cites her experience with AAS as a key educational moment which continues to inform both her identity and writing today. She is not alone.

Associate Professor of Latin American studies at the University of Connecticut Jason Oliver Chang credits his career in academia to exposure to AAS. The need for a robust civil society, attentive to contemporary issues, and committed to public service has never been greater.

Continuing to neglect AAS would do a disservice both to Amherst students and the larger American public.

Responding to Student Center Sustainability Concerns Jim Brassord Chief of Campus Operations I write to thank Margot Lurie ’21 in “The Need for a Sustainable Student Center,” published in The Student on Feb. 5, for advocating that the college embrace sustainable design principles for the new student center and for highlighting the importance of minimizing embodied carbon as part of a sustainability strategy. I also want to offer some clarifications and insights on the college’s sustainability goals for the new student center.

The college has a history of constructing buildings that are exemplars of sustainability and energy efficiency. The science center is testament to that commitment, having received the American Institute of Architect’s highest honor for sustainable design excellence in 2019. That award, granted to only 10 buildings per year, reflects not only the science

center’s industry-leading energy efficiency but the skillful integration of sustainable design into every aspect of the building. The Greenway residence halls are hyper-efficient due to certain design features such as robust thermal insulation, energy reclamation and radiant heating/cooling.

While energy efficiency has been one measure of a building’s sustainability, there has been revolutionary change in the design community’s focus on holistic sustainability. Architects and engineers are rapidly adopting the use of construction materials that require significantly less energy to manufacture, come from renewable resources and can be produced locally, all of which minimize their embodied carbon compared to conventional building materials like concrete and steel.

As Lurie urged in her article, the college will strive to minimize embodied carbon in the design of the new center. We have selected Herzog

& de Meuron (HdM) as the lead architect, in part because its work embraces the most advanced sustainability principles. Another partner in the project, Transsolar Engineers, is a firm considered by many to be the most innovative sustainability consultant in the world. Transsolar has been instrumental in the field of embodied carbon mitigation. Their collective charge from the college is to design a student center that is a standard bearer for energy efficiency and embodied carbon reduction.

It is important to note, counter to Lurie’s concern, that the demolition of McGuire will not in fact “release thousands of metric tons [of carbon] into the atmosphere.” Carbon emissions occur when a building is constructed; demolition does not release carbon into the atmosphere. However, it is fair to ask if the demolition materials with embodied carbon will be put to beneficial use and if low-embodied carbon materials will

be used for the new student center.

HdM will address these questions, among many others. For example, the use of low-embodied carbon materials such as fly-ash concrete, mass timber and cross-laminated timber will be at the forefront of the architects’ thinking as they consider the conceptual design of the building. Additionally, while architectural studies have concluded that the demolition of both Merrill and McGuire is necessary to create a student center that achieves our community’s programmatic goals, there will be deep analysis to determine what components of these buildings can be reused. Current plans involve the reuse of their foundations, concrete structures with the highest density of carbon in the current buildings, which will mean they don’t have to be recreated for the new building. This will significantly reduce the embodied carbon of a new student center. HdM also is

exploring the possibility of retaining demolition materials in a subterranean tunnel surrounding the base of the structure, through which fresh air would flow and create a thermal “flywheel” to seasonally preheat or pre-cool the air before it is introduced. Using the mass of these materials to create thermal inertia will lower the operational energy profile of the building and put the embodied carbon to beneficial use.

From the announcement of the new student center by President Martin, we have engaged the community in the planning process for the project. There will be opportunities for participation in meetings with the architects and others over the next year. Through the aforementioned and other innovative strategies, we are confident that the new student center will be highly sustainable by all operational and embodied carbon measures and a building that we will all be proud of.

The Amherst Student • February 12, 2020

Opinion 8

Seeing Double: Solving Our Climate Crisis This week’s Seeing Double is a point/counterpoint debates which economic system is best suited to solve the increasingly dire climate crisis: capitalism or socialism. Columnists Cole Graber-Mitchell ’22 and Thomas Brodey ’22 debate this pressing question.

Socialism as the Solution Cole Graber-Mitchell ’22 Columnist Right now, we have what we need to overcome the climate crisis. We have the the will: an overwhelming majority of Americans believe that climate change is both happening and dangerous, according to a 2018 study

by Yale researchers. And we have the means: America is wealthy enough to make the necessary changes. The only barrier left standing is our commitment to capitalism.

Over the last 400 years, capitalism has turned our pale blue dot into a source of tremendous wealth. Capitalist extraction of the Earth’s resources have destroyed societies, poisoned our planet and blocked action on the climate crisis. Oil money props up authoritarian regimes abroad and oligarchs in America, coal mines poison workers and our air, and deforestation in the Amazon is quickly killing one of the most important carbon sinks on the planet.

Capitalism, defined as the control of the means of production by private individuals, can never take the livelihood of society or our Earth into account. It exists to produce profits for the few at the expense of the many. That’s inherent in the structure of capitalism: private ownership for private profit. That profit is generated from our collective labor.

Right now, three men — Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett — have combined fortunes dwarfing those of the bottom half of Americans. That wealth, which could almost single-handedly solve the climate crisis, according to recent estimates by U.N. scientists, is instead locked up in private estates.

As a result of capitalism, the money that our society has generated has flowed to the top for years, concentrating in the hands of overwhelmingly white and male oligarchs.

These oligarchs are the ones who got us into this mess. When we started to understand the climate crisis in the 1970s, capitalists like the oil-rich Koch brothers started a decades-long program to gaslight the American public.

Our commitment to capitalism allowed the Kochs to crush every threat to their fossil fuel empire — at the cost of our future.

There’s an alternative to our top-down, extractive economy. First, we need to establish reforms to ensure that capitalists don’t have undue influence over our democracy. American oligarchs buy government inaction on

climate change and have for half a decade.

Then, we need to transition from outdated fossil fuels to green energy. We need to begin retraining coal miners to become solar panel and wind turbine engineers. We need to use the money locked up in personal fortunes to radically improve public transit, phasing out personal cars in most cases. And we need to kickstart government investment in new technology as we search for new ways to power our lives without killing the planet. None of this can be done without immense wealth redistribution, worked-owned production and powerful, universal social programs.

The argument that socialism is slow, or that it requires violence, is disingenuous. To compare democratically-enacted socialist reforms that redistribute wealth to authoritarian, deadly regimes is intellectually dishonest and a misrepresentation of history. The socialism I argue for is not total state planning of the economy. Instead, I argue for universal social programs and powerful worker protections, coupled with the nationalization of key industries and incremental-but-radical wealth redistribution. With this economic infrastructure, we can make the changes we need to survive rather than satisfying the greed of wealthy men. In other words, production for use rather than profit.

