Issue 17

THE AMHERST

THE INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868

STUDENT VOLUME CXLV, ISSUE 17 l WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2016

Women’s Hockey Advances to NESCAC Semifinal See Sports, Page 9 AMHERSTSTUDENT.AMHERST.EDU

Author Chris Abani Speaks on Race and the Human Face Kiana Herold ’17 Managing News Editor

Photo courtesy of Sophia Salazar ‘18

Students gathered at the Women’s and Gender Center in Keefe on Feb. 16. The center’s new director, Jesse Beal, started their first day in the role on Tuesday, March 1.

College Appoints New WGC Director Dan Ahn ’17 Managing News Editor The college welcomed Jesse Beal as the new director of the Women’s and Gender Center on Tuesday, March 1. Beal formerly worked as the acting director for the office of diversity services at Suffolk University. The center will hold a meet and greet with them (Beal uses the non-binary pronouns they/ them/theirs) from 3 to 5 p.m. this Thursday.

The former interim director, Danielle Hussey, left the position during the summer of 2015. Angie Tissi-Gassoway, director of the Queer Resource Center, served as interim director of the Women’s and Gender Center last semester. Tissi and Dean of Students Alex Vasquez headed a search committee for the new director comprised of faculty, students and staff.

“I know that the directorship of this office has been open for a long time and so I think

the staff are very excited to have a director,” Beal said. “And I’m really excited to work with them to see what we can create together for the center.”

Over the course of last semester, the center’s student staff took on greater organizational responsibilities.

Beal has an academic background in women’s and gender studies. They received their bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas, Austin and master’s from Brandeis University.

“The idea of taking the theory that I spent so many years learning and putting it into praxis in a real way is exciting,” Beal said.

However, Beal said that their background in community organizing will also impact the work that they plan to do as director.

Beal did community work since they were a young adult, but their time at the University of Texas, Austin cultivated their passion for activism. They worked in campaigns that or-

ganized against hate crimes, trans-exclusionary employment practices and anti-abortion groups.

According to Tissi, the search committee chose Beal primarily because they demonsstrated a grasp of gender-related issues that took complexities of identity into account.

“Often, when we think about a women’s and gender center, we think about cis women, straight women and white women,” Tissi said.

“We think of womanhood in a very narrow way. And compared to the other candidates that we saw, Jesse really was able to articulate to us how womanhood and being a woman, and understanding gender and how gender operates through its intersections, require much more than a single lens.”

Beal expressed their admiration for the student activism that took place during Amherst Uprising and said that the students

Continued on Page 3

Renowned author Chris Abani delivered a speech titled “My Face and Ours: Views of Today’s America” in Stirn Auditorium on Feb. 24. Abani’s talk focused on themes from his new book of essays, “The Face: Cartography of the Void,” and was part of a lecture series taking place to honor Black History Month.

Abani commented on the complex undercurrents of race and individual and collective identity in people’s interactions with their own and others’ faces.

A conversation between Abani and Latin American and Latino Culture professor Ilan Stavans, who was the publisher of Abani’s memoir, followed the lecture, and the event concluded with a question and answer session. The lecture was sponsored by the Victor Johnson Lectureship Fund, and President Biddy Martin selected Abani to be the speaker.

Abani is an award-winning author of novels, essays, poems, screenplays and plays. He has received a Guggenheim Award, the Prince Claus Award, PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award and the PEN Hemingway Book Prize, among others. “Graceland” is one of his most well known works. One focus of his work is the collision of cultures he experienced growing up with a Nigerian father and an English mother. He is currently an English professor at Northwestern University.

Chief communication officer Pete Mackey, who was involved with planning the event, said that Abani’s lecture tied into themes touched upon by political strategist Donna Brazile’s recent talk on race and electoral politics.

“We chose Chris because of his excellence as a writer and public speaker, because his recent book, ‘The Face: Cartography of the Void,’ explores timely topics of race and identity in a candid and compelling way and because of the range of ideas his writing as an accomplished essayist, novelist and poet has probed,” Mackey wrote in an email interview.

Abani spoke on how a person’s race impacts the way that their face is viewed. While

Continued on Page 3

Professor Organizes New Series of Dialogues on Race Phillip Yan ’18 Staff Writer Students gathered at the Center for Humanistic Inquiry in Frost Library for a discussion on class, race and affirmative action on Sunday, Feb. 28. This was the third meeting in a series of “Dialogues about Race” organized by professor of philosophy Jyl Gentlzer.

Gentzler said that she started the series after the events of Amherst Uprising, incorporating dialogue training that she had received from the college.

“I was so moved by what I had witnessed in the library that I thought it might be good for students to have opportunities to talk about how they felt and what their experi-

ences were,” she said in an interview.

In order for students to talk openly about their feelings and their experiences, they were given guidelines before the discussion to facilitate the creation of an open space. These guidelines were designed with the aim of allowing the freest possible discourse.

“Some of [the guidelines] seem so selfevident that you shouldn’t have to say them,” Gentzler said. “But I do think it’s important to make them explicit so everyone knows that these are going to be norms that are accepted.”

Students then began discussing class and race with regards to the college admissions process. They made arguments in support of both class and race as considerations in col-

lege admissions.

Students noted an increasing trend of class consciousness. One student cited Amy Gutmann’s essay, “Should Public Policy be Class Conscious Rather than Color Conscious?” in which Gutman argues that focusing on class would be an effective approach of addressing both racial and class injustice.

Participants pointed to larger forces that enable discrimination and commented on the difficulty of being truly race blind. Some argued that it might be more of a claim than a reality in the society we currently live in.

The conversation then turned to diversity and its role at an elite institution. According to Professor Gentzler, the theme of diversity is a common one in these dialogues.

“What I hear at almost every one of these meetings is the frustration with the theory of diversity and the reality of diversity,” Gentzler said. “The theory is that we all interact and learn from one another, and students often express frustration that it doesn’t happen.”

Gentzler also said these dialogues on race embodied that very theory of diversity. She said that one thing she appreciated about the meeting was that “it seemed to exemplify the ideal of Amherst as people from all sorts of backgrounds that come together and share their experiences and views.”

The “Dialogues on Race” discussions series is open to all students. Its next meeting is scheduled for April 10 in the Center for Humanistic Inquiry.

News

Becky Danning Feb. 23, 2016 - March 2, 2016

>>Feb. 23, 2016 6:28 a.m., 79 South Pleasant Lot An officer investigated an intrusion alarm and found it was accidentally set off by an employee.

7:35 a.m., Off Campus Location A student reported being involved in a motor vehicle accident with a college-owned vehicle. >>Feb. 24, 2016 1:57 p.m., Valentine Dormitory Officers responded to a disturbance involving an altercation between two people.

Assistance was provided and the Student Affairs office was notified for follow-up.

10:55 p.m., Orr Rink An officer investigated damage to a gate near Orr Rink. The responsible person was identified on video. Restitution will be pursued. >>Feb. 25, 2016 1:58 a.m., Crossett Dormitory Officers responded to a complaint of loud music and issued a warning at a first-floor suite.

9:11 p.m., Cohan Dormitory An officer responded to a complaint of loud music on the second floor, but nothing was found. >>Feb. 26, 2016 10:12 p.m., King Dormitory An officer discovered a group of students with alcohol playing a game involving beer. They were advised that the activity was prohibited. >>Feb. 27, 2016 12:04 a.m., Coolidge Dormitory Officers responded to a complaint of a loud party and located a large party in a secondfloor suite. It was shut down.

2:12 a.m., King Dormitory Officers responded to a complaint of people yelling in the basement. Several students and visitors were found with alcohol. They were of age to possess the alcohol and were advised of the noise complaint.

7:51 a.m., Valentine Dining Hall An officer investigated the theft of a newspaper rack valued at $800. As a result of the investigation, a student was identified as being responsible.

The matter was referred to Student Affairs.

10:30 p.m., Williston Hall Officers responded to a noise complaint and found a gathering with alcohol in a first-floor room. All non-residents were directed to leave.

10:49 p.m., WIlliston Hall While at a first-floor room investigating a noise complaint, an officer discovered that the underage residents were in possession of alcohol. The alcohol was confiscated and the matter was referred to Student Affairs.

10:49 p.m., Williston Hall While investigating a noise complaint, officer confiscated alcohol found unattended on the first floor.

11:02 p.m., King Dormitory Officers responded to a noise complaint and found an unauthorized party on the first floor.

It was shut down.

11:22 p.m., King Dormitory While investigating a noise complaint, an officer confiscated alcohol found unattended in the first-floor common room.

11:28 p.m., Merrill Science Road An officer checked on several men loitering on the south side of Coolidge Dormitory with a 30-pack of beer by their side.

It was discovered the men had no association with the college and were directed to leave. >>Feb. 28, 2016 12:16 a.m., Hitchcock Dormitory A resident reported the theft of a green North Face jacket from his unlocked room. It is valued at $200.

11:31 a.m., Campus Grounds Amherst College Police Department officers assisted the town police in investigating an incident that occurred in town.

One student and his guest were placed under arrest.

5:26 p.m., Moore Dormitory While in a first-floor room, an officer discovered marijuana. It was confiscated and the matter was referred to Student Affairs.

5:52 p.m., Porter House A resident reported overhearing a suspicious comment through her open window made by someone outside the building. Report was taken.

8:55 p.m., Leland House Officers and the Fire Department responded to an alarm and found that smoke from a pot of grease left on a stove activated the system. >>Feb. 29, 2016 1:10 a.m., Frost Library A man who has no association with the college was found asleep in the building. There was evidence that he had been drinking. He was issued a notrespass order and directed off campus.

Thoughts on Theses Department of Mathematics

Becky Danning ’16 is math major writing a thesis that examines the relationships between participants of social networks. Using Python, she seeks to create an algorithm capable of analyzing social networks to identify which participants hold the most influence.

Her thesis adviser is Professor Tanya Leise from the mathematics department.

Q: How did you first become interested in mathematics?

A: I declared sometime toward the end of sophomore year, but I think I realized I wanted to be a math major at the beginning of sophomore year.

Q: What do you think drew you toward the math department?

A: I came in just having taken AP calculus in high school and I honestly thought that was going to be the last math class I ever took because it was a stressful experience and I was really looking forward to trying something new. But I figured, if I’ve gone all the way up to AP calculus, I might as well take multivariable calculus.

And then, if I’ve taken multivariable calculus, I might as well take linear algebra. And then I started getting hooked, especially with linear algebra. From there, I decided I might as well major.

Q: What is your thesis about?

A: I’m writing a thesis on network analysis, specifically social network analysis. Social network analysis — a lot of people think it’s like analyzing Facebook or Twitter. It’s sort of related to that, but [it’s] network analysis. “Social” is the adjective, it’s not “social network” analysis. It’s the science of examining networks of relationships between people or business or countries or any sort of entity and trying to figure out how the different actors in the network are going to behave based on the relationships between them.

Q: Could you give me an example?

A: I worked as a research assistant for Professor Clemans in the psychology department the summer before this year. She had just done the APEX study — the Amherst Peer Experience study — for the class of 2017. She was looking at how peer networks change over time, and she was trying to figure out if certain attributes of people make them more likely to attract people as time goes on. A lot of that comes down to social network analysis. For example, there’s a concept called ‘centrality’ in social network analysis, which is what I’m focusing on, which is essentially how much power or influence they have. By converting the network into a matrix of numbers, you can basically calculate who has the most power in all these different ways.

