Issue 23

THE AMHERST

THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868

STUDENT VOLUME CXLVII, ISSUE 23 l WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2018

Women’s Lax Goes 3-1 Against Quartet of NESCAC Foes See Sports, Page 10 AMHERSTSTUDENT.AMHERST.EDU

Hikaru Kozuma To Replace Suzanne Coffey as Chief Student Affairs Officer Isabel Tessier ’19 Editor-In-Chief

Photo courtesy of Maria Stenzel

William Ford ’83 reveals the new nameplate for Ford Hall, formerly known as Greenway A. The dedication of the building kicked off a weekend celebrating the launch of the college’s fundraising campaign.

Amherst Launches Funding Campaign for $625 Million Emma Swislow ’20 Managing News Editor The college launched “Promise: The Campaign for Amherst’s Third Century” on Friday, April 6 with a weekend of events, including the dedication of Ford Hall. The campaign aims to secure Amherst’s future as it moves into its third century starting in 2021.

The campaign plans to raise $625 million over the next five years, according to Suzanne Newby-Estes, the executive director of advancement and campaign operations. The college has already raised around half of the money through “quiet” fundraising leading up to the campaign launch.

This includes a $100 million donation by an anonymous alum that will be used to match “gifts at very significant levels that are matching campaign priorities,” Newby-Estes said.

Newby-Estes outlined the campaign’s six main goals, which include expanding a variety

of resources on campus and academic departments, especially in STEM fields.

“This campaign specifically is looking to expand the faculty by a number of positions and that is to meet the need in the STEM fields,” she said. “We are just expanding the faculty and it’s important to recognize that the needs of the institution change over time so it’s not only just for STEM, it’s just what the institution needs right now. One hundred years from now it could be completely different.”

Some of the other goals include hiring more staff in the Center for Writing and Public Speaking, the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Counseling Center. The campaign also hopes to expand the Loeb Center’s “Careers In … ” program, which provides students advising and shadowing opportunities in specific fields like non-profit, government and communications, as well as increase funding available for internships.

Part of the campaign will also support the

Annual Fund and aim to contribute $80 million to it over the duration of the campaign.

The Annual Fund is the way that most alumni donate, with around 12,000 alumni donating every year, according to Newby-Estes. The money raised through this fund is unrestricted and helps to support the campaign’s priorities.

The campaign will also contribute to paying for the construction of the New Science Center as well as the Greenway Dorms, one of which was renamed this weekend.

This weekend’s launch began with the renaming of Greenway A as Ford Hall. The building is named after William Ford ’83 P’13, who is the CEO of a growth equity firm called General Atlantic. President Biddy Martin, Board of Trustees Chair Cullen Murphy ’74, Association of Amherst Students President Aditi Krishnamurthy ’18 and Ford all spoke at the event.

Following the speeches, Ford pulled a rope

Continued on Page 3

Hikaru “Karu” Kozuma will join the college as the new Chief Student Affairs Officer (CSAO) starting July 1, according to an email announcement sent out on Monday, April 9 by President Biddy Martin.

Kozuma, who previously worked at the University of Pennsylvania as associate vice provost, will replace current CSAO Suzanne Coffey, who announced her retirement on Oct. 17, 2017.

“In Karu, the search committee has found a person who is thoughtful, nuanced, experienced and lovely to be with,” Martin wrote in the email. “He is known at Penn and among professional colleagues as an unusually good listener who cares deeply about education, the life of the mind in a liberal arts setting and the students who are its beneficiaries.”

Kozuma was recommended by the CSAO search committee, which was cochaired by Dean of the Faculty Catherine Epstein and Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Norm Jones, and also included senior staff members, professors and students.

According to a press release by Chief Communications Officer Sandy Genelius, Kozuma said “I am elated to join the Amherst College family! I am honored and privileged to be given this opportunity, and I look forward to partnering with students, faculty and staff to enhance the experiences for all who are part of the community.”

Scholar Mark Anthony Neal Discusses the Birth of Stax Records Natalie De Rosa ’21 Assistant News Editor Charles Hamilton Houston Visiting Scholar Mark Anthony Neal gave a talk titled “Love in the Stax: Death, Loss and Resurrection in Post-King Memphis” on Thursday, April 5 in the Center for Humanistic Inquiry. The event was hosted by the black studies department and supported by the Charles Hamilton Houston Lecture Fund.

Neal is a professor of African-American studies at Duke University, and has published several books including “Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities.” He also writes about black culture on his website “NewBlackMan (in Exile)” and hosts a weekly webcast called “Left of Black.”

Neal’s recent research includes examining black culture in digital archives. “In order to find blackness in the [digital] archive you have to know certain kinds of things, you have to have certain kinds of access to cultural DNA,” he said as he began his talk. Through his research, Neal began exploring the archives surrounding Stax, a Memphis-based record label founded in 1957, that focused on releasing the music of black artists throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

To frame the story of Stax, Neal began with

the deaths of two prominent black figures in the 1960s: Otis Redding in 1967, and Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Neal played Stax artist William Bell’s song “A Tribute to a King” for the audience to establish this connection.“Listen, people, listen, I’m gonna sing you a song, about a man who lived good, but didn’t live too long,” William Bell sings.

Neal said that the song’s deceptive title leads many to assume that Bell’s song was about King.

In actuality, the song chronicles the life of Redding.

Neal wanted to depict what Memphis and Stax thought about Otis Redding, setting the basis for the story of Stax.“Love in the Stax charged a transition moment of one of the defining brands of black cultural production of the late 1960s and 1970s, a transition that occurred in the midst of tragedy, loss, portrayal and what might be described as post-apocalyptic Memphis,” Neal said.

The name Stax came from a combination of its founders’ last names, Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton. According to Neal, the label hit its peak between 1962 and 1967, signing classic soul artists like Carla Thomas, Booker T. and the M.G.’s and Otis Redding.

Stewart and Axton viewed their label as producing “authentic black music,” with many of their artists “embodying the de-segregationist impulse

being demanded on the streets of Memphis,” and the label “[symbolizing] racial integration,” Neal said.

Stax was able to rise to national attention through a distribution deal with Atlantic Records in 1968 and a new co-owner, Al Bell. Alongside this landmark deal, however, Stax needed to confront several other issues. Within a couple of years, Stax dealt with the death of artists like Otis Redding and members of the Bar-Kays. Additionally, when Warner Brothers bought Atlantic Records, Stax was forced to forfeit their entire archive to Atlantic.

Shortly after Stax lost its artists and its archive, King was assassinated in Memphis. This combination of tragedy, Neal said, was as an immense loss for the people of Memphis. Nonetheless, Neal then focused his talk on the rebuilding of the Stax archive post-1968.

Al Bell introduced a new strategy to rebuild Stax: “buying the archives on unreleased material, aggressively signing new acts … [expanding] the breadth of the brand beyond traditional Southern soul and blues and [implementing] an ambitious plan to introduce a new product, ‘soul explosion,’” Neal said.

“Part of [Al] Bell’s efforts to rebuild the archive

was to expand the narrative ranges and sonic ranges of black music in the era,” Neal said, “He curated a sound of black power.”

Neal then played the music Stax released after 1968, including songs from several different genres ranging from soul to gospel. Some of these songs were Carla Thomas’ “B-A-B-Y,” Otis Redding’s “These Arms Are Mine” and Rufus Thomas’ “Walking the Dog.” After playing these songs, Neal concluded the talk by saying that the “ultimate story is on one hand the devaluation of black music and the ability to rethink about how to rebuild that value by thinking more actively and broadly about the archive.” The talk then opened up to a Q&A session, in which the audience asked questions concerning gender and Stax’s lack of modern-day fame.

Caryce Tirop ’17, who attended the event, enjoyed the use of history and archives to understand black culture. “As a historian, I am always excited by the possibilities of using different sources to write histories and this talk was really important for that conversation,” she said. “These archives allow us to highlight new narratives, make connections between events that seem disconnected, and finally understand contemporary cultural production and happenings.”

News

The Amherst Student • April 11, 2018

Continued from Page 1

Fresh Faculty

April 2, 2018 - April 8, 2018

>>April 3, 2018 12:24 a.m., Keefe Campus Center An officer discovered unattended alcohol in a common room. It was disposed of.

cated.

4:38 p.m., North College Dormitory Officers investigated a smoke detector sounding in a third-floor room, but the cause was unidentified. A microwave was confiscated as it is prohibited by the housing regulations.

6:57 p.m., Railroad Right of Way An officer observed two people walking on railroad tracks and advised them to get off the tracks due to the potential danger.

5:05 p.m., Keefe Campus Center An officer responded to a report of a man acting in an unusual manner. The building >>April 8, 2018 was checked, but the man 12:23 a.m., Plimpton House was not located.

Officers responded to a complaint of loud music >>April 4, 2018 7:18 p.m., Campus Grounds and shut down a registered A student reported an email event that was continuing phishing spam. The Informa- beyond the scheduled time. tion Technology Department 12:34 a.m., Mayo-Smith was notified.

House A caller reported people >>April 5, 2018 screaming and possibly 2:51 a.m., Greenway Buildfighting in the area around ing B Mayo-Smith. Nothing was An officer investigated a refound when officers investiport of a damaged exit sign gated. in Building B. 4:15 p.m., Off Campus Locations An officer received a report of a college-owned vehicle being involved in an accident while off campus. >>April 6, 2018 2:45 p.m., Wieland Dormitory An officer responded to a complaint about the odor of marijuana on the fourth floor. The origin could not be identified, and the odor dissipated. >>April 7, 2018 2:15 a.m., South Pleasant Street An Uber driver reported he was threatened by a fare he just dropped off on South Pleasant Street. The Amherst Police were notified as the incident occurred in their jurisdiction.

7:28 a.m., Hitchcock Hall Two kegs found in a firstfloor restroom were confis-

3

Amherst Kicks Off Weekend of Events for Fundraising Campaign

Michael Kunichika >>April 2, 2018 5:25 p.m., Greenway An officer responded to a report of people smoking marijuana on the bridge between buildings C and D. No one was found.

News

12:42 a.m., Seelye House Officers discovered that a registered party was over capacity and it was shut down.

12:55 a.m., Sellen Street An officer investigated a motor vehicle accident.

2:52 a.m., North College Dormitory Officers responded to a report of a group of males fighting in a stairway. The group was located but there was no fight. They were being very loud.

6:08 p.m., Leland House Officers investigated a fire alarm and found it was activated by cooking smoke.

7:44 p.m., Greenway Building B Officers investigated a smoke detector sounding in the kitchen of Building B and found it was activated by the use of a microwave oven.

Interested in having your voice heard on this campus?

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

Department of Russian

Michael Kunichika is an associate professor of Russian.

He completed his undergraduate study at Reed College, where he majored in Russian. He went on to get his doctorate in Slavic languages and literatures with a designated emphasis on film studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

Q: How did you begin studying your subject?

A: Reed had a lot of distribution requirements and one of the requirements is that you have to choose between math and a foreign language, and since I knew math wasn’t for me, I decided to go with foreign language.

I did not do well on the Spanish placement exam, and so I would have had to start at the beginning with Spanish, so instead I decided to try Russian. During my Russian studies I met the most amazing professor, Lena Lencek, who taught my second-year Russian course.