My co-columnist makes the point that socialism isn’t inherently environmentally conscious, and that’s true. However, capitalism is environmentally unconscious by nature. The only reason we’re still on a collision course with disaster is because the few people who control our economy don’t need to worry about the climate crisis. To claim that we must focus on climate change to the exclusion of everything else is to utterly ignore the causes of our destruction. Climate change was manufactured and is maintained by our broken economic system.

Socialism isn’t a panacea, able to cure the world of its fever with a single dose. But if we’re going to make any headway against the climate crisis, the economy must work for everyone. We need to use the wealth that we’ve all worked to generate to help us all instead of giving it to the undeserving few. Under capitalism, wealth inequality is skyrocketing.

So are global temperatures. There’s no time to turn around the burning car of capitalism, as in my co-columnist’s metaphor. It’s time to get out of the car altogether.

Capitalism as the Solution Thomas Brodey ’22 Columnist The climate crisis is an enormous challenge which will take our best efforts to combat. That’s why we need to approach the issue with utmost rationality. There is no room for error, no time for delay. We must take the tools already at our disposal and use them to the best of our ability.

That’s why the only realistic solution to climate change lies in a capitalist system.

It’s easy to say that capitalism is broken and place the blame for climate change on its shoulders, but that is ultimately inaccurate. Industrialization caused climate change. Throughout the 20th century, both communists and capitalists did their best to industrialize, regardless of the environmental costs. Even today, socialist countries are no better than capitalist ones at limiting emissions. Between 2000 and 2018, per capita annual carbon emissions in the U.S. dropped 19.5 percent. The U.K. dropped 57 percent, far better than any truly socialist economy (with the exception of North Korea, truly the platonic ideal of socialist progress). China, on the other hand, increased emissions by 196 percent.

You might argue that this isn’t a fair comparison because China’s economy is still developing. You’d be right and that’s exactly the point. Factors like political activism, industrialization and development have a much bigger effect on a country’s emissions than that country’s level of socialism.

Transitioning to socialism doesn’t automatically close factories or save polar bears. Based on the data we have, it’s not fundamentally any better at preserving the climate than capitalism. In fact, making land public property can result in more environmental abuse since people tend to extract unsustainably from land they no longer personally own. The tragedy of the commons can apply just as much to socialism as it does to capitalism.

And with the clock ticking, it seems foolish to waste political capital and energy to transition to a system with no guarantee of any real short-term improvement.

Make no mistake, any transition as massive as a switch to socialism would take more time than we have to address the cli-

mate crisis. We’re in a burning car about to careen off a cliff. We could blame the car for our problem and remake it from the inside out, or we could turn the wheel and use our flawed source of transportation to save ourselves.

It is entirely possible that a socialist world would be more environmentally friendly than a capitalist one. But creating that world would take a long time. In the U.S., many politicians reject even the most basic environmental protections, partly because of a deep-seated fear of socialism.

Like it or not, these politicians aren’t going away anytime soon. Pushing for a socialist overhaul would only create obstructionism and freeze the whole environmentalist project. Even if our divided political system could get behind a socialist agenda, experimenting with the untried system would inevitably lead to costly mistakes and unforeseen complications.

Make no mistake, our priorities need to change if we are to deal with the problem of climate change, but for hundreds of years, capitalism has proven its ability to adapt to shifting priorities. There’s no reason it can’t adapt to solve climate change. When properly directed by the government, it can motivate dramatic technological improvement. Last year, 3,500 economists signed a statement arguing that carbon taxes are a necessary and effective way to reduce emissions. Government subsidies on renewable forms of power will allow a huge variety of groups to turn their ingenuity into all sorts of green energy sources. Plus, capitalism’s ability to advance technology goes beyond government-driven innovation. According to the Telegraph, most of the recent green energy innovations in recent years have occurred through private research, not government projects.

It’s tempting to color capitalism as the root of all evil, but economics are more complicated than that. If we can somehow avoid the immediate danger of living in an uninhabitable world within a few decades, I would be happy to consider many of my co-columnist’s ideas. But for right now, socialism is untested, unproven and unwise.

If we allow our righteous rage to turn to irrational impetulence, we risk losing focus on the central issue at hand and wasting irreplaceable time.

Arts&Living

2020 Oscars: The Good, The Bad, The Most Memorable 5. Chris Rock and Steve Martin Speaking of hosts, Steve Martin and Chris Rock stepped up to deliver the monologue as non-hosts and did not fail to remind us of just how white and male-dominated the Oscars really are. In particular, their joke about Mahershala Ali’s two Oscar wins and the absence of female nominees spoke volumes not only about the environment within the Academy but the larger American society as well.

Photo courtesy of 361 Magazine

“Parasite” made history as the first non-English film to win Best Picture at the Oscars.

Gaby Bucio ’21 Staff Writer Even before the 92nd Oscars aired this past Sunday Feb. 9, everyone knew there would be a lot to digest.

With tensions running high since the Academy once again presented a nominee list comprised almost entirely of white, male filmmakers, this year’s Oscars were bound to deliver memorable moments. To catch up everyone who chose not to sit through three hours of ridiculously long acceptance speeches (we’re looking at you, Joaquin Phoenix), here are a few of the best and worst moments, along with the most memorable celebrity appearances of the night.

The Good: 1. Four-Win Sweep by “Parasite” The South Korean thriller “Parasite” was nominated for six Oscars — Best Picture, Best Director, Best International Feature, Best Original Screenplay, Best Production Design and Best Film Editing — and took home four of them. Though the film captivated audiences and impressed critics, many expected it to lose the Oscar for Best Picture to Sam Mendes’s “1917”, especially

after the Golden Globes, where it took the Best Picture Title. Bong Joon Ho’s win for Best Director also elicited favorable reaction from the audience, as he continued the trend set by Mexico’s premier directors (Alejandro G. Iñarritu, Guillermo Del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón) of beating Academy favorites like Martin Scorsese and representing international talent in an American setting.

2. “Hair Love” wins Best Short Film “Parasite” and its successful win was not the only emotionally-charged celebration of non-white talent at this year’s Oscars. “Hair Love”, which captivated the hearts of many as a declaration of love for black culture and father-daughter relationships, took home the award for Best Animated Short. The unexpected win provoked shouts of joy from lovers and supporters of the film.

3. Martin Scorsese’s Reaction to Eminem Eminem’s presence at the Oscars was as confusing as it was outdated, and Martin Scorsese’s reaction to his performance perfectly captured that.

