Issue 19

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THE INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868

VOLUME CXLIII, ISSUE 19 • WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, 2014

Amherst College Develops Digital Open-Access Press Andrew Kim ’17 Managing News Editor

Photography Editor Olivia Tarantino ’15

GlobeMed hosted its annual date auction on Friday, March 7, raising money for healthcare workshops conducted by its partner organization, Pastoral de la Salud in El Salvador.

Frost to House Humanities Center

Sophie Murguia ’17 Managing News Editor

The second floor of Frost Library will soon be the site of the College’s new humanities center, expected to open in 2015.

In interviews earlier this week, Amherst administrators and professors described a recently approved proposal to transform a portion of the library into a space that will both support the scholarship of resident faculty and provide space for visiting scholars.

“I think first and foremost, we see this as a means that will bring colleagues together, giving them opportunities for conversation about their

work and opportunities to invite other scholars to campus,” said Dean of the Faculty Gregory Call, one of the people spearheading the project.

The current plan calls for a humanities center that will include offices and group gathering space on the west side of Frost’s second floor. Each year, the center will host scholarship and programming based on a particular theme.

“We’re going to ask the faculty to propose themes, and so the themes will come from faculty bringing ideas forward,” Call said.

The director of the center will work together with a faculty advisory council to determine the final theme for each year. According to Call, the center’s director will be an Amherst faculty mem-

ber who has yet to be named.

The idea to invite visiting scholars to engage with the Amherst community while exploring a particular theme is not new. The College’s Copeland Colloquium already brings scholars together for a yearlong event centered on a theme — this year’s topic is “Catastrophe and the Catastrophic.”

However, the humanities center programming will be focused specifically on the humanities, and visiting scholars may be able to use the new office space on the second floor of Frost.

Once programming for the humanities center begins, the Copeland Colloquium will be held Continued on Page 3

In an industry largely dominated by major research institutions, Amherst College is seeking to make its presence in scholarly publishing with the establishment of Amherst College Press, an initiative created and staffed in part by the College’s Library. Breaking the traditional scholastic publishing model, Amherst College will be the first higher-education institution to run a completely digital open-access press.

Unlike most university presses today, Amherst College Press is established as a commons press, a press whose content is available for free.

While traditional university presses rely on book sales to fund the company operations, Amherst College Press will be funded by the College’s endowment as well as donations from sponsors. All published books will bear Creative Commons licenses, which will allow readers to access, reproduce and use digital material without royalties as long as they are properly credited.

Works published under Amherst College Press will be accessible through all digital media including tablets and smartphones. Books can also be requested to be printed on demand.

Given its unique digital platform, the press will pay special attention to preserving works online through institutional digital repositories as well as shared and closed repositories such as Stanford Univ.’s LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe), computer systems that allow libraries to collect and preserve digital works for their readers. Through these repositories, the press will protect published works from the risk of going out of print.

Currently, the press is investigating ways to advertise its publications. In addition to traditional publicity strategies such as book reviews and academic databases such as WorldCAT, the Continued on Page 2

Getting Strategic: Curriculum and Community Sitina Xu ’16 News Section Editor

This article is the first in a four-part series about the four core committees involved in this year’s strategic planning process.

Since October, the Integration of Curricular and Co-Curricular Learning Strategic Planning Committee has been examining the issue of how learning supports living at Amherst, how living supports learning at Amherst and how the two aspects meet in developing co-curricular learning.

This committee is one of the four Strategic Planning Committees engaged in investigating the meaning, identity and culture of the College as it reflects upon its current state and plans for the future. The Integration of Curricular and CoCurricular Learning committee is charged with understanding how the College is currently using its residential, community and academic resources to develop its students for all aspects of life and how it can better use these resources.

“In some ways, we’re backing up and asking very big questions, very fundamental questions

that guide our work,” said Judith Frank, Professor of English and Chair of the Committee.

The main questions the Committee has been investigation so far involve co-curricular learning, community building, the academic curriculum and how time is used. By early next fall, a final report on all the findings and proposed recommendations are expected to come out.

One main task of this committee is thinking about implementing co-curricular learning as the cornerstone of an Amherst education.

“We think of co-curricular activities as one that supports the intellectual mission of the college, of something that happens outside the classroom.

We don’t think of them as extra,” Frank said.

Indeed, the Committee is shifting the emphasis from extra- to co-curricular activities in order to emphasize all aspects of learning at Amherst.

“The co-curricular in some ways, and the move from extra- to co-, emphasizes how much the things that happen outside the classroom are so much a part of the human development the curricular supports as well,” Frank said.

In looking at co-curricular learning, the committee is focusing on the integration of inside

classroom activities, such as readings, lecture, discussion, with outside classroom experiences, such as internships and community service work.

“We’re thinking about a model of learning that goes beyond the intellectual proper, so for example, learning as involving civic awareness, emotional awareness, leadership,” Frank said. “Our hope is those are things students actually bring into the classroom, and they learn physics or English or their various disciplines with a whole self that is developing with the intellectual.”

An example of co-curricular learning is the English class Reading, Writing, and Teaching: a course designed with both inside classroom reading, discussing and writing and a community engagement component.

“Where people have a community engagement aspect — tutoring in the high school or adult learning center — and bring those experiences to think about education, social stratification, their own status as learners, education and race in America,” Frank said. “They bring it all into the classroom and the co-curricular becomes part of the intellectual.”

Another main focus of the committee is the

residential aspect of an Amherst education.

Specifically, the committee is examining how to support sharing of experiences, facilitating communications and mutual learning of all members of the campus community.

“We think one of the biggest learning opportunities we have at Amherst is the very diverse community,” Frank said. “So if we think about diversity as an opportunity for learning in an increasingly diverse and internationalized world, we need to create supports in the residential life where that diversity will be reflected instead of people clumping together because they are comfortable with each other.”

Committee members say the need for greater cross-cultural sharing and learning is a major component of the residential aspect of Amherst, but it is also an area that needs further development.

“In general, there seems to be a very separatist culture on campus. People go into their separate groups or associations and there is not as much cross-cultural exchange of ideas,” said Jayson Paul Continued on Page 2

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News

“I’ve made a lot of film portraits of people who have unusual practices. For example, I made a film about a blacksmith.”

Adam Levine, Fresh Faculty Page 3

March 3, 2014 - March 10, 2014

>>March 4, 2014 2:25 p.m., East Drive An officer investigated a motor vehicle accident.

10:33 p.m., Garman House An officer responded to a complaint of loud music and issued a warning to a second floor resident. >>March 5, 2014 12:44 p.m., Service Building A written no-trespass order was issued to a man involved in an incident on campus. >>March 7, 2014 4:19 p.m., Charles Pratt Dormitory An officer investigated a smoke detector sounding and found it activated when a hair straightener was used too close to it. >>March 8, 2014 6:25 p.m., South College Dormitory An officer investigated a smoke detector sounding on the first floor and found it activated when hair spray was sprayed too close to it.

9:00 p.m., Boltwood Avenue Officers responded to a report of two people having an argument in front of the building.

The people were not located.

9:46 p.m., The Quadrangle While in James, an officer discovered alcohol and a beer pong table set up in the third

floor lounge. The alcohol was confiscated.

11:57 p.m., King Dormitory While in the first floor common area of King, an officer discovered two bottles of hard alcohol and some beer. It was confiscated. >>March 9, 2014 12:19 a.m., Crossett Dormitory A student reported he was bitten during an altercation with an unknown male while in a first floor suite. Officers searched for the aggressor, based upon an description, but he was not located.

6:32 p.m., Stearns Dormitory An officer responded to a complaint about the odor of marijuana smoke and discovered the odor in the north stairway. The origin could not be located. >>March 10, 2014 12:54 a.m., Pond Dormitory While investigating a noise complaint at a second floor suite, an unlicensed keg was discovered. The keg was confiscated and the four residents were fined $25 each.

1:48 a.m., Quadrangle Road Officers responded to a report of an intoxicated man walking along the road near Converse Hall. The man was located and placed in protective custody. He was taken to the town holding facility.

Press Aims to Provide Free Digital Content for All Continued from Page 1 press is looking into digital forms of publicity as well. It plans to make works accessible through search engines such as Google and linkable to blogs and other online media. There are also plans to create an Amherst College Press RSS feed to notify people about new releases in real time.

According to Mark Edington, the press’s director, Amherst College Press also seeks to reflect the values of a small liberal arts college such. The press will initially publish works in liberal arts fields such as economics and literary criticism.

Contrary to large university presses, Amherst College Press hopes to publish “teachable scholarship” or academic publications intended for an instructional audience.

The press’s commons model will also provide new methods for seeking out authors. While most publishing companies hire acquisitions editors to solicit works from writers, the press will use Amherst faculty as talent scouts for new work. Edington has met with faculty in the College as well as authors outside of Amherst. The development of a humanities center in Frost Library will also provide opportunities to solicit works from visiting resident scholars at Amherst College.

As expressed by Librarian Bryn Geffert and Edington, the press’ unique free and all-digital platform is largely a reaction to the declining trend of current university book publishing.

The number of publishers and book titles in recent years has decreased due to declining sales revenues. Because these presses run on a profit model, there has been a movement in scholastic publishing to attract established authors that will increase revenues. According to Edington, the current situation of scholastic publishing limits scholarship solely to profit-generating ideas and diminishes the opportunities of younger, lessestablished scholars to contribute.

“Where we’re at right now [in university publishing], we’re locking up a lot of ideas in silos,” Edington said.

According to Geffert, the press is also an effort by the library to expand the services it provides to the community.

“Traditionally, libraries collect work from these presses and distribute them, but many times libraries do not have all the materials that people need,” Geffert said. “We hope to make an additional step to make sure that that material exists for other people.”

Geffert conceived the idea of the Amherst College Press four years ago while interviewing for the position he currently holds. In his interview, Geffert discussed the negative impact academic publishing has had on libraries and scholarship. Current university presses do not pay scholars for their manuscripts, and university libraries are required to pay for work their faculty have produced. Geffert proposed plans for a digital press to liberate university and college libraries from unfair publishing.

After hearing Geffert’s ideas, Dean of Faculty Gregory Call proposed plans for the press to then-President Tony Marx. However, it was only when President Biddy Martin took office in 2011 that the plans began to be realized. Fully supportive of the endeavor, Martin brought the matter to the Board of Trustees, who endorsed the plans.

The development and initial funding of the Press did not start until 2012, when the Board of Trustees revised the budget for the library. In the budgetary changes, there were plans to fund two full-time editorial positions, one of which Edington currently holds. President Martin has planned to discuss with the advancement office for the possibility of funding a third position.

Although still in its developmental phase, the press has already received many manuscripts.

The first books published under Amherst College Press will be released next year.

New Student Affairs Office Strategic Planning Focuses Opens Doors to Community on Co-Curricular Learning Continued from Page 1 Sophie Murguia ’17 Managing News Editor The newly renamed Office of Student Affairs made its official debut on the second floor of Converse Hall Tuesday afternoon, welcoming students, faculty and staff to an open house at the office’s new location.

Visitors trickled in throughout the middle of the day, munching on pastries and entering their names to win raffle prizes. At night, the Office of Student Affairs invited members of the community to an ice cream social in the Converse Hall lobby.

The move comes at a time of dramatic change for the Office of Student Affairs, as the College prepares to conduct a search for a new Dean of Students following Jim Larimore’s sudden departure.

In one of the two Student Affairs suites in Converse 201 and 202, an empty office sits waiting for the new Dean of Students, who will serve alongside Chief Student Affairs Officer Suzanne Coffey.

Coffey said that the move “wonderfully parallels” the administrative restructuring in the Office of Student Affairs.

“We’re opening our doors to new opportunities and new things that we’re looking forward to,” Coffey said of the changes. She added that the search committee for the new Dean of Students will likely be formed by the middle of next week.

The new offices also include areas that hope to invite students in and provide a place to work on projects involving students.

“We’ve not only got great office space, but we’ve also got lots of great student space,” Coffey said.

According to Coffey, the other renovations going on in Converse provided the Office of Student Affairs to move from the first floor into a second floor space that could provide the extra room the office needed. These other renovations are also impacting the Economics Department, the Provost’s Office, and the College’s legal team.

