Issue 2

THE AMHERST

THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868

STUDENT VOLUME CXLVIII, ISSUE 2 l WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2018

Men’s Soccer Records Largest Victory Since 2010 See Sports, Page 11 AMHERSTSTUDENT.COM

Students Voice Need for More Counseling Resources Shawna Chen ’20 Managing News Editor Editor’s Note: This article is the second in a twopart series on the the Counseling Center’s challenges balancing student need and financial resources. Resources for any person who is feeling depressed, troubled or suicidal are listed at the end of this article.

Photo courtesy of Natalie De Rosa ’21

Overenrollment of the class of 2022 has forced 60 first years to live in triple-occupancy dorm rooms, all of them converted from large one-room doubles or two-room doubles.

Overenrollment in Class of 2022 Leads to Triples Natalie De Rosa ’21 Assistant News Editor Sixty first years are living in triple-occupancy dorm rooms in the first-year residence halls this year because of overenrollment in the class of 2022.

Though the Office of Admissions initially anticipated a class size of 460 to 485 students, 497 students matriculated into the class of 2022, producing a yield rate of about 40 percent — 3 percent higher than expected.

Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Matthew McGann noted that the issue of overenrollment is not exclusive to Amherst. Colleges across the country, particularly other NESCAC institutions, are also seeing higher-than-expected yield rates for incoming classes.

While this surge in applicants occured systematically, McGann added that yield rates are a product of individual choices and are therefore unpredictable.

“Yield prediction is challenging because the students who we admit to Amherst have a lot of great options,” he said. “There’s some degree to which you can predict that, but at the end of the day, it’s a very human process and it’s a very individualized set of decisions.”

The class of 2021, for example, witnessed a lower-than-anticipated yield rate, which led to an increased number of acceptances from the waitlist. While a low yield rate relies on the waitlist to reach the target class size, a high yield rate can

prompt a variety of scenarios. Some schools with dramatically higher yield rates might encourage students to take a year off, while others choose to be stringent with final grades and deposit deadlines, rescinding students from the class. McGann insisted that the decision to house students in triple rooms was the best-case scenario for overenrollment.

“What we’ve got going is the ideal, McGann said “All the first-year students are living together on the first-year quad, they’re coming in the year that they intend to enroll in college and we’re treating students fairly and equitably.”

Chief Student Affairs Officer Hikaru Kozuma also lauded triples as the best choice, noting that triples presented the least disruptive option.

“Although [triple rooms] were not ideal, we tried to minimize the number of disruptions for students, including those who were housed in a triple,” Kozuma said.

To compensate for the inconveniences that living in a triple room might provoke, affected students were provided $500 in ACDollars.

The limited amount of space in triple rooms posed a clear problem, Kozuma said, but each room on the first-year quad was examined to ensure that the biggest spaces were used as triples.

He also emphasized that square footage alone could not provide a fair representation of the room — room visitations by staff throughout the summer were also crucial to gauging the general feel of the rooms.

“You can see blueprints and you can see square

footage, but once you get into the room you can see how it actually works,” he said.

In addition to room size, location was considered to avoid putting an extra burden on resident counselors in first-year dorms. Triple rooms were spread across the first-year dorms rather than clustered in one area in order to distribute the high number of students more evenly across RCs. Willie Cohen ’22, who was assigned a triple room in Charles Pratt Dormitory, said that his living arrangement was better than he expected.

“It hasn’t been that bad,” he said. “There are one-room doubles with less space, so I guess we lucked out.”

Bernardo Luna ’22 echoed this sentiment. After working with his roommates to loft their beds and move their desks into alcoves, Luna’s reservations about living in a triple were diminished.

“Living in a triple was something I was anxious about and believed would cause problems.

The opposite has been true and my roommates and I are getting along fine,” Luna said.

While housing shortages posed an issue for this year’s first-year class, Kozuma doesn’t think that the problem will carry on to upperclassmen housing in the future.

He said that there are always enough rooms even if it initially seems tight, because students tend to make last-minute decisions to go abroad or take a semester off, creating space throughout the year.

“It’s never the case that every single room on campus is filled 100 percent of the time,” he said.

Last week, The Student reported on the search for a new counselor to supplement resources at the Counseling Center. This week, students speak on their experiences with the center and areas they see for improvement.