While plenty of audience members

seemed to be enjoying the moment, Scorsese looked as though he was ready for a nap or at the very least for the song to end. Regardless of how well or not people think Eminem did as a performer, the truth is that his performance was not relevant to this year’s Oscars — or this year in general, really — and like Scorsese, some of us were not here for it either.

4. Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig We can all appreciate the Academy’s attempt at minimizing problems by going host-less, yet Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig’s turn at presenting made us wish the Academy had instead chosen them as hosts. The two gave hilarious speeches while presenting the awards for Best Costume Design and Best Production Design, making everyone (including Scorsese) laugh multiple times, produced some of the best reactions of the night. Billie Eilish, in particular, reacted so viscerally to the comedians’ singing that she is sure to become a lasting meme.

That said, with Amy Poehler and Tina Fey set to host the Golden Globes next year, it would definitely give 2021 a good start to have Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig host the Oscars. It’s what the people deserve.

6. Cynthia Erivo’s Performance Though we all expected to be blown away by Idina Menzel’s performance of “Into the Unknown”, it was perhaps Cynthia Erivo who blew us away with her rendition of “Stand Up” from the movie “Harriet.” Erivo demonstrated that we have a lot to look forward to in her upcoming interpersonation of Aretha Franklin.

The Bad: 1. Shia LaBeouf’s Awkward Presenting Shia LaBeouf has come under some fire for seeming inpatient with co-star Zack Gottsagen on stage while presenting the award for Best Live-Action Short. Though much of the backlash has been regarding what many perceived to be mistreatment of Gottsagen, few have taken notice that LaBeouf, in his hurry, read the name of the film as “The Neighbor’s Widow” as opposed to “The Neighbor’s Window”, which only adds to the already awkward situation on stage.

2. Rebel Wilson and James Corden Relive Cats To present the award for Best Visual Effects, James Corden and Rebel Wilson decided to poke fun at their own disastrous movie, “Cats”, by dressing up as cats. Though the intention was clear in their dress and speech, the image of the two dressed as cats while on live TV is one we could have lived without. In any case, Maya Rudolph’s reaction to the two was priceless and almost made

the moment worth it — almost.

3. Janelle Monáe’s Backup Dancers’ Costumes Choosing Janelle Monáe as the opening act of the awards was by far one of the best decisions the Academy has made. Not so great, however, was the choice of outfits for Monáe’s backup dancers. Though the creativity to represent films that had been snubbed by the Oscars (including “Midsommar” and “Us”) and those that were nominated can be applauded, the end result was a lot creepier than can be assumed to be intended and ultimately took some of the spotlight away from Monáe herself.

The Most Memorable Attendees: In a room full of A-list celebrities, sometimes it is hard to stand out.

However, there were a few attendees who stole the show with just their presence.

1. Julia Louis Dreyfus — Our comedy queen came through to remind us that even cancer can’t take away your shine.

2. Diane Ladd — Though it was her daughter, Laura Dern, who won an Oscar, Diane Ladd won our hearts.

3. Salma Hayek and Oscar Isaac — This dynamic duo looked spectacular while presenting two awards and even managed to take an ingenious stab at the lack of diversity in the Academy while doing so.

4. Spike Lee — The renowned Knicks fan paid tribute to the late Kobe Bryant with his purple and gold (adorned with Bryant’s #24), proving that there are some things only Spike Lee can pull off.

There are, of course, plenty more moments that erupted a variety of reactions on Twitter and have provided source material for the next great meme. So, while we wait for some genius troll to choose their weapon, how about we start drafting that petition letter to get Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig as next year’s hosts?

Arts & Living 10

The Amherst Student • February 12, 2020

It’s Been Quite a Ride: Bidding Farewell to “BoJack Horseman”

Photo courtesy of Wired

Netflix’s “BoJack Horseman,” beloved by many for its humorous grappling with serious moral questions, premiered its sixth and final season on Jan. 31.

Jack Klein ’20 Staff Writer Note: this article intentionally avoids spoilers in this piece, so it appeals to a broader audience and convinces some new people to watch the show.

Part of the brilliance of Netflix’s “BoJack Horseman” is that it forces viewers to grapple with their own views regarding morality by presenting them with BoJack’s mistakes and making them question whether they’re rooting for him as a protagonist. Some of his actions are illegal, others creepy and some just plain weird, but for whateverreason, he keeps landing on his feet even as he hurts those around him.

In the third season of “BoJack Horseman,” loveable loser and couch-crasher Todd Chavez tells the titular character during a fight: “You are all the things that are wrong with you. It’s not the alcohol or the drugs or any of the shitty things that happened to you in your career or when you were a kid. It’s you.”

Todd cuts through BoJack’s self-loathing attitude and tells him the truth he needs to hear. In Season 6 Part 2, we get to find out whether BoJack’s peers and world judge him in the same way that Todd does.

The final installment of the BoJack Horseman story plays out the tension of whether BoJack’s past will catch up to him, despite having become sober and making tangible changes in his life, by following a couple of journalists who are on the hunt to discover his past misdeeds.

Season 6 also brings almost all of the character arcs that have developed across the life of the show to a close.

Viewers get to find out what happens with Diane Nguyen and her new boyfriend and are treated to an insightful and creative episode - á la “Stupid Piece of Sh*t” (Season 4, Episode 6) - that explores her process of writing while battling depression.

Mr. Peanutbutter, who began the series as a punchline, takes concrete steps towards

self-awareness in the final season, especially in the way he handles his relationship with his girlfriend.

In the first half of Season 6, the writers devote an entire episode (“The New Client”) to the challenges Princess Carolyn faces when raising her newly adopted porcupine baby. We get to find out if and how she manages her work-life balance.

Some of the storylines even tie back around to each other, as Mr. Peanutbutter and Diane reconnect and reminisce on a heartfelt phone call.

The penultimate episode of the show takes fans and the eponymous character on a harrowing trip down memory lane. Its unconventional style recalls the other second-to-last episodes of other seasons and delves deep into BoJack’s psyche, while also posing existential questions. A word of advice - pay attention to the small details, some dialogic, others visual.

A strength of the final half-season is that it leaves some

storylines unfinished and emphasizes moral and thematic ambiguity. Life is not as clean as in many television shows, and the creators of “BoJack Horseman” were always aware of that fact and sought to reflect it in their work.

Writers Allison Tafel and Raphael Bob-Waksberg leave fans six seasons filled with complex characters, hilarious jokes and thoughtful reflections. Illustrator Lisa Hanawalt created a visually stunning world comprised of endless Easter eggs — the show is worth a second and third rewatch just to find these nuggets — one that works in harmony with the writers’ scripts to use the show’s unique format to its advantage, especially in episodes such as “Time’s Arrow” (S4 E11) and “The View From Halfway Down” (S6 E15).

