Issue 19

THE AMHERST

THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868

STUDENT VOLUME CXLVII, ISSUE 19 l WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2018

Men’s 4x400 and Distance Relays Qualify for Nationals See Sports, Page 11 AMHERSTSTUDENT.AMHERST.EDU

Budgetary Committee Revises Funding Policy Sehee Park ’20 Staff Writer

Photo courtesy of Jacob Gendelman ’20

Award-winning author Junot Díaz (right) spoke on March 2 at Lit Fest, a three-day literary festival founded by The Common editor-in-chief Jennifer Acker ’00 (left), who facilitated the conversation with Díaz.

Junot Díaz Speaks at Amherst on Immigration and Family Natalie De Rosa ’20 Staff Writer Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz spoke to the college community on March 2 in Johnson Chapel. The event was a part of Lit Fest, a three-day literary festival that celebrates the college’s literary history by inviting distinguished writers to campus. Lit Fest is sponsored by Amherst College-affiliated literary magazine The Common, the Emily Dickinson Museum and the Center for Humanistic Inquiry (CHI).

Martha Umphrey, director of the CHI, introduced Díaz as “one of the most remarkable writers working in the U.S. today.” Díaz’s writing melds together Spanish and English and explores combinations of different styles, including academic prose and street language, as well as science fiction and melodrama, according to Umphrey.

Díaz is most renowned for his works “Drown,” “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” and “This is How You Lose Her,” all of which have won

several prestigious writing awards. Díaz received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2007, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2008 and the title of National Book Award Finalist in 2012.

Díaz began the talk by reading his essay, “Money,” which recounts childhood memories of his mother sending money back to the Dominican Republic. Upon returning home from a short vacation, Díaz’s family discovers that neighborhood thieves had stolen their remittances. Díaz learns that his friends were the thieves, and after going to great lengths to reclaim the money, Díaz proudly presents it to his mother. He receives no reaction from his mother, however.

After his reading, Díaz transitioned into a conversation with The Common Editor-in-Chief Jennifer Acker ’00. Acker began by asking Díaz why he chose to write about this particular episode in “Money.”

“I think that most of us know the particularity of most of our lives that we don’t hear in literature,” Díaz answered. “It spends more energy erasing

lives of people of color or immigrants than it does in any way presenting them.”

Díaz said that even a small thing like remittances begins to show the everyday details of those experiences and speaks against the shortage of narratives about immigrant lives.

Acker then proceeded to discuss the children’s book Díaz is currently working on, “Island War.” The book follows a young girl named Lola as she completes a class assignment for which she has to draw her home country.

As Lola tries to collect details about a place she doesn’t remember, she must use her imagination to fill in the gaps.

When asked asked why he chose to write about a young girl seeking information about a home she doesn’t know, Díaz responded by comparing the different experiences among siblings from immigrant families.

“Some siblings remember the place they’re

Continued on Page 3

The Budgetary Committee (BC) announced a policy change that would open up funding for both on-campus and off-campus activities over break on Dec. 2, 2017. Off-campus activities, however, would not be eligible for funding related to accommodations, transportation or food. A few months after this change, students are starting to feel its effects, both positive and negative.

In the original email that notified the student body about recommended club budgets and the change to the spring break trips policy, Jacob Silverman ’19, treasurer of the Association of Amherst Students (AAS), wrote: “New BC policy mandates that off-campus break requests (ex: spring break trips) can only be approved in club budgets and are not eligible for funding related to accommodations, transportation or food.

Funding for on-campus breaks can be requested through the discretionary fund, however.”

Isiaha Price ’21, a member of the BC, said that “historically, we don’t fund trips, or fund anything that’s over break — over summer, over [winter] break, over Thanksgiving break.” He added that the reason behind this was budgetary restraints; last semester, the BC got down to the last five percent of their budget without covering the costs of activities over breaks.

There have been some exceptions to this rule, however. For the last 14 years, the men’s and women’s ultimate frisbee teams have received funding from the BC to travel to the High Tide Ultimate Tournament, which takes place over spring break in Myrtle Beach, S.C. The funding covered the tournament fee and housing.

AAS President Aditi Krishnamurthy ’18 said that the ultimate frisbee teams’ spring break trips have been funded for so long because “some

Continued on Page 3

Underspent ResLife Budgets Elicit Concern About Lack of Transparency Kathleen Maeder ’20 Staff Writer The tendency for residential counselors (RCs) to underspend their budgets, coupled with a lack of clear communication to RCs on Residential Life policies, have raised concerns among some RCs about the Office of Residential Life’s lack of transparency.

On-campus student residents are charged a fee — $59 in Fall 2017 and $60 in Spring 2018 — part of their semester bills, which is intended for residential programming and community activities such as Tea Times. This fee is the basis of each RC’s budget for student programming within the dormitories.

The amount that each RC spends varies significantly by dormitory. Spencer Quong ’18, a RC for North Dormitory during the 2016-2017 academic year, spent less than his floor had originally been allocated.

“For my own floor, I estimate that I spent about half of the budget in the fall and two-thirds of the budget in the spring,” said Quong.

He added that this was likely a slight underestimate of the total spending on his dorm; occasionally, he noted, he went shopping with his area co-

ordinator, who paid for the dorm supplies directly.

Quong added that, in his experience, the Residential Life staff encouraged him to be creative with the ways he used his dormitory budget to engage with residents.

“I would say that my area coordinator did discourage us from spending too much money on food. I actually appreciated that advice, because I think it forced me to think more creatively about how we could go about spending our budget,” said Quong.

“The bigger question was how were you spending your budget thoughtfully, not how much of your budget were you spending,” he added.

A current RC for an upperclassmen dorm, who requested anonymity for fear for job security, raised questions about Residential Life’s budgetary decisions.

In particular, she voiced concern with the RC budget policy — from what her area coordinator has told her in the past, she said, unspent money from one semester’s budget does not necessarily roll over into the next semester’s budget.

In a joint email response with Director of Student Affairs Budget Chad LaDue, Andrea Cadyma, director of Residential Life, said over email that unspent portions of RCs’ dorm budgets do,

in fact, roll over to the next semester, according to Cadyma. “[P]revious year net residuals would augment the current year per-capita allocations and used in the same manner — to support hall programming,” she wrote.

Unspent money is divided up across dormitories for the next academic year.

The anonymous RC, however, expressed frustration over Residential Life’s lack of communication on the use of unspent per-capita dormitory funds, both with its student staff and the larger campus community “At the end of the year, you don’t get your [unspent] money back. It just kind of vanishes,” she said, estimating that she spent only 70 percent of her budget last semester.

She added that Residential Life never discussed with her or her peers where the unspent money from their budgets is used.

“I think there should be more transparency about what happens to the money, and accountability for the residents — because that is their money,” she said.

“I don’t think people are aware of it, necessarily.

Like, I don’t think people know that their money is going to [dorm programming … especially when]

some of it isn’t being spent,” she added.

RCs work with supervisors to host events within the breakdown of their budgets, according to Cadyma.

Though Cadyma said that Residential Life encourages funds to be utilized to the fullest extent possible each year, there is no penalty for RCs who choose, intentionally or unintentionally, to spend substantially less than their budget allows for.

Oftentimes, she added, RCs are not intentionally underspending; rather, they are trying not to exceed budgets.

Residential Life works with the Office of Student Affairs to determine budgets, which are typically determined a year in advance, according to Cadyma.

When asked why the college does not just lower RC budgets instead of allowing underspending, Cadyma said the question has not been raised for discussion but may be on the table for the future.

Frequent underspending of the dorm’s programming funds, however, combined with a lack of information regarding where leftover dormitory funds go at the end of each academic year, often results in frustration on the part of some RCs, who seek more clear, consistent communication from the Residential Life office.

News

Ashwin Ravikumar Fresh Faculty

Feb. 26, 2018 - March 4, 2018

>>Feb. 26, 2018 1:00 p.m., Amherst College Police Department A student reported becoming involved in an internet scam involving a subject line of “Amherst College job … work at your own leisure.” >>Feb. 27, 2018 1:01 p.m., Pratt Field A light pole was damaged by a vehicle that left the scene.

8:57 p.m., Morris Pratt Dormitory An officer investigated unauthorized entry into a second-floor room. The matter was referred to Student Affairs. >>Feb. 28, 2018 4:51 a.m., Beneski Earth Sciences and Natural History Museum Officers investigated an intrusion alarm and found it was activated by an employee.

4:06 p.m., Gooding Field An officer responded to a complaint of unauthorized people using Gooding Field. A group of high school age students was asked to leave.

6:19 p.m., Pratt Pool Officers investigated a panic alarm in a locker room and found no reason for it.

9:48 p.m., Greenway Building D Officers responded to a report of a male walking around inside the Greenways that no one recognized as a student. The man was located outside the building and identified as a student.

10:28 p.m., Northampton Road A student reported an encounter they had with a person while jogging along Northampton Road. >>March 1, 2018 6:22 p.m., Humphries House Officers investigated a smoke detector sounding on the first floor and discovered it was activated by cooking smoke.

9:58 p.m., Tyler House An officer investigated a smoke detector sounding in the basement and found it was activated by cooking smoke.

10:05 p.m., Off Campus Loca-

tions A student from another college reported an incident she observed in the center of town. An officer accompanied her to the Amherst Police Department so the incident could be reported. >>March 2, 2018 4:54 a.m., Beneski Earth Sciences and Natural History Museum Officer investigated an intrusion alarm and found it was set off by an employee.

12:20 p.m., New Science Center A delivery driver reported not being paid the full amount for a delivery made to a construction worker.

8:37 p.m., Cohan Dormitory While in a second-floor room, an officer discovered a smoke detector covered with a plastic bag.

It was removed, and the incident was referred to Student Affairs. >>March 3, 2018 1:00 a.m., Mayo-Smith House An officer encountered an unauthorized party with alcohol and approximately 60 people. It was shut down.

9:13 p.m., College Street Officers responded to a report of a person being struck by a car near Valentine Hall. The person, who is a student, was given medical care. The accident is under investigation by the town police as the incident occurred in their jurisdiction. >>March 4, 2018 12:18 a.m., Hitchcock Hall Officers discovered an unauthorized party with over 100 people.

The gathering was shut down.

12:39 a.m., Powerhouse Officers responded to a report of a fight involving five males during an event at the Powerhouse.

One visitor was injured and was given medical attention. None of the men, who are not associated with Amherst College, wanted to press formal charges.

9:58 a.m., Marsh House A student reported the theft of a red Shogun bicycle that was unlocked outside of Marsh. It is valued at $250.

Interested in having your voice heard on this campus?

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

Department of Environmental Studies

Ashwin Ravikumar is an assistant professor of environmental studies. He holds a B.S. in molecular environmental biology and ecology from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as an M.S. in environmental studies and a Ph.D. in environmental policy and social sciences, both from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Q: What is your area of research?

A: Most of my career has been spent working on the politics of land use and looking at how policies that attempt to reduce deforestation in the tropics, to mitigate climate change and also provide other benefits are actually working in practice or not working. So I lived in Peru for about two-and-ahalf years after my Ph.D., where I was coordinating this global comparative study on land use change and deforestation, looking at how different policies were interacting with — that is, supporting or not supporting — indigenous peoples’ land rights, affecting who holds power in decision-making, empowering or not empowering local governments and ultimately whether or not they were effective in reducing deforestation.

Q: Are you currently working on any any articles or books related to your research?

A: … I guess the main article that I am working on right now is challenging some ideas that are really prevalent in global development and conservation.