Visiting the Center Alex Frenett ’18 started attending therapy at the Counseling Center in the spring semester of his sophomore year and continued through the end of his junior year. When Frenett was able to meet frequently with his counselor — once every week or once every two weeks — the two were able to “get deeper into what I wanted to talk about.”

Frequent sessions ensured that the counselor retained more information about Frenett’s treatment and challenges, meaning that each session continued smoothly from one session to the next.

Soon, however, the only appointments available to Frenett were scheduled three to four weeks apart. “It just wasn’t worth it for me,” he said. “It wasn’t frequent enough to be helpful.”

His counselor advised him to see a psychiatrist to start medication, telling him he should see the psychiatrist once every two weeks to monitor the effects of the medication. The first two sessions, he said, were two weeks apart, but after that, even as he was increasing the dosage of the medication, the frequency of the appointments decreased.

Frenett felt that he was stable enough and decided not to seek counseling off campus, but he acknowledged that continual counseling would have helped him better manage his senior year.

“There were points during senior year where I thought I should [go to counseling], but I was just very discouraged and ended up

Continued on Page 3

New Chef Forages for More Customizable Dining Options Emma Swislow ’20 Managing News Editor Entering the kitchens in the basement of Valentine Dining Hall is like entering a more intense version of the seating area at noon on a Monday. It’s loud from the dishes being washed, it’s smokey from the burgers being grilled for burger night and it’s very easy to bump into the people and equipment that fill up the space. Yet Stefania Patinella, Amherst’s new executive chef hired in July, navigates the commotion-filled kitchens with ease.

She first stops to chat with the garde manger, who’s slicing up cucumbers for the salad bar, and

then checks in with the chef making red pepper hummus. Patinella walks into the next room and checks on the burgers and the chefs grilling them. Then she almost pirouettes to another chef to work out a scheduling conflict, before advising someone else on whether the wedge-shaped potatoes will cook all the way through.

When she finally steps out of the kitchens and walks out of the dining hall toward the first-year quad, Patinella jokes that she needs to be at least 20 paces away from the dining hall to do anything uninterrupted.

Patinella grew up in an Italian family where “food was the most important thing you could possibly provide for your children,” she said.

Her childhood was filled with healthy, nutritious foods.

This experience with homemade food from locally-sourced ingredients is something that Patinella plans on developing during her time at Amherst.

“The chef before me came from a restaurant background and many of the items that have a lot of care in them are also very restaurant-y,” she said. “They’re somewhat rich and that’s nice to some degree … but my way of approaching food is to have a lighter touch. Things that are a little bit simpler, a little bit lighter and fresher. This is a direction that the whole country is going in, so I’m not unusual in this and of course not every-

body wants to eat this way, so there will always be variety.”

Although she’s never worked in a college dining setting before, Patinella found herself drawn to the intersection between education and food.

“I’ve done some work in restaurants, but not a lot, and this just feels like a great niche,” she said.

“Working in restaurants has never been my thing because it’s a little bit of a passive experience, which can be nice. I want to go to restaurants and have someone prepare my meal sometimes, but the mission is not usually an educational space, whereas here the mission is education and I think

Continued on Page 3

News Ashwin Balaji Aug. 27, 2018 - Sept. 9, 2018

>>Aug. 27, 2018 10:30 a.m., Johnson Chapel The flag was lowered to halfstaff in memorial of the passing of Senator John McCain. >>Aug. 29, 2018 3:15 a.m., King Dormitory Officers responded to an alarm sounding in a room in the basement which was caused by a maintenance issue.

7:37 a.m., Lincoln Avenue A vehicle was parked in a manner that impeded access to a lot. >>Aug. 30, 2018 12:41 a.m., Marsh House Officers responded to an alarm sounding in a room on the second floor and found no cause.

1:26 a.m., Appleton Dormitory An alarm was set off accidentally from burnt food.

4:56 a.m., Moore Dormitory A trouble signal was received and cleared itself.

6:00 a.m., Valentine Loading Dock A golf cart was vandalized.

6:16 a.m., Valentine Loading Dock Environmental Health and Safety responded to a spill outside the building for clean up. >>Sept. 1, 2018 3:10 p.m., Jenkins Dormitory An officer responded to remove an item from the ground that was discovered to be makeup.

11:29 p.m., Greenway Building D Officers responded to a noise complaint and dispersed a gathering. >>Sept. 2, 2018 12:56 a.m., The Octagon A group was dispersed from a roof area where access is not permitted to those not working on it.