She is the most extraordinary professor I have ever studied with and encouraged my love of Russian.

Q: What is your favorite part about teaching Russian?

A: The thing that I love the most is seeing students use a word they just learned or their ability to recognize a new word.

It is crazy to see students acquiring new information and putting it to immediate use.

When I teach the third-year Russian course, I am always amazed at what the students can achieve after only a few years of Russian. In that class, students read classic Russian literature and they really do achieve a high level of understanding of the material.

“

original form. In Russia and the Representation of Race, we explore how Russia has thought about its own ethnicities and how Russia has served as a model for other minorities to think about their identities. Next fall, I will be teaching Second-Year Russian and Nabokov’s Art and Terrors. Nabokov’s Art and Terrors is a survey course on his novels. Students will begin to think about the nature of his literary art and how each of his different works deal with different types of terrors.

Q: Are you currently doing any research?

A: Yes, I am currently working on two projects. First off, I am writing a book called “Specters of Empire: Early Soviet Cinema and the Representation of Race.” This book deals with how cinema created novel ways of representing ethnic minorities and how race as portrayed in film is related to the imperialistic and anti-imperialistic policies at the time. In addition, I am working on another project that focuses on the rediscovery of prehistory, including cave painting and prehistoric artifacts in Russia.

During the 1960s, there was a reinvigorated interest in the deep past, and my project is about why this interest remerged.

It is always impressive to me to see how much students and faculty care about this place as an institution. There is a high degree of care that people have for this place in addition to a great deal of support amongst the faculty.

Q: What were you doing before you started at Amherst?

A: Before coming to Amherst, I taught at New York University, the Institute for Advanced Study and Harvard University.

Q: What made you decide to come to Amherst?

A: Amherst is heaven for teaching.

There are so many resources and so much support between faculty members. The Russian department here has a rich and deep history, and the Center for Russian Culture also drew me to Amherst.

Q: Can you tell me about the classes you teach at Amherst?

A: This semester I am teaching ThirdYear Russian and Russia and the Representation of Race. In Third-Year Russian, we read Russian literature in its

Q: How does Amherst as a community compare to other places you’ve worked?

A: It is always impressive to me to see how much students and faculty care about this place as an institution. There is a high degree of care that people have for this place in addition to a great deal of support amongst the faculty.

”

Q: What do you do in your spare time?

A: I do not have much spare time, but one of the things I love to do is to watch movies. Luckily for me, movies are a part of my research! I also make time to explore local restaurants with faculty members.

— Emily Young ’20

to reveal the new “Ford Hall” sign on the side of the building. Afterwards, a cake in the shape of Ford Hall and baked by Carl Charrette, the college’s pastry cook, was served to those in attendance.

Saturday began with a lunch in Valentine Dining Hall for students, alumni, faculty and staff. In the afternoon, Murphy interviewed Martin in Johnson Chapel where they discussed the history and future of the college.

Following that, students and faculty members gave a variety of presentations and panels on research, extracurriculars and academic life at Amherst.

In the evening, around 325 people gathered for dinner in Coolidge Cage, surrounded by

screens with pictures of people from the Amherst community and bathed in purple light.

Several student groups performed, including the Choral Society, Dance And Step at Amherst College (DASAC) and the Zumbyes.

Although the campaign launched this weekend, planning for it began several years ago, according to Newby-Estes.

“When you’re planning a campaign, you start with a strategic plan … which we did about three years ago now,” she said. “Out of the strategic plan, we start to develop specific campaign fundraising priorities … Developing a campaign goal is always a mix of what the priorities of the institution are and what we think we can realistically raise in a finite period of time. That’s how we came to the $625 million goal.”

Photo courtesy of Amherst College

President Biddy Martin and William Ford ’83 cut into a cake shaped like Ford Hall during the launch of the college’s fundraising campaign.

Steven Lee ’01E Talks About Russia and Multiculturalism Sehee Park ’20 Staff Writer Steven Lee ’01E gave a talk titled “Beyond Interference: Soviet and Russian Lessons for American Multiculturalism” on April 5. The talk was co-sponsored by the Amherst College Corliss Lamont Lectureship for a Peaceful World and the Amherst Center for Russian Culture.

Lee is an associate professor of English at University of California, Berkeley and also is an affiliated faculty member of the university’s Center for Korean Studies, the Center for Race and Gender and the Institute of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies. He published “The Ethnic Avant-Garde: Minority Cultures and World Revolution” in 2015, which was a co-winner of the 2016 Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies from the Modern Language Association in 2016.

Associate professor of Russian Michael Kunichika gave the introduction to the talk. Lee’s work, he said, “is a powerful recuperation and reminder of how many ethnic minorities themselves thought beyond the confines of the nation and national cultural traditions in order to fashion a more capacious sense of themselves and of cultural political possibility, as well as also in their hope to author a more just world.”

Lee started the talk by defining his project as an attempt “to try to make sense of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, specifically the fact that this meddling involved attempts to highlight and heighten racial divides here.” He gave examples of Russian social media trolls, some of whom gained likes by circulating accounts of police brutality, while others fanned white nationalist sentiment.

Lee said that “what we see here is our new Cold War with Russia converging with our new culture wars.” In the United States, Lee said, culture wars refer to the “twists and turns of identity politics since the 2008 election of Barack Obama.” On the left, an initial celebration of a post-racial world gave way to disappointment

after the realization that structural inequities were still very much in place. The project of the left then became to protest these inequalities, particularly their racist and sexist manifestations. Meanwhile, the right attempted to reverse the “gains of late-20th century liberal multiculturalism” and to restore the status quo of the 1950s.

Lee said that he brought up culture wars not to take sides, but rather to stress how both sides have “been manipulated by an outside party.”

He then gave several precedents of Soviet and American interactions, some of which had beneficial outcomes. During the Cold War, Soviet propaganda drew attention to American racism and indirectly led to the civil rights movement, while Americans talked about Soviet anti-semitism, which led to eased immigration for Soviet Jews.

Lee continued by saying that “the Cold War wasn’t just a struggle between capitalism and communism. The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. laid competing claims to global prominence by touting domestic inclusion, both assailing one another’s failures to live up to stated ideals.”

One possible response to the recent Russian interference would be to “use these external pressures to advocate for an end to systemic racism and police brutality.” And while Lee agrees with these goals, he finds this takeaway too easy.

He argued that what “we should take away from Russian interference is a more layered, resilient understanding of identity and identity politics,” and that we should once again be willing to learn from Russia.

To highlight what can be learned from Russia, specifically a different approach to identity, Lee turned to a comparison of theater from Moscow and U.S. cinema. He showed clips of “Vanya on 42nd Street,” a 1944 American film adaptation of a Russian play called “Uncle Vanya.”

The performance of the American actress who plays Sonya, one of the main characters, is “marked by an emotional clarity through which

the actress melds with her character.” In contrast to this, the actress in the Moscow version of the play maintains a “distance from the characters they are portraying.” The result is a “more incisive take on these characters and their context,” according to Lee. Lee went on to say that “we should all be more like Sonya, by which I mean more like the actresses who perform Sonya in Moscow, not aiming for emotional clarity or authenticity but able to step back from the role she is performing.” He lauded the flexible, late-socialist subjectivity of the Moscow version, and said that this subjectivity is “much more nuanced than what we are accustomed to in the United States, especially in the current political climate.” Lee added, however, that he was worried that his argument would reinforce the notion of a new Cold War and that it would add to the current demonization of Russia.

He described the deportation of 1937, when almost the entire Korean population of the Russian Far East were moved to unpopulated areas in the west. While the common approach to understanding this deportation is as a spillover of the anti-Asian racism in the Pacific, which Lee compared to the internment of Japanese Americans in the U.S., he argued that this does not capture the nuanced identity of Korean Russians. The Soviet Union had considered Koreans as “a model national minority, a model Soviet minority,” and argued that the reasoning behind the deportation was “perverse but not racist.”

He then turned to singer-songwriter Viktor Tsoi, who was born in the Soviet Union to Korean and Soviet parents and whose grandparents had been affected by the 1937 deportation, as a positive model of minority identity. Before he began, Lee cautioned the audience that Tsoi should not be embraced as a new intersectional hero, as there are problems with that model.

“One of the frustrations that I have with current American notions of ‘otherness’ and intersectionality is that these tend to enshrine evermore particular and fine-grained identities.

An emphasis on individual experiences and the personal as political often come at the expense of a larger view of domestic and especially international politics,” said Lee. Lee then used Tsoi as an example for his main argument, which was that, “in the Soviet Union, one’s identity as a minority subject can be simultaneously essential yet irrelevant, eternal yet absent.”

Moving on, Lee described Tsoi as a figure that can “disrupt the binaries typically used to describe identity — for instance, self vs. other, dominant culture vs. minority culture.” Lee also added that Tsoi is compelling because of the “difficulty of ascribing any fixed identity to him.”

That did not mean that people did not try to ascribe identities onto Tsoi: Korean student activists claimed Tsoi as their hero, while American newspapers stressed Tsoi’s Soviet-Korean identity. Lee argued, however, that “it would be silly to try to ascribe ethnic or national characteristics to Tsoi’s performance, or to his music or lyrics.” For Lee, Tsoi advances the dynamic, fluid, non-binary identity of late-socialism, which is “more interesting and nuanced than the shallow, easily-triggered versions of identity that were so easily manipulated in 2016 by Russian trolls.”

Wrapping up, Lee said that Tsoi as a figure “stands at a distance from the self ” and “refuses to be reduced to a single political identity.”

The talk was followed by a Q&A session, which covered a wide variety of topics such as Tsoi’s position as an outsider, racism in Russia and the Soviet Union and the difference between punk and post-punk.

Emilie Flamme ’20 said that the talk was a good opportunity to “learn about Russian identity and also Russian identity politics and Russian minority politics in the context of, in a comparative example between the U.S. and Russia, but then also all the multicultural dynamics that were going on during the Soviet Union, and how they affected the transition into a postSoviet space.”

Office of Student Affairs Surveys Students on Social Life RonnieMarie Falasco ’21 Staff Writer In an effort to gather student opinions on social life, the Office of Student Affairs (OSA) sent out a survey to students on March 16, and they had until April 2 to finish it.

Aimed at understanding students’ level of satisfaction with the current social life on campus, the short questionnaire allowed students to describe their ideal social experience.

In the past, the Office of Student Affairs has sought out students’ opinions on their social experience at the school in more public settings.

This has taken the form of meetings with members of the office in residence halls and students spaces, as well as the town hall meeting that the Association of Amherst Students

(AAS) hosted in February.

However, Senior Advisor to Student Affairs Jess Caldwell-O’Keefe, explained that the OSA, noticing some of the drawbacks of these feedback settings, chose to try a survey format.

“Recognizing that not everyone is comfortable speaking in a town hall meeting or has the time to attend a focus group,” CaldwellO’Keefe said, “[we] wanted to provide an opportunity for everyone to share their ideas and experiences, while also voicing their concerns and questions.”

The survey had a 39 percent response rate, with 675 students responding to it. Although they are still in the process of coding and visualizing the data that they received, Caldwell-O’Keefe explained that they hope the information “will help everyone better

understand students’ needs in terms of what types of spaces and activities are needed for social gatherings.”