When I was living in Peru, I was working for a big, international research organization that was pretty closely linked to global development organizations. … A lot of the kind of discourse that I heard … was [that] the main challenge that’s preventing us from slowing deforestation in the tropics is that different sectors aren’t coordinating with each other, that the environment offices of the government and the agriculture offices of the government and the mining offices of the government aren’t talking to each other enough. And if we would get these folks to talk to each other and coordinate, we could solve problems. But through interviewing people that were really on the ground, and especially from seeing how movements that were led by indigenous people have secured great victories, even against seemingly insurmountable odds, what I started to learn — what some of my friends and I started to notice — is that the victories that we are seeing aren’t happening because of coordination. They are happening because of deliberate contestation between indigenous groups and activists and advocates that support sustainable land use and the rights of communities that have been living in forests for a long time, rather than agricultural intensification, rather than mining and extraction. So I’m writing a paper right now that kind of takes to task this notion that more coordination is always a good thing.

Q: How did you transition into academia?

A: It was an interesting journey. I was working, doing this research post-doc basically, with an international organization called the Center for International Forestry Research, and I had a really wonderful experience there, actually. It was awesome — I had a great team of collaborators and mentors that were awesome to work with … It was really cool to just, sort of, see how these global systems across levels work together. But I kind of wanted to move from that into something that was even more advocacy-oriented. From there, I went to join the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, which, kind of under the radar a little bit, had been doing some really amazing stuff in the Peruvian Amazon … So I ended up getting a really cool job with that group doing that type of work that was much more advocacy-focused and really trying to push for conservation pretty directly, and that was awesome and a wonderful experience. What I sort of saw with Amherst College is I missed teaching and I missed working with students and I wanted to do that more. And also, even as this group con-

tinues to be super successful and I maintain a really good relationship with them — I’m still an associate with the Field Museum today — there are a lot of really important research questions about how they have been able to do what they do. And I felt like coming here would give me an opportunity to work with students and also just kind of continue to work with the Field Museum and work on those types of advocacy projects, but from a more research perspective, with more of a research lens, to ask questions about how the new ways that they work with communities have empowered communities more than conventional development initiatives have and what’s special about it and what’s working about it.

Q: What drew you to Amherst College?

A: The thing that I think really caught my attention when I came out here to interview and talked to other faculty was just how much they remembered students that they had had in the past and how much good stuff they had to say about students …

Even when I was interviewing, just hearing about the sustained relationships that faculty maintained with students, as mentors and even friends, after they had graduated — long after they had graduated — just spoke to the kind of community that gets formed here, and that was super cool to me. Even when I’m in a faculty meeting here — I just got here a couple months ago now — you’ll have 10 tenured or tenure-track faculty members, 10 faculty brains, that will spend 45 minutes talking about two or three students because they care that much. And that was something that I think is super unique and something that I had not really experienced before at other universities that I’d been at.

Q: Can you describe the courses you are teaching this semester?

A: So I’m teaching two courses right now: Global Environmental Politics and Environmental Justice.

In Global Environmental Politics, I do that course a little bit more as a mixed lecture and discussion … I pull from some of my own experiences quite a bit in that class, and we try to unpack not just what policies and decisions shape environmental outcomes and what challenges exist for coming up with sustainable solutions, both within countries and between countries, but also try to really dig a little deeper into why policies emerge and can get passed or can’t, what coalitions are responsible for driving policymaking and who really holds power … Environmental Justice is a smaller class. It’s very discussion-focused … My own intuitions as an activist and as an advocate in my life come out of environmental justice traditions very much. But there is also a lot that I don’t know, so I’ve been using that class as an opportunity to read stuff that I haven’t even read before, watch documentaries that I haven’t even done before. And I’m trying to do something that I think is a little bit innovative and a little bit new, which is not just leave that class in the classroom but go outside of the classroom. What we are currently doing is trying to reach out to local organizations, and I’m finding now that in the Pioneer Valley there’s a bunch that are doing great work around environmental and social justice …

So really using class time and using the course as an opportunity to do work that hopefully has a real impact in the community and perhaps even more broadly, if it’s something like a [piece of] state legislation or something like that.

—Claire Dennis ’20

The Amherst Student • March 7, 2018

News

3

National Book Award Finalists Discuss Representation in Art Emma Swislow ’20 Managing News Editor National Book Award finalists Min Jin Lee and Carmen Maria Machado spoke at Amherst on March 1 as part of Lit Fest, a three-day literary festival sponsored by Amherst College-affilitated literary magazine The Common, the Emily Dickinson Museum and the Center for Humanistic Inquiry (CHI).

Lee is the author of “Pachinko,” a novel that follows four generations of a family, which first lives in Japanese-occupied Korea during the early 1900s and later lives in Japan from before World War II until the 1980s.

Machado is a National Book Award finalist for her short story collection “Her Body and Other Parties,” which incorporates aspects of a variety of genres including science fiction, fantasy, humor and psychological realism in stories about queerness and gender, among other topics.

Jennifer Acker ’00, editor-in-chief of The Common and founder of Lit Fest, began by introducing Lee, Machado and Parul Seghal, a literary critic at The New York Times, who moderated the event.

Seghal began the conversation by asking the authors about their writing processes.

Lee said that her writing usually evolves out of an idea rather than a story. “I don’t think so much about writing a story, believe it or not,” Lee said.

“I’m a very idea-based person, so I start with an idea and then I work with a thesis and I do a ton of research and then the story comes after. I’m not a very traditional fiction writer. I’m an idea writer and that makes me really weird.”

The two authors then read passages from their books. Afterwards, Seghal asked Lee and Machado to speak on the narrators of their books.

Machado described the pressure felt by the narrator of her short story, “The Husband Stitch,” which is part of her collection.

“My narrator knows it’s a tragedy and she’s moving towards the tragedy with every beat and by telling the story, she is moving closer to her own death,” Machado said. “But she does it anyway because the story must be told. So for me it’s a little

Photo courtesy of Alura Chung-Mehdi ’19

Authors Min Jin Lee (right) and Carmen Maria Machado (middle), both of whom are National Book Award finalists, engaged in a discussion hosted by literary critic Parul Seghal (left) at the college on March 1. less benevolent and a little more like it’s the way it must be and someone needs to tell a story and it’s me.”

The narrator of “Pachinko,” Lee said, is a more omniscient narrator that embodies her best qualities. “My narrator is the best part of me,” she said.

“She’s the part of me that has love for every person despite every situation, and I want to be that person, but it’s really difficult and, as a matter of fact, I suck at it. But my narrator is also a person who is revised.”

Both authors explore various themes surrounding sex in their fiction writing. Lee spoke about her experience as a journalist and the discussions she has with people about sex.

“I didn’t realize how many women want to stop having sex at a certain point in their life,” Lee said “I’ve talked with a lot of women about the change

of sexual habits and appetites, and I wanted to have that kind of discussion in fiction because we shouldn’t act like we always want sex. I wanted to write about it and put it out there because I think sexuality and all these other phases are a part of everyone’s life and it should be in fiction.”

Machado added that she was not seeing sex portrayed in a way that she wanted. “What I’ve noticed is that a lot of times writing about sex will be very euphemistic, and oftentimes when I was reading it, I was reading it mostly from male authors with this deep, deep contempt for the female body,” Machado said.

Filling this gap and representing those who are not typically seen in literature or other art forms is something that Machado spent time originally agonizing over but eventually came to terms with, she said.

“I had a lot of anxiety about being a certain kind of voice,” Machado said. “I just worried that people would say ‘Oh you wrote about a crazy lesbian, how original,’ but I’m a lesbian woman with mental health issues so I am that thing. I felt like I was spinning in circles, and I ultimately just decided that I had to write the stories that made sense to me.”

A brief Q&A session followed the conversation, during which they discussed critics’ reception of their books.

Isabel Meyers ’20 attended the event and found inspiration from authors talking about their books.

“It was refreshing to hear women up on stage really owning their literary success,” Meyers said. “I felt seriously inspired by the authors’ dedication to write the stories they felt were missing or underrepresented from mainstream literature.”

Author Junot Díaz Emphasizes Radical Hope at LitFest Event Continued from Page 1 from, others don’t. Some siblings are fluent in the language, others say they’re fluent until you test them,” Díaz said. “It’s a good reality, a good conflict that many of us carry.”

The conversation then moved to discussing Díaz’s already-published books, and Acker asked why most of Díaz’s characters aren’t middle-aged adults.

Díaz noted that for many parents, especially immigrant parents, most of their time is spent working to support their families. “I was just trying to capture that reality,” he said.

Díaz also discussed the odd dynamics surrounding age, in which society “fetishizes youth” and simultaneously “pathologizes aging.”

“I think it’s a way that society makes sure that nobody gets respect,” he said as he reflected on the ways both the young and old are mocked.

Acker also asked about how Díaz developed his writing style, which consists of “insider” details about the Dominican Republic and informative footnotes to catch up uninformed readers.

“We model what we expect from readers by having been readers ourselves, and not every book makes the same expectations of us,” Díaz said.

He emphasized that the experience of reading a text that resists the reader is ultimately rewarding, despite its difficulty.

Díaz talked about figuring out how to accurately present a scenario, like his family’s Christmas Eve or watching the first Star Wars movie with his siblings.

“You try to find ways of representing deeper issues and deeper themes,” Díaz said.

Acker followed up by asking how Díaz uses language to convey difficult and intense emotions.

Writers struggle with conveying character, Díaz answered, especially those not often seen.

Díaz used the example of the intense, seductive Dominican girl. “If you’ve ever had the strange pleasure of that seduction, you’re in for it,” he said.

“For those of us who haven’t, it’s hard to communicate it.”

Acker concluded the conversation by mentioning an essay Díaz wrote after the 2016 election titled, “Under Trump, Radical Hope is Our Best Weapon.” She asked what Díaz meant by that phrase and how he puts it into practice.

Díaz referenced the work of University of Chicago professor Jonathan Lear, whose research centers around indigenous communities.

He stressed the “radical hope” indigenous communities had in spite of their circumstances and suggested that we hold the same hope in our ancestors.

“If your community that helps create hope inside of you only includes the living, you have a very specific set of parameters for where hope comes

from,” Díaz said.

The talk ended with a Q&A session, during which Díaz discussed respectability politics, misogyny in his books and being romanticized as a person of color. The Q&A was followed by a book signing.

Zavi Sheldon ’18, who attended the event, said she enjoyed how Díaz described resistance.

“He was talking about breaking small rules, and how when you’re asked to break a really big rule, you’re already warmed up and ready to say no,” Sheldon said. “I really liked that.”

Robin Kong ’21, who also attended the event, was surprised to by the contrast between Díaz in person and Díaz as an author.

“My only knowledge of the author was based off of his books … so I was shook to see how nonchalant he was and how willing he was to break that stigma of respectability,” Kong said. “That really gave a certain ambiance of familiarity.”

AAS Policy Revision Specifies Off-Campus Funding Over Breaks Continued from Page 1 treasurer many, many years ago started funding that trip, and it became this question of precedent versus policy.” She added that there have been attempts to stop funding this trip in the past, but the issue was always appealed and the trips continued to be funded.

During Fall 2017, making the exception for the ultimate frisbee teams became a bigger problem, as members of the BC noticed that more clubs were starting to make funding requests for activities over breaks.

“Because we have always allowed frisbee as an exception to that rule, there was a big sentiment that it wouldn’t be fair anymore to just simply allow them to travel for spring break, and then not

fund other groups,” BC member Natalia Khoudian ’20 said. “So, we decided it would be much better to make a formal policy that would allow spring break trips and contingencies around it.”

In addition, Price said that “there is a precedent to keep funding things, but it’s not really sustainable … if we’re funding every club, like over [winter] break, which is a month long, then only a few people are getting to use [the funds] and it’s not really equitable to the rest of the school.”