3:08 p.m., Mayo Smith Parking Lot An officer responded with Residential Life to speak with individuals consuming alcohol. >>Sept. 3, 2018 8:50 a.m., Marsh House Officers and the Amherst Fire Department responded to a fire alarm caused by cooking smoke.

8:56 p.m., Plimpton House An unauthorized party was dispersed after an alarm was received for the building. >>Sept. 4, 2018 11:39 p.m., Plimpton House

An officer spoke with residents regarding items in their hallway making movement difficult. >>Sept. 6, 2018 11:22 a.m., The Quadrangle An officer stopped a vehicle that was traveling the wrong way on a one-way street. The people were visitors of the college and did not know the roads.

12:17 p.m., Converse Hall Student Affairs and the Office of the President received a call from an individual that had concerns regarding their property that was not in the possession of the Amherst College Police Department.

1:55 p.m., Hills Lot An officer responded to a complaint of a vehicle parked in a manner that was impeding traffic in a lot. The vehicle was moved. >>Sept. 7, 2018 12:35 p.m., Converse Hall An officer responded to a report of the bathroom faucets being left on full blast and found no cause for this.

7:42 p.m., Churchill House A large bee hive was located outside the building. Environmental Health and Safety and pest control were notified. >>Sept. 8, 2018 8:22 p.m., Alumni Gym A skunk was removed from the gym.

8:42 p.m., Greenway An officer responded to a report of individuals drinking alcohol on the volleyball court, including those under the age of 21. >>Sept. 9, 2018 1:11 a.m., Plimpton House An officer responded to a report of an unknown pill and found it to be a vitamin

supplement. The pill was discarded.

2:01 a.m., South College Hall Officers responded to a large group creating a noise disturbance. They left the area without incident.

Correction: In last week’s Fresh Faculty, The Student incorrectly wrote that Professor Katharine Correira is a professor of statistics.

She is a professor of mathematics and statistics. The Student also misquoted her as saying she could not see herself returning to a hospital-type setting. In fact, she could. The Student sincerely apologizes for the errors and has updated the web article to reflect the changes.

Thoughts on Theses Department of Biophysics-Biochemistry

Ashwin Balaji is a biophysics-biochemistry major. For his thesis, he is researching loop formation during DNA folding in sperm cells. His adviser is Associate Professor of Physics Ashley Carter.

Q: What does Ashley Carter’s lab study?

A: The Carter lab looks at a few different things.

Our main focus is understanding how DNA compacts into very small structures. In your cells DNA needs to fit into a very small space — it’s something on the order of a few microns, but DNA inside the human genome is about two meters long. That’s many, many thousands of times of compaction that need to happen.

We’re ... specifically looking at this compaction in sperm cells. In sperm cells the DNA is bound with this protein called protamine, which then leads to compaction of DNA into first loops of DNA ... Then these loops condense further into toroids, these donut-like shapes of DNA, which allows all this genetic information to fit inside the cell. We know of intermediates that form in this process, the loops and the toroids that eventually result, but we don’t know how we go from a straight piece of DNA to a loop to a toroid. The two main questions in the lab right now are: how does a loop form, and then how does a toroid form from these loops? I’m working on the loop formation aspect, and my labmate, Hilary Bediako, also doing a thesis, is doing work on how the toroids form. We have some other projects in the lab. Mainly another thesis student, Peter Cho, is working on behavioral studies with zebrafish. He’s using programming and computer algorithms to monitor the zebrafish.

Q: What does a day working your thesis look like?

A: It’s mostly spent on the phone or on the computer ordering parts, talking with representatives and sale reps to get all the parts we need for this apparatus. That’s been kind of interesting to see that side of the science — getting all of our materials ready and here before we can start to build, which is something I feel like a lot of students may not get to experience because everything’s been set up. It’s been really unique starting a project from scratch ... and building up from basically nothing until hopefully at the end of this year we have a working, functioning apparatus that gives us data and information and the tools to answer the questions we’re going after.

Q: What methods are you using to look at your question?

A: That’s the part I find really exciting. Halfway through the summer we decided to take this new approach that Professor Carter found.