One of the aims of the survey is to see how students think the college can make the social experience more inclusive and enjoyable for all students, according to Caldwell-O’Keefe and Director of Institutional Research Jesse Barba.

While some students have reacted positively to the survey and the effects it might have, others don’t think it will have an impact on social life at Amherst.

“I don’t think anything will change,” Annie McCluskey ’20 said. “A survey most likely won’t change anything.”

Others, like Cam Mitchell ’21, viewed the survey as a sign that the school was making an effort to listen to all students’ opinions.

“The survey was anonymous,” she said. “It was uncensored. I think that allowed people to give more honest answers than they ever have before.”

Mitchell said that she thinks the survey could be a possible catalyst for improvement to campus social life. “While I don’t think they will be drastic,” she said, “I do think there will be changes made. I’m just not sure what they will be.”

Even those who see the potential that the survey might have are still unsure if changes will ever actually take place. “I would hope that the statistics from [the survey] would have some impact on the social life,” Asha Walker ’18 said, “but I don’t know if the administration will take them into consideration and actually change how the social life is.”

Opinion

The Amherst Student • April 11, 2018

THE AMHERST

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

be entering a unique place brimming with discovery, with professors and staff genuinely invested in your growth. Revel in the frustrations of not knowing, and rest assured that you’ll have the rest of your life to live in the answers. Take in as much as you can from the people around you, because the few years you’ll have at Amherst will pass by quickly.

Admire and take in the school. It’s teeming with conversations and connections. Take the time to watch the baseball game with the backdrop of the mountain range, the sun setting over Johnson Chapel or even the wet snow in April. Listen and you’ll hear how the voices at Amherst reverberate, and how the echoes in classrooms and at tables at Val manifest themselves across campus.

Articulate what you want from Amherst, and with its size, you can be the one to bring that change. Our campus has been molded and remolded constantly — not just with the changing of the physical landscape, but also shifting dialogues and key issues. This life of yours demands to be felt truthfully. This Amherst experience can be uniquely yours by focusing in on what you want from Amherst. You may walk away from Amherst after this weekend and never want to come back, and that’s okay. Either find ways to change Amherst or go find somewhere better suited for the next step.

Counseling Center Fails to Serve Its Students Emma Wilfert ’20 Contributing Writer “You are not alone. You are surrounded by people who care and want to help — your class deans, the Counseling Center, Religious Life, the office of Student Affairs … ” I don’t know how to describe the sensation I felt when I first read this line in President Biddy Martin’s Monday email regarding the cause of death of Chris Collins ’20. Most obviously, deep sorrow at the thought of one of my classmates being lost forever.

But, as someone who has sought help from the Counseling Center in the past to very little success, my emotions were much more complicated than sadness. Rather, I found myself in a state of confused, bubbling, panicked anger at what I consider an unfair representation of this campus’ commitment to protecting students’ mental health.

While I don’t mean to refute that mental health experts on campus want the best for students, I want to suggest that there are nowhere near enough resources to handle the colossal stress placed on Amherst College students, nor are any of these resources easily accessible.

First of all, both Scott House and Hitchcock House, the Counseling Center’s two main outposts, are located on a pretty solidly residential street, far removed from most of student life and necessitating a 10 minute walk way past any buildings that house classes or dorms. While I understand that this choice was probably intended to protect students’ privacy, in practice it does just the opposite.

Rather, walking to the Counseling Center feels extremely conspicuous because, well, where else would you be going? In a perfect world, no student would feel a need to hide their mental health issues from their peers for fear of being stigmatized, but that does not change the fact that they have a right to do so if they wish, a practically impossible feat with the current system.

This is not to mention the difficulty in even getting an appointment at the Counseling Center, which does not have an online portal like Keefe Health Center does, considering how fully booked its counselors

are on a regular basis. Seeing a psychiatrist there requires a referral from one of their therapists (some are not even psychologists).

Even if you regularly meet with a therapist you found through the Counseling Center who does not work for the college and they recommend you get medication, you are not able to set up an appointment with a college psychiatrist. As a result, you must go through the laborious process of scheduling one meeting with a counselor, schlepping to the Counseling Center, getting told that you need medication (as you already know), scheduling an appointment with a psychiatrist (potentially weeks later) and then going out to the Counseling Center again for yet another meeting. If the Counseling Center made appointments with its counselors more readily available, this might not be such a problem, but many people are explicitly turned away and told that they cannot get regular treatment there. While I chose not to jump through the hoops required to receive prescriptions from one of Amherst College’s psychiatrists, a large part of that decision was based on my negative experiences with Counseling Center staff.

Here, I can speak from personal experience.

I have struggled with anxiety and depression since sixth grade. Last semester, during a particularly hard time for my mental health, I scheduled my second-ever appointment with the Counseling Center.

The first time, at the end of my freshman year, I was essentially told that my struggles were not serious enough to merit any further appointments, and that I should come back in case of emergency. As a result, I was apprehensive going back, but felt things were dire enough to merit action.

This second appointment was pretty nearly a disaster. After disclosing that my anxiety had gotten much worse and was significantly interfering with my academic performance and social life, I was told my problems were out of the Counseling Center’s scope and that they would not be able to meet with me weekly. Instead, they promised to redirect me to a therapist in town (an expensive endeavor, although I luckily have the resources to cover the cost). I only received a list of therapists after emailing them several days later to

5

If I May: Patrick Reed, the Media and Family

Dear Admitted Students With 200 prospective students here this Monday and around 650 more arriving this weekend, students on campus will be repeatedly asked to locate the nearest bathroom, or the dreaded question of “Why Amherst?”

These open houses signal the cycle of one graduating class for an incoming one. Now is the perfect time to take a moment and reflect on the time spent at Amherst.

Here are some thoughts and advice for admitted students from the Editorial Board on life at Amherst College.

Congratulations, you have been accepted into Amherst! You have had to dig deep to write essays that reflect your best work, trying to show to an admissions officer what you add to the academic and social community. You have completed the SATs or ACTs that you may have agonized over in a panicked fury, but are now a thing of the past. You have persevered and come out alive. You have accomplished so much in the short time you’ve lived, and that deserves recognition.

You’re currently in the midst of great change. This is the start of new beginnings and final preparations, as well as many goodbyes. Completing high school and starting college is an intense and tumultuous experience that sharpens the beautiful anxieties of life.

It’s a time to ask a lot of questions and appreciate the process of asking. Question as much as you can; you’ll

Opinion

remind them that I was waiting. Later, when I contacted them, many of the therapists told me they were not taking new patients.

This encounter raises so many questions that I don’t even know where to begin. What if I were not able to afford a therapist? If I was originally too healthy to see the Counseling Center and I was now considered too far gone for them to help, at what point was I supposed to contact them? When could I expect meaningful assistance from them?

I know my story is not unique. I have heard stories of medications being mixed up, students that feel overwhelmed being told to transfer, countless students getting lost in the shuffle as the center tries to cram in appointment after appointment and much more. These stories are not only deeply troubling, but also lead me to question how genuine the administration is when it encourages students to seek help. Clearly, the Counseling Center is already straining under the demand. If Amherst is serious about providing adequate mental health resources to its students, I hope it will take the step of expanding the Counseling Center and improving its accessibility, possibly even relocating it to a more convenient spot.

Again, I want to make clear that I don’t write this to disparage the therapists or psychiatrists currently working at the Counseling Center.

As Biddy said, our community is going through a period of healing, and it is not my intention to exacerbate that pain by throwing stones, especially when I believe that these counselors are qualified to help, but are simply overworked. It is my duty, however, to speak out and demand that Amherst step up when it comes to meeting students’ mental health needs.

In her email, Biddy also mentioned the work of the student organization Active Minds. I truly commend the work these students are doing to destigmatize mental illness and represent the many students who suffer with it in various forms. My therapist once told me she wished I could see how many students at Amherst deal with anxiety and depression every day. I feel like I’m starting to. I just hope the Counseling Center can see them, too.

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 Zehra Madhavan, Katie Boback, Maria Mejia, Julia Shea

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Jake May ’19 Columnist It is an easy story to write. Patrick Reed has just won The Masters, perhaps the most prestigious individual sporting event in the United States. His parents Bill and Jeanette and sister Hannah tear up as they watch him win — not in person, though. They are watching on television, from their living room just a few miles from Augusta National Golf Course, where the tournament is held. Reed and his family have been estranged since 2012, when his parents expressed disapproval with him marrying so young. They were not invited to the wedding. Two years later, Bill and Jeanette’s friends had extra passes to the U.S. Open, so they attempted to go watch their son. Justine Reed, Patrick’s wife, had them escorted off the course by police.

After Reed won The Masters on Sunday,

numerous golf writers wrote moving stories about Reed’s parents’ bittersweet afternoon.

They were able to watch their son achieve what he’d always dreamed of, but they weren’t able to share it with him. One writer admitted to tearing up on the phone along with Bill Reed as the winning father described his wish to just give Patrick a hug. Simply relaying that sentence here made me slightly emotional.

It is no surprise that the media has latched on to this narrative. Reed has often been portrayed as a villain. In college, he alienated his teammates with his intensity and was accused of cheating during practice rounds.

On the PGA Tour, he is known as one of the more solitary players. In 2014, after winning a tournament, he declared that he believed himself to be one of the top five players in the world, even though he was ranked 20th at the time and had never even played in a major.

This type of behavior is, understandably, not

popular on the PGA Tour, or in any professional sports league. By drawing attention to his strained relationship with his family, the media furthers this villain narrative while creating sympathetic figures in his parents.

I don’t believe that the situation is that simple. It is important to note that, through all of this, only one side is really talking. Bill and Jeanette Reed have been vocal in their longing for a relationship with their son. Justine Reed, a few years ago, accused Reed’s family of being abusive in a Facebook post, but for the most part has stayed relatively quiet. Reed himself has been nearly completely silent through all of this. On Sunday, Alan Shipnuck, a well-known golf journalist, asked Reed if it was bittersweet to not be able to share his epic victory with his family. “I’m just out here to play golf and try to win golf tournaments,” replied Reed.

Shipnuck described this response as “coldblooded.” I would describe it as guarded.

Asian Students Demand Asian Student Space

ASA, KSA and SASA Contributing Writers

Asian and Asian-American students make up more than 14 percent of the student body here at Amherst College. Asian students are the largest racial minority group on campus — yet, there are very few resources dedicated to Asian students. In particular, there is no specific student room for Asian students, which has left Asian affinity groups scattered around campus with no space where they can feel safe to host meetings, have discussions and build community.

Unlike La Causa, whose meetings are held in the José Martí Room (created in 1979), and the Black Student Union (BSU), whose meetings are held in the Gerald Penny Black Cultural Center (established in the 1970s), the various Asian affinity groups on campus are forced to meet in various spaces on-campus. The Asian Students Association (ASA) has resorted to meeting either in the Multicultural Resource Center (MRC) or Chapin Lounge. The South Asian Students Association (SASA) meets in Chapin Lounge.

The Korean Students Association (KSA) meets either in the James or Stearns common room. These spaces are troublesome because of their general public access and the irregularity of their availability. The MRC is too small and underfunded to support the nearly half of the student body who identify as students of color, and its broad scope means that the space is not designated specifically for Asian students.