Monetary concerns were also part of the problem. In the Fall 2017 budget, the ultimate frisbee teams requested $16,400 to cover the costs of lodging for the High Tide tournament, which is “a pretty large sum for a frisbee trip over break,” according to Price.

The requested tournament fee was $1,200

for the High Tide trip; the teams received $600 through club budgets and $675 through discretionary funds for a total of $1,275 spent on registration. The teams also received $14,200 for housing for their spring break trip this year: $8,200 through the club budgets and $6,000 through the discretionary fund. Although they will continue to receive funding for their registration fees following this policy change, there are concerns about how they will pay for lodging in the future.

Khoudian said that funding from the Office of Student Activities or alumni donations were possible ways to alleviate the burden of the cost. “It’s just hard because I know that they’ve always funded [the frisbee teams] as an exception, but ultimately, exceptions aren’t always fair,” Khousidan said. She added that this policy change has positively affect-

ed other clubs, such as the International Students Association, which has requested funding from BC for on-campus activities such as $400 for ice skating over spring break.

If students have concerns about this change or other policies, the BC and Senate meetings are always open to the student body, Krishnamurthy said. “I think if they would like to give feedback, it’s not that hard,” she added. “It’s a student running the whole enterprise, you can send an email, you know where they are. Budgetary Committee meets twice a week. You can come to Senate; it’s an open meeting. You can come every Monday night if you have something to say, and say it. So if someone wants to give feedback, they really can’t say that there’s no way for them to do it; there are a lot of ways for them to give feedback.”

Opinion

THE AMHERST

On Silenced Narratives

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

At this year’s LitFest, Junot Díaz started his talk with a reading from his nonfiction essay “Money,” which discusses remittances, a part of the immigrant experience that isn’t discussed often. We must continue to do what Díaz is doing: bring to light stories about immigrants and other underrepresented groups and give more varied insight into how others live.

Díaz said last Friday, “The peculiarities of most of our lives don’t appear in literature.

The country spends more energy erasing the lives of other immigrants than it does to represent them.” The “roaring silence” he mentions dominates communities of color and immigrants. We can do more by exploring different sides of stories from unheard people.

For example, in Díaz’s talk, he specifically asked people of color as well as other marginalized groups to speak up. No one should feel the need to strip away one’s own identity in order to please a certain audience nor should we strip away at people’s lives to create the narrative we want to hear. Díaz said in his talk, “I would cut pieces of myself, thinking whiteness would applaud. If I were to keep doing that, there would be nothing of me.”

Much of Díaz’s work focuses on shedding light on immigrant experiences, and this Monday, we reached President Trump’s deadline for Congress to come up with a legislative solution to DACA or else Trump would repeal it. Neither Trump nor Congress delivered.

During such a polarized era without a long term plan for immigration, we must take a more

holistic and nuanced perspective on policy and the people affected. There’s racial anxiety about immigrants who are mostly people of color. We have a responsibility to society to be careful in how we have a discussion about them.

Díaz argues that we should be deliberate about how we label or think about certain groups of people. He said that many of his readers consider the narrator in his novel, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” Yunior, a Dominican male of African-descent, as problematic. Díaz said he wrote Yunior to be sexually assaulted in the first five pages of his novel and frequently referenced the sexual assault as a framework as to view Yunior’s subsequent transgressions. Díaz encourages a complex reading of his character to avoid typecasting him as a sexual predator incapable of also being a victim, even though perpetrators and victims are often linked. The same complexity should be applied to groups of people outside the literary realm especially immigrants.

Without a clear policy moving forward, DACA members are in a tough position as they tip-toe the line of legality. This affects how society perceives them and their rights, of how to handle non citizens entering and staying in our country. The legal rights that we, as a country, believe undocumented immigrants deserve are in flux right now, subject to the country’s economic or political needs. This ignores the enormous impact these policies will have on hundreds of thousands of people.

Stoneman Douglas, Social Media and Cynicism Lisa Zheutlin ’21 Contributing Writer The most recent mass shooting, and it’s tragic that I even need to say “most recent,” was close to home — literally. Stoneman Douglas is 20 minutes away from my high school; we competed against them in sports.

My best friend went to camp with a teacher who was murdered.When I first heard about the shooting in my high school friend group chat, I was shocked, but my day continued.

I told the people at Amherst who I was with at the time and looked up articles about it, but felt numb. 17 people were murdered, though the number was not finalized at the time, and I felt desensitized. How is it that I may have met people from this school, gone to newspaper and sports competitions with them and did not feel anything? I imagined myself during fire drills in high school, joking around with my friends, never expecting to be a potential victim of a school shooting.

Then, the social media torrent came through:“Pray for MSD” frames were added to profile photos on Facebook and stories were posted on Instagram “demanding” policy and change. Ironically, that’s when the scope of the situation hit me, but instead of feeling sad, I felt angry. Misplaced or not, this anger was channeled towards the outpouring of social media posts. People who I know voted for Donald Trump and supported Florida senator Marco Rubio were now praying or demanding change from leaders who ran on platforms opposing any common sense gun control laws. I tried to be optimistic: “even if they voted for Trump, maybe this means now they’ve realized, may-

be now something will actually change.” My anger stemmed mostly from my belief that these social media associates of mine were posting and were then going to let the horror of the mass shooting subside, like I was afraid I would too, in the next week. Their civic duty was fulfilled by voicing support that would then disappear, both literally and, so I thought, figuratively, in 24 hours.

Of course, the backlash on social media also contributed to my anger. To the people who say we cannot politicize this, I can agree with you in that this issue should cross party lines and we should all agree that we need gun control laws. But the truth is, it is political. Republicans in Congress refuse to denounce the National Rifle Association (NRA), and their supporters love the Second Amendment enough to be able to reframe this shooting as a need to address the mental health of the shooters, rather than limit their ability to purchase assault rifles. Yes, mental health awareness is important, but frankly, it seems like a red herring. The root of the issue is Americans’ access to war weapons designed to murder hundreds of human beings.

I waited to write this article. I waited to see if my cynical prediction would be validated; that these seemingly superficial social media posts would not translate into actual action. To be fair, I didn’t even know what kind of action would appease me: something, anything to show that this mass shooting would not just fade into oblivion. And surprisingly, there has been hope. A group of survivors from the shooting, led by my aforementioned friend’s cousin, Cameron Kasky, have come together to organize a movement titled “Never Again,” and they are organizing

national “March for Our Lives” protests on March 24 to demand gun reform. They have been interviewed on national news, scheduled meetings with policy makers and were vocal in the recent CNN town hall, where Kasky asked Rubio, who receives millions of dollars from the NRA, if he would continue to accept donations from the organization. Rubio’s response was embarrassing but expected, and in a roundabout way, he responded that he would continue to accept donations but that he is ultimately the one who is making the decisions on the issues.

He is as complicit as the 71 Florida state legislators who voted against banning assault rifles at the state level after the Douglas shooting. He will be in office until 2020, and I genuinely do not believe he will be voted out when his reelection comes around. So what can we do?

These students give me hope, yet they also allow me to remain remote, as if someone else is handling it. I think my recent ambivalence towards politics stems from the idea that I literally do not know what I could do in this situation to be effective at making change. I called my senators to voice my support for gun control, and now what? I so desperately want change; I want these students’ efforts to not be for nothing. I’m critical of the social media posts, but my current feelings of purposelessness have made me realize that maybe one of the most important actions we can take is to ensure that no one forgets this shooting, whether through social media or marching; that when the Facebook frames expire, this shooting does not go to the backburner as the next mass murderer purchases assault rifles and bump stocks.

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

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The Amherst Student • March 7, 2018

Opinion

Crop of Lies: GMOs and Misinformation Ellen von zur Muehlen ’20 Contributing Writer

The term “genetically modified organism” (GMO) often inspires visceral reactions. To some, GMOs are cancer-causing, environment-destroying monsters created by evil biotechnology corporations. To others, they nourish a patronizing belief that American technological innovation is the only way to feed a growing global population with the onset of climate change. Misinformation abounds between these two schools of thought, and neither seems to have a firm grasp on the scientific realities and social implications of genetically modified crops.

Genetic modification is not a new practice.

Through selective breeding, we have been genetically modifying plants and animals since the beginning of agriculture. Modern genetic engineering, however, is far more precise. A common method today is to use comparative analysis to isolate the genes that produce a trait of interest — such as disease resistance — and then employ molecular technology to insert these genes into the circular DNA strands

of bacteria, like Agrobacterium tumefaciens.

This bacteria’s natural life cycle includes embedding its DNA into a host organism’s DNA, so the modified A. tumefaciens provides the perfect delivery system for desirable genes.

Fear towards genetic engineering is rooted in the false notion that moving genes between species is unnatural and dangerous.

Anti-GMO sites like experiencelife.com use emotional yet misleading language, such as calling GMO crops “frankenfoods.” To put their warning of “artificial combinations” in perspective, about eight percent of the human genome is composed of viral DNA passed down from ancestral infections, which illustrates that there is a natural precedent for interspecies gene transfer. There is nothing essentially different about DNA from different species; all DNA has the same structure and comes in different sequences of the same four molecular building blocks. Adding genes from one species to the genome of another is similar to editing a car manual to add a few more lines of instruction. Additionally, rigorous testing is done to ensure that the modified product displays the desired traits and does not show any

unexpected alterations that could occur from the introduction of new genes.

While the most vocal members of the anti-GMO movement betray their scientific illiteracy, GMO supporters are often no better. To propose GMOs as the ultimate solution to a global hunger crisis is both myopic and naive.

First, this solution ignores greater issues with modern agriculture. Increasing the yield or nutritional value of crops does nothing to alleviate the rampant land degradation, exploitative labor practices and ecological destruction that results from large-scale monocropping, nor does it address the United States’ colonial legacy of burdening developing nations with these damages. Moreover, because biotechnology corporations were controversially granted the ability to patent their organisms, only farmers with the ability to afford licenses are able to grow these crops — at least until the patents expire.

Though a meta-study of 1,700 separate reports done by the National Center for Biotechnology Information concluded that GMOs do not pose a health risk, it is important to maintain rigorous oversight of new inventions,

5

especially while corporations like Monsanto are the dominant innovators. Monsanto, a Missouri-based company, has a shady history.

In 1982, the company dodged liability when a chemical spill contaminated Times Beach, Missouri with dioxin — a highly toxic carcinogen — and all the town’s residents were forced to evacuate. Monsanto was also one of the primary producers of “Agent Orange” during the Vietnam War, a defoliant connected to a multitude of health problems. The corporation was also sued, along with Deere and Company, by the Department of Justice for violating antitrust laws in creating a monopoly of the seed supply. With these transgressions in mind, it’s important to remain skeptical of corporate motives and support regulations that keep them accountable to the public. Ultimately, through the hedge of uninformed, reactionary opinions we can see that while the science of GMOs is not in itself dangerous or diabolical, there remain a host of valid criticisms surrounding the issue, including questions of corporate accountability, oversimplified solutions for global issues and scientific literacy in the public.

Our Ivory Tower Teeming With Green Kirstin Henry ’20 Contributing Writer It is a truth universally acknowledged that college students consume illegal substances. I do not know what percentage of our student body smoke marijuana (or eat, for those who prefer edibles) but I know that it’s more than zero percent. I would even wager that it’s more than 40 percent. To this end, we truly inhabit an ivory tower.

