Issue 15

THE AMHERST

THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868

STUDENT VOLUME CXLVII, ISSUE 15 l WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2018

Women’s Swim and Dive Picks Up Two Wins See Sports, Page 9 AMHERSTSTUDENT.AMHERST.EDU

Best-Selling Author Gives Talk on Nonfiction Book Sehee Park ’20 Staff Writer

Photo courtesy of Sarah Wishloff ’19

Administrators released the updated Party Policy on Jan. 26, citing occupancy hazards and risk to student safety — including increased alcohol-related hospital transports — as the reasoning behind changes.

ACEMS Data Challenges Reasons for New Party Policy Shawna Chen ’20 Managing News Editor Data provided to The Student by a member of the Amherst College Emergency Medical Services (ACEMS) calls into question administrators’ assertion that the college needed to overhaul the Party Policy at the beginning of the semester due to a significant increase in risks to student wellbeing.

Student Affairs released an updated version of the Party Policy on Jan. 26 to student backlash.

Changes include requiring one party sponsor per 20 people as opposed to the previous 50 and expecting party sponsors to work with staff to manage attendance levels.

The college designates the authority to revise policies in certain sections of the Student Code of Conduct to specific entities such as the Committee of Six, College Council and Association of Amherst Students (AAS). Most but not all policy revisions undergo “some [community-based] vetting mechanism” such as a student body vote, according to Senior Associate Dean of Students Dean Gendron. The party policy did not.

Though the college usually makes edits to the document during the summer months, Gendron said there are times when administrators need to “be quicker than that and don’t have the opportunity or maybe it’s not appropriate even to have a long-term consensus building process.”

“We might forego that process in very limited cases,” he added. “Where local state or federal law has changed and where the college is now responsible for new expectations that need to be immediately translated into our code, or where ... the college recognizes that there is some policy or some procedure or practice that is not appropriately protecting health or safety, we would put measures in place to protect health and safety without delay.”

The revisions to the party policy, Gendron said, was such a case — focused on health and safety, not “social life scenes or some of the more student preference or student party culture aspects of this.” Those decisions, he said, should be community-based and occur over longer periods of time where “student voice is large and where all students have the opportunity to weigh in.”

Gathering information received through Amherst Town Police, Amherst College Police, residential and other professional staff, Keefe Health Center and ACEMS, the college ascertained that policies needed to change to protect against risks to fire and life safety. The college is seeing clear trends, Gendron said, in increased alcohol-involved incidents and hospital transports.

ACEMS declined to comment for the story, but according to an ACEMS member who provided data on conditions of anonymity in order to protect against possible consequences from administrators, an internal review found no statistically significant differences in proportions of alcohol-related hospital transports between the semesters of Spring 2015 through Fall 2017.

ACEMS responded to 17 alcohol-related hospital transports in Spring 2015, 24 in Fall 2015, 16 in Spring 2016, 14 in Fall 2016 and nine in Spring 2017. In Fall 2017, ACEMS responded to 26.

The Student examined the number of alcoholrelated transports compared to total number of transports and found that in previous semesters starting from Spring 2015 and including Fall 2017, alcohol-related transports were approximately 30 to 50 percent of total transports. Last semester, they comprised 53.1 percent of transports, which is on the higher side of ACEMS statistics.

The internal review backs up the statement that “[l]ast fall, hospital transports related to intoxication exceeded transports for the entire previous academic year,” as Chief Student Affairs Officer Suzanne Coffey and Gendron wrote in an email to the student body on Jan. 30.

The proportion of alcohol-related transports in Fall 2017, however, only surpassed that in Spring 2017 by approximately 3.1 percent.

The number of total hospital transports in Fall 2017 was in the 40s, a number in line with the total hospital transports in Fall 2015, Spring 2016 and Fall 2016. That number dipped unusually low to 18 in Spring 2017.

“There was no statistical evidence of any change between Fall 2017 and previous semesters in proportions of alcohol-related calls or alcoholrelated transports out of total calls and transports, respectively,” the ACEMS review concluded. “No ACEMS members, including those who have

been responding to alcohol-related calls for multiple semesters, have reported subjective increases in alcohol levels in transported students.”

ACPD Chief John Carter wrote in an email interview that 28 police calls involving overconsumption of alcohol required transportation to the hospital in Fall 2017, whereas 25 calls involving overconsumption of alcohol required transportation to the hospital in the 2016-2017 academic year. Additional numbers of calls not reflected in ACEMS’ statistics occurred in locations outside its service area or while ACEMS was out of service.

Carter did not provide numbers for semesters prior to the last academic year or records from the Amherst Town Police.

“On average approximately 20 persons a fall semester are transported for alcohol medical reasons, but our heightened concern this year stems from the serious condition of many of last fall’s transports,” Carter added. “This is not purely an issue of numbers.”

Director of Health Services Emily Jones said that Keefe Health Center has been implementing a tracking system to follow alcohol-related incidents since her arrival at the college at the beginning of the last academic year. According to Jones, Keefe receives emergency room reports, including laboratory data, on students transported to the hospital for alcohol or drug intoxication.

“These reports have indicated some extremely high blood alcohol levels this past semester,” Jones said in an email interview. “This data is concerning as many of these blood alcohol levels have been high enough to cause loss of consciousness, and could even have been in the range of causing respiratory depression or death.”

Jones could not provide data on alcohol-related incidents prior to her arrival.

According to Director of Residential Life Andrea S. Cadyma, students voiced particular concerns to Residential Life regarding occupancy at parties, which led to the addition of language including staff in assisting with attendance levels.

“That was a measure that was intended to make students safer,” she said.

“We acted as deliberately as we could to put

Continued on Page 3

The New York Times best-selling author Jeff Hobbs spoke at Amherst on Jan. 31 in Stirn Auditorium about his book “The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League.” The talk was hosted by the Conferences and Special Events Office.

Hobbs received a bachelor of arts in English language and literature from Yale in 2002 and published his first fiction novel, “The Tourists,” in 2007. He published his first work of nonfiction, “The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace,” in 2014.

In his introduction of Hobbs, Adam Hutchinson ’93, assistant coach of the men’s basketball team, said that though the book discusses Peace’s upbringing, his time at Yale and his return to Newark, it is also “about much, much more.”

The title, Hutchinson said, echoed the theme of “two Americas,” which is in itself a shorthand acknowledgement that there are a myriad of experiences to be found in the United States. He discussed how higher education is “almost universally recognized as an important key to upward mobility,” but pointed out that there are deep costs, not only in the financial sense, that come with the opportunity.

Following his introduction, Hobbs began by talking about his relationship to Peace. Peace was Hobbs’ “college roommate and friend for four years” at Yale. Peace was later a groomsman at Hobbs’ wedding, but after graduation, they lived on opposite coasts of the country and only talked “four or five times a year.”

“It seemed like there would always be time for a reunion,” Hobbs said. “There wasn’t.” Nine years after graduation, Peace was shot twice and killed by men in ski masks in a basement where he had been selling marijuana.

After laying out the facts of Peace’s death, Hobbs circled back and fleshed out who Peace was as a person. Peace was from a town outside of Newark nicknamed Illtown, a place that “wasn’t Disneyland, but it was home.” He lived with his mother, while his father, convicted of a double murder when Peace was young, was incarcerated.

When Hobbs met Peace, he quickly realized that “Rob was not typical, not just because of where he grew up but because he was a straight-A student in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, which is about as easy as it sounds.” Peace was also captain of the water polo team for two years, and was “very bright and very popular.”

Peace also “smoked a lot of weed and sold a lot of weed” from their dorm room. Hobbs said that Peace never seemed to spend the money on himself, however, and posited that he had been saving it for the future.

“But what I didn’t know, was not aware of, was the huge and complicated set of discomforts Rob experienced, coming from his home to Yale,” Hobbs said. “How to reconcile the gratitude he had for this education that was a gift … with a very real resentment of lively, affluent peers like myself.

How to manage the guilt knowing that his mother was home crying every night” as well as “guilt for high school friends — also bright guys who had aspirations but they couldn’t go to college because of financial or other reasons.”

Peace didn’t know “how to ask for help without

Continued on Page 3

News

Dianne Pater Fresh Faculty

Jan. 31, 2018 - Feb. 4, 2018

>>Jan. 31, 2018 2:25 p.m., Off-Campus Locations An employee reported receiving harassing phone calls at his off campus address.

10:38 p.m., Appleton Hall Officers and the Fire Department responded to an alarm that originated on the first floor, but no cause could not be identified.

>>Feb. 1, 2018 1:03 a.m, Mayo-Smith House An officer discovered a bottle of hard alcohol unattended in the first-floor common room. It was disposed of.

10:51 p.m., North College Dormitory Officers investigated a smoke detector sounding on the second floor and detected the odor of marijuana. The origin could not be identified.

4:18 p.m., Off Campus Locations A student reported a case of online harassment.

7:16 p.m., Beneski Earth Science and Natural History Museum Officers investigated an intrusion alarm, but no cause could be identified. >>Feb. 2, 2018 12:13 a.m., Plimpton House A caller complained of loud music and people yelling. The party sponsor was contacted by phone and advised.

12:32 a.m., Hitchcock House An officer responded to a complaint of a loud party and located a group of students with loud music in the first-floor common room. The gathering was shut down.

12:36 a.m., Plimpton House Officers responded to a complaint of a loud party and people yelling outside of Plimpton.

Upon arrival, officers located a small group of students who were leaving the building.

12:49 a.m., Lipton House Officers responded to a complaint of a loud party in the basement and located an unregistered event. It was shut down. >>Feb. 3, 2018 12:11 a.m., King Dormitory Officers responded to a complaint of a loud unregistered party of the first floor. The gathering was shut down.

10:33 p.m., Charles Drew House An underage student was found in possession of a bottle of hard alcohol while entering an event.

The alcohol was confiscated and the matter was referred to Student Affairs.

11:18 p.m., Charles Drew House A glass pipe used to smoke marijuana and a grinder used to grind marijuana were confiscated during a pat-down at the entrance to an event. The matter was referred to Student Affairs.

11:47 p.m., Lipton House Officers responded to a noise complaint and found an unauthorized party in the basement.

It was shut down. >>Feb. 4, 2018 1:08 a.m., Cohan Dormitory An officer discovered unattended alcohol on the first floor. It was disposed of.

2:43 a.m., Charles Drew House An officer intervened in an altercation that began between a student and several non-students after a scheduled event.

3:34 a.m., Greenway Building B An officer responded to a complaint of loud music on the first floor of Building B and had it shut off.

10:57 a.m., Appleton Hall Officers and the Fire Department responded to an alarm and found it was activated by a detector on the first floor for an unknown reason. Facilities was notified.

1:55 p.m., Charles Pratt Dormitory ACPD received a report from Student Affairs about an incident involving underage possession of alcohol. They are following up on the issue.

8:52 p.m., Morrow Dormitory An officer responded to a complaint about the odor of marijuana on the fourth floor, but the origin could not be located.

Department of Biology

Dianne Pater is a visiting assistant professor of biology and a consortium for faculty diversity scholar. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of New Mexico and her doctorate from the University of California, San Diego.

Q: How did you first get interested in your field?

A: When I started as an undergrad, I knew that I wanted to do biology, but I was really interested in vaccine research … One of the intro classes at my university was a plant and animal form and function class, and I wasn’t really looking forward to the plant section — I was really looking forward to the animal section — but once the plant section started, it was really the first class I had ever taken where I walked away from every lecture with a list of questions that came up as I was listening to the lecture. I wound up going to the office hours of the professor with all those questions, and I eventually asked him if I could volunteer in his lab and then I got a research position in his lab and I’ve been working with plants ever since.

Q: Can you describe your research?

A: The main basis of my research is that I’m trying to understand how plants respond to environmental stresses and how they regulate water loss to the environment. Specifically what I’m looking at are natural variations in populations of crop plants as well as differences between crop plants and their bio relatives.

“

J o i n th e ! n o i t c e news s If you want to write for us, email schen20@amherst.edu or eswislow20@amherst.edu.

Q: Why liberal arts rather than a large research institution?

A: I like the small class sizes. When I was a grad student, the classes I was teaching in were huge, several hundred students in a lecture class. The ability to have these small classes for more personal interactions with students, as well as the flexibility to create my own courses and teach outside of a very restricted university curriculum was very appealing to me.