Across Amherst College, there has been a consistent lack of institutional support for the programming work done by ASA, SASA and KSA. Programs surrounding Asian American identity have been initiated and facilitated solely by Asian students on campus, who are not being paid for their labor and must work in addition to their typical academic and extracurricular schedules. Week-to-week programming (from the speakers invited by the President’s Office to discussions hosted by various departments) on Asian-American identity simply doesn’t exist on campus. The least the administration can do to support

Asian students is to give them a room in which they can continue their work in engaging the student body on issues of Asian and Asian-American identity.

Louis Briones ’19, a current senior cochair of La Causa, explained that the José Martí Room “provides students a safe space on campus that they can call their own at Amherst in order to foster community, especially on a campus that sometimes doesn’t feel meant for Latinx students. With the onset of troubling and alarming global events as of now, having a space in the José Martí Room allows me to engage with my own community in comfort and dialogue.” Jeremy Thomas ’21, a member of BSU Executive Board, said, “because many students of color can feel isolated and lonely at a predominantly white institution, the Gerald Penny Center is a wonderful place to build community, and to have a space on campus to call our own.”

A room for Asian and Asian-American students would provide space for connection and community, especially given the lack of support these students are typically given by the administration.

There is no lack of student interest regarding more institutional support and visibility for Asian students on campus. With three regularly meeting affinity groups, Asian students are actively seeking out resources and community. At ASA’s first meeting of the 2017-18 school year, over 90 people attended, and approximately 20 students consistently attend weekly general ASA meetings. Over 40 people attended SASA’s first meeting of the year, and its conferences and events regularly draw over 30 people. Diwali, its hallmark event of 2017, had an attendance of over 100 people. In addition, over 45 students attended KSA’s first meeting of the year, with the group’s larger events such as cooking nights drawing about 50 people.

The absence of a student room for Asian students at Amherst replicates the displacement and invisibility that Asians feel in the United States at large. Placed in a blackand-white racial dichotomy, many Asian Americans have continually felt confusion and uncertainty surrounding their racial

identities. The model minority myth largely erases the narratives of Asian Americans who are low-income and first-generation college students. Equivalently, international Asian students often find themselves shoehorned into American racial structures and find that there is no physical space where they may explore some of the cultural and intellectual tensions between nationality and race.

Additionally, Asian students are routinely left out of conversations surrounding diversity and students of color on campus.

Last year, comments made by an admissions staff member failed to include Asian students when referencing diversity. When a raciallycharged bias incident targeting Asian students occurred in Fall 2016 outside Seligman House, the administration failed to send out an email addressing the incident. Numerous Asian students have experienced racist comments from peers as well as professors and staff members, which the administration has failed to adequately address. Last year, when the degrading comments made by the men’s cross country team were revealed, no effort was made to address the racialized nature of their words, some of which specifically targeted Asian women. With very few Asian or Asian American staff members in offices that directly support students, Amherst College lacks the institutional resources to understand the multitude of Asian and Asian American student experiences on campus.

If Amherst wants to take diversity and inclusion seriously, the administration must immediately take steps to create an Asiancentered student space. This year, the Office of Diversity & Inclusion launched The Belong Campaign, which aims to “cultivate an inclusive, equitable community” for all students at Amherst. Asian students at Amherst have frequently expressed a sense of not belonging and feeling uncomfortable in many spaces on campus; giving Asian students a dedicated space is the bare minimum the administration can do to facilitate a change in this aspect of the campus culture. A room specifically designated for Asian and AsianAmerican students is necessary for the goal of allowing Asian students a space to be

Reed’s parents have been clear that they want a relationship with Patrick, but they have not been clear about how exactly their relationship ended. Perhaps Justine Reed is being truthful when she accuses Reed’s parents of abusive behavior. After all, there are endless stories about troublesome sports parenting, especially of athletes who eventually reach the highest levels. Perhaps Reed is reluctant to discuss the issue is not because he is a cold person, but because he wants to protect his family from any criticism it might receive. I don’t know what he’s thinking — no one does — and that’s the important thing here. No one, except for those involved, knows the specifics of why Reed’s relationship with his family is so strained. I wish that the media would present this issue with more uncertainty, instead of furthering a narrative that is more eye-catching and heartbreaking. The story would be no less interesting.

their full selves on campus. Although Asian students have already had multiple meetings with administration members over the last few years, there has been little recognition of the urgent need of such a space.

In terms of resources for Asian students on campus, Amherst severely lags behind its peers. At Mount Holyoke College, the Asian Center for Empowerment has supported Asian students since 1998. At UMass, the Yuri Kochiyama Cultural Center supports Asian students through programming, discussions and advocacy. Tufts has an Asian & Asian American Center which supports Asian and Asian-American students on campus.

These centers constitute physical spaces in which Asian students can gather and feel comfortable having discussions surrounding their racial identities and intellectual heritage.

Asians have pushed for academic, cultural and political recognition in the United States through years of determined effort. The Amherst community is no different. Students of Asian descent face unique challenges that deserve attention, and a physical space from which students can build community, engage with questions of identity and organize is a crucial step in creating a campus where everyone belongs.

On behalf of ASA, ShoYoung Shin ’19 (President) Olivia Zheng ’20 (Political Engagement Chair) Janelle Le ’20 (Community Building Chair) Kevin Zhangxu ’20 (Outreach Chair) Ariana Lee ’20 (Political Committee Member) Emily Ye ’20 (Political Committee Member) Sivian Yu ’20 (Political Committee Member) On behalf of SASA, Shreeansh Agrawal ’20E (Co-President) Swati Narayan ’20 (Co-President) Shivani Patel ’21 (Political Engagement Chair) On behalf of KSA, Christine Chung ’20 (Co-President) Jenny Chung ’20 (Co-President)

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Arts&Living

“Amherst Doesn’t Teach Me” Speaks to Asian-American Identities

Photo courtesy of Emily Ye ‘20

Photo courtesy of Emily Ye ‘20

Emily Ye ‘20 (left) and Olivia Zheng ‘20 (right), co-founders of the “Amherst Doesn’t Teach Me” campaign, hold up signs on what the college curriculum lacks.

Olivia Hendrickson ’21 and Esther Song ’21 Contributing Writers Last week, the Amherst Asian American Studies Working Group (AASWG) released a Facebook photograph campaign titled “Amherst Doesn’t Teach Me” to advocate for the incorporation of more Asian-American studies courses into the college’s curriculum. The post, published on April 4, consists of 35 portraits of Amherst students holding written responses to the questions: “What about Asian-American history and identity are you not being taught at Amherst?” and “Why does Asian-American Studies matter to you?”

While Asian Americans make up approximately 14 percent of the Amherst student body, there is only one tenured faculty member, Professor Robert Hayashi, and one visiting professor, Professor Franklin Odo, teaching Asian-American studies courses at the college.

Between those two faculty members, there are often only one or two courses offered per semester that fall under the category of AsianAmerican studies.

Olivia Zheng ’20 helped to organize the campaign and feels that Asian-American studies are vital at Amherst. “You can’t study American history and not include Asian Americans. That would be a complete misrep-

resentation of what this country is, and so in that aspect, a stronger curriculum surrounding Asian-American issues would be valuable for both Asian-American and non-AsianAmerican students.”

The campaign, spearheaded by Zheng and Emily Ye ’20, aims to bring to attention both the lack of Asian-American courses and the student activists working towards a more comprehensive curriculum. Ye explained that the initial idea for the campaign came about when she and Zheng attended the East Coast Asian American Student Union conference and met other student activists who had done similar photo projects at their own schools that had gone viral.

While this campaign focuses specifically on the Amherst community, similar movements are happening on college campuses across the nation.

This is the first public online campaign for Asian-American studies at Amherst, but students in the Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies Initiative have been advocating for representation to the administration for years. The administration has hired a new tenured Asian-American faculty member for the Fall 2018 semester, which will diversify the college’s faculty and essentially double the number of Asian-American studies courses of-

Photo courtesy of Emily Ye ‘20

fered each semester.

While the addition of a new faculty member is a sign of progress for the AASWG, work still remains to be done to create a more comprehensive curriculum. Many students who participated in the “Amherst Doesn’t Teach Me” campaign expressed a desire for gender and sexuality courses taught in the context of Asian-American studies. “While it is great that we will have a new Asian American studies professor in the fall, he is also male identifying, so we’re hoping to hire a woman in the near future to create diversity within the faculty,” said Zheng.

Professor Odo also acknowledged the potential for diversification of faculty, saying, “Asian-American studies is such an extensive area of study, and Professor Hayashi and I are both Japanese-American males, so together we are just scratching the surface of what there is to be offered and explored.”

On the strengths and weaknesses of Amherst’s current Asian-American studies offerings, Ye said, “Amherst does a good job of teaching Asian-American history, but there still aren’t really any courses in contemporary Asian-American issues and the intersectionality of different Asian-American identities.”

The AASWG has created five- and 10-year plans with the eventual goal of creating an

Asian American Studies major, similar to the new Latinx and Latin American Studies major. “It’s an interesting phenomenon among our students,” said Professor Odo, noting that the students currently advocating for the creation of an Asian American Studies major are doing so with the understanding that changes are unlikely to take place during their times at Amherst. “They’re doing it for the next generation or the next next generation, and that’s impressive because it’s not a self-serving enterprise.”

Professor Odo also acknowledged that public campaigns like “Amherst Doesn’t Teach Me” are powerful tools in putting pressure on the administration and pushing for the changes students want to see in their education.

“Last year’s work was a lot of meetings and letter writing, but it was all very behind the scenes, and we felt that it wasn’t reaching the general student body,” Zheng explained. “We wanted the photo campaign to be a way to let everyone at Amherst know that there are students who are actively advocating for these things on campus. We hope students will see it and be interested in creating a larger team.”

Due to student interest, the AASWG will be conducting another round of photographs for the “Amherst Doesn’t Teach Me” campaign on April 14 from 1-4 p.m. in Keefe Atrium.

Photo courtesy of Emily Ye ‘20

Joon Kim ‘18 (left) and Ann Guo ‘20 (right) hold signs on their feelings about the lack of both Asian-American studies and awareness of Asian sexualities at Amherst.

The Amherst Student • April 11, 2018

Arts & Living 7

G.O.O.D. Music Record Label Tries to Remain On Top of Its Game

Photo courtesy of flickr.com

Kanye West, founder of the G.O.O.D. Music record label, performs during the South by Southwest Festival in 2011, shortly before releasing “Cruel Summer.”

Hugh Ford ’20 Staff Writer In 2012, Kanye West’s record label, G.O.O.D. Music (short for Getting Out Our Dreams), released one of the most emphatic label-wide collaborations ever with “Cruel Summer.”

Though it was not critically acclaimed — few compilation albums are — “Cruel Summer” spawned some of the most ubiquitous songs of the decade, namely “Mercy” and “Clique,” and effectively positioned G.O.O.D. Music as the premier record label in hip-hop in the early 2010s.

But now it’s 2018, and one has to question whether this is still the case. After the release of Kanye West’s “The Life of Pablo” in 2016, Kanye and others on the label teased the release of a “Cruel Summer” sequel, “Cruel Winter,” with the release of the single “Champions.”