Students consume illegal substances and the town police, more or less, turns a blind eye. This situation is markedly different from how marijuana use is handled throughout the rest of the country. The Washington Post analyzed FBI statistics from 2016 and concluded that police arrested more people for marijuana possession than murder, rape, aggravated assault and robbery combined. Consider this statistic in relation to our nation’s track record with rape cases, for instance: End the Backlog, a nonprofit organization, estimates that “hundreds of thousands” of rape kits remain untested in police and crime labs across the country (If you visit their website, you can see a rough estimate of the thousands untested in your home state). Hundreds of thousands of brave survivors sought the help of police, allowed themselves to be vulnerable in front of officials and underwent invasive procedures, only to have their efforts disregarded so that law enforcement could focus on arresting more people for enjoying, or facilitating others’ enjoyment in, a psychoactive plant.

If our campus, along with most other

college campuses, is relatively unbothered, where is the gaze of the law focused? Who fills up our jails and prisons for marijuana offenses? Which applicants, because of drug felonies, are disregarded by potential employers before they’ve even had a chance to interview? Disproportionately low-income people of color. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) estimates that over half of all drug arrests in the United States in 2016 were for marijuana. Of these cases, black people are clearly targeted: they are 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people, despite roughly equal usage rates. Not only are we wasting valuable resources prosecuting victimless/non-violent crimes, we are perpetuating a system that disproportionately oppresses people of color.

Civil rights activists and criminal justice reformers have whispered, spoken and shouted these facts at us for years. Michelle Alexander in “The New Jim Crow,” succinctly highlighted how mass incarceration and drug law enforcement represent a refined racial caste system, in which white people benefit from the criminalization of people of color. (If you recoiled in disbelief from that sentence, read the book and watch Ava DuVernay’s “13th”). These statistics are not new.

However, my brief summary serves a specifically Amherst-oriented purpose.

First, we must acknowledge our privilege.

As students of Amherst, we are relatively free to consume substances. While police patrol our dorms, break up parties and occasionally confiscate materials (check The Student’s crime log), these practices primarily target

alcohol use and, in terms of drug crackdowns, our community is nowhere near as scrutinized as others. We have a class that meets in Hampshire County Jail and House of Corrections, and it is composed of college students and prisoners, some students of which are imprisoned for drug use. Amherst students who attend this class probably attend other classes with drug users, though those classes are on campus and those drug users are free.

Do not misunderstand. I am not advocating for stricter policing of our campus. I firmly believe marijuana should be legalized nationwide and that the federal government should end the sentences and expunge the records of all human beings whose lives have been significantly disadvantaged because the police caught them possessing, smoking and/ or selling marijuana. I am, however, advocating for increased activism, which brings me to my second proposal.

Those of us who willfully disregard what we believe to be unjust laws, mostly secure in our campus bubble, must advocate for people who find joy and/or pain relief in similar activities but are, unlike us, significantly penalized for it. How might we do that? We can take note from other activist groups. We can organize and/or attend marches dedicated to marijuana legalization and advocacy for those targeted. Held annually in Boston in late September, the Freedom Rally is a relatively accessible option. We can, as always, contact our legislatures and express our frustrations with drug laws and drug law enforcement. Better yet, we could run for office

ourselves and/or rally around someone from our community who truly has a deep commitment to justice and the charm to secure support (looking at you, Sade Green ’20).

Speaking of community, we are assigned an extraordinary amount of papers and projects, and we always have the option to write a thesis. We could use the campus resources and these outlets to research the impact of marijuana law enforcement on different communities, public opinion on marijuana laws and usage, medicinal aspects of cannabis and so forth. We could then distribute our findings or use them as conversational pieces with family member or friends from home who do not truly grasp the injustices inherent in our current legal system as it relates to marijuana offenses. This list is just a short survey of possible actions. Do not confine yourself; think of more measures and act on them.

Understand that Amherst College is not an island unto itself. If you are an Amherst student who smokes and/or eats marijuana and you did not grow that plant yourself, you are complicit in a process that someone else may be jailed for. If you smoke and/or eat marijuana and you did grow that plant yourself, you are still not innocent. You are knowingly benefiting from systems of oppression that privilege elite college students.

Faced with this position, what do you do?

You acknowledge your position in society.

You do not allow “terras irradient” to just act as a nifty selling point for the college. Use the resources, connections, knowledge, and skills that you’ve gained from this institution and fight to make this country more just.

If I May: My Top Five Oscar Hosts Jake May ’19 Columnist This past Sunday, Jimmy Kimmel hosted the Academy Awards for the second year in a row.

By all accounts, he did a very solid job. However, it was obviously a fairly safe pick for ABC. I hope that in the future, the producers pick some more exciting, perhaps less established hosts. I’ve decided to try and think of who I’d like to see hosting the awards. Like my column about late-night hosts, these choices are mostly very unrealistic, but I don’t care. Below are my top five picks, in no particular order: 1. Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele In the early days of the ceremony, the Oscars often had multiple hosts. Recently, it’s been one person, especially since the debacle that was James Franco and Anne Hathaway (mostly

James Franco). However, I think having a pair that know each other well, work together and have great energy would add an exciting dimension to the hosting duties. Key and Peele fit this bill perfectly; if you’ve ever seen a full episode of their show, you know that they can be funny out of character as well, and they play off each other in such a lively way. In addition, Key and Peele represent a newer, fresher comedy that would be a departure from the more old-hat choices of late-night hosts and established comedians. That being said, there are many pairs of people who fit this bill, which leads me to…

2. John Mulaney and Nick Kroll Mulaney and Kroll are another pair who would inject some freshness into the decidedly stale vibe of the Oscars. They’ve proven that they can effectively host an award show; they’ve been the hosts of the Film Independent Spirit

Awards for the past two years (check out both monologues on YouTube — they’re hilarious).

Both Mulaney and Kroll have a healthy disposition towards film: they clearly respect and celebrate the art form, but at the same time can lampoon the elitism present in Hollywood.

3. Tina Fey and/or Amy Poehler Okay, so I’m cheating a little bit here. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have proven that they are a force as a duo. They were excellent together as the hosts of the Golden Globes in 2013, 2014 and 2015. In fact, they were so good that I don’t really understand why they were never picked to host the Oscars. So obviously, they can host well together. However, I think that either of them would be a fantastic host on their own.

ABC, if you’re reading this (which I assume you are), please choose one or both of them in the near future.

4. Tiffany Haddish If you saw Tiffany Haddish present an award with Maya Rudolph, or saw her host SNL, or saw her in Girls Trip, or have ever seen her do stand-up, you would know that she would be an incredible host of the Oscars. Obviously, I am a huge fan of Tiffany Haddish. Of all of my picks, she may be the one that I hope actually gets picked the most. The energy she would bring to the ceremony is truly unlike any other person on this list.

5. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson I mean, come on. Who wouldn’t want to see this? Initially, I was going to put him on this list as a joke. However, the more I think about it, the more I’ve come to believe that The Rock would be an outstanding host. If you disagree, please write me a letter. AC #1076. Please. I love mail.

Arts&Living

2018 LitFest Poetry Slam Provides Platform for Student Expression

Photo courtesy of en.wikipedia.org

Poetry slam winner DJ Williams ‘20 will perform as a guest of honor at the Nuyorican Poets Café, one of the most famous slam poetry venues in the U.S. Carolina Carriazo ’18 Contributing Writer This past Thursday, Amherst kicked off the third annual LitFest with one of the more exciting events in the weekend lineup: the Poetry Slam. The midweek slump didn’t seem to discourage the audience, which filed in by the dozens. At 10 p.m., the Powerhouse, gutted and blue-lighted in preparation for the evening, was buzzing with chatter. However, the moment the host, David Gatrell — chief executive director of the Nuyorican Poets’ Café in Brooklyn — shuffled up to the mic, the room fell silent in a hush of anticipation.

And rightly so — the slam, in its brief few years of existence, has set quite a high standard for itself. The notoriously stiff competition was on full display on Thursday, and given what was at stake, the nervous energy was understandable. Third place at the slam earned a competitor a one-hour creative studio session in Emily Dickinson’s bedroom; second place, an iPad; and first place, a guest of honor performance at the Nuyorican Poets Café itself, arguably the most famous slam poetry venue in the world.

The fight for the top prize resulted in a dazzling array of performances — some serious, some heartbreaking and some hilarious, but all relat-

able and moving in their individual ways.

Before the nine poets took the stage, Gatrell passed off the mic to the evening’s guest judge, four-time individual World Poetry Slam champion Ed Mabrey. Mabrey cut an imposing figure as he performed one of his pieces in a prelude to the competition, electrifying the audience with “The Tragic Comedy Dance,” which deals with the black male experience of growing up in America in relation to music and dance.

It was a hard act to follow, but the student poets channeled the power of Mabrey’s performance. First up was Bao Tran ’17, who spoke about homesickness and love for her mother, in honor of the upcoming International Women’s Day. Succeeding her were Caleb Williams ’20, Tejia Pavao ’17, Sade Green ’20, Dorjohn Boakye ‘21, Isiaha Price ’21, Latrell Broughton ’19, DJ Williams ’20 and Markel Thomas ’18.

Their delivery styles varied considerably: Caleb Williams was steady and measured, Green was forceful and serious and Price was more conversational. Regardless of the way they approached the stage, however, all of the student poets tackled intimate issues, ranging from encounters with racism to rocky relationships, struggles with body image and tensions within families. The lineup gave particular voice to people of color, which gathered fur-

ther momentum in the audience; Green’s poem on the tragedy of the black slave experience in America inspired murmurs of agreement from the crowd. In fact, as the evening progressed, silence proved to be the exception rather than the rule, as the audience often became a part of the performance.

The emotion in the room during each performance was palpable, and the poets kept up their impressive stamina throughout the night.

Price described how he had happened upon slam almost accidentally, after trying to channel his creative energy through more traditional poetic forms.

He recalls his first encounter with this “different” kind of poetry: “When I first starting writing in high school, it was definitely Poe, and Frost, and Hawthorne, and a bunch of these famous, big-time, classical poets [that were primary influences] … I was never really interested in that … it was never really the poetry, that, for me, felt the most creative.”

He continued, “Slam felt right. There’s this performance I get to put on for the audience and I get to share my experience — it’s validating and it’s wonderful.”

And yet, as Price went on, slam poetry is as much for himself as it is for his audience. Having grown up in the largely conservative and

homogenous town of Russellville, Kentucky, coming to terms with his identity as a gay black man in his hometown was not easy.

“Slam was my therapy … it’s reparative. I’ve gone through things, but I’m here now … my poetry is my battle cry,” he said.

Like Price, the other contestants cultivated fruitful relationships between their writing and their own inner worlds. In general, slam provides a compelling mixture of the conversational quality of writing, vulnerability on stage and communion with the audience — drawing in performers and listeners alike.

After two rounds (or more aptly, two-anda-half-rounds — there was an optional haiku battle just after intermission) of charged performances and a few minutes of judges’ deliberations and tallying, it was time to announce the winners of the competition. The race was close. In third place was Tran; second, Green; and in first — now preparing for her enviable trip to New York — was DJ Williams.

But, if the chatter on the path as the crowds walked up from Keefe was any indication, everyone in the room took something away from each performance. The annual poetry slam continues to be an exciting and thoughtful space for the showcasing of poetic talent on campus.

The Amherst Student • March 7, 2018

Arts & Living 7

Brockhampton’s Three “Saturation” Albums Mark Group’s Success Jack Klein ’20 Staff Writer The boy band Brockhampton can best be described as a harmonious and quirky amalgamation of individual talent. From the sound of its music to the size of the group, not to mention each member’s individual style both inside and outside of the recording booth, Brockhampton strikes listeners as just plain different.

Even the way in which the group was formed is unorthodox. The band’s current leader, Kevin Abstract, along with Jalen Jones, posted a message on the Kanye West online fan forum, “KanyeToThe,” inviting others to form a band. After the original attempt, the group recruited more members and branded itself as Brockhampton.