Q: By doing this, do you expect to find people with the strongest networking abilities?

A: Yes. I’m writing a program in Python that will figure out who’s the most central based on an algorithm I’ve developed. What I’m looking at is basically ease of communication among different members of the network, and also the ability of the network to isolate someone else. If you can isolate someone else — you only have one friend in that network, and that person decides to stop talking to you — then all the sudden you have no more access to that network.

The person who has the ability to cut you off has a lot of social influence in that way.

Q: So far, what has been the hardest part of writing a thesis?

A: Probably figuring out exactly how I wanted to write this algorithm. It’s hard to make some-

thing up. It’s almost coming out to be like a creative thesis. I already have the introduction, which is sort of a review of past research and past measures, but at some point I had to sit down and think, “What do I want to make up?”

It was sort of a daunting challenge, and I went through a lot of different drafts of what key factors in a network I wanted to be targeting. No one method [for which] I could code could account for every single part of a network, so I had to really focus on a few specific things in order for it to be a feasible project.

Q: What has been the most enjoyable part?

A: What I really like about my thesis is the extent to which it’s accessible to people who aren’t math majors. It’s a little embarrassing that my senior math thesis is that accessible, but I really like that it has real-world applications. That’s what drew me to the subject in the first place.

It’s a general topic that I’m interested in also, so being able to apply my math background to this thing that I’m interested in is very fun.

Q: Do you plan on using this work or continuing it in the future?

A: Ideally, yes. I don’t know at what point it’ll come back in. Network analysis is a burgeoning field, but also hasn’t totally been implemented in a lot of different contexts just yet. But I’m hoping that I will have the opportunity in the future, when presented with a problem, to be like, “Hey, I actually know a little bit about this area. Let me try and look at it from a network perspective”—as opposed to an individual caseby-case perspective.

Q: Do you have any advice for students considering writing a thesis?

A: Don’t be afraid to make up your own subject.

Often students, especially in the sciences, will work with a professor on their own project, and there are a lot of really cool professor projects in the math department as well, but I had the gut feeling that I wanted to do this. It’s been a little bit scary to write a thesis where someone else won’t necessarily have the answer if I can’t figure it out, but it’s been a lot more rewarding because it’s something that I came up with. I didn’t invent it, but I came up with it on my own.

Q: Now that you’re well underway, is there anything you would have changed or done previously before you started your thesis now that you know what the process is like?

A: It would have been nice to have been working on my thesis over the summer becauseI would have been able to make a lot more headway and I’d have more time to focus on it, but really during the summer was when I was figuring out what I wanted to be doing. I couldn’t have changed it if I wanted to, but — this is another thing for future thesis writers: if you can, stay at Amherst before your senior year and start working on your thesis, “it’ll be a very good decision.”

This is less from my experience and more from the experience of being a senior, but if you’re going to write a thesis, make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons: because you’re interested in the topic, or because you want the research experience.

— Ryan Cenek ’18

The Amherst Student • March 2, 2016

News

3

OES Promotes Activism in “All In” Campaign Jingwen Zhang ’18 Managing News Editor The Office of Environmental Sustainability is holding the Amherst All In initiative this week, a T-shirt campaign designed to encourage positive student attitudes towards environmental activism.

Planning for the Amherst All In campaign began last semester. According to the campaign’s student organizer Suhasini Ghosh ’16, the campaign’s name comes from the goal of demonstrating the widespread effect of environmentalism on daily life.

“There is such a stigma that is associated with people that care about or support environmentalism and sustainability,” Ghosh said.

“That stigma is of the ‘tree hugger’ and prevents people from becoming fully in support of these issues.”

The first part of the campaign took place last Thursday and Saturday and encouraged students to make statements about the personal importance of environmentalism and receive an Amherst All In tee for their efforts.

The students also had their photos taken to raise awareness.

According to Ghosh, the organizers advertised these events mainly by word of mouth.

Sixty students participated in this portion of the campaign.

“We talked to people from different groups around campus to see if people would be in support of it,” Ghosh said. “It wasn’t just the environmental studies majors, or the people involved in green groups on campus.”

The next step will be tabling in Keefe campus center on Wednesday, where more

Photo courtesy of Sophia Salazar ‘18

Students posed for photos at the Powerhouse as part of the Office of Environmental Sustainability’s All In campaign in support of environmental activism on Feb. 25. students will have the opportunity to write a statement about environmentalism and receive a T-shirt.

“We did the first two rounds of photo-taking just to create some buzz around it,” said Laura Draucker, director of the Office of Environmental Sustainability. She said that while all stages of this campaign are open to all students, Wednesday’s events would be better

advertised than the photo-taking events last week.

Draucker said that the Office of Environmental Sustainability and leaders of studentrun environmental groups on campus will use the statements made by participants to gauge the student body’s attitudes and thoughts toward environmental issues. According to Draucker, a common theme among many

statements was a focus on questions of social justice.

The office plans to use this information to inform future on-campus programming, such as speaker events, that deals with environmental issues.

Ghosh is encouraging students to wear their shirts in solidarity on Friday to round out the final component of the initiative.

Abani Speaks On Faces and Perceptions of Racial Identity Continued from Page 1 some worry about whether their face is considered beautiful, Abani said he is more concerned with how he holds his face and how others read his face in relation to personal safety.

Abani said that no matter how faces represent individuals, they are subject to being perceived as representative of racial groups.

“It seems like you are always caught between this problem, where any attempt to affirm your individuality, affirm your own privilege, becomes a simultaneous shameful thing, where you are simultaneously disavowing other kinds of blackness — making you a race traitor, but also putting you in a position where you are always begging for something that actually belongs to you,” he said.

Throughout his talk, Abani used personal anecdotes to convey his thoughts on contemporary issues. He shared stories from his

childhood growing up in a biracial family in Nigeria and his experiences of discrimination in the U.S. “Power, it has been argued, is in having fluidity — fluidity within a larger social context, but also within your own self-narrative, such as to accommodate and simultaneously thwart narratives that are projected onto you,” Abani said.

Abani consistently returned to the concept of the face and its relationship to identity throughout the talk. He noted that individuals are taught to see humanity in things that they perceive as human, and appealed to the audience to change their reflexive associations and attitudes.

“When I look at a face I try to challenge every assumption I have about that face and what that face is trying to tell me,” he said. “I try to touch it metaphorically in certain ways as to say, ‘Who is this face and what does this face mean to me?’”

Photo courtesy of Kiana Herold ‘17

Latin American studies professor Ilan Stavans and author Chris Abani talked about Abani’s personal life and its impact on his writing on Feb. 24.

Beal Named WGC Director

Interested in getting the scoop on the latest developments on campus?

Continued from Page 1

e h t Join s w e n ! ff a st If you want to write for us, email dahn17@amherst.edu

showed the ability to bring up complex issues of identity.

“I’ve been doing multicultural affairs work and LGBTQ work in higher education, and all of it has been very intersectional,” they said.

“I’ve always had a focus on how race, gender, sexuality and class impact and complicate one another. I’ve been doing this work, but not in the context of a women’s and gender center.”

Some of Beal’s immediate goals are to begin strategic planning for the center’s future and write a mission and vision statement in collaboration with the center’s staff. They said that crafting a “brand” for the center is important in order to inform the community about the resources that the center can provide.

“It’s figuring out internally who we are and then making that statement campuswide,” they said.

Beal also plans to increase center programming, as well as potentially set up largescale programs, such as major speaker events, that would engage a larger portion of the student body. ”I’m hoping that Jesse is going to do things that we haven’t ever seen in the women’s and gender center, because it’s been a relatively quiet place,” Tissi said. “I think if we can make sure that we choose a person to make the place a vibrant hub on campus, we’re doing well, and I think Jesse’s going to be that person.”

Beal said she intends to collaborate with the other resource centers on campus as well as the black studies and sexuality, women’s and gender studies departments.

“I think feminism is incredibly important to us understanding who we are in the world and what equity really means,” they said. “Because if we’re not talking about the intersections of gender as well as sexual orientation and race, then we’re not doing all the work.”

Opinion Springing to Change Too Soon?

Editorial

With variance in national holidays, school-wide events and commencement programming, the college’s academic calendar changes on a yearly basis. The length of each semester has always remained consistent — 13 weeks in the fall and 14 weeks in the spring — but it could be changed in the near future. College Council recently proposed shortening the spring semester to 13 weeks, for reasons such as aligning the college on a similar calendar with other elite institutions and allowing for consistency within the structure of interterm. This shortened semester would then lengthen the reading period in the spring up to seven days, although the number is not determined yet. While this proposal is well-intentioned, there are many potential complications inherent in this change.

This proposal operates under the assumption that professors will tailor their courses to fit into a 13-week-long semester.

However, we wonder if all professors will actually be willing to eliminate some material from their current 14-week-long curriculum to accommodate the new calendar. In quantitative courses, many professors arrive at the end of the semester shy of their originally intended goal. These courses often build on each other, so it’s crucial to cover all the intended content so that students will be prepared for the course in the curriculum that follows. Additionally, many humanities based courses use the extra week in the spring semester to delve deeper into interesting topics. Many research based courses are restricted to the spring specifically to use the extra week of class time.

By shortening the semester, professors will be forced to cram content into a shortened time frame, giving students even less time to fully grasp all of the material presented to them.

Another reason to reconsider the shortening of the semester is not only that it eliminates a week of our valuable classroom hours, but also a week of extracurricular activities.

Most Amherst students are heavily involved in extracurricular

activities, and to cut out a week of school means seven fewer days of playing sports with your team, singing or playing musical instruments with ensemble groups, or coordinating special events for the campus, to name a few. Extracurriculars are a key part of the Amherst experience, and it’s important to consider the cost, both monetary and personal, in losing a week of these foundational activities. The new proposal does not include any considerations for changes in tuition with the shortened length of the semester. While reading period days are valuable, classroom and extracurricular minutes are crucial to our time at Amherst, and it’s important that the additional value of a week be considered.

The proposal promises a longer reading period in order to fit a calendar in which the date of the commencement ceremony is planned and fixed years in advance. Some proponents of the 13-week-long spring semester have said reading period will promote more opportunity for studying as well as de-stressing and self-reflecting. These activities that promote self-care align with the college’s goal to shape Amherst students as well-balanced individuals, not just academically minded students. However, the extended reading period needs to also combat structural inefficiencies with the current reading period model. We need professors to be more available within this crucial time. And we wonder whether the extended reading period will provide value to all Amherst students.

Since many humanities majors choose to go home and write their papers at the beginning of reading period, these students would essentially be trading a week of precious class time for a week spent at home. There are still many lingering questions as well as problems inherent in this shortened semester proposal, and the editorial board urges faculty and administrators to carefully consider these questions before approving any drastic changes to the academic calendar.

Good Riddance, Justice Scalia Galen Muskat ’18E Contributing Writer “Better the wheels of government should stop … demonstrate itself to be a failure and find an end … than our principles, our honor be infringed upon — we have right, justice and the ‘King of Kings’ on our side.”

If this sounds as though it came from the mouth of a Republican congressman this past week, many of whom refused to hold a confirmation hearing on anyone President Obama might name to fill the vacancy in the Supreme Court — let alone even meet with any presumptive nominee — well, it did not.

Rather, these words flowed from the quill of E.W. Marshall, a well-established South Carolinian merchant and fierce advocate of slavery, to his good friend and national Congressman William P. Miles in 1860. At issue was the potential nomination to Speaker of the House of John Sherman of Ohio, whose rise to the position would tip the balance of power to [anti-slavery] Republicans and all but assure their dominance over future bills regarding the position of slavery in the United States.

