Issue 23

THE AMHERST

THE INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868

STUDENT VOLUME CXLVI, ISSUE 23 l WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2017

Baseball Posts Pair of Dominant Victories See Sports, Page 9 AMHERSTSTUDENT.AMHERST.EDU

Martin and Blake Speak at State of the College Address Claire Dennis ’20 Staff Writer

Photo courtesy of Isabel Tessier ‘19

The college’s new mascot, the Mammoth, pays homage to Amherst history. Since 1925, the Beneski Museum of Natural History has housed the skeleton of a mammoth discovered by Amherst professor Frederick Brewster Loomis.

College Selects Mammoth as Official Mascot Audrey Cheng ’20 Staff Writer The college announced that its first-ever official mascot is the Mammoth on Monday, April 3, marking the end of a six-month mascot selection process that began in October.

In total, 72 percent of the student body, 31 percent of eligible alumni and 35 percent of staff members voted for their mascots of choice, for a total of 9,260 votes.

Official data shows that the number of alumni votes amounted to three times that of student votes.

Voting was conducted online, and an outside party of alumni volunteers oversaw the process.

Voters had the option of ranking each of the fi-

nalists in their preferred order, or to mark it as “no vote.”

After an elimination process based on the results, the Mammoth took first place 4,356 votes, and the Purple and White was second with 4,134 votes.

According to Alejandro Niño Quintero ’18, co-chair of the Senate Mascot Committee, the Office of Communications and the Office of Advancement underwent a process of filing the trademark and buying relevant online domains related to the new mascot.

Regarding the surprise announcement, Niño Quintero said, “We were going to have a more formal launch sometime this week, but as we were figuring out the formal steps, we realized it was impractical to keep it secret for so long.”

“Once you file for [the trademark], it becomes public record, so people would find out anyways,” he added. “People are good at finding these things, so we decided it was better to announce it on our own terms and announce it early.”

For the Office of Communications and Office of Advancement, the next step is to create visual aspects of the mascot and its branding. Panels of students and alumni will be organized to participate in this branding.

A formal celebration of the new mascot will be held on May 5.

“For now, my big part is done,” said Niño Quintero. “I’m just really happy with the process, and I think there was a great turnout.”

“Overall, the process was really fair and everyone had a voice in it,” he added.

President Biddy Martin and Association of Amherst Student (AAS) President Karen Blake ’17 addressed an audience of faculty and students at the college’s first State of the College Address on Wednesday, March 28 in Johnson Chapel.

The event was planned and created by AAS Senator Sade Green ’20 as part of her senate project, a requirement that each AAS Senator create an initiative to benefit the student body.

“I believe that these two things, communication and transparency, are essential to the ways in which we build community with one another because, in order to build community, we must engage in dialogue,” Green said in her opening remarks. “We must have conversations about the things that matter.”

Blake spoke first, beginning her address by describing the “magic” she felt as a prospective student before her first year and saying that she continues to feel it today when she looks out across Memorial Hill.

However, Blake continued, there were key areas for continued improvement at the college.

“The swiftness with which Amherst welcomed diversity in recent years has not simultaneously been supported through the creation of resources that sustain these diverse communities,” Blake said, citing microaggressions by faculty and the underfunding of student resource centers. To solve this disparity, Blake suggested creating increased opportunities for faculty diversity training and more generous allocations of funding towards resource centers. The AAS has already provided a subsidy of $2,000 per semester to resource centers to supplement their programs, Blake said.

Blake also said that she hoped the administration will improve communication with students about its initiatives.

Continued on Page 3

‘Decolonize Val’ Organized to ‘Disrupt Toxic Culture’

Shawna Chen ’20 Managing News Editor

“Decolonize Val,” a student-led sit-in aiming to break down what organizers called the “toxic culture” of the back room in Valentine Dining Hall, took place during the evenings last week from March 27-31.

The organizers, who first publicized the event on Facebook, called for students to sit in the back room space during dinner in order to combat the culture perpetuated by the “predominantly white male athletes” who normally sit in the back room, said organizer Alyssa Snyder ’19. She and organizers Trenton Thornburg ’20 and SabriAnan Micha ’19 began planning the sit-in at the beginning of the 2017 spring semester.

On the first day of the sit-in, about 30 people came out to support the movement. The goal, Snyder said, was not to make noise or protest in the traditional sense. The organizers opted instead to occupy the space quietly, inviting students on the Facebook event page to bring homework and join “the company of the diverse students that often do not feel comfortable in the back room.”

It was a conscious decision on the part of organizers, who said that many of the problems associ-

ated with the Val back room involve noise.

“It’s what we were upset about in the first place, that people are yelling across to their friends in a way that’s not very appropriate for a place where people are trying to eat,” Snyder said. “And there are a lot of people with sensory problems at Amherst that have to come down [to Val terrace room] to eat or have to go the very, very back of the front room to eat because they’re physically unable to be in that space.”

Snyder said that people in the back room have purposefully spilled drinks on her friends and that silverware have been thrown across the room.

People often yell in the room, and when tables are pulled together to accommodate a large group, it becomes “physically impossible” to move around the area, said Snyder and Micha.

According to Snyder, female athletes of color as well as professors have told her that they are uncomfortable in the back room of Val. “It’s important to not forget the fact that it’s not all athletes [that] are involved in the problem,” she said. “It is predominantly male athletes, but it’s also their friends who are not athletes.”

An incident on Saturday, March 25 involving student athletes reinforced organizers’ belief in the necessity of a sit-in, Thornburg said. AC Voice, a

student-run web publication, covered the events on March 25. In an article titled “The State of Athletics,” Marc Daalder ’18 wrote, “From a number of reports, it appears that there may have been two separate incidents, an earlier one involving a women’s team and a later and greater disturbance with a men’s team.”

All three organizers were present in Val on March 25 and attested to the actions of student athletes in the back room.

“There was a lot of noise,” Snyder said. “People could hear people yelling and singing from outside of Val. People had open bottles of alcohol, cans of alcohol, were actively drinking, were very, very drunk. People had stood up on tables.”

The controversy of the night spread on social media and throughout campus. When reached for comment, President Biddy Martin wrote, “Student Affairs is currently investigating the reports of inappropriate conduct at Valentine that led to the Decolonize Val activity, so I can’t say much more about that until we are able to confirm the facts.”

“What I can say is that I oppose behavior that does not meet community standards of decency and respect, and I support behavior that encourages thoughtful, open, critical, evidence-based reasoning and respectful conversation that moves

us forward together,” Martin added.

While Snyder said that it is difficult to articulate why some students’ discomfort is salient in the back room, she believes the issue is partially perpetuated by one group of people’s feeling of entitlement to a public space.

“People are so comfortable with owning a space, the way that people just spread out, move the tables together so you physically can’t get to where you want to sit sometimes and leave stuff on the table,” she said.

Micha said that the largest number of people came out on Monday to support Decolonize Val. “There were a lot of faces that I knew and trusted, and I felt more comfortable than usual for the first time in that space,” she said. But as the week went on, fewer people showed up, and “that uncomfortability came back.”

One aspect of the back-room culture is that the divide between athletes and non-athletes is also “a gap in terms of a stark racial divide, a stark class divide, gender, the whole nine yards,” said Thornburg. According to “The Place of Athletics at Amherst College,” a report released by the Committee of Six in January, white students made up nearly

Continued on Page 3

News

Raheem Jackson March 27, 2017 - April 2, 2017

>>March 27, 2017 7:10 a.m., Alumni Gym A student reported the theft of a wallet from her backpack over the past weekend. Approximately $700 was withdrawn from a bank account using a card and information that was in the wallet.

11:39 a.m., Frost Library A student reported the theft of sunglass and medication from his backpack. The incidents occurred on different dates.

1:17 p.m., Stearns Dormitory A caller reported being stuck in an elevator. Assistance was provided.

2:40 p.m., Seelye House A student reported the theft of his ID card. >>March 28, 2017 12:18 a.m., Hills Lot Officers responded to a report of a male possibly passed out in a vehicle. Upon arrival, it was determined that a student was sleeping in his car.

11:20 a.m., Moore Dormitory A caller reported an offensive word was written on a paper on their door.

5:11 p.m., Life Sciences Building Officers responded to an animal complaint. Assistance was provided. >>March 29, 2017 8:02 a.m., Frost Library An officer responded to an animal complaint. The animal could not be located.

10:14 a.m., King Dormitory A resident reported the theft of electronic equipment from the firstfloor common room during November 2016. The items are valued at $150. >>March 30, 2017 11:00 a.m., The Quadrangle A caller reported a drone flying near Johnson Chapel and South Hall. An officer discovered that an employee of the Communications Department was taking photographs.

9:52 p.m., Seligman House An officer checked on a report of an abandoned vehicle near Seligman House. The town police were notified because it was parked in their jurisdiction. >>March 31, 2017 10:00 a.m., 40 Dickinson Street An employee reported unauthorized dumping into a college-owned dumpster.

9:38 p.m., Lipton House A caller complained about loud music and banging coming from the third floor. Nothing was found when an officer investigated.

9:53 p.m., Plimpton House Officers and the Fire Department responded to an alarm and found that a basement pull station had been

activated for no apparent reason.

11:00 p.m., Morris Pratt Dormitory A caller complained about noise from a registered party. The party sponsor was contacted by phone and advised of the complaint.

11:53 p.m., Seligman House A caller complained about activity at a registered party that was in progress. The matter was documented and a report was sent to the Student Affairs office. >>April 1, 2017 12:45 a.m., Greenway Building A An officer investigated a report that graffiti was written on the wall with purple marker near the event space in Greenway Building A. 1:54 a.m., Valentine Dormitory An officer investigated a report that an emergency exit sign was vandalized on the third floor.

4:32 a.m., Plimpton House While in Plimpton, an officer found a man sleeping in a chair in the common room. The man was identified as a student who was intoxicated and under the legal drinking age. After evaluating his condition, he was transported back to his residence hall.

2:46 p.m., Stearns Dormitory A parent reported her son’s laptop was stolen from his unlocked room sometime during the week of spring break.

8:12 p.m., Campus Grounds An officer encountered a student with two unlicensed kegs near Jenkins. The kegs were confiscated and the student was fined $200. >>April 2, 2017 12:17 a.m., Humphries House A party sponsor requested assistance in shutting down a registered party. Upon arrival, officers located approximately 600 people.

During this time a town resident complained about the event and someone pulled a fire alarm station for no reason. After considerable effort, the event was shut down and people cleared out.

12:56 a.m., Humphries House While closing down a party, an officer discovered an unattended pipe and grinder with marijuana residue in them. They were confiscated.

1:28 p.m., Humphries House A student reported the theft of his wallet from his pants pocket which were left unattended in a stairway.

3:39 a.m., Morris Pratt Dormitory Officers and the fire department responded to an alarm and found it activated when someone pulled a basement pull station for no apparent reason.

3:41 a.m., Morrow Dormitory A second-floor resident reported someone banging on his door. No one was found when an officer investigated.

Thoughts on Theses Department of Black Studies

Raheem Jackson ’17 is a black studies and sociology double major. His thesis examines black masculinity, specifically in female-headed households. His advisers are Professors of Black Studies John Drabinski and Rhonda Cobham-Sander.

Q: Can you give me a brief overview of your thesis?

A: It’s ethnographic and autoethnographic. I talked to 11 men and it’s [about their] life history. They talk about their lives growing up in female-headed households and what that means for them … Essentially that’s what it’s about — the men sharing their life stories and making meaning of their life stories.

Q: How did you come up with this idea?

A: It started when my grandmother died and I did a semester at the University of Florida back home. I took a course called “Man and Masculinities” … about gender and the concept of multiple masculinities. I really liked it, and I started looking into more theories and literature on black masculinities, specifically. From there, the project just sort of happened. But it really started with that course that I took at the University of Florida.