In the spring of 2016, Brockhampton released its debut mixtape, “All-American Trash,” and the subsequent release of three successive albums (“Saturation,” “Saturation II” and” Saturation III”) facilitated the group’s rise to stardom.

A notable aspect of the first “Saturation” album is that Brockhampton released many of the songs on it as singles and music videos before the album was released. In contrast, most artists usually put out just one or two songs as singles before the official album release as a means of generating interest. Music industry conventions dictate that releasing

too many songs off an album before its release will weaken the allure and excitement surrounding the album, harming album sales and streams. By sticking to its own script, however, the band overcame the roadblocks that most up-and-coming artists face, presenting its best songs to potential fans immediately. The public didn’t have to wait for critics to review Brockhampton’s whole album or sit around for a long time between new content releases.

By saturating YouTube and streaming services with a host of singles, Brockhampton put itself on the map.

One of the best singles that ended up on the first album is “FACE,” a slow-paced love song that features pleading, tender verses from some of the band’s best rappers. On the chorus, Joba croons “Tell me what you’re waiting for / I just wanna love ya.” Later, Ameer Vann raps, “You make it warm in my bed, butterflies in my head.” The song displays the range that Brockhampton would later perfect in its successive albums.

Another highlight of “Saturation” is “CASH,” which opens with a foreboding guitar riff that continues for the length of the song. It has both the sound and ethos of a rock song; the listener can feel the frustration and anger radiating from the rappers when Merlyn Wood wonders “Whose society is this? Who delayed my first kiss?” or when Ameer Vann spits “Kill you for a dollar, listen to ‘em holler / Big blood ballers with a crown on my corner.”

The beauty of having such a large rap group is that each individual brings his own experience and perspective to every song. Brockhampton is truly “All-American,” featuring artists black and white, straight and gay and young and old. However, it is an exclusively male group. This diverse group of artists only became united when it felt like society had put them in a position to fail and “Get[ting] money, big bands, simple bands” was the only answer.

“Saturation II” is more cohesive and spirited than its predecessor, making it by far the most exciting of the three albums. The opening track, “GUMMY,” exudes more energy than most of the songs on “Saturation.” Kevin Abstract’s M.I.A. impression on the chorus — “Cash don’t last, my friends will ride with me / Keep ‘em in a bag, we robbed a limousine” — and Dom McLennon’s lyricism — “That’s what they sayin’ in private, speaking from that entitlement / We still workin’ for titles and makin’ tidal environments” — complete the song.

The passionate chorus in “QUEER” and Ameer Vann’s verse, “My lifestyle still the same, just a face lift … My whole life slowly turned into a daydream,” provide a change of pace from the song’s opening. Kevin Abstract’s mocking falsetto (“La-di-da-di-da-di-da, do I trust ‘em? Probably not”) on the chorus of “JELLO” epitomizes Brockhampton’s weirdness and unabashed willingness to try new things.

Meanwhile, “CHICK” examines the selfconsciousness of the nerdy members of Brockhampton. On “JUNKY,” Kevin Abstract openly discusses his homosexuality, attempting to subvert the stigma regarding gay rappers. “SWEET” boasts the best lyrics on the album with two-liners like “The original licksplickety, higher than Yosemite / Breaking the mold mentally, master with no limiting” and “What it’s like to be called to what’s not set in stone / I am one with the ebb and flow, that’s all I know.”

On “Saturation III,” the members of the band play off each other well, most likely the result of having spent more time rapping and recording songs together. “BLEACH” is the album’s show-stopper, featuring a soulful chorus and introspective verses. On “ALASKA,” the group reflects on their rise to stardom and the differences found in their new lives, while “RENTAL” features catchy flow over a smooth synth. Overall, “Saturation III” feels more complete, both lyrically and thematically, than the other “Saturation” albums.

Brockhampton burst onto the music scene with its rapid-fire album releases and instant hits, and its idiosyncratic style has penetrated the mainstream music industry. The group consistently shows intense growth from one album to the next and its future looks bright.

Hopefully, Brockhampton can follow up its incredible 2017 with more quality music in 2018.

Three Spring Break Reads You Won’t Find in Your Course Reader Olivia Luntz ’21 Staff Writer “The Power” by Naomi Alderman

Photo courtesy of alittleblogofbooks.com

Reminiscent of “The Hunger Games” and “The Handmaid’s Tale,” this dystopian novel has been hailed by Margaret Atwood as “Electrifying! Shocking! Will knock your socks off!

Then you’ll think twice, about everything.”

“The Power” by Naomi Alderman, which was named to The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2017 list, centers around the question of what would happen if women suddenly had physical power over men.

One morning, all teenage girls in the world wake up with a new muscle, a “skein” that is located at their collarbones and has the capacity to generate varying levels of electric shocks that can disarm and even kill men. Men’s sudden inability to defend themselves against women creates massive social upheaval. Alderman questions how much of our world has its foundation in a patriarchal system and whether inequality of power is truly the root of all evil.

To fully present how the world would change, Alderman masterfully weaves four characters and their stories together.

One is Tunde, a young, rich Nigerian man who becomes a famous photojournalist reporting on wars and protests. As the novel progresses, he becomes increasingly worried about his safety while being alone around women.

Another is a female American politician, Mar-

got, who creates a specialized army of young women while struggling to raise her daughters in this new society. The remaining two characters, Allie and Roxy, are both teenage girls and therefore the most affected by the emergence of the “skeins.” Allie is able to escape her abusive foster home in Alabama and accidently becomes the face of a new female-focused religious group, while the story of Roxy, the daughter of a British drug lord, explores how women become the most powerful figures in organized crime.

All of these characters eventually interact with the newly formed republic of Bessapara, in which previously-trafficked women have overthrown the government and created their own matriarchal society. However, Alderman does not intend for her book to be a feminist fantasy in which women ruling the world suddenly makes it perfect, but rather explores how power corrupts morality and humanity. I was personally transfixed by both the originality of Alderman’s story and also her captivating writing — even finishing the novel in one day. Consider this a warning to not start this book on a day when you have a lot of things that need to be accomplished.

“Little Fires Everywhere” by Celeste Ng

Photo courtesy of bethfishreads.com

“Little Fires Everywhere” opens with exactly what you would expect — a fire — but

after that, everything in this book is something unexpected. Opening with the burning down of the Richardson home in the picture-perfect suburb of Shaker Heights, the book proceeds to travel backwards. We find out how the arrival of off-beat single mother Mia Warren and her teenage daughter Pearl set off a chain of events that reveal the cracks growing within both the Richardson family and their idyllic community.

These cracks cause the characters to face settings such as an abortion clinic parking lot, a courtroom in the midst of an intense custody battle and a getaway car, a VW Rabbit.

Through an omniscient point of view, Ng is able to deeply probe into her characters and explore the internal struggles they face in order to fit in, or stand out, in their homogenous town.

Specifically, Ng grapples with issues surrounding motherhood and what the best way to do one’s job as a mother is — making us question our own morals and assumptions along the way. Further, the omniscient narrator allows the reader to know all the characters’ secrets.

Although we initially keep reading to find out who it is that set the “big fire,” we soon realize that the crux of the novel is really the “little fires everywhere:” the lies that we all tell and the mistakes that we all make.

This novel is especially a must-read as it was recently announced that Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington have joined forces to adapt and presumably star in a television show based on the book. If Witherspoon’s success in bringing the book “Big Little Lies” to the small screen is any indication, this new show is likely to be a massive hit.

“The Magicians” by Lev Grossman Childhood lovers of “Harry Potter” and “The Chronicles of Narnia” — I have found the book for you.

“The Magicians” is a novel that is somehow able to distill the magical essence of Hogwarts and Narnia and inject it into an adult novel that deals with mental health, power and relationships. Author Lev Grossman manages to create this world without it feeling cheesy, clichéd or childish — an impressive feat.

The novel follows Quentin Coldwater, a high school student who spends most of his free time rereading his favorite book from childhood, in which a group of children discover a Narniainspired fantasy-land called Fillory.

While attempting to attend an interview

Photo courtesy of rodapedohorizonte .wordpress.com

for Princeton, Quentin stumbles instead upon a portal to the magic school of Brakebill and enrolls.

However, he discovers that many of the problems that haunted him in the non-magical world have followed him to Brakebill. While struggling to memorize spells, Quentin also battles depression, disillusionment and the upsand-downs of love. Although he is attending a school for magicians, Quentin’s moments of insecurity and attempts to fit in still feel relatable.

The novel truly shines, however, once Quentin realizes that the land of Fillory is real and that his friend has figured out how to travel there. Quentin and his friends jump at the chance to travel to Fillory, but they quickly find evil lurking within this supposedly perfect world, and this rag-tag group of teenagers may be the only ones who can end the reign of terror. Quentin’s journey into Fillory tells the fascinating tale of what would happen if our wildest dreams came true, only to fall horribly short of expectations.

Additionally, this book is the first in a trilogy, so if you love it, there is much more of Brakesbill and Fillory to explore after you reach the last page. This trilogy, which includes “The Magician King” and “The Magician’s Land,” is perfect to read if you’ve been beaten down by half-a-semester’s worth of academic readings and need to inject some magic back into your life.

The Amherst Student • March 7, 2018

Arts & Living 8

Arts & Living Special Feature

Photo courtesy of Army.mil

In everything from the short films to the Best Picture nominees, the 90th Academy Awards ceremony was full of politically charged movies and dialogue.

90th Academy Awards Embodies Hollywood’s Shallow Liberalism

Youngkwang Shin ’19 Staff Writer The 90th Academy Awards concluded in an anticlimax that strangely did not fit such an eventful year in both film and world events.

2017 was the first year of the Trump administration and the year of #MeToo and #TimesUp — at once the sudden defeat and slow recuperation of liberalism in the United States. It was a year of sharp contradictions that inevitably seeped into the film industry, with notable actors cracking and ultimately breaking the dam against Harvey Weinstein amongst others and spearheading the two hashtags that have come to define the inaugural year of Trump and the #Resistance.

Apropos of nothing, Jimmy Kimmel hosted the Oscars. Like so many hosts before him, the late-night comedian struck that miraculous balance between unsubtlety and inefficacy.

Peaking early, Kimmel remarked about how the Oscar statue’s penislessness made him the ideal man in the age of #MeToo. He played this card while vaguely gesticulating towards the immobile golden man, face frozen in a cringing wince in the shadowed margins of the stage. Little was mentioned of the second man, away from the shadows and in the limelight, Jimmy Kimmel himself, fully armed with both a rote script and penis. It is a curious contradiction that the hall could chuckle about the confusing joke and idea that inanimate docil-

ity was the natural opposite to sexual abuse, and still somehow ignore that the most popular awards ceremony in the world’s most influential film industry was produced and organized by, voted upon and hosted by mostly powerful men.

This curious limitation of Hollywood liberalism was the true theme and cause of the eerie listlessness that came upon the gathering. Even the most anticipated award could not escape this mood. The nominees themselves were topical and revealing. “Phantom Thread” directly commented on the toxicity of the figure of the male genius and imagined a nihilistic revolt on the part of his repressed female muse. “Get Out” mapped the pessimism found in wars of the sexes onto genre and race relations. “Call Me by Your Name” and “Lady Bird”, deep-dive into gay boyhood and Sacramento girlhood and though not quite as over in their discussion of contemporary politics, nevertheless found themselves affected through subsequent politically-bent discussions.

Yet out of all of these films, the eventual winner proved to be “The Shape of Water,” a pretty fable that, like Jimmy Kimmel, was watered down by its attempts at subversion.