But it may as well be considered analogous to the obstructionist stance of today’s majority — Republican congress. Their outright refusal to consider any Obama Supreme Court nominee — one who could establish the first liberal court since the end of Earl Warren’s tenure in 1969 — is a disgrace to our Constitution and democracy.

But it is also a juvenile, “my-way-or-the-highway” proclamation that hearkens a bygone era — one of sectionalism, racism and inhumanity — which all but reeks of the once all-powerful white man’s fear of losing his ability to enforce

traditional, bifurcated views of identity, class and ethnicity in American society.

Ironically, it is a fitting way to “honor” the memory of Justice Antonin Scalia. The Italian-American native of 1940s Queens, New York was a bigot through-and-through, and his proclaimed “Originalist” reading of the Constitution (interpreting it in the context of its authors’ “original” intentions) represented a thinly-veiled excuse for promoting his vision of a society where blacks were inferior, homosexuality was a sin to be erased and the wealthy could buy the allegiance of politicians.

“Originalism” is a misnomer. “Obstructionism,” though, does his views, uh, justice.

Indeed, Scalia’s rulings not only prevented progress, but sought to wind it back. In his dissent last December over an Affirmative Action case involving the University of Texas, he said that minorities with lower academic credentials and backgrounds than their white peers could do better at “a less advanced school, a slower-track school where they do well.” Racist, for sure, but he was just warming up: “Most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas. They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re being pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them.”

It does not take much effort to see the connection between Scalia’s shocking comments and the anti-black vitriol at the heart of E.W. Marshall’s text. What’s perhaps more amazing, however, is that it’s 2016, and here I am having to make note of inherent similarities between clearly racist personalities born more than one hundred years apart, which has produced the same obstructionism in the current Congress as

that which threatened its mid-nineteenth century counterpart.

Republicans in today’s Congress may think they are doing Scalia an honor by refusing to allow the balance to tip in favor of the opposition. If anything, they are revealing their fears of losing political power, much like pro-slavery Secessionists; and their own flagrant misunderstanding of democratic processes parallels Scalia’s backwards ideas about a world where “all men are created equal.”

So by all means, Congress, stall away: If you look to emulate Justice Scalia with a harmful and blatant misreading of the Constitution, you are right on target. But your unwillingness to even participate in a democratic process renders no favors to the living.

I never wish death upon anyone. But the passing of Antonin Scalia is a boon for America’s future — however the court’s now-open seat may ultimately be filled. Scalia called homosexuality a “moral opprobrium.” In Lawrence v. Texas, a case that challenged the state’s criminalization of gay sex, he referred to the latter as “flagpole sitting.” Commenting on a crucial provision of the Voting Rights Act during its reauthorization

by Congress in 2006, Scalia said its unanimous approval in the Senate was not indicative of its need but of “a phenomenon … called perpetuation of racial entitlement.”

Such ignorant, hateful language does not belong on the Supreme Court; and such language is the last thing we should expect, in this, the twenty-first century, to be issuing from the lips of a Supreme Court justice.

Good Riddance, Scalia. Oh, and R.I.P.: Remain Interred, Please. Your ideas were way past their time.

THE AMHERST

STUDENT E X E C U T I V E B OA R D Editors-in-Chief Elaine Jeon, Lauren Tuiskula Executive Adviser Sophie Murguia Managing News Dan Ahn, Kiana Herold, Jingwen Zhang Managing Opinion Diane Lee, Julia Pretsfelder Managing Arts and Living Gabby Edzie, Paola Garcia-Prieto, Alida Mitau Managing Sports Jason Darell, Drew Kiley, Julia Turner Managing Design Gabby Bishop S TA F F Head Publisher Emily Ratte Design Editors Justin Barry, Megan Do, Sunna Juhn, Adele Loomis, Monica Nimmagadda, Zavi Sheldon, Chloe Tausk, Yrenly Yuan Assistant News Editors Ryan Cenek, Carlos Rivero Photography Editor Kyra Gardner

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The Amherst Student • March 2, 2016

Opinion

A Greener Gift Noah Lerner ’16 and Ned Kleiner ’16 Contributing Writers At first, this op-ed was going to be a call to arms, asking our fellow seniors to boycott the senior gift drive. As members of Amherst’s divestment campaign, we planned to refrain from donating to Amherst College until the college has divested, a pledge that many other environmentally-conscious alumn have already taken. Amherst still has many investments tied to the fossil fuel industry, and we felt that it was important that our class does not give our dollars to the companies that are destroying our planet.

In late January, we discovered that we had been outmaneuvered. In an email sent to the entire senior class, the Senior Gift Committee explained in a few bullet points that our class’s donations would not be put toward the college’s endowment and that seniors could elect to put their donations towards “sustainability.” A comprehensive analysis of why we think these points are inconsequential is beyond the scope of this article, but suffice it to say that we all rolled our eyes when we saw yet another proclaimed “sustainability” fund put forth by the college. Regardless, we felt that the Senior Gift Committee had effectively taken the wind out of our sails before our campaign had even begun.

Let us be clear — the Senior Gift Drive is a symbolic effort. What the Senior Gift Committee, the

Alumni Office and Biddy herself have all stressed is that what matters is not how much money seniors donate, but rather how many of them donate at all. One of our friends — who will remain nameless — did her duty to the school by donating five cents. While the Senior Gift Drive may claim that our gifts are important to financial aid and the overall operation of the school, the emphasis on reaching 92 percent participation makes it clear that the school really just cares about having a good statistic to give to U.S. News & World Report.

If you run the math, as we are sure the administration has, the Senior Gift Committee will need to persuade all but thirty-some students to donate if they want to reach a 92 percent participation rate. It was no surprise, then, that the Senior Gift Committee was nervous about our campaign. If even a small fraction of environmentally-minded students chose not to donate, the Committee would have little chance of meeting their goal.

It was to that end that Biddy, in her speech at the Senior Gift Kickoff Event, seemed to address our campaign directly. The third of her three main reasons to donate to the Senior Gift was that our contributions would indirectly support the effort to fight climate change. This statement, which was a stretch to say the least, felt like a hollow and very targeted appeal for our money and also the .25 percent of the se-

nior class that each of us represented. It also signaled that for the first time, Biddy was addressing us not as students but as future donors. As second semester seniors, our relationship with the college is about to transition. Whereas previously we have effectively been Amherst’s dependents, we are now about to become its supporters.

We fully acknowledge that Amherst is reliant upon alumni donations for its continuing operation. And we want to make it clear — we believe wholeheartedly in Amherst’s mission. We both have also benefitted tremendously from our Amherst education and experience. But at the same time, we want Amherst to do better when it comes to its sustainable investing. And to that end, we plan to leverage our position as supporters of this institution to catalyze broader change.

In the end, we believe that the most consequential way that Amherst can forward the cause of sustainability is to divest its endowment from fossil fuels.

So while we are committed to supporting our alma mater, we also feel that by contributing to the Senior Gift, we would be demonstrating to Amherst that nothing needs to change. We have decided, instead, to donate our money to the Fossil Free Divest Fund.

When the day comes that Amherst finally chooses to divest, the Divest Fund will release our donations to the College. Until that day, Amherst will have to do without our .25 percent.

Reimagining Physical Education Shruthi Badri ’16 Contributing Writer To the Curriculum Committee, and (again) in particular, The Fundamental Skills sub-committee, The phrase “P.E.” evokes memories that vary wildly depending on whom you ask.

Responses range from reminiscences of time spent playing with friends, away from the doldrums of the classroom, to shudders at the recollection of the gym’s sickly smell which was made far worse by the desire to be almost anywhere else. As conflicting as these sentiments are, they are in part rooted in some form of the following insight: P.E. is different from being in a “regular” class (of course, opinions vary on whether this is a good thing.)

In fact, in the Commonwealth, “Physical Education” is called “Physical Training.” While otherwise retaining much of the same nature, this nomenclature explicitly establishes the distinction from academic activity even more.

P.E. today is not a domain of higher education. Colleges don’t typically require their students to fulfill any kind of physical education requirement to graduate. Amongst those that still do, most seem to be motivated by some notion of the importance of fitness or “healthy” habits. The vast majority of these programs are not considered academic or relevant to academics but instead, extra skills that a student ought to learn to be “well-rounded.”

This would suggest that the cultivation of the mind and of the body are distinct pursuits — both important but not directly related.

But this is an astonishing view, particularly in a world where we imagine we have moved on from Cartesian dualism. Ask anyone who has ever been acquainted with cognitive science, fallen seriously ill, or dedicated time to yoga, and they will tell you that the mind and the body are inextricably intertwined. A scientist might point to the fact that it is possible to image the brain with results that correspond to the person’s mental activity. A psychiatrist will tell you that pills can affect a dramatic change in mental state through a series of physical re-

actions. Someone who has had a chronic physical illness could talk to you about the numerous times when they have felt betrayed by and estranged from their mind in addition to their physical symptoms. Those who do practices that encompass the body and the mind like tai chi and yoga are intimately familiar with the ways that they can use the body to profoundly transform the mind.

Given the profusion of evidence, it is inexplicable that any institution dedicated to fostering thought would not require that its students become aware of and learn to carefully examine, the effects of their bodies on their minds. We are so meticulously instructed as students on how to guard our thoughts from emotional influences, biases and poor forms of reasoning. Yet to imagine that we can stop there assumes that our minds function perfectly otherwise and do so consistently. Unfortunately, this is simply not the reality of things. What we are doing is akin to giving a race car driver the keys to a vehicle after extensive training in a simulator, and omitting to mention that in the real world, a car’s ability to perform is subject to more than just the driver’s skill. There are all sorts of ways the vehicle might physically wear down or respond to its environment that will fundamentally affect the quality of the drive. Any good driver ought to be able to account for and address these issues as they arise.

What would such physical education look like? It’s difficult to provide a precise prescription because there’s really nothing like it in mainstream higher education at the moment. What can be said is that it can’t simply be physical activity in the vein of athletics or fitness; we certainly don’t need to bring back the swim test. Instead, it is essential that the instruction is grounded in reflection and aims at furthering a personal understanding of the how the mind and body interact. The ways this might manifest provide abundant fodder for conversations to come, but if we are as serious as we say we are about fostering thought, it is absolutely critical that these conversations occur going forward.

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Arts&Living

Photo courtesy of watermarkonline.com

Host Chris Rock offered comedic criticism of Hollywood, drawing attention to the lack of diversity among recent Oscar nominees and in the film industry.

Racially Aware Oscars Marks Turning Point in Hollywood Politics Paola Garcia-Prieto ‘18 Managing Arts & Living Editor The impossible happened: Leonardo DiCaprio finally won an Oscar and the Academy owned up to its lack of diversity. The #OscarsSoWhite controversy emerged in the last couple of years, but the issue became even more pertinent this year when there were no actors of color nominated. After Neil Patrick Harris danced around the subject last year, the Academy chose straight-shooter Chris Rock to be this year’s host. When it was first announced that he would be hosting the Oscars for the second time, everyone knew Rock wouldn’t keep quiet about the Academy’s lack of diversity. However, the issue became more pressing when the nominations came out and Jada Smith announced that she was boycotting the Oscars and encouraged others to do so as well. In his opening monologue, Rock said that he seriously thought about boycotting but realized the show would go on either way. He decided to put his comedic talents to good use and make the diversity issue the main theme of the entire show, making it the most memorable Oscars of our lifetime.