As with any successful work of art, the conditions of “BoJack’s” synthesis will likely not be repeatable. The show was created in 2011, greenlighted by more open-minded and content-hungry Netflix executives, who have

recently been less willing to approve unconventional original content.

It’s easy to overquote this show when discussing it because the quotes are relatable. However, one worth repeating appears in the final episode. Todd remarks to BoJack, in a classic example of the “BoJack” writers’ meta-awareness: “Isn’t the point of art less what people put into it and more what they get out of it?”

It isn’t hard to find hundreds or even thousands of posts on Reddit and other online forums of people admitting how much “BoJack” helped them with their depression, made them feel less alone, made them feel more empowered about their sexual orientation or destigmatized their addictions and allowed them to get help. The point of “BoJack” was never to give definitive answers to moral questions but to explore all parts of life, whether it be the presence of honeydew in fruit salad, the trials and tribulations of divorce and the value of friendship.

Arts & Living 11

The Amherst Student • February 12, 2020

Considering the Role of Music in Political Campaigns Skye Wu ’23 Contributing Writer Less than 72 hours before the Iowa caucuses began, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, the Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter, played an acoustic set at the Horizon Events Center in Clive, Iowa on Jan. 31 to garner support for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

Vernon performed a set of eight songs including a pair of covers from the quintessential “protest” singer Bob Dylan. He opened with a solo rendition of 1964 Bob Dylan tracks “The Times They Are A-Changin” and “With God on Our Side.” Also in the setlist were some of the songwriter’s original songs, including “Blood Bank,” “Flume” and “For Emma.”

Ahead of his performance, according to Ilana Kaplan from the Rolling Stone, Vernon released a statement on his support for Sanders: “I believe, unequivocally, that all people deserve support, love and the freedom to choose how to live their own lives. There are promises in our constitutional language that are being superseded by money and greed in this country.”

The crowd of 2,500 Sanders supporters erupted in applause after the statement, resembling the exuberant atmosphere of an actual concert. Yet this time, it was Sanders who was the real star.

Following Vernon’s performance was Vampire Weekend, the acclaimed indie rock band from New York City, who played a set at Sanders’ Cedar Rapids, Iowa rally on Feb. 2. The band covered Thin Lizzy’s 1976 hit “The Boys are Back in Town” which was followed by some of Vampire Weekend’s own career-changing hits including “2021,” “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” and “This Life.”

This is not the first time the bands have shown their support for Sanders. During his 2016 campaign, both Vampire Week-

end and Bon Iver performed concerts at rallies in Iowa and New York.

This series of musical events for Sanders’ 2020 campaign again was designed to appeal to an audience composed of millenials, Latinx voters and low-wage workers — whom many identify as the future of the Democratic Party.

The live performance experience evoked a sense of hopeful unification among the supporters, especially from excited young voters who may feel excluded by electoral politics.

Looking back, music has always had the power to inspire, motivate and empower a political campaign, even since the founding of our country. George Washington used a parody of “God Save the King” — “God Save Great Washington” — to effectively convey the skepticism and mockery of the British monarchy.

To comprehend such campaign songs, we need a general understanding of the historical background which has inspired and shaped their political context.

Today, overtly political music is seen less often. Music in political campaigns is used to rally people in a more nuanced way through appealing to the ideology of a certain social group.

Instead of creating a song from scratch solely serving a specific campaign, candidates utilize music that has already exerted great influence upon society.

Their choices of music can reflect a lot about who they are: their values, their political messages and even their personal lives. Besides that, many musicians show political inclinations in their music.

Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin,” which Vernon chose to incorporate into his performance, is considered one of his most iconic protest songs.

It demonstrates Dylan combining the folk protest movement in the 1960s with the civil rights movement.

The identities of the musicians have a great impact on who they are influencing. For example, Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay main-party presidential candidate, notably includes several LGBTQ artists such as George Michael and Shea Diamond in his campaign playlist.

The songs can also target a specific audience group since people embrace different symbolism conveyed by different styles of music and musicians.

Sanders’ campaign playlist is a perfect example demonstrating how certain songs can appeal to a certain voter base.

In his playlist, three songs with the word “revolution” in their titles communicate his renegade style and liberal values, which would help him win wide

support from the younger voters.

More specifically, the power to unite people through concerts is unique. In front of the same stage, people with different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds are integrated into one close community. Such consolidating sensations evoked by live music can serve for political purposes.

Sanders’ Iowa rally as one recent example, we can see that rather than simply booming playlists, presidential candidates start adding elements of live performance to their campaign rallies.

Sanders’ Iowa rally especially showed how music could move people politically through not only the message conveyed by

the songs but also the performances themselves. The concerts help further the ideas of showing up and participating which are essential in people’s political lives; one cannot engage with live music from afar, and one cannot engage with the democratic process from a distance, either.

That night, Sanders was actually stuck in the D.C. impeachment hoopla and could not be present at the event, while his campaign was able to turn out people who do not usually show up. According to Esther Wang, who wrote in Jezebel, the crowd began chanting Bernie’s campaign slogan at one point, “Not me, us.” Politics are humanized through the melodies as compassion grows among the concert crowds.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia

Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon (pictured) was one of the musicians, along with Vampire Weekend, who performed in Iowa ahead of the caucuses to show support for Bernie Sanders.

Arts & Living 12

The Amherst Student • February 12, 2020

2020 Oscar-nominated Shorts Playing at Amherst Cinema

Photo courtesy of Olivia Gieger ’21

Amherst Cinema is currently screening all of the 2020 Oscar-nominated live action shorts at their venue.

Kaelyn Milby ’22E Contributing Writer Amherst Cinema is currently offering a film series featuring all five Oscar nominated live action shorts. The series starts off with the well-acted and tense “A Sister,” directed by Delphine Girad, before heading into Meryam Joobeur and Maria Garcia Turgeon’s quietly beautiful and haunting “Brotherhood,” allowing the viewer to ease into the captivation of the latter without drowning out the intensity of the former.

The next short, Marshall Curry’s “The Neighbor’s Window,”

provides some relief from the heavy opening films while maintaining its own voice. The penultimate “Saria,” directed by Bryan Buckley and produced by Matt Lefebvre, stands out as the most jarring and gut wrenching of the shorts. It is followed by Yves Piat’s ultimately lighthearted “NEFTA Football Club” which brings the film series to a close.