[She] talked to someone at a conference about this new apparatus. It’s called a centrifuge force microscope ... Actually the bulk of my thesis will probably be getting this apparatus built, because we’re kind of starting from scratch with it. The basis of it is: you can take the DNA and make tethers with them. You stick one end to the glass slide, so it’s anchored there. You can stick a small polystyrene bead to the other end of the DNA ... You’re able to see it, so we can use a microscope to actually visualize it, and then take this tethered DNA and spin it in a centrifuge along with our microscope equipment. Because it’s spinning, the DNA starts to stretch out. What we’ll do is take these tethers, have them fold up with protamine. Then we’ll stretch them out to see how they unfold. That’s how we get information about the folding process.

Q: Do you want to keep doing research in the future?

A: Yes I do, actually. I’ll be applying to graduate schools at the end of this year. Hopefully something there pans out and I’ll be able to keep doing single molecule biophysics research down the line.

Q: Have you found any results so far?

A: Actually in terms of what I’ve just talked about, no, because we’re building the apparatus right now. I did do work over the summer which basically confirms how the DNA is folding. For that we don’t pull on it or anything.

We just observe the DNA fold as we flow protamine in. We’ve kind of seen that the DNA folds in a multi-step process, and that loop formation, again, is multi-step. We see these clear intermediates. The tether shortens to one length, and then after a while shortens to another. That shows us that the shortest length is a looping form, but then there’s a state before this that another intermediate to loop formation.

Q: What draws you to biophysics research?

A: I’m really interested in the way things move, and the way they generate force in mechanical interactions. I thought these types of things didn’t happen at the molecular level, at the nanoscale. When I started realizing that there are ... things that act very much like machines and motors and rotors that we see in the physical, macroscopic world at the microscopic level, that got me really excited to see how these things move and how biology has coded for such machines — and such logical, smart machines — at the nanoscale.

Q: What advice do you have for future thesis writers?

A: I would say really don’t be afraid to take ownership of your project and, within the boundaries of safety and things like that, just take those few next steps, even though you may not have discussed them exactly thoroughly with an advisor. Start doing that kind of thing on your own. Of course, when you get the time, do go through it with your advisor, but I think you’ll learn a lot more when you start acting and thinking for yourself. Try things out, and then when you really get stuck, go to your advisor and see what the next steps might be.

Q: What is your research process when you run into an issue and you have to start thinking independently?

A: … Really it’s just breaking down your problem or your apparatus into small discrete units ... It requires you to intimately know what your apparatus is and how things work there ... Then finetune and change individual parameters and see if anything changes. If something does, you know that’s the source of your problem. It’s really about thinking through what all goes into what you’re trying to do, and then isolating each one of those factors so you can see where the problem is.

—Jacob Gendelman ’20

The Amherst Student • September 12, 2018

News

3

Lord Jeffery Inn to Become Inn on Boltwood in 2019 Audrey Cheng ’20 Staff Writer The Lord Jeffery Inn, a hotel in Amherst Center owned by the college, announced on Aug. 28 that it will change its name to Inn on Boltwood in January 2019. The decision is part of a greater process at the college of moving away from the unofficial Lord Jeffery mascot since the Board of Trustees’ 2016 ruling.

The board formally declared that the college would cease to use the Lord Jeff on official Amherst communications, messaging and symbolism on Jan. 26, 2016 after students at Amherst Uprising protested the college’s longtime unofficial, and controversial, mascot: Lord Jeffery Amherst, a colonial general who proposed the distribution of blankets with smallpox to indigenous people during wartime. This change also applied to the inn.

Amherst Uprising was a 2015 student movement that protested the experiences of marginalized students on campus. The movement led to a number of changes at the college, but until this summer, the inn had kept its original name.

The inn is the only college-owned building

where the Lord Jeffery name officially appeared.

To determine a new name, the inn’s board of directors, which is comprised college administrators, staff and alums, hired a third-party hotel branding company to facilitate the process and brainstormed over 50 new names.

“We had to be careful about trademarks and registering web pages and search terms,” said the college’s Chief Financial Officer Kevin Weinman.

“A number of states have towns called Amherst, and a lot of those names — Amherst Hotel or Amherst Inn — are taken,” Weinman added. “We had to be creative about the sorts of names we were looking at. They had to make sense to the college and the town, but also so that we could operate it as a business.”

The name change process will take place right after the new year, when business tends to slow down, Weinman said. The inn will order new signage and print materials before the transition.