Q: Can you tell me more about the classes you’re teaching?

A: I’ve helped out with the labs for both of the biology intro classes, and this year I helped design some new labs for Biology 181 and I’m teaching one of the lab sections for that. I also just created a new course, which is Biology 250, and it’s called According to Science.

It’s a communication and literacy course. It’s basically looking at popular science articles and how science is presented in popular media and then looking at the actual scientific journal articles that either support or claim to support those popular science pieces. Also the students are going to be creating their own blogs where they’ll compare those popular pieces with the science, as well as creating their own blog posts talking about a scientific topic of their choice.

The ability to have these small classes for more personal interactions with students, as well as the flexibility to create my own courses and teach outside of a very restricted university curriculum was very appealing

Q: How is your research applicable to the broader world?

A: It’s pretty massively applicable actually. Climate change is affecting not only water availability for agriculture, but also we’re increasing the amount of irrigation we’re doing to crop plants, which is increasing salinity in the soil. The way that crop plants react to water stress and salt stress is controlled by very similar pathways within the plant. In order to keep up with the demand for food, especially with the growing populations, understanding how the genetic variations of plants correspond to survival rates and how plants regulate water loss is pretty important.

Q: What were you doing before coming to Amherst?

A: I just finished my Ph.D. at UC, San Diego.

Interested in having your voice heard on this campus?

I like working with students. It’s fun teaching them new things and getting the questions back from them. Also I have always been involved in mentorship and diversity initiatives, so having that opportunity to mentor students is really important to me.

Q: What brought you to Amherst?

A: I am here through a fellowship with the consortium of faculty diversity in the liberal arts colleges. I really enjoy teaching. I learned as a graduate student that I really liked being a TA [teaching assistant] and being in charge of my own classes. The opportunity to do research but also have a teaching load was very appealing to me rather than doing a research post doc.

Q: Do you prefer teaching or researching?

A: I like research and the discovery of it. But

”

Q: What do you like to do outside of the classroom?

A: I’m really big about going to concerts. I’m sort of a concert freak. I go to probably 50 or so concerts a year. Other than that, I really like playing pub trivia.

Q: Who’s your favorite musician?

A: There’s a singer-songwriter named Ryan Adams and I love him, but actually my favorite singer of all time is Glenn Phillips.

I’ve seen him probably 97 times in concert.

—Emma Swislow ’20

The Amherst Student • February 7, 2018

News

3

ACEMS Review Casts Doubt on Admin’s Party Policy Claims Continued from Page 1 measures in place to address occupancy and to bring to attention the abuse of alcohol,” Gendron added. “Student safety is not something we’re willing to negotiate with anyone.”

Gendron also acknowledged students’ concerns about architectural issues and lack of large gathering spaces on campus but said other administrators are working on space management to address the problem.

The process of policy revisions is overseen by different offices and committees depending on specific sections of the Student Code of Conduct.

The College Council holds authority over Section 1 — the Honor Code — but jurisdiction over policies past Section 1 depends on subject matter expertise or other governance structures. The Of-

fice of Residential Life oversees Sections 7 and 9, which relate to housing, while the Title IX review committee oversees Section 3, the sexual misconduct policy.

Student Activities is not as closely tied to specific sections in the code — the office is instead informed by the AAS, environmental health and safety standards, Five College risk management and Massachusetts state law, said Director of Student Activities Paul Gallegos.

According to Cadyma, Sections 7 and 9 have not changed since her arrival in July. “There typically isn’t a whole lot of change, and as a practice, students would be notified in advance,” she added.

In its revised party policy, Student Affairs originally required party sponsors to meet with staff prior to party authorization to discuss guidelines and expectations but changed the language on its

webpage from “require” to “encourage” over the night of Jan. 29 — without notification to the student body. Gendron said this shift occurred once staff members felt the mandate would impede the process of party approval.

“While there is no prescribed mechanism for notifying students about changes to policy or procedures, it is our practice to send communitywide notice to students with as much notice as is feasible,” Gendron said. He did not provide a clear reason for the lack of notification regarding the current change.

“Really, timing was the most challenging aspect of this because the semester was upon us and we wanted to not start the semester with one understanding and then a couple weeks into it, say, ‘We’re now going to do this because of fire and life safety,’” he said.

AAS President Aditi Krishnamurthy ’18 said she is working with Coffey and Coffey’s team to hold a town hall, which will be announced this week. Krishnamurthy maintained that while the party policy revisions were not necessarily unwarranted, the manner in which they were changed was “extremely sudden” and said administrators could have waited and listened to more input. “[The town hall] will be an opportunity for students to come and engage with the administrators who put together these policy changes,” she said. “There needs to be face-to-face, direct communication … I’m doing everything in my power to make that happen.”

Kathleen Maeder ’20 contributed reporting for this story.

Author Jeff Hobbs Speaks on Writing the Story of His Close Friend Continued from Page 1 admitting that he needed it.”

Hobbs, however, was careful to emphasize that Peace had not been a “brooding Hamlet” because of these pressure. “When we watched him receive his diploma in the spring of 2002, he seemed not just destined but maybe even chosen to fulfill all of his dreams and all the dreams other people had for him,” Hobbs said.

But nine years later, Hobbs received the news that Peace had been killed. He attended the funeral along with 400 other people.

“Those of us in the church did our best … to celebrate him,” Hobbs said. People told stories about Rob, and after the funeral, many of them kept in touch.

“At a certain point, I probably foolishly volunteered to make some compilation of these stories,” Hobbs said. Six months after the funeral, he found

himself in Peace’s mother’s home, asking for permission. Hobbs made sure she knew about his doubts and the uncertainties that came with the undertaking of such a project. Hobbs had never done nonfiction before this point, so he wasn’t sure what he was doing. Peace hadn’t been famous, and “it was really sad, so not many people would likely publish such a story.”

There was also discomfort over Hobbs’ role and the system he would be taking part in, “by which the vast majority of stories told in America are told by overeducated white men.” Hobbs recounts, however, that Peace’s mother simply said, “That would be nice,” and granted her permission.

Soon, what was originally intended to be a short piece grew and became over 1,000 pages. As the project got bigger, Hobbs began to question how Peace would feel about the book. “I think he’d be pretty pissed, in fact,” he said.

Collecting stories, Hobbs noticed “patterns of

recklessness, patterns that didn’t become apparent until it was too late.”

“Rob was the man. Peace was the man. But we can get so used to thinking of someone through the lens of being ‘the man’ that I think we all forgot that he was a man,” he said.

Hobbs said that while some students “are geared to believe that adults exist to help them,” others, like Peace, “had to see himself as a functioning adult from a very young age.” Peace saw the “very act of asking for help … as an expression of weakness, maybe even a source of shame.”

Hobbs ended the talk by saying that “there are no answers, really, in this story.” In fact, he said many readers expressed frustration because Hobbs didn’t assign blame to anything such as institutions, drugs or racism.

“When Rob died … it was easy to talk about the two worlds he lived in, to call him two men: his mother’s son or his father’s son, a drug dealer

and a nerd, Yale and Illtown,” Hobbs said. “It’s important to make sense of things, and it’s helpful to learn by putting stories into those boxes and trying to draw clean lines, but at the same time … he was one person, he lived in one world and he made it a pretty big one.”

A Q&A session followed the event, during which audience members asked for clarification of certain events in the book and inquired after the process of writing the book.

Katherine Hague ’18 said she read the book years ago and that she came to the talk because she wanted “to hear more about [Hobbs’] experience writing the book.”

Maria Mejia ’20, on the other hand, said that because the talk was prefaced with the mention of “two Americas,” she had expected that Hobbs “would go deeper into the reasons why Rob died,” and stated that the talk “left so many open-ended questions.”

AAS Senator Candidate Statements

On Friday, Feb. 9, the AAS will hold elections for two senators from the Class of 2018 and one senator from the Class of 2019. The students below have announced their candidacies for these elections. Students who are interested in hearing from these candidates, or interested in running but were unable to submit a candidate statement, should attend Speech Night on Thursday, Feb. 8 at 7:30 p.m. in Merrill 1.

Silvia Sotolongo — 2019 Senator My name is Silvia Sotolongo, and I’m running to be a senator for the class of 2019. As part of my duties as senator this year, I would like to join Judiciary Council to (1) edit the AAS constitution to use more inclusive language and (2) reinforce bylaws that already exist, such as students on faculty councils being allowed to attend faculty meetings. I am also working with another student in the class of 2019 to make the fitness and gym spaces on campus more accessible and inclusive for all. I have served as a senator be-

fore, chairing the Transportation Committee and serving on Budgetary Committee and College Council. Additionally, I served as the secretary of AAS, where I oversaw the van usage and led the appointments process for at-large members of committee. These past experiences have allowed me to create connections in the administration and throughout the student body and learn how to effectively complete student-led projects. After going abroad this past fall semester, I am excited to be back on campus and get involved in student government again!

Nate Manwell — 2019 Senator My name is Nate Manwell, and I would love to serve, if given the opportunity, as the new senator for the class of 2019. I think I have two qualities that would make me an effective advocate for students. First, I am knowledgeable about the issues that matter to students here. This knowledge comes from observation and talking to other students, researching for a professor to develop a “Politics of Amherst College” course, writing a 25-page paper on food and class inequity at Amherst in an education seminar this past fall and

designing a special topics course on policing and college for this semester. Second, I will be unafraid of revealing the results of this research, regardless of its implications. I want to keep learning about Amherst, and I want to be able to use this learning to help my fellow students and the school at large. Thanks!

Hitchcock Fellowship The Department of Physical Education and Athletics invites applications for the Hitchcock Fellowship for the 2018-2019 academic year. The Hitchcock Fellowship is awarded to a graduating senior who wishes to pursue a career in the field of athletics, primarily teaching and coaching. The Hitchcock Fellow will be an Assistant Coach in at least two intercollegiate programs and may be assigned/elect other duties. Individuals interested in the position should send a letter of application and current resume no later than February 16, 2018 to: Jen Hughes Assistant Athletic Director Women’s Soccer Coach

Opinion

THE AMHERST

A Need for Collaboration

STUDENT E X E C U T I V E B OA R D

In light of the party policy, it’s clear that more needs to be done to foster open communication between students and administrators before major policies are implemented or changed. This, however, is something that should not be limited to party policy. Active, engaged and open discourse between the administration and students must be a cornerstone of how the school functions and operates. Moreover, transparency on behalf of the administration should be required even when it comes to seemingly banal alterations, such as wording or policy.

When changes are made, the administrators must be in conversation with the student body about the policies that could dramatically shift our Amherst experience and the role of the college in the broader community.

Given that the school changes administrators, student demographics and values over time, it is perfectly reasonable for policy to reflect this by being in flux.

However, change can and often times is disruptive — for better or for worse — and therefore the implications of these changes should be carefully considered communally.

Balancing the college’s administrative, political, financial and social goals doesn’t have an easy solution, nor should it be easy. The fact remains, however, that communication is key, because some of the larger issues that our campus must face, like policy regarding sexual assault or racial diversity to name a few, require collaboration. This conversation must continue as we try to find the right balance between competing interests. A community with vastly differing expectations regarding major issues needs cooperation, and the lack of it should be alarming to the administration and students.

While it’s good to see the dialogue opening up with regard to policies that students are discontent with,

namely the party policy, this should have been an active conversation before the changes were enacted — not just after. Additionally, policy revisals should be clearly and sufficiently justified so that students can at least understand why these changes are being made, even if they were not included in the decision-making process.

As students, we must figure out the most effective way to address unfavorable changes and advocate for positive ones. Our conversations should be grounded on shared aspirational values and how to achieve them as a community. Everyone wants a better college experience for students now and in the future. On top of that, it is important for the administration and the student body to engage in discourse on how Amherst College can play a role in the broader community. What is the college doing to not only foster these shared values within our campus, but to promote them at the local, state and national level?

How can we be striving towards a campus life that reflects the types of social change the college envisions itself being a part of? These questions are all part of what drives policy, and they should be answered in an open and transparent exchange between the administration and the student body. One of the things that can be done to is to hold more town hall-style events in which members of the student body and the administration actively discuss with each other the goals and means to reach those goals together.

Antagonistic attitudes between students and the administration hinder progress. Both sides must listen and think together instead of separately to address these attitudes. Moreover, honest discussion in public forums has to serve as the blueprint for how we go about changing the world around us for the better.