Rock got real in his opening monologue, hiding meaningful hard-hitting quotes amidst jokes that made the mostly white audience extremely uncomfortable. He started off with some light jokes to relax the audience. He pointed out that this was the 88th Academy Awards and surely not the first time there were no black nominees. He asked the question many critics of the Oscars boycott posed: why this Academy Awards? Why were there no protests in the 50s and 60s when black people were probably not even allowed into the Oscars? He gave a concise answer : “we had real things to protest at the time, you know? We had real things to protest; you know, we’re too busy being raped and lynched to care about who won best cinematographer.” In other words, he was alluding to the fact that it is 2016 and Hollywood can no longer pretend to live in a post-racial world any longer. He described how Hollywood is racist, but not the type of racism everyone is accustomed to. It’s “sorority” racist. “We like you Rhonda, but you’re not a Kappa,” Rock said. He calls out

the white directors, screenwriters, actors and producers that are so nice and liberal, but still refrain from casting black actors in their movies most of the time. “What I’m trying to say is, you know, it’s not about boycotting anything, “Rock said. “It’s just, we want opportunity. We want black actors to get the same opportunities as white actors. That’s it. Not just once.

Leo gets a great part every year and, you know, everybody, all you guys, get great parts all the time.”

The conversation did not end there. All throughout the show the theme of racism in Hollywood kept appearing. First, there were skits of black actors in the nominated films, including Rock adopting Matt Damon’s role in “The Martian” and being left on Mars to die by the NASA crew who “didn’t see any black astronaut.” Another crowd favorite was the “Black History Month Minute” where Angela Bassett commends an actor, whom we assume to be Will Smith, for his talent and at the end reveals she was referring to Jack Black, a crack at the Oscar’s tendency’s to award white actors over equally talented black actors. Rock also went to a movie theater in Compton to talk to moviegoers about the Oscars controversy.

Most of the people he interviewed, who were all black except for one white male, hadn’t seen most of the Oscar nominated films. At the midpoint of the show the president of the Academy gave an empowering speech, urging the people in the theatre to make a difference in their fields, “it is not enough to listen and agree, we must

take action.”

While for the most part the show ran smoothly, there were a couple of hiccups. The sound was cut off a couple of times, ironically while presenting the Oscar for best sound editing and most unfortunately when the winner for best film was being announced. A few presenters, such as Sasha Baron Cohen and Sarah Silverman, tried and failed to deliver diversity related jokes before presenting their awards.

The famous minions presented the award for best-animated short film, and were met with a collective groan of frustration. There was an ill-timed joke about Stacey Dash, who recently proclaimed there should be no Black History Month, being the Academy’s new minority outreach director and wishing the audience a happy Black History Month. However, Rock’s jokes kept the audience engaged. He even brought his daughter’s Girl Scout troop along to sell cookies at the event, where they supposedly made over 65 thousand dollars.

The Oscars experimented with some new features including a pre-set list of names the winners wanted to thank, which would appear in a scrolling caption at the bottom of the screen as they approached the stage. This was obviously an attempt to shave off time from the acceptance speeches where the winners go on to thank all the members of their family and every elementary school teacher they ever had. Still the show went over time and lasted a total of three hours and 30 minutes because winners still ended up thanking everyone from the scrolling caption anyway.

Besides the infamous minions there were some other great cameos in the show including the bear from “The Revenant.” which sat in the audience and waved at the camera when the movie won best cinematography.

Woody and Buzz Lightyear appeared to present an award 20 years after their first movie came out, reminding all of us how old we are. The beloved Star Wars droids, C-3PO and R2-D2, rePhoto courtesy of tv.com turned to

the stage for the first time since 1978 along with their new companion BB-8.

The music performers, however, stole the show. First The Weeknd performed his hit “Earned it,” backed up by violinists and surrounded by modern dancers as a trapeze artist performed above him. Lady Gaga managed to top her jaw-dropping tribute to “The Sound of Music” at last year’s Oscar’s with her performance of “Til It Happens To You.” Vice president Joe Biden introduced Lady Gaga as “his friend” after delivering a speech related to the president’s “It’s on us” campaign to end sexual violence on college campuses. Gaga’s song was written for a documentary called “The Hunting Ground” about rape culture on college campuses. Gaga’s ballad is heartbreaking enough on it’s own but at the end of her performance she was surrounded by sexual violence survivors standing strong with messages written on their arms. The audience, both in theaters and at home, burst into tears.

Despite this show-stopping performance, Sam Smith took home the Oscar for his song “Writings on the Wall.” He thanked Lady Gaga and dedicated his award to the LGBT community around the world. The big winner of the night was “Mad Max: Fury Road” with a total of six Oscars. Alejandro Iñárritu became the first person to win best director twice in a row for his movie, “The Revenant” and he gave a hopeful speech about a world in the future where “the color of our skin is as irrelevant as the length of our hair.” Brie Larson won best actress for her role in “Room” and the patient Leonardo DiCaprio, after 19 years of losing, won best actor for his role in “The Revenant.”

In his speech he thanked everyone who has helped him succeed throughout his entire acting career and proceeded to talk about climate change. “Spotlight,” in which Rachel McAdams and Mark Ruffalo star as investigative journalists who uncover the web of pedophilic Catholic priests, won best feature film in a surprising turn of events. The night ended on a jolly note as Rock invited the audience to the BET awards in the summer and screamed “Black Lives Matter!” before the hip-hop classic “Fight the Power” played as the credits rolled, ending the night on the same note it began.

Arts & Living 7

The Amherst Student • March 2, 2016

Rising Artist Smino to Perform in Hitchcock Dormitory Saturday Night Alida Mitau ’18 Managing Arts & Living Editor It’s unfortunately clear that a vibrant music scene doesn’t exist in the mainstream social fabric of Amherst College. In my experience, when concerts happen on campus, very few people know about them and attend them. And on Saturday nights, the social dorms tend to radiate the same ten pop songs.

Certainly, people have schoolwork to do, jobs to work and higher priorities than participating in the creation of a more sophisticated musical culture. However, when the opportunity arises, why not spend a Saturday night on campus listening to a great and free concert and aiding in making Amherst a more musical, artistically inclined campus?

Fortunately, a few commendable students have been working to change this dissonant culture, and this Saturday they are gifting us with a concert featuring groundbreaking artist Smino and opening band Baeja Vu. Smino, a rapper and vocalist from St. Louis, has recently put out two EPs with his producer Monte Booker, and they have been exceptionally well received. His first EP, released four months ago, is called “S!CK S!CK S!CK,” and since then, Smino has been making a lot of noise in the hip-hop world. With the release of his second EP two months ago, “blkjuptr,” his Soundcloud followers have steadily increased, and he has frequently been predicted to reach high-level fame.

Chicago-based producer Stefan Ponce said, “Smino and Monte, in my opinion, are going to be DJ Premier, Guru level. Drake and 40 Level. They will be that legendary.”

Working in Classick Studios, the same recording studio that gave us Change the Rapper’s “Acid Rap,” Smino will surely continue to release impressive original music. Smino is also known for being socially conscious and representing his St. Louis roots in the wake of Mike Brown. His music style is very

Photo courtesy of facebook.com/SminoBrown

WAMH and Hip-Hop Club have sponsored Smimo, an artist who guarentees to bring an exciting social alternative to the standard Amherst Saturday night. versatile, and he raps and sings over eclectic, emotive and electronically-influenced beats. Pigeons and Planes, a music journalism outlet owned and operated by Complex Magazine, describes Smino as possessing an “unforced confidence” that allows him to showcase his versatility in “his sung hooks, rapping in a syrupy cadence then snapping into a double-time flow, just because he can.”

Baeja Vu will be opening for Smino thanks to the bassist of the band, Fadi Hamati ’14, an Amherst alum. The band said that they have “been bringing an eclectic mix of funk, R&B, and hip-hop to basements and porches (and stoops) since 2015.” Based in Somerville, Massachusetts, Baeja Vu has

quickly grown from a group of roommates performing at Somerville Porchfest 2015 to a seven piece band moving crowds at sold out shows at the Cantab Lounge and Lilypad in Cambridge. They have been described to have a big-band sound with cutting rhymes.

The frontmen of the band, Lumumba Seegers and Mike (“kid naps”) Leon, self describe as spitting “a tight blend of heady original verses and thick catchy hooks” while their background ensemble “clamors to deliver the funk.” Though they are a relatively unknown, new band, they will deliver a great show for us on Saturday, especially due to their strong Amherst connection.

This Saturday’s show is in Hitchcock

Dormitory, starting at 8:30 p.m. with Smino performing at 10:15 p.m., is sure to be a success and an event you won’t want to miss.

The average Saturday night places and songs aren’t going anywhere, so why not try something new and exciting and come out to hear Smino and Baeja Vu? It could be a once in a lifetime event, you might just be seeing Smino’s name next to Drake’s in the next few years, and it would be awesome to support to those commendable students who worked long and hard to make this show happen. Saturday night has promised to result in a lively celebration of good music and, perhaps, it will lay the groundwork for initating a more creative, artistic social culture at Amherst.

Ridley Scott’s “The Martian”: The Story of the Loneliest Man on the Planet

Photo courtesy of flickr.com

“The Martian” recieved six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.

Mark Simonitis ’19 Staff Writer The red planet has been a source of inspiration for years, especially for science fiction visionaries such as H.G. Welles and Edgar Rice Burroughs. It has hosted alien civilizations, portals to other dimensions and Bugs Bunny. This time, Matt Damon takes on the second step of the final frontier. It’s his Oscar-nominatedperformance that anchors this movie, “The Martian,” and allows legendary science fiction director Ridley Scott to produce a quality adaption of the Andy Weir novel of same title.

The movie opens with the Martian landscape, a beautifully barren wasteland that sets the scene for the rest of the movie. The audience is then introduced to a team of astronauts who are forced to abort their mission when a sandstorm hits. During the evacuation, one of the astronauts, Mark Watney (Matt Damon), is knocked away from the group by a flying piece of debris. After failing to find him, the team believes him to be dead and leaves the planet.

Watney survives this accident, but unfortunatelyl, the next Mars mission isn’t scheduled to arrive for another four years. Using only his brain and the supplies abandoned by his team, Watney must figure out a way to survive. In essence, it’s “Cast Away” in space.

Wait, that was “Gravity.” Okay, this is “Cast Away” on Mars.

Naturally, “The Martian” only works because of Matt Damon’s performance. Damon’s character spends most of his screen time alone, leaving us to watch him figure out how to treat his injuries, make food and water, travel across the harsh Martian terrain and contact NASA. Throughout this process, Watney chronicles his struggle for survival via video and audio logs.

While this might seemed like a forced contrivance à la “Paranormal Activity,” it works within the context of the character and the situation. Still, all of this wouldn’t mean a thing if Damon wasn’t compelling, funny and engaging the entire time. He takes what could have been a simple narration and transforms it into a series of genuine character moments as he performs one scientific miracle after another. While I’m sure plenty of real world scientists will take issue with it, the script sounds smart and realistic enough that any average theatergoer won’t be bothered by anything crazy.

The script is fairly sharp and manages to successfully communicate some seriously difficult concepts of rocket science to the audience. However, I did feel like the movie was hitting me over the head with one particular concept. I could understand this if it involved some outright bizarre minutiae of space travel, but this was something that’s fairly common in many sci-fi movies and even movies outside of the genre. I appreciate the effort to make sure that everything was understood, but sometimes you need to know when to trust your audience, especially when it involves something we’ve seen.