The films are in English, Spanish, French and Arabic with English subtitles and take place in several locations all in the near-present. This year’s live-action Oscar nominated shorts offer incredible performances, stunning visuals, and insights

into the darker side of humanity. With a run-time of about two hours, there is no reason to miss them. Spoilers ahead.

The screening starts off with “A Sister”. Set in Brussels, this incredibly disquieting short film tells the story of the protagonist Alie’s 911 call. Selma Alaoui (caller) and Veerle Baetens’ (dispatcher), bring the film to life.

Most of the film takes place either in the car with the caller or in close-up shots of the dispatcher. These tight perspectives make the film feel claustrophobic and add to the intensity of the caller’s desperation. The short does an excellent job of maintaining grim suspense, but because of its lack of development, it can feel like a snippet from a larger film rather than a substantial short.

The next film in the series, “Brotherhood,” stands out as one of the most visually beautiful in the roster. Set on a farm in rural Tunisia, the landscape becomes its own character. You can feel the breeze and the grass and the loneliness of the mountains all feel tangible in the home of the protagonists.

The film focuses its story on a family shaken by the return of its eldest child, Malek, who has brought with him a mysterious, Syrian wife. Malek had previously left to join ISIS against his family’s wishes, and his return forces his father to decide whether he should call the authorities.

He eventually does, and only afterwards, he discovers that Malek has fled ISIS and that Malek’s wife is actually the child bride of another fighter who he decided to rescue. In the end, the father runs to the beach to search for his son, only to discover that he has once again been taken from him.

Heartbroken, he screams his son’s name which eventually blurs into the breeze and once again the desolate sound of the wind and the rustling of the trees takes over the auditory landscape of the short.

Third in the line up is “The Neighbor’s Window,” which

takes place in a New York apartment. The parents of three young children discover that a new, young married couple has moved into the apartment just across from them.

The parents, and in particular the mom, develop a voyeuristic fascination of the young couple, watching their youthful escapades with envy. The parent’s dryly funny comments about the young couple in comparison to their own lives make the short appear to be a relatable comedy at first.

But the husband across the street soon falls seriously ill, and the mother watches with mournful curiosity as he slowly succumbs to his illness. She confronts the young woman as coroners remove her husband’s body, and the young woman recognizes her.

Apparently, watching the young family actually gave the young woman and her late husband joy. The film ends from the young woman’s perspective, as the mom looks out at her, covered in shadow while her family plays joyfully in the background.

This short stands out as the sloppiest in the line up, killing off the neighbor across the street in order to force its rather onthe-nose point. But despite its shortcomings, it stands out as among the most lighthearted, and it offers some of the funnier moments in the otherwise heavy film series.

These brief moments of comic relief will be much appreciated by audiences as they head into the next short, “Saria”. This short film, directed by Bryan Buckley and Matt Lefebrve, is based on a 2017 tragedy in which 41 orphans were killed in a fire after failing to escape a Guatemalan safe house where they lived.

It is, by far, the saddest of this year’s Oscar nominated live-action shorts. The film follows two orphans, Saria and her sister, Ximena, as they endure the daily abuse inflicted upon them by the safe house, the very institution designed to shelter them.

Ximena meets a boy, Appo, at a dance and the sisters enlist him in devising a plan to escape to America.

But soon after they manage to escape the orphanage, the children are captured, brought back and locked into a windowless cell. In one of the film’s most heart-breaking moments, Saria tells Ximena that watching her with Appo has made her realize that she looks forward to one day falling “stupidly in love.”

Seconds later, those hopes are irreversibly dashed as a fire engulfs the room, and the desperate cries of the girls are ignored by the woman tasked with keeping them locked up. The film ends with a list of the names of the 41 girls who perished in the 2017 tragedy.

After the gut wrenching ending of “Saria,” viewers may, at first, find it particularly difficult to invest in the final short film, “NEFTA Football Club,” as it seems to continue the theme of children in danger. Directed by Yves Piat and Damian Megherbi, the film follows the story of two young Tunisian brothers who come across a donkey wearing headphones and carrying saddle bags full of white powder.

The elder boy, Mohammed, decides to try and sell the white powder. He hides the stash under his couch and tells his younger brother, Abdallah, to stay put while he goes out. Abdallah is annoyed, and Mohammed comes home empty-handed to find that the drugs are gone.

The film cuts to Abdallah dragging the bags to the soccer field to show off to his friends.

Mohammed frantically runs to the field and asks where the powder is. “Here,” the brother replies, and points to the lines drawn on the field with the white powder. Relieved laughs could be heard throughout the theatre.

The film was compelling enough to keep the viewers’ attention and provided enough comic relief with a much-needed happy ending to make it the perfect close to the film series.

Sports The False Dialectic of the Video Assistant Referee in Premier League Soccer Ben Gilsdorf ‘21 Staff Writer At the beginning of the current Premier League season, the Football Association (FA), English football’s governing body, officially implemented the instant officiating replay system known as the Video Assistant Referee.

The Video Assistant Referee (affectionately called VAR) had already been in use in the Spanish and Italian leagues, as well as the UEFA Champions League and the FIFA World Cup. Many fans of the game heralded the arrival of VAR as the end of refereeing controversies, especially over penalties and offside calls. Fans of smaller clubs have long accused referees in the Premier League of giving larger teams the benefit of the doubt on offside calls and penalties, and they saw VAR as an innovation that would even the playing field.

To put it philosophically, VAR

was the final stop on the pathway of refereeing. There can now be little doubt over the veracity of a given call, with the unbiased computer eye there to correct any “clear and obvious” error the referee might make; the introduction of VAR, to some, has signaled the “end of refereeing.”

But, the belief that VAR would bring about the end of controversial refereeing decisions was a foolish one.

In the first match week of the season, Manchester City striker Gabriel Jesus thought that he had scored a late winner against Tottenham, only to find out after wheeling away in celebration that his teammate Aymeric Laporte was alleged to have handled the ball in the buildup, negating the goal.

I’m no Manchester City fan, but in Jesus’ defense, the call was questionable. The ball glanced off Laporte’s elbow after a headed flick from striker Sergio Agüero.

It certainly wasn’t intentional,

and Laporte was holding his arm in a natural location. Tottenham fans breathed a sigh of relief, and Manchester City fans fumed in protest.

Had it not been for VAR, it’s likely no one would have noticed that the ball had grazed Laporte’s arm, meaning VAR was not doing its job of correcting a “clear and obvious” error by the referee. Going by the letter of the law however, the ball did hit Laporte on the arm in the buildup to the goal and thus shouldn’t stand.