If I May: Seven More Things I Like or Don’t Like Jake May ’19 Columnist Last week, I wrote an in-depth article detailing my issues with the Amherst party policy. I had to read through the policy many times, and I also had to think very hard about what I was writing. The laws of the universe dictate that, since last week was serious, this week’s column must be silly and mostly irrelevant. Sorry, editors! There’s nothing I can do! It’s the law of the universe! With that in mind, here are “Seven More Things I like or Don’t Like”: 1. Marsh Coffee Haus Marsh Coffee Haus is a beautiful thing. It is a space where students from every corner of the school can come together and enjoy a night of each other’s talents. During this past Friday’s event, I saw poetry readings, acoustic guitar performances, juggling and standup comedy. I am thrilled that we have a space here at Amherst where students can express themselves through their art. However, while Coffee Haus is already great, there are some things that can make it even better. Having attended the majority of Coffee Hauses over the past two years (during which time I’ve been a Marsh resident), it has become clear that the same core group of people make up the audience and often the performers.

While I hope that this core group (which includes myself ) continues to attend and enjoy Coffee Haus, I also hope that this semester can usher in a new set of Coffee Haus enthusiasts. So, if you’re reading this article and have never attended or performed in a Coffee Haus, please consider coming by or signing up to perform!

2. The Grateful Dead The Grateful Dead is one of my all-time favorite bands. Personally, as a fan of im-

provised music, I connect with the Dead’s long, improvised jams, wherein lead guitarist Jerry Garcia takes the listener on a journey over the course of 15 to 20 minutes. It is these very jams that lead most people to scoff at the Grateful Dead’s music. Many say it just sounds like aimless noodling. Frankly, I understand this criticism. For one who is not interested in group improvisation, these jams can seem pointless. However, I would still urge any person to listen to Grateful Dead music. Instead of listening to the long jams, listen to the songs themselves that precede these jams. Not only is the music beautiful, but the lyrics — often written by non-member Robert Hunter — are insightful and thought-provoking. If you’re interested, start by checking out “Bertha,” “Eyes of the World,” “China Cat Sunflower” and “Althea”.

3. WAMH The longer I have spent at Amherst, the more I have come to love our student-run radio station, WAMH 89.3 FM. As a firstyear, I did not anticipate even being involved in the station, and now, two years later, I’m hosting two one-hour shows and going on the air whenever possible. WAMH, like Coffee Haus, is a wonderful way for Amherst students to express themselves. While there are a few rules, for the most part students are free to run whatever type of show they wish.

This leads to a great variety of programming on our schedule, which makes WAMH a joy to tune into no matter the time. Furthermore, the students who make up the WAMH executive board do a fantastic job of running the station. I want to take this opportunity to publicly thank them for their hard work!

4. Ice on the Ground On the way to the library to write this column, I slipped on ice on the ground and fell. This not only hurt physically, but also

emotionally. I do not like ice on the ground.

5. Coffey and Gendron’s Email The editorial in last week’s issue did a great job of addressing Suzanne Coffey and Dean Gendron’s email regarding the party policy; however, I wanted to briefly address one part of the email that particularly bothered me. Gendron and Coffey scolded us for taking the easy way out in blaming the administration for the social issues on campus.

They certainly have a point — as has been noted often, in addition to criticizing the administration, Amherst students must also change their own behavior. However, I’d say that Gendron and Coffey are also taking their own easy way out by blaming us as students.

Rather than the students and administration continuing to be at odds, both bodies should be looking inward to see how they can make positive changes.

6. TV Screen Outside of Val Last time I wrote a list of “Things I Like or Don’t Like”, I noted that I didn’t understand the TV screen outside of Val. I would like to now say that I understand it. Having the list of events up there is a great way to advertise events without wasting paper. And the photos are still cool, I guess.

7. The New England Patriots Losing in the Super Bowl As a New York Jets fan, I deeply, deeply despise the New England Patriots. Also as a Jets fan, I normally get very little joy from watching football, as the Jets are one of the most embarrassing sports organizations in the United States. However, one of the great joys I get to experience is watching the New England Patriots lose in the Super Bowl. This past Sunday was a truly joyful experience — until I realized that the Pats will probably just make it all the way back to the Super Bowl next year.

Editors-in-Chief Nate Quigley Isabel Tessier Managing News Shawna Chen Emma Swislow Managing Opinion Kelly Chian Daniel Delgado Managing Arts and Living Olivia Gieger Managing Sports Connor Haugh Henry Newton Julia Turner Managing Design Justin Barry Design Editors Katie Boback Zehra Madhavan Head Publishers Nico Langlois Mark Nathin

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The Amherst Student • February 7, 2018

Opinion

5

Cloned Monkeys, Nature and Humanity John Kim ’20 Staff Writer It’s only been a month into 2018 and already we boast a new milestone in human ingenuity. After 79 attempts that spanned several weeks, Zhongzhong and Huahua, the first two monkey clones in the world, were born in the Institute of Neuroscience at Shanghai. Their names form “ZhongHua,” which means “the Chinese nation or people,” as homage to China’s leadership in primate research in recent years.

Any milestone is a stepping stone. A pair of cloned monkeys means that we’ve proudly leaped across the threshold of cloning primates and are closer than ever to cloning humans. Because monkeys share nearly 90 percent of their genetic makeup with humans, researchers plan on studying the development of these cloned primates for

insights on childhood genetic disorders.

Yet, closer does not mean close. The cloning process used for Zhongzhong and Huahua is anything but reliable (as it stands, it has a 1/80 chance of success), and is incompatible with human embryos, so it seems Aldous Huxley’s dystopia is still a good march ahead.

It’s not surprising that we’re headed in this direction; controlling nature is our oldest pastime. Ever since we began plowing fields, each and every generation of humans has desired to understand and manipulate nature’s cryptic rules. The more nature has shown, the more we’ve yearned to draw back the curtains. Yet, with our curiosity comes a great fear of the unknown, and more importantly, of how we might change when the unknown becomes known. With every discovery, it’s not nature that frightens us so much as it is the threshold, for it forces us to

reformulate our conceptions of who we are and what we value.

As of now, we’re in a safe space when it comes to redefining our values. Zhongzhong and Huahua haven’t stirred up anything crazy, but they can at least help shine an insight into how we think about the distinction between nature and humanity.

Most of us deem the cloning births as artificial births, as “unnatural” manipulations of a “natural” reproduction process. Why? Precisely because it came as a result of human control. Our conception of “nature,” then, is something uninfluenced by direct human control, and our conception of “human” is as the controlling agent. “Nature” is the unknown and unseen and “human” is the knower and seer. Funnily enough, this very distinction is also a human construct, a tool with which we define what it means to be human and non-human. In a sense, we

are human because we can define ourselves.

The real perplexity behind human cloning is that it muddles this line. Cloned humans are ostensibly human in every other way except for how they’re born. If we can control the birthing process every step of the way to create a perfectly healthy and “normal” human being, are the clones really “human”? Ironically, it appears that for certain aspects of our humanity, denying nature’s work can actually make us non-human. The same applies to our dearly cherished ideas about romance. If you can chemically work out what love is and proceed to control it, is it really love? Are we really human if the love we feel can be dissected and concocted with scientific precision?

Zhongzhong and Huahua are proof that we’re still trying to answer these questions about ourselves. And while we look, to the frontiers we charge.

What Can We Do With Party Policy Discourse?

Brian Zayatz ’19E Contributing Writer Things have gotten a little crazy here at Amherst College. Crazy that a dean showed up to walk through Crossett Christmas. Crazy that these are the things that our student body apparently thinks we should “make some serious noise about” when a modern-day gestapo is deporting people from communities in our own backyard. But this is where campus discourse is at right now, so what do we do with that?

As frustrated as I and other campus leftists are that people don’t care about other far more egregious and insidious abuses of power around campus and our western Massachusetts community, I believe that this particular topic can be a window into many of the tensions and contradictions that we negotiate daily as Amherst students, as people living in our current historic-political context and as people, period.

We feel infantilized. As my friend Bryan Doniger ’18 noted in his Jan. 23 op-ed, if we don’t want to be treated like infants, we ought to start by not treating ourselves like infants.

The administration is not without its valid points about safety, and to deny this would indeed be rather infantile. I am not often one to side with the administration. But since we find ourselves at their more-or-less autocratic whim, we have little choice but to take their criticism seriously so that we can recognize what may be worth changing about our campus culture, and push back with legitimate counterpoints against their illogical or unfair

assertions. Suzanne Coffey writes in her wildly unpopular email of January 30th that “getting to a better place and a more vibrant social environment requires that you hold one another responsible and protect one another from excesses that could be highly risky for them or for other people [sic].” If we don’t take care of these issues ourselves, we are inviting infantilization by our campus Big Brother, or at least this is the logic provided to us.

We feel over-policed. We should talk about this, because we will not cease to be over-policed when we leave Amherst College.

Over-policing is predicated on a logic of infantilization — that we are not capable of taking care of ourselves — so that is just what we must do. We have to watch out for people getting too drunk at our parties. We have to watch out for predatory behavior at our parties. During my time living at the Zu, we tried to do this by assigning roles for people to remain sober, providing contact information for sober people in bathrooms and hallways and encouraging people to keep their eyes open and notify us of any unwanted behavior. Community responsibility is a messy project that takes trial and error. Police have had nearly 200 years to perfect their means of social control. We’re not going to learn how to undo our policed mindsets and care for each other overnight, but it is extremely important to practice. Even if it begins out of spite for a “Footloose”-esque administration, we have little to lose by implementing ethics of community self-care not only in our parties, but in our everyday lives. If we get started now,

we might be able to return to our communities back home, or wherever we may go after college, and begin to grow networks of mutual accountability that eliminate the need to call the police.

The police inevitably crash our Zu parties even when we try to take as much initiative as we can to neutralize the need for their presence. Our college police have a lot less to do than municipal police, have a much smaller area to patrol and are pretty good at predicting when and where students will be doing things the college is supposed to frown upon, since, as the popular refrain goes, we have no party spaces now that the socials are gone.

But what if I told you that, south of the gym, west of Route 116 and north of Route 9, lay neighborhoods upon neighborhoods of houses transitioning year to year between groups of students much like ourselves? That they are competitively priced with room and board at the college (or subject to a generous financial aid stipend), and lie outside the jurisdiction of the ACPD? It is true, my friends. I realize that transportation is still an issue here, but it is worth at least using party policy discourse to start a conversation about the possible obsolescence of the college’s strict policy of being a residential community. If one wants to not be infantilized by college police and administration, one solution is to live outside of the bounds of its biopolitical sphere of influence.

We could decide when and where to eat rather than herding ourselves to our community feed trough two or three times a day, we could meet

our neighbors of a variety of ages and backgrounds and we could decide how we want to party and exchange our lack of responsibility for a sense of control. (I will not go into the importance of meeting more community members, as I have already done so in my Disorientation 2016 piece, “Popping the Amherst Bubble”). The college would not have to meet every need of every student — it could merely be a place of learning (imagine that!) from which we return to our own sovereign spaces each day. This might relieve Student Life from some of the pressure of providing everything a young adult might need for a fulfilling life in the space of a few acres, too.

But of course, even if we build systems of accountability in our common spaces, the cops will still come. Even if we all decide to move off campus, the college will put up a fight. So the most important thing to take from this moment is that the people who claim to represent you, to keep you safe, will disappoint you and prevent you from being free. In mid-January, Congressional Democrats folded in negotiations to protect 800,000 undocumented young people after only 72 hours. My comrades at the Pioneer Valley Workers Center and I had hoped we could count on New England’s Senate Democrats for whom we had campaigned, to represent us, but they did not. That is why we organize. If we want a campus culture we can be proud of, we’ll have to put in the work to build it ourselves, and if we want a society we can be proud of, we’ll have to build that ourselves, too.

sity and feminism. Because she has so often championed these ideas, her actions regarding Strider have garnered a large amount of media coverage, including may claims of hypocrisy calling her out as a hypocrite.

Unfortunately, Clinton is not the only powerful woman in politics to be in the news recently for issues related to sexual assault.

In his incendiary new book “Fire and Fury,” Michael Wolff insinuates a relationship between Donald Trump and United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley (There is no evidence to back up these claims, and even if she did spend time alone with Trump, as a cabinet member her job requires discussing important policy issues with the president).