Case Manager Scott Howard, who works in the new student affairs space, said that the open house was also an opportunity to talk to members of the community who may not know what programs fall under the umbrella of Student Affairs. He recalled the story of someone who walked into the office at the beginning of the open house and asked, “What is Student Affairs?”

“There’s a board with the different services offered through Student Affairs,” Coffey added. “Lots of folks have come through and paused at the board and said ‘Oh. I didn’t realize that you could come to this office and access TYPO or TYSO, or that you could come to this office and get some support for any number of other things. So I think there’s a little bit of awareness-raising that is happening with this, which is a good opportunity for us.’”

’16, a member of the committee.

Raizel DeWitt ’16, a student who attended a dialogue between the committee and members of religious life at the College, seconded this idea.

“I think Amherst is trying to create open and honest dialogue,” she said. “I’m not sure whether that can happen if we all segregate into our respective groups.”

This is one of several themes that committee members say have emerged as the committee continues to engage in extensive dialogue in order to listen to the needs of the many constituencies across campus. Additional parallel themes are the lack of a vibrant residential and social life, increased separation between faculty and students, between students and staff and the overall lack of feeling part of a community.

The community subgroup of the committee has been examining these issues by considering alternative models of residence from other schools and rethinking residential life.

Another main takeaway the committee has found from talking to various campus groups is the feeling of a lack of time in the face of immense tasks and responsibilities.

“The fact is that people feel their lives are incredibly burdened by stuff they have to do and don’t have time to do a lot of things they want to do,” Frank said.

The curriculum sub-group has been addressing these concerns by coming up with ways to open up space within the academic year to read-

just the pace of learning.

“We’re thinking about taking the week after spring break because spring is such a long semester,” said Frank about a possible recommendation.

“What if students just choose one of their four courses and they go deep? Maybe get to reread something, redo an experiment.”

Frank said time is a major concern to this committee because they recognize the major impact of time on the quality of learning.

“Learning doesn’t always happen when you have four courses a week and you’re reading as fast as you possibly can and you have papers due every five minutes,” Frank said. “That’s not always how learning should or best happens.”

Other aspect of the curriculum the committee is how the academic year should be scheduled.

“Especially with the amount of international students we have now who aren’t going home, the question is, how can we use our time during interterm and summer?” Paul said.

The ultimate goal of the committee is to answer whether or not the College is creating an environment that encourages thoughtful and critical engagement.

“Are we going to be a part of the problem or are we going to bring our critical intelligence to the problem of the way we are catapulted into our lives with extreme busyness?” Frank said. “We can’t be a quiet utopia, but what we can do is open up a space for critical thoughts, about the way you guys are going to live your lives. Hopefully we’re preparing you for this world that is not getting any slower.”

The Amherst Student • March 12, 2014

News 3

Adam Levine

Fresh Faculty Department of Film and Media Studies

Adam Levine, Visiting Assistant Professor in Film and Media Studies, received a B.A. from the University of East Anglia and an M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts. His film and video work has screened at festivals and galleries including the Vienna International Film Festival, Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux de Paris, TIE: The International Experimental Cinema Exposition, Artists’ Television Access and REDCAT.

Q: What sparked your interest in Film and Media Studies?

A: I grew up as a VHS kid. In my early teens, my mom would take me to a video store. I consumed movies on a weekly basis. So I had this whole video store education. At university. I took a lot of theory classes — in global cinema, Asian cinema, French film from surrealism to the new age ... And then I took one film class in undergrad where I made surreal films with my friends. And after college, I bought my own video camera.

Q: What types of films have you created?

A: I make mostly short films. My shortest film is two minutes. It was an experimental film that I shot in Thailand. I wanted to make a haiku.

A film haiku. Very compressed. So I was carrying these [60 mm] films

around Thailand, and each of these is 2 ½ minutes. So, I just had a backpack with a camera in it, and as many of these as I could fit.

I’ve also made essay films, where you have an idea that’s you’re exploring. I’ve used voice-overs over to explain an idea. And then used images to illustrate that.

Q: How do you shoot films?

A: I mostly shoot on my own. I kind of like the challenge of doing everything yourself. I go out and gather footage — almost kind of like a street photographer. Like Brassai, who would take candid photography in the streets of France. Wherever he would go, whatever he was doing in life, he would just carry a camera around with him — so he would just capture real life as he was walking around. He was hoping for a chance image he would see that he could

then capture. So I kind of think about that in the way that I make films — I try to use small cameras and carry them around with me. Because that’s the only way you can get things you would never be able to plan for ... I’m always making things.

And it’s very hands-on.

Q: Do you gravitate towards certain themes in your films?

A: Until now, I’ve always lived in big cities. And so I was always interested in how to look on the urban environment through film. And what effect the urban environment is having on us as individuals. And how a filmmaker can show the urban environment through a different lens.

Another theme is portrait films.

I’m teaching a class now called “The Film Portrait”. And that’s where you find a really interesting person, and you work with them to show their

personality through the film. It’s a little bit like a documentary, but it doesn’t have to be totally truthful.

You can tell them what to do — you can collaborate with them. So I’ve made a lot of film portraits of people who have unusual practices.

For example, I made a film about a blacksmith — which seems a bit out of place in 2014. Why would someone do that now? And what does that person’s life look like? Are they building an imaginary [old-fashioned] life around what they do?

Q: What are you working on currently?

A: I’ve been making a film in Los Angeles with a friend of mine. It’s going to be a feature length film about the oldest freeway in Los Angeles. It’s kind of what we call a city portrait. We’re following the freeway to look at the city — to see how the city functions. We show the different communities of Los Angeles, and we get aspects of the infrastructure ...

We have cameras and we shoot still frames, but we shoot bursts of them all at once. It’s of reality but it’s very visually different.

I’m also working on some footage that I’ve shot out in New England. Wherever I am, I always like to have a film I’ve made — to reflect the place I’ve lived. So I need my New England film. I live up in Greenfield.

And there’s an abandoned water pumping station up there. It’s kind of like a swimming hole with a covered bridge over it. And so I keep returning to it, and filming it, and capturing the sound of the water.

Q: What are your influences?

A: Definitely surrealism, and dare I say it, certain aspects of French theory. Although I’ve never studied it in a serious academic sense … rather as a dilettante. Honestly, visual art that isn’t film is very influential to me. I look at sculptures, painting, and photography and concept art.

And writing — fiction and creative nonfiction.

Q: That’s interesting. You like to bring different fields into film.

A: Well, things that I like from those fields. I have a class, called “The Essay Film”, and the question we ask in that class is “Can we write with a camera the same way we can write with a pen? Can we get ideas out through a camera the same way?” I think we need to think more about what aspects of the moving image we are not using. I’m not anti-Hollywood. I love the narrative Hollywood film, but I’m trying to explore the rest of spectrum of the moving image and what we can do with it.

— Evelyn Ting ’17

Frost to Provide Space for Humanities Scholars Humanities Center Will Bring Together Faculty, Visitors and Students Continued from Page 1 every other year instead of every year.

According to Professor Austin Sarat, Associate Dean of the Faculty, the Copeland Colloquium has also provided a valuable lesson in the importance of physical space.

“One of the things we learned from the experience of the Copeland Colloquium is that the absence of physical space inhibits the kind of interaction which we think generates lots and lots of good ideas,” Sarat said. “It’s just harder if one person is on one side of the campus and the other person is on the other side of the campus.”

To remedy this problem, the new humanities center will focus on providing a flexible space that encourages collaboration as well as individual research. And part of the center’s collaborative aspect will involve encouraging students to become involved in research as well.

“A model might be something like the Mellon Tutorials, where we might have some small classes associated with the themes that are being highlighted in the center in a given year,” Call said.

The humanities center will also be open outside of business hours as a place for students to study.

“The task force that made the proposal for the humanities center agreed that the space in the humanities center would be open for students at 7 p.m. at night, which is when study space is so badly needed,” said Bryn Geffert, the Librarian of the College.

Additionally, the center will have a strong focus on creating a space for postdoctoral fellows in the humanities.

Call said he anticipates that the center will have offices for three postdoctoral fellows each year. These scholars will spend the first year of their two-year appointment associated with the center, then move to offices in their respective department buildings for the

second year.

“This will be a means of bringing young scholars to Amherst and introducing them to what a life of doing teaching and research at a great liberal arts college is like,” Call said. “It’s potentially an opportunity to mentor them and to learn from them in terms of their scholarship, and also perhaps to recruit some of them here.”

Other offices in the center will likely be used for the center’s director, an administrative assistance and two senior scholars who will be associated with the center each year. Two or three offices per year could house Amherst faculty members who choose to have offices in the center because they are particularly interested in the current year’s programming. These offices might also provide an opportunity for professors on sabbatical to have a place to work on their research.

These new offices and group areas will displace some of the bookshelves and faculty carrels that currently reside on Frost’s second floor, a change that has sparked some concern among some professors.

“There was some worry that we would have to move a great deal of print material out of the library to make room for this,” Geffert said. “Fortunately, we have figured out that it’s not going to have much of an impact on the collection. In fact, our best estimates are that we’re only going to have to move between one percent and two percent of the collection off site.”

As for the carrels, there are 14 currently available in the library, and 12 will be removed to make room for the humanities center. As a result, there will be enough space to accommodate all the displaced faculty members, although some have expressed their reluctance to abandon offices that they have had for many years.

However, despite the minor prob-

Photography Editor Olivia Tarantino ’15

Frost Library will be the site of the new humanities center, which will provide a space for faculty research and collaboration in the humanities. lems with the space, professors and library staff voiced their agreement that Frost is the building best suited to host the humanities center.

“The centrality of the location I think is important to the prospective success of the humanities center,” Sarat said.

The planning group considered other locations on the periphery of campus, but ultimately decided that the center would be more attractive to faculty and students if it were located in an easily accessible location. Faculty also thought that the library would be an appropriate location for the humanities center because of its intellectual mission.

“The humanities center is going to be one of the centers of intellectual life on campus, and that should be in the library, which in some ways is the intellectual center of campus,” said History

Professor Catherine Epstein, who is involved in the planning process and will become the Dean of the Faculty next academic year.

“I think a vision of the library as not only a physical repository of important materials for scholarship but also a center itself which brings people together is really the direction in which we see our library evolving,” Call said.

Plans for some sort of humanities center have been over a decade in the making: Call said that the College started getting proposals for humanities-related research centers at least 15 years ago. In the spring of 2011, a group of faculty presented the proposal that eventually became the current plan, and President Biddy Martin expressed her support the idea when she joined the College later that year.

Since then, faculty in the planning

group have been studying humanities centers at other liberal arts colleges to see what kind of humanities center might be best for Amherst.

“We’ve talked in some depth with colleagues at Williams and Wesleyan and Smith, and we’ve investigated about a dozen total humanities centers,” Call said. Sarat and other members of the faculty then wrote a report and presented their findings to President Martin.

The planning process for is now well underway, and work will begin on the center later this year.

“We’re pretty excited,” Epstein said.

“I think that if we can make this a humanities center that lots of faculty are engaged in, then it will really be successful and really help to bring even more intellectual dynamism to campus.”

Opinion

“... how did the white underprivileged become invisible to me in Amherst?”

White Class in Amherst... Page 5

Editorial

What’s in a Name?

Amherst students like to be credited for their work. Many would be mortified if they neglected to put their name on an academic paper, and most would take offense if someone quoted their work without properly attributing it to them. It is ironic, then, that few display a similar possessiveness when writing online. Perhaps, the internet simply inspires a sort of altruism in students so they may feel compelled to share their wisdom without selflessly coveting recognition and acknowledgment. More likely than not, online anonymity provides an excuse to abdicate responsibility for one’s words.

A recent article published in AC Voice has generated 91 comments to date. While

not all of the comments critical of the article were anonymous, the vast majority were.

Many were little more than sardonic gibes that contributed nothing to the discussion.

The reaction to the AC Voice article illustrated that when students are allowed to post anonymously, they do so irresponsibly.

Students should be accountable for their opinions, and anonymity is not conducive to productive dialogue. Anonymity makes it too easy indulge in self-gratifying vitriol.