The record was not only supposed to showcase some of the label’s older stars but also usher in a new era headed by G.O.O.D. Music’s younger talents such as Desiigner of “Panda” fame.

However, since that first single, G.O.O.D. Music has flown under the radar, relatively speaking. The last major release — excluding Big Sean and Metro Boomin’s 2017 collaboration “Double or Nothing” — was Big Sean’s fourth album “I Decided,” which came out in the fall of 2016. Desiigner, who released a series of singles supposedly leading up to his debut album “The Life of Desiigner,” has kept quiet. And Pusha T, another G.O.O.D. Music heavyweight and current president of the label, has delayed and delayed the release of his own album. So,

it seems reasonable to ask, what has G.O.O.D. Music been up to?

Well, Pusha T hasn’t remained completely idle. It seems he has been quietly signing the next generation of G.O.O.D. Music artists to replace such losses as Kid Cudi and John Legend. Among these new artists are Valee, 070 Shake and Sheck Wes, who have all had G.O.O.D. Music releases this spring.

Valee is a Chicago-based rapper, who signed with the label this February. On March 2, he released the six-track “GOOD Job, You Found Me” EP. On “GOOD Job, You Found Me,” Valee makes the most of the EP’s crunched 15-minute runtime to show off a diverse array of flows. This skill is perhaps the most impressive feature of the tape, seeing as most of the beats are relatively similar. The record takes a grimy approach that finds Valee rhyming over bass-heavy, minimalistic beats. Nevertheless, “GOOD Job, You Found Me” is somewhat inconsistent, as Valee’s flows vary just as much in quality as they do in style.

Songs like “Juice & Gin,” “Miami” and “Vlone” are clear indications of Valee’s potential. With a unique voice, sometimes-comical lyrics and catchy choruses, Valee hypnotizes his listeners. The other three songs on the tape, however, are slightly disappointing. They range from “way too repetitive for a two-minute song” to brazenly ignorant — though it would be hard to say Valee is ever the sensitive type.

Overall, “GOOD Job, You Found Me” is a nothalf-bad attempt that shows some potential for a full-length album.

Shortly after “GOOD Job, You Found Me,”

070 Shake, another new G.O.O.D. Music signee, released her own commercial EP “Glitter.”

070 Shake is 19-year-old artist from New Jersey, who gained some traction with singles like “Sunday Night” and “Rewind” featuring Lil Yachty. She has managed to carve out a lane of her own in the hip-hop world with her signature deep, smoky, melodic voice and dark and moody songs.

On “Glitter” she continues to hone her style.

The tape is a strong, cohesive effort from 070 Shake and will certainly be a welcome listen by fans of her past work. Over the six songs on the EP, 070 Shake raps about her battles with addiction and depression as well as her feelings around love and sexuality. Her voice, imbued with the pain of a troubled past, is absolutely haunting. The closing track, “Glitter,” serves as the capstone of the project, detailing the inconsistency between her musical success and her on-going struggles with mental health.

Nevertheless, the EP does have some weak points. The first two tracks, “I Laugh When I’m With Friends But Sad When I’m Alone” and “Someone Like Me,” open with crescendos that seem to just build and build, leaving the listener waiting for the “drop” for far too long.

In fairness though, when the drops — a refrain from 070 Shake and a heavy-hitting verse from 070 Phi — do arrive, they are extremely satisfying.

Though “Glitter” is a solid EP, it does prompt a little concern about 070 Shake’s ability to create a full-length album. Most songs on the EP are slow burning, and her signature melodic singing and rapping doesn’t vary much

from track to track. It will certainly be interesting to see where she goes from here. Her subject material is rich, and she will only gain more musical experience working with a label like G.O.O.D. Music.

The final G.O.O.D. Music artist, Sheck Wes, has not yet released a commercial project, but his singles have been making waves in hip-hop.

Earlier this year, Sheck Wes signed a joint record deal with G.O.O.D. Music and Cactus Jack Records, Travis Scott’s label. Since then, Sheck Wes has only released one song, the single “Do That.” However, G.O.O.D. and Cactus Jack also took over distribution for his summer 2017 standout track, “Mo Bamba.”

On “Mo Bamba” and “Do That,” Sheck Wes is charismatic, erratic and intense. He quickly changes from cool and collected to wilding out on a dime. His deep, steady voice carries the menacing choruses. He uses excessive adlibs and employs a variety of flows ranging from triplet flow to distorted screaming. In short, both songs are certified bangers. Sheck Wes definitely has potential to blow up, though it remains to be seen how versatile he is with regard to different styles.

With most of big dogs of G.O.O.D. Music remaining quiet and “Cruel Winter” nowhere in sight, some fans have started to wonder whether the label can stay at the top of the rap game. Nevertheless, some of the young and fresh signees are starting to make ripples. Valee, 070 Shake and Sheck Wes have already shown Kanye West and Pusha T that they have promise. Now they are trying to show the world the same. Their singles and EPs are a GOOD start.

The Amherst Student • April 11, 2018

Arts & Living 8

Paint n’ Sip Event Provides First Years an Artistic Study Break

Photo courtesy of Kyle Nguyen ‘21

The First-Year Area Councils hosted a guided painting session to help unwind.

Whitney Bruno ’21 Staff Writer This past Sunday, amidst the stress of midterms, the East and West First-Year Area Councils organized their latest event to bring first year students together for a creative study break. Around noon, students lumbered

through chilly weather from all corners of the first-year quad to gather in O’Connor Commons for a guided painting session, complete with delicious snacks and bubble tea.

At the front of the room, an experienced painter guided bustling students through the process of painting a luscious beach landscape.

The combination of the light-hearted social

atmosphere and the act of working creatively in a large group setting made for an uplifting experience — a positive end to a week full of stress-inducing essays, deadlines and exams.

For Kyle Nguyen ’21, the president of the FirstYear East Area Council, the social atmosphere, as well as the creative freedom allotted to participants, was the central appeal of this event.

“The main attraction was the act of creating an art piece, be it this one or your own, along with your peers,” Nguyen said.

Throughout the two-hour long event, I saw the obvious and important truth in Nguyen’s words; there was something special about creatively expressing yourself and venting your frustrations that made for a delightfully communicative time. Diverse students from all different social standings, even students who were strangers to one another, reached out to compliment one another’s art. A group of girls around me boasted about speaking to each other for the first time since orientation; another pair of students off to my side later introduced themselves to each other, and subsequently began to share a plate of paints.

Nguyen thinks this is the beauty of collective creativity, which is key to this event’s ultimate success. “Based on a creative standpoint, what makes art amazing is the fact that everyone puts forth their own creation onto their canvas right alongside each other,” he said. “Strangers draw and converse together through creating art. Artists don’t need any

prior relationships in order to enjoy each other’s company.”

The fact that this vibrant, creative event was limited to first years was what made it more unique than other art-based events on campus; first years can sometimes struggle at first to find like-minded creative communities. “This inclusivity [among first-years],” Nguyen said, “fosters further community-building that will hopefully persist above the college level.”

As the event crept to its end and students slowly began to trail out of the room in pairs and groups, newly-created pieces in-hand, this statement rang especially true to me. For a two-hour period, we were reduced to the vulnerable but more uninhibited states of our Orientation-era selves, when despite no one really knowing each other well, everyone was eager to put differences aside in order to get to know one another and make new lifelong friends. This effect that such a short but sweet program can induce, Nguyen thinks, is what makes him proud of being on the First-Year Area Council, which thrives on connecting students through creativity.

“As the school year closes,” he told me, “I would like to say that I am proud to be a part of the first-ever First-Year Area Council. It is truly amazing to see first years bond over the course of our events. I am excited to see how future generations make use of this programming, and I hope to see this in other grade levels at Amherst.”

Green Room Performs “Lizzie: The Musical” about Lizzie Borden

Photo courtesy of Ali Bennett ‘18

Dominique Manuel ’20, Kiely Mugford ‘21 and Willa Grimes ’21 (left to right), with foam noodles as microphones, rehearse The Green Room’s “Lizzie: The Musical.“ Annika Lunstad ’21 Staff Writer Last weekend, a group of students — with the support of The Green Room — performed “Lizzie: The Musical.” A rock-musical interpretation of a famous story from the Massachusetts area, “Lizzie: The Musical” is about a woman who was accused of killing her father and his wife with an axe but was found not guilty of the crime at trial.

The musical, directed by Alli Bennett ’18, featured a small cast of four women and a band for the musical accompaniment. The idea for the musical originated while rehearsing for another play, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” when Emma Ratshin ’21 started humming one of the songs from “Lizzie.” Bennett recognized the song, and they started talking about possibly performing the musical. However, it wasn’t until The Green Room proposal meeting that their discussion started to become

reality.

According to Ratshin, the process of actually bringing “Lizzie” together was hectic, but absolutely worth it in the end. For the first several weeks of practice, the cast did not have the actual sheet music for the piece and had to start learning their parts from the soundtrack, which was near impossible for the three and four-part harmonies. Eventually, the musical came together with the help of stage manager Claire Hawthorne ’21. The creators also managed to assemble a band, directed by Theo Peierls ’19.

Though the musical itself is set in 1892, the newer sound of a rock musical fits perfectly with the content and mood of the play. The Borden house is described in the musical as “pressure cooker,” too small for all of its inhabitants. Controlled by their awful and abusive father, the daughters Emma and Lizzie start becoming more and more desperate for change.

Lizzie Borden (Kiely Mugford ’21) suffers

abuse from her father. She and her sister Emma (Ratshin) live in the house along with their father’s new wife and Bridget Sullivan (Dominique Manuel ’20), their housemaid who goes by the name Maggie. As the musical progresses, Lizzie becomes desperate to find a way out of her current situation, wanting to be like the birds she takes care of and fly away. Unfortunately, women at this time had few ways to be financially independent, and so the daughters are dependent on their father. Emma becomes fed up with her father’s new wife and leaves, but not before she essentially tells Lizzie to kill their father and his wife.

The musical’s climax is the actual moment where Lizzie kills them. Earlier in the musical, Lizzie frets that “someone will do something,” and we realize during the climactic scene that these were words meant to throw people off her track, as she is the one that is doing something.

Perhaps Lizzie even suffers from some sort of dissociation, afraid of what she feels she might

do. She may have been trying to ignore the urge to fix her situation, as she feels increasingly pushed towards drastic action. Right before Lizzie murders her father and his wife, the cast members sing “somebody will do something, somebody will try, somebody will do something, somebody will die.”

While this musical shows how Lizzie’s actions are understandable given her situation, it also shows the dangerous cycle of abuse that surrounds Lizzie and those near her. Her friend and neighbor, Alice Russell (Willa Grimes ’21), falls in love with her but is horrified and dismayed by her girlfriend’s actions, refusing to support her. Though Alice refuses to lie to protect Lizzie, Emma and Lizzie pay Maggie to keep quiet and Lizzie is acquitted. “Lizzie: The Musical” ultimately shows that regardless of Lizzie’s motives, nothing can justify the horrible murders she committed or the way that she manipulated those around her to keep her secret.