Instead of taking up arms in solidarity with Haley, as was seen in the #MeToo movement, women in and outside politics highlighted the book as comedic and relevant, despite such offensive claims that should potentially harm Nikki Haley’s professional reputation.

In fact, “Fire and Fury” was used as a punchline in a sketch during last weekend’s Grammy Awards, in which celebrities — including Hillary Clinton — read and laughed at passages from the book. Why are we focusing on

the ridiculousness of Trump’s eating habits instead of Wolff ’s subtle attempts to paint Haley as someone who would do anything for the job?

The public and the media care less about Republican women as compared to Republican men, like Trump, whose history with sexual assault leaves us with plenty to discuss.

When the media spotlight shone brightly on Al Franken and John Conyers last year, somewhat proportional attention and support was given to the women who accused them.These two men and their victims were given plenty of outlets to discuss the situation, but when Nikki Haley was accused, she barely received any attention. She did not even have the support of an army of female politicians; out of 22 women who serve in the Senate, only five are Republican. Of 84 women in the House, only 22 are Republicans. Until our country does better about listening to and electing female politicians, it is unlikely that we will see enough improvement in sexual assault issues in politics. All women, regardless of party affiliation, deserve solidarity. All women, regardless of party affiliation, must stand up against sexual harassment.

All Women Deserve Solidarity Campbell Hannan ’21 Hayley Fleming ’21 Staff Writers 2017 ushered in an age of reckoning for sexual harassment across many industries, notably in entertainment, government and sports. We’ve seen the rapid denunciation of big names like Harvey Weinstein, Larry Nassar and Al Franken. We’ve seen powerful court testimonies by strong women like Aly Raisman, Taylor Swift and countless lesser-known survivors. We’ve seen unprecedented media coverage of a problem that has existed for far too long. Now, in 2018, we have much higher expectations for workplace conduct.

The latest subject of this media attention is Hillary Clinton, who has become a feminist icon over the years of her hard work and dedication to breaking the highest political glass ceiling. On Jan. 26, The New York Times broke the story of Clinton’s inadequate response to the sexual harassment claims made against her “faith advisor,” Burns Strider, during her 2008 presidential campaign. Strider was accused of engaging in inappropriate behavior towards a woman he shared an office

with including sending her suggestive emails, rubbing her shoulders and kissing her on the forehead. The allegations were brought to Clinton along with the recommendation that he be fired, but she chose instead to dock his pay, move the accuser to a different job and require that Strider go through counseling.

Clinton claimed that she thought this response was harsh and clear enough to make a real difference in Strider’s life, and allegations against Strider reportedly stopped after this incident. In 2013, Strider was fired for sexual harassment from a Super PAC that supported Clinton, proving that Clinton’s actions did not have an adequate impact on him. Would Strider have continued his misconduct if Clinton had fired him instead of giving him a second chance? There is no way to know. However, Clinton’s actions should send a message to all women in power: if you have the opportunity to stand up against sexual assault and support victims, it is your responsibility to use this power to its fullest extent, even if that means firing a long-time employee.

Hillary Clinton is a member of the Democratic Party, a party that claims to value diver-

Arts&Living

The Mead’s Newest Show Questions What Makes a House a Home

Photo courtesy of Olivia Luntz ‘21

“HOUSE“ opens Feb. 8 with selections from John Weiland ‘58 and his wife Sue Weiland’s collection of art exploring the physical and abstract make up of homes.

Olivia Luntz ’21 Staff Writer On Feb. 8, “HOUSE,” the Mead Art Museum’s main exhibition for the spring and summer, will open to the public. The exhibition features 58 pieces of art that vary in media, size and country of origin, but are unified in subject matter. All of the works come from the collection of John Wieland ’58 and his wife, Sue Wieland, who began collecting art together over 50 years ago.

The couple started specifically collecting pieces featuring houses as a result of John’s career as a developer in Atlanta, which sparked his fascination with the various ways to visually represent houses and homes.

Jocelyn Edens, the assistant museum educator for the Mead, notes that the concept of a “house” was interesting to her because “it’s a deceptively simple theme. Everyone can recognize what a house is, but there are actually a lot of layers — a house is a shelter, but also a place where one builds a home. It can be both scary and comforting; it can represent an American dream to aspire to or a dream that will never be reached.”

Edens stated that the Mead wanted to use “HOUSE” to explore how houses demonstrate the vulnerability of humans — specifically relating to our hierarchy of needs, which puts shelter above needs such as love and belonging.

Further, Edens noted that the curators of the exhibition chose to capitalize the title in order to “underscore the idea of the house as a major factor in the way the world is organized and a key filter through which we see the world.”

Some of the highlights of the exhibition in-

clude the contemporary Icelandic-Danish photographer Olafur Eliasson’s 2012 “hut series” — a collection of 56 framed photographs of rescue shelters across deserted areas of Iceland that dominate a wall in the Mead’s Fairchild gallery.

The brightly colored huts contrast the desolate, sparse landscapes surrounding these vulnerable outposts of humanity. In arranging these huts next to each other in a grid, like an urban map, Eliasson creates an illusion of closeness and community, beckoning us closer.

A few steps away from this installation sits “House Crate,” a radically different interpretation of a house created by American sculptor Richard Artschwager. This comically small and simple depiction of a house made out of a wooden shipping crate simultaneously conjures up memories of childhood crayon drawings and lends itself to more bleak interpretations — an empty shell with no entrances or exits, or a diminutive home made for modern urban life.

This diversity in media, era, nationality and style is exactly what the curators of “HOUSE” were intending when selecting pieces from Wieland’s collection to bring to the Mead. Although both of these creations embody in some way the iconic symbol of a house — a square with a triangle on top — they also force us to question what truly makes a home. Would we consider a rescue shelter a home? What about something created from a shipping crate?

Edens selected Robert Gober’s “Half Stone House” as her favorite piece in this collection. Gober’s sculpture is featured centrally in the museum’s Rotherwas Room and draws viewers thanks to its resemblance to a playful dollhouse. This resemblance is not accidental as “Half Stone House” is one of series of doll-

houses Gober made in hopes of making money for rent in the years before he considered himself an artist. To create this piece, Gober used found objects such as pebbles from Coney Island for the bottom of the house’s exterior and scraps of paper for the wallpaper. Through his work on these dollhouses, he slowly began to consider himself an artist. Edens noted that the piece is interesting to her in the way that Gober, a gay man, explored the gender roles of the 1980s. Gober grew up in the house that his father built — making the act of building a house a male pursuit. However, dollhouses, unlike actual houses, are meant to teach young girls how to be home-makers, raising the question of under which gender does the act of building a dollhouse fall?

“Half Stone House” is especially fascinating in contrast with the other dollhouse-esque piece in the exhibition, Hans Op de Beeck’s “A House by the Sea.” While “Half Stone House” reminded me of the toys of my childhood, Beeck’s piece reminded me of my childhood nightmares. Filling up the entire Arms gallery of the Museum (even the specific grey paint color on the room’s walls is part of the piece), the work’s central focus is the immense model house, painted entirely in shades of grey. The house, which is over seven feet tall, contains several tiny, intricately-created and startling scenes within its rooms, all illuminated by a few miniature light fixtures. In the dining room, under the warm glow of a minuscule chandelier, chairs have been knocked to the floor and wine glasses lie shattered on the table. In the bedroom, an iron bed-frame and crib seem suspiciously empty without mattress or sheets, and the door is ajar, as if someone left in a hurry. Although Beeck’s piece is similar

to a dollhouse in many regards, he specifically chose to include model furniture but leave out the most important part of any house — its inhabitants. Without the people there, we are only left to wonder what disaster occurred inside the house and what caused its residents to flee.

Like many of its exhibitions, the Meade makes “HOUSE” accessible to a wide range of people beyond just members of the Amherst College community. As Edens excitedly told me how the Mead plans to bring in more local K-12 groups to experience “HOUSE,” I could imagine my elementary school-self loving the bright colors in the “hut series” and pouring over the intricate details Gober included in “Half Stone House.” However, the exhibit is in no way childish and proved truly thought-provoking for me, a first-year student who is living away from home for the first time, even leading me to question what exactly makes a “house” a “home.” “HOUSE,” is also a great opportunity to see the works of famous artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and Alex Katz. Edens hopes that “HOUSE” will instill in visitors “an interest in moving through different ideas and pulling out resonant themes … encouraging people to linger at each work and think about what the house is doing: is it a window into a bigger idea or a mirror to an experience?” “HOUSE” forces us to consider whether things we always assumed were straightforward and simple contain complexities we were never aware of.

“HOUSE” will be on view from Feb. 8 until July 1 at the Mead. On Feb. 8, there will be a conversation with John Wieland and chief curator David E. Little from 5-6 p.m. in Stirn Auditorium, followed by an opening reception in the Mead from 6-7:30.

The Amherst Student • February 7, 2018

Arts & Living 7

“Identities Unseen” Gives Platform for Asian-American Artwork

Photos courtesy of Sarah Wishoff ‘19

Ann Guo ‘20 (left) curated the “Identities Unseen“ show in Keefe, featuring art from Asian and Asian-American artists, including Swati Narayan ’20 (top right).

Julia Shea ’21 Contributing Writer Last Thursday, the “Identities Unseen” art exhibition opened in Keefe Campus Center, expanding the conversation surrounding the invisibility of students of color on campus. The collection, curated by Ann Guo ’20, features student art that explores and celebrates AsianAmerican identities, narratives and experiences at Amherst. Featuring work from students Young-Ji Cho ’18, Sangmin Song ’19, Mashiyat Zaman ’18, Emily Ye ’20, Jane Kim ’20, Swati Narayan ’20, Shivani Patel ’21, Shreeansh Agrawal ’20E and Ludia Ock ’19, the exhibit showcases a diverse range of experiences and highlights the nuances within Asian and Asian-American identities. It will be open on both floors of Keefe until April 1.

This past summer, Guo worked at the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles, where she was involved in curating an exhibition,

sponsored by The Getty, centering on art of the Chinese-Caribbean diaspora from the 20th century to the present day. Inspired by her time at the museum, as well as the joyous representation of Asian-American identity and experience in LA, Guo wanted to create a similar place for Asian and Asian-American students at Amherst to share their experiences through art.

“I hope that this actually serves as a platform for the expression and validation of AsianAmerican experience and identity at Amherst,” said Guo. The act of publicly sharing one’s experiences of invisibility and marginalization requires a great deal of mental and emotional labor, something that’s often unfairly expected of students of color. In curating this show, Guo doesn’t directly aim to educate a largely-privileged student body, but rather to reach out to those who have been previously unheard. “It’s not so much for the audience as it is for the community itself,” she said, “And of course the audience will learn — they had better”.

One of the artists who contributed work, Agrawal, aimed to address a reluctance to admit their own ignorance among people at Amherst, for whom “fear of saying something wrong overcomes the will to understand.”

He reflected on how “personal testimony is considered really important in the culture [at Amherst]. While this brings a tenderness to debates about culture, it also establishes the fear of saying something wrong. Many of my friends tiptoe around me when they ask me questions about home. I appreciate where they are coming from, but I sometimes wish they would be more honest about their ignorance. I don’t mind people not knowing things. I only mind people not learning.”

His piece that depicts a person looking up at a mandala, upon which two ogre-like individuals stand, was inspired by visiting his young cousins who immigrated to New Jersey and sympathizing with their parents. “They want their kids to assimilate in the American environment so that

they’re not othered, but constantly feel guilt for not being able to give them a more ‘authentic,’ true-to-one’s-roots kind of life. It is a constant feeling of shame, like you deserted your own culture. I think that’s why I’m portraying those two figures in the painting as ogre-like and unattractive. It’s how they see themselves,” he said.

The conversation surrounding Asian and Asian-American identity is still developing at Amherst. At the exhibit’s opening night, Guo excitedly told attendees that an Asian-American Studies major is in its developmental stages and the school is hoping to invite a woman to teach courses in the major. “As you can see in the representation of the art and also [in] the people who came to help when the exhibition needed to get done, it was women who showed up, and that’s true amongst all communities of color,” Guo said in her closing statements. “Thank you especially to all the women of color in the AsianAmerican community who show up to make this happen.”