Q: What kind of research have you done?

A: Literature reviews, a lot of looking at masculinity theory in general [and] a lot of looking at black masculinities and the way that black masculinities are represented in popular culture, in media [and] in the scholarship. And … I talked to the 11 students and [conducted] in-depth interviews with 11 black men that are [in college or] recent graduates.

Q: How did you find those people?

A: A snowball sampling. I looked at a network of potential participants by looking at social media, reaching out to different college campuses, reaching out to friends [and] talking to people. I met a lot of people who were willing or had some great things to say about where I should go with the project or what I should look for, but ... in my project I talked to each guy three separate times and each time I needed a commitment of at least 45 minutes to an hour. So when it came down to it, there was really only those 11 guys who were willing to commit for three hours.

Q: How has your thesis changed throughout the course of the year?

A: It changed a lot, actually … [I went] into the project thinking I was going to find one thing, trying to disprove something, so I really went into my project with a chip on my shoulder. All throughout my life I had been hearing about black men from “broken homes” or absentee fathers and all those things — things that weren’t really talking about my life but framing it as what I’m lacking instead of focusing on what was actually going on in my life and what I actually had, which has a lot of value. I specifically remember hearing instances of people saying “women can’t raise men” and things like that. My mom and grandma raised me, so essentially, I set out to provide some counternarratives to that and disprove it or at least nuance it — the notion that black men from these “broken homes” or female-headed homes are destined to debauchery and failure and criminality and all these other things that are stereotypes. Eventually, I learned a lot more about my own self through learning about the other men.

I learned a lot about how fortunate I am in my own situation, in a lot of ways. I think it became less about me … when I talked to the men and reflected on what they were saying, and reflect-

ed on my own life … it became about me again.

I was able to learn more about myself and learn more about some of the assumptions I had.

Q: What’s the best part about writing a thesis?

A: For me, the best part about it was making it my own … I was able to put some of my favorite lyrics from the songs that I had heard throughout my life, dealing with black manhood and black masculinity — you know, it was relevant.

I wasn’t necessarily quoting some famous scholar, I was quoting things that I was consuming everyday and things that I identify with a lot more. [In] my intro, [I was] talking about my own life and how the project is personal to me and laying out my methodology and what drove the project and … how it’s bigger than me. Also, I think that was fun, because it allowed me to reveal myself. I’ve been at Amherst for four years, and I feel like there’s not really a lot of people or professors that really know me, so I feel like this project allowed me to pay homage to my family, my mother and my grandmother and my circumstances that I value a lot. I think that part was the most fun — making it personal. My introduction was really fun, trying to make it creative and not boring [and] putting some J. Cole lyrics in my epigraphs.

Q: What’s the hardest part about writing a thesis?

A: Producing pages! Probably for me, the hardest part is looking for validation. Once you get something on the page, it’s scary to think [that] two years from now I might not identify with it as much. Two years from now, I might not agree with some of the claims I make. Some of the things are pretty straightforward, like the things that the men were saying and the patterns that arose from [what they] were saying. [But] some of the claims that I make — I’m just kind of scared that in a couple years, I won’t even think those things anymore, or that they’re not claims that people will agree with or value — so that’s the hardest part, getting over that fear.

Q: Do you have any advice for other students interested in writing a thesis in the future?

A: Do it! But do it for the right reasons. If I wasn’t interested in what I was writing about — and I really am — I found ways to make it really interesting. For example, my first chapter, it’s dealing with a lot of theory … theories of dominance, privilege and multiple masculinities. It’s dealing with a lot of academic jargon, but I was able to be creative and relate it to something from my everyday life: … the idea of a positive black male role model. That was something that was very interesting for me, relating the theory to this tangible thing ... that’s easily digestible … And so my first chapter is really just talking about the idea of a black male role and complicating that with ideas of privilege and power and heterosexism and patriarchy and all those things. But if I wasn’t interested in it, I don’t think I would have liked doing that first chapter at all, but luckily I like my topic — it’s personal and something that I value and think is important. So I would say, do it if you’re interested in it, but if you’re not interested, don’t do it. And do something that you feel like is valuable to you — that would be my advice.

— Sylvia Frank ’20

The Amherst Student • April 5, 2017

News

3

Weeklong Dinner Sit-Ins Held in Valentine Back Room Continued from Page 1 three-quarters of athletic teams from 2011 to 2015 but only 47 percent of all students. The report stated that only 3 and 4 percent of athletes are firstgeneration and low-income students, respectively.

Organizers said they have received support from both athletes and non-athletes. While they have not directly faced backlash, they recognized the controversy of their movement on campus.

Snyder, Micha and Thornburg met with the dean of student affairs, chief officer of diversity and inclusion, director of athletics and directors of Valentine Dining Hall on Wednesday, March 29 to discuss the movement’s goals. Moving forward, they hope to work with student-athlete leaders, set up a meeting with Student Athletic Advisory Committee and speak with coaches.

“There’s definitely a divide between athletes and non-athletes, whether people want to recognize it or not,” Thornburg added. “I don’t think

that’s always a nefarious sort of thing, but in some instances, it is, and we should have conversations about that.”

Sam Chen ’17, a varsity lacrosse player, said his immediate reaction to news of Decolonize Val was confusion. “Personally speaking, if that’s what people needed to do to feel comfortable, eating in the backroom, that’s totally fine,” he said. “The general sentiment from the people who sit back there is that we’re not telling anyone they can’t sit back there. Though I understand there is an implicit barrier where back room is for athletes, it’s also a self-fulfilling prophecy that people create — the more you talk about it, the more it becomes real.”

Chen said that he recognizes the problems with the divide between athletes and non-athletes but attributes it in part to athletes spending most of their time on training and academic work. They are less able to commit to other extracurricular activities, which is how students typically become acquainted with people of different social circles, he

said. He added that he could not imagine anyone in the back room telling a non-athlete that they don’t belong in the space.

“I understand that it’s an intimidating space because it’s very much where large groups of athletes sit … but I’ve never seen anyone in the back room look at a non-athlete and say, ‘This is an athlete-only space,’” he said.

When his team of 45 lacrosse players comes in together after practice, he said, they want to eat together, and it is easier to sit in the back room and pull up tables.

Decolonize Val, said Chen, did not create outrage among athletes, but many of his athlete friends did question why the movement was created.

“There was a sense of confusion,” he said.

“More of a ‘What’s wrong about the place I choose to sit with my teammates?’”

Both Chen and the organizers acknowledged that they do not have detailed solutions for the

divide between athlete and non-athletes. Micha, however, encourages athletes and non-athletes alike to engage in dialogue.

“I think that one of the goals of this whole thing was to get people to come and actually talk and to say, ‘Okay, if you don’t understand what the problem is, come and talk to us,’” Micha said. “I don’t know exactly how we’re going to proceed, but we have talked to administration about facilitating conversations or figuring out some way to continue this going.”

According to Martin, Student Affairs is currently developing programming to address the divide on campus. The college has enlisted the help of professionals to create a program “aimed at promoting engagement across entrenched boundaries,” Martin said. Representatives from faculty governance groups continue to discuss the athletics report.

“Ultimately, we all need to own the responsibility that we have to each other,” Martin wrote.

NAACP President Cornell Brooks Speaks on Activism Kathleen Maeder ’20 Staff Writer

Cornell Williams Brooks, president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), spoke to members of the college community in Johnson Chapel on Friday, March 24.

In his talk, titled “A Woke Democracy,” Brooks discussed contemporary challenges that marginalized groups faced and the need for a multigenerational social justice movement. The event was free and open to the public, and Brooks’ talk was followed by a brief Q&A session.

President Biddy Martin, who introduced Brooks at the talk, wrote in an email interview that she met Brooks and his wife after she gave a talk at Admitted Students Weekend two years ago. After exchanging messages about leadership in the past year, she asked him to speak at Amherst “because of the importance of his position, the reach of his vision and his strong leadership as President and CEO of the NAACP, one of the nation’s oldest civil rights organizations,” she said.

Brooks began by thanking the college’s Black Student Union and members of the NAACP for their work, as well as his wife and two sons for their support.

“We find ourselves tonight as a community [of] students and faculty, as a community of citizens and those who aspire to be citizens, at an anguishing hour of our democracy,” said Brooks. “This is a moment in our democracy in which many are trembling in fear, having survived a presidential campaign in which we saw racism routinized, antisemitism normalized, Islamophobia deexceptionalized and misogyny mainstreamed.”

Brooks cited progress made by activists, particularly young activists, as a reason to be optimistic for the future of the social justice movement. He focused on the advances in movements surrounding criminal justice reform and voting rights.

“In the wake of Trayvon Martin’s death, the Black Lives Matter movement was born with a hashtag and a visceral commitment to reform, to justice, and predicated with an affection and a love for blackness — not to the exclusion of any other hue or heritage, but with an understanding that

unless you love yourself, you are ill-positioned to love anyone else,” said Brooks.

“We’ve seen, in the context of criminal justice reform, literally an army of activists who are calling for us to engage in a reform and revolutionary project in the midst of our democracy, in the midst of our jails [and] in the midst of our prisons,” said Brooks. Young black men, he added, are 21 times more likely to die from police brutality than young white men.

On voting rights, Brooks discussed Shelby v.

Holder, a 2013 Supreme Court case that he said allowed for widespread voter disenfranchisement.

The case dismantled part of the Voting Rights Act and allowed nine states to make changes to their voting laws without prior federal approval, according to a 2013 New York Times article. He mentioned specific cases in Texas and North Carolina where student activists worked to oppose discriminatory voting laws.

“There’s some … who say, well, we still have voter suppression, we still have racial profiling, we still have police misconduct,” Brooks said. “But may I remind you that in the course of this presi-

dential campaign the NAACP secured nine victories against voter suppression in 10 months. May I remind you that the NAACP marched in Ferguson from the home of Mike Brown to the home of the governor, and we got passed a law capping municipal fines … That’s advocacy.”

Brooks praised activists’ efforts in New Jersey and elsewhere in supporting “ban the box” legislation and bail reform to protect the rights of individuals with criminal records and noted that students played a significant role in these campaigns.

“This is a moment in which we should be encouraged and inspired and believe in young activists,” Brooks said. “We cannot tut-tut and cluck our tongues on the sidelines of history. Why? Because we are mindful of an elder statesman by the name of John Lewis who sat down in the well of the House of Representatives in an act of civil disobedience. But we remember that the elder statesman John Lewis began as a 19-year-old firebrand.”

Following Brooks’ talk, attendees asked him questions that ranged in topic from practical ways to get involved in social justice movements to holding the Amherst administration accountable.

State of the College Address Aims to Increase Transparency Continued from Page 1 “The Amherst administration has the best intentions and actively works to create meaningful and positive changes for students,” Blake said.

“Unfortunately, not enough is done to reach out to students to make them a part of the decisionmaking process.”

Blake encouraged the administration to go beyond soliciting student feedback and include students in oversight of projects on campus. Blake applauded the administration for its swift reversal of the gender-based housing policy and said that the incident provides evidence that listening to students’ concerns is important for the school.

After Blake concluded her talk, Martin gave her speech, beginning by discussing why she took the position of college president nine years ago.

One reason, she said, was “the diversity that Amherst had achieved in its student body.”

Martin said that she knew Amherst would challenge her. She described her upbringing as a first-generation student in rural Virginia, where women were not encouraged to pursue higher education. Attending the College of William and Mary gave Martin some insight into how it felt to attend a school with a different environment and expectations than her hometown, she said.