The Amherst Student • April 11, 2018

Sports

9

Men’s Tennis Defeats Bates, Women’s Track and Field Wins Falls to Bowdoin in Maine Four Events at Spring Fling Matthew Sparrow ’21 Staff Writer Firmly in the midst of conference play, the No. 7 Amherst men’s tennis team split its two matchups, beating No. 25 Bates but falling to Bowdoin, which entered the matchup ranked second in the nation. It was an uneven Maine trip for the Mammoths, as they squeezed out the 5-4 win over Bates but were handily defeated by Bowdoin, 8-1.

Amherst started the road trip off in Lewiston when it faced off against Bates inside Merrill Gym. The different conditions seemed to phase the Mammoths as they dropped two of the first three doubles matches.

Sean Wei ’21 and Jayson Fung ’20 fell in the first doubles match to Ben Rosen and Jacob Kauppila by a score of 3-8, before Cameron Raglin ’19 and Kevin Ma ’21 lost to Josh Leiner and Josh Quijano in the second doubles slot, 8-6. Fortunately, Zach Bessette ’19 and Jon Heidenberg ’19 made sure that Amherst didn’t come away from doubles play empty-handed, defeating Duane Davis and Vidyut Yadav in a close 8-6 match.

Things looked bleak after Wei dropped his first singles match in three close sets to Rosen, but the Mammoths turned things around by winning the second, third, fourth and fifth singles matches. Ma, Bessette and Fung all proved victorious in straight sets while Jesse Levitin ’19 came back from a set down to beat Yadav 2-6, 7-6 (5), 6-2.

While Heidenberg lost his singles match on the singles court to Nick Glover, the Mammoths had done enough to clinch the 5-4 win.

Amherst’s next stop was to Brunswick to face off against the second-best team in the nation: Bowdoin. It was an absolutely disastrous performance for the Mammoths, as they managed to only win a single match.

Things got off to an inauspicious start as Amherst lost all three doubles matches with Wei and Fung losing to Grant Urken and Luke Tercek, Raglin and Ma being defeated

by Kyle Wolfe and Jerry Jiang and Bessette and Heidenberg being edged by Gil Roddy

and Justin Patel.

The singles section didn’t prove much better for the Mammoths. After Wei beat Urken in the first singles match, 7-6, 7-5, Amherst dropped the next five. Ma, Bessette, Fung and Heidenberg all lost in straight sets with none of them winning more than three games in any set.

Levitin gave Roddy a good match as he claimed the opening set, 6-3. However, Roddy fought back to win the second set, 6-3, and even up the match at a set apiece.

In the 10-point tiebreaker, Roddy disposed of Levitin in dominant fashion, taking it 10-3 and ensuring an 8-1 overall win for Bowdoin.

This coming week, Amherst will have two home matches as they continue to move into the thick of their schedule. They’ll play NESCAC foe Conn. College on Wednesday, April 9 at 4 p.m. before hosting MIT on Friday, April 13 at 3 p.m.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Zach Bessette ’19 won on court three in two sets, 6-1, 6-1, against Bates.

Photo courtesy of Amherst Athletics

Leonie Rauls ’18 was part of a strong performance in the 1500-meter race, finishing fourth, while Danielle Griffin ’18 placed first out of 31.

Connor Haugh ’21 Managing Sports Editor This weekend at Lehrman Stadium, Amherst played host to the fourth annual Spring Fling Meet. The women’s track and field team faced seven teams, including Wesleyan, Williams, Middlebury and Brandeis. The Mammoths placed third overall.

Notably for Amherst, first-year Sophia Friedman finished first in the 200-meter sprint.

Her race, just north of a minute in duration, ended in a photo finish with Sydney Packard of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, but Friedman prevailed by seven hundredths of a second.

Fellow first-year Jordan Rhodeman finished behind Friedman in fifth, with a time of 1:01.86, while Molly Carleton ’19 and Lexi Stern ’20 finished in eighth and 16th respectively.

In the 800-meter run, Christina Scartelli ’19 placed sixth, followed by Grace Haase ’21 in11th , Katie Krum ’21 in 13th and Rachael Ruderman ’21 in 15th.

In the 1500-meter run, mid-distance ace Danielle Griffin ’18 finished in just under five minutes to claim first. Sarah Gayer ’21 and Leonie Rauls ’18 demonstrated Amherst depth, finishing in third and fourth respectively. The

Mammoths’ performance in the event earned them 14 points toward the team total.

In the 5000-meter run, the dynamic firstyear duo of Haley Greene and Olivia Polischeck finished third and fourth respectively, showcasing a promising future in the distance events.

Kristin Ratliff ’20 won the 3000-meter steeplechase, finishing a full minute ahead of her competitors.

Three Amherst teams competed in the 4x400-meter relay, and the quartet of Friedman, Rhodeman, Jenny Mazzella ’20 and Julia Asin ’19 finished first. In the field events, Becki Golia ’18 and Kaitlyn Seigel ’20 both finished second in the high jump, leaping over a mark of 1.54 meters in a rare tie.

In the triple jump, Yrenly Yuan ’19 finished second of five. She bounded a total distance of over 10 meters, falling just seven centimeters short of the top finisher. In the javelin throw, Caroline Ferguson-Dryden ’20 launched the spear 33 meters, which earned her fifth place and the team two crucial points.

The Mammoths’ performance demonstrates progress as the team continues into the spring season. Amherst will travel to Conn. College this Friday, April 13, where they will compete in the two-day Silfen Invitational.

Men’s Track and Field Competes at Home Spring Fling Meet Veronica Rocco ’19 Staff Writer On a sunny, but cold and windy day, the Mammoths took to their home track at Lehrman Stadium to place third out of seven teams at the fourth annual Amherst Spring Fling meet.

Due to the forecasted cold weather, athletes in events 200 meters and below did not compete, as the cold weather would have put them at an increased risk of injury early in the spring track season.

The men’s hammer throwers kicked off the action for the day, as Sam Amaka ’19 had an excellent day to place third with a new personal best throw of 44.68 meters (146’ 7”). Elorm Yevudza ’19 also threw a new personal best with a throw of 38.07 meters (124’ 11”) to place sixth, while Cornell Brooks ’19 placed 13th with a throw of 34.53 meters (112’ 3”).

The first event for the Mammoths on the track was the 1,500, in which the Mammoths competed in the first three of four heats.

In the first and fastest section, Kristian Sogaard ’19 and Spencer Ferguson-Dryden ’20 took on a field of mostly Middlebury runners, and the Mammoth duo excelled, placing second and third, respectively. Sogaard used his fast closing speed to make up a gap on the last lap to place second in a time of 4:03, and FergusonDryden placed third right behind him in a time of 4:03 as well.

In the second heat, cross country All-American Clark Ricciardelli ’20E completed his first race since the Little III Championships during the indoor season to win his heat in a time of 4:09. First-year Billy Massey ran a great race to

place second behind Riccardelli in a time of 4:12.

Two Mammoths placed first and second in the third heat as well, as first-years Jamie Mazzola and Braxton Schuldt ran 4:09 and 4:12, respectively.

Next on the track was the 400 meters, in which Brad Besson ’20 placed eighth overall with a time of 52.95 seconds to set a new collegiate best, impressive on a day with less than ideal weather for sprinting. Kyland Smith ’21 placed sixth in a time of 52.67 seconds, just off the collegiate best that he set last week at Tufts in more favorable conditions.

The Mammoths swept the first three places in the 800 meters. In the first heat, Jacob Silverman ’19 and Ralph Skinner ’20 battled to the finish line to finish a mere 0.4 seconds apart, with Silverman claiming victory in a time of 1:59.

Skinner ran his first 800-meter race since the 2017 outdoor track season, finishing in 1:59 as well. Earlier this year, Skinner had competed as a member of the distance medley relay that qualified for indoor nationals, running the 400-meter leg of the event.

In the second heat, Jack Malague ’19 placed third in a time of 2:00, just missing the two-minute barrier which he broke indoors at the Boston University Valentine Invitational.

This bodes well for the rest of the junior’s season and shows promise for Amherst’s 4x800meter relay.

Jack Dufton ’20 took to the track for the 400-meter hurdles and placed fourth in a time of 1:00.13, improving on his time from last week at Tufts by nearly two seconds. Jay Drain ’18 was running an excellent race, until he crashed on the second to last hurdle and fell down, but was

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

In the 1500 meters, Kristian Sogaard ‘19 (right) finished second overall out of 31 harriers with a time of just over four minutes. able to get back on his feet to place fifth in a time of 1:00.82.

The most impressive performance of the day came from Jordan Edwards ’20, who placed second in the triple jump with a hop, skip and a jump of 13.85 meters (45’ 5.25”) for a new personal best and fourth-best performance in program history.

The last event for the Mammoths on the track was the 4x400 relay, in which Silverman returned to the track to lead off and handed the baton to Estevan Velez ’20 in second place.

Velez handed off to Sogaard, who ran the Mammoths fastest split for the day with a time 51.24 seconds. Sogaard made up considerable ground on Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), and Drain ran a stellar anchor leg to beat the Engi-

neers to the finish line in a time of 3:29.96.

“I was running really well in my 400 hurdles race until I crashed on the second to last hurdle, so I was really disappointed about that race,” Drain said. “Coach Talbot told me to channel my emotions towards anchoring the 4x400. Kristian ran a great third leg and closed the gap enough for me to chase down WPI’s anchor and get him right before the finish line. That comeback was huge for my confidence, so I’m really looking forward to running the 400 hurdles next weekend.”

Next weekend, the Mammoths will travel to Conn. College for the two-day Silfen Invitational. On Friday night, only elite sections of distance events will be contested, while on Saturday, all track and field events will be contested.

10

Sports

The Amherst Student • April 11, 2018

No. 4 Women’s Lacrosse Moves to 10-1 with Wins Over NESCAC Foes Delancey King ’18 Staff Writer The Amherst women’s lacrosse team had another successful week, coming away with two conference wins to improve to an overall record of 9-1. After topping Wesleyan on Wednesday, the Mammoths overcame Williams on Saturday to clinch the 2018 Little III title.

Wesleyan took an early lead in Wednesday’s contest, with goals from Abigail Horst and Emi Ogden-Fung putting the Cardinals up 2-0. However, only 27 seconds after the visitors’ second goal, first-year standout Maia Noyes took advantage of a man-up situation and put the Mammoths on the board. Another goal from Horst restored Wesleyan’s two-goal lead, but a top corner snipe from Katherine Malone ’20 brought Amherst within one just before the half.

Following the intermission, both teams came out hard and went back and forth during the opening minutes of the second half. Isabelle Sennett ’21 got things started, beating two defenders and sending a shot past Wesleyan’s Allegra Grant to tie things up at 3-3. In between two more Cardinal goals, Claire Dunbar ’21 capitalized on a free position and brought the score to 5-4.

From there, the Mammoths went on a 4-1 run to secure the victory. Sennett once again proved to be an offensive catalyst, as her second goal of the game began the run. A few minutes later, Leah Ritterband ’21 gave Amherst its first lead of the game with a top shelf rip off of a pass from Dunbar. The Cardinals managed to get on the board one final time to bring the score to 6-6, but two clutch free position goals from Mary Grace Cronin ’18 earned the Mammoths the win.

On Saturday, six unanswered goals in the first half helped to power Amherst past archrival Williams. Dunbar was the first to convert after the Ephs received an early yellow card that put the Mammoths up a player. Williams’ Emma Tenbarge was quick to respond, finding the back of the net with a free position shot to tie things up.