Everyone at the College is capable of articulating an intelligent argument, and when an online poster makes a sarcastic swipe at a writer without elaborating on our justifying their criticism, it is purely out of a lack of

Observing the Observer: An Interview with Luisa Santos ‘14 Defining Amherst

Vivian Mac ’16 Defining Amherst is an initiative about exploring the purpose of an Amherst education. For more information, visit definingamherst.wordpress.com.

For Luisa Santos, observing is essential. As an anthropology major with a passion for mindfulness, she is a participant-observer in her own life.

“Mindfulness is, in its purest sense, really just noticing what is happening as it’s happening. What mindfulness is not is filling in the gaps with our ideas, judgments, evaluations, or assumptions of what’s happening,” she said. “By being open and not rushing to analyze what is happening to you, you are being mindful, and, thusly, can genuinely come closer to the reality of what is happening in the moment.”

In this interview, Santos explains how paying mindful attention has helped her understand others and herself, love more deeply and question her Amherst education.

VM: Are there any classes you have taken that have stood out to you or kept you thinking?

LS: With each class, you start thinking differently in general, so I want to speak more generally to that. Whenever I say I’m an anthropology major, there’s so much to it that I personally associate with. I am an anthropologist in my own life at all times, trying to distance myself from my situation enough so that I can get a better picture of what’s going on. You can get a lot of information from just being fully present and seeing what’s going around you. I feel like a participant-observer in my own life.

I’ve been noticing that I started thinking about the way that we think about things, even more than what it is that we think. I am also paying attention to how the professors are teaching, and how students are interacting with each other and with the professors in the class. That’s a huge side of education that’s doesn’t get talked about.

The experience of being educated is a very edu-

E X E C U T I V E B OA R D Editors-in-Chief Brendan Hsu, Emmett Knowlton Executive Advisor Brianda Reyes Managing News Sophie Murguia Managing Opinion James Liu, David Chang Managing Arts and Living Meghan McCullough, Elizabeth Paul Managing Sports Andrew Knox, Nicole Yang

cating experience.

VM: What is the purpose of your Amherst education?

LS: I want to get to know people. It is not just getting to know as many people as possible, but also getting to know the people I know even better. I think that’s an underlying thing that fuels everything I do. Professor Daniel Barbezat is the first, if not the only professor whom I met that really cared to ask the question, “Why are you doing what you’re doing?” It really stuck with me.

VM: What do you mean by “getting to know” people?

LS: Knowing is exchanging understanding more than anything else. You don’t want to assume that you know what the other person is thinking, which is what anthropology taught me. But I want to hear people out more and try to reach a deeper level of understanding with people.

VM: How do you do that?

LS: What one would do is listen. That’s the most foremost thing. Listening is very important, in the sense that you pay attention to other people’s emotional manifestations and physical beings.

VM: How can we listen?

LS: Part of it is how you interact with other people, but a big part of it is knowing how you are and centering yourself. For example, if I’m talking to someone and not listening in that moment, there’s probably a reason. It’s probably not anything about the other person that’s causing that, but something within myself that’s causing that. Ask yourself, “What is keeping me from connecting with the person?”

Once you’re really present in the conversation, the other person will eventually take on the kind of energy that you’re giving out. They will start

effort and consideration.

Some may argue the contrary, that anonymity can be beneficial because it protects online commenters from persecution and encourages a diversity of opinions. This is self-centered and egotistical, considering that the same writers, who commenters are only willing to criticize behind a veil of anonymity, did not hide behind anonymity when publishing their articles. Whenever a writer publishes an article with their name attached, they make themselves vulnerable to negative feedback; it is only fair that commenters reciprocate that generosity. The risk of criticism is inherent to any form of expression, and it is a risk that most stu-

to be more open themselves once they see how open you are. That’s such a beautiful thing, because we are able to transfer that energy by engaging with someone. Have more energy transferals going on— that’s why I want to get to know people.

VM: Do we all have a larger, common purpose as students at Amherst?

LS: There may be a common purpose, but we can’t necessarily prescribe that, which is why I go to [the idea of] paying attention and asking [ourselves], “What is going on with me?” I realize that some people might not be ready nor want to do that now. I think that should be respected as well. To respect everyone’s process is a questionable thing to say too, because sometimes there are processes that are just wrong.

VM: What advice would you give to students?

LS: I would suggest not to limit what you think your options are. A lot of the limits that we see are imposed by someone, or imposed by ourselves. We should question everything in general.

If that’s too overwhelming, start with questioning our expectations.

VM: Is learning about questioning assumptions?

LS: Yes, but that’s not necessarily what a formal education is. In a formalized education system, there are going to be notions that are taken more seriously than others. There are certain opinions that are going to come out while others aren’t.

The education system becomes too often, or too easily a system of indoctrination. Sometimes in formal education, you’re not getting people to think, you’re getting people to know how to do a thing and repeat it over and over.

S TA F F Design Editor Brian Beaty, Andrew Kim Opinion Section Editors Darya Barshak, Ashley Montgomery Sports Section Editors Dori Atkins, Jason Stein, Jeremy Kesselhaut Publishers Connolly Bottum, Diana Lopez, Syeda Malliha, Nazir Khan, Tia Robinson, Valerie Salcido Photography Editor Olivia Tarantino

dents are already accustomed to. Whenever we submit a paper, we expose our ideas and ourselves to the possibility of criticism from our professors. Why can’t we extend a similar openness to our peers?

So what’s in name? A insightful argument is no less insightful, regardless of the name attached to it. But if someone is unwilling to back their point of view with their name, what good is backing their point with argument, no matter how well taken it may be?

We urge students to refrain from abusing the anonymity of the internet, not to silence the nameless voices of internet, but to bring life to a conscious and conscientious dialogue.

VM: Do you think Amherst encourages us to question?

LS: Amherst is trying to get us to question, while in the method of it all, reinforcing those things.

It’s a very contradictory type of thing and it causes dissonance in people, depending on how sensitive you are to that. It really causes this tension to be taught one thing at the verbal, direct level, but when you look deeper down at what’s actually happening, you think, “Wait, that’s not what I’m being taught.”

It always threw me off that I’d have professors professing about the way things are, and how we should question it and do something about it. But even to allow you to say those words to me, there was so much that took for it to happen that was not completely wholesome. This is my personal experience, but it seems that even if a professor says that s/he wants to help students as much as s/he can, it’s really obvious that there are institutional constraints on that.

VM: How did your values change and develop at Amherst?

LS: I was very unthinking right out of high school. My values were to please a certain subset of people, which includes my professors or people who evaluate me in some way. That changed through meeting the people whom I would now call my best friends. They care to see me grow, learn, and improve. It was by opening myself to these relationships to these best friends that I was able to love others and to love myself. I can evaluate myself and know that’s going to be the golden standard, not what some higher authority determines to be the golden standard.

Photo by Markku Lyyra

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The Amherst Student is published weekly except during College vacations. The subscription rate is $75 per year or $40 per semester. Subscription requests and address changes should be sent to: Subscriptions, The Amherst Student; Box 1912, Amherst College: Amherst, MA 01002-5000. The offices of The Student are located on the second floor of the Keefe Campus Center, Amherst College. Phone: (413) 542-2304. All contents copyright © 2011 by The Amherst Student, Inc. All rights reserved. The Amherst Student logo is a trademark of The Amherst Student, Inc. Additionally, The Amherst Student does not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or age.

The views expressed in this publication do not reflect the views of The Amherst Student.

The Amherst Student • March 12, 2014

White Class in Amherst The International Perspective

Wai Cheung Chan ’17 The International Perspective is a biweekly column that provides a platform for students to share their opinions about our larger world. This includes international outlooks on domestic issues as well as opinions on problems occurring around the globe.

I learned last week that not all white students in Amherst College are rich.

Okay, common sense: not all white people are rich. However, when a white person told me that she was a QuestBridge scholar last week, my automatic reaction was “Oh, you’re the first non-rich white person that I know in Amherst!” I couldn’t help but be surprised: oh, so poor white people do exist in Amherst!

It is a statistic: higher-income families in the United States tend to be white families. Besides, Amherst College is very expensive, and we all

know that half of us study here without any financial aid. It’s just how the system of accumulated wealth and white privilege works in this country. But this is not an article about white privilege. In fact, it’s about the opposite: how did the white underprivileged become invisible to me in Amherst? (If it is just me who thought that all white people are rich in Amherst, then I apologize.)

Minority groups do have higher poverty rates than white people do, but in terms of absolute numbers, white people make up the most

Opinion 5 of people living in poverty in the United States of America. Nonetheless, I was surprised not to have met any poor white students until the seventh month of my time here. Indeed, I seem to have a clearer idea about the social classes that Black people and Hispanics are from: they talk about their parents’ jobs and hometowns and that gives me a pretty clear idea about their income.

On the other hand, there are other fixed stereotypes about white people on campus. When I hear the word “varsity athlete” in Amherst, the image that comes to mind is a rich white person. Why is it that I only hear about white people being rich in Amherst? I’m sure that there are very rich black people, very rich Asians, and very rich Hispanics on campus as well.

Since the day I arrived, I have been conditioned to think that rich people on campus are all white. The day I arrived at Amherst, I was told that white students here are rich. “It’s crazy, half of the student body here can afford to come here without financial aid.” As an afterthought, “mostly the white students” was added. When I asked people how I could distinguish between

European-Americans and white-looking Hispanics, I was told “the white ones are the rich ones.” “Preppy,” an adjective often used to describe Amherst College, is also traditionally used on white people.

It is my fault that I did not challenge the idea that all white students are rich. Still I simply did not meet any white people who identified themselves as coming from low-income families. I have met many people who told me their parents were lawyers, doctors or held some other jobs and clearly relegated them to the upper class. Generally though, social class just isn’t a topic that comes up in conversations in Amherst. Perhaps, it is a remnant from Amherst College’s past as an all-white ultra-expensive school.

As an international student, I believe that my foreign identity is of value, and I am proud of it (not that the College tells me that, but that’s another story). Shouldn’t it be the same with class background and race? Amherst College prides itself on the diversity in its student body.

How come I didn’t even know about the existence of the poor white group?

The AC Voice Problem: Activist Olympics and Silent Discourse Andrew Lindsay ’16 Contributiting Writer AC Voice is the student publication that students love to hate. Depending on who you mention the publication to, you may get everything from encouraging compliments to unenthusiastic sighs and murmurs. Generally, however, campus enthusiasm is low about the publication. Case in point the events of last week. On March 4, AC Voice writer Gina Faldetta ’15, posted an article to the independent publication aptly titled “Amherst College’s Bathroom Problem.” In the article, Faldetta makes a fairly reasonable observation about the gender-bias present in the bathrooms of older buildings on campus. Merrill, Chapin, Frost and Converse have 52 places for men to use, while females have only 22. In response she proposes gender-neutral bathrooms. As many students saw from their Facebook newsfeeds, AC Voice has had tremendous negative feedback in the comments section. As of now, there are 91 mostly damaging and anonymous comments on Faldetta’s article. A few individuals chose to publicize their identities, while many others chose to remain hidden. Some of these individuals included the student body President, George Tepe ’14 and many of the other writers of the publication, who had very little to lose socially for posting their opinions in the comments section. In my opinion, the phenomenon of anonymity is where AC Voice as an “activist” institution finds itself into problems.