Far from being an isolated incident, this call was just the first of many VAR decisions that have angered football fans across England. Liverpool striker Roberto Firmino had a goal called off against Aston Villa because the edge of his armpit was “marginally ahead of the last defender,” per the FA. Liverpool later became the lucky side in a matchup with Wolverhampton Wanderers, as a goal from striker Pedro Neto was

ruled out because his teammate Jonny’s toe had been offside earlier in the play.

As often as VAR has been criticized for making rulings, fans have also bemoaned when VAR has supposedly seen nothing wrong. In that same Manchester City v. Tottenham fixture, City’s midfielder Rodrigo was clearly dragged down in the box during a corner, but VAR saw no reason to give a penalty. And in the Wolves v. Liverpool game with Jonny’s offside toe, Liverpool’s first goal came after an obvious handball from Liverpool centerback Virgil van Dijk that was never called.

Brought in to fix the crisis of faith in refereeing, VAR has seemingly only made that problem worse.

I see the decision VAR gives in a game as a continuation of the tradition of using the dialectical approach to seeking truth.

The referee’s call on the field is the thesis, the objections from opposing fans and players the

antithesis and finally, VAR’s decision as the synthesis, reconciling the two viewpoints in one accurate ruling. Like all dialectics, VAR is supposed to transcend emotional pleas, especially from the jeering home fans and irate managers.

Yet VAR will always fall short of this lofty ambition. Its techniques are too trivial, too imperfect and too subjective. How does the computer decide the exact moment a through-ball was played? How does it interpret whether a player’s arm is in a “natural position?”

Perhaps this is too postmodern, but football fans like to assume the existence of a universal, rational truth that I fear doesn’t exist. They want to be able to claim with certainty that Aymeric Laporte didn’t handle the ball, or that Roberto Firmino was offside. And even if this truth exists, it is undoubtedly too esoteric to be practical, even for the highly precise eye of VAR.

Men’s Basketball Back to Back Wins Secure Home Court Advantage at NESCACS Ethan Samuels ’23 Staff Writer The Amherst men’s basketball team spent the past weekend in Maine, beating Bowdoin on Friday and following it up with a Saturday victory over Colby.

In Brunswick, the Mammoths jumped out to an early lead, scoring the first seven points of the game. It was all Mammoths for the rest of the game, eventually beating the Polar Bears 91-80. Both Tim McCarthy ’21 and Josh Cherry ’20 led the team with seven rebounds. Garrett Day ’22, the leading scorer for the Mammoths, racked up 25 points on a stellar performance from beyond the arc, shooting 6-10 from the three-point range.

Day followed up his big performance in Brunswick by

leading the Mammoths in scoring once again against Colby the following day. Behind Day’s 16 points, Fru Che’s ’21 ten rebounds and Grant Robinson’s ’21 six assists, Amherst won handily, 87-69. Amherst’s spot-on shooting paved the way to a win; the Mammoths ended the night shooting 58.9 percent from the field.

As playoffs are on the horizon, some might expect growing intensity at practices, but junior big-man Jack Harlan ’21 says that practice intensity has been a constant key to success starting from day one: “The intensity has been pretty balanced throughout the whole season when it comes to how we act in practice.

We compete at a very high level every day in practice.” Harlan makes it clear that the team isn’t setting its vision directly at

a NESCAC championship quite yet: “We try not to focus too far ahead on playoffs. It’s a very one-game-at-at-time focus.”

That said, with back-to-back wins in Maine, the Mammoths are now 6-2 in NESCAC play.

They currently sit in third place in the conference, two games behind Tufts and a half-game behind Colby, but the win over Colby has secured the tie-breaker if Colby and Amherst end the season tied for second in the NESCAC. Amherst finishes the regular season this weekend at home. Taking on Trinity on Friday and Connecticut College on Saturday. The Mammoths, in control of their own destiny, lock up the two-seed and home court advantage throughout the first two rounds of the NESCAC tournament if they win twice this weekend.

Photo courtesy of Amherst Athletics

Fru Che ’21 recorded his first double double of the season in the team’s victory over Colby.

The Amherst Student • February 12, 2020

Sports 14

Swashbuckling Sheffield United Takes Premier League by Storm Henry Newton ’21 Managing Sports Editor In the dull, flat grey light of an early English morning, the city of Sheffield comes to life. Situated three hours north of London in South Yorkshire, the city stands today as a town reborn, revitalized by a surprisingly vibrant decade and economic growth that has outpaced the wildest expectations for even the most successful post-industrial communities.

Sheffield is perhaps best known for its history of manufacturing; the town was once famous around the world for its forks and knives. In the following decades, Sheffield transformed from a producer of cutlery into the Steel City, with the invention of stainless and crucible steel transforming a sleepy factory town into a manufacturing and productive powerhouse, fueling a tenfold increase in population.

However, the city’s fortunes, like the rest of the nation’s, took a familiar turn for former manufacturing powerhouses during the 1980s and 1990s with the decades’ austerity programs, Thatcherism and inevitable industrial decline. South Yorkshire, and more broadly the north of England, was the backdrop for the era’s most contentious clashes, from the Miners’ Strike of 1984 and the forcible breaking up of unions and picket lines with police truncheons.

Almost overnight, the coal mining industry that sustained the city’s steel mills collapsed, with thousands of miners out of work, the city center emptied out, and South Yorkshire entered into an economic depression. Steel jobs halved nationwide, and Sheffield was no exception. The city that had built itself on steel suddenly had nothing to support itself with.

However, the city, in a story of rebirth and revival, refashioned itself into a center for art, culture and business. Dozens of movies have been shot on the city’s narrow streets, where the Artic Monkeys honed their sound, and home to largest construction company in the nation, SIG UK. Not every part of the city was so quick to remake itself. Sheffield, despite its struggles, has maintained a

fervent love and passion for not one, but two clubs, Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday, who compete in the Still City Derby, one of the biggest matches in England despite taking place, oftentimes, below the first tier of English football. The last time one of these two teams was in the Premier League was Sheffield Wednesday’s 1999-2000 campaign.

Sheffield has a long a storied footballing tradition; soccer was invented and codified in the city, the first professional club in history was founded in Sheffield, and Sheffield United’s home ground, Bramall Lane, is the oldest professional stadium in the world.

Both clubs fell on hard times, but Sheffield United, otherwise known as the Blades, was hit the hardest.

United was one of the founding members of the Premier League in 1992 and was the first squad to score a goal in the new competition. However, this topflight success was not to last, as the team was relegated to the second tier after the 1993-1994 season. Difficult seasons followed, with a period of decline mirroring that of its home city.