Unfortunately, the movie missteps when it comes to events taking place back on Earth.

The nature of the plot and the realistic manner in which it’s portrayed mean that the effort to rescue Watney is a massive undertaking that involves several people in very specialized professions. As a result, this movie has a handful of characters at both NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The cast is incredibly strong, but that doesn’t change the fact that we spend too much time with them.

There are several stretches of time when we don’t get to see Watney at all and the movie slows to a crawl as a result.

That being said, there are strong moments in the scenes taking place on Earth. The most intriguing plot thread is the struggle between Sean Bean’s Mitch Henderson and Jeff Daniels’ Teddy Sanders. As the flight director of Watney’s mission, Henderson is insistent that they tell the other crew members about Watney’s survival.

However, Sanders, the director of NASA, is initially against it because of the stress it might place on the remaining crew members.

Would their distress over leaving Watney behind cause them to make a fatal mistake on the journey home? This is just one of the

many conflicts between the two characters as Henderson fights for the crew members as people and Henderson fights for them as parts of a larger whole. I have to applaud “The Martian” for not making Sanders a complete villain as they gave him some very compelling reasons for his stance. After all, this movie takes place in an alternate future where NASA’s budget hasn’t been gutted like a fish. It’s Sanders’ job to look at the bigger picture and to make sure that the organization survives this potential PR disaster.

As for the technical side of the movie, the only effect that really stuck out was the Martian landscape. I hate to say it, but I think that after “Gravity” and “Interstellar,” we might be getting oversaturated with visually stunning space effects. Naturally, “The Martian” possesses all the classic sound effect choices of your standard sci-fi movie, such as the “cut all audio as we watch video footage of an airlock exploding.” However, I have to mention that the cinematography is top-notch as we follow Watney and his crew on their travels. In the end, “The Martian” is a movie that does not necessarily rely on effects to make its point.

If we have to be done with this spasm of space-exploration movies, at least it will go out on a high note. Ridley Scott is channeling “Blade Runner” rather than “Prometheus” as he crafts this extraordinary tale about one man’s drive to survive and the knowledge that allows him to do so.

It’s a love letter to science that needed to spend more time with its leading man, even if it meant giving up some of the realism that it clings to. After all, what sets this movie apart from similar stories is Damon’s performance, which manages to induce laughter, tears and everything in between — that’s what makes it special.

Arts & Living 8

The Amherst Student • March 2, 2016

Oscar Nominated Shorts Cover Relevant and Timeless Themes

Photo courtesy of feis.utero.pe

“The Story of Bear” was this year’s animated short film Oscar winner.

Sophie Currin ’17 Staff Writer We all know that the beautiful Leonardo DiCaprio finally won an Oscar this past Sunday, an achievement long-sought after by both himself and by his fans. And while his animalistic acting skills in “The Revenant” should certainly be acknowledged, there are many categories in the Academy Awards outside of “Best Actor” and “Best Picture” that do not receive the attention they deserve, and among these are the animated shorts.

The Oscar nominated animated shorts are, in fact, short — this year ranging from six to 17 minutes long — yet tangy and impactful. The shorts

work through themes that often are specific to the present day, tackling humanity’s evolving relationship with technology or the difficulties of an immigrant-parent and American child relationship, but also think about age-old themes, reflecting on friendship, family relations and loss.

This year, there were five animated shorts nominated for the Oscars: “Sanjay’s Super Team,” “World of Tomorrow,” “Story of a Bear,” “We Can’t Live Without Cosmos” and “Prologue.” The shorts were created by artists from a variety of countries: the first two from the U.S. and the rest from Chile, Russia and the U.K., respectively.

Because the artists hold complete creative power over color, sound, tone, dialogue, shape of characters and form, their ideas rapidly ex-

plode onto the screen, affecting the viewer in an unavoidably visceral way. Without revealing all, I will attempt to translate this distinct feeling and meaning that reverberate throughout each short: “Sanjay’s Super Team” is about the first-generation, Indian-American artist named Sanjay and his relationship with his father. The complexities of their relationship involve play and tradition. Through a series of extractions from levels of reality, the short film takes the viewer through Sanjay’s colorful imagination, in a wo rld mixing all-American action figures and religious Indian figures in a video-game-like setting. The short shows how the generational gap between the Indian-American boy and his traditional father is bridged.

“World of Tomorrow” depicts an encounter between a toddler, Emily, and her immortal clone from far, far in the future. The form is fittingly unsophisticated, using stick-figure, stop-motion animations that resemble a series of childlike drawings. The clone attempts to enlighten Emily on highly intelligent, futuristic concepts such as time travel and the technology and social structure of cloning and the preservation of memories, and Emily responds as the typical toddler would — i.e., “Do you like my toy car?” It becomes clear that Emily, though much younger and less intelligent, has the more advanced ability to feel, envied by her more sterile clone.

“The Story of a Bear,” the Oscar winner, reflects on the despondency that results from being forcefully separated from one’s family through exile.

The father in a family of three bears is torn from his wife and child and forced by abusive, more

powerful figures to participate in a circus. This world is dark, dominated by browns and the bear’s physical joints are metal, his movements less than fluid. Translated to humans today, this theme is especially relevant, showing a similar pattern of pain and loss prevalent in the refugee crisis.

“We Can’t Live Without Cosmos” was easily my favorite. It tells the story of two hard-working, enthusiastic astronauts in training that pass all physical and mental tests that all the others fail, apparently through their unrelenting teamwork.

Unobstructed scenes of the universe, the stars, push on the viewer the possibility of imagining the infinite. Finally, the day comes for one, only one, to go to space. The mission is unsuccessful, the astronaut never returns and his best friend is devastated. This short shows immense friendship, and consequently, immense loss.

Finally, “Prologue” is the recreation of a battle in the Spartan-Athenian war thousands of years ago. All figures and landscape are black and white save blood, and the family crests on the warrior’s shields, and the sounds are expressively simple.

However, the attention is focused on a young girl, a child or younger sister of one of the warriors, who after observing part of the battle, is overcome with a deep sadness that permeates off the screen and into the viewers’ minds.

These animated shorts hold the seemingly magical ability to transfer an almost unsurpassable amount of feeling and meaning onto the viewer in twenty minutes or less. This year’s best animated sho rts are cute, sad, funny, diverse, relatable, expressive and innovative — and you must watch them in order to fully experience them.

Student Created App “Meetum” Aims to Promote Social Unity Simon Stracher ’18 Contributing Writer Conor Brown ’16, Louie Reed ’16 and Patrick DeVivo ’16 have created “Meetum,” an app that more than a third of Amhert’s student population has downloaded, and one that hopes to shift Amherst’s social paradigm.

Meetum is intended as an app where students can share events and activities (“meetums”) with each other. Unlike Facebook events, “meetums” are intended to be more casual. DeVivo puts it as, “Impromptu social events or things like studying for a particular midterm or comps,” or “playing basketball, looking for two more guys, etc.”

Brown and Reed conceived of Meetum in the wake of Amherst Uprising.

“We realized that our campus culture is very confined to sports teams and clubs and

cliques. It is not very inclusive, and there is a great sense of isolation. Meetum intends to change that,” Brown said.

Brown and Reed are both members of the hockey team, while DeVivo is the captain of the men’s crew team. All three recognized the problem of exclusivity at Amherst and sought to fix it. In fact, they even see it within themselves.

“Patrick is a great guy,” Brown said. “However, I don’t know if we ever would have met if we weren’t roommates [freshman year].

Meetum will hopefully help people find others outside of their bubbles.”

The three represent the core of Meetum’s message — there are like-minded people in the Amherst community who will never have the opportunity to meet. DeVivo, Brown and Reed only met by chance — through first-year room draw. Meetum hopes to take chance out

of the equation, creating more opportunities for compatible individuals to meet.

If Brown and Reed were the visionaries behind Meetum, then DeVivo was the pragmatist who made it happen. DeVivo got his start in programming in fifth grade, and has “always had a boyish enthusiasm for making things and watching how fundamental pieces fit together to create a whole.” DeVivo created this app as a hybrid mobile app, which means it’s essentially a website wrapped-up in an icon. So far, the app has a few simple features, but he intends to add features to it regularly, to drum up excitement, and to also bolster its functionality. Beyond Meetum, DeVivo also intends on continuing to write code after he graduates.

There is some concern that students may not buy in to Meetum — meaning that, while they may join it and post various “meetums,”

they will not actually go to events that they are not comfortable with, and generally will stay in the bubbles that they are accustomed to. However, the creators dismissed this idea.

“It takes effort to branch out,” Reed said.

“It’s always scary, but Meetum will just give students more opportunities to be sociable.”

He added that the overarching idea behind Meetum is to let students “create the culture they want.” “It is on the students to make something out of Meetum,” he said. “We just wanted to give them a platform.”

To join Meetum, all you need is an Amherst email and password. Registering is simple, and the interface is easy to navigate — even the most technologically adverse will have no problem. Currently you can find Meetum in the iPhone app store. And if you don’t have an iPhone, it is accessible on meetum.io.

Laszlo Neme’s “Son of Saul” Wins Oscar for Best Foreign Film

Photo courtesy of film.nu

“Son of Saul” tells the story of a Jewish man forced to bury the remains of other Holocaust victims.

Youngkwang Shin ’19 film, fixed its gaze on the struggle of the names Staff Writer written on the infamous List. To a lesser extent, It is impossible to make a film that accurately portrays the Holocaust as a whole. Its horror is too vast, and its characters too numerous. Cinema’s only available shortcut is to illuminate individual traumas that compose the darkness of the times.

Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece “Schindler’s List,” perhaps the most familiar American Holocaust

it focused on Oskar Schindler, the brave soul who risked his stature and position to rescue the names. And the argument can be made that the movie was ultimately about the Jewish girl clothed in red, in whose hue held, and in whom Schindler beheld, the ghastly silence of the dying Jews and by-standing Germans.

Laszlo Neme’s film “Son of Saul” follows Saul

Auslander, a Hungarian-Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz, circa 1944. He serves as a Sonderkommando, a worker unit who, under the threat of death, disposes the corpses of gas chamber victims. After yet another day’s purging, Saul discovers the body of a boy. From this point on, giving this boy a proper Jewish burial becomes Saul’s cardinal obsession. Throughout the movie, Saul searches the camp for a rabbi or anyone who is acquainted with one. Meanwhile, Saul’s colleagues organize a riot to escape the death camp once and for all.

Laszlo Nemes’s “Son of Saul” is an experience that takes the aforementioned lesson to heart, and from the looks of it, to film. While “Schindler’s List” played with colors, only permitting bright red to intrude as to wordlessly explore the gradual transformation of Schindler’s mind, “Son of Saul” plays with the camera. Almost every shot in “Son of Saul” excessively zooms into the hardened visage of Saul and is touched with a slight tremor, as if the camera, just as the audience, is uncomfortable with the lack of distance. The way these individual portrait-shots connect and flow is equally impressive. The Auschwitz atrocities unfold throughout the entire film, but only in its periphery. The aspect ratio of t he movie imprisons the viewer to see Saul and only Saul, and in the few occasions when Saul directly stares at the events, they occur over his shoulder, often blurred or made otherwise

indistinct.