In my opinion, AC Voice is not a publication that necessarily promotes meaningful discourse, as its proponents would describe. It is an publication that masquerades under the label of promoting conversation while only perpetuating anonymity through a fear of social backlash. The site does so through the monopolization of a variety of social justice jargon and through the policing of individuals that do not conform to their predetermined definitions. Through this strict monopolization of social justice jargon and their enforcement of this jargon through the “checking of privilege,” the unintended consequence becomes a discourse of silence in the Amherst College community. This silent discourse manifests itself through the anonymity of individuals that do not conform to AC Voice self-defined language of activism. We see it through the language of Liya Rechtman ’14 as she attempts to school the Black Students Union (BSU) on how to be activist about hate-speech (think Oppressive Olympics), Faldetta, as she compares the importance of bathroom gender equality to Rosa Parks and the civil rights movement, and Craig Campbell ’15, as he defines (seemingly using the dictionary of his choice, or in his words “basic dictionary definitions”) what activism, advocacy and agitation are. Frankly, the “one, multivocal Amherst College Voice” that individuals like Campbell and Rechtman purport is a farce. AC Voice has almost transformed “activism” on the campus to a homogenized pulp dominated, unfortunately, by writers such as Rechtman, Faldetta and Campbell. These self-contained definitions of activism, racism, sexism, etc. have

obscured many of these writers from recognizing their own privilege. In other words, the “Activist-Olympics” is real and at Amherst College AC Voice has won because of their domination of key social justice jargon. My problem with AC Voice started with an article that I penned on behalf of the BSU in response to hate speech on campus last semester. Rather than criticize the act of hate speech and the pervasive campus apathy that was present about N-word scrawls outside dorms, Rechtman wrote a tremendously insensitive critique of the language present in the article and not the actual act of hate speech (merely reinforcing some of my above opinions on AC Voice). When I, under the name “Anon,” called out Liya’s insensitivity and privilege I got this response.

I spent a great deal of time and energy trying to edit and bolster your prose so that when the campus read the important things you had to say they would really hear and pay attention to your critique of Amherst as a frequently racist and silencing community. My only major criticism of your argument, as you know by now, was that I hoped you would include some actionable next step or at least target a specific area so that readers could come from you article having a sense of where to direct their anger.

Here Rechtman justifies the police-style monitoring of the words and actions of the BSU, another activist organization on campus. Why, without her explicit direction, could the BSU not express their feelings towards the campus and administration? Here language, both in this response and in the original AC Voice article, was incredibly offensive, silencing and patronizing — almost reflecting a strand of paternalism that insinuates that the organizations response was invalid and that only she knew best. Just to note, in her response to the BSU’s Op-Ed critiquing hate speech, Rechtman superimposes her definition of the organization without doing any prior research on the organization at Amherst College — or even going to a single meeting. In my opinion, the most troubling quote from her article was “Lindsay’s letter plunged us back into the ‘oppression Olympics’” and a self-victimizing rhetoric that I have in the past argued would only lead us to cross-cultural miscommunication, community fatigue and oppressive stasis.” The “Oppression-Olympics” that Rechtman identifies, for those who don’t know, is when people from various groups attempt to win the day by stating that their particular type of oppression is more damaging than another group’s.

There appears to be a growing trend in institutions where the expression of social justice jargon is the norm, a term called the “Activist-Olympics.”

In the white social justice “activist” community there seems to be tremendous competition to prove who the most “activist” is. This generally equates to who is the most politically correct, the person who has “checked their the privilege” the most regularly and the individual who has the loudest voice in declaring their (insert privilege here). Womanist Musings writer Renee Martin

states it more aptly.

It seems like there are dozens of responses from white people about what the person did wrong, how offended POC should be by this particular person or brand of activism, and how the activist is ‘showing their privilege.’ And when the “white anti-racists” are done with their critiques of the person who performed the activist work in question, they retreat into their corners, read a book, write a blog and do nothing to promote justice in any concrete way.

AC Voice because of their monopolization of social justice jargon is essentially immune from constructive criticism. In one of my criticisms of Faldetta’s article, again under the title “Anon” I highlight some of the problems that I had with Faldetta (and Rechtman in a past article tilted “Desegregate”) comparing the issues that they raised to the civil rights movement and Jim Crow.

One of my criticisms stemmed from this comment that Faldetta made in defense of her article.

NOT to appropriate the racial oppression historically and currently experienced by black Americans, but there is a very similar line of logic that one can draw here. It’s easy, from a position of privilege, to view such an issue as bathrooms on campus as trivial, but I’d like to think that commenters here would not also say that ‘the extra twenty steps and extra thirty seconds’ it takes to get to the back of the bus is not a big deal and should not be complained about.

Rechtman, in support of Faldetta’s comparison of bathroom inequality at Amherst to a period in history where African-Americans were killed because of their skin color responding in another section in the comments says: Just because two things are not similar in all ways does not mean that there is no similarity between them. Let me give you a non-political example of this: if I were to say that lava and water were alike in that they were both liquid, and fluid, would not mean that I think lava is as harmless as lava or that lava is easy to drink, like water.

Problematic logic like Faldetta’s and Rechtman’s is left unchecked because of the monopolization of social justice jargon that they maintain in the Amherst College community, and if this monopolization of jargon is challenged, one gets repressed, such as what happened with the Black Student Union last semester.

Faldetta’s article last semester titled, “’Cold’ is a Relative Term” is perhaps a better representation of what AC Voice functionally represents to many at Amherst College, as opposed to the multifocal voice that the site purports. Faldetta begins, “If your activism makes your oppressor feel comfortable than maybe you should reevaluate your activism.” In the second paragraph she calls out a guest writer for equating his feelings of being left out in the cold for not having anyone educate him

about cultural appropriation to the “historical and systematic oppression suffered by two Jamaican women …allow[ing] him to criticize these women for lashing out at him without having to actually acknowledge that he comes from a place of privilege.” This line is in direct contrast to the quote I laid out earlier where she compares the Amherst bathroom problem to the historical oppression of African-Americans. However, this is not the crux of the issue. She continues: I’ve thought about based on countless interactions with people at Amherst, is of silencing the voice and expression of the oppressed simply because they might hurt someone’s feelings. This lack of distinction between being unpleasant and perpetuating an oppressive social dynamic is essentially privilege denial, and is extremely detrimental to the creation of a community of social equality[…] So, the question remains: do individuals attempting to enact social change and overthrow social systems that oppress them have to do so by communicating nicely to people who are subjugating them? My answer, right now, is no. I understand that it is most effective to communicate in a collaborative manner when trying to explain social issues to people who could use some enlightenment, but under a circumstance in which someone is directly perpetuating your oppression, it is well within your right to approach them with whatever tone you see fit.

When taken to the degree that we see from many of the its writers, the contents of this article are a metaphor for the type of discourse that AC Voice perpetuates on this campus. The publication (at least in the case of the more prominent authors) promotes a discourse of silence predicated by not only by the off-hand, often satirical and anonymous responses from critics (such as myself), but the cowardly and silent challenges to AC Voice’s control of “activist” language in and out of classroom. People at Amherst College are scared of publicized dissent because of the “’Cold’ is a Relative Term” mentality from many individuals like Faldetta and Rechtman.

When professors and students observe offense language in classroom, many don’t respond because of this silent discourse. These problems spill out of the classroom into “Politically Correct” everyday life with ones peers on and off campus.

This defeats the purpose of the liberal arts education that we are encouraged to partake in while being here. The only way Amherst College can move forward into more tangible equality and dialogue is to have more meaningful conversations, and this can only happen if institutions like AC Voice stop monopolizing social justice terminology, accept meaningful criticism and become more introspective. We need to encourage more dialogue, however offensive it may appear to be on the surface. If we don’t see these microaggressions how can we combat them if people are too reluctant to express their opinions? The discourse of silence has to stop, only then can Amherst College move forward.

Arts&Living Image courtesy of Jake Walters ’14

“‘Clothes should tell a story. That is why fashion is cool.’”

Look of the Week...Page 7

Image courtesy of yelp.com

Image courtesy of yelp.com

Make sure to give the baklava (left), Mediterranean Plate (center), and abounding salad bar (right) a try at Pita Pockets! If you play your cards right, the charming father and son duo that run the store may even give you a sample of the baklava for free.

Pita Pockets: Cheap, Tasty and Friendly

Jake Walters ’14 & Daniel Diner ’14 Staff & Contributing Writers

There’s a venue right off North Pleasant Street that boasts some of simplest yet most satisfying food in the Valley. No, it’s not that weird alleyway next to Antonio’s. Tucked away and slightly hidden, recentlyopened Pita Pockets sits in the spot previously occupied by Captain Candy near Panda East. The first time we visited, we came across it purely by accident. We were walking, hungrily, across the no-man’s-land that is Amherst downtown after 10 p.m. A sign advertising a giant falafel drew our attention. Though we were already carrying a late night dozen donuts special from Glazed, there was no way we weren’t going to explore further.

We hoped for some good Mediterranean food to procrastin-eat, but what we got was so much more.

“Come on in, guys! I’ll cook you something tasty!” Before we even reached the counter, a remarkably enthusiastic father-son duo showered

us with attention, encouraging us to try assortments of delicious-sounding dishes and complimenting us on everything from the impressiveness of our tastes to how much delicious food they bet we could eat.

“You look like you would enjoy Combo Plates! Would you like some delicious Combo Plates, guys?” We’ve been to Pita Pockets three times now, and this interaction — unlike Val’s General Tsao’s Chicken — wasn’t just a special treat. The incidental conversation one has with the proprietors is a very memorable part of the experience at Pita Pockets. While you’re waiting they go beyond small-talk to make you feel welcomed; they create a homely atmosphere that makes you genuinely excited to eat food that they are genuinely excited about preparing. When taking pictures of the food with some friends who happened to walk in, the proprietors couldn’t wait to get involved, providing amusing and helpful advice about how to take the pictures. They went around the store and asked us, as well as everyone else, about our meals and

provided advice on ordering nonmenu items and unique ways to eat their food. Unique to the experience is that they display no hesitance towards interaction, something which stands out in a town filled with nice looking and tasty food experiences that often lack personality.

The same qualities of the atmosphere are also manifest in the food.

Simply put, the food feels natural.

There is elegance in its simplicity, in the way that it doesn’t mask itself in excessive sauces and sides. The food just speaks for itself. And it has a kind of natural flavorfulness that extends beyond the individual dish, making you confident that anything you try will be delicious. The meat is naturally succulent, the hummus is filling but not too indulgent, and the vegetables are fresh. They’re simple ingredients, but they all work really well together without all the fuss that “fancier” places might feel pressured to make. And this simplicity also of course informs the food’s affordability — the prices are also not too bloated.

The first time we went to Pita Pockets was within three days of their opening. The only other customer was a classmate who told us that he was there on orders from friends who had already marked the spot as a favorite. On our third visit, the place was packed. Ten Amherst students had come by before we left, and several times the first things that were said in conversations was “Isn’t this place just the best?”.

Likewise, a friend who had been away for the year on leave had already heard about and visited Pita Pockets upon a recent visit to campus by the time we met with him. Point being, Pita Pockets, despite it’s unassuming location and small size, is growing in reputation, and rightfully so. It’s a strong alternative to the unhealthy, greasy Extra-Cheese-Five-MeatMayonnaise-Zones which taint dorm rooms far and wide around Amherst, especially late at night. Pita Pockets is open until 11 p.m. every night, so they won’t be able to help your weekly 2 a.m. essay-writing binge, or any other kind of 2 a.m. binge college

kids may be prone to, unless of course you think ahead a few hours. But for a second semester senior thesis writer whose daily schedule goes something like: stay up until 9 am, wake up at noon for class, nap at 6 pm and then sleep through Val until 9 a.m. or 10 p.m., Pita Pockets is the perfect “how I am going to regain energy to feign working on another page or two tonight” spot. With consistently strong, flavorful food and a unique, fun atmosphere that just begs you to come back and try something else, Pita Pockets is a great addition to the Amherst town line-up. So, what are you waiting for? Let them make you something tasty.

103 N. Pleasant Street, Amherst (between Panda East and Bart’s Ice Cream) Casual Mediterranean Restaurant Prices: Quite affordable, especially in comparison to Moti’s Recommended Dishes: Kibbeh Football, Chicken Kabob Pocket, Hummus, Grape Leaves

The Amherst Student • March 12, 2014

Arts & Living 7

Look of the Week: Emma Rothkopf ’15 Juliana Glasser ’16 Contributing Writer Although junior Emma Rothkopf ’s women’s soccer après sport apparel may seem omnipresent, this junior midfielder’s true fashion sense is inspired by her other passion — a deep and refined love of art which continues to grow through her art classes as a fine arts and English double major. Or maybe it is Rothkopf ’s personal style that inspires her artistic eye. Indeed their overlapping interest is clear — as a recipient of the Lane Fellowship for creative artists in the library, Rothkopf used her passion for art, fashion and nature to sew a collection of simple canvas dresses that were inspired by old books in Amherst archives. She says, “... with pages of pictures of hand-drawn mammals and butterflies and insects, for example. Then I was inspired by those images and I got to make whatever I want. So I decided to make dresses and paint them with those images.”