The club returned to the Premier League in 2007 but was relegated the following season after a loss in the final game and a shock West Ham United victory over champions Manchester United on the final day of the season. West Ham’s lone goal in the game was scored by Carlos Tevez, a player whose transfer to West Ham was later deemed illegal.

Sheffield United sued West Ham, and they ultimately received 27 million pounds in compensation from their opponents, but it was too little, too late. The Blades were already condemned to life in the second tier.

As if that was not enough, in 2010-2011, further hardship struck the club, as it wasrelegated from the second tier to the third.

In 2013, however, the club, like its home not a few years before, was reborn. A new ownership group invested in the club, purchasing a 50 percent stake for just a single pound and the promise of substantial new capital with the stated aim of returning the club to the Premier League.

The team was returned to the second tier after a demoralizing stint in League One after the 2016-2017

season after Chris Wilder, a former player for Sheffield United, took charge of the club and introduced a radical, swashbuckling style of play that eventually drove the club all the way back to the Premier League in 2019, returning the club to the top flight and sending the once proud city into joyous celebration.

The city that had remade itself out of the ashes finally had a club that had done the same. Sheffield United, like the town whose name it bears, was back.

That a team from Sheffield would even line up against the big names of English football, such as Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and others is almost enough reward in and of itself. But, true to the city it represents, Sheffield United has not done that; rather, the team finds itself sitting in rarefied airs, above the giants and the rich alike, currently situated in fifth place above traditional powers such as Arsenal, Tottenham, Manchester United and Everton. Sheffield is just two points behind fourth place Chelsea, who sits in the final qualification spot for the Champions’ League, the highest level of soccer in Europe.

Unlike many recently promoted teams of the past decade, the Blades did not go on an unsustainable spending spree when they returned to the Premier League after over a decade languishing in the lower

tiers; rather, the club spent smartly and frugally, with some estimates for its summer outlay being as low as 45 million pounds, a miniscule sum when you consider that, just last week, Manchester United spent more than double that on one single player.

Chris Wilder, the man who engineered the club’s rescue from the doldrums of the third tier, continues to prowl the sidelines, forging a team with a fearless identity and innovative tactics. Players like longtime captain Billy Sharpe, who was with the club during some of its darkest times, are reaping the rewards of their commitment. Phil Jagielka, a longtime Everton stalwart who started his career with the Blades, returned to the club upon their return to the league. Built not from the transfer market but rather forged through the fires of its own collective experience, the team has thrived based on its collective continuity, rather than individual talents.

The team plays with reckless abandon and a formidable backbone. Center backs, the primary defensive spine of every soccer team, fly forward in attack for Sheffield like almost no other club in the world. They play just three at the back and push them forward in attack; the concept of overlapping center backs is unique in world football. Without the ball, the Blades are similarly relentless, making up for

any skill gap with tireless effort and pressure. They are, at their core, a team that relies on all eleven players working within the system and with each other.

With two thirds of the season over, Sheffield is flying far higher than it ever could have possibly dreamed. For a city that has experienced the lowest of lows, and a club whose fortunes have risen alongside it, it is nothing short of a dream.

By all rights, they should not be here. They don’t have the money to compete on the international transfer market for the biggest, most established names. They cannot raid smaller clubs for talent to bolster their first team squad. They don’t necessarily have the glittering support of multinational corporations, and they can’t afford to make huge transfers (the largest transfer in club history, Sander Berge, was completed last month for the relatively paltry fee of 25.85 million pounds).

The Blades are a reflection of Sheffield, a team representing a town determined to remake itself in the face of hardship, unbowed and unbroken.

Liverpool might be running away with the title this season, but the story of the year has to be how a group of overlooked newcomers, through sheer force of will, have willed themselves to the near pinnacle of world soccer. They have a core of pure steel.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia

Sheffield United’s home stadium is the oldest stadium in English professional football.

The Amherst Student • February 12, 2020

Sports 15

Mammoths Split Squad for Weekend Competitions

Camilo’s Corner Camilo Toruño ’21

Managing Sports Editor Camilo Toruño reflects on the Mookie Betts trade and the implications this has on the Red Sox’s culture of winning.

Photo courtesy of Amherst Athletics

Ella Rossa ’21 had a standout indoor track and field season.

After setting a program record, she won the 60-meter hurdles this weekend.

Henry Newton ’21 Managing Sports Editor The Amherst women’s track and field squads impressed over the weekend. The squad was split into two, with one heading to Tufts for the non-team scoring Cupid Challenge and another group headed to the Blue and Orange Invitational held at Utica College.

At the Cupid Challenge, notable performances included Isabel Park ’20 notching a new personal record in the 200-meter race.

In the 600-meter race, Grace Haase ’21, running the event for the first time this season, clinched a DIII New England qualifying mark and finished fifth overall in the race.

Jenny Mazzella ’20 was similarly impressive, logging a collegiate personal best and qualifying for the DIII New England regional meet in the 800-meters.

The 1000-meters was another impressive contest for the Mammoths, as Rachel Ruderman ’21 and Maggie Drew ’22 solidified their spots at the regional championships meet, with the duo both logging career bests and finishing inside the top-15 at the Cupid Challenge.

Additional qualifiers for the DIII Regional Championships included Sophia Wolmer ’23 and Sarah Gayer ’21 in the mile, Kristin Ratliff ’20 in the 5000-meters, and Lauren Lamb in the triple jump.

Hurdler Ella Rossa ’21 additionally had a standout meet, logging a personal best in the shot put. However, her greatest success came in the 60-meter hurdles, logging another qualifying time and finishing in first place at the event. As it stands currently, Rossa is a serious contender for the national title at the DIII Indoor National Championships.

At the Blue and Orange meet, Annelise Romero ’22 turned in the performance of note for the Mammoths, finishing in first overall at the event in the pentathlon at the meet. Romero finished inside the top five in four of the five events, and logged a new personal best in the high jump.

The Mammoths return to action this weekend, Feb. 1415 when they will again look to log regional championship meet qualifying times, competing at the David Hemery Valentine Invitational hosted by Boston University next Saturday.

It must be a hard time to be a Boston Red Sox fan. The troubles began with Alex Cora, the team’s manager for the 2018 and 2019 seasons. Cora and the Red Sox recently parted ways because he was found to be implicated in the Astros’ cheating scandal during the 2017 season when he was working as the teams bench coach. In an investigation conducted by Major League baseball, the Astros were found to be guilty of stealing signs from the catchers throughout the entire season. Cora was discovered to be very influential in orchestrating this scheme. The cheating has raised such indignation because the Astros won the World Series in 2017, a result that perhaps would not have happened if they did not cheat. Cora left the Astros the following year to manage the Red Sox. Suspiciously, the Red Sox won the World Series in 2018, and there is a current investigation onto the team. In other words, there is a chance that Cora brought his cheating ways to the Red Sox. We must reflect on the measures taken in order to win. Recent events have revealed that those lengths can even include cheating. These lengths have also been the dramatic spending of money. Big spending has been the recipe to Red Sox winning in the past two decades. With World

Series wins in 2004, 2007, 2013 and 2018 there’s no denying that the Red Sox have found consistent success.