“Dear Evan Hansen” Brings Refreshing Relatability to Broadway Jack Klein ’20 Staff Writer Broadway shows are meant to dazzle and transport their viewers to another place, time or even world. However, it’s rare that they evoke emotions beyond amazement. The best works of art, whether of painting, music or theater, either make the consumer of the work feel unexpected emotions or achieve a non-superficial level of relatability. The musical “Dear Evan Hansen” does both; the audience not only feels Evan’s pain and tears up along with him, but also laughs with him when his friend makes a dirty joke.

“Dear Evan Hansen” eschews the concept of a Broadway show as an escapist work of art thanks to its focus on real-world issues. However, it also avoids getting bogged down in the potentially depressing tropes of suicide and social anxiety. Its deviation from the norms of Broadway shows — both its original story and musical score — makes it a refreshing experience. The most important aspect of the show is that its viewers emotionally invest in the characters. There were few dry eyes in the theater at the

end of the first act, which was capped off by the crescendo of the musical number “You Will Be Found,” performed by the whole company. The powerful message “Even when the dark comes crashing through / when you need someone to carry you … you will be found,” resonates with those that feel alone, regardless of age, race or gender. In that moment, “Dear Evan Hansen” connects the audience and the actors, thus becoming a show for everyone.

The show opens with the main character, Evan Hansen (Ben Platt), sitting alone on his bed, attempting to write a letter to himself that will convince him that his day will be a positive one. His mother jovially enters and reminds him to take his medicine and write the letter — she works most nights, so Evan is left alone most of the time.

When Evan goes to school, he acts so shyly that he can barely formulate the words to talk to his crush, Zoe Murphy. Even if you weren’t a nerd or a social outcast in high school, Evan’s charming shyness and stuttering are relatable because everyone in high school feels insecure at some point whether they look it or not. Zoe’s

brother, Connor, comes by and mockingly signs Evan’s cast. He later finds Evan’s note to himself and confiscates it.

Soon thereafter, Evan is called to the principal’s office. To his surprise, Connor’s parents are waiting for him. The news: Connor took his own life and Connor’s parents have found Evan’s note. Because the note began “Dear Evan Hansen,” the Murphys assume that Connor had authored it. To save them from suffering more in that moment, Evan confirms the Murphys’ story.

Evan attains popularity almost overnight after the school finds out that he was supposedly Connor’s friend. He enlists his family friend Jared to back-date emails so that there exists more correspondence between him and Connor to prove the validity of their friendship. At first, Evan is torn. He knows it’s wrong for him to lie, but he could also both provide the Murphys some comfort and gain acceptance from others.

After a series of twists and turns, including bonding with Connor’s father and dating Zoe, Evan is finally forced to admit that he fabricated his friendship with Connor. He becomes a social outcast but leaves the situation wiser, as proven

by the maturity that he exhibits in the show’s final scene, a chat with Zoe that takes place in a memorial garden for Connor.

It would be remiss to conclude a discussion of “Dear Evan Hansen” without addressing its musical score. The show is elevated as much by its music as by its original script. It not only exudes the typical energy of a Broadway show, but also displays a depth of lyricism and genuineness that is seldom replicated in other shows. The show’s most popular song, “Waving Through a Window,” takes the audience through the range of emotions that Evan feels; everything from despair “On the outside always looking in / will I ever be more than I’ve always been?” to hope, “’Cause I’m tap, tap, tapping on the glass / waving through a window.”

With six Tony award wins, critics resoundingly agree that “Dear Evan Hansen” is a mustsee. Due to its fantastic music, moving script and emotional performances from its actors, along with an inherent relatability absent from other Broadway shows, “Dear Evan Hansen” should be at the top of anyone’s list of musicals to see on Broadway.

The Amherst Student • February 7, 2018

Arts & Living 8

New Biopic Returns Tonya Harding’s Story to Prominence

Photo courtesy of wired.it

Over 20 years after the attack against Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding’s subsequent fall from grace, popular culture revisits Harding’s story in “I, Tonya.“ Milan Loewer ’21 Contributing Writer “I, Tonya” is a sympathetic portrayal of American figure skater Tonya Harding’s rise and subsequent fall, following her infamous 1994 attack on fellow figure skater and longtime rival Nancy Kerrigan.

Harding was born into a poor family in Portland, Oregon. Even as a child, she was a bit of a tomboy, often working on cars, hunting, drag racing and chopping wood — as the fictionalized Tonya puts it in the film, she was a “redneck.” By the age of three, however, she already showed promise as a skater, and her mother signed her up for lessons. In her teens, Harding moved up in the figure skating world, dropped out of high school her sophomore year, moved in with an abusive boyfriend to escape her abusive mother and, at 19, won gold in Skate America.

But the reason this film exists and the reason we are still talking about her today was not her skating prowess and the fact the she is the first woman to ever complete a triple axel in competition. Rather, it was her connection to the 1994 attack on Kerrigan. No one will ever know the true extent of her involvement in the attack, but the general belief at the time was that Hard-

ing’s ex-husband, with her then-bodyguard, had hired a man to kneecap Kerrigan, in the run-up to the 1994 Winter Olympics. At the time, there was a media frenzy surrounding the attack, and the dominant narrative was that white-trash Harding had attacked America’s princess, Kerrigan.

The first time I watched “I, Tonya,” I loved it.

I found it at times funny, at times moving and walked away from it pondering one of Tonya’s last monologues where she looks into the camera and says of her experience with fame: “I was loved, then I was hated, then I was just a punchline. It was like being abused all over again, but this time by you, all of you.”

However, in the sober light of the following morning, I realized that much of what had been funny about the film was Tonya’s abuse.

The abuse is a punchline reused throughout the film, and aside from the oafish stupidity of Tonya’s bodyguard, which is honestly pretty hilarious and certainly a highlight, such abuse is practically the only source of humor in the film.

At the same time, the theme of Harding’s abuse is also the pathos of the film. “I, Tonya” oscillates from jerking laughs out of the audience one moment to evoking tears the very next scene. Of course, there certainly is a lot of

humor in tragedy, but in “I, Tonya,” the tragedy and humor negate one another, detracting from the seriousness of scenes like the one in which Tonya’s mother tells her that maybe she “deserves to get hit” by playing it for laughs.

Similarly, after Tonya comically introduces her abusive boyfriend Jeff Gilooly as “the first boy I ever loved…The only catch was...he beat the hell out of me,” it is a bit jarring when he really does beat the living hell out of her. The audience is left unsure about whether to laugh at that introduction in the first place.

All this makes her line about being abused by “all of you,” (that is, the audience, the consumers of news and media) either a sadistic stroke of ironic genius or, more probably, given how sympathetic — if at times patronizing — the film is towards her, an unfortunate irony that points towards the essential problem with the film —for all our sympathy towards Tonya, her abuse becomes a punchline that all of us can have a good laugh at.

So, why does this somewhat condescending, if sympathetic, portrayal of a mostly-forgotten figure skater from the 90s known basically for one scandal, seem relevant right now? In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, the film’s director, Craig Gillespie, said that he saw

the film partly as a way to address the “anger in our society starting out with what happened in the election” and “how you transcend that creatively.”

The premise of “I, Tonya” is an attempt to present an emotionally real telling of the Tonya Harding story from Harding’s point of view. It aims to humanize her by presenting her whole story and to show how much she suffered from all the vitriol that the public spewed at her following the attack. Much of the vitriol that was aimed at her stemmed from the environment she grew up in, because she was poor and “white trash,” because she was the type to vote for Trump, which, incidentally, she did — because she was a “deplorable.” And the film is certainly successful to a degree in all these things, but, ultimately, it falls short of its mark. Harding is somewhat one dimensional, and the film lacks the nuance to really explain how she became a world-class athlete despite the abuse and poverty she suffered. It portrays her as a victim of abuse that comes off both somewhat comic and somewhat tragic. With all of the accolades and attention that it has received, it seems that this dumbed-down, somewhat patronizing film has hit a nerve because of its ultimate revelation: that white trash deplorables are people too.

Anderson’s “Phantom Thread” Fails to Live up to Lofty Ambitions Youngkwang Shin ’19 Staff Writer “Phantom Thread” opens with Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis), a celebrated fashion designer of the 1950s, in his incorrigible routine: an uneventful breakfast, stilted conversation with his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville), dealings with his occasionally-royal patrons and a dinner and sleep as tranquil as the breakfast that began the day.

The rest of the movie details the change and destruction that his newfound model and muse, Alma (Vicky Krieps), ushers into his disciplined life. This change is evident when the scene of breakfast occurs again, only with Alma’s blue blur of a dress interrupting the shot’s placid composition and the silverware rattling as she blithely neglects upper-class dining customs.

True to his archetype, the aged artist hides little of his repulsion with her unorthodox ways. But he is just as attracted to this storm brewing in his life, and, as the film unfolds, the designer’s indifferent exterior crumbles to make way for his twisted fixations that never quite find resolution in the unconscious.

The spine of the film is the increasingly dark and toxic relationship between Reynolds and Alma, and this is quite obvious. But as the title would suggest, director Paul Thomas Anderson makes it a priority to have us see the phantom in

the threads. From one perspective, a phantom thread describes the surprising durability of their toxic dynamic. Every scene in the second half of the film seems to show the death of a relationship, but the two cling to one another as if possessed by dubious forces.

From another perspective, a phantom thread refers to just those forces: forces of the past, like the lock of his mother’s hair Reynolds has sewn into his suit. Indeed, Reynolds’ unresolved issues with his mother turn his character into something wrong and inhuman, an alien who not just desires but hungers for the sadomasochistic back-and-forth with Alma and distances himself from his own sister due to her inadequacy as a reliable participant in the poisonous arrangement.

It is unfortunate, then, that this premise is so hindered by weak writing. Ever since 2007’s “There Will Be Blood,” Anderson has sucked all warmth and vigor from his films. His movies have become cold and arid, and in the process, they’ve grown cryptic. This new style paid dividends in “Master” and “Inherent Vice” both of which, coming from the vantage point of broken men, chronicled the violent introduction and expansion of American capitalism. They were soulless and rudderless, if only to reflect the vices of their subject. “Phantom Thread” has similarly lofty ambitions, but it cannot fit its siblings’ clothes. The film wants to explore the

troubling concessions, repressions and perversions that are fundamental to any acceptable impression of domesticity: the strained performance of affection and the equally strained suppression of changing moods and hearts. It is no smaller task than a critique of modern romance that weighs on the film’s shoulders.

But where it should fly, as Anderson’s work so often has, his newest film resorts to running.

Like Anderson’s older films, “Phantom Thread” jumps from episode to episode, creating a loose chronology that make for a vaguer arc for its central characters. Reynolds’ mommy issues collide in superbly tense encounters with Alma’s growing realization that in front of her troubled lover she models not clothes, but people. This is all fine and good, but the film’s select encounters cannot sustain Day-Lewis’ and Krieps’ fantastic performances. Every tensely mumbled conversation always sounds like it is lacking something more than volume. Reynolds’ psychological problems are impatiently stuffed into one piece of dialogue and dream, while all Alma receives is a sexual rival at whom to enviously stare. The previously mentioned second meaning of phantom threads — the dubious force of the past still acting upon the present — thus fizzles out due to a scarcity of plot to embody it.

Scarcity, unfortunately, becomes the keyword to the whole experience of viewing this film. The soft music, subdued performances

and sophisticated set design are expertly coordinated to suffocate the growing tensions in the Woodcock household and workplace. The piano jingles accompanying Reynolds’ day are lovely as music, but they add little to the already plenty-subdued affair of the film. Krieps, though she gives an explantory rendition of the given material, nevertheless lives up to the name of Alma, possessing little physical presence and resembling more and more of a disembodied spirit. A spirit, a phantom! If only it felt as though it was by design. As her scarcity of charisma stands, she feels more like a will-o-the-wisp.

Day-Lewis, in perhaps his last film role, is excellent as a child subdued in a genius artist’s body, but does not bring out the inherent tension between the conflicting characteristics.

The sets, though pristine and aristocratic, are almost plain for the purpose they ought to have served: pointing out the decidedly base behaviors playing out within.

It is a disappointing irony that a feature so coherent and calculated unspools into such a mess. Expectation follows pedigree, and Anderson’s career has never been short of breathtaking. Even “Phantom Thread” one of his weaker films, is a film worth watching and thinking about, at the very least as a learning experience.