Eight minutes into the matchup, Amherst

started to pull away. Julia Crerend ’18 and Hannah Fox ’20 each powered a free position shot over the goal line, and then Crerend notched two more scores to complete the hat trick. Finishing out the run, Noyes and Malone each contributed a goal to put the Mammoths up 7-1. Williams managed to score one more before the half, but another goal from Crerend and a goal from Annie Cohen ’19 brought the score to 9-2 before intermission.

In the opening 10 minutes of the second half, Crerend found the back of the net once again, and Dani DiTommaso ’20 got on the board to extend Amherst’s lead to nine. Williams started to make a comeback with 18 minutes left to play, but their efforts were not enough. Goals from Malone, Noyes and yet another from Crerend secured the 14-8 win for the Mammoths.

Facing off against Conn. College, the Mammoths dominated from the opening faceoff. The Mammoths scored the first 10 goals and never looked back. The final score was a lopsided 16-3.

Amherst will face off next at home on Saturday, April 14 against Tufts.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Lindsey Call ’19 has recorded 20 points on the season with 14 goals.

Men’s Lacrosse Goes 3-1 over Tough Slate of NESCAC Contests Kelly Karczewski ’18 Staff Writer It was Little III week in the world of NESCAC lacrosse — both the men’s and women’s teams took on contests against Wesleyan and Williams.

On the men’s side, Amherst fell to the Wesleyan Cardinals by just one goal in a heated Wednesday matchup in Middletown, Connecticut.

In the contest between the No. 4 Cardinals and No. 7 Mammoths, neither team took a dominant lead at any point in the 60 minutes.

Amherst won the first quarter, 2-1, thanks to markers by senior Zachary Schwartz and junior captain Evan Wolf. Dylan Peabody ’21 provided the assist on both tallies, giving Amherst a onegoal advantage after falling behind thanks to an initial score from Wesleyan’s Ronan Jacoby in the second minute of the contest.

Wesleyan responded in a big way, logging four goals in the second quarter and allowing a single tally from Amherst sophomore Matt Solberg.

After halftime, though, the momentum swung back in the visitors’ favor. The Mammoths posted four unanswered markers to open the third period, with goals by Wolf and Trenton Shore ’19. The frenzy gave Amherst a 7-5 cushion.

Peabody extended the lead to 8-5 with an assist from Colin Minicus ’20 at the seven-minute mark, but the Cardinals finished the third with tallies from Cole Turpin and Zander Kotsen in the final 3:46 to cut Amherst’s lead to just one goal.

With only six minutes left to play, however, Wesleyan regained the advantage, and although the last few minutes remained back-and-forth, the Mammoths were unable to find the requisite tying goal. When the final whistle blew, the Cardinals

emerged with a 12-11 victory.

Wolf and fellow junior Jack Norton led the attack against the hosts defense, each finding the back of the net three times.

Dylan Finazzo ’20 went 19-for-26 on face offs to lead the Mammoths and posted a game-high 14 ground balls, while first-year Reid Shilling led Amherst with two forced turnovers.

The home matchup against archrival Williams would prove to be less of a challenge. Due to a track meet on Pratt Field, the game took place on more intimate Gooding Field, where the Mammoths unleashed a scoring frenzy upon the unsuspecting Ephs.

Sophomore Jon Coffey led the Amherst pack with personal-best five goals, and Minicus dished out five assists to help Amherst rack up the points.

Williams was no match for Amherst’s high-powered attack and found it difficult to even get the ball out their defensive zone.

Finazzo had another big game — he and senior Drew Kelleher were stellar at the faceoff dot, finishing 15-for-19 and 9-for-11, respectively, while Finazzo led the Mammoths in ground balls with five.

Amherst then faced off against Conn. College on Tuesday. Amherst started the game strong, and continued to apply the pressure througout the entirety of the game, winning 24-11. Coffey was again a key cog in the offense, finishing the game with eight goals. Despite this solitary outburst, the Amherst offense was balanced, with 17 different Mammoths players recording at least one point in the contest.

The Mammoths will next face off against currently-undefeated Tufts on Saturday, April 14, at 1 p.m.

ATHLETE SPOTLIGHT

Sophia Friedman ’21

Zach Bessette ’19

Favorite Team Memory: When we got back from an indoor meet right as Val was closing and they stayed open so we could have chicken and waffles as a whole team Favorite Pro Athlete: Allyson Felix Dream Job: Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Pet Peeve: Slow walkers Favorite Vacation Spot: British Virgin Islands Something on Your Bucket List: Being on a talk show Guilty Pleasure: Binge-watching Netflix Favorite Food: Lobster Favorite Thing About Amherst: The open curriculum How She Earned It: Friedman was one of four Mammoths to notch wins in the women’s track and field team’s recent meet at the Amherst Spring Fling track meet. Clocking a winning time of 1:00.16, she improved upon her previous meet’s fourth-place finish of 1:00.41. Friedman was also a member of the winning 4x400-meters team. Friedman’s impressive performance followed two top five finishes in the 200-meters and the 400-meters in previous meets.

Favorite Team Memory: Winning a hardfought 5-4 victory over Wesleyan last year to clinch the Little III title Favorite Pro Athlete: Nikita Kucherov Dream Job: Dolphin trainer Pet Peeve: Being late Favorite Vacation Spot: Merrill Beach Something on Your Bucket List: Winning a race against Christina Scartelli ’19 and Kristian Sogaard ’19 Guilty Pleasure: Party-size bag of M&M’s Favorite Food: Chicken parm Favorite Thing About Amherst: All of the friends I have made here How He Earned It: Bessette has been a stalwart for the No. 8 men’s tennis team, notching a victory on the third court against the No. 25 Bates Bobcats, 6-1, 6-1. Bessette and his partner Jon Heidenberg ’19 also notched a victory on the third doubles court, 8-6. The weekend prior, Bessette won his matches on the fourth court against opponents from Kenyon College and Case Western Reserve University, 6-2, 6-3 and 6-4, 6-3, respectively.

Bessette will be back in action against Conn College on Wednesday.

Women’s Tennis Leans on Strong Doubles Play in Recent Matches Arnav Parikh ’21 Staff Writer The Amherst women’s tennis team travelled to Maine this weekend for three matches and returned home with wins in both of its NESCAC games, beating Bates on Saturday and Bowdoin on Sunday.

Entering the match as favorites, the No. 8 Mammoths took on No. 28 Bates on Saturday afternoon in Lewiston, Maine.

All three Amherst doubles pairings cruised to comfortable victories to give the Mammoths an ideal start. The tandem of senior Avery Wagman and sophomore Anya Invenitsky downed Maisie Silverman and Bella Stone 8-2 on the first doubles court.

On the second doubles court the duo of Vickie Ip ’18 and Jane Fraley ’19 picked up an impressive 8-3 win, while the all-sophomore pairing of Camille Smukler and Maddie Dewire notched a clinical 8-1 victory on the third doubles court.

On the singles courts, Smukler convincingly downed Silverman in straight sets 6-3, 6-3 at the top of the ladder.

However, on the second court, Ip lost to Bates’ Hannah Sweeney, who continued her outstanding debut season. Sweeney won the first set 6-0, but Ip bounced back to take the closely contested second set 6-4. Ip’s spirited effort in the second set was not enough as Sweeney prevailed 10-3 in the super tie-break.

Sweeney’s splendid performance turned out to be the Bobcats solitary win in the entire tie.

Dewire, Ivenitsky, Wagman and Trapness powered past their respective opponents to guide Amherst to an impressive 8-1 win.

Later on Saturday, the Mammoths faced an uphill battle against Emory, which entered the match as the top-ranked team in the nation.

Continuing its rich vein of form on the doubles courts, Amherst managed to take two out of the three doubles matches. Ip and Fraley defeated Anna Fuhr and Stephanie Taylor 8-5 and the tandem of Smukler and Dewire battled to an

8-6 victory over Katie Chang and Daniela Lopez.

Heading into singles play with a 2-1 advantage, Amherst was on course to pull off a major upset.

However, Emory rallied from behind, claiming five of the six singles matches to seal the win.

Amherst’s lone point on the singles courts came at the top of the ladder as Smukler won her nerve-racking, marathon match in the tie break of the third set. The only difference between Smukler and Ysabel Gonzalez-Rico in the opening two sets was a solitary break of service in each set, as Smukler took the first set 6-4 and Gonzalez-Rico clinched the second set 6-4. The final set went all the way to a tie break, in which Smukler held her nerve and secured a memorable 7-3 tie break win.

On the other courts, Ip, Ivenitsky, Wagman and Trapness all fought hard but lost in the deciding sets of their respective matches which allowed Emory to close out the tie 6-3. However, this performance will certainly give Amherst a lot of confidence for its remaining matches.

On Sunday afternoon, the Mammoths, showing no signs of fatigue, played their third match of the weekend against Bowdoin and emerged victorious, 6-3.

Even though Wagman and Ivenitsky went down on the first doubles court, the other Amherst duos won on the lower two courts to give the Mammoths a 2-1 lead.

In singles play, Smukler picked up her third victory of the weekend, downing Tessa Trinka in straight sets.

Lower in the ladder, Dewrire, Iventisky and Wagman all picked up straight-set wins to help Amherst win 6-3 and finish off a positive weekend.

Facing off against Conn. College on Tuesday, the Mammoths started the match with a trio of wins on the doubles court. In a controlling position from the start of the contest, Amherst did not look back, winning five out of the six singles matches. This win moved the team to 3-0 in conference play, as the Mammoths sealed the 8-1 victory.

Amherst returns to action on Friday, April 13, when it will host Brandeis University at 4 p.m.

The Amherst Student • April 11, 2018

Sports 11

Baseball Wins Weekend Series Over Rival Williams Off Success at the Plate

The Mazzola Minute Jamie Mazzola ’21 Columnist Mazzola examines the Indiana Pacers’ suprising season that has seen them claim an Eastern Conference playoff spot due in large part to the play of Victor Oladipo.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Senior shortstop Harry Roberson contributed four RBIs in three games over the weekend at the plate, as well as turning three double plays in the field.

Katie Bergamesca ’18 Staff Writer Although inclement weather created some difficulties, the Amherst baseball team ended up going 2-1 last week, claiming a series win over archrival Williams.

Before the series against the Ephs, the Mammoths were supposed to take on Mitchell College in a mid-week, non-conference game on Wednesday, April 4.

However, snow flurries kept the two teams from ever taking the field.

On Friday, April 6, Amherst was scheduled to travel to Williamstown to play the first game of a three-game series against NESCAC rival Williams, but winter weather once again forced a postponement.

The game was rescheduled for Sunday, April 8.

The Mammoths played their first game of the week on Saturday, April 7, when they hosted the visiting Ephs in a double-header.

Amherst split the two games, winning the first, 11-9, and dropping the second, 5-4.

Amherst jumped out to a significant lead in the first inning, scoring nine of its total 11 runs just in the bottom of the first.

Although the Mammoths tacked on another two runs in the third inning before the Ephs had scored a single run, the visiting team did manage to cut down the Mammoths’ lead by several runs before ultimately losing by only two.