They’ve found this success in part by signing free agents to record breaking contracts. Most recently, David Price comes to mind with his seven-year $217 million contract, and J.D. Martínez with his five-year $110 million contract.

I do not mean to say the Red Sox did not have home grown talent. Shortstop Xander Bogaerts, left fielder Andrew Benintendi, third basemen Rafael Devers are examples of the Red Sox farm system.

I acknowledge I’m leaving out an important name, Mookie Betts. It’s clear that the Red Sox recipe to success was the development of players combined with the ability to sign big name free agents to huge contracts.

However, the Mookie Betts trade marks a dramatic divergence from the Red Sox’s unfailing commitment to winning at all costs. Quite literally at all costs.

In a trade that was completed on Monday, the Red Sox sent Mookie Betts and David Price to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Red Sox return in this trade were Alex Verdugo, Jeter Downs and Connor Wong.

The true motivation for the trade was saving money by getting underneath the luxury tax threshold. If a team’s

payroll is over $208 million in 2020, they have to pay a tax. The Red Sox had been above the luxury tax for the past two years. That meant that every dollar spent above the limit in 2020 would have been taxed 50%.

The trade off-loaded David Price’s enormous contract, but they also sacrificed one of the Red Sox’s most promising young players, Mookie Betts. At only 27, Betts had already won an MVP in 2018 and has a bright future ahead. So why did the Red Sox trade him? It was an economic decision.

I believe the Red Sox will be competitive in 2020. However, they will not be competing for a World Series they would have if they hadn’t shipped off David Price and Mookie Betts. Thus, we must return to the question about the lengths professional sports teams go to in order to win. Some teams cheat. Some teams spend millions upon millions of dollars. Perhaps both of these strategies are morally suspect. In the past month, it seems like the Red Sox are trying to turn over a new leaf. They have disassociated themselves from cheating as much as possible and they have relieved a financial burden.

One can respect these decisions, but we must remain vigilant to the connotations surrounding this team’s winning the past couple years.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia

Mookie Betts hit 29 home runs to go alongside a .295 batting average in 2019. He will now take his talents to Los Angeles to play for the Dodgers of the National League.

The Amherst Student • February 12, 2020

Sports 16

Women’s Basketball Performs Remarkably on Senior Day Weekend Tyler Marshall ’21 Staff Writer The Amherst women’s basketball team had an outstanding weekend as the team upset Bowdoin on Friday night and followed it up with a victory on Senior Day against Colby Saturday afternoon. This weekend marked the final regular season home games for a trio of seniors.

Hannah Fox ’20, Madeline Eck ’20 and Cam Hendricks ’20 led the way to defeat a pair of NESCAC foes at home.

On Friday night, fans packed Lefrak Gymnasium as the #3 ranked Bowdoin Polar Bears came to town to take on the #9 ranked Amherst Mammoths. Bowdoin came into the game with only one loss on the season which had the team sitting in second place in the NESCAC. Amherst, third in the conference, wanted to make up ground on Bowdoin by handing the Polar Bears their second loss of the year.

The game could not have started any better for Amherst and head coach G.P. Gromacki. The Mammoths did not allow a single point in the first quarter and led 16-0 after ten minutes of play. With a commanding lead from the beginning, the Mammoths never looked back

as they led the entire game.

Bowdoin attempted to make a comeback in the fourth quarter, twice cutting the deficit to six, but both times Amherst got a much-needed basket. Eck and Fox both made key plays down the stretch to ensure the Mammoths would hold on to claim the victory.

Amherst fans have grown accustomed to seeing this over the past few years, and this game was no different as Eck and Fox both played the entire 40 minutes.

Fox led the way with 20 points while Eck contributed a double-double with 16 points and 10 rebounds.

Although Eck and Fox led the way, Amherst received a huge spark from Dani Valdez ’22. Valdez, who was making her first start of the season, scored 10 points on the offensive end, but it was her defense that completely changed the game.

Both Valdez and Courtney Resch ’22 recorded three blocks each and disrupted the Bowdoin offense all night long. Bowdoin shot a season low 28.3% from the field and turned the ball over 19 times. It was a big win for the Mammoths on Friday night, and they were right back on the court Saturday afternoon.

Amherst hosted Colby on Saturday and came out a little sluggish

THUR

FRI

Women’s Swim and Dive NESCAC Conference Championships @ Middlebury

Men’s Track and Field David Hemery Valentine Invitational @ Boston University, 11 a.m.

Women’s Hockey vs. Suffolk, 7 p.m.

Women’s Track and Field David Hemery Valentine Invitational @ Boston University, 11 a.m.

GAME SCHE DULE

Women’s Swim and Dive NESCAC Conference Championships @ Middlebury

Photo courtesy of Amherst Athletics

Hannah Fox ’20, Cam Hendricks ‘20 and Madeline Eck ‘20 helped lead their team to victory on Senior Day. after the senior day festivities. Amherst trailed 14-8 after one quarter but outscored Colby 22-4 to in the second quarter to take a 12-point halftime lead. Amherst cruised the rest of the way to claim a 53-36 victory over the visitors. Fox led the

way with 16 while Hendricks and Maggie Shipley ’23 added eight a piece. It was another strong performance for the Mammoths and a great way to honor the careers of the three powerhouse seniors.

Amherst will be back in action

SAT Men’s Basketball vs. Trinity, 7 p.m.

Women’s Basketball @ Trinity, 7 p.m.

Men’s Hockey vs. Conn, 7 p.m.

Men’s Track and Field David Hemery Valentine Invitational @ Boston University, 9 a.m.

Women’s Swim and Dive NESCAC Conference Championships @ Middlebury Men’s Basketball vs. Conn, 3 p.m.

Women’s Basketball @ Conn, 3 p.m.

Men’s Hockey vs. Tufts, 3 p.m.

on Feb. 14 when the team travels to Connecticut to take on Trinity.

The Mammoths will then take on Connecticut College the next day at 3 p.m. These are the final regular season games before the NESCAC tournament begins on Feb. 22.

SUN Women’s Swim and Dive NESCAC Conference Championships @ Middlebury