“We look forward to many years of events and gatherings at the Inn on Boltwood, whose new name reflects the historic location of the inn and is consistent with the board’s adopted

Photos courtesy of Sylvie Palmer ’22

The Lord Jeffery Inn will be renamed Inn on Boltwood in January 2019 as part of the college’s response to Amherst Uprising. policy to cease using Lord Jeff in official college business,” Andrew Nussbaum ’85, chair of the board of trustees, said in a statement.

“I like the new name and am glad the process has concluded,” President Biddy Martin added in an email interview.

College Should Expand Mental Health Services, Students Say Continued from Page 1 not doing anything” he said. “It ended up being fine, but … having regular appointments senior year would’ve helped.”

Emma Wilfert ’20 visited the Counseling Center twice — first at the end of her first year and then again in the middle of her sophomore year when her anxiety began heavily interfering with her everyday life and she started having suicidal thoughts.

Wilfert said she was clear about seeking semiregular therapy, but “the first time I’d gone, it was like ‘This isn’t bad enough’ and the second time was ‘This is too bad.’”

After her second visit, a case manager with the college told her she’d put Wilfert in touch with a therapist in the area, but Wilfert ended up having to email her a reminder after a week passed without an update.

“It’s one of those things where, yes, they’re very overworked, but that week could’ve made a big difference in my life,” Wilfert said. She ended up finding a “really great” therapist in town with whom she has weekly appointments.

For Lesley Martinez ’20, the counselor and psychiatrist she saw provided adequate treatment — whenever her therapist sensed that she needed more than one session every two weeks, she would make time to fit Martinez into her schedule.

Her experience with urgent care appointments, however, could have been better, she said.

Urgent care appointments are typically blocked for 45 to 60 minutes long and are scheduled with the counselor on call — oftentimes someone Martinez has not seen before. The length of urgent care appointments, however, often vary depending on the counselor’s workload for the day and can be as short as 30 minutes when the center is particularly busy.

When the session is with someone new, Martinez said, it takes time to build trust and provide context for what she’s feeling.

“Just 15 more minutes would be good enough,” Martinez said.

Toward the end of her sophomore year, Kyra Naftel ’19 met with a therapist at the Counseling Center after feeling increased distress about personal difficulties. She left the meeting feeling “lighter” and was looking forward to scheduling more sessions in the future. The counselor she met with, however, became unexpectedly unavailable, and the Counseling Center couldn’t find a time to schedule her with any other counselor for the next month.

Naftel went abroad the following semester, but when she returned, she said she didn’t even want to try booking another appointment. “I kind of rationalized it — they’re overburdened and I’m sure there are people who have worse problems than I do,” she recalled thinking to herself.

After the deaths on campus last year, however, she realized the importance of destigmatizing mental health and making sure people get the resources they need. “It is really important on this campus, and even in the one session I had, I felt a big difference,” she said. “But maybe I’m less optimistic about how frequently I’ll be able to use the services.”

Suggested Improvements All of the students who spoke with The Student recognized that the Counseling Center is doing the best it can and that it is serving students with the resources available to its staff. As they pointed out, however, that doesn’t mean that changes can’t be made.

“I don’t see a way around needing to hire more people — financially that’s a burden, obviously, but if you have a center that’s not able to help people or only helps a certain amount of

people, that’s better than nothing, but where it’s at right now seems to me like it’s understaffed,” Frenett said. “It can’t help the number of people it needs to help, from my viewpoint.”

For Wilfert, the main problem is with the way the Counseling Center is marketed on campus — during orientation, workshops and presentations — both as a “valuable long-term psychiatric resource” or a one-stop shop for all mental health issues. Upon her first visit, Wilfert’s condition didn’t warrant high-crisis treatment per se; she’d sought someone with whom she could talk to about everyday challenges — a difficult day, a panic attack, relationship trouble and academic stresses. Now, she understands that the Counseling Center cannot provide sustainable service of that kind, but she said making that clear from the beginning would have clarified where she could go to find the support she needed.

“Since [these resources] don’t exist and it’s not really reasonable for them to exist on college campuses, I think it would be helpful to have other resources that could provide that service,” she said. She suggested a counterpart to Amherst College Emergency Medical Services (ACEMS) that would train students to run warmlines — a phone line that could provide support to students with non-urgent needs — and provide peer support to students looking for someone to talk to about low-crisis struggles.

“Say I was just having a panic attack one day — I could talk to a student friend,” Wilfert explained, referencing a similar program at Kenyon College. “The next day, I’m feeling suicidal, and that’s the time I might be redirected to the Counseling Center, and they might not be as bogged down with people dealing with everyday things as they would otherwise.”