Like Blake, Martin also agreed that certain administrative changes were taking place slowly, but she said that the pace was not a detriment to the college but a safeguard against carelessness. “[Institutions] move slowly in part because the democratic process requires shared decisionmaking ... and checks and balances in the system so that when any constituency or group or

individual … demands this or that thing, it can’t simply be offered without consultation, without deliberation, without the weighting off trade offs [and] without considering the limits of resources,” Martin said.

However, the administration has sometimes made decisions it is not prepared for, Martin said, such as admitting women to the college in 1975.

“If Amherst had waited until it knew it was fully prepared to and anticipated all the needs that had to be met, it probably never would have done the right thing, or it would have done the right thing at a much later point,” she said.

Martin concluded with a list of positive changes in Amherst this year. The Office of Admission received a record number of visitors and applications, specifically international applications and applicants who are students of color. Addition-

ally, the college has undergone extensive hiring, especially of new faculty members of color. She highlighted innovative learning initiatives, such as grants for faculty to take students on travel opportunities.

The campus is also decreasing its environmental footprint with the Greenway dormitories and new science center set to open in fall 2018, which Martin added will provide improved spaces for scientific learning and student gatherings.

“There are a lot of people on campus who have either criticize[d] the administration’s efficiency and inclusivity or simply have questions about its intentions,” said Abby Mesfin ‘20, who attended the address. “The State of the College Address gave students the perfect opportunity to ask those burning questions and allowed faculty to hear and address the real concerns of the students.”

Former MSNBC Host Gives Talk on Politics of Race and Gender Jacob Gendelman ’20 Staff Writer Wake Forest University professor and former MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry presented a talk titled “Race, Gender and the Politics of Knowledge: Campus, Community, Congress” in Johnson Chapel on Monday, March 26.

Harris-Perry is also the Maya Angelou Presidential Scholar, Executive Director of the Pro Humanitate Center and Founding Director of the Anna Julia Cooper Center at Wake Forest University. She hosted “Melissa Harris-Perry,” a current affairs and political commentary television program, on MSNBC from 2012 to 2016. HarrisPerry has written two books and is now an editorat-large at lifestyle and fashion magazine Elle.

Harris-Perry spoke about the low value placed

on women of color on campuses, in communities and in congress. She defined campus as the “space where we produce knowledge, but in the broadest sense,” community as “the spaces of ordinary discourse or everyday knowledge — common sense” and congress as “formal structures of power and government.” In these spaces, she said, “knowledge of race and gender is devalued, and … women of color are absent.”

According to Harris-Perry, women cannot improve their circumstances by hard work alone when they earn less than men, especially in highpaying jobs. She argued that women earn less because of assumptions about their knowledge.

“Our presumptions about what makes you strong, the value of what you know and how you know it [and] the claims you make on truth are similarly situated in ways that devalue women’s knowledge

and the knowledge of women of color,” she said.

Harris-Perry also focused on violence against women of color in the U.S. While the history of violence against men of color is well-documented, Harris-Perry said that the same was not true of violence against women of color.

“When black women[’s] vulnerability appears … we don’t have a set of stories onto which to map it,” she said, citing the recent string of missing teenage girls in Washington D.C. as an example. A lack of knowledge and documented history prevented the police from effectively responding, she said.

Harris-Perry then spoke about women of color in congress. According to Harris-Perry, black women voted for former president Barack Obama in previous elections with extremely high turnout rates. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton had

expected black women to do the same for her this past election, according to Harris-Perry, but did not make significant efforts to show that she had black women’s interests in mind.

“If anybody had bothered to think about America from the perspective of black women’s knowledge, it would have been very easy to see how Trump wasn’t really all that motivating [for black women voters],” she said. She added that the media did not provide much coverage of issues impacting black women, such as the trial of Daniel Holtzclaw, an officer accused of sexually assaulting black women.

A Q&A session followed her talk. To one student who asked about making change at Amherst, Harris-Perry said new scholars studying different issues in numerous fields would need to join the college as professors for real change to take place.

Opinion

THE AMHERST

STUDENT

On Not Knowing

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

Editorial Walking through the stacks of Frost Library reminds us of the overwhelming volume of published material in the world.

No matter how many classes we take, there are always more books we could read, more textbooks from which we can learn and more people to whom we can listen. There is so much we will not know simply because of limited time. However, the feeling of not knowing enough should not become a state of hopeless stagnation. To move forward, to move past the “not knowing,” the next immediate question we should ask ourselves is: How do we think about and reconcile the fact of our limits?

After recognizing the limits of learning, we need to think about how to voice this admission productively. Even if we internally acknowledge our own limits, it can be easy to become defensive on the outside — in the classroom, for instance, pretending you recognize the author or theory that someone is referencing for the sake of your pride. What does it look like to say “I don’t know” to the outside world without hesitation? This place, our college, should be a place which teaches us to say “I don’t know” inflected with curiosity. The college should instruct us how to be genuinely open in the face of not knowing. This does not mean celebrating our ignorance, but rather acknowledging it in order to move beyond it.

In order to arrive at such a culture for our institution, we should be able to look to our professors as role models.

Our faculty are some of the most knowledgeable people on this campus, and therefore should also be the most able and willing to admit their shortcomings and ignorances. The best professors here do just that — or, put more broadly, they are consistently flexible and never believe they have reached a point of perfection. They listen and hear how a class responds to material, and they react and teach differently depending on the group, because they know that knowledge and classrooms

are not built of cold stone but are at their best when constantly reimagined. Of course, there are certainly professors who do not reflect this willingness to reimagine curriculum and who are unwilling to rethink what work feels most urgent in our new political climate (and our political climate does demand a reorientation from every single person, regardless of one’s politics).

In broader terms, the college itself needs to openly embrace its own malleable quality. As a college, we should not fixate on a certain old image of the institution. Instead, we must acknowledge how any object should be able to change over time. This week, the college announced its first official mascot: the Mammoth. Alumni and students were and are invested in the selection process — some are happy with the decision, and others less so. But regardless of how you feel about our mascot, the change is quite radical. It reflects the resolution of an extremely drawn-out process and stands as an example of the triumph of activism against a stubborn and outdated vision. The change reflects students’ perseverance and selfassuredness. After all, those who advocated for some kind of change must have been the most secure in themselves and in their imagination of the institution — so secure they were willing to submit to the uncertainty of change and newness.

As we learn to destabilize our pride and to admit to “not knowing,” the limits of our knowledge will expand. The more our pool of knowledge expands, the more dynamic the world will become. A single word or ideal can no longer encompass a person in their entirety, because ascribing to someone a simple description deprives them of their humanity. People and their relations have no edges. They have uncertain, nebulous infinities that wouldn’t exist in a society that only values certainty.

If I May: The Complexity of Mascots Jake May ’19 Columnist On Monday, Amherst College officially (and finally) announced its first-ever official mascot: the Mammoths. This change comes on the heels of the student body’s majority decision to reject the college’s long-time unofficial mascot, the Lord Jeff, because of Lord Jeffrey Amherst’s terrible and inhumane treatment of Native Americans. However, in terms of national attention, the controversy over the Lord Jeff is small potatoes compared to the argument over the Washington D.C. football team’s name.

You’ll notice that I did not even use the word that is Washington D.C.’s nickname.

In my daily life — where, admittedly, discussion of the D.C. football team comes up relatively infrequently — I try not to use the name of the team. However, for the purposes of this article, it is necessary to use the word.

The Washington D.C. football team’s name

is the Redskins. Their logo is a caricature of a Native American man with dark burgundy skin.

Of course, this team name is offensive and incredibly problematic. First of all, the word “redskin” is literally a racial slur used to describe Native Americans. When we would discuss this at home, my dad would always make the point that if Matt Lauer described a group of Native Americans as “redskins” during a segment on the “Today Show,” he should and would likely be suspended and perhaps lose his job. The fact that a word that is incredibly inappropriate to say in conversation is the nickname of one of the most popular NFL franchises is preposterous. It seems like an obvious decision to change it and, much like the Lord Jeff, it seems like it should have been changed long ago.

Of course, there is a great deal of backlash against changing the mascot. Many fans of the team do not want to get rid of the “Redskins” moniker, claiming that it is not meant as an

insult but rather as a celebration of Native American culture. Furthermore, many fans balk at the idea of removing a symbol that has defined an important part of Washington D.C.’s culture. There is a part of me that understands these sentiments. It is true that the tradition associated with a beloved team’s name can feel important and necessary to preserve. But I also believe that many fans of Washington’s team both lack and don’t care to achieve an understanding of the plight of Native Americans in this country, and simply think of the “Redskin” as an abstract mascot.

This ignorance has gone on for long enough. It is clear that the team’s owner, Daniel Snyder, is not going to change the team’s name. So, I think it is time for the powers that be — the NFL’s administration — to take matters into their own hands and declare that they will no longer allow for a blatantly offensive name to represent one of their marquee franchises. It’s time for Washington D.C.’s football team to find a new name.

Residential Life Doesn’t Care About You Rachel Boyette ’17 Contributing Writer If you are a student, you probably read the title and thought, “Obviously — what else is new?” This might stem from month-long unanswered emails from staff (my personal streak is 7 months), lack of housing accommodations for students, or recent controversies.

What’s new is an opportunity to change Residential Life from a program that enforces unasked-for, arbitrary and harmful policies into a department that actually serves its students.

I’ll start with an anecdote. At the end of my first year as a Resident Counselor (RC) in 2015, all five of the Area Coordinators (ACs) — who supervise RCs — quit, forcing Amherst to hire

a completely new staff in less than three months.

With three out of five positions filled and only a couple of weeks’ notice, the new and understaffed ACs were forced to create the 1½-week-long RC training schedule, assign freshman housing and handle student move-in as well as other miscellaneous residential life duties, none of which they had done before. During one of the training sessions in August, an AC approached me and asked, “Be honest, how much of a shit-show is this?”

“It’s kind of bad,” I answered. That was putting it nicely, but I knew it wasn’t the ACs’ fault. As I was told, they only had a week to plan and organize the RC training, which they had never been a part of, with little to no guidance from the Associate Director of Residential Life, Corry Colonna, who gave them that responsibility. This disorgani-

zation and frantic game of catch-up seems to be what Residential Life is best known for these days.

The failure to secure long-term employees has created a culture within Residential Life that is willfully ignorant of students’ needs. This became painfully obvious this past semester, when a new policy, referred to within this article as the “75/25 policy,” was announced. For those unaware of the controversy, this policy aimed to restrict 75 percent of dorm rooms as single gender, leaving only 25 percent for Amherst students who do not with to choose a room according to their birth sex. What’s more, the 25 percent would be open to anyone to take, nonconforming gender identity or not.

Continued on Page 5

Editors-in-Chief Drew Kiley Jingwen Zhang Executive Advisers Lauren Tuiskula Sophie Murguia Managing News Shawna Chen, Isabel Tessier Managing Opinion Kelly Chian, Spencer Quong Managing Arts and Living Julia Pretsfelder, Paola Garcia-Prieto Managing Sports Nathaniel Quigley, Julia Turner Managing Design Justin Barry S TA F F Head Publishers Tia Robinson, Emily Ratte Head Marketer Sophie Currin Design Editors Zehra Madhavan, Isabel Park, Chloe Tausk, Sivian Yu

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The Amherst Student • April 5, 2017

Opinion

5

A Critique of Our Residential Life System Continued from Page 4 To be clear, this policy stemmed from the failure of a $60,000 online program Residential Life purchased last year to make room draw less stressful. Apparently, the program was unable to assign gender ratios to floors, so Residential Life’s answer was to manually designate rooms as either male or female, leading to the “75/25 policy.”

This policy was introduced without any input from students and was set to be enforced immediately without any prior notice. It was overturned when Amherst students bombarded administrators’ email accounts.