Rothkopf defines her personal style as comfortable and artsy. She believes her more naturalistic style is in part due to her upbringing in a rural Massachusetts town of only 6,000 people. As a child, Rothkopf loved the woods, perhaps explaining the earthy elements of her style. One gets the sense that the same eye that decorates her canvases also cultivates her style. After some hesitation Rothkopf notes, “I look at some magazines. Like Harper’s Bazaar.

Bazaar I definitely like Pinterest a lot.

Just to gather my thoughts. Obviously, Miranda Kerr is awesome, but I do not know if we even have a similar style or anything.

I just think that she is cool. And wears cool things. Obviously because she is a super famous fashion model.” Rothkopf continues, “I just got the Kate Moss book, which is pretty sweet. I found $60 worth of Barnes & Nobles gift certificates from childhood laying around my house and I was like, ‘yep I know what I am going to get.’”

Rothkopf is practical when it comes to what she needs and how best to spend her money. For example, she dreams about the day when she will bring herself to splurge on a nice bag. “That is something that I would splurge on in the future when I make lots of money … I do not need one now, but after college I’ll need one, and I’ll splurge on that for sure.”

While in college, especially at parties, Rothkopf tries to stay away from the tight-dress look.

“It just is not comfortable,” she says. And besides, she prefers to “leave a little to the imagination. I would rather wear a bag than a tight dress.” She then pauses, giggles and then confesses, “Although I am wearing a tight black dress tonight.

When worst comes to worst, go all black.”

Rather than conforming, Rothkopf has grown to take risks and sometimes stand out, even if it means taking flack from her friends. There are two fashion risks that Rothkopf enjoys: “I like hats. Like beanies. But also I like real hats with brims. But they are sometimes hard to get away with. And people sometimes make fun of me, but it’s fine.” And the second? “Long dresses. I feel like they are hard to wear in normal life, like to class.

But it can be done.”

When it comes to her favorite items of clothing, Rothkopf does not necessarily value all new clothing. She emphasizes the importance of mixing the old with the new. Detailing her favorite items, Rothkopf says, “One of my favorite pairs of jeans that I got in like eighth grade. It is unclear why they still fit.” Still another musthave: “Boots. Lots of boots. I love boots.

I just got a pair of knee high boots and I like them a lot. They are plain black suede. But for every day, I like ankle to mid. I cannot wait until it is warm so I can wear my knee high boots with little dresses.” As a tribute to her more sentimental side, she says, “I have my dad’s old jean jacket. I will keep that forever for sure.”

Aside from just the sentimental tinge, Rothkopf ’s family, specifically her mother, has been a great source of her fashion inspiration.

Rothkopf explains, “My mom keeps everything — from high school on. She always told me stories about a special peacoat that she bought from Urban Outfitters when it just opened and she was living in Cambridge. It is a plain peacoat, but it has a very stylish flair.” She adds, “I am pretty into the period when my mom grew-up, 60s-70s style. And she has all of that clothing for me to explore.”

“Clothes should tell a story. That is why fashion is cool. The superficial parts of fashion are not what are cool,” Rothkopf says. “I mean do not get me wrong, it is so much fun to go to Bloomingdales, but at the same time, I would so much rather go rummage around in my attic for something cool.”

Major: English and Fine Arts Favorite Magazine: Harper’s Bazaar Favorite Celebrity: Miranda Kerr Favorite Website: Pinterest Favorite Store(s): Aritizia, Free People, and any good department store Favorite Store near Amherst: Ode Favorite Item of Clothing: A dress Last purchase: Sherpa jacket Dream Brand: Chanel Most comfortable outfit: Leggings and a giant sweater and hat

KenKen

The numbers you use in a KenKen puzzle depend on the size of the grid you choose. A 3 x 3 grid (3 squares across, 3 squares down) means you use the numbers 1, 2, and 3. In a 4 x 4 grid, use numbers 1 to 4. A 5x5 grid requires you use the numbers 1 to 5, and so on.

The numbers in each heavily outlined set of squares, called cages, must combine (in any order) to produce the target number in the top corner using the mathematic operation indicated (+, -, ×, ÷).

Here's how you play: •

Use each number only once per row, once per column.

•

Cages with just one square should be filled in with the target number in the top corner.

•

A number can be repeated within a cage as long as it is not in the same row or column.

KenKen® is a registered trademark of Nextoy, LLC. Puzzle content ©2014 KenKen Puzzle LLC. All rights reserved. For more KenKen puzzles, visit www.kenken.com

8 Arts & Living

The Amherst Student • March 12, 2014

Pasta E Basta: Discovered Just In Time Ellie Andersen ‘15 Staff Writer Sometimes food is like those romantic comedies where the girl chases some foreign or mysterious boy for the entire movie before finally realizing what we’ve all known the whole time: the best option and the person she truly loves is the dude who has been by her side since the beginning. I always think that Northampton holds some novel restaurant that beats my usual options in Amherst, and while the town over does have wonderful restaurants, we also have our fair share here. Sadly, I easily overlook some of the wonderful options for silly presumptions, looking afar when I have a great resource within a five minute walk off campus.

After last Sunday, I suddenly find myself reevaluating my relationship with Pasta E Basta. It is absolutely an untapped resource that I have been missing for my last three years at Amherst. Of course I visited Pasta E and loved chowing down on the free bread and massive plates of pasta, but I have always felt that while hauling the food among three floors must certainly keep the wait-staff in shape, the added exercise might cause the wait for food to outlast my hunger.

Here, I also have to admit that I have generally only been to Pasta E with large groups that undoubtedly contributed to the long wait.

Last Sunday, however, Pasta E became the steady companion I have always had but never fully appreciated. As with every Sunday, I had not been as productive as planned and the reality of a packed week was setting in, but I had agreed to go to dinner with my friend, so we quickly

headed into town. Although he had originally chosen Crazy Noodles, we decided upon Pasta E as we discussed the wonderful job they did catering our dinner with the Military Support Corps panel the previous Friday. We had both met the owners through the process and wanted to thank them again for everything.

Now, in all of my previous experiences at Pasta E, I had always stepped through the door and immediately clambered up the narrow stairway to wait for a table on either the second or third floor. Although I know that people can eat on the first floor, it had never occurred to me to take that direct cut to the right to enter this more casual setting. Luckily, my friend knew what to do and led the way, heading through the righthand door, straight up to the counter.

There we paused, looking at the boards lining the wall behind the register and making the crucial decisions. We deliberated and discussed, and negotiated, settling on our meals and ordering at the counter. After paying, we quickly chose a table before grabbing glasses of water at the station in the back of the room.

As we talked over last week’s Support Corps panel, a waitress brought out the highly anticipated olive oil and bread. We each snatched a piece, ripped through the crust and doughy interior before dipping it in the oil infused with fresh garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and red pepper flakes. After a few moments of concentration, we returned to our discussion, but before long the calamari ($8) arrived. Again, we dug in, sprinkling the golden rings with lemon juice before dipping them in the blue cheese aioli and marinara sauces. Although I could have eaten the entire plate,

Image courtesy of trip-advisor.com

Pasta E Basta is a great option for a quick and efficient meal that is located just five minutes away from the Amherst campus.

I held off as my house salad ($3.50) arrived, accompanied by a sweet balsamic vinaigrette. I happily crunched through the iceberg lettuce, and before I could even finish, my pasta had appeared before me.

I quickly downed the rest of my house salad before diving into the spaghetti topped with garlic and olive oil, sun-dried tomatoes and kalamata olives ($9.50). Our conversation halted entirely as we both devoted ourselves to devouring the piping hot pasta. Soon, however, we had both reached our limits, only to

find that we still had plenty of food to bring home with us.

Luckily, Pasta E had provided take-out containers at the back of the room, alongside the water. As we poured our food into the boxes, bussed our plates and silverware to the back of the room and headed back to Amherst, I realized that our meal had just shredded any prejudices I had previously had against Pasta E Basta. They met my every desire on a stressful Sunday night, providing an efficiently quick and filling meal.

In the end, Pasta E Basta is just

like that boy the girl never notices until it’s almost too late. I cannot wait to eat at Pasta E during my last three semesters at Amherst because I know that should I need that simple, filling and quick meal, Pasta E’s first floor will be there. I’m just happy I found it in time.

26 Main St, Amherst Casual Italian Restaurant Prices: Affordable Recommended Dishes: Crazy Alfredo and Calamari

[Un] Fab Five: Worst Things About Room Draw

Cartoonist: Clarice Carmichael ’16

Realizing you have five people in your room group and having to vote someone off the island so you can get a suite.

Ranking your friends in order of importance to you.

Getting a high room draw number and realizing all the good rooms are being saved for opt-out.

Opting out and fully accepting the fact that you’ll have to live in a tent on the quad next year.

Having to compete against the Zumbyes in lip sync.

The Amherst Student • March 12, 2014

Sports 9

Men’s Basketball Edges York to Reach Sweet 16 Green ’16 Looks to Return Against Plattsburgh State

On Saturday, March 8, Amherst men’s basketball turned a two-point halftime deficit into a 63-51 win over the York College to advance to the NCAA Third Round for the fourth consecutive season. Now, the Jeffs, who sport a 25-3 overall record, stand just four victories away from repeating as National Champions.

Without the presence of both sophomore guard/forward Connor Green and sophomore forward Ben Pollack, Amherst’s depth was tested by a talented and athletic York squad.

The first half between Amherst and York was a staunch defensive battle with the two teams combining for only 45 points.

In the first half, the Jeffs struggled shooting the ball against a lengthy York defense, as they went 7-29 (24.1%) and 3-14 (21.4%) from behind the arc. Amherst’s offense was kept afloat in the first half as a result of the contributions of a pair of seniors. Guards David Kalema ’14 and Connor Gach ’14 accounted for two-thirds of the Jeff ’s first half points. Kalema found a way to score from the field and the free throw line, while Gach hit two clutch threes to keep the Jeffs from falling too far behind despite their shooting woes.

As much as the Amherst offense struggled in the first half, the defense kept the Jeffs in the game by limiting the Cardinals offense to just 23 points.

“In the first half, we really hung in there,” said Coach David Hixon ’75, who was recently recognized as the NESCAC Coach of the Year for the second time in as many seasons and for the fourth time during his career.

Heading into the second half of play, the Jeffs offense began to find its rhythm. In the second period, Amherst improved their field goal percentage considerably to 13-27 (48.1%). The Jeffs also doubled scoring their output in the second half by tallying 42 points.

Although the Jeffs pulled ahead early in the second half, building a 35-28 lead less than five minutes in, the Cardinals would storm back and close the gap to 50-47 with 5:30 remaining. With 3:30 remaining, Amherst still only held a threepoint edge over York at 52-49, but the Jeffs would close the door on an 11-2 run over the final 2:32 to advance to the NCAA Third Round.

By the game’s end, Kalema finished with a game-high 21 points. Senior guard Aaron Toomey, who was recently recognized as the NESCAC Player of the Year for the second-straight season, had a double-double with 15 points and 12 boards, while senior guard/forward Tom Killian, a Second Team All-NESCAC selection, posted 10 points.

Ultimately, the Amherst defense stifled the York offensive unit, especially their top two scoring options. While St. John posted 31 in his NCAA First Round performance against Rhode Island College, the Jeffs limited him to 11 points on Sat-

Women’s Track & Field Brings Home ECAC Title Chris Rigas ’16 Staff Writer Women Led by another excellent performance from senior Naomi Bates, the women’s indoor track team won the ECAC championships last weekend. The Jeffs’ 38 points were just enough to hold off the MIT women, who collected 36.5 points.

Bates won the long jump and set a meet record in the process, posting a mark of 5.85 meters. She also took fourth in the 60-meter dash with a time of 7.81 seconds. Karen Blake ’17 edged out Bates for third, also recording a time of 7.81. Blake’s semifinal time of 7.75 seconds set a program record.