Future Action As the new chief student affairs officer, Hika-

ru Kozuma intends to work with different departments on campus to reframe the model of mental wellness.

“It could mean having a person they can talk to about a whole host of different things,” he said.

“It may not need to be in a therapeutic relationship … [Counseling Center Director Jacqueline Alvarez and I] talked about other departments that have and can contribute to this, whether it’s health education, Residential Life, Religious and Spiritual Life, the health center.”

“I’m used to working in institutions where everyone takes a piece of this challenge so it’s not on any one department or one person,” he added.

“Not to replace a counselor, but to help overall efforts for folks to have someone to talk to.”

According to Alvarez, the Counseling Center is also seeking out alternative ways to meet students’ needs. Last year, the center piloted a fourpart series called Anxiety and Me, which taught anxiety management skills with the expectation that students would practice and apply the skills between classes. Students were also invited to talk about their own personal experiences with anxiety in the class. The center will expand these offerings, as well as therapy groups focused on addressing a particular issue.

“I don’t mean to say we are perfect by any stretch because there’s deep need, and for people who really, really need support and treatment, I think we do pretty good work,” Alvarez said.

“There may be more needs that could be met in different ways, and that’s where we really need to grow.”

Any person who is feeling depressed, troubled or suicidal can access an Amherst College counselor by calling 413-542-2354 at any time. People can also reach trained counselors by calling the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-784-2433 or texting the Crisis Text Line at 741741.

Executive Chef Brings Lighter Touch to Val Kitchens Continued from Page 1 food should be part of that education.”

Patinella hopes to create more ways for students to customize their meals. She plans on adding new ingredients, like sesame oil and tamari, to the salad bar area so students can make their own dressings.

Another change she wants to implement is adding a burrito bar and other more customizable lunches beyond sandwiches.

“If I could right now snap my fingers and make everything different, we’d do a lot more meals that are custom and to-order,” Patinella said. “We’re not set up for that right now, but we can approximate that a little bit. There’s a ton of

creativity in how people navigate Val and the more I can understand about how people do that, the better options I can give.”

Patinella first developed her interest in food when she started working as a grant writer at a nonprofit based in New York City called the Children’s Aid Society. On her lunch breaks she would walk over to a nearby farmers’ market.

“I got into cooking because there was a farmers’ market that was really close to my office that was [open] four days a week,” Patinella said. “I was living really on my own for the first time and began spending more and more time at the farmers’ market.”

Patinella’s interest in food led her to the Natural Gourmet Institute, a culinary school that fo-

cuses on health and sustainability.

“It’s about cuisine that is as good for your body as it is for the earth as it is for the preservation and dissemination of interesting cultures,” she said. “It ended up being the right choice for me.”

From there, she continued her food education in Italy, researching, studying and farming on a Fulbright grant.

In 2006, Patinella returned to the Children’s Aid Society to launch a food and nutrition program for the 70,000 children and families served by the organization. The program taught children and parents how to cook and also educated middle schoolers and high schoolers on food justice.

Each day, Patinella worked to serve the children

healthier foods.

“The food at Children’s Aid Society was like most food programs at children’s nonprofits — so chicken nuggets, pizza and those sorts of things,” Patinella said. “So we transitioned the food program, which fed about 4,000 kids a day, to a from-scratch, largely plant-based menu.”

In her free time, Patinella has been spending time getting to know western Massachusetts through one of her favorite pastimes: foraging.

“I really like hiking and foraging, particularly foraging for wild edibles,” Patinella said. “I love to get to know my environment by peering very closely at every little plant. I was at the farm and just looking around and thinking that there’s so much wild stuff we could also bring into Val.”

Opinion

THE AMHERST

STUDENT

Breaking Ground

E X E C U T I V E B OA R D A little more than a week ago, the college opened the new Science Center after three years of construction. As reported in The Amherst Student in last week’s issue, the building features state-of-the-art teaching and research labs, a library, cafe and lounge spaces.

It was not long ago that a very different set of buildings existed on those grounds. This year’s senior class is the last to have experienced the Social dorms, which were central to Amherst’s social culture. After their demolition, students and the administration struggled to recalibrate the rhythm of Amherst life. Past editorials and opinion articles in The Student reflect overwhelming uncertainty, discomfort and even resentment among students regarding the social life at Amherst.