For all its genre extremities, most notably the prospect of a woman copulating with a merman, “The Shape of Water” presents a tale as old as time. Its Beast acts a catch-all metaphor for besieged minorities and their relationships with beauty — an empowering parallel for all

marginalized relationships. Meanwhile, Gaston works for the government. In any other classic Hollywood film, director Guillermo del Toro had noted, Michael Shannon’s white, chiseled operative would be the hero of the story.

What is this “any other film?” “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” according to del Toro.

But that film came and went with the fifties and its particular sociopolitical arrangement, and global film has since constructed a venerable tradition of questioning the invulnerability of the white male hero. That is not to say that the monstrous coding of marginalized people has vanished from the film industry. It has instead become subtler, and modern films are finding new ways and fronts to fight its attenuated manifestations.

In that context, an award for “Shape of Water” becomes at once puzzling and comprehensible. It is not necessarily the best film, but it does the most. It welds the various marginalized stories into the old archetype of the Beast, sheened anew as a sexy merman. Yet in the process, so many other stories remain archetypical: the sassy black lady cheerleading on the sidelines, the shy and scared gay artist. But we need easier comfort in desperate times, so we choose the fable and made fun of a statue.

The criticism of “Shape of Water” is not itself the point. Nor is the criticism of Jimmy Kimmel. And neither is the criticism of Guill-

coach because she wants her daughter to be “normal.” Sue places her daughter in a “normal school,” refusing to try to get Libby any special accommodations because she wants Libby to learn how to speak (something she may not be capable of ) instead of using sign language.

In the last shot of the film, a wrought iron fence stands between Libby and her sign language coach, as Libby is trapped inside her new school and her coach, for some undisclosed reason, is unable to go in or to wait for school to be dismissed. Across this inexplicable barrier, a despondent Libby signs the words “I love you.” It is certainly an emotional scene, and it even jerked some tears out of me, but it was so lacking in nuance that I felt as if I had been conned into caring for Libby. The film feels more like a PSA (albeit one advocating the extremely important cause of raising awareness and support for the issues deaf children face) and less like an actual film.

Instead of “The Silent Child”, I believe that “Watu Wote” was the most deserving nominee. This short tells the story of a 2015 terror attack on a bus near the Kenyan-Somali border. This film also has a political message, and if one were to boil it down to its core,

the film tells us that Muslims and Christians can and should come together in the face of religious extremism. But, unlike “The Silent Child,” “Watu Wote” is artistically justified in its political statement.

The film’s protagonist is a Christian woman named Jua, who takes a 31-hour bus trip from Nairobi to the majority Muslim city of Madera, near the Somali border. Jua, whose family was killed in a terror attack by Muslim extremists, is highly islamophobic and distrustful of Muslims.

The film invites its audience to see the world from Jua’s point of view and share her prejudices. When two Muslim men board the bus carrying a package, director Katja Benrath uses a combination of shaky-cam and ominous music to make us feel like Jua — ill at ease with their presence.

But when the bus is suddenly ambushed by terrorists from the East African jihadist group Al-Shabaab, who have come to find the Christians onboard and murder them, it is in fact these two package-carrying men who act the most courageously in order to save Jua. Jua may be the protagonist, but the true heroes of the film are the passengers who refuse to reveal Jua’s identity as a Christian

ermo del Toro, whose Oscar for Best Director was as well-deserved as it was belated. But, del Toro was announced by Emma Stone as one of the ‘four men and Greta Gerwig’ competing for the Best Director crown, a jab copying Natalie Portman’s more successful cuff at the Golden Globes. While del Toro delivered a heartfelt speech about erasing lines drawn in the sand, he still had to pose for a photo-op with Best Actor nominee Gary Oldman, who has been accused of domestic abuse against his ex-wife. It was this constant overlap of the progressive with the regressive that brought the ceremony down.

Some of the regressive elements originated since the distant past, to be sure. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences still privileges directors and actors over cinematographers, perpetuating a cult of personality and celebrity that implicitly belittles thankless labor, obscures discussion of diversity and unfairly skewers popular perception of film as the work of individual visionaries.

The Academy still ignores foreign films, especially foreign animated films, on the pretext that it is a celebration of the American film industry, all the while annually profiting off the global capital of Hollywood. The 90th Academy Awards still does the bare minimum at resistance and fulfills the Trump electorate’s stereotype of the coastal liberal elites while denying immediate victims of their progessive desires.

Oscars Miss the Mark in Failing to Honor Short Film “Watu Wote”

Milan Loewer ’21 Staff Writer In recent years, the film industry and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences itself have grown progressively more political, a change which has manifested itself in positive ways (this year the Oscars were perhaps #marginallylesswhite). Much like many of the big name films that vied for Best Picture this year, four of the five films nominated in the Live Action Short Film category had some sort of political bent or message to them.

The nominees included the eventual winner “The Silent Child,” “DeKalb Elementary,” “The Eleven O’Clock,” “My Nephew Emmett” and “Watu Wote: All of Us.” However, some of these films pull off their political commentary with more nuance and artistic merit than others.

The “Silent Child” took home the Oscar on Sunday night, but it was the most preachy and heavy-handed of all of the nominated films. It tells the story of a four-year-old deaf girl, Libby, and her bond with her sign language coach. Libby’s caricaturish-ly villainous and negligent mother, Sue, ultimately separates Libby from her sign language

even in the face of death. These heroes quote the Quran to the Al-Shabaab militants at gunpoint, explaining that it is haram (against Islamic law) to take life. They beseech Allah to guide the terrorists “on the straight path of those who have received [his] grace. Not on the path of those who wander astray.”

While giving the audience a perspective into Jua’s fears, the film also humanizes the terrorists themselves. It gives us a glimpse of the desperation that led some of the militants to join Al-Shabaab, most notably so when one of the terrorists screams in a trembling voice, “The whole world is out to get us.”

“Watu Wote” is a film that aims to expose our own hidden prejudices and subvert our expectations. It addresses one of the most charged contemporary political issues — terrorism — by exposing the underlying humanity of the victims and, even to some extent, the perpetrators.

The final scene of “Watu Wote” consists of Jua walking hand-in-hand with a Muslim woman and child into the sunset. After a film full of thoughtful craft, Benrath earned her sentimental last shot, and the emotion it evokes does not feel as though it is being aggressively squeezed out of the viewer — it feels real.

The Amherst Student • March 7, 2018

Sports 9

Women’s Basketball Advances to 11th Straight Sweet Sixteen

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Hannah Hackley ’18 had two blocks in the win over St. Joseph’s on Saturday.

Michael Stone ’21 Staff Writer This weekend, the women’s basketball team topped both Becker College and Saint Joseph’s College to reach the third round of the NCAA Division III tournament.

Amherst, the reigning national champions, entered NCAA action ready to play and defend their title.

The Mammoths jumped out to an early 19-2 first quarter lead in Friday’s game against Becker.

This momentum carried into the second half, as Amherst held the visitors without a field goal in the second half. In all, the Mammoths put on a dominant performance on both sides of the court, beating Becker by a score of 61-12.

Guard Emma McCarthy ’19E had a very efficient outing, going 5-5 from the field en route to scoring a game-high 11 points in just 13 minutes.

Meanwhile, sophomore Madeline Eck was dominant at both ends of court, posting 10 points and five steals.

Given its large lead from the start, Amherst relied heavily on its bench, with each non-starter playing over 20 minutes. This proved be a wise move on the part of coach G.P. Gromacki, who was able to rest some of his key players for Sunday’s match against St. Joseph’s.

Coming off of a Friday victory against Old Westbury, the St. Joseph’s Monks were eager to continue their winning ways in the Round of 32 matchup against the favored Mammoths.

The Monks were up to the challenge of facing Amherst right from the start, keeping the deficit to just one point at halftime.

However, the Mammoths relied on a big second half to power past the Monks, 53-47, and move on to the third round of tournament play.

St. Joseph’s relied heavily upon junior guard Kelsi McNamara, who put up a gamehigh 30 points on 11-21 shooting from the field.

In order to overcome the efforts of McNamara and the Monks, Amherst relied on stellar guard play of its own.

Hannah Fox ’20 had a huge night, logging 40 minutes and putting up a double-double with 18 points and 11 rebounds. Fox was especially effective in the fourth quarter, scoring nine of her 18 points in crunch time.

Classmate Eck was right by her side, also logging 40 minutes and totaling 13 points, eight rebounds and four assists.

Along with these two standout performances, the Mammoths relied heavily upon solid defense and team rebounding to propel them to victory.

Amherst grabbed several big offensive boards down the stretch and used the resulting second-chance points to extend its lead.

Ultimately, the Mammoths emerged from

the hard-fought battle with a win that earned them a place in the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA DIII tournament.

In its next NCAA tournament match, Amherst will take on Montclair State, the winners of the New Jersey Athletic Conference.

This game is scheduled to take place at Amherst’s LeFrak Gymnasium at 7 p.m. on Friday, March 9.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Hannah Fox ’20 scored 18 points against Saint Joseph’s College.

Men’s Lacrosse Wins First Two in Women’s Track and Field Sends Five to Last Chance Qualifier Dominant Start to the Season Kelly Karczewski ’18 Staff Writer After a disappointing NESCAC campaign in 2017, the Amherst men’s lacrosse team kicked off this spring season with a dominant 22-7 win over the Colby Mules.

Sophomore Colin Minicus started his season right where he left off last year after being named NESCAC Rookie of the Year.

Against Colby, Minicus led Amherst in scoring with nine points, tallying five goals and four assists.

A home matchup for the Mammoths, Amherst ran onto Pratt Field clad in its all-white uniforms with visible confidence.

Part of this confidence no doubt stemmed from the historical performance of the Mules, who in the past have not been one of the stronger squads in the NESCAC. Junior Andrew Ford struck first for the Mammoths, putting away a perfect feed from Jimmy McAfee ’20 in the sixth minute of play.

McAfee himself was next to find the net, putting the Mammoths up two, before Ford struck once more less than a minute later to give Amherst a 3-0 advantage.

Colby responded with a goal, but Amherst fired back immediately by putting up six unanswered markers in the first nine minutes of the second quarter.

Trenton Shore ’19 found the back of the net in a man-up score, Ford found nylon once again and Evan Wolf ’19, Minicus, Matt Solberg ’20 and McAfee also contributed to the scoring spree.

Amherst’s dominance did not waver in the second half. The Mammoths added another 11 tallies to the board while holding Colby to just three goals to secure the 22-7 victory.

Minicus and Wolf each logged three scores in the second half, while Jack Norton ’19, Dylan Finazzo ’20, Jack Hutchinson ’21, Max Keeley ’18 and Zach Schwartz ’18 chipped in a goal each.

The scoring from so many different sources displayed Amherst’s depth in attack this season.

The defense also proved relatively unbreakable. Five players scooped up three ground balls each, leading to a 40-22 edge in ground balls for the hosts.

At center field, Dylan Finazzo ’20 and Drew Kelleher ’18 were unstoppable in the face-off, leading to an advantage 24-8 in favor of the Mammoths.

Amherst’s net was defended by three different Mammoths — first-years Gib Versfeld and Cameron Mitchell, as well as junior Chad Simmons.

Versfeld registered two stops, while Mitchell batted five away. Simmons also saved one with 2:29 left to play.

In the Mammoths’ Tuesday home matchup against Western New England University (WNEU), Amherst got out to a quick start, putting up seven goals to WNEU’s three in the first quarter. In the second quarter, Amherst scored four, while the Bears only put one into the Mammoths’ net.

In the third quarter, Minicus scored just 12 seconds after the opening whistle, burying a feed from fellow sophomore McAfee on a fast break from the opening faceoff.