Harry Roberson ’18, Ariel Kenney ’18, Nick Nardone ’19 and Rob Casey III ’20 all had multiple-RBI games.

Max Steinhorn ’18, Joe Palmo ’21 and Severino Simeone ’20 each had a stolen base. Steinhorn was also 3-4 with two runs scored.

Davis Brown ’19 started on the mound for Amherst, throwing six innings and allowing nine hits and five earned runs, with four Ks for good measure.

First-year Andrew Nagel and junior Mike Dow came in for relief and ultimately secured the win for the Mammoths.

The second game of the day made for an exciting match-up between the rival teams.

Amherst maintained a slim lead on Williams until the fourth inning when the Ephs scored two runs to tie up the game. Innings five and six were both scoreless.

In the top of the seventh, the Ephs tallied a single run to seize the lead.

The Mammoths answered with a score of their own in the bottom of the seventh.

Ultimately, Williams was victorious in the back and forth battle. After the Ephs scored in the top of the eighth to regain the lead, the Mammoths were unable to answer, losing by a single run.

Palmo lead the team in RBIs with two, while Nardone contributed one of his own. Kenney was solid at the plate, going 1-3 with two runs scored.

Starting pitcher Andrew Ferrero ’19 threw for three and two-thirds innings, during which he allowed three hits and three earned runs and struck out two batters.

In the make-up game on Sunday, Amherst established a 10-run lead after the first two innings, and Williams was never able to close the gap, eventually losing the contest by a decisive 12 runs; the final score was 16-4 in favor of the Mammoths.

Roberson, Kenney and Simeone all had multiple RBI games. Will Murphy ’20 and Steinhorn showcased their speed, stealing two and three bases, respectively. Senior Sam Schneider pitched six innings, allowing seven hits and two earned runs while also striking out five batters.

With the pair of wins, Amherst improves to 11-6 on the season and 4-1 in conference play.

The Mammoths return to action on Wednesday, April 11 when they travel to Elms College in Chicopee for a 7 p.m. game.

On Friday, April 13 the Mammoths will head to Middlebury, Vermont for a three-game series against NESCAC opponent Middlebury.

Their first game will begin at 4 p.m. on Friday, and Saturday will feature a double-header against the Panthers; the first starts at noon and the second at 3 p.m.

Last spring, Paul George, unhappy with his team’s subpar playoff performances, informed the Indiana Pacers he wished to sign with the Los Angeles Lakers when his contract expired.

Rather than lose their superstar wing (then a four-time NBA All-Star, three-time All-NBA Third Team, one-time All-Defensive First Team, two-time All-Defensive Second Team, one-time Most Improved Player and one-time All-Rookie Second Team) for nothing, the Pacers opted to make a trade.

As a result, Indiana traded George to the Oklahoma City Thunder for Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis, who had combined for a lone All-Rookie First Team accolade heading into the 2017-18 season.

At the time, the trade was derided for how lopsided it appeared, and fans assumed the Pacers were looking to tank.

In recent seasons, tanking has become a widely-used strategy for teams stuck in the mid-tier of the league, unable to compete with the Golden State Warriors or Cleveland Cavaliers of their conferences but unable to secure the top draft pick. The Philadelphia 76ers, for example, are famous for their “trust the process” motto and consistently finishing at the bottom of the standings to stockpile draft picks and assets. Ironically enough, Philadelphia’s tanking days are behind them, as they currently sit third in the Eastern Conference.

Instead, the Pacers are fifth in the Eastern Conference with a 48-33 record. The Oklahoma City Thunder, with its “big three” of last season’s regular season MVP Russell Westbrook, George and perennial All-Star Carmelo Anthony, are seventh in the Western Conference with a 46-34 record.

How did a team turn what was once viewed as an unfavorable trade into a franchise rejuvenation?

It’s pretty simple: Victor Oladipo has been transcendent.

Let’s examine the accolades first. 201718 NBA All-Star Game selection? Check.

2017-1818 NBA Dunk Contest selection?

Check. 2017-18 NBA Steals Champion?

Check. Leading his team to a playoff berth?

Check. 2017-18 Most-Improved Player Award? Probable check. 2017-18 All-NBA Team Selection? Well, he certainly deserves it.

“How did a team turn what was once viewed as an unfavorable trade into a franchise rejuvenation?

It’s pretty simple: Victor Oladipo has been transcendent.”

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Nick Nardone ’19 powered the Amherst offense with five hits, four runs and three RBIs in the series and is tied for the team lead in home runs with two.

Now, let’s take a look at some basic stats.

Points per-game? 23.1 (11th in the NBA).

Rebounds per-game? 5.2. Assists per-game?

4.3. Steals per-game? 2.4 (first in the NBA).

Blocks per-game? 0.8.

And he has done all this while slashing .473 from the field, .367 from three, and .803 from the free-throw line.

What do all those numbers have in common? Besides the free-throw percentage,

they’re all career-highs.

They also place him in the upper-echelon of well-rounded NBA two-way (referring to offensive and defensive) stars.

The advanced stats tell an even scarier tale. The real plus-minus (RPM) statistic measures the scoring difference in the game when a player is on the court versus when a player is off the court, adjusting for lineup changes to isolate the impact of each individual player.

Oladipo’s RPM of 5.54 ranks sixth in the NBA, second among shooting guards.

Adjusting for total possessions played, Oladipo was worth 13.68 wins (an estimate using RPM of how many of Indiana’s wins are solely due to Oladipo’s presence), sixth in the NBA and first among shooting guards.

“Oladipo’s dramatic improvment over his previous seasons is no accident” According to a recent tweet from Basketball Reference, “Victor Oladipo is the eighth player in the last decade to have a 30+ usage rate and a 57+ true shooting at age-25 or under. The other seven are LeBron, KD, Harden, Kawhi, Kyrie, AD and Giannis.”

Usage rate estimates a percentage of a team’s plays used by a specific player while the player is on the court.

True shooting percentage combines a player’s field-goal, three-point and freethrow percentages, adjusting for the point value of each shot, to provide a more accurate measure of how efficiently a player scores.

Still not convinced? Just watch a Pacers game or Google some highlights. Oladipo, although he’s a shooting guard, acts as the primary ball-handler for a significant percentage of Indiana’s possessions, dazzling the crowd with pull-up jumpers, nifty layups and soaring dunks.

His energy is contagious. On defense, Oladipo hounds the passing lanes, looking for steal opportunities while staying lockedin on his man.

Oladipo’s dramatic improvement over his previous seasons is no accident.

Oladipo spent the offseason working out three times daily with future Hall-of-Famer Dwyane Wade’s trainer, adjusting nutrition and fitness plans while honing his technical skills.

More importantly, he was able to seek advice from Wade, one of basketball’s greatest shooting guards.

“He was hungry for knowledge, had a real thirst for it,” Wade said. “As much as anybody in the NBA, I want to see him succeed. I’m happy for him. I’m proud of him. I want him to want more for himself.”

“I guess Victor has bad days, but I never see them,” Pacers head coach Nate McMillan said.

“We’ve been down in a lot of games this season, but you look at Victor in the huddle, and he’s always the same. That calmness has helped us, along with his play. And he’s just got an infectious personality. I mean, the singing?”

The singing? Oh, yeah. Oladipo is also a professional recording artist. Talk about multifaceted...

Sports

Photos courtesy of Clarus Studios

Ace Gina Pagan ’18 shut out Middlebury in the second game of the series sweep, striking out 11 batters, walking only one and allowing four hits.

Softball Sweeps Crucial Weekend Series Against Middlebury Michael Stone ’21 Staff Writer

This past weekend, Amherst softball played its first home series of the year, taking on NESCAC rival Middlebury.

In the first game, Amherst jumped out to a quick 5-0 lead, thanks to a big first inning from the offense.

Middlebury battled back, scoring two runs in both the fourth and fifth innings to cut the lead to 5-4.

The Mammoths, however, tacked on some insurance runs, with three in the bottom of the fifth and another in the bottom of the sixth to secure a 9-4 victory.

The Amherst offense had a huge day at the plate, racking up 12 hits and scoring nine runs.

Andrea Sanders ’20 and Sammy Salustri ’19 provided a big spark at the top of the lineup, each tallying two hits and scoring a run.

Kyra Naftel ’19 and Ally Kido ’18 also had multi-hit outings as the Mammoths rolled in game one of the series.

The second game of the series was a much lower scoring affair. Amherst relied on dominant pitching and solid defense to keep Middlebury off the board.

Tied until the fifth inning, Salustri opened the scoring with an RBI-triple.

She was brought around to score by a single from Kyra Naftel ’19, before the Mammoths tacked on another run as Alyson Plaman ’21 hit a sacrifice-fly to left field.

Gina Pagan ’18 put on a masterful perfor-

WED FRI

GAME SCHE DULE

Softball vs. Smith, 3:30 p.m.

Men’s Tennis @ MIT, 3 p.m.

Men’s Tennis @ Conn. College, 4 p.m.

Baseball vs. Middlebury, 4 p.m.

Softball vs. Smith, 5:30 p.m.

Women’s Tennis @ Brandeis, 4 p.m.

Baseball vs. Elms College, 7 p.m.

Softball vs. Wiiliams, 5 p.m.

mance on the mound, throwing a completegame shutout, walking just one batter and allowing four hits.

Pagan kept Middlebury guessing at the plate all day, as she racked up 11 strikeouts.

In the final contest of the three-game series, Amherst topped Middlebury by a score of 7-2 and was dominant both offensively and defensively.

The Mammoths kicked off the scoring in the bottom of the first inning, as Audrey Hansen ’21 hit an RBI-single. Amherst added three more in the second inning to extend its lead to 4-0.

Middlebury got two back in the third, but Amherst was sure to keep its foot on the pedal, adding two more of its own in the bottom of the third.

Men’s Golf Hampton Inn Classic @ UMass Dartmouth, 5 p.m.

Men’s Track & Field Silfen Invitational @ Conn.

College, 6 p.m.

Women’s Track & Field Silfen Invitational @ Conn.

College, 6 p.m.

SAT

Men’s Golf Hampton Inn Classic @ Umass Dartmouth, TBD

The Mammoths added one more run in the fifth to close out the scoring.

Sanders led the charge with a three-hit, three-RBI game from the leadoff spot.

Hansen, Naftel, and Plaman all posted multi-hit performances that contributed to Amherst’s big day at the plate. Lorena Ukanwa ’19 threw six dominant innings, allowing two runs (none earned) on six hits and three walks in addition to recording 13 strikeouts on the day.

Emily Lachtara ’21 came in to shut the door, throwing a scoreless inning in the seventh.

Up next, the Mammoths will play a doubleheader against Smith on Wednesday, April 11 with the games scheduled to start at 3:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.

Women’s Track & Field Silfen Invitational @ Conn.

College, TBD

Women’s Golf @ Vassar Invitational, TBD Baseball vs. Middlebury, noon Men’s Track & Field Silfen Invitational @ Conn. Softball College, TBD @ Wiiliams, noon Women’s Lacrosse @ Tufts, noon

Men’s Lacrosse vs. Tufts, 1 p.m.

Women’s Tennis @ Williams, 1 p.m.

Softball @Wiiliams, 2 p.m.

Baseball vs. Middlebury, 3 p.m.