Who thought such a harmful policy would be a good idea? Why was it implemented without the expressed consent of students? Why did it take the student body’s vehement protests for the administration to acknowledge that we might have an opinion on the policies that directly impact our well-being and comfort?

Well, it boils down to incompetence and precedent. This isn’t the first time Residential Life has willfully ignored students’ needs or desires when enforcing a policy, which no one asked for, thus creating more problems than we had to begin with.

Perhaps you remember “Neighborhoods,” the 2015 policy that failed almost as miserably as the “75/25 policy.” The Neighborhoods project, in brief, was a policy that limited students’ housing options to three or four buildings, depending on the region of campus housing to which they were involuntarily assigned freshmen year.

This is yet another creation from Residential Life produced without any expressed consent or even acknowledgement of student’s opinions. This policy was announced so late into the second semester with such short notice that perhaps Residential Life thought it would get away with it. The program was copied from Notre Dame, the current residential life director’s alma mater, in hopes of facilitating community.

Anyone who knows the difference between large research schools and small private liberal arts colleges could tell you why this policy might work at a school like Notre Dame who has over 12,000 total students enrolled, but would fail at Amherst College, who has a total enrollment of 1,792 students. The small number of students and limited choices for housing would make this program excessive and confining, something the director would have known if he asked for students’ input.

During a conversation with the director of residential life about the failure of Neighborhoods, he told me a story about a girl during the school-wide protest breaking into tears about how terrible the policy was. However, he told me that the Neighborhoods proposal was not abolished, but put on hold. He said he hoped to implement Neighborhoods soon, after it was refined and after students had time to warm up to it. This does not sound like someone who has the best interests of students in mind.

What’s perhaps most disturbing is the school’s way of handling student dissent. When the “75/25 policy” was withdrawn, Susanne Coffey, the Chief Student Affairs Officer, sent an email stating, “We recognize and apologize for the impact the proposals described in The Amherst Student have had on our community.” As many students have already pointed out, the “75/25 policy” was not a proposal. It was introduced as a policy to be implemented during the current round of room draw.

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, this is classic gaslighting. In other words, this apology is a manipulative tactic to make the “75/25 policy” appear less damaging than what it had the potential to be, an attempt for administration to save face when it was called out. These manipulative tactics are rampant in Residential Life. Ask your

RCs the last time they ever felt like Residential Life was giving them the full story on any of their secretive “proposals” or goals for the future. The answer will be, “Never.”

Residential Life’s timeline in announcing changes to policy indicates another example in which the office has intentionally used manipulation as a strategy to avoid student protest. There is a disturbing pattern of announcing policies with such little time in advance that students feel it is hopeless to protest, as we witnessed with the “33/33/33 policy” in the Greenway dormitories, which allotted a third of Greenway rooms to each class year, except freshmen. There is no waiting period soliciting student input after a policy is announced. Rather, policies are kept under the table until cleared by higher-ups and are effective immediately. Unsuspecting students are expected to accept these rushed and undesirable policies because Residential Life said so.

To illustrate a real-time example of this process, I’ll let you all in on another one of these secret “proposals,” which has yet to be announced.

Someone who worked with Residential Life claims that the current director of residential life is planning to change the funding process for the Zu (Humphries House). Apparently, the director, who is resigning after this year, plans on adjusting the food budgeting system at the Zu, whose residents cook their own meals. Currently, if the Zu is under their allotted food budget, residents receive the difference at the end of the year in the form of checks. However, the director wants to hold the difference from the Zu and have that money go back into the college.

Well, I can tell you what’s going to happen with such a policy: you’re going to further divide the Zu from the rest of Amherst College, especially from the administration, and the Zu will make it a point never to go under their food budget again, defeating the policy’s assumed purpose of saving money. It really doesn’t take a genius to understand the negative consequences. Now, this change in policy has yet to be announced, which means that Residential Life is yet again playing the game of “wait until it’s too late to complain,” or someone has actually grown the gonads to tell Residential Life that it’s a bad idea and it can’t just go and do whatever it wants without being held accountable. My bet is on the former.

To reiterate, these are not the only examples of Residential Life flexing its muscles and changing student policies to fit their own agenda. But instead of elaborating on all of them, I will give the rest of the examples in a bulleted list.

• The dispersion of a sub-free house on the First-Year Quad by dividing sub-free into floors and essentially destroying a completely sub-free environment for freshmen.

• An increase of single-sex housing on the First-Year Quad without an increase in demand, and in some cases, placing freshmen with explicit disinterest in single-sex housing into these floors.

• Moving the French House to Wieland.

• Creation of Greenway dorms and their layout.

• Destruction of “The Socials” and “The Trailers,” especially with the lack of available housing, forcing some students to reside off campus in Fall 2016.

• Exploitation of students by forcing students to purchase a meal-plan and on-campus housing.

This is an issue that needs to change, and I will be working on an article to bring more attention to possible solutions.

Why were these changes enforced with no demand, let alone without asking what students want? The only reason given to me when I asked was that the director of residential life wanted it that way. Perhaps these changes seem small, even inconsequential, but I argue that they’re much more than that. The changes are precedent that

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residential life can change anything for any reason without any input from students, and the impacts of this become far more severe when these decisions border on discrimination. Besides, shouldn’t the students have a say in our living conditions and accommodation on campus, considering these policies directly impact, and only impact, us?

It’s no coincidence. Let’s entertain the notion that all of these impromptu and unasked-for changes have been beneficial and that the majority of students would have wanted them anyway.

Why not present the policies as proposals first then? What is the harm in asking the student body, the only ones affected by these changes, whether they desire these changes?

The fact that Residential Life does not ask is not only disappointing but also infantilizing.

Either we are the responsible young adults that Amherst touts us to be, or we are so irresponsible and reckless that the college cannot even trust us to tell it what would make us happy. It cannot be both ways: either treat us according to the standard you claim to hold us to, or acknowledge that your practices restrict student input, thus damaging morale and creating an antagonistic divide between students and administration.

An alum who graduated a year ago gave me their take. Because of the high turnover rate, we have ACs wanting to make their mark without knowing the needs of the student body. The high turnover rate is a result of understaffed ACs being overworked and undercompensated. In the past three years, seven ACs have resigned from their position, three of whom resigned after working for only a semester. That’s an average of 2.3 ACs who quit every year in a position that requires five total employees. Residential Life has failed to fill all five AC positions at any given time since I was an RC starting in 2014, and perhaps longer.

These numbers are alarming, and this situation needs to be addressed by the administration.

There need to be additional incentives for ACs to stay in their position for at least three- to four-year increments so that they can develop an understanding of student needs and create policies that help, rather than hinder, students.

This isn’t the only change that needs to occur.

Currently, there is no system of accountability to keep Residential Life in check. If there was a system in place that allowed students to present feedback on potential policies, administrators could no longer feign ignorance about students’ wants or needs. Policies such as “75/25” and Neighborhoods are only scrapped because they are egregious enough to provoke campus-wide protests or other strong reactions from students.

This doesn’t mean students are satisfied with the other changes Residential Life enforces. It would not be difficult to set up a process in which the office emails all students about policy proposals and allows students to voice their approval or dissent.

Such measures would actually help Residential Life avoid controversies like the “75/25 policy” and foster a better relationship between students and the administration. I truly believe that if the “33/33/33 policy” were left to a vote, it would have passed. Instead, Residential Life didn’t take the chance because it doesn’t care about incorporating student input when it comes to enforcing policies that directly impact the student body. The students are the ones left to suffer.

There is hope, however. The current director of residential life is resigning, meaning that the position will need to be filled. Students of Amherst, let your voice be heard, as it seems that the only means in which we will be taken into consideration is when we demand it. When another policy is introduced which we do not ask for, protest. Do not settle for these policies simply because they are executed with such little notice that it seems hopeless to argue. Fill up the spaces in Keefe, in

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Frost and in Converse. Let the members of the administration know that this cannot continue, and I promise you, they will listen. We have already shown it twice in the past two years with Neighborhoods and the “75/25 policy.” If they don’t care to ask us, the students, what we want, then we will tell them, and we will tell them loudly so that they can’t ignore us.

First, we must start by outlining who we need to staff the Residential Life department. To my knowledge, the college has not yet announced any candidates or secured employees to fill the role, so we must tell Residential Life what the student body needs in order to properly represent us. We need someone who has a firm understanding of the dynamics in small, private liberal art colleges.

The soon-to-be-former director of residential life came from Notre Dame and tried treating Amherst College as though it were no different and failed miserably. We need someone who can understand the unique complexities of our school and who will target issues that students care about.

Secondly, we need a director who will be devoted to improving the department and promote employee benefits to make positions more than a three-month-long stepping-stone.

Thirdly, and in my opinion most importantly, we need a director who will create a direct line of communication between students and Residential Life when it comes to policy decisions. The school devotes plenty of effort to analyzing statistics about varsity athletes, happiness on campus and student policy violations. Does the school consider Residential Life so unimportant that it doesn’t care to ask us our view of it? I repeat that Amherst boasts to have some of the greatest young minds within its classrooms. We are the ones who continue to raise the standards of Amherst College and add to its achievements. Why, then, are we not trusted enough to add our input when it comes to issues concerning residential life?

The students are the ones who need to demand these changes. We need to ask for meetings with candidates for the position of residential life director and show up. I have been to several hiring meetings between students and administrators, and there are rarely more than two students present. These meetings are important and not difficult for students to commit to. Furthermore, we need to be more active in reaching out to the employees who are paid to represent our well-being.

Email your opinions and the demand for a competent director of residential life to the following people, in order of position and relevance: • Amherst trustees • President of Amherst College • Dean of the faculty • Chief student affairs officer When future housing and residential life policies are implemented without student input, email the following to express your opinion, in order of position: • Amherst trustees • Chief student affairs officer • Associate director of residential life • Assistant director of housing • Your area coordinator (AC) This is our duty as students. I remind you all of the Thomas Jefferson quote: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

In conclusion, I will say this plainly: the largest influence of day-to-day student happiness at Amherst is Residential Life, and Residential Life has repeatedly shown its incompetence in representing the needs and desires of students. The school needs to create accountability within Residential Life and give students a choice in the policies that directly impact us. The next time another $60,000 worth of funding towards Residential Life is put on the table, it should be centered around resolving this issue, not an online program that employees don’t even know how to use.

If you want to write for us, email squong18@amherst.edu or kchian20@amherst.edu

Arts&Living

Photo courtesy of Amherst Theatre and Dance

Lauren Horn ’17 applied her studies in psychology by interviewing the dancers performing in her thesis, which incorporates music, sound and text.

Horn ’17 Forges the Connection between Dance and Identity Julia Pretsfelder ’18 Managing Arts & Living Editor Q: How did you start dancing and come to where you are now?

A: I started dancing at 3 and was a tap dancer and an African dancer at a center for arts of the African diaspora. And I just kept on tapping up to the level that they said if I were to take any more classes I should start doing modern and jazz. So I kept tumbling into dance and trying different genres and never really stopped.

Q: You’re also a psychology major. How do you think psychology and theater and dance work together as disciplines?

A: Dance and psych allow for a mind and body connection. The way people think affects how I choreograph dances. I’m really interested in identity, which I explore in my thesis, and psychology also gives me other ways to consider that. I was in a psych class the other day, and we were talking about group think, and that made me really excited because I thought — this is what I’m trying to represent in one of my dances!

Q: How does it feel to cast and direct your peers in a piece you have written? Does it come naturally, or is it uncomfortable? What skills do you think it requires?

A: It’s so weird directing your peers. It takes time to get used to, of course. You think, “Aw man, I have to keep them safe.” I have to create a space where they feel comfortable and ready to share.