What results from this visual decision is the reinforcement of Saul’s subjectivity. “Son of Saul” documents a particular strain of madness, the madness of an individual in the face of societal catastrophe. Saul’s own unspoken and weightily guilt for hurling the ashes of his people into the sea has overtaken him, and throughout the movie all he desires is respite. To him, the proper, traditional burial of the boy is the proper, traditional burial of the Jewish spirit, and more importantly the necessary piece of evidence that can prove to him beyond a shadow of a doubt that he has done what he could. The conflict arises when this easily understandable motivation mutates into an obsession that blinds Saul from the sufferings of those still living around him. Whereas the visuals provide the walls with which to trap the audience, the sound design serves as a unified, painful scream from the other side that reminds us of the existence of the external world. For a film with barely any dialogue, “Son of Saul” is filled with noise from beginning to end. Ultimately, the clawing at the steel walls, the wailing, the shrieks of authorities and the murmurs of the resigned are nowhere near as terrifying as the quiet, wounded man who ignores them all, and neither frighten more than the inhumanity of those who have designed the horrors that fathered both.

The Amherst Student • March 2, 2016

Sports 9

Men’s Lacrosse Looks to Replicate Success from Historic 2015 Season

Photo courtesy of Eugene Lee ’16

Captain Kane Haffey ’16, Amherst’s top scorer in 2015, will be critical for the team this campaign. Haffey scored 60 goals in 19 games played last season.

Drew Kiley ’18 Managing Sports Editor After a historic 2015 season, the Amherst men’s lacrosse team enters the 2016 season with the highest of expectations. Under head coach Jon Thompson last year, the purple and white won their first eight games en route to their highest win total ever with an 18-3 overall record (9-1 NESCAC).

Amherst claimed the No. 1 seed in the NESCAC tournament, where they fell to eventual national champions Tufts in the final. After receiving an at-large bid into the NCAA tournament, Amherst defeated Castleton State College (20-4) and Middlebury (16-10) before losing in the third round to Tufts.

The purple and white, ranked fourth in the

USILA Dvision III Preseason Coaches Poll, return an experienced team this season that includes their top seven scorers from 2015.

In attack, they are led by reigning NESCAC player of the year and senior captain Quinn Moroney. Last season, Moroney led Amherst with 83 assists and added 30 goals, also garnering NEILA player of the year, First Team All-NESCAC, First Team USILA All-American and ECAC Offensive player of the year honors.

Senior captain Kane Haffey, Amherst’s top goal scorer last year, also returns for the purple and white this season. After netting 60 goals in 19 games and earning Honorable Mention All-American honors, the senior will be central to Amherst’s attack this season.

The purple and white also boast strength

in depth in Chris Albanese ’18, who finished second on the team with 45 goals last year, and Max Keeley ’18, who netted eight times in his first season.

One first-year to watch is attacker Evan Wolf, who will look to hit the ground running for the purple and white in his debut season.

In midfield, Amherst’s unit is highlighted

by Dylan Park ’16. Named a Second Team USILA All-American and a First Team AllNESCAC selection last season after scoring 29 goals and claiming 13 helpers, Park looks to build on those marks in his final season.

The purple and white also return Park’s linemates Michael Litner ’16 and Charlie Gill ’16. Litner contributed 23 goals with 12 assists last year, while Gill added 21 goals and 12 helpers.

Captain Connor Crump ’16, Sam Lawlor ’16 and Connor Sheehan ’18 return, while Andrew Ford ’19 highlights a group of first-years who add depth in the middle of the field.

At long stick midfield, Rob Butko ’16, who was second on last year’s squad in caused turnovers with 35 and ground balls with 79, returns along with Brian O’Malley ’17, Jordan Sanford ’18 and Sam Chen ’17 to provide a deep unit for the purple and white.

In defensive midfield, Amherst will have to rely on less experienced players after losing Kevin Curry ’15 and Eric Grein ’15. Thompson will hope that Greg Roder ’18 and Ian Kadish ’18 can step up in their absence.

In defense, senior captain Ryan Cassidy, who garnered First Team ECAC New England All Star, First Team All-NESCAC and First Team All-NEILA honors last season, will anchor the Amherst unit. Cassidy led the squad last season with 82 ground balls and was first in the NESCAC with 35 caused turnovers.

The purple and white lost stalwart defender Matt Virgilio ’15, who forced 30 turnovers last season, but return Daniel Annino ’16.

Amherst’s depth is such that they have

four players vying to replace Virgilio. Defenders Jamie Smith ’19, Uzoma Egbuchulam ’17, Zack Anderson ’18 and Geroge Ward ’17 have, according to Thompson, impressed in preseason.

At goalie, Cody Tranbarger ’17 returns after a 2015 season in which he garnered Honorable Mention All-American, First Team AllNESCAC, Second Team ECAC New England All Star and Honorable Mention All-NEILA selections. Thomas Gilligan ’16 and Justin Imperatore ’19 will compete with him for playing time.

Once again, the NESCAC will be one of the best conferences in the country with the top four teams from last year’s standings all in the preseason top 10 nationally.

Amherst will face No. 8 Bates, the NESCAC’s third place team last season, in their second home game of the year on Saturday, March 12.

The purple and white later travel to Vermont on Saturday, April 2, to face No. 6 Middlebury. After losing to the Panthers at home last year for their only blip of the regular season, Amherst will look to replicate their second round win against Middlebury during 2015’s national tournament.

Tufts, last year’s national champions, are ranked No. 1 and will provide perhaps the stiffest test for the purple and white. After the Jumbos knocked Amherst out of both NESCACs and the national tournament last season, the purple and white will be looking for revenge in their marquee matchup at Tufts on Saturday, April 16.

It’s down to business immediately for the purple and white in 2016. The squad begins their season this Saturday, March 5, when they travel to NESCAC rival Bowdoin for a 1 p.m. game.

Their home opener follows on Tuesday, March 8, when they will play non-conference foes Skidmore at 5 p.m.

Women’s Hockey Advances to NESCAC Semis on OT Winner

Men’s Track Places Tied for 21st Overall in NEICAAA

Devin O’Connor ’16 Staff Writer

Caleb Winfrey ’19 Staff Writer

The Amherst women’s hockey team has advanced to the NESCAC semifinals this weekend, thanks to an overtime goal from first-year Katelyn Pantera on Saturday in the win over Bowdoin.

The purple and white defeated the Polar Bears at Orr Rink in a thrilling NESCAC quarterfinal game on Saturday, Feb. 27.

Tensions were high before the match-up, since the now 21-1-3 Amherst team suffered its only loss of the regular season to Bowdoin. The home team managed to come out on top and push forward in their pursuit of a NESCAC championship. Goaltender Sabrina Dobbins ’18 registered 34 saves in net for Amherst, helping the purple and white to keep its season going.

Amherst came out hard in the first period, sending shot after shot at the Polar Bears’ net.

Photo courtesy of Amherst Athletics

Sabrina Dobbins ’18 saved 34 shots in the overtime win against Bowdoin.

Caitlyn Ryan ’17 put Amherst on the board about eight minutes into regulation. The home team took advantage of an opportunity on the power play when Alex Toupal ’18 sent a pass to Ryan at the offensive blue line, which Ryan fired through the crowd and into the net.

In the defense, Caroline Bomstein ’16 prevented a Bowdoin goal with under a minute to play when she poked the puck out from a threatening Polar Bear player. Amherst led at the close of the first stanza, 1-0.

Though Dobbins made some huge saves in the second period, the momentum swung toward Bowdoin. The visitors evened the score with less than five minutes to play in the period. A Bowdoin offender found the puck off a rebound, which she easily notched into the open net.

The third period was nerve wracking for both teams, with each aware of what was at stake. Both Amherst and Bowdoin failed to score, and the end of regulation left the score tied at 1-1.

Amherst found its rhythm again in overtime play. The home team pushed forward and maintained possession in its offensive end for the majority of overtime play.

Just over two minutes into the extra period, Kristen Molina ’18 forced a turnover that turned into a winning goal. Sarah Culhane ’17 ripped a shot on net that was deflected by the goalie, but Pantera was ready to end the game. The first-year deflected Culhane’s shot into the net, adding the winning goal 2:12 into the period. Immediately, the bench and the crowd erupted in celebration.

Pantera describes her game-winner as “surreal” and credits the win to a “full-team effort that luckily ended with a connection and a bounce of the puck in [her] favor.”

Amherst will face Connecticut College on Saturday, March 5 in Middlebury, Vermont. The Panthers will host the championship weekend, placed first in the conference, but Amherst hopes to dethrone the top seed.

The Amherst men’s indoor track & field team placed tied for 21st overall at the two-day NEICAAA Championships hosted by Boston University this weekend.

Amherst had three runners featured in the 5,000-meter run including cross-country phenom Mohamed Hussein ’18, who finished an impressive first overall in the field of 30 talented runners with a time of 14:33.95. First-year and fellow cross-country teammate Tucker Meijer also had a stellar performance in the 5,000-meter run with a time of 15:27.08, a personal record for Meijer, while sophomore Justin Barry finished the event in 15:51.79.

In the 800-meter run, sophomore Chris Butko cruised to an impressive three-second personal record and finished 14th overall with a mark of 1:53.70.

Capping off the first day, the distance medley relay tandem of Jeff Seelaus ’16, Kristian Sogaard ’19, Brent Harrison ’16 and Kevin

Connors ’17 finished eighth in the event with a time of 10:05.63.

On day two of the event, Amherst had two runners featured in the one-mile run including Connors, who finished 12th with a mark of 4:13.97, and Steven Lucey ’17, who placed 19th in the event with a time of 4:17.20. In their final relay of the meet, the purple and white’s 4x800-meter relay tandem of Jesse Fajnzylber ’17, Vernon Espinoza ’19, Sogaard and Harrison finished eighth overall in a time of 7:41.89.

“It was disappointing to see the team slip from the top ten on the second day, but I thought we all performed very well,” Espinoza said. “Hopefully, we can further improve next week and get some more qualifiers for the NCAA Championships.”

On Friday, March 4, the men’s team will compete at the Tufts Last Chance Invitational at Tufts in Medford, Massachusetts beginning at 5 p.m. Going into this final meet, the men are looking to qualify several more individual runners, jumpers and throwers for postseason action.

Photo courtesy of Amherst Athletics

Junior Steven Lucey finished 12th overall in the one-mile run this weekend.

10

Sports

The Amherst Student • March 2, 2016

Men’s Hockey Overcomes Bowdoin with Barrage of Goals in Third Period

Photo courtesy of Mark Box

First-year Katelyn Pantera has the fifth-most points on the team, with 13.

She has also contributed seven assists over the course of the season.

Sarah Wagner ’19 Staff Writer When asked about his team’s quarterfinal victory this weekend, Amherst men’s ice hockey coach Jack Arena’s face was overwhelmed by his joyful grin. “It was crazy. Just crazy,” he said, shaking his head. Arena could be referring to many things about the game — the fact that sixth-seeded Amherst took down third-seeded Bowdoin, 8-5, the fact that the purple and white tallied six goals in the third period, or the fact that they fought back from a 3-0 deficit early in the game. The final period was surreal for the Amherst team, who put as many pucks in the net as saved shots on goal.