Although WNEU would score two in the quarter, Minicus bookended the quarter with another goal, and Amherst maintained a 10 goal lead headed into the final period of action.

WNEU scored two quickly at the start of the fourth quarter, but an Amherst timeout quickly led to a unassisted Evan Wolf goal.

WNEU’s late game efforts resulted in several Amherst man-up situations, as the Bears committed several penalties.

The final score ended up being 19-10 in the hosts’ favor, as the Mammoths moved to 2-0 on the season. Amherst certainly will look to maintain its high-flying offense.

The Mammoths will return to the field in an away contest this Saturday, March 10 against NESCAC rival Bowdoin at 1 p.m.

Henry Newton ’21 Managing Sports Editor The Amherst women’s track and field team sent five runners to the Tufts University Last Chance National Qualifier meet Saturday afternoon at the Gantcher Center.

Last week, two Amherst runners impressed, and put themselves in a strong position to qualify for the DIII National Championships: Danielle Griffin ’18 and Leonie Rauls ’18.

These two runners finished in the top two spots in the 800-meter race at the Maine State Open, held on Feb. 24, and looked to lock down spots in the championship.

At the Last Chance Qualifier, Griffin and Rauls did not disappoint, turning in another impressive set of performances that saw them finish in second and third place in the 800-meter race, respectively.

Griffin finished the race in 2:16.00, while Rauls crossed the line less than a second later with a time of 2:16.81.

These times were good enough to propel both runners into Nationals, as both times

met the qualifying standards for the DIII Indoor National Championships. Of the 17 runners who qualified for the 800-meter race, Griffin ranks 11th in the nation, while Rauls sits at 16th.

Looking to join Griffin and Rauls at Nationals were Ella Rossa ’21, competing in the 60-meter hurdles, and Katie Siegel ’20 and Becki Golia ’18, competing in the high jump.

Siegel, who notched a victory at the Gordon Kelly Invitational on Feb. 10, recorded another first-place finish at this event, jumping 1.57 meters.

Meanwhile, Golia finished tied for second in the event with a jump of 1.57 meters.

Rossa ran an impressive time in her preliminary heat and qualified for the finals.

However, Rossa recorded a DNF in the finals heat after clipping the first hurdle and, as such, did not register a time.

Despite the impressive performances on the track and in the field events, only Griffin and Rauls booked their tickets to the DIII Indoor National Championships, to be held this Friday and Saturday at the Birmingham CrossPlex in Birmingham, Alabama.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Katie Siegel ’20 won the high-jump, leaping over a height of 1.57 meters.

10

Sports

The Amherst Student • March 7, 2018

Women’s Hockey Falls to Middlebury in Finals of NESCAC Tournament

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Senior Alex Toupal finished her collegiate career with 117 total points, 41 of which came this season en route to her being named to the All-NESCAC first team.

Mary Grace Cronin ’18 Staff Writer This weekend the third-seeded Amherst women’s ice hockey team travelled north to Middlebury, Vermont for the semifinals and final round of the NESCAC tournament.

The matches were held in familiar territory, as the Panthers have hosted the last seven NESCAC championship matches, winning all but three of those conference titles.

In their first matchup against No. 2 Conn. College, Amherst defender Miriam Eickhoff ’19 scored the opening goal 11 minutes into the first stanza of play.

Capitalizing on a quick breakaway, Eickhoff used her speed to collect a rebound off the shot by first-year Natalie Lima and put the Mammoths up 1-0.

With time winding down in the first period, NESCAC-leading goal-scorer Alex Toupal ’18 collected a pass from first-year defender Mia DelRosso and sent a rocket into the back of the net, securing a 2-0 Amherst lead headed into the first intermission.

Toupal picked up right where she left off in the second period, sending a backhander past the Conn. College goalie to widen the margin to 3-0 after Savage had dished her a puck in front of the net.

Despite the Mammoths consistent pressure on the Camels defense, Conn. College’s Lauren Helm team managed to poke one into the net at the very end of the second period to bring the score to 3-1.

However, Amherst was able to hang on, claiming the win and moving on to the fi-

nals, despite the higher-seeded Camels leading 37-19 in shots.

Senior Bailey Plaman had a fantastic day in net, recording 36 saves and anchoring the Mammoths’ defense.

The very next day, Amherst faced the reigning champions and host of the tournament, Middlebury.

The two teams had met in NESCAC tournament play in each of the previous two years, and the Panthers had prevailed both times at home.

With a chip on their shoulder, the Mammoths came out strong, recording 10 shots in the first period and playing pretty evenly with their rival.

Middlebury’s Jessica Young snagged the first lead of the day, however, nine minutes into the second period.

Despite several chances by the Amherst offense, the Panthers struck again in the third period to take what proved to be an insurmountable two-goal lead.

In a last-ditch effort to generate opportunities, the Mammoths pulled Plaman for the final two minutes of regulation.

Unfortunately, Amherst couldn’t find a goal, and history repeated itself for the third time in Vermont.

With the loss against Middlebury, the Mammoths fell to 16-7-4 record on the year.

Their record ultimately wasn’t good enough to secure a spot in the NCAA tournament.

However, to cap off the otherwise successful season, both Toupal and Eickhoff nabbed spots on All-NESCAC teams.

Toupal earned first team accolades, while Eickhoff was named to the second team.

Men’s and Women’s Squash Send Two to CSA Individual Championships Julia Turner ’19 Managing Sports Editor Amherst Squash sent two competitors to the 2018 College Squash Association Individual Championships this weekend March 3-4 in Washington D.C. Haley McAtee ’18 from the women’s team competed in her final career squash matches for Amherst.

First-year Terrance Wang, however, competed in his first ever CSA Individual Championship tournament.

McAtee played in two matches, facing two tough opponents, taking on Zoe Foo Yuk Han from Georgetown in the first round.

Next, she faced Lindsay Stanley of the University of Pennsylvania in the consolation bracket. Unfortunatley, McAtee lost both matches.

The senior finished her career with an outstanding season, holding the top spot in the Mammoth lineup for most of the year.

McAtee collected seven individual match

wins and a second-team All-NESCAC selection along the way.

Wang dropped his first matchup of the tournament to Arhum Saleem of Columbia University in three games.

Wang, however, made a triumphant comeback, defeating Quinn Udy of Hobart College later that morning.

The Mammoth first-year came out strong again the next morning.

He recorded a three-set win over the University of Virginia’s Jarrett Odrich, putting him in the consolation bracket championship later that afternoon.

Wang completed his consolation championship run on Saturday with a close, four-set win over James Watson from Penn.

Wang, who held the top position in the Amherst lineup for the entire year collected six wins on the season, and earned a firstteam All-NESCAC selection.

The Mammoths look to return next season under his leadership, while they will mourn the loss of McAtee.

ATHLETE SPOTLIGHT

Maia Noyes ’21

David Ingraham ’18

Favorite Team Memory: Cooking team dinner and setting off the fire alarm Favorite Pro Athlete: Lindsey Vonn Dream Job: Anything that would let me travel, like a food blogger or photographer Pet Peeve: When people don’t hold the door for someone behind them Favorite Vacation Spot: Nantucket or Cape Cod Something on Your Bucket List: Skydiving Guilty Pleasure: Ice cream for breakfast Favorite Food: Raspberries Favorite Thing About Amherst: My friends How She Earned It: In her first collegiate game, Noyes dominated in women’s lacrosse’s 13-12 upset win over No. 9 Colby.

Registering seven points, Noyes scored three goals and four assists. To round out her performance, Noyes also recorded one ground ball and a forced turnover. For her performance, Noyes was named NESCAC athlete of the week. In the following game against Keene State, Noyes continued her strong play, scoring three goals in Amherst’s 20-1 victory.

Favorite Team Memory: Placing third at indoor nationals in the distance medley relay my freshman year Favorite Pro Athlete: Tom Brady Dream Job: Head writer for “The Onion” Pet Peeve: When people refer to metal music as “screamo” Favorite Vacation Spot: Jamaica Something on Your Bucket List: Learn to play an instrument Guilty Pleasure: Pokemon video games Favorite Food: Goldfish Favorite Thing About Amherst: The open curriculum How He Earned It: Ingraham, a men’s track and field captain and member of the 4x400meter relay team that qualified for the DIII National Championships, has been a consistent performer for the Mammoths this season.

Ingraham has been critical to the success of the 10th-ranked 4x400 team in the nation, which recently took first place at the Tufts National Qualifying Meet on Saturday. Ingraham and the rest of the team will travel to Birmingham, Alabama, to compete in the DIII Indoor National Championships on Friday and Saturday.

Women’s Diving Competes at DIII Regional Diving Championships Matthew Sparrow ’21 Staff Writer This past weekend, Amherst sent its two top divers to Middlebury to compete at the NCAA Region 3 Diving Championships.

Lindsey Ruderman ’21 and Jackie Palermo ’19 did the Mammoths proud by both posting impressive scores in competition against a talented group of divers from across the region.

The event serves as a qualifier for the DIII Swim and Diving Championships.

Athletes can qualify for the national event by posting qualifying scores at two seperate events throughout the season in either height, one or three meters.

Just one qualifying score at the regional meet, however, can qualify a diver for nationals.

In the three-meter diving event, Ruderman finished second overall with a score of 457.50, outscoring 23 competitors in a 25 person field

and finishing less than one point away from claiming the title.

Palermo held her own, notching a score of 400.70 that was good enough for 11th overall in the event.

In the one-meter diving, Ruderman finished in the top five once again with a score of 421.35 that earned her fifth overall, while Palermo cracked the top 10 after receiving a mark of 394.25.

The sole remaining event on the Mammoths calendar is a late-March trip to Indianapolis to compete in the NCAA Division III Swimming and Diving Championships.

Ruderman will compete alongside Natalie Rumplet ’20, Livia Domenig ’19, Nina Fitzgerald ’21, Stephanie Moriarty ’18, Sarah McDonald ’20, Heather Grotzinger ’20, Geralyn Lam ’18 and Ingrid Shu ’20.

The quartet of swimmers will not only compete in individual events, but also the 400 yard medley relay event.

Photo courtesy courtesy of of Clarus Clarus Studios Studios Photo

Lindsey Ruderman ’21 took second out of 25 competitors in the one-meter diving event and will compete at the NCAA DIII Championships later this March.

The Amherst Student • March 7, 2018

Sports

Men’s Track Qualifies Distance and 4x400 Relay Teams for Nationals

11

The Hot Corner Jack Malague ’19 Columnist Jack Malague dishes out his take on the recent allegations facing several NCAA men’s basketball programs and the investigative teams tasked with these issues, ranging from the NCAA’s internal team to the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Cosmo Brossy ’19, who has already qualified for nationals in the 3,000 meters, led the distance relay to its own qualification, finishing in 10:01.38.

Veronica Rocco ’19 Staff Writer On Saturday, the Mammoths returned to Tufts for the third time this indoor season to compete at the Tufts National Qualifying Meet, a last-chance meet to qualify for the Division III Indoor Track and Field National Championships. Amherst had an incredible day, as both the distance medley and 4x400meter relays earned places on the starting line in Birmingham, Alabama this upcoming weekend at nationals.

The day began for the Mammoths with the distance medley relay, in which the first runner runs 1,200 meters, the second 400 meters, the third 800 meters and the fourth and final leg runs 1600 meters.

Spencer Ferguson-Dryden ’20 ran the 400- meter leg, moving up steadily throughout the eight-team field to hand off to Ralph Skinner ’20 in fourth with an excellent final lap and a split of 3:04. Skinner, coming back from an injury that has limited his indoor season, held the team’s position in fourth with a stellar 49.8 split in the 400.