I can’t make a piece about identity without focusing on the people in the piece. In most of the work, I interview and ask them questions like, “What is a white space to you? What does a black space mean to you?” Then I use their answers to make them solos, so their responses make the text.

respond to what they said. I like working subconsciously, so I just read their responses over a lot, and then I arrived at what I wanted to do.

Q: How did you choose the music?

A: That’s a funny question. I don’t want to spoil it. In life, if I like this song, I want to dance to it, so for one piece I just did that. Then for another piece I wanted to switch it up and have people have fun.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I am working with Sam Croff ’18 to compose a piece. We talked about chaos, and it’s an entity that we’re still forming.

The last piece, it wasn’t just me picking music that I liked. I wanted to play up these really cool character shifts. I wanted to pick songs because of the contexts in which they were made. We’re trying to go to different spaces and different time periods. What was commercial while this song [was] being made, and what emotion goes into it?

Q: What is it like to study dance in an academic setting? What do you think is the main difference between dancing recreationally and as an art form?

A: That’s a big question. Dance in a professional

or academic setting is more codified within more distinct genres of dance. Social dance is popular dance, so you don’t need to be trained to do popular dance. It comes out of your culture. The culture then influences professional dancers. Popular dance can be more trendy, like some kids came up with the Nae Nae, and it caught on. With professional dance, you’re taught from a young age.

There tends to be more of a wall between dance and music in terms of accessibility. Music can be easily consumed, but with dance you have to participate in it. People get weird about bodies, and they feel like they’re not doing something right.

Q: What role do you think dance plays at Amherst? Do you think there’s a relationship between dance and cultural appropriation on college campuses?

A: Dance is accessible, but a lot of people at this school think it’s inaccessible. I never go there and think everyone sucks at dancing. I like watching people dance because it’s natural, and it’s the way people move and have fun. Dance plays out in that venue … like parties [with] people letting loose or moving. I think people don’t understand dance on a stage because they think they’re watch-

ing it incorrectly. You just need to sit back, watch it and think about the way it makes you feel. You wouldn’t look at abstract art and think it’s going to give you one answer.

I think it devalues the cultures where the dances come from. A lot of dance history involves cultural appropriation, teaching dances “of the orient,” but I don’t really think about cultural appropriation at a party. Go up and have fun if it’s a popular dance in America. What does it mean to dance like a black woman? I don’t think there’s a problem until the way the movements are interpreted based on the body. When a white girl starts twerking, everyone thinks it’s super cool, but when a black girl does it, it’s expected or ignored or ridiculed.

Q: What do you think we can do to have more art at Amherst?

A: That’s actually my job next year. I’m the Arts at Amherst Coordinator, so I’ll be doing that. A lot of having more art at Amherst has to do with accessibility and availability. Sometimes there isn’t enough publicity, especially when faculty bring in really cool people. I also think there should be different communities of art coming together where we collaborate and make fun stuff.

Q: How did you make your thesis an interdisciplinary combination of “music, text, movement and sound”?

A: I’ve been interested in text for a while now.

My advisor is Wendy Woodson, and Paul Matteson is one of my mentors, and they both work with text. I also like including interviews because you get to know people a lot with talking, and I think the best is when I talk and move at the same time. So for the auditions for my piece, I had the dancers do movement and text improvisations. I’d get them to respond with their bodies to a word.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do for my thesis, so I interviewed them because I also wanted to Photo courtesy of Amherst Theatre and Dance

The Amherst Student • April 5, 2017

Arts & Living 7

Mead Museum Gets into the Trickster Spirit with “Fool Mead Once”

Photo courtesy of Mead Art Museum Instagram

Photo courtesy of Murray Guy Gallery

The Mead Art Museum responded to the dynamic spirit of April Fool’s Day in their multimedia installation of Ezawa’s work, which was inspired by an art heist.

Mark Simonitis ’19 Staff Writer The Mead Art Museum held their Community Day for the Spring Semester, called “Fool Mead Once” on April 1, 2017. After entering the Mead that afternoon, I was immediately handed a miniature magnifying glass and a booklet advertising a scavenger hunt being held for that day.

There were children constructing flipbooks and a few signs pointing me in the direction of the highlighted exhibits, Kota Ezawa’s “The Garden Revisited,” along with a series of short animated films dating back to the beginning of the 20th century.

After viewing Ezawa’s works and watching an animated dinosaur prance around in a black and white silent film, I sat down to speak with Keely Sarr, Assistant Museum Educator at the Mead Museum and the primary architect of this event.

Q: Could you give us a brief overview over the “Fool Mead Once” event?

A: “Fool Mead Once” is our Spring Community Day. We have Community Days once a semester, and these are open to not only the students of Amherst College but also the broader Amherst population. We get families and groups of all ages.

This event in particular was inspired by our cur-

rent special exhibition in the Rotherwas Room — Kota Ezawa’s “The Garden Revisited.” Because Ezawa plays around with animation, light boxes, cartooning and several other tricks needed to create something like that, we thought that in the April Fool’s Day Spirit, we would hold an event to celebrate the different tricks that artists can pull on us.

Q: What exactly do you mean when you say “the April Fool’s Day Spirit”? Furthermore, how does that spirit relate to the exhibits being highlighted?

A: Ever since the early 1900’s, animators have been using various tricks and illusions to create visual effects on screen, even before the dawn of computer animation or CGI. While everyone else may be pulling pranks on each other today, we decided to focus on the tricks that animators pull on us from the short films created in the 1910’s to Kota Ezawa’s light boxes in 2017.

Q: Could you please describe the Ezawa exhibit’s background and what it entails?

A: On March 18, 1990, two thieves posing as police officers stole 13 artworks estimated at $500 million from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Ezawa has recreated these sto-

len artworks in the form of these “light boxes” that you can see hanging around the Rotherwas Room. These images are not exact copies of the works, but instead serve as memorials to the works that were stolen and have not yet been recovered. Some of the activities we have today are very much inspired by that, such as showing people how to make their very own lightboxes using cupcake boxes, tea lights and craft paper. We are also teaching people how to make flipbooks and other crafts related to the Gardner Museum.

The Ezawa exhibit is our second in a new series of contemporary installations in our Historic Rotherwas Room. While the room itself dates all the way back to the 17th century, starting last fall our director, David Little, has sourced a contemporary artist to showcase in that space every semester, bringing entirely new and modern works into this historical space.

Q: What kinds of activities are you putting on for the general Amherst community during “Fool Mead Once”?

A: We have created a scavenger hunt booklet that displays pictures of the original works stolen form the Gardener Museum. We ask visitors to look very closely as they explore Ezawa’s lightboxes and try to see if they can spot the alterations he

made in recreating them. Guests love finding the differences that Ezawa intentionally left in these lightboxes.

Q: Do you have any upcoming events that you want the Amherst community to know about?

A: We do not plan on having any more Community Days for the rest of the semester, but we will have a few over the course of the summer, open to anyone who is around at the time. We also plan on having several family workshops, as we tend to do a little bit more once school is out. Next fall, we will have plenty more community events and student events ready to go, and they will be open to all members of the community.

Q: Do you have any final thoughts or suggestions to give to the Amherst community?

A: Check out the Ezawa exhibit while you still have the chance, as it will only be here until around the middle of summer. If you want to see this incredibly interesting juxtaposition between electric lightboxes and classic 17th century painting, you should come on down to the Rotherwas Room. The exhibit has been receiving plenty of national attention, so make sure not to miss this great opportunity to see an exciting moment in art history!

Quicksilver Baroque Ensemble Performs for Stifled Audience

Photo courtesy of quicksilverbaroque.com

The New York Times hails the Quicksilver Baroque Enesemble, who play unconventional or old fashioned instruments, as rockstars of early music.

Alina Burke ’18 Staff Writer On Saturday night, during the performance by the Quicksilver Baroque Ensemble, I realized just how strange the modern attitude towards classical music is. I use classical in the sense that it is old and instrumental non-pop music. The genre is technically baroque rather than classical. Although it is stated in the programs that the members of Quicksilver are considered “rock stars within the early music scene,” the performance felt especially formal, though I suspect this was no fault of the performers. I sat in the front row and experienced an anxious girl’s worst nightmare. In the middle of a six-movement

piece, when the music got whispery soft and delicately beautiful, I had to cough. At that moment, coughing seemed like the most disrespectful thing I could ever do during this concert, which I was enjoying immensely. The more I thought about it, the harder it was to hold in the cough until tears were streaming down my face and I felt like I was about to explode. It felt like a lifetime passed before the applause came and I could finally cough my lungs out. Thinking over it now, it seems strange to me that this environment would have made me feel so uncomfortable doing such a normal thing. Part of it is my anxiety, but I think it’s worth looking at the reason why classical concerts feel formal enough to provoke physical discomfort. Some would rather avoid going to that

sort of event at all simply because the air can be so stuffy and rigid. But it doesn’t have to be. Quicksilver put on a wonderful concert that was objectively cool and unique, so it must be pressure from other audience members or society in general that has created this precedent for propriety-driven apprehension in younger audience members.

Although Baroque music is a niche subject, the members of Quicksilver come from different musical backgrounds, and as far away as the 17th century might seem, it is not so far away as to be completely un-relatable for a modern audience.

The spectacle of the performance in itself was interesting to see. The stage was set with a beautiful harpsichord with gold accents and a small portable organ with intricate carvings in the wood.

Both the harpsichord and the organ were played by the multi-talented Avi Stein. By far the most interesting thing on stage was the theorbo played

by Charles Weaver. A theorbo is like a lute with an absurdly long neck. The whole instrument is about six feet long, so watching someone play something so large is fascinating. Weaver played with a wonderful expression, especially in a piece

by Marin Marais where he communicated a raw sadness to the audience in a duet that he played with David Morris, who was on viola da gamba.

The two instruments complemented each other and almost melted into one another. It was nice to get the experience of hearing different mixes of the instruments rather than just hearing everyone play the entire time. Viola da gamba looks a lot like a cello, but is older and tweaked a little. The other two players were Robert Mealy and Julie Andrijeski, both on violin. The violins were much like modern violins, except for the size of the bows. The bows they used were smaller and bet-

ter suited to the agility and quick ornamentation of Baroque music rather than the long, smooth notes of more modern classical music.

The players have different musical backgrounds and interests aside from the baroque.

Perhaps most interestingly for college-aged readers, David Morris played on the album “Have One on Me” by hipster folk singer and harpist, Joanna Newsom. These baroque instruments and styles are quite translatable to a modern setting, seeing as Newsom’s album came out in 2010.

Quicksilver’s repertoire was focused on showing the versatility of Baroque music between countries as well as bringing historical imaginings to life. It felt as if we had traveled back in time to some fancy court, but at the same time, the music was both evocative and stirring. The concert contained music from English and French artists, and the two were clearly in conversation with one another. Overall it was an informative and fascinating concert, and I do not mean to sound pretentious or old, but it is a bit of a shame that younger people do not feel comfortable attending concerts like this. Indeed, it’s a shame that I felt the environment was stifling enough that I would not let myself cough, and I attribute that to a degree of pretentiousness that is attached to old music. The music is being performed on a college campus, and it’s there to be appreciated. It should be okay to cough and okay to listen in whatever relaxed way you want. I’m going to make a promise to myself to be more comfortable in my skin next time I go to a similar concert. This air of formality that has long been attached to classical concerts is neither practical nor pleasant, and it detracts from possible attendees as well as the audience’s experience.

Arts & Living 8

The Amherst Student • April 5, 2017

NBC’s New Show “This Is Us” Keeps Network Television Alive

Photo courtesy of wired.it

“This Is Us” has a reputation on social media for being a real tear-jerker.