But even so, it is difficult to shake the feeling that “Phantom Thread” is cheap cloth for the body that used to be.

The Amherst Student • February 7, 2018

Sports 9

Men’s Track & Field Qualifies Several Women’s Basketball Remains No. 1 in Runners for DIII New Englands Nation After Wins Over Tufts, Bates Veronica Rocco ’19 Staff Writer For the second meet in a row, the Amherst men’s track and field team travelled east to compete at Tufts. This past weekend, the Mammoths competed in the Cupid Challenge, a smaller meet featuring strong teams from the New England, Mideast and Atlantic regions, in addition to international competition from the University of Québec at Montréal.

Amherst had a solid performance and competed well against a talented field at the unscored meet.

Junior Maxim Doiron kicked off the meet for the Mammoths, placing eighth in the prelims of the 60-meter hurdles with a time of 8.97 seconds. He later replicated his prelims performance in the finals, finishing eighth.

Classmate Stadtler Thompson competed well in the 60-meter dash, placing 12th in the prelims with a time of 7.42 seconds, the same time he had run the weekend prior at the Branwen Smith-King Invitational.

In the shot put, Sam Amaka ’19 set a personal best, throwing 13.30 meters (43’ 7.75”) to place sixth, while fellow-junior Elorm Yevudza set a personal best in the event with his 10.18 meter (33’ 4.75”) throw.

First-year Braxton Schuldt had a successful first collegiate 5k, a daunting task with 25 laps and 3.1 miles required on the 200-meter indoor track.

Schuldt ran consistent splits during the race to finish in a time of 15:43.

Captain Justin Barry ’18 took on the mile run, running a time of 4:36 in the eight-lap event.

In the 400-meter dash, Vernon Espinoza ’19 set an indoor personal-best time of 50.62 and looked to challenge the 50-second barrier in an open 400 race after splitting sub-50 seconds on the 4x400 relay at the Branwen Smith-King Invitational.

Brad Besson ’20 also set a new indoor personal best, running a time of 53.80 seconds.

After running the 600 meters for all three of his collegiate meets, Andrew Swenson ’21 set a personal best in the event, finishing in 1:25.49 and squeaking under the DIII New England standard of 1:25.54 after just missing it at Branwen Smith-King Invitational.

In a thrilling 800-meter race, Kristian

Sogaard ’19 returned to his signature event and placed third in a time of 1:54.

An All-American in the 800, Sogaard’s time now ranks seventh in the nation in the event and looks to qualify for nationals once again.

In the third heat of the 800, Estevan Velez ’20 set a new collegiate personal best of 1:59, which also qualifies him for DIII New Englands.

Thompson returned to the track for the 200-meter dash, in which he set a new personal best time of 23.31 seconds to place eighth.

Sophomore standout Spencer FergusonDryden set a personal best in the 3k by 55 seconds, covering the 15-lap event in 8:40, which qualified him for DIII New Englands.

Ferguson-Dryden has also qualified for the meet in the 1,000-meter and mile runs as well, giving him several options for the meet in two weeks.

Teammate Tucker Meijer ’19 was right behind him, setting a new personal best with his 8:42 clocking, which gave him a DIII New Englands qualifying time for the event in addition to the 5k.

The meet ended with the 4x400 relay, as Kyland Smith ’21, Swenson, Alex Mangiafico ’20 and Stanley Dunwell ’20 teamed up to run a time of 3:32.

“After the meet, Coach Rubin spoke to us about goal-setting,” Sewnson said. “He explained how, in track, there’s never really an end goal, and that we should never be completely satisfied with our progress.”

“Our team has been doing great this season, and personally it felt nice to qualify for DIII New Englands, but ultimately qualifying was just one little temporary goal.”

Next week, the Mammoths will split up and compete at both the Boston University Valentine Invitational and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Gordon Kelly Invitational.

The Valentine Invitational will be Amherst’s one opportunity to compete on a banked track before Nationals in March, and the meet will also feature competition from all three NCAA divisions as well as amateur and professional athletes.

After that pair of meets, the Mammoths will begin preparation for the DIII New England Championships.

Men’s Basketball Bests Bates, but Falls to Both Tufts and Wesleyan Katie Bergamesca ’18 Staff Writer In the penultimate weekend of regular season action, the Amherst men’s basketball team split its two away contests, falling to Tufts before besting Bates. The Mammoths, however would also fall to Wesleyan in a Tuesday evening NESCAC battle.

Tufts proved to be a significant challenge for the visiting Mammoths, who saw their four-game win streak come to an end.

Despite senior captain Johnny McCarthy’s impressive 13 points and 14 rebounds, Amherst was not able to come away with the win, as the Jumbos emerged with a hard-fought four-point victory, 60-56.

Point guard Grant Robinson ’21 provided a secondary scoring punch for the visitors, tallying 12 points. Michael Riopel ’18 and Eric Sellew ’20 were both solid, notching nine points apiece and collecting six and five rebounds, respectively.

However, in the relatively low-scoring affair, Tufts came out on top thanks to the Jumbos’ Vincent Pace tallying a remarkable 27 points. The Mammoths were forced to regroup quickly after the loss, as they were back in action the following afternoon against the Bates Bobcats. In what proved to be a career-night, 6’10 center Joe Schneider ’19 led the team with a career-high 24 points, most of

which came after the halftime break.

A huge second-half push, paced by Schneider’s 22 points in the frame, propelled Amherst to a decisive win over the hosts. First-year Fru Che came away with a team-high 11 boards and three assists, and, after leading by only one point at halftime, the Mammoths pulled away for an 80-61 victory.

On Tuesday, Feb. 6, Amherst headed to Middletown, Connecticut to take on the Wesleyan Cardinals. Unfortunately, the Mammoths were unable to clinch victory, after a strong shooting performance from the Cardinals left Amherst in their wake. Wesleyan took an early lead, and the Mammoths never cut the deficit to within ten points. Eventually the hosts emerged with a comfortable 71-57 win.

After this past week’s action, the Amherst men move to 14-8 on the season and 5-4 in the NESCAC. This final week of regular season play will be crucial to ensure the Mammoths secure a high seed in the NESCAC tournament.

The Mammoths will finish out their regular season at home in LeFrak Gymnasium with games against Williams and Middlebury on Feb. 9 at 7 p.m. and Feb. 10 at 3 p.m., respectively.

Before tip-off on Saturday, senior co-captains Riopel and McCarthy will be recognized for their impressive four years on the Amherst basketball team.

Kelly Karczwesci ’18 Staff Writer The Amherst women’s basketball team clinched their 54th and 55th consecutive wins this past weekend.

First up was a suspenseful victory over Tufts on Friday night, followed by a win against Bates the next day in a game that doubled as the Mammoths’ Senior Day. Madeline Eck ’20 led all scorers with 20 points in the win over the No. 7 Jumbos and also added six rebounds, two blocks and three assists.

Jackie Nagle ’18, Hannah Hackley ’18 and Emma McCarthy ’19 each added eight points comprising the majority of the Mammoths’ scoring.

For the first time this season, Amherst did not tally a single three-pointer in the game, going 0-7 from behind the arc.

However, the Mammoths’ ability to dominate the paint resulted in 34 points from down low, giving them a distinct edge over the Jumbos, who were heavily out-rebounded the in the game.

Although Amherst saw its 13-point halftime lead quickly disappear, the Mammoths ending up coming out on top 50-43. With this win, Amherst moved to 21-0 on the season.

The next afternoon marked the last regular season home game for Amherst.

During the contest against the Bobcats, the Mammoths celebrated seniors Jackie Nagle, Jenna Schumacher, Hannah Hackley

and Emma McCarthy ‘19, before dominating Bates in a 58-31 rout.

Amherst’s senior class has had an incredibly successful four-year run at the College.

McCarthy, a transfer student, has not lost a game since her arrival at Amherst in 2016, and Hackley, Nagle and Schumacher have made two national semifinals, won two NESCAC crowns and were key pieces in Amherst’s second national title run.

Nagle had a stellar senior day performance. She led the Mammoths’ scoring with 12 points and controlled the boards with seven rebounds.

McCarthy came close to a double-double with 11 points, nine rebounds and three assists. Hackley further added 10 points and dished out four assists.

The first basket of the contest went to the Bobcats, but Amherst quickly took the lead with an 11-0 run.

The score remained heavily in Amherst’s favor for the rest of the game, partly due to the fact that the Mammoths nearly doubled Bates’ rebound total.

Amherst will close out the regular season with two away matches next weekend.

First up, the Mammoths will take on archrival Williams on Friday, Feb. 10 at 7.p.m.

The following day, Amherst will travel north to take on Middlebury in the regular season finale at 3 p.m.

The Mammoths’ eyes, however, remain set on continuing their unbeaten streak to the NESCAC and DIII tournaments.

Women’s Swim & Dive Upsets MIT, Routs Springfield in 2-0 Weekend Matthew Sparrow ’21 Staff Writer Two big victories over the weekend have left the Amherst women’s swimming and diving team full of confidence heading into the NESCAC Championships. The winning run started Saturday when the Mammoths upended No. 8 Massachusetts Institute of Technology and included a home victory over Springfield College on Sunday.

Going into Saturday’s meet against the Engineers, the No. 10 Mammoths were the underdogs. It didn’t take long for Amherst to set the tone, however, as the team of Stephanie Moriarty ’18, Katie Smith ’19, Geralyn Lam ’18 and Ingrid Shu ’20 won the first event of the day, the 200yard medley relay, while the team of Bridgitte Kwong ’19, Nina Fitzgerald ’21, Tracy Chen ’20 and Natalie Rumpelt ’20 took third.

An impressive performance in the 200-yard freestyle saw Rumpelt take the top spot with a time of 1:53.95, and classmate Sarah McDonald finished third with a time of 1:56.13. In the 100-yard backstroke, Amherst claimed first and second with strong showings from Moriarty and Kwong, respectively.

In the one-meter diving event, Lindsey Ruderman ’21 continued her dominant rookie season, posting a score of 290.54 to score nine points for the Mammoths.

In the 500-yard freestyle, Livia Domenig ’19 won the event with a time of 5:09.42, with fellow Mammoth Jayne Vogelzang ’19 placing third.

These strong performances added up to a 171.5 to 128.5 upset victory for Amherst.

The Mammoths returned on Sunday to host Springfield on senior day at Pratt Pool, and the hosts made sure the home crowd left happy. Moriarty, Fitzgerald, Lam and Rumpelt broke the pool record by finishing the 400-yard medley relay in a blistering time of 3:53.90, smashing the old record by nearly four seconds. In the same event, Tracy Chen ’20, Smith, Sarah Wang ’20 and Dorit Song ’19 raced their way to a third-place finish with a time of 4:09.61. The second race of the day yielded yet another new pool record,

as Kwong swam her way into the record books with a win in the 400-yard individual medley in a time of 4:32.16. Sophomore Heather Grotzinger finished right behind her teammate to claim second in 4:36.87. Amherst clinched its win by sweeping the top-three spots in the 50-yard backstroke (Moriarty, Chen and Ingrid Wefing ’21), the 100-yard butterfly (Clare Leonard ’19, Julia Ruggiero ’21 and Meredith King ’21) and the 50yard freestyle (Lam, Rumpelt and McDonald). In the one-meter diving, both Ruderman and Jackie Palermo ’19 crossed the NCAA B-cut threshold of 255.00 points with scores of 292.87 and 262.42, respectively.

In the final event of the day, Shu, Rumpelt, Moriarty and Lam swam the 200-yard freestyle relay in 1:36.10, a time that doubled as both a pool record and a fitting end to senior day with Lam swimming the last leg in a 172-110 Mammoth victory.

With the pair of wins, Amherst finished its regular season with a sterling 7-1 record. The Mammoths will have two weeks off before traveling to Williamstown, Massachusetts for their biggest meet of the year so far: the NESCAC Championship, a three-day event that starts Friday, Feb. 16.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Katie Smith ’19 secured first place in the 50-yard breastroke in 30.36.

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Sports

The Amherst Student • February 7, 2018

Men’s Swimming Drops First Meet of Season to MIT, Rebounds Against Springfield

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Sam Spurrell ’18 was part of the 400-yard medley relay team that secured first place at the meet, turning in a time of 3:27.56 in the first event of the meet.