The game began with equal play on both sides, and the two teams matched each other for shots and chances. However, Bowdoin struck first, about halfway through the first period. Camil Blanchet’s line beat the Amherst defenders with quick passes to put the Polar Bears on the scoreboard. They ended the period on a high note as well, widening the lead to 2-0 during a last-minute 5-on-3 power play. Feeling good, the Polar Bears continued their momentum with Austin Ricci’s top-shelf snipe at the beginning of the second period. Amherst made their debut on the scoreboard a few minutes later, when center Chris Roll ’17 won a face-off in the offensive zone that fell to Brendan Burke ’16, who buried the puck. Conor Brown ’16 continued Amherst’s hard work to close the goal gap by taking a shot that rolled off Bowdoin goaltender Peter Cronin’s shoulder into the net. Within a single goal now, Amherst attacked Bowdoin with renewed intensity, but were unable to even the score after Polar Bear Cody Tedesco’s rebound tally at 14:51 into the second period.

The purple and white entered the final stanza, possibly the last of their season, losing 4-2. Patrick Arena began the period with an unassisted goal during the opening power play. Amherst did

not have time to enjoy the single-goal differential, however, since only seven seconds later a Bowdoin forward dumped the puck into the Amherst zone from outside the blue line; the puck was deflected toward the net and, in an unlucky moment for Amherst netminder Dave Cunningham ’16, somehow slid over the goal line, pulling Bowdoin again ahead by two.

Then came Amherst’s time. Coach Jack Arena opined that his team had played well all afternoon.

However, “the puck finally started bouncing our way” for the purple and white two minutes into the third period, Arena said.

The first in a barrage of Amherst goals came 34 seconds after Bowdoin’s final goal of the game, when Austin Ho ’17 took a shot from the blue line. Cronin, screened by players in front of him, didn’t see the puck as it slid by him into the net.

Three minutes later, Roll knotted the score for the first time since the first period. Two minutes after that, Ho struck again for his second goal of the contest, netting the game-winner off a pass from Burke. Despite the flood of goals, 13 minutes still remained on the clock.

The goal scoring abated for a bit, with both teams battling, but Amherst’s David White ’18 was next to break through. This talented forward escaped a one-on-one situation, giving himself an open lane to the opposing net. Uncontested, White made a quick move to beat Cronin. Bowdoin’s shocking decline from a two-goal lead to being down by two goals prompted a timeout with three minutes remaining for the Polar Bears to save their season and extend their playoff run.

Soon after, Bowdoin head coach Terry Meagher pulled Cronin. Unfortunately for Meagher, Will Vosejpka ’18 took advantage of the open net to finalize the score at 8-5.

The purple and white do not have much time to enjoy their success against Bowdoin since they will contest the next round of NESCAC playoffs on Saturday.

Photo courtesy of Mark Box

Senior forward Erin Martin has tallied 22 goals and 13 assists in 25 games.

ATHLETE SPOTLIGHT

Austin Ho ’17

Victoria Hensley ’16

Favorite Team memory: Going to the Frozen Four last year Favorite Pro Athlete: Kobe Bryant Dream Job: Premier league football player Pet Peeve: A dirty common room Favorite Vacation Spot: Myrtle Beach Something on Your Bucket List: See every city in the world Guilty Pleasure: Romantic comedies Favorite Food: Yogurt chicken Favorite thing about Amherst: Antonio’s pizza How He Earned It: Ho scored two critical goals during Amherst’s comeback win against Bowdoin in the NESCAC quarterfinals. Early in the third period, Ho shot from behind a screen to pull back the scoreline to 4-5. His next goal, which proved to be the game-winner, took place 7:13 into the third period, when he expertly guided the puck in from the right side. Ho’s second and third goals of the season could not have come at a better time, as they booked Amherst’s ticket into the NESCAC semifinals.

Favorite Team memory: Playing capture the flag in the cage over interterm Favorite Pro Athlete: Sanya RichardsRoss Dream Job: Professional laser tagger Pet Peeve: When people say “my bad” Favorite Vacation Spot: Bermuda Something on Your Bucket List: Drive cross-country Guilty Pleasure: Puns, sometimes it’s punstoppable Favorite Food: Hummus Favorite thing about Amherst: The people, also, the Assasin game in the spring How She Earned It: Senior captain Victoria Hensley was featured in the preliminaries of the 400-meter dash this Friday as the team competed in the NEICAAA championships at Boston University. Hensley, who has been impressive all season, truly hit her stride in the 400-meter this weekend, running a 58.54 and breaking the school record for the race held by former All-American Naomi Bates ’14.

Women’s Lacrosse Begins Spring Season with High Expectations Jason Darell ’18 Managing Sports Editor Fresh off their 15th appearance in the NESCAC championship tournament, the Amherst women’s lacrosse team is primed to succeed in the 2016 season. The squad is comprised of a mix of veterans and new faces, with 18 players returning to the team from last year. These upperclassmen will look to guide and rely upon the 10 new players joining the purple and white on the field for the first time.

Last season, many underclassmen, including sophomore Julia Crerend who scored 14 goals and recorded three assists, produced in a big way for Amherst. This depth is essential for any team with playoff aspirations, and it seems as if Amherst has only improved upon this aspect in advance of the coming season.

This combination of leadership and depth should prove to make Amherst formidable opponents in the face of the tough field of NESCAC teams.

Coach Christine Paradis, entering her 22nd season at the helm of the women’s lacrosse program, is no stranger to success. With an overall record of 249-85 during her tenure as head coach, Paradis has seen it all, from winning the ECAC Championships in the years 1997 and 1998 to bringing the purple and white its first NCAA championship win in 2003.

More recently, during the 2014 season, Paradis guided Amherst to a 19-3 record enroute to an appearance in the NCAA Final Four. Her .746 winning percentage is among the best in the nation, and provides even more proof of her ability to lead a program to success in both regular season and postseason matchups. The current iteration of the women’s lacrosse team contains 11 members who have experienced a run deep into the postseason, and this group will serve as the team’s knowing veterans to guide the eager newcomers.

This season, Amherst will look to quickly generate momentum as they did last year,

when they won five of their first six games. In contrast to the 2015 season, however, the purple and white hope to sustain that momentum, and improve upon their 9-7 overall record from last spring.

In addition, the purple and white will begin the season with a bitter taste left in their mouths following their devastating 9-8 loss to Middlebury in the NESCAC quarterfinals. In particular, the team’s six seniors will without a doubt be looking to redeem themselves, with the ultimate goal being to finish their Amherst careers by bringing home a NESCAC championship.

The purple and white’s attacking corps contains an intriguing combination of both veteran leaders and new faces. Two of Amherst’s tri-captains, seniors Mia Haughton and Devin O’Connor, play up front, and both will hope to build upon their productive seasons last year. Haughton scored 15 goals and added 14 assists, while O’Connor found the back of the net eight times and recorded 10 assists. They, along with the other returners, will be joined by four first-years, Kaitlyn Haase, Lindsey Call, Haley Henriksen and Annie Cohen.

The midfield, led by the final tri-captain senior Rachel Passarelli, will look to continue their dominance from last year. Passarelli compiled an astounding 42 goals last season, and was joined in her impressive output by Claire Cagnassola ’17, who notched 25 goals. Two first-years, Sabrina Solow and Jacq Fitzgerald, project to play big roles in this year’s iteration of the purple and white’s dominant midfield.

Amherst’s defense, anchored by seniors Katie Paolano and Emily Kelty, adds excellent depth this year through first-years Shannon Tierney, Casey Tucker and Kate Burns.

The defensive squad will look to continue and improve upon their dominant performances from last year.

The purple and white will begin their season this Saturday, when they host NESCAC rival Bowdoin at noon.

The Amherst Student • March 2, 2016

Sports

Men’s Basketball Falls to Middlebury in NESCAC Tournament Final Heartbreaker Julia Turner ’19 Managing Sports Editor Men’s basketball faced tough competition in the NESCAC tournament last weekend, where they won an exciting matchup over Tufts last Saturday and then dropped a close game to fourth-seeded Middlebury in the championship game on Sunday. This performance by the 13thranked purple and white was enough to earn them an at-large bid for their 18th appearance in the NCAA tournament, their sixth-straight since 2011.

The team’s Saturday game came with much to prove, considering the Tufts Jumbos had handed Amherst their second conference loss of the regular season only weeks earlier. Both teams came out strong, with neither side holding more than a seven-point advantage in the first half before Tufts went into the locker room at halftime with a slim 37-35 lead over the purple and white.

The second half once again saw the two talented squads knotted at a 48-48 stalemate before Eric Conklin ’17 put in back-to-back layups and Connor Green ’16 connected from threepoint range to put Amherst up 55-48.

The purple and white mounted their second half charge on a well-balanced offensive effort.

Six players finished with double-digit scoring totals for the purple and white, and Conklin, Johnny McCarthy ’18 and David George ’17 were joint top scorers with 14 points each.

With ten minutes left to play, Michael Riopel ’17 hit a clutch three to give the purple and white their largest lead of the game at 64-55.

The Jumbos weren’t done yet, as they clawed their way back to tie up the score at 81 before an exciting finish from Amherst. With just 17 seconds left in regulation, Riopel drained yet another three to put the purple and white up by one before sophomore Jayde Dawson put the game away, making two free-throws with eleven seconds left on the clock.

Clutch performers Dawson and Riopel netted 12 and 11, respectively, while junior Jeff Racy was the final Amherst player in double digits with 10 points for the game.

With their Saturday win, Amherst advanced to the championship game on Sunday, where they faced fourth-seeded Middlebury at host college Trinity after the Panthers pulled off a surprising upset of the top-seeded Bantams in their semifinal.

Riopel again came in clutch in the Sunday matchup, leading the team in both points with 17 and rebounds with seven. In the end, however, the Panthers out-rebounded the purple and white, 44-33, putting Amherst at a major disadvantage against a talented Middlebury squad.

Although Amherst jumped out to an early 4-0 lead, Middlebury fought right back, going on a 12-2 tear to give the Panthers a 12-16 lead with 15 minutes left in the first stanza. The purple and white managed to grab the momentum back, however, scoring 19 of the next 21 points capped by a McCarthy swish from behind the arc. More back-and-forth play from both squads set the score at 36-35 in favor of Amherst heading into the locker room.

The purple and white came out strong in the second half, scoring six points in the opening 57 seconds of play. From there, neither team held greater than a three-point lead at any point while the two squads fought through seven tie scores before a Racy three put Amherst up by one with a minute and a half left to play. Unfortunately, clutch free throw shooting by the Panthers in the last seconds of the game set the final score at 81-79 in favor of Middlebury.

This weekend’s split from the purple and white sets their all-time postseason record at an impressive 35-9 in NESCAC tournament play.

Despite losing in the final, the purple and white received an at-large bid into yet another NCAA tournament. The men will host their first-round game against 21-6 Husson University at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, March 4.

Photo courtesy of Mark Box

McCarthy ’18 is Amherst’s second leading scorer with 12.7 points per game.

Women’s Track Competes at NEICAAA Champs, Hensley Sets School Record Nate Tyrell ’19 Staff Writer Last weekend, the Amherst women’s track and field team competed in the two-day NEICAAA Championships at Boston University last Friday and Saturday.

On Friday, Amherst had two runners featured in the preliminaries of the 400-meter dash. Both senior Victoria Hensley and firstyear Julia Asin competed in the event. Hensley finished with a time of 58.45 seconds and Asin with a time of 59.45.

Hensley’s time broke the indoor school record for the 400-meter dash previously held by All-American Naomi Bates ’14 with a time of 58.61.

“I was very excited when I found out I

broke the record, I just had to to give it my all and put everything I had into that race,” Hensley said. She also acknowledged that she did not get to this point alone. “Track is an individual sport, but I wouldn’t be where I am without the motivation and support from all my teammates,” she said. “And also my family because I know they’re always rooting for me even when they’re far away.”