Brandon Medina ’19 Staff Writer With streaming services at peak popularity, binge-watching has become the primary way most Americans consume media, and thus network television has begun a steady decline. Networks such as ABC, CBS and NBC have grown concerned for their futures as Netflix and Hulu increase their amount of original content every year. With the exception of networks such as the CW and Fox, networks are eager for a steady supply of tent-pole shows guaranteed to have viewers tune in weekly. NBC may have found that tentpole with their new family drama “This Is Us,” which just wrapped its first season.

“This is Us” drew an average of 10 million viewers in its first season. The show follows the lives of a large, colorful family through two time periods. The first timeline follows Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and Rebecca (Mandy Moore), a white middle-class couple, in the 1980s as they navigate raising their three children; Kevin, Kate and Randall their adopted black son. The second timeline follows Kevin (Justin Hartley), Kate (Chrissy Metz) and Randall (Emmy-winner Sterling K. Brown) in the present day, each of who has gone on a wildly different path. Kevin tries to make it as a respected actor after quitting his long-running lead role on a mediocre sitcom, Kate navigates a relationship with a guy she meets at a weight-loss support group and Randall finds and connects with his biological father William (Ron Cephas

Jones), who abandoned him as an infant. As the storylines begin to mesh with each other, we learn more about each character’s personal lives, values and inner demons.

I did not think much of “This Is Us” when I first caught a glimpse of it scrolling through channels one day. In fact, I initially thought that I was just watching a commercial because of the acoustic guitar music, lens flare and overly stationary camerawork over widely smiling actors. I decided to watch the show seriously after my parents and several family friends strongly recommended it.

Upon completion of the first episode, I immediately understood the appeal around my family’s circle. At first, I was quick to dismiss the show’s politics as too vanilla and naïve, but the characters in “This Is Us” are, for the most part, good people.

The siblings’ love for each other is genuine and on constant display, and characters consistently make sacrifices for each other and do the small gestures associated with such affection. If I were to sum up this show in Sparknotes fashion, it is a tale of romantic and familial love through everyday hardship. However, while its general summary can be distilled to a familiar formula, and elements of this formula’s clichés often appear in the show, the summary does not properly encapsulate the show’s ambitions.

“This Is Us” has a lot on its plate — to put it mildly ­— and fortunately, some of it is handled really well. Randall’s relationship with his estranged biological father William is complex and heartwarming, and the show’s writers do a fine job of

developing their relationship organically through the season. It helps that their bond has a sense of urgency, as William is in the final stages of terminal stomach cancer. I found myself touched by their relationship and liking William as a character without forgiving him for the sin of abandoning his son. The show also explores Jack and Rebecca’s marriage and challenges raising their children. Their relationship is also sufficiently believable. I received a genuine sense of how parents cope with the needs of the children dominating their lives and their desire to be free of those burdens, as we see through Rebecca’s part-time hobby as lead singer of a band. However, many elements in the show do not leave much emotional impact or are bogged down in clichés.

A prime example is Kate and Kevin’s storylines.

Kevin, Jack and Rebecca’s biological son is a Hollywood actor in the present-day who recently quit from a one-note role that did not satisfy him creatively. His storyline follows his move to New York City to become a “real, dramatic actor” in theater.

Kevin is, by far, the least dimensional character of the “Big Three” as his challenges mostly revolve around his vanity, insecurity and failed relationships with women. Kevin’s cluelessness toward anything but the enhancement of his own image is played mostly for (poor) comedy, which makes it hard to take his troubles with women seriously, which the show spends so much time covering.

The show also addresses Kevin’s neglect towards Randall during childhood, but the writing is underdeveloped and only carried by Brown’s performance rather than any proper execution of Kevin’s characterization.

Finally, there’s Kate’s plot, which could have been a fantastic story but falls short due to some narrative shortcuts. Kate has lived with morbid obesity since childhood and struggles to see herself in a positive light, especially when comparing herself to her conventionally beautiful mother. She meets another overweight guy at a support group, Toby (Chris Sullivan), with whom she starts a relationship. Kate’s story is inherently more engaging than Kevin’s, and her character more fleshed out, but the writers struggle to find compelling stories beyond the ones that hinge on her relationship with Toby or her self-worth. Chrissy Metz gives a star-making performance, but her story takes many unexpected detours that do not have much dramatic payoff or only serve to rehash certain story beats. Ultimately, both Kate’s and Kevin’s

could not survive on their own without context from the other stories to support them, unlike Randall’s, which is so strong it could almost be self-contained. Most of the emotional labor feels shifted from their specific storyline domains to characters and stories either from the past or having to do with Randall. After this season, I am not confident that Kate and Kevin could successfully carry their own stories for more than a few episodes.

As for the way the show is shot, I am personally not in love with it. The show looks very cheap, especially during the many montages, and the vibe often takes me out of the moment. Halfway through the season, I found myself wondering how much of the show’s budget went toward licensing acoustic guitar ballads when, according to Twitter, I was supposed to be crying. The show revels in close-ups and lens flares, and these work well during emotional moments or dreamlike sequences but can be distracting otherwise.

The strongest aspect of the series is the ensemble. Brown, Jones and Metz are particular highlights, and each manages to give their characters vulnerability and charm without being sentimental. I am personally rooting for Brown to win an Emmy for his performance. Ventimiglia also portrays a strong, warm paternalistic presence as Jack, although at times I felt his character came off a little too saintly. Though the show does have its reasons for this, the cheesiness of Jack’s super-dad persona could get grating. My wishlist for Season 2 is that the woman characters go through more ambitious narrative journeys and are given room to display their acting range. Season 1 was most certainly the season for father figures, for better or worse.

It’s rare to see a network show shoot to success as fast as “This Is Us.” NBC has already renewed it for two more seasons and weekly viewership shows no signs of slowing down. If you enjoy heartwarming family dramas tackling heavy themes and do not mind the clichés and narrative shortcuts that come with the genre, then “This Is Us” may well be your new favorite show. There are serious flaws, ones that are hard for me to ignore, but it feels earnest, and the actors clearly love this show dearly and put a lot of work into making people cry week by week. Although I am intrigued by the concept and entertained enough to pass the time with it weekly, I don’t expect to shed tears anytime soon.

GoldLink’s Style Evolves in Album “At What Cost,” an Ode to D.C. Mya, April George, Brent Faiyaz and Shy Glizzy.

Despite GoldLink’s relative fame, none of the features, besides Wale and KAYTRANADA, are big names themselves. On “At What Cost,” GoldLink gives back to the district, helping unknown but talented artists get mainstream exposure.

GoldLink’s love for D.C. is also apparent in the songs themselves. Over the course of the album, he shouts out the city multiple times.

On “Roll Call,” GoldLink and Mya sing about returning to the streets of the city that raised them. “Roll Call” is also a great example of GoldLink’s innovation on this album. Instead of his usual jazzy sound, this track is backed by a house-sounding beat. Other tracks such as the “Opening Credit,” “Hands On You Knees” and “Meditation” borrow sounds from the district itPhoto courtesy of flickr.com self. “Opening Credit” is an ethereal track. GoldLink’s voice is almost hidden behind rushes and GoldLink, already an established performer through two successful mixtapes, varied his usual sound in his first studio album through layering multiple genres. harsh squeaking noises, reminiscent of metro cars. On “Hands On Your Knees,” Kokayi acts to come out of the DMV, he matches any other as an MC of a D.C. club introducing GoldLink.

Hugh Ford ’20 artist from the area in local pride, making “At The track is accompanied by a prominent surreal Contributing Writer What Cost” one of the most “uniquely D.C.” al- synth noise. On the more relaxed track, “MeditaOn March 24, D.C.-based rapper GoldLink bums to be popularly released. tion,” GoldLink raps about his love for a woman released his debut studio album “At What Cost.”

The cover art immediately hints at GoldLink’s over a drumbeat similar to the beats of street The album follows two singles, “Meditation” and hometown pride. Whereas his previous mixtapes performers. Although GoldLink is in many ways the widely popular “Crew.” The 2015 XXL fresh- featured more abstract art, the cover of “At What a unique artist, his influences also shine through man has also released two moderately success- Cost” displays a heavily stylized depiction of on this album. ful mixtapes, so he has the background to debut GoldLink and two women in front of a blingedOn “Have You Seen that Girl,” GoldLink as a practiced rapper with his own trademark out car. The style of the art is reminiscent of D.C. raps over a beat strikingly similar to Drake’s flow and soulfulness. However, rather than rely street art down to its penciled-in title “At What “Feel No Ways.” Instead of a regretful ballad on on his tested formula in “At What Cost,” Gold- Cost” in the bottom right corner. GoldLink’s love lost, however, GoldLink turns to admiring Link moves to expand his scope by changing up D.C. pride doesn’t stop at the cover, though. Of a particular woman’s features. Always repping and adding new elements to his style. Although the many features on the album, a good number D.C., he raps about taking her out to lunch in GoldLink is not the most well-known performer are DMV-born artists, including Kokayi, Wale, Georgetown, the upscale waterfront area of the

city. GoldLink’s appreciation for Kanye West also shines through on the album. On “Pray Everyday (Survivor’s Guilt),” GoldLink raps about “passing Kanye,” and on the impressive “The Parable of the Rich Man,” GoldLink raps using Kanye-style autotune. Over the course of “The Parable of the Rich Man,” GoldLink weaves a story of temptation in allusion to Jesus’ parable.

April George closes the track with a solemn chant about not being loved.

Other highlights of “At What Cost” include “Crew,” “Herside Story,” “Kokamoe Freestyle” and “Some Girl.” “Crew” and “Herside Story” are classic GoldLink. On “Crew” he is backed by rapper Brent Faiyaz and singer Shy Glizzy, and on “Herside Story” he flows over a smooth beat with assistance from Irish R&B group Hare Squead. In this tender track, GoldLink muses about loving the same girl in spite of his fame.

“Kokamoe Freestyle,” on the other hand, is a very gritty freestyle about violence and rap music. On “Some Girl,” Steve Lacy of R&B band The Internet joins GoldLink. It’s interesting to hear GoldLink rap over Steve Lacy’s cymbal-heavy beat.

Like “The Parable of the Rich Man,” “Some Girl” also closes with a distinctive outro that showcases GoldLink’s creativity.

On “At What Cost,” GoldLink proves himself capable of creating an artistic rap project.

Despite the stylistic changes, GoldLink’s talent shines. Thematically, the album often resorts to the familiar topic of women. However, he also broadens his approach by rapping about growing up around violence in D.C. Overall, “At What Cost” is a quality project that shows GoldLink’s maturation as a rapper.

The Amherst Student • April 5, 2017

Sports 9

Women’s Tennis Opens Conference Play With 9-0 Sweep of Conn. College

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

First-year Anya Ivenitsky had a strong showing on Tuesday, easily winning both her doubles and singles matches.

Nate Quigley ’19 Managing Sports Editor After a long layoff due to bad weather, the Amherst women’s tennis team finally returned to action on Tuesday, April 4, facing Connecticut College in their first NESCAC matchup of the season.

The Mammoths swept aside the Camels in the match, dominating both doubles and singles action to the tune of a 9-0 victory.

The match began with action on the three doubles courts, on which Amherst posted three comprehensive wins. The first pairing of Camille Smukler ’20 and Kelsey Chen ’19 rolled to an easy 8-1 win over their Conn.

College counterparts.

After going just 1-4 as a pairing on the

California Spring Break trip, the win was a welcome one for Smukler and Chen, and they hope it serves as a springboard for future success.

The Camels came closest to getting a point in doubles action on the second court, managing to win three games before falling 8-3 to the duo of Avery Wagman ’18 and Anya Ivenitsky ’20.