Julia Turner ’19 Managing Sports Editor Amherst men’s swim and dive had a full weekend, highlighted by a dominating victory on senior night on Sunday, Feb. 4 at Pratt Pool.

To kick off the weekend, however, the Mammoths travelled to No. 4 Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Saturday, Feb. 3 to compete in a dual meet.

Despite several impressive individual performances, the Engineers overwhelmed the Amherst squad, holding a 213-86 advantage over the Mammoths. The consistently dominant group of Craig Smith ’20, Elijah Spiro ’18, Sam Spurrell ’18 and Jack Koravos ’20 started the day off strong for Amherst, racing to a second place finish in the 200-yard medley relay with a time of 1:33.11.

Smith continued his impressive performance on the day with a victory in the 200-yard backstroke with a time of 1:52.45, while Spurrell clinched a second-place finish in the 200-yard butterfly. The Mammoths best event of the day was the 100-yard breaststroke, where they swept the top two spots, with Ang Li ’21 finishing second behind another Smith victory.

Spiro touched the wall in 57.79 seconds in the 100-yard breaststroke to place second and add four points to Amherst’s total, while junior Josh Chen took third with a time of 58.49 seconds. In another two-three podium finish, Sean Mebust ’20 clinched second in the 200 yard breaststroke with a time of 2:07.67, while Eric Wong ’20 took the bronze in the 500 yard freestyle with a 4:47.20 mark. In the 1,000-yard freestyle, senior Nathan Ives secured another second-place finish with a time of 10:02.40. To round out the swimming side of the meet, Koravos, Mebust, So and Wong finished third in the 400 yard freestyle relay in a time of 3:12.49.

On the diving board for the Mammoths, Bennett Fagan ’21 earned two second-place finishes, amassing 261.30 points in the three-meter event and 301.80 points on the one-meter board.

Coming off of their first dual-meet loss of the year on Saturday, Amherst burst off the blocks in dominant fashion on Sunday against Springfield College. The afternoon meet marked the team’s Senior Night, as it was the last home event for the Mammoths.

The all-senior quartet of Spurrell, Spiro, John Janezich ’18 and Ives started the meet strong for the Mammoths, claiming first in the 400-yard medley relay in 3:27.56. In the individual 400yard medley event, Brandon Wang ’20 paced the competition with a 4:14.24 mark.

With a time of 21.47 seconds, Koravos placed first overall in the 50 yard free, while Mebust touched the wall first in the 200-yard freestyle event with 1:46.36. Wong finished off the sweep of the freestyle events, claiming first in the 100-yard race with a time of 47.35.

Smith continued his impressive weekend, earning a victory in the 100-yard backstroke with a 52.86 second mark and breaking the previous pool record of 24.59 seconds in the 50yard backstroke with a 24.21 mark.

Chen posted another pool record in the 100yard IM, finishing in 53.23 seconds and besting the previous record by nearly 0.7 seconds.

Spiro added another Mammoth victory and new pool record in the 100-yard breaststroke, touching the wall in 56.81 to break his own pool record of 56.94 that he had set earlier this winter.

Finally, in the 500-yard free, Kou Li ’21 clocked a 4:47.18 mark to clinch gold.

With the weekend schedule’s results, Amherst improves to 7-1 in dual meet competition.

The Mammoths return to the pool on FridaySunday, Feb. 23-25 when they travel to Bowdoin for the NESCAC Championships.

Women’s Hockey Defeats Plymouth State 7-1, Toupal Notches Five Points Mary Grace Cronin ’18 Staff Writer In last week’s sole game action, the Amherst women’s ice hockey team dominated the Plymouth State Panthers, 7-1, at home in Orr Rink.

With the non-conference win, the Mammoths’ record stands at 12-5-3 overall and 7-3-2 in the NESCAC. While Plymouth State’s Shannon Hickey opened the scoring early for the Panthers, Amherst proceeded to explode with seven unanswered tallies.

Ava Simoncelli opened the floodgates, netting her second goal of the season to tie the game up eight minutes after Hickey had scored. In an impressive unassisted effort, Simoncelli collected the puck and sailed a hard shot to the back of the net.

Less than two minutes later, senior stud Alex Toupal received a pass from forward Katie Savage ’19 and blasted a shot from point-blank range to give the hosts a lead.

At the start of the second period, the game still seemed to be in the balance, but Savage put the game out of reach with a goal of her own, having

collected the rebound from her line-mate Toupal’s initial. Senior Emma Griese widened the margin, tipping a shot by defender Anne Malloy ’20.

With the momentum firmly in favor of the Mammoths, Toupal tallied her second goal of the game to make the score 5-1 and close the scoring in the three-goal second period. Toupal ripped a low shot off first-year forward Emma Flynn’s assist.

Entering the third stanza of play, Toupal struck again on a power-play for her third hat trick of the season and her 14th goal overall. Capitalizing on the man-up advantage, Jocelyn Hunyadi ’19 notched her first point of the day on the assist to Toupal, who rifled the puck into the back of the net.

Savage concluded the rout with a late goal of her own, assisted by Toupal, who finished the day with an impressive five points, her highest total of the season. Additionally, goalie Sabrina Dobbins managed 20 saves in the effort.

Amherst will return to the ice for the penultimate weekend of regular season play, taking on Hamilton in a pair of home games on Friday, Feb. 9 and Saturday, Feb. 10.

ATHLETE SPOTLIGHT

Patrick Daly ’20

Natalie Rumpelt ’20

Favorite Team Memory: The overtime win against Hamilton last year Favorite Pro Athlete: Tom Brady Dream Job: Professional golfer Pet Peeve: Chewing with mouths open Favorite Vacation Spot: North Myrtle Beach, SC Something on Your Bucket List: Playing Augusta with my little brother Guilty Pleasure: Boston sports documentaries Favorite Food: Pizza Favorite Thing About Amherst: NHL Network is part of the cable package How He Earned It: Daly was a crucial contributor in the men’s hockey team’s wins against Bowdoin and Colby over the weekend.

The sophomore forward netted two goals against the Polar Bears, and tallied an assist in the Mammoths’ game against the Mules.

Daly has scored 19 goals in his two seasons.

The forward’s nose for goal is complemented by his passing, as he has dished out 15 assists as well in his Amherst career as well. He has also contributed on the defensive end of the ice, as evidenced by his plus/minus of +6.

Favorite Team Memory: Watching Craig Smith ’20 break a pool record Favorite Pro Athlete: Craig Smith Dream Job: Yoga Instructor Pet Peeve: Practicing in a six-lane pool Favorite Vacation Spot: Upstairs Val Something on Your Bucket List: Practicing in an eight-lane pool Guilty Pleasure: Tequila lime chicken Favorite Food: Tequila lime chicken Favorite Thing About Amherst: Tequila lime chicken How She Earned It: Rumplet has been a consistent performer for the highflying Amherst women’s swimming and diving team, winning the 500-yard free event against Springfield College in the team’s most recent meet with a time of 5:09.84. The freestyle specialist also set a pool record in the 400-yard medley relay, along with Stephanie Moriarty ’18, Nina Fitzgerald ’21 and Geralyn Lam ’18. Against MIT, Rumpelt took gold in the 200-yard freestyle and also helped the Mammoths take first in the 400-yard freestyle relay.

Men’s Squash Battles to Sixth-Place Finish at NESCAC Championships Henry Newton ’21 Managing Sports Editor Entering the NESCAC Championships, the Amherst men’s squash team knew it faced an uphill battle to contend for the conference title. However, despite this reality, Amherst had managed to secure the fifth-overall seed with wins in three of its four matches leading up to the tournament and was looking to make it to the semifinals for the first time since 2009.

Playing on the Hamilton campus, the Mammoths first faced off against the fourth-seeded Middlebury Panthers in the quarterfinals. In the two teams’ previous meeting, Middlebury had emerged victorious, sweeping the Mammoths 9-0.

Despite the added motivation of postseason competition, Amherst was unable to mount a significant challenge to Middlebury this time, losing 8-1. However, despite the score line, Amherst was competitive on many of the courts.

Amherst’s lone victory in the match came on the fifth court, where Reggie Brewster ’21 defeated his opponent in four games, 11-7, 11-3, 9-11, 1311.

Dropped into the consolation bracket and out of the title race, Amherst turned its sight to finishing the tournament on a high note. Facing the eighth-seeded Bowdoin, the Mammoths advanced in convincing fashion, besting the Polar Bears 7-2. Winning in each of the top four spots and the three bottom spots, Amherst displayed solid depth throughout the lineup.

Standing out in this defeat of Bowdoin were the play of David Merkel ’19 and the team’s overall resiliency in the face of early setbacks. Merkel was the only member of either team who defeated his opponent in straight game. Terrence Wang ’21, Chris Zimmerman ’20, Mateen Mills ’20 and Arnav Parikh ’21 all went down one game early to their respective opponents, but then each fought back to win the match in four games.

Amherst then moved on to face Colby in a match to decide who would finish fifth and sixth at the tournament. In what proved to be a tightly-

contested match, Colby edged Amherst 5-4, handing Amherst its second consecutive sixth-place finish at the NESCAC Championships.

Wang was again dominant at the top of the Amherst lineup, winning his match in straight games. Merkel won his second consecutive match in straight games, while Mills also notched a second consecutive victory.

The most impressive performance, however, was that of Harith Khawaja ’19, who gutted out a five-game victory on the third court in a match that saw him come back from a 1-2 defecit to clinch the victory.

In other tournament action, Trinity recorded its 12th consecutive NESCAC title, while Bates finished second for the third year in a row. Trinity is also the defending CSA national champion and is the top ranked team in the nation, having recorded 24 straight victories dating back to last season.

Overall, the Mammoths now boast a record of 8-9 and a national ranking of No. 23. The Mammoths will return to action in several weeks at the CSA Men’s Team Championship.

Photo courtesy of Amherst Athletics

David Merkel ’19 won two matches at the NESCAC Championship.

The Amherst Student • February 7, 2018

Sports

11

The Hot Corner Jack Malague ’19 Columnist Jack Malague recaps Super Bowl LII and explores how, despite this being the game’s biggest and most choreographed stage, the NFL’s deficiencies were still aparent.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Haley Greene ’21 crossed the finish line in 10:31.41 in the 3000-meter race to secure eighth place overall in a field of 27 runners.

Women’s Track and Field Impresses at Annual Tufts’ Cupid Challenge Meet Connor Haugh ’21 Managing Sports Editor The Amherst women’s track and field team competed this weekend in the Cupid Challenge at Tufts’ Gantcher Center. The Mammoths, competing only for individual accomplishments as no team score totals were counted, put forth a strong showing. Only 25 members of the 45 person roster, however competed in the event, due to a combination of premeditated rest and illness.

Amherst did not field competitors in the 5000 meter run, the 4x200-meter relay, or the 4x80meter relay. Amherst also did not participate in the weight throw or shot put.

Notably for Amherst, first-year distance runner Sarah Gayer placed second in the one mile run, finishing just nine seconds over the fiveminute barrier. Junior Christina Scartelli would finish in the middle of the 26-woman event just seconds later.

Amherst, building on their senior leadership, demonstrated their depth in the 800-meter run, in which seniors Leonie Rauls and Danielle Griffin finished second and third respectively. Fellow senior Adele Loomis also crossed the finish line

in 13th place.

Lauren Lamb ’21 and Lizzie Kobelski ’20 finished fourth and fifth, respectively in the 60-meter hurdles.

Amherst still has much to improve on in the flat jumping events, as the Mammoths only successfully completed half of their attempts across the triple and long jumps, fouling five out of nine attempts. Sophomore Katie Siegel, however, took home third in the high jump event, managing over two and a half meters.

The Cupid Challenge, however, remains an important launch point for the coming spring season, along with giving competitors an opportunity to qualify for the Indoor Nationals. These events also proove that first-years have sunk their teeth into college competition and become acquainted with its quirks. Although the team will compete through March in the indoor season, the momentum for the Mammoths only continues to improve.

In the week ahead, Amherst sets it eyes on the next meet in the greater-Boston area, as the team will travel to Boston University to compete in the two-day Valentine Challenge next weekend as well as the Gordon Kelly Invitational at MIT.

Women’s Squash Clinches Fourth-Place Finish at NESCAC Championships Zoe Atoko ’21 Staff Writer This weekend, the women’s squash team travelled to Clinton, New York to open postseason play at the NESCAC Championships, which were hosted by Hamilton. The tournament began on Feb. 3 and kicked off with No. 4 Amherst facing No. 5 Tufts.