Amherst also earned several notable finishes in the middle and long distance events, highlighted by the 4x800-meter relay team of Amy Dao ’14, Olivia Tarantino ’15, Kelli Ellingson ’15 and Hannah Herrera ’17, who placed second with a time of 9:34.96. Herrera also took 10th in the 800, finishing in 2:18.15, while Ellingson collected sixth in the 1000-meters. Dao rounded out the track top-10 finishes, earning 10th in the mile with a time of 5:09.05.

Two Jeffs collected points in the field events, as Kiana Herold ’17 cleared 1.69 meters to take third in the high jump, and sophomore Taylor Summers placed fourth in the long jump with a mark of 4.96 meters.

“I’m just really proud of our girls. They went out and really put a lot of effort into their perspective events, which shows by us winning the

Photo courtesy of Taylor Summers ’16

The Jeffs placed first out of 62 teams on Saturday.

meet. Still the win was very surprising, but I think sometimes the unexpected win is the best kind of win,” Sophomore Louise Atadja said.

The qualifying Amherst women also travel to Lincoln, Neb. this weekend for the NCAA championships. Kiana Herold is in line to compete in the high jump, and Bates and Blake are in line to run in the 60-meters or the 200-meters. Blake will also compete in the long jump.

Her mark of 5.89 meters is second-best in Div. III this year.

Men The Amherst men’s indoor track team took limited numbers to both of its meets this week.

On Thursday, a distance medley relay team that included juniors Romey Sklar and Greg Turissini, sophomore Brent Harrison and senior Matt Melton competed in the Tufts Last Chance Meet. As its name suggests, the meet is an additional chance for athletes to qualify for the NCAA Championships, which take place this coming weekend. The relay team turned in a mark of 10:01.04, qualifying them for the meet.

On Friday and Saturday, the Jeffs that qualified for the ECAC Championships, besides the medley relay group, collected 13 points in the meet. Their total was good for 23rd out of 62 teams, as NESCAC rival Bates took first with 47 points. Sophomore Dan Crowley stood out for Amherst, taking second in the 3000-meters, with a time of 8:30.29. Other notables were Jeff Seelaus ’16, whose time of 4:20.42 earned sixth in the mile and Mark Cort ’15, who leaped 6.10 meters to take seventh in the long jump. Alex Durkee ’15, Jesse Fajnzylber ’17, Kevin Connors ’17 and Nick Codola ’15 made up a 4x800-meter relay team that ran an 8:02.10, placing seventh.

Melton’s time of 47.91 in the 400-meters, recorded at the NEICAAA championships, is the best in Div. III this year.

The 15 Div. III athletes with the best marks in each event qualify for the NCAA championships, which will be held March 14-15 in Lincoln, Neb. According to head coach Erik Nedeau, Melton and the distance medley team will likely be the only Jeffs to compete.

“While Greg Turissini is entered in the 3000-meters, it is very unlikely he will get in,” he said. “He will just be focused on a great anchor leg for the relay.”

urday. Woods, who entered play as the secondleading scorer in the nation, was held to 19 points, well short of his season average of 28.4 points per game. Defensive highlights included a 51-34 team rebounding edge over the Cardinals and five key blocks from David George ’17.

With regard to George, Hixon noted that the first-year “is an amazing kid. He had five blocks, and a couple of them were spectacular. He is a real game-changer.”

Of Killian, Hixon said that “he is long, he bothers people, he tipped a couple of three-point shots and he has quickness. Quickness and length is a great thing on defense.”

The road to a repeat title will not come easily, as Amherst awaits Plattsburgh State (24-5) in the NCAA Third Round on Friday, March 14 at 7:30 p.m. in LeFrak Gymnasium. Last season, the Jeffs played against Plattsburgh State in the NCAA Second Round and advanced with an 89-72 win.

“They have some of the kids from last year, but the kids that they lost were their bigger players,” said Hixon. “Right now, they start four guards and a 6’6” kid who is a perimeter player, so they basically start five outside players. Last year, they were a bit more traditional. In the next few days, we’ll try figure out how we can play that.”

If the Jeffs were to advance past Plattsburgh, the Jeffs would face the winner of Richard Stockton (25-4) and Morrisville State (21-8) in the National Quarterfinals the following evening at 7

SPRING PREVIEW

Jason Stein ’16 Sports Section Editor

p.m. in LeFrak.

Notably in other tournament play, while many predicted that Cabrini would be playing in the National Quarterfinals, Richard Stockton knocked off Cabrini, 85-76, in the NCAA Second Round. Two wins for Amherst this upcoming weekend would propel the Jeffs into the Final Four to be held on Friday, March 21, with the National Championship scheduled for Saturday, March 22 in Salem, VA.

Photo courtesy of The Office of Public Affairs

Connor Green ’16 is averaging 18.2 points per game in 32.4 minutes.

BASEBALL

Devin O’Connor ’16 Staff Writer The Amherst baseball team had a Cinderella run last season, winning their first NESCAC Championship since 2005 and setting a new program record for wins with 27. After a promising 2012 campaign fell short, the Jeffs broke through to defeat Wesleyan for the 2013 NESCAC title, securing a spot in the NCAA Regional Championship in the process. Amherst saw its season come to a close, however, in a loss to third-ranked SUNY Cortland at the NY Regional. This season, the team is back with something to prove this spring with hopes of going all the way to the 2014 College World Series.

“You can feel the difference in the way we handle drills and minutiae at practice,” Dylan Driscoll ’14 said. “It’s always a bit of a grind having to play baseball indoors for a month, but I think we’re better prepared this year than we’ve ever been.”

The preseason, which officially started Feb. 15, was a long one for the Jeffs. After a month of practices, workouts and scrimmages, they will open their season in Winter Haven, Fla. against Vassar on March 15.

Despite losing four key senior players, including 2013 NESCAC Pitcher of the Year Bob Cook, Head Coach Brian Hamm is optimistic for his team. The returning lineup includes senior captain and shortstop Taiki Kasuga, the 2013 NESCAC Defensive Player of the Year and All-NESCAC First Team Selection and 2013 Rookie of the Year Mike

Odenwaelder ’16.

Hamm noted an emphasis on improving the team’s defense in the offseason with a handful of players competing for innings in both the infield and outfield from all classes. The pitching staff will be spearheaded by senior Fred Shepard and junior John Cook, both left-handers, who combined for nine wins a year ago. Riley Streit ’16 and Eric Kotin ’14, both of whom had success in 2012, look to be the key cogs out of the bullpen.

Over spring break in Fla., the Jeffs will play 12 games in nine days and face a host of strong opponents, including second-ranked Southern Maine, last year’s national runner-ups.

“Our Florida trip over spring break will be a big test. Since I’ve been here, we’re 3-0 against them, and I think if we make that 4-0, we’ll get a lot of people talking,” Driscoll said.

The Jeffs will jump right into NESCAC play following their return north, facing Hamilton in their first home game of the season. Hamm anticipates a tough schedule in the NESCAC this season, especially against Wesleyan, Williams, Trinity and Tufts. The Jeffs also have one of the toughest nonleague schedules in the country this spring, facing powerhouses such as ECSU, Keene State and Endicott. Driscoll, however, is especially excited for the Williams series, April 4-5.

“We’ve swept Williams every year that I’ve been here, and if we can make it four straight you can expect some noise complaints to be called in,” he said.

Photo courtesy of Megan Robertson ’15

Senior captain Taiki Kasuga led the Jeffs in hits last spring with 51. The shortstop was a major offensive contributor, batting .338 with 22 RBIs.

10 Sports

Schedule THURSDAY Women’s Lacrosse @ Springfield, 7 p.m.

FRIDAY Men’s Lacrosse @ Endicott, 6 p.m.

Men’s Basketball vs. Plattsburgh St., 7:30 p.m.

Women’s Basketball vs. Ithaca, 5:30 p.m.

Men’s & Women’s Indoor Track & Field @ NCAA DIII Championships (@ Lincoln, NE), TBD SATURDAY Men’s Basketball

The Amherst Student • March 12, 2014 @ NCAA Quarterfinals, TBD Women’s Basketball @ NCAA Quarterfinals Women’s Hockey @ NCAA First Round, TBD Men’s & Women’s Indoor Track & Field @ NCAA DIII Championships (@ Lincoln, NE), TBD Baseball vs. Vassar, 3:30 p.m.

SUNDAY Softball vs. Bethany, 9 a.m. vs. Fontbonne, 11 a.m.

Baseball vs. Rutgers-Camden (DH), 1:30 p.m.

Women’s Hoops to Face Ithaca in Sweet Sixteen Dori Atkins ’16 Sports Section Editor

SPRING PREVIEW

The Amherst women’s basketball team walked out of this past weekend with two NCAA wins under their belts, paving the way for Sweet Sixteen competition. Playing Springfield on Saturday and Hartwick on Sunday, sophomore Marley Giddins posted a double-double in both games, leading the Jeffs to victory.

In Saturday’s 63-49 win over Springfield, Giddins received help from first-year Ali Doswell, who also scored in double digits with 16 points. Haley Zwecker ’16 and Jaimie Renner ’17 added seven points and six points, respectively, while both Jeffs grabbed six boards.

Amherst controlled the play early on, but Springfield was able to find a way back into the game midway through the first half. However, an Amherst 18-6 run left Springfield behind by 11 points going into halftime.

The Jeffs carried the momentum into the second half, netting seven of the first nine points.

After a pair of Springfield free throws, the lead was cut to 13. Zwecker then found the long range, igniting an 11-3 spurt for the Jeffs. Springfield made a last effort to shorten the deficit, which included points from five different players. Despite holding the Jeffs to one point and no field goals for the final nine-minute span, it was not enough for Springfield to walk away with the win.

Although Amherst’s bench was outscored 22-13, the Jeffs capitalized on Springfield’s 20 turnovers with 22 points.

“We didn’t play that well in our game against Springfield, but enough people made important plays at the right times to keep Springfield behind us for most of the game” Ali Doswell said.

In Sunday’s game against Hartwick, five different Jeffs scored in double figures to lead the Jeffs to the 82-61 victory. A. Doswell led the team with 15 points, while adding five rebounds, four assists and three steals. Twin sister Meredith Do-

swell ’17 ended the game with 14 points and five boards. Giddins posted her team-high seventh double-double, while Savannah Holness ’15 and Jaimie Renner ’17 added 12 and 11 points, respectively.

Amherst jumped out to an early lead with an 8-4 run, but Hartwick would respond with five unanswered points just three minutes later. The Jeffs, however, set forth on another run, 8-0, in just over one minute’s time. Amherst held the Hawks to a 40-29 edge going into halftime.

Over the first five minutes of the second half, the Jeffs continued to dominate, mounting a 20-5 run. Hartwick continued to make efforts for a comeback, but Amherst’s final 13-9 run sealed the victory. Shooting just 33.9 percent from the field, Hartwick couldn’t hold up against the Jeffs’ 53.8 field goal percentage. Amherst also won the rebound battle, 37-32, and scored 22 points off of 13 Hartwick turnovers.

“Although we didn’t play quite as well as we wanted to against Springfield, we performed well against Hartwick,” Giddins said. “We were hitting most of our shots, and our defense was able to successfully contain a couple very talented Hartwick players. I think that these two wins, especially against Hartwick, are going to give us some great momentum going into the next round. We are all very excited to have made it to the Sweet Sixteen, and we are determined to make it to the Final Four.”

Along with the team’s success, the Jeffs have also seen individual players honored. Ali Doswell received NESCAC Rookie of the Year and hopes to continue to bring her best basketball for the remainder of the NCAA tournament.

“I feel extremely honored to have received rookie of the year,” Ali Doswell said. “There are lots of other players in the league who could have easily been selected for the award.”

Up next, the Jeffs will travel to Tufts to take on Ithaca College in the Sweet Sixteen on Friday, March 14 at 5 p.m.

MEN’S GOLF

Nicole Yang ’16 Managing Sports Editor The Amherst men’s golf team is traveling to North Carolina for spring break to train at Pinehurst Golf Resort in preparation for their upcoming season. The team led by senior captains, Erik Hansen and Nicholas Koh, has four competitions this spring, culminating in the NESCAC Championships at the end of April.