The senior captain pairing of Claire Carpenter and Megan Adamo closed out the sweep for Amherst, beginning their last season of conference play with an 8-0 destruction of Conn. College’s third pairing.

With the three victories in doubles play, the Mammoths held a comfortable lead heading into singles play and needed only two victories on the six courts to return home

victorious.

In fact, Amherst ended up prevailing in all six matches, with only one court requiring more than the minimum two games.

Wagman, playing in the sixth spot, had the most dominant showing of the evening, sweeping her Camel opponent in matching 6-0 sets.

The victory was Wagman’s fourth consecutive win after falling twice to highly-ranked opponents to begin the season.

Similarly dominant were Camilla Trapness ’19 and Adamo, who notched matching 6-1, 6-1 wins on the fourth and fifth courts, respectively.

With her individual win, Adamo moved to 3-1 on the season in singles action while Trapness brought her singles win percentage up to .500.

Meanwhile, Smukler and Ivenitsky continued their strong starts at the college level, posting 6-1, 6-2 and 6-1, 6-3 victories, respectively. Smukler, ranked 34th in the country, solidified her spot as the undisputed first singles player and the heir apparent to Amherst’s individual national champions of the past few decades.

Additionally, with the season-long departure of stud junior Vickie Ip, the 10th-ranked player in the nation, the strong play at the top of the Mammoths’ lineup bodes well for the rest of the season.

Amherst’s last win in singles play came from Chen, who’s been forced to shoulder most of the burden of Ip’s departure, as Chen both lost her long-term doubles partner and was forced to move up to the second court.

However, Chen’s strong showing, a 6-2, 6-1 win, demonstrated her mental fortitude and enormous potential.

With the 9-0 win, Amherst now sits at 3-3 on the season, with all three losses coming to highly ranked opponents in California. Additionally, the win moves the Mammoths, at

least for the moment, into a four-way tie for third-place in the NESCAC, level with traditional powerhouses Middlebury, Wesleyan and Williams.

Amherst will seek to build on its modest three-game win streak with a key conference double-header at home on Saturday, April 8.

The Mammoths will first take on Bowdoin at 1 p.m., in a match that doubles as Amherst’s home-opener, before taking on Bates at 4 p.m.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Junior Avery Wagman provided stellar play from the first doubles and sixth singles courts, winning on each.

Women’s Outdoor Track & Field Baseball Dominates Non-Conference Starts Season Strong at Tufts Meet Opponents En Route to 2-0 Week Laura Greer ’20 Staff Writer The Amherst women’s outdoor track and field team kicked off its season this past weekend by competing at the Tufts Snowflake Classic in Medford, MA. A strong showing by many underclassmen led the Mammoths to a 14thplace finish out of a talented 22-team pool.

Amherst performed well in the sprint and mid-distance events. Anna Buford ’20 clocked in a time of 13.56 seconds to claim 16th in the 100-meter dash.

Buford continued to show well in the 200-meter dash, finishing in 15th-place with a time of 27.74. Fellow first-year Jenny Mazzella claimed a 14th-place finish in the 400-meter dash, finishing in 1:06.90.

In the middle-distance events, Christina Scartelli ’19 and Kaeli Mathias ’18 finished back-to-back in the 800-meter race, claiming 23rd and 24th place with times of 2:29.54 and 2:30.07, respectively.

The Mammoths had several impressive showings in the 1,500-meter run with four

runners within the top 20. First-year Katherine Treanor, continuing her dominance from both the indoor track and cross-country seasons, finished fifth with a time of 4:52.21. Senior Savanna Gornisiewicz finished just behind Treanor in sixth, clocking in with a time of 4:53.85. Leonie Rauls ’18 finished 13th with a time of 4:57.36, while Tess Frenzel ’17 crossed the line just behind Rauls, clinching 19th place in 5:00.34.

Underclassmen continued to impress with several top five finishes. In the 3,000-meter steeplechase Kristin Ratliff ’20 finished with a time of 12:03.82 that placed her fourth. Firstyear Kaitlyn Siegel impressed in the field events with a fourth-place showing in the high jump, thanks to a leap of 1.58 meters.

In the relay events, Amherst placed 10th in the 4x100 meter relay with Buford, Caroline Ferguson-Dryden ’20, Arianna Mordy ’20 and Katherine Hom ’19 clocking in a time of 53.61.

The Mammoths return to action on Saturday, April 8, when they will host the Amherst Spring Fling at Lehrman Stadium. The meet starts at 11 a.m.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Junior Leonie Rauls was part of a strong Amherst showing in the 1,500-meter run, finishing 13th herself, while three others finished in the top-20.

Julia Turner ’19 Managing Sports Editor Amherst baseball won their first two home games this week in blowout fashion, rolling over Springfield for a 20-5 victory on March 29 and taking down regional rivals Keene State on April 3. The purple and white’s victory over the Owls of Keene State came after five straight games were postponed due to inclement weather.

First-year Zach Horowitz earned his first collegiate win on the mound against Springfield.

The lefty threw three complete innings to start the game, striking out five and allowing just two earned runs. Andrew Ferrero ’19 came in for relief, shutting out Springfield and tossing two hitless innings. The Amherst bullpen showed off its depth as Wilson Taylor ’19, Chris Baldi ’17, Mike Castiglie ’17 and David Brinkley ’19 pitched an inning each to finish the game.

Offensively, Amherst exploded for 22 base hits, six of which went for extra bases. Senior Yanni Thanopoulos roped a pair of doubles while Harry Roberson ’18 recorded the only triple of the day. Anthony Spina ’17, Chase Henley ’19 and Severino Tocci ’20 each added a double, while junior Max Steinhorn led the team in runs scored with three.

On Monday, April 3, the purple and white saw the first sunny day in several weeks, and played to a full crowd as they grabbed another dominant win over the 8-9 Owls, this time by a margin of 19-5.

Amherst leapt out to a 5-0 first-inning lead courtesy of doubles from Roberson, Henley and Tocci and questionable fielding on the part of the visitng Owls. However, the top of the second saw Keene State roar back, posting a four-run frame, thanks in large part to a three-run shot from Devin Springfield.

Although the Mammoths went scoreless in the bottom half of the second, the team then plat-

ed three runs in both the third and fourth to pull away from the Owls. Thanks to another timely hit by Roberson and even more suspect defensive work, Amherst led 11-5 after the fourth and 12-5 after a fifth inning that saw Keene State allow yet another unearned run.

The seventh inning, however, proved to be the most impressive of the entire game for Amherst, with the Mammoths piling on seven runs. Keyed in large part by a two-RBI double from Nick Nardone ’19 and a two-run homerun from Henley, Amherst extended their lead to 19-4. Although Keene managed a consolation run in the top of the eighth, the Mammoths’ walked away from the affair with a 19-5 win.

Horwitz once again paced the Amherst pitching effort, tossing three scoreless innings in relief work, while Ferrero, who rebounded well from a rough first inning, garnering six strikeouts and the win in his three innings of work.

The Mammoths will continue this recent stretch of non-conference play with a home game against Mitchell on Wednesday, April 5, at 3:30 p.m.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Max Steinhorn ‘18 scored six runs and went 5-9 in the past two wins.

10

Sports

The Amherst Student • April 5, 2017

Men’s Track & Field Places Fourth at Tufts Snowflake Invitational

ATHLETE SPOTLIGHT

Jack Norton ’19

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Vernon Espinoza ‘19, the sole Amherst participant in the 800-meter race, ran to a second-place finish with a time of 1:57.

Veronica Rocco ’18 Staff Writer The Amherst men’s track and field team returned to competition on Sunday, April 2 after a month-long break following the indoor season.

The meet was originally scheduled for Saturday, but after a snowstorm was forecasted, the meet was moved to Sunday and took place in much warmer temperatures.

The sprinters, jumpers and throwers of the team decided to skip the meet in favor of preparing for the rest of the season, so only the mid-distance and distance runners traveled to Tufts.

Competition for the purple and white opened with the 10,000-meter race, where Clark Ricciardelli ’20E led a strong Amherst contingent by winning his first outdoor collegiate race.

The transfer from Villanova covered the 25-lap race in 32:14 in his debut.

Teammates Tucker Meijer ’19, Cosmo Brossy ’19 and Raymond Meijer ’17 ran with Ricciardelli for the first 5,000-meters of the race, where they crossed the halfway point in 16:21 at a tempo effort, and then finished the latter half of the race individually.

Tucker Meijer led classmate Brossy and older brother Raymond in a sweep of places third through fifth. The three crossed the finish line in times of 32:18, 32:22 and 32:33, respectively.

Not far behind them was Justin Barry ’18, who finished the race in 33:08. Classmate Aaron Zambrano ’18 was the final Amherst competitor across the finish line, running a time of 34:05.

With their races, Ricciardelli, Tucker and Raymond Meijer, Brossy and Barry qualified for the Division III New England Championships.

Next for the purple and white was the 1,500-meter run, where first-year Ralph Skinner finished eighth in a time of 4:06. The first-year carried momentum from his strong indoor track season, while teammate Kristian Sogaard ’19 ran 4:07 for a 10th-place finish.

Jacob Silverman ’19 placed 13th in a time of 4:09.

Sophomore Vernon Espinoza placed second in the 800-meter run, covering the difficult two-lap race in a time of 1:57.

First-year Spencer Ferguson-Dryden successfully raced his first collegiate track 5,000-meter race, finishing the 12-and-a-half lap race in 15:42 to place fourth. Senior Kevin Connors placed eighth in a time of 15:56.

First-year Chris Stone ran the race in 16:46, and Kevin Dooley ’19 crossed the line in a time of 17:28.

The purple and white ended the meet with the 4x800-meter relay, where the three Amherst relay teams were the only competitors in the race.

The team composed of Jacob Silverman ’19, Ralph Skinner ’20, Spencer FergusonDryden ’20 and Tucker Meijer ’19 crossed the finish line in first with a time of 8:21. The other two Amherst teams finished the relay race in times of 8:31 and 8:37.

“From the 800 to the 10K, we performed exceptionally as a unit, cheering each other on and performing,” said Espinoza. “We are all coming off of a few weeks of heavy mileage so we’re excited to see what’s to come.”

On Saturday, the entire track and field team will return to action at the Amherst Spring Fling, the only meet of the year that Amherst hosts.

The meet provides a great opportunity for the Mammoths to compete at the newly renovated Pratt Field for the first time since Amherst hosted the NESCAC Championships last April.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Sophomore Kristian Sogaard placed tenth overall in the 1,500-meter run.

Favorite Team Memory: Beating RIT in the Second Round of the NCAA playoffs last year Favorite Pro Athlete: Roger Federer Dream Job: Zookeeper who works with pandas Pet Peeve: Not entirely erased chalkboards Favorite Vacation Spot: Sheepscot Lakes, ME Something on Your Bucket List: Skydiving Guilty Pleasure: House Hunters and Fixer Upper on HGTV Favorite Food: Not Val Favorite Thing About Amherst: We get the WSJ for free How He Earned It: Norton was a key factor in Amherst’s wins over Springfield and Middlebury, tallying a remarkable 12 goals in the two games in addition to one assist and three ground balls won. With his effort, Norton now is fifth in the conference with 25 goals on the season, seven more than the nearest Amherst player. For his outstanding play, Norton received NESCAC Player of the Week honors, the first Amherst player to recieve the award this season.

Kyra Naftel ’19 Favorite Team Memory: Spring break trips to Florida Favorite Pro Athlete: Bethany Hamilton Dream Job: Photographer Pet Peeve: People who use their hand to cover a sneeze Favorite Vacation Spot: Kauai Something on Your Bucket List: Feed/ pet a panda Guilty Pleasure: Watching The Bachelor with friends Favorite Food: Pasta Favorite Thing About Amherst: Living so close to friends How She Earned It: Naftel was a key component of Amherst’s stellar offensive effort in the weekend sweep of Hamilton.