The Mammoths’ tournament run got off to a hot start with the favorites gliding past Tufts in the opening round, 7-2, winning by an identical margin to the matchup between these two teams earlier in the season, which Amherst also won.

Tufts took an early lead, winning at the one and three spots. However, a five-game thriller in the second position, won by Kimberley Krayacich ’18, showed that the Mammoths would not cede the upper-hand so easily. The intense start gave way to a swift conclusion, as Amherst swept through the rest of the lineup, allowing Tufts to only take two games on the remaining six courts.

Having bested the Jumbos, the Mammoths advanced to the semifinals of the tournament, where they found themselves facing a much more formidable opponent: top-seeded Trinity.

Much like the previous contest against Tufts, the match between Amherst and Trinity moved swiftly. Unfortunately, however, this time the Mammoths were on the wrong side of the scoresheet. The Bantams mowed down most of Amherst’s lineup, winning positions one through seven in straight games.

However, unwilling to fully fold, Amherst

remained resilient until the end, with Margaret Werner ’21 and Priya Sinha ’19 claiming their own victories in straight games at the eighth and ninth positions, respectively, to end the match on a high note. Despite these small victories, in the end, Amherst lost to Trinity 7-2.

After falling to the Bantams, Amherst played a hard-fought third-place consolation match against Middlebury on Feb. 4. Middlebury impressed at the top of the ladder, winning at the first and second positions. However, Amherst dominated the middle of the lineup, winning positions three through five. Rachel Ang ’19 narrowly won her match; after winning the first game, she had to battle back from a one-game deficit to win the match in five (11-6, 8-11, 7-11, 11-8, 11-9). Ang was followed by Caroline Conway ’20, who dealt a resounding blow to her Panther competitor, winning in straight games (11-9, 11-3, 11-2). Riddhi Sampat ’21 impressed in the fifth position, winning a close four-game affair (12-10, 11-9, 4-13, 11-6).

However, Middlebury clinched the win with a dominant showing in the lower positions, winning on the sixth, seventh and eighth courts, before Werner managed a narrow five-game win in the ninth position to close out the scoring.

Despite the close nature of the match, ultimately the higher-seeded Panthers emerged with a 5-4 victory.

Amherst will host Mount Holyoke onWednesday, Feb. 7 at 6 p.m. in the team’s final match before continuing postseason action at the CSA Team Championships.

On Sunday night, the Philadelphia Eagles toppled the New England Patriots, fending off the reigning champions and grabbing hold of the city’s first Super Bowl championship. Those who feared they would never escape the crippling imprisonment of the Patriots’ dynasty walked away from the Super Bowl like Andy Dufresne emerging from the sewer, arms flung skyward in the falling rain. And Eagles fans kicked off a “celebration” from which the city of Philadelphia may never recover.

Football season is now over, and the sport goes into hibernation until the fall (or June, for anyone who follows the Canadian Football League). Millions of Americans awoke Monday morning, many having assaulted their digestive systems the previous night, and headed to work to face seven months without their country’s near-pathological obsession. For the NFL, however, the Super Bowl is the first marker of the success of the coming season. The league, in recent years especially, is desperate to expand its fan base — to the point of foisting the sport upon Mexico and England, neither of which really seem to have asked for it. The Super Bowl, for reasons only a social scientist could begin to explain, draws viewers who, for the other fifty-one weeks of the year, could care less about football, let alone the two teams actually competing. This one night is the NFL’s opportunity to showcase its product to the uninitiated and uninterested, to draw them into its dramatic and violent spectacle. It is football’s job interview, a chance to convince the world that, even if it is violent and fails to magically insulate itself from political and social struggle, at least it is exciting.

In concept, the game did its best to deliver.

The seemingly unstoppable Patriots were led by the legendary, if perhaps bickering, duo of quarterback Tom Brady and head coach Bill Belichick. They have been the established class of the league for a span nearing two decades, a factory-like powerhouse preaching soulless professionalism and, in the process, committing copyright infringement on the New York Yankees. And what did the the rest of the league come up with to face them? The hard-luck Eagles, led by a backup quarterback, who two years ago was prepared to retire, and a coach who had been running a high school team within the past decade. Certainly, the Eagles had their stars — Fletcher Cox, Jay Ajayi, LeGarrette Blount and Zach Ertz are no scrubs — but after quarterback Carson Wentz’s week 14 knee injury, their Super Bowl hopes were too unrealistic to be taken seriously. Armed with their nightmare-inspiring “underdog” masks, they looked to unseat the inevitable champions, for whom the actual game was supposed to be just a pre-crowning formality. A team that had dealt its fans crushing disappointment for the entirety of the Super Bowl era faced a juggernaut that gave its fans little reason to doubt.

This, of course, was not exactly a matchup of good and evil. Though their fortunes have differed in this millennium, Eagles and Patriots fans share a place atop the rankings of “most despised fan bases:” the Patriots’ for their (stereotype’s) arrogant blather and their Eagles’ counterparts for their propensity for throwing objects at opposing teams’ buses, among other departures from normative fan behavior.

The game began after some characteristically intricate pageantry, including what has to be the largest-ever assemblage of Congressional Medal of Honor recipients — reassuring those who might have chosen to doubt the league’s commitment to lionizing the country’s military — before players began their three-hour march toward CTE. From there, the game went much the way the NFL likely desired. Both teams’ offenses were productive, yet scoring was not inevitable. Three missed kicks added an element of chaos and un-

certainty to the usual formula of a football game.

The Patriots, late in the game, erased the deficit they had earlier allowed the Eagles to establish, only for the Eagles to answer with the game’s final lead change — though they still left a glimmer of hope for a New England comeback. All along the way, “Tide ads” and a dancing Eli Manning kept fans entertained, whilst NBC and the NFL made money hand over fist.

The game, however, played out under the shadow of football’s inadequacies. All the $10 million-a-minute ads and patriotic songs cannot change the fact that football fans have no idea what a catch is. The fate Sunday’s game rested on this harried definition. With fewer than three minutes to play in the fourth quarter and the Patriots leading 33-32, Philadelphia quarterback Nick Foles threw to tight end Zach Ertz on a third-and-7 play from the Patriots’ 12-yard line.

Ertz corralled the ball on the 6-yard line, turned to his left and headed for the end zone. He took three steps and appeared to trip as a New England defender attempted a tackle. As Ertz fell into the end zone, the ball came loose, flipping up into the air and hanging aloft as if suspended by the string of a marionette, tantalizing the Eagles players who swarmed towards it. When it came to earth, Ertz was there to catch it. The referees signaled a touchdown and the Eagles celebrated a huge swing in their win probability.

“Those who came to viewing parties Sunday night wondering whether football was worth their devotion saw football at its best, but also at its worst

”

One might guess where this is headed. The moment the referees threw up their arms to announce the touchdown, NBC play-by-play broadcaster Al Michaels said to the audience, “All you can think back to now is the Jesse James play with Pittsburgh: does he complete the process [of the catch]?” This column dealt with the Jesse James issue in its last edition. After a long review where, as usual, the camera crew allowed the spectators to watch a referee watch a play they all just saw, the officials confirmed the ruling. Ertz, they said, had become a runner after gaining possession and was thus entitled to recover his fumble for a touchdown. This came as a grave shock to the booth announcers, who understood the catch rule to mean the pass was incomplete. Chris Collingsworth, not usually one to be at a loss for words, said, “I give up.”

A similar moment of resigned shrugging happened on most scoring plays during the game. If people thought analyzing slow motion video for intricate details was a fun and exciting way to spend three hours, Americans would pick a weekend in February to all sit down and watch the Zapruder film. Those who came to viewing parties Sunday night wondering whether football was worth their devotion saw football at its best, but also at its worst — by this I mean not only the rule nausea, but more importantly, the gruesome head injury suffered by Patriots’ wide receiver Brandin Cooks in the second quarter of the game. Football, of course, has more pressing concerns than the definition of a catch, the physical and mental effects of a career in the NFL being the most daunting. Yet, even for those of us who have little investment in the NFL’s ratings success, it is hard to watch an organization bungle it all so badly.

Sports

Photos courtesy of Clarus Studios

Amherst junior defenseman Phil Johansson has been a stalwart on the blue line for the Mammoths, registering a plus/minus of +10 thus far this season.

Men’s Hockey Skates Past Bowdoin and Colby in Important NESCAC Games Delancey King ’18 Staff Writer The Amherst men’s hockey team, in the midst of a season defined by inconsistency, finally seemed to find some positive momentum this past weekend. Coming away with two huge NESCAC wins, the Mammoths have improved their overall record to 9-7-4 and sit fourth in the NESCAC standings.

“This was an important weekend for us,” junior defender Phil Johansson said. “It feels great to get two wins, and we’re hoping to carry that momentum through the rest of the regular season and into the postseason.”

On Friday night, the Mammoths took on NESCAC foe Bowdoin at home. Patrick Daly ’20 got things off to a quick start, finding the back of the net within the first four minutes of the game. Finding his own rebound after the initial save from Bowdoin’s Erik Wurman, Daly went top shelf to put Amherst up by one

GAME SCHE DULE

goal. Junior forward Jack Fitzgerald doubled the Mammoths’ lead early in the second period, when Max Roche ’19 found him in the slot with a no-look backhanded pass.

Determined to stay in the contest, the Polar Bears continued to fight and managed to tie things up with five minutes to go in the second period.

Goals from Daniel McMullan and Thomas Dunleavy brought the score to 2-2 and seemed to change the momentum of the game. However, Daly notched his second tally of the game with 48.2 seconds to go to restore Amherst’s lead heading into the third period.

The last score of the game came in the opening minutes of the final frame. Pieter von Steinbergs ’21 received the puck at the right point and fired a shot past Wurman to give Amherst a two-goal lead that they wouldn’t relinquish. Defensively, senior goaltender Connor Girard made 33 saves to se-

cure the win.

The following day, the Mammoths sought revenge against Colby, against whom they had lost 4-1 in January. Nick Bondra ’21 put Amherst on the board first in the 13th minute. Receiving a beautiful pass from Roche on the left dot, Bondra one-timed a shot past the Mules’ net minder. Before the end of the first period, sophomore Noah Gilreath increased the Mammoths’ lead to two. Johansson found Gilreath at the point, and Gilreath’s shot redirected off a defender’s skate into the back of the net.

The Mules came out hard in the second period and seemed poised to make a comeback. In the opening minutes of the period, a power play goal from Colby’s Michael Decker cut the Mammoths’ lead in half. One-timing a shot from the point, Decker went five-hole on Girard to keep the Mules in the game.

The Mammoths responded just before the end of the period, notching two goals in

the remaining four minutes to halt Colby’s comeback. Faking a shot to beat his defender, senior captain Patrick Mooney powered a wrister past Mules’ goalie Sean Lawrence. A mere 14 seconds later, Fitzgerald capitalized on a three-on-two opportunity to put Amherst up by three goals headed into the second intermission.

The final nail in Colby’s coffin came in the last five minutes of the third period. Recording his first collegiate goal, Corey Goldstein ’21 beat his man to a loose puck in front of the Mules’ net and fired a shot into the nylon. The Mules put Amherst under pressure for the rest of the period, but Girard came up with several stops to protect the 5-1 victory for the Mammoths.

Next up, Amherst will host Tufts on Saturday, Feb. 10 and Conn. College on Sunday, Feb. 11. As it will be the last home game of the season, Sunday’s contest against the Camels will double as Senior Day.

WED

FRI

Women’s Squash @ Mount Holyoke, 4 p.m.

Men’s Track & Field @ Valentine Invitational, TBA

Women’s Basketball @ Williams, 7 p.m.

Men’s Track & Field @ Gordon Kelly Invitational, TBA

Women’s Basketball @ Middlebury, 3 p.m.

Women’s Track & Field @ Valentine Invitational, TBA

Women’s Ice Hockey vs. Hamilton 7 p.m.

Women’s Track & Field @ Gordon Kelly Invitational, TBA

Men’s Hockey vs Tufts, 7:30 p.m.

Men’s Basketball vs Middlebury, 3 p.m.

Women’s Ice Hockey vs Tufts, 7:30 p.m.

Men’s Basketball vs. Williams, 7 p.m.

SAT