“We will be practicing endlessly to achieve our ulimate goal, winning the NESCAC Championship at Midd. A victory at NESCAC’s could be our ticket to the national championship,” said first-year Liam Fine, who finished ninth overall at the ECAC New England Div. III Championships to close his debut fall season.

Juniors Josh Moser and Jarvis Sill also look

to build upon their stellar fall campaigns, where Moser placed fifth at the Trinity Invitational and Sill earned seventh at the Williams Invitational.

“With the implementation of an unheard of physical fitness regime, we intend to take the mantra of the ‘hardest working golf team in Div. III’ to the course,” Nick Kafker ’17 said.

Their first match of the season is the Westport Hampton Inn Invitational at UMass Dartmouth, where the Jeffs placed third last year with Sill and Moser both finishing within the top 15.

Until then, the team will enjoy their week in North Carolina and practice outside at Hickory Ridge Golf Club once the weather warms up.

“The trip not only provides us with an opportunity to seriously work our games before the season but also fosters a great team bonding experience,” Fine commented.

ATHLETE SPOTLIGHT

Andrew Kurlandski ‘14

Karen Blake ’17

Favorite Team Memory: Beating Williams Favorite Team Memory: The 2014 Div. III Indoor Championships in the 2014 NESCAC Semifinals Favorite Pro Athlete: Allyson Felix Favorite Pro Athlete: Brett Hull Dream Job: No idea Pet Peeve: When people shush me Dream Job: Fishing guide Favorite Vacation Spot: Disney World!

Pet Peeve: Cell phones in restaurants AKA “The Happiest Place on Earth” Favorite Vacation Spot: Pentwater, Mich.

Something on Your Bucket List: Travel to Something on Your Bucket List: Climbing every continent Guilty Pleasure: Prison shows. I binge Mount Rainer watch MSNBC’s Locked Up Favorite Food: Bread or breakfast food Favorite Food: The Juicy Lucy Favorite Thing About Amherst: Everyone Favorite Thing About Amherst: “The boys” is so nice.

Women’s Tennis Opens Season with MIT Sweep

Chris Rigas ’16 Staff Writer

The third-ranked Amherst women’s tennis team opened its spring season with a dual match sweep of 17th-ranked MIT. The Jeffs’ no. 1 doubles team, seniors Gabby Devlin and Jordan Brewer, coasted to an 8-1 victory over MIT seniors Lauren Quisenberry and Julia Hsu. On the no. 2 court, two more seniors, Jen Newman and Zoe Pangalos, earned a 9-8 (4) tiebreak victory over the Engineers’ duo of Elysa Kohrs and Victoria Tam. “Jen and Zoe went down in their match 3-7 and had to win four straight games to stay in; heroically they won five straight to go up 8-7.

MIT then tied the score at 8 all and forced a tiebreaker,” said head coach Jackie Bagwell. “I feel our team’s body language went south after a few mistakes, and our confidence went down. Once they let their mistakes go and stayed in the present, they got back in the driver’s seat.”

In the no. 3 doubles match, sophomore Sarah Monteagudo and junior Safi Aly knocked off the MIT team of Michelle Dutt and Krystal Lai, 8-6.

The Jeffs dropped just two sets in their sweep of the singles matches. On the no. 1 court, Brewer defeated Quisenberry 6-2, 7-5. After a 6-2 first set victory, Devlin dropped the second to Kohrs, 3-6, but she rallied and took the final set 6-4 to win in the no. 2 spot. On the no. 3 court, Newman handled Wendi Kong in two sets, 6-1, 6-2.

Sue Ghosh ’16 and Pangalos also had little trouble, playing in the no. 4 and no. 5 courts, respectively. Ghosh beat Tam 6-2, 6-2, and Pangalos defeated junior Vynnie Kong, 6-3, 6-2. In the No. 6 spot, Monteagudo lost the first set to Lai, but took the second set and third set tiebreaker decisively to earn a 4-6, 6-2, 10-5 victory.

“Both Gabby and Monte put tremendous pressure on themselves which often makes them play tight,” Bagwell said. “Coach Soyster, my assistant, came to the rescue asking both of them to quit hitting hundred dollar shots when fifty dollar shots would do. Problem solved.”

The Jeffs return to action March 17 against 10th-ranked Pomona-Pitzer, when they open a week long trip to California. The trip will also feature matches against Cal State Fullerton, Concordia, Claremont Mudd-Scripps and Whittier.

Men’s Lax Loses 17-15 to Bowdoin in Final Minutes Greg Williams ’16 Staff Writer The men’s lacrosse team trekked up to Brunswick, Maine this past weekend to play the Polar Bears in their second NESCAC game of the year.

Though the game was hotly contested, it was Bowdoin who managed to edge the Jeffs in the final minutes of the game to earn the 17-15 win. The Jeffs fell to 1-1, while Bowdoin improved to 3-0.

The first quarter of the game appeared to be heading toward a defensive struggle, with Amherst going up 2-1. Both teams were ringing up points in the second quarter, as each team managed six goals, making the game 8-7 at the half.

Amherst extended their lead in the third, outscoring Bowdoin 5-3, but the Polar Bear offense came alive in the fourth, outscoring the Jeffs 7-2, to claim the victory.

With the score 15-16 with minutes remaining in the game, there were numerous chances for the Jeffs’ offense. Amherst had a man-up situation for 30 seconds when Kane Haffey ’16 sent the potential game-tying shot off the post.

Dylan Park ’16 opened the scoring with the

two initial goals and finished with three on the day, and Devin Acton ’14 lead all Jeffs with five goals. Haffey finished with four points, while fellow sophomore Quinn Moroney had a pair of goals and three assists. Aaron Mathias ’14 and Chris Albanese ’17 also scored for the Jeffs.

Bowdoin edged Amherst in shots 51-46, and both teams had 15 turnovers for game. Notably, Amherst scooped up 27 ground balls and won 17 out of 36 face-offs.

On Tuesday night, the Jeffs traveled to Willimantic, Conn. to face ECSU. Amherst cruised to a 17-1 victory and improved their record to 2-1.

Acton had another five-goal performance to lead all players, scoring unassisted three times.

Haffey tallied another four goals for the Jeffs, while Quinn Moroney dished out seven assists in addition to scoring a goal of his own. Fellow sophomore Charlie Gill contributed to the prolific scoring with two goals in the third quarter.

The Jeffs hope to continue their offensive success this Friday, when they travel to face Endicott on March 14. The team will then fly south for a week in Orlando, Fla. with games against Western New England, Hamilton and MIT.

The Amherst Student • March 12, 2014

Women’s Lacrosse Tops Babson, Bowdoin

Holly Burwick ’16 Staff Writer The 11th-ranked Amherst women’s lacrosse team notched two wins this week to continue their undefeated start to their 2014 campaign.

On Wednesday, the Jeffs walked away with a 16-2 defeat of Babson College in their home opener on Gooding Field. Senior captain Krista Zsitvay led the Jeffs with five goals off of just six shots to bring her season total to a team leading nine goals.

“We got on a roll and never looked back. They are a good team, and we put them on their heels and it was hard for them to generate much attack,” Coach Chris Paradis said.

Alex Philie ’14 started things off for the Jeffs by scoring just 1:53 into the first half. Less a minute later, Zsitvay notched her first goal of the game off of a Heath Cockrell ’15 assist.

Continuing this trend, the Jeffs found themselves up 12-0 at halftime. Contributing to this lead were three from Zsitvay, another Philie tally and a goal apiece from Priscilla Tyler ’15, Caroline Holliday ’14, Mia Haughton ’16, Elizabeth Ludlow ’14, Rachel Passarelli ’16 and Devin O’Connor ’16.

In the second half, the Jeffs largely resorted to possession although they snuck a few more goals past the Babson goaltender. Coco Kusiak ’17 scored her first goal of her college career while Haughton, Passarelli and Zsitvay each added an additional tally to close out the game. Babson retaliated with two goals, but the victory remained a decisive one for the Jeffs. Amherst sophomore goalie Christy Forrest rounded out the game with two saves.

On Saturday, Amherst faced 12th-ranked

Bowdoin in its second NESCAC matchup of the season. Zsitvay had another team leading performance with four goals.

In the first half, the Jeffs outshot the Polar Bears 11-2. Zsitvay opened up the scoring seven minutes into the game off a Meghan Mills ’15 assist. Holliday increased the Jeffs’ lead to 2-0 off an unassisted goal less than two minutes later. Bowdoin retaliated with a score of its own, but Tyler and Zsitvay added goals to give Amherst a 4-1 advantage going into halftime.

Philie gave the Jeffs a strong start to the second half by directing a pass from Ludlow into the lower right corner of the Bowdoin net. However, the Polar Bears regained some momentum, scoring twice before exchanging goals with Amherst to bring the score to 6-4. Paradis noted she was happy that the Jeffs were able to regain momentum and close out the game on a strong note despite this temporary shift.

Passarelli added a goal to the mix while Zsitvay and Philie capitalized on Bowdoin’s empty net to bring the final score to 9-4. The Jeffs held a 22-13 shot advantage and a 15-8 edge in groundballs.

Forrest posted eight saves for the Jeffs in net.

“Many things are going well for us right now,” Paradis said. “We are causing turnovers all over the field and this is giving us more offense. On the attack, many different players are stepping up, and on defense, whatever we don’t stop as a unit, Christy Forrest is taking care of in goal.”

The Jeffs will return to action this Thursday, March 13 at 7 p.m. on the road against Springfield College, which will be a good non-conference test for the Jeffs.

TK14: Endgame

Thomas Kleyn ’16 Columnist It’s February 3, 2013. The clock of Super Bowl XLVII reads triple zeroes, and Ray Lewis in the last year of his storied career is an NFL champion for the second time. The championship did not come without a price. Against all odds, 38-yearold Lewis came back from a torn tricep to play during the Ravens’ playoff push. His toughness and motivation inspired others Ravens’ players to raise their level of play, as they drew strength from their leader. It is warriors like Lewis who capture the attention of sports fans who marvel at the freakish athleticism they witness through their televisions.

As much as athletes prove otherwise, they are just as human as the rest of us. Players like Lewis, who play for 10 years-plus are even rarer.

The miles that someone like Lewis puts on his body from 17 years of football go far beyond just those 17 years, and he knows that.

As fans, we only watch the performance not the preparation. We see the games but not the stretching, rehab and surgeries. The cruelty of sports is that not everyone can win even though everyone puts a tremendous amount of work in towards staying healthy and continuing to perform at a high level. Lewis was lucky enough to go out on top, but some players are left with an aching body for life and no ring on their finger.

Take Steve Nash, the Lakers’ 40-year-old point guard. Nash is a surefire Hall of Famer who has been the league’s MVP and one of the top point guards in the NBA during his career. He is only missing a championship ring and knows his time is running out. Nash is documenting the uphill battle he faces in trying to stay healthy and relevant for the Lakers at the end of his career with a video diary. He describes how early in his career he could play four games a week without a problem. Nowadays, he puts himself through a barrage of rehabilitation treatments every day to alleviate the pain in his back that he faces from years of jumping and cutting on the court. Even with treatment, it is difficult for Nash to play at the level he once did.

Great players don’t lose their passion for success, but they do lose their ability to achieve success when their bodies fail them.

One of basketball’s greats Kobe Bryant is

dealing with a similar situation. Unlike Nash, Kobe has five championship rings, but now the injuries are piling up, and Kobe cannot seem to stay on the court. Like Nash, Kobe can’t comprehend the fact that the pace of the game is catching up to him. He can’t let go of the player he once was. As rational fans, when we see someone like Brett Favre come out of retirement, just to get pummeled by bigger, stronger and faster players half his age, we can’t help but wonder, why? Why not listen to your body telling you that it’s time to quit?

Professional athletes spend their whole lives devoted to their respective sports, so it’s very difficult for them to accept that there is a time to give it up. In that respect, athletes don’t think rationally.

In Brett Favre’s mind, if he has the will to compete, then he should keep playing, regardless of the toll it may take on his body. It’s not something that the ordinary person can understand, and it’s also not something that all athletes think about.