Rounding out this weekend’s action was sophomore Leonie Rauls, who finished the 1,000-meter run with a time of 2:59.65 that was good for ninth place, narrowly missing the cut for the finals on Saturday morning.

The purple and white will return to action this coming weekend when the squad competes at the ECAC Championships on Saturday, March 5.

11

Forest’s Fast Take Forest Sisk ’17 Columnist Conor McGregor: Manimal Amongst Men. With McGregor’s fight against Nate Diaz coming up this Saturday at UFC 196, Forest Sisk looks at the unique style and the bombastic personality that place the Irish fighter in a lineage of charismatic fighters here in the U.S. Sports have given the public some of its most vibrant and memorable personalities. Boxing in particular breeds a certain type of athlete. History brought forth craziness in the form of Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson and Floyd “Money” Mayweather to name a few. Now, as boxing recedes into a sport of the past, mixed martial arts has taken center stage. On the highest pedestal of this developing sports platform stands Conor McGregor. Although he isn’t undefeated, the 27-year-old Irishman is the current featherweight UFC Champion. His tenacity in the octagon is matched by his larger-than-life personality in the media. Fighting sports embrace a culture of public trash talking, which allows for these personalities to shine. Is it real? Is it for show? When you see the insanity required to go toe-to-toe in a UFC bout, you are left inclined to believe the former.

Despite appearances, Conor McGregor is actually a real human being who was once a child who attended grade school and played with toys.

He was raised in South Dublin and moved to West Dublin when he was 17 years old. While in South Dublin, in his younger years, McGregor was consistently bullied by his peers. In an interview, the Irishman described how he did not grow as fast as his student counterparts. He recollected that he was “a little, skinny kid” and described that in his formative years, he “got into situations where [he] was afraid, a little scared kid basically.” He followed up: “There was a group of people I had to walk by every day and they would chase me, attack me.” I know America thinks they have a bullying problem, but I’m sure McGregor would argue that it’s worse in blue collar Dublin. The now 5’9”, 155 pound Irishman cited that his tormented youth was a large contributing factor in his decision to pick up mixed martial arts.

McGregor’s move from South to West Dublin was motivated by his new apprenticeship as a plumber. At the age of 17, McGregor still wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life, but his loud persona sparked an ambition in him that wouldn’t allow for him to settle in as a plumber.

McGregor shared his internal struggle in regards to his career path in an Irish television interview: “It was a rough time for me. I did not like the life.

Being a plumber did not interest me. One day, I said, ‘F*ck it,’ and I quit.” This decision did not sit well with McGregor’s father. McGregor went home and declared to his father, “There’s not a hope in hell you’re going to get me back on that building site.” His father’s reaction foreshadowed the years to come for McGregor in a way because the two men broke out into a fistfight, according to McGregor. With a cheeky smile, McGregor said, “He might have whooped my ass, but I still didn’t go back to that building site.”

From there, McGregor found his passion through his training. When he was just 18 years of age, he contended his first fight. It was an amateur fight for the Irish Ring of Truth promotion in Dublin. He impressed with a TKO in the first round. McGregor caught the eye of the right people and was signed to one of the biggest gyms in Ireland: Straight Blast Gym. Fighting mostly domestically, McGregor continued to dominate the competition. He even won a fight in a shocking four seconds, by knockout of course, in a local championship bout. Eventually the big man came a-knockin. Dana White, UFC President, heard of McGregor’s accomplishments and proceeded to sign the Irishman to fight in his league in the winter of 2013.

McGregor continued to grow across the pond, here in America. He quickly made his way through the ranks and is now sitting pretty as the UFC Featherweight Champion. Just as he did in Europe, McGregor is looking to be a dual-weight champion. In fighting, the boldest feat is to fight up a weight class. He is asking to go up against a

stronger, taller man. The championship fight was scheduled for UFC 196 against UFC Lightweight Champion Rafael dos Anjos, but dos Anjos had to withdraw from the fight the other week because of a broken foot. Instead, McGregor is now scheduled to fight up two weight brackets in a welterweight bout with Nick Diaz. Although he isn’t going up against the welterweight champion, the weight difference is enough to scare most fighters away.

So what makes him so good? Many of his competitors have much more extensive backgrounds in revered fighting styles, but McGregor employs the knowledge he has acquired with a ferocious ease. In an interview with Blood Elbow, a MMA publication, McGregor described his fighting methodology: “I’ll train in any style.

I always love to learn. I always look at everything.

I spend all day looking at videos, or in the gym working on the things that I’ve seen. I started out doing some kickboxing and boxing, then a little Capoeira, Tae Kwon Do and Karate. The human body can move in many ways, and that’s what I’m trying to do.”

Most fighters allow their personal style to be dictated by the denominations of martial art they learn, but McGregor’s outlook is actually the reverse. He, first off, establishes his own style and then integrates the martial arts into his own style. This creates a more agreeable and natural fighting style for McGregor to play with. His palms-out, wide-legged stance is unique compared to most of his adversaries and is useful for energy conservation. Because he isn’t spending useless energy with pawing jabs and rigid stances, his attacking explosions are extra explosive.

Tired punches miss, and McGregor is revered for his deadly accuracy. Between his straight left-handed strikes and his variety of kicks, McGregor has amassed 17 knockouts in 19 wins.

The man oozes power.

As the accolades pour in, his confidence continues to rise. Probably as a result of all of those younger years as the subject of harassment on the playground, McGregor has adopted the art of trash talk. His pre-match predictions and overall psychological warfare are a big part of why everyone is talking about McGregor. However, McGregor is not just some maniac on the loose — Mike Tyson was a maniac on the loose. McGregor’s antics are executed with the same sort of natural elegance as his fighting. He can thus be seen as more of a Muhammad Ali type in his media presence. In the pre-match hype for his U.S. debut in Boston, McGregor laid down this juicy line: “There’s two things I really like to do and that’s whoop ass and look good. I’m doing one of them right now and on Saturday night, I’m doing the other.”

The organic comfort he has when communicating with the media leads me to not simply shrug off his antics, but rather to buy into them.

Right after a first-round TKO victory at UFC 178, Dana White got this out of McGregor: “I am cocky in prediction. I am confident in preparation, but I am always humble in victory or defeat.” For him to say this after a dominating victory is an honest and endearing look at the zealous Irishman. And finally, the holy grail of McGregor sentences uttered comes in the shape of a promise in regards to the emergence of Irish fighters: “We’re not just here to take part — we’re here to take over.” Our own Robert Frost would probably win over Conor McGregor in a contest of poetic lines, but the margin of defeat would be less than it would be in a boxing match between the two. McGregor is a personality and a fighter that could be here to stay, and his bandwagon is one of fierce competition and hilarious entertainment, so let’s all jump on for the ride.

Conor McGregor is scheduled to fight Nate Diaz in UFC 196 at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden Arena this Saturday night, March 5.

Sports

Photo courtesy of Rob Mattson

The Amherst women’s basketball team, fresh off its NESCAC championship win, looks ahead to the first-round of the NCAA tournament this weekend.

Women’s Basketball Defeats Tufts to Win NESCACs, Enters NCAA Tourney Kelly Karczewski ’18 Staff Writer The Amherst women’s basketball team took down Bowdoin last Saturday to advance to the final round of the NESCAC tournament. They then beat No. 1-seeded Tufts in a 50-49 win to claim the NESCAC championship title in Medford, Massachusetts.

After helping Amherst to their title by scoring a team-high 22 points and and going 8 for 8 from the free throw line in the championship game, Ali Doswell ’17 was named NESCAC player of the week.

With this championship, the purple and white, ranked No. 5 nationally, roll into the NCAA Division III tournament on a five-game winning streak and sporting a 26-1 record for the season.

The second-seeded purple and white pounded on the Polar Bears in the second half of Saturday’s match to secure an impressive 63-51 victory over third-seeded Bowdoin. The Polar Bears entered the night boasting the NESCAC’s

third-highest scorer in Shannon Brady. The forward, who is averaging 16.5 points per game for the season, struggled against Amherst’s stingy defense. She finished with just six points on 3 for 11 shooting.

Despite a tough night from the field for leading scorer Ali Doswell, Amherst won on the back of a terrific performance from Hannah Hackley ’18. The sophomore led all players 23 points on just 13 shots, and also contributed seven rebounds, four assists, two steals and three blocks.

Meanwhile, fellow sophomore Jackie Nagle recorded a double-double with 10 points and a game-best 14 rebounds in the win.

The first half of the match was characterized by intense play on both sides. Bowdoin took the lead early, going up 6-0 in the first few minutes and maintaining a one-point lead for the majority of the first quarter, but the purple and white fought back to make it 12-9 by the time the first quarter whistle went off. Bowdoin again began to edge back in the first minutes of the second quarter, but a 58.3 percent shooting average from the field put Amherst back on top, making

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios, Inc.

GAME SCHE DULE

FRI Men’s Track & Field @ Tufts Last Chance, 5 p.m.

Women’s Basketball vs Eastern Conn. State @ Rowan University, 4:30 p.m.

it 27-26 at halftime.

Junior Jaimie Renner, Hackley and Meredith Doswell ’17 led the purple and white in scoring in the third and fourth quarters, leading by 10 with just two minutes left to play. Meredith Doswell, who also recorded a double-double with 10 points and 11 boards, drained two 3-pointers and Renner went three for four from the foul line to end the game at 63-51 in favor of Amherst to send the purple and white to the final round.

After falling to the Jumbos during the regular season, Amherst stepped into the championship match with much to prove. Tufts had shattered Amherst women’s basketball team’s recordbreaking home win streak just a few weeks prior and gave the purple and white their only loss of the season.

The purple and white struggled against the Jumbos’ stingy defense, hitting just one three for the game and shooting 33.1 percent from the field. However, Amherst also showed why they boast the best defense in the conference, holding Tufts to just 33.9 shooting.

The purple and white found themselves be-

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios, Inc.

SAT Men’s Basketball vs. Husson, 5:30 p.m.

hind early, trailing 18-10 after 10 minutes of play.

The second quarter was more evenly matched, and senior Haley Zwecker, Meredith Doswell and Ali Doswell each chipped in to give Amherst a one-point lead at the halftime whistle.

The second half featured a more intense back-and-forth play and with two minutes left to play in regulation, the score was tied at 45.

Meredith Doswell hit the first Amherst three of the contest and Hackley added a layup to make the score 50-47 in favor of the purple and white with a minute and a half left to play. The Jumbos were able to hit one more two-point jumper, but could not hit the winning basket to edge Amherst, and purple and white were victorious at the final whistle.

After the NESCAC Championship title win, Amherst will go on to appear in the NCAA tournament for the ninth year straight in hopes of winning a national title. The purple and white will face Eastern Connecticut State in their firstround game of the NCAA tournament this Friday, March 4, at Rowan University. Tip off is at 4:30 p.m.

Women’s Track & Field ECAC Championship, TBD

Men’s Ice Hockey vs. Middlebury @ Trinity, 1 p.m.

Women’s Lacrosse vs. Bowdoin, noon

Women’s Ice Hockey vs. Conn. College @ Middlebury, 4 p.m.

Men’s Lacrosse @ Bowdoin, 1 p.m.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios, Inc.

SUN

TUE

Women’s Track & Field ECAC Championship, TBD

Men’s Lacrosse vs. Skidmore @ 5 p.m.