Skinner then passed the baton to Jacob Silverman ’19 for the 800-meter leg, and the junior split 1:55 to keep the team in fourth place. Silverman gave the baton to Cosmo Brossy ’19 for the final 1,600 meters, and the junior quickly made up the gap between Amherst and Williams to catch up to the lead pack.

Needing a 4:11 time in the 1,600 to qualify, Brossy delivered, running an incredible 4:11 1,600-meter split to place the team in fourth out of an excellent eight-team field, in which the top-five placing teams qualified for nationals.

The Mammoths finished with a time of 10:01.38 on the flat track at Tufts. After the conversion that translates the time to what it would be if the race had been run on a banked track — like there will be at nationals — the Mammoths sit 11th in Division III with a converted time of 9:53.33.

“I think we were all a little stunned that we had run a qualifying time and it felt awesome making that happen as a team,” Brossy said.

This will be Amherst’s first time bringing a distance medley relay to nationals since 2014, when Amherst held the Division III record - since broken by NESCAC foe Middlebury - and placed third to earn All-American honors.

The 4x400-meter relay also had a stellar day, as the quartet of David Ingraham ’18, Ryan Prenosil ’21, Vernon Espinoza ’19 and Kristian Sogaard ’19 qualified for Nationals.

Captain Ingraham lead off for the Mam-

moths and shot out of the blocks, running a 50.8 split to hand off to Prenosil in fifth in the six-team field. Prenosil ran a superb race, bringing the team up to third with a 49.5 split.

Espinoza grabbed the baton from the first-year phenom and ran the Mammoth’s fastest split of the day with his 49.0 second time to put Amherst in the lead heading into the final leg. The junior handed off to Sogaard in first, and the junior clinched the win and qualification for nationals with a 49.6 split for a total race time of 3:19.25.

“The 4x400 team has had its sights on nationals since the start of the season, and we finally secured a spot by picking up the win and running three seconds faster than our season best,” Ingraham said. “This is the largest crew we’ve sent to indoor nationals in a long time, and we’re all hoping to cap off the season with some more great performances.”

The Mammoths are 10th in Division III with a converted time of 3:16.13. In the 2016-2017 indoor season, Amherst’s fastest 4x400 time was 3:28, a remarkable display of improvement in just the past season.

The Mammoths will send a strong squad to Birmingham, including both relays, Sogaard, who will compete in the 800 meters as the second seed, and Brossy, who will compete in the 3,000 meters as the 15th seed.

Both relays, Sogaard and Brossy will seek to achieve All-American status, which is earned with a top-eight finish in an event.

This will be everyone’s first trip to the indoor national meet with the exception of Ingraham, who competed in 2014 as part of the distance medley relay.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Ryan Prenosil ’21 ran a 49.5 second split in the 4x400-meter relay race.

Late last month, Yahoo Sports revealed some of the results of an FBI probe into corruption in NCAA men’s basketball. According to documents the Bureau acquired over a years-long investigation, at least 25 collegiate programs have given impermissible benefits to current players or handed out bribes to high school athletes whom they were attempting to recruit.

The documents Yahoo released were requests for reimbursement filed by Christian Dawkins, an associate at ASM Sports, an agency run by former NBA agent Andy Miller.

Dawkins was arrested last year and charged with felony wire fraud and bribery. The benefits he doled out range from the mundane to the outrageous.

Some of the documents detail expenses as inconsequential as a $70 lunch with a recruit’s parents. However, a wiretap also recorded Dawkins and University of Arizona head coach Sean Miller discussing a $100,000 payment to current Arizona big man DeAndre Ayton, offered in exchange for his commitment to the school.

Among the more amusing entries is a $400 advance made to current Spurs GLeague forward and All-Name team nominee Jaron Blossomgame — via Venmo. We have come a long way since the days of wads of bills in brown paper bags.

These allegations, which have produced charges in three criminal cases, have left a haze of confusion in their wake. For one thing, it is somewhat unclear how the FBI has nothing better to do than conduct a yearslong probe into NCAA violations, tracking down who did or did not receive a moderately overpriced lunch on a university or agent’s dime.

Not since Andy Pettitte testified before the United States Congress — about whether it was Roger Clemens or his wife who had maybe used HGH — has an arm of the federal government been so interested in rule breaking in sports.

It is also an unpleasant revelation that cheating in basketball is grounds for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to listen to your phone calls.

Further, it is doubtful that the NCAA will get its hands on all of the FBI’s information.

What Yahoo revealed was only a small fraction of what the Bureau has uncovered, yet only documents relating to criminal cases will become publicly available. The rest will remain the sealed products of an FBI investigation. Meanwhile the NCAA has kept at a safe distance from the FBI, careful not to step on the toes of a criminal investigation.

Whatever the long-term effects, which are becoming less long-term as the national tournament approaches, the immediate consequences have not been trivial.

In addition to Dawkins, several others have been arrested and handed felony corruption indictments. This includes former assistant coaches from Arizona, Auburn University, Oklahoma State University and the NCAA’s bete noir, the University of Southern California.

Charges were also filed against a financier, clothing and shoe brand executives and an AAU coach. Former University of Louisville head coach Rick Pitino lost his job, as did the school’s athletic director (though their team’s indiscretions were, let us say, especially remarkable). Sean Miller was held out of Arizona’s game against the University of Oregon, which Arizona lost. Other players have been suspended.

NCAA president Mark Emmert released a statement that would make Jonathan Edwards

blush.

“These allegations, if true, point to systematic failures that must be fixed and fixed now if we want college sports in America,” Emmert said.

“Simply put, people who engage in this kind of behavior have no place in college sports. They are an affront to all those who play by the rules.”

Last year, he and the NCAA created the Independent Commission on College Basketball, headed by, of all people, Condoleezza Rice.

If Mark Emmert’s shock and awe is genuine, he seems to have been left out of the loop.

That recruits receive under the table benefits came as a surprise to very few. Most have always assumed that this was part of the recruiting game, that a recruiter’s “living room pitch” was made a good bit more appealing if it involved covering the electric bill.

What Emmert likely wants is to preserve the image that these payments are the deeds of a few dirty coaches and agents, tarnishing a system that otherwise would be clean. The alternative is much scarier for the association.

As the NCAA approaches its biggest moneymaker of the year, the men’s Division I national tournament, Yahoo’s revelations threaten to blow open the NCAA’s intractable opprobrium for compensating student-athletes.

Of the 25 teams implicated in the FBI findings, most will qualify for the tournament. Several are contenders to win the national championship. In fact, four of the top five teams in the most recent AP Poll are alleged to have in some way violated NCAA regulations.

If these allegations of payment were to be proven, and the NCAA decides to maintain its complete opposition to these types of dealings and stand by its claim that “people who engage in this kind of behavior have no place in college sports,” it must, one imagines, take stern measures against these teams. This would likely mean suspending many players and coaches, if not vacating teams’ appearances in the tournament.

The NCAA should learn now what it has tried so hard not to learn for so many years. It is better to bend and not break. NCAA regulations attempt to control student-athletes’ lives so closely that the body cannot reasonably enforce them without looking absurd.

This has, in the past, included a prohibition on putting certain types of spreads on bagels, a delicacy which few thought was reserved for professional athletes. Now regulations determine exactly how many meals a university can provide its athletes, though it has taken a much more relaxed position on “snacks.”

It would take very little for the NCAA’s authoritarian stance to become much more reasonable. A stipend, perhaps, and opportunities for policies resembling workman’s compensation for athletes, whose universities reduce their academic lives to classes on floral arrangement at best and purely imaginary “paper classes” at worst, and who stand to lose everything with a single bad injury.

This would still be far less than would be needed to reflect the incredible wealth these athletes produce for the NCAA (Emmert made about $2 million in total compensation last year), their coaches (the highest-paid government employee in most states is a football or basketball coach), their universities and the television networks.

Still, a set of policies that is only slightly more flexible would make NCAA rules much easier to enforce and could let the FBI return to some more important work.

Sports

Photos courtesy of Clarus Studios

Attacker Julia Crerend ’18 led Amherst’s offense, scoring two crucial goals in the Mammoths’ win over Colby and tallying three goals against Keene State.

Women’s Lacrosse Upsets No. 9 Colby, Routs Keene St. to Open Season 2-0 Delancey King ’18 Staff Writer The Amherst women’s lacrosse team kicked off its 2018 season with a huge wins over NESCAC rival Colby on Saturday and Keene State University on Tuesday. The previously unranked Mammoths upset the No. 9 Mules 13-12 after scoring eight goals in the second half.

The game was competitive from the first whistle, as neither team was able to attain more than a two-goal lead at any point in the first half.

Colby got on the board first with an early goal from Sasha Fritts in the fourth minute, but Lindsey Call ’19 was quick to respond, notching her first goal of the year only a minute later.

The Mules controlled the next 10 minutes of

play, as they went on a 3-1 run in order to go up 4-2 on the Mammoths. However, two more goals from Call and a goal from Julia Crerend ’18 allowed Amherst to come back and take their first lead of the contest with seven minutes remaining in the half.

Managing to record two goals in the final three minutes of the frame, Colby took back the lead just before the intermission.

Once again getting off to a quick start, the Mules scored two goals early in the second half to take an 8-5 lead.

In an impressive display of resilience, the Mammoths battled back and scored four unanswered goals to go up 9-8. Maia Noyes ’21 contributed two goals, while Crerend and Claire Dunbar each found the back of the net once to

SAT

FRI GAME SCHE DULE

Men’s Track & Field NCAA Indoor Championships @ Birmingham Southern University, 10 a.m.

help Amherst regain the lead.

Colby’s Emma Banks managed to tie things back up, but the Mammoths responded by going on yet another run. Goals from Noyes, Isabelle Sennett ’21 and Hannah Gustafson ’21 provided Amherst with a 12-9 lead, the largest margin of the contest.

The Mules managed to cut Amherst’s lead to one with goals from Grace Crowell and Grace Langmuir, but Sennett killed their momentum with a free position goal that ultimately secured the win for the Mammoths.

Colby managed to cut the lead to one before the final whistle blew, but the Mules were unable to find the equalizer thanks to a stellar performance from goalie Talia Land ’20, who made 12 saves on the day.

Women’s Track & Field NCAA Indoor Championships @ Birmingham Southern University, 10 a.m.

Women’s Basketball vs. Montclair St. College, 7 p.m.

Men’s Track & Field NCAA Indoor Championships @ Birmingham Southern University, 10 a.m.

Women’s Track & Field NCAA Indoor Championships @ Birmingham Southern University, 10 a.m.

Women’s Lacrosse vs. Bowdoin, noon Men’s Lacrosse vs. Bowdoin, 1 p.m.

Noyes was rewarded for her game-high seven points with NESCAC player of the week honors.

Amherst returned to action on Tuesday, March 6, when the Mammoths hosted Keene State University for a nonconference tilt.

From the beginning, Amherst dominated the pace of play and the scoreline, opening up a wide lead early in the contest and maintaining it throughout, with the final score reading 20-1 in favor of the Mammoths. Amherst also outshot the Owls. 40-4.

In addition to controlling the offensive side of the play, Amherst dominated on defense, causing 27 turnovers and securing 19 ground balls.

Amherst will return to action this Saturday, March 10 for a conference home game against Bowdoin at noon.

SUN

Men’s Tennis vs. Skidmore College @ Claremont, CA, TBA Softball vs. Millikin University @ Clermont, FL, 9 a.m.

Baseball vs. Otterbein University, @ Port Charlotte, FL, 10:30 a.m.

Softball vs. Suffolk University @ Clermont, FL, 11 a.m.