Batting .632 in the three games with a .650 OBP and .727 slugging percentage, Naftel extended her hitting streak to eight games. Additionally, in the second game against Hamilton, Naftel’s three-RBI double in the fifth ended the game by putting the purple and white up by eight runs. For these myriad accomplishments, Naftel was named NESCAC Player of the Week.

Women’s Lacrosse Beats Babson, Falls to NESCAC Rival Middlebury Katie Bergamesca ’18 Staff Writer The Amherst women’s lacrosse team went 1-1 over the past week, dominating out-ofconference foe Babson College before enduring a tought loss to No. 4 Middlebury College.

In a frigid, mid-week game, the Mammoths blanked the Beavers in an impressive 11-0 win.

Junior Kyra Gardner was a force in net, coming up with eight saves and notching her first shutout of the season. Claire Cagnassola ’17 led the 11-goal effort with four tallies of her own.

A total of ten Amherst players dished out an assist, and Hannah Krueger ’17 paced the group with two helpers.

First-year Katherine Malone also continued her strong early season play, coming off the bench to lead the team in groundballs with six. Sabrina Solow ’19 anchored the defense with three caused turnovers.

After the dominant win, Amherst traveled to Middlebury to take on the defending national champions. Despite a strong defensive effort from the Mammoths’ back line, the Amherst attackers were unable to generate enough offense to top a dominant Middlebury squad.

The Panthers secured the victory in convincing fashion by a score of 13-3. Each of the Mammoth goals came from different players.

Senior Kate Wyeth was the first player to put Amherst on the board a little more than halfway through the first half with an unassisted goal. The Panthers held a 6-1 lead over the Mammoths at the end of the first half.

Following the intermission, Middlebury notched two more goals before Julia Crerend ’18 halted the Panthers’ run with a goal of her own to bring the score to 8-2. Middlebury responded with a goal quickly, increasing their lead back to seven.

Cagnassola was able to send one more past

the Middlebury goalie before the Panthers went on a four-goal run to close the game and secure the win.

After this past week’s action, the Mammoths stand at .500 on the season with an overall record of 4-4, while the team’s conference record stands at 1-3 following the Middlebury loss.

The Mammoths will look to improve on their overall and NESCAC record when they take on conference rival Wesleyan in Middletown, Conn. on Wednesday, April 5 at 6 p.m.

Amherst will then return home to Gooding Field for another NESCAC match-up against Colby.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Annie Cohen ‘19 and the Amherst midfield struggled against Middlebury’s high-octane offense.

The Amherst Student • April 5, 2017

Sports

Softball Opens NESCAC Play With Three-Game Sweep of Hamilton

Men’s Tennis Downs Tufts to Open NESCAC Play, Sports 12-2 Record Nate Quigley ’19 Managing Sports Editor

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Sophomore Annie Murphy scored two runs in Friday’s match before going 3 for 4 with a double in Saturday’s early game.

Jenny Mazzella ’20 Staff Writer This weekend, the Amherst women’s softball team claimed its first conference and divisional wins of the 2017 season. The purple and white swept Hamilton in a three-game series that took place over the course of two days.

In game one, Amherst defeated Hamilton 10-5. The purple and white took an early lead in the second inning when Julia Turner ’19 hit a strong ground ball to the right side to score Amherst’s first runner. Amherst then capitalized on a hit by pitch, two walks, an error and two wild pitches to extended its lead. The Continentals attempted to come back in the fifth inning, scoring three runs and cutting the Amherst lead down to seven at 10-3.

Hamilton tallied two more runs in the sixth and loaded the bases with two outs. However, pitcher Gina Pagan ’18 managed to get out of the jam and successfully closed out the game with a scoreless seventh. Pagan allowed only two earned runs and recorded four strikeouts, furthering her dominant start to the season.

Amherst tallied two more wins against the Continentals in the following day’s doubleheader. In the first game of the day, the Mammoths won 13-5. Hamilton took a lead in the opening inning, but the purple and white im-

mediately tied the game 2-2. Amherst proceeded to blow the game open with four runs in the second inning.

Andrea Sanders ’20 led the charge with four runs, while Naftel, Ally Kido ’18 and Alena Marovitz ’17 each added three RBIs. Lauren Tuiskula ’17, Kate Copatic ’20 and Annie McCluskey ’20 plated one runner each in the win.

Lorena Ukanwa ’19 provided another impressive performance from the mound, pitching the entire game and striking out five batters.

In game two, Marovitz and Sanders provided Amherst two early runs, but Hamilton caught up in the second inning and led 4-2 going entering the sixth. However, with the bases loaded, a single from Turner and a triple from Naftel keyed a four-run rally and secured the 6-4 victory for the purple and white. Amherst outhit Hamilton in every game of the series.

Naftel and Kido extended their hitting streaks to eight games. After the weekend’s wins, the Mammoths stand at 12-6 overall and boast a perfect 3-0 conference record.

Amherst will return to the field on Wednesday, April 5 with a non-conference doubleheader against Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, which will take place at home. On Friday, Amherst will return to NESCAC play, traveling to Middlebury for another threegame series.

11

After suffering a heart breaking 4-3 defeat to Division I member Harvard, the Amherst men’s tennis team rebounded well, claiming a 5-4 victory over 19th-ranked Tufts to open NESCAC play on Saturday.

The No. 14 Mammoths roared out of the gates, dominating the hometown Jumbos on the first and third doubles courts. The number one pairing of Jayson Fung ’20 and Zach Bessette ’19 comfortably took care of their Tufts opponents, notching an 8-3 victory, a scoreline matched by the first-year duo of Josh Marchalik and Nathan Kaplan on court three.

Even the second doubles team, Oscar Burney ’20 and Anton Zykov ’17, put forth an admirable effort, only falling to their Jumbos counterparts by an 8-6 margin.

With the two wins in doubles play, the Mammoths entered the singles portion of the action knowing that a split of the three courts would be enough for a win.

Worryingly for Amherst, Tufts almost immediately retook the lead, with a pair of easy two-set victories on courts two and three giving the Jumbos a 3-2 overall lead.

Thankfully for the Mammoths, Bessette posted a hard-fought win on the first singles

court, needing a tie-breaker in the second set to post Amherst’s lone two-set victory in singles action, 6-4, 7-6 (7-2).

With Bessette’s win knotting the match at three points apiece, the result depending upon the three lower courts. With each court requiring a third set to decide the result, the first-year trio of Fung, Gabe Owens and Burney attempted to clinch a win for the Mammoths.

Burney was the lone member of the trio to actually win the first set of his matchup, with both Fung and Owens going down one set to none. However, Fung on court four and Owens on court five rebounded to finish off their Tufts opponents in dominant fashion, posting 2-6, 6-1, 6-1 and 4-6, 6-2, 6-2 wins to clinch the victory for Amherst.

Meanwhile, Burney managed to push the Jumbos’ Kevin Kelly in each of the second an third sets but ultimately fell, leaving the overall scoreline to read Amherst 5, Tufts 4.

With the win, the Mammoths move to 12-2 on the season and 1-0 in conference, with the team’s only two losses coming to Harvard and No. 1 Emory.

Amherst will attempt to build on the win over Tufts when the team plays Bowdoin on Saturday, April 8 at 1 p.m. in what will be the team’s home opener.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Sophomore Zach Bessette cemented his status as Amherst’s top player, winning both his singles and doubles matches with relative ease.

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Sports

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Matt Killian ‘17 was part of a prolific Amherst offense in the team’s two recent victories, tallying three goals, two assists and nine ground balls won.

Men’s Lacrosse Win Streak Hits Five After Pair of Comfortable Victories Mary Grace Cronin ’18 Staff Writer The Amherst men’s lacrosse team successfully downed both out-of-conference foe Springfield College and NESCAC rival Middlebury College this week. After the two home wins, the 12th-ranked purple and white improved to 7-2 overall and 3-1 in conference play.

In their first matchup against Springfield, a low-scoring first quarter saw a goal by the Pride before Brogan Mahon ’19 opened up scoring for Amherst off an assist from fellow sophomore Andrew Ford.

After another scoreless six minutes, Springfield’s Ty Daugstrup notched a goal with six seconds left to give the visitors a slim 2-1 lead at the end of the first quarter.

The purple and white came out with a vengeance in the second quarter with nine goals,

GAME SCHE DULE

giving the Mammoths a solid 10-5 lead heading into the half.

The quarter featured two four-goal runs for Amherst, the first within just two minutes of play. Trenton Shore ’19 started the rally, followed by unassisted efforts from Jack Norton ’19, Matt Killian ’17 and Max Keeley ’18. Both Norton and Keeley would add two more tallies apiece before the end of the half to put the purple and white up for good.

Amherst continued their strong play in the third period, outscoring Springfield 6-3. Early goals from Ian Kadish ’18 and Colin Minicus ’20 got the ball rolling, while a man-up goal from Zach Schwartz ’17 and additional tallies from Minicus, Norton and Jackson Herrick ’20 put the team up 16-8 heading into the last quarter.

Springfield did manage a comeback attempt in the fourth period but couldn’t overcome the eight-goal deficit, eventually falling

WED Baseball vs. Mitchell, 3:30 p.m.

Women’s Lacrosse @ Wesleyan, 6 p.m.

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

Men’s Lacrosse vs. Wesleyan, 6 p.m.

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

18-14.

Just three days after the Springfield win, Middlebury traveled to the Pioneer Valley to face the purple and white.

Although the Panthers struck first, a commanding six-goal run from Amherst set the tone for the rest of the game. After a Brett Inglesby ’18 goal off a pass from Keeley opened the scoring, both Shore and Norton put two in the back of the net before the end of the quarter.

Meanwhile, Mahon added a goal of his own off an assist from Ford.

Norton continued his strong first-quarter performance across the game, racking up eight goals in a tremendous individual effort.

Back and forth second and third quarters saw Middlebury and Amherst both post six goals, but the Panthers were never able to cut into Amherst’s lead.

One last push by the Mammoths in the fi-

FRI

SAT

Men’s Golf Hampton Inn Invitational @ UMass Dartmouth, 1 p.m.

Men’s Track & Field Amherst Spring Fling, 11 a.m.

Baseball vs. Middlebury, 4 p.m.

Softball @ Middlebury, 5 p.m.

Women’s Track & Field Amherst Spring Fling, 11 a.m.

Women’s Golf @ Vassar Invitational, TBD

Men’s Golf Hampton Inn Invitational @ UMass Dartmourth, 1 p.m.

Baseball vs. Middlebury, noon Softball @ Middlebury, noon

nal stanza of play saw an impressive six-goal run keyed by Minicus, Killian and Herrick, giving the purple and white the final 20-11 victory.

Thanks to his strong play against both Middlebury and Springfield, scoring seven goals against the Panthers and five against the Pride, Norton garnered NESCAC Player of the Week plaudits.

Norton’s award also marks the first time an Amherst attacker has earned such an honor since purple and white standout Quinn Moroney in the 2012 season.

Amherst will seek to stretch its current winning streak to six games when it returns to action on Wednesday, April 5 at 6 p.m. The Mammoths will play host to Little Three rival Wesleyan. The two schools will enter the match tied for fourth place in the NESCAC standings, with each boasting a 3-1 mark in conference play.

Women’s Tennis vs. Bowdoin, 1 p.m.

Men’s Lacrosse @ Colby, 1 p.m.

Men’s Tennis vs. Bowdoin, 1 p.m.

Softball @ Middlebury, 2 p.m.

Baseball vs. Middlebury, 2:30 p.m.

Women’s Tennis vs. Bates, 4 p.m.