To play more than 10 years by itself is an accomplishment. Most athletes’ bodies get the better of them a few years into their careers. It may be a career ending injury from the wear and tear of the game or just general fatigue that leads to a loss of talent. Veterans of the game are an elite brotherhood. They have managed to outplay their age and stay relevant even with younger competition.

Derek Jeter is another player who has survived the test of time. From his rookie year in 1996 to now, he has hauled in accolades and collected five World Series rings. Jeter is one of the most iconic Yankees of the modern era, and his legacy will live on long after he retires. Because he is such a mainstay in the Yankees lineup, it is hard to believe that 2014 will be Jeter’s last season.

Like Kobe, Lewis, Nash and Favre, Jeter is slowly being forced to accept the fact that he cannot play forever. Limited by an ankle injury last season, the Yankees captain played just 14 games and was forced to watch helplessly as his team failed to qualify for the playoffs. Like every great athlete, Jeter wants to go out on top. He wants to be like Lewis and leave the game with another ring.

When Jeter announced his pending retire-

March Madness

Sports 11

Kess Kolumn

Jeremy Kesselhaut ’16 As conference championships begin, college basketball fans are earerly awaiting the arrival of the NCAA tournament. Beyondwinning $1 billion dollars if they fill out a perfect bracket, fans are excited for the drama and excitement that March Madness promises. Viewing professional basketball compared to college basketball, Kess dives into the differences that make the NCAA tournament the most exciting sporting event of the year.

Every basketball fan associates the calendar change from February to March with the word “Madness”. March Madness, the namesake of the NCAA Div. I Basketball Championship, is one of the greatest sporting events every year.

I won’t argue it’s more entertaining than the Super Bowl, the World Cup or the Olympics. However, I am not shy to praise Div. I College Basketball and March Madness over the NBA and its playoffs.

The unpredictability, volatility and larger skill gap between the players makes college basketball more exciting to watch than the NBA. While the two leagues share similarities, they are also marked by drastic differences.

The most obvious contrast between the two is the players’ motivation.

In the NBA, players are undoubtedly driven by monetary compensation, and the league’s minimum annual salary is an astounding $490,180. Even the least talented players make enough money to live a luxurious lifestyle.

The average salary of NBA players is $5.1 million, which is more than players in any other professional sport including the MLB ($3.3 million), the NHL ($2.4 million) and the NFL ($1.9 million).

Excluding scholarships, college players are not paid; as a result, college basketball players are less self-directed and more externally driven. They play for the pride of their teammates, their coaches and their school.

Money seems to have negatively impacted the level and style of play in the NBA. College basketball games are marked by more team-oriented play. The NBA is an offensedominated league with players paying little attention to defense.

Meanwhile, college basketball is equally offensive as it is defensive, making points hard to come by and the margin of victory much closer.

NBA games are 48 minutes and have a 24 second shot clock, while college basketball games are 40 minutes and have a 35 second shot clock. The average NBA team scores 100.4 points per game and the average NCAA Div. I team scores 71.4 points.

While some argue that offense sells tickets, it is a defensive-presence that creates hardly fought, closely contested games that go down to the wire.

NBA teams are characterized and identified by individual players. The Miami Heat is Lebron James’ team. The Oklahoma City Thunder is Kevin Durant’s team. The New York Knicks is Carmelo Anthony’s team. The Chicago Bulls will always be Michael Jordan’s team.

In college basketball, coaches are unquestionably the faces of their teams. The Duke Blue Devils is Mike Krzyzewski’s team. The Michigan State Spartans is Tom Izzo’s team.

The Kentucky University Wildcat’s is John Calipari’s team. The UCLA Bruins will always be John Wooden’s team.

With coaches, rather than players, at the forefront of college basketball teams, players respect and listen to their coaches and are much more disciplined. In addition, schematics, organization and fundamentals, including boxing out for rebounds and keeping hands up on defense, become much more pivotal in college basketball than in the NBA. The NBA has become much more of a one-on-one game compared to the fiveon-five game that marks college basketball.

While there are less acrobatic, freakishly athletic and newsworthy plays in college basket-

ball, there are more stimulating and exhilarating games.

The team-focused mentality of college basketball in contrast to the player-focused mentality of the NBA lends itself to increased volatility and decreased predictability in competition.

If you asked any knowledgeable NBA fan in the beginning of the year to predict the top two teams in the Eastern and Western Conferences at the end of the 2014 season, there is a high probability they would say the Miami Heat and the Indiana Pacers in the East, and the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs in the West.

Guess what? The Heat and Pacers were in the Eastern Conference championship the year before and the Spurs were in the Western Conference championship. The Thunder were expected to reach the conference championship as the No. 2 seed but lost due to a hobbled Russell Westbrook.

In the NBA, teams that are better on paper and that are expected to win generally come out on top. I suppose this is due to the lack of defense and the role of individual players in the NBA and decreased parity. In college basketball, there is a lot more mobility and unpredictability.

The AP Preseason Rankings had only one of the top-five ranked teams in the current AP Rankings. That team is Duke, who has been outside the top-10 for the majority of the season.

The difficulty of predicting college basketball, especially during March Madness, makes it all the more exciting. Top seeded teams falter and unranked, under-skilled teams score upset victories.

Take Syracuse. The Orange held the No. 1 overall national ranking with a 25-0 record.

However, Syracuse was dethroned of their top seed after a very unexpected loss to Boston College, who held an unimpressive 7-19 record on the season. BC’s 19 losses were the most by a team ever to defeat the No. 1 overall ranked team.

Even more impressive was the fact that BC won on the road because Syracuse had won 46 straight home games against unranked opponents at the Carrier Dome, and BC wasn’t even close to being ranked.

The Orange went on to lose two of its next three games. Upsets like these, that are much less common in the NBA, keep college basketball fans intrigued.

In 2010 and 2011, Butler University, the small, unknown Indiana school, miraculously made the finals in consecutive years as the fifth and eigth-seeds respectively. This amazing run propelled Butler’s head coach Brad Stevens to take Doc River’s position as head coach of the Boston Celtics.

Last year, Wichita State reached the final four as the ninth seed and Florida Golf Coast University reached the Sweet 16 as a 15thseed. FGCU was the first team to advance that far, upsetting a No. 2 and No. 7 seed in the process. This year, Wichita State has an impressive record of 31-0 and is looking to make another tournament run.

March Madness is simply more entertaining than the NBA Playoffs. With a field of 68 teams, I have learned to expect the unexpected. Obscure non-conference teams beat highly praised top-tier teams.

Heroes are born in both players and coaches. I know that my bracket will be marked up by a slew of red X’s, but the fun of March Madness comes in filling out the bracket and hoping for the best championship.

Sports

“Led by another excellent performance from senior Noami Bates, the women’s indoor track team won...”

Women’s Track & Field Brings... Page 9

Photo courtesy of Rob Mattson

Senior Andrew Kurlandski fights for control of the puck against a Williams defender in the NESCAC semifinals on Saturday. Kurdlanski scored two of his team-leading 11 goals on the season to bring his career total to 38.

Men’s Hockey Loses Heartbreaker in 2OT

Beat Williams in Semis, Can’t Top Bowdoin in Finals Greg Williams ’16 Staff Writer The men’s ice hockey team’s season came to a close this past weekend in a thrilling double overtime showdown in the NESCAC Championship game. The Jeffs took down the Ephs on Saturday to advance to the finals, where they faced off against the Bowdoin on Sunday. The latter game resulted in some of the best hockey of the entire year.

In the semis, Williams initiated the scoring 6:43 into the first, as the the Ephs got on the board first from a George Hunkele shot, an opportunity that was born from quality passing preceding the goal. Sophomore sensation Conor Brown struck back swiftly just a minute and half later to tie it up off of a pass from senior captain Brian Safstrom.

Amherst took only eight shots to Williams’ 15 in the first but were able to outshoot the Ephs the rest of the game, finishing with 44 total shots to Williams’ 38.

There was no scoring in the second period despite both teams racking up quality chances. Dave Cunningham ’16 stopped number of shots and was especially clutch during an Amherst penalty kill.

With the score tied a one apiece, the physicality ramped up in the third period, indicative of the magnitude of the game. Both teams were charged with a few penalties, but Amherst was able to convert on their power plays. 6:36 into the frame, senior captain Andrew Kurlandski capitalized on the man-up chance for his 10th score of the year, with assists from Brown and Jake Turrin ’15.

Kurlandski came back again later in the period to add the insurance goal with just over three minutes remaining. During another power play, juniors Aaron Deutsch and Michael Cashman set up Kurlandski’s one-timer that found the back of the net. Williams pulled their goalie for the last minute, but they couldn’t get past the stingy Jeff defense.

The 3-1 win advanced Amherst into the NESCAC championship game the following day.

“Beating Williams to get to the final was ter-

rific,” Head Coach Jack Arena said. “Our guys had a plan and stuck to it, and we were able to be opportunistic on the power play.”

On Sunday, Amherst was set to face Bowdoin, who had knocked-off the top seed Trinity the day before. In their last match-up at home, Amherst defeated Bowdoin 5-3, so both teams were prepared for a battle.

The Polar Bears started the scoring when Danny Palumbo notched one by Cunningham off of assists from Matt Sullivan and Zach Kokosa. There was no more scoring in the first, and in the second period Amherst gained momentum. The Jeffs had four power plays during the frame and capitalized on the final one of the period 17:50 in. Elliot Bostrom ’14 scored with a slap shot from the point, and Safstrom had the assist, his 11th of the season.

Entering the third period even at one all, both teams looked to build some momentum for the final push. Just over halfway through the period, Bowdoin took the lead, but then a little over a minute later, Amherst tied it right back up at 2-2.

Though the Jeffs outshot the Polar Bears in the frame, the game would head to overtime. The first sudden-death period ran its entire course without either team able to decide the outcome. The puck dropped for the second overtime, and Bowdoin ended the contest just 22 seconds in with a solid shot that found its way into the upper corner.

“I was awfully proud of the way we played. We were a little tight in the first but bounced back, and I thought we carried the play until the game ended.

We worked and competed extremely hard. In a sudden death situation it comes down to one play, and they made it,” Arena said. “Dave Cunningham was excellent in both games and was a huge key in our success this year.”

With 605 saves on the season and a 92.5 save percentage, the sophomore goalie was instrumental in many of the Jeffs’ wins throughout the season and was especially clutch from the end of the regular season into the playoffs.

“Our final regular season weekend is one of

our toughest because Williams is obviously our biggest rival. I was very proud of the way we played.

Throughout the playoffs we went into every period knowing we were going to dominate, and I could not be more impressed with our work ethic and commitment to excellence,” Cunningham said.

The championship game was fittingly best game the NESCAC saw all year.

“Being in double OT was surreal. There is literally no comparative feeling. Every time they had the puck the only thing going through my mind was ‘not yet.’ It was so nerve-racking. I think the game took 10 years off my mother’s life. Never easy being the goalie’s mom,” Cunningham added.

“Mentally, as a team we remained focused even though we were physically drained. We worked so hard throughout the season, so we were in far better shape than Bowdoin, but it ended up just coming down to a lucky bounce that landed on their best scorer’s stick. We deserved to win that game, so its going to sting for a while. It’s not every year you get the opportunity to compete in the finals, and

I think this year’s sophomore and freshman class now know what it takes to win a championship.”

Sunday’s final marked the last game for Amherst’s stellar senior class, as the team will say goodbye to critical offensive and defensive contributors, including Kurlandski, Safstrom, Bostrom and Ryan Edwards.

“The seniors were an unbelievable group, and I’m so happy to have spent the last two seasons with them. Everyone had a different role, but each and every one of them was a role model for the rest of the team. It was really tough seeing all the emotion in the locker room after the final game, knowing almost all of the seniors have played their last ever hockey game. These seniors have done so much for this program, and there is nothing I want more than to win the NESCAC next year for them,” Cunningham said.

The championship game marked the end of the Jeffs’ 2014 campaign, as Bowdoin and Trinity will represent the NESCAC in the NCAA Div. III tournament.

Photo courtesy of Rob Mattson

Ryan Edwards ’14 tries to get the puck past the Williams goalie in Amherst’s 3-1 victory in the NESCAC Semifinals.