The consensus was that the college did not hear them and was not addressing student demand for a Socialsequivalent replacement. The Greenway dorms, for example, offered suite-style living but are unconducive for the organic gathering that the Socials allowed. Alumni, seniors and even juniors can relate to the ever-continuing, tiring march to and from the Triangle, searching desperately for parties that remind us of Crossett or Stone.

The new Science Center feels like the administration’s definitive response to these grumblings. This particular impact is interesting because the Science Center is evidently an academic building, not residential nor social. Its completion — an impressive and flawless one, we would argue — has sealed any lingering thoughts we may have about the Socials and the practices, both good and bad, that they promoted. By presenting an attractive space, the college has succeeded in showing students that, perhaps, getting rid

of the Socials is valuable for all of us. What is the lesson here?

It is that we do not have to maintain the past; however, in changing, the college must continue to generate value for its students in a meaningful way.

This year seems to mark more intention on the part of the college. Schwemm’s now offers alcoholic beverages on weekend nights for students of legal age. The social spaces in the Science Center were planned, in part, by students themselves via the Design Thinking Challenge. These changes symbolize not only a new chapter of the college’s priorities, but also prove the college’s interest in student contribution and idea.

The long-term impact of the new building on campus culture is unclear, but the Editorial Board observes that students of all disciplines are frequenting the hybrid space.

Thus far, there are only a few student complaints about the Science Center itself (namely, the lack of a 24-hour work space).

The Editorial Board encourages the college and Amherst students to continue the collaboration and dialogue that has made the Science Center successful. We still have the challenge of creating a successful social dynamic on campus.

In this procress, the dialogue must continue. The Science Center proves that the administration and student body are co-dependent: the college needs student support to maintain a vibrant campus, and students need the administration’s expertise and resources. We urge students to continue pushing for a more fruitful social life, and for the college to listen and be thoughtful in the way we have seen this semester.

If I May: Schwemm’s Sadness Jake May ’19 Columnist This past Friday night, as my latest attempt to “go out” at Amherst wound down, I found myself in a familiar position: hungry, specifically for mozzarella sticks. I remembered that our beloved Schwemm’s had been renovated, and I was eager to check it out (and also to get mozz sticks). Upon arrival, I was pleased to see the changes to the furniture. Assuming some more tables will arrive for the inner room, the new aesthetic of the place is far improved from its previous form.

I looked at the updated menu, and there were several exciting new options: veggie and chicken dumplings, nachos, flatbreads and more. However, amidst this excitement over the new options, I also noticed some glaring omissions from the menu: mozzarella sticks, the West Coast turkey sandwich and egg and cheese bagel-wiches.

I have to say, these three items were perhaps my most frequent orders at Schwemm’s,

Do you have opinions about issues on campus?

and from discussions with some of my classmates, I have gathered that this is true of others as well. The mozzarella sticks were perhaps the quintessential late-night snack and were certainly incredibly popular at Schwemm’s. Julia Pike ’19, a close friend of mine, had this to say about the lack of fried cheese: “I spent my whole summer thinking about how when I got back to Amherst, I could have pesto and mozzarella sticks. I get back, the pesto’s here. But the mozzarella sticks? Gone! A travesty.”

The West Coast was the marquee item on the old Schwemm’s menu. Slathered in guacamole, this sandwich seemed to satiate many students’ desire for avocado. Recent alum Justin Henriksen ’18 was speechless when I informed him that the West Coast was no longer on the menu. I had witnessed him order enough West Coasts during his time at Amherst that I believe his intake alone would personally make it worth it to still have on the menu.

Finally, we arrive at the egg and cheese

bagel-wich. This is — or, rather, was — my personal favorite item on the Schwemm’s menu. The eggs were fried fresh. The bacon was crispy and crumbly (how I like it), and the sausage was not bad at all. I am very sad to see it go.

To be clear, I do not mean this article as an indictment of Schwemm’s and certainly not of anyone who works there. As I mentioned above, I am very pleased with the renovations and menu additions. However, it seems that the kitchen equipment has not changed; the same fryer is there, the same griddle, and the same sandwich station. It would seem that it is entirely possible for Schwemm’s to continue to have these old items on the menu, in addition to the new ones.

If other students share this opinion, I would encourage those to write a comment card, as I plan to. The dining staff here at Amherst really cares about students’ opinions, as we have seen with the improvements in Val. I would not be surprised if they would take our voices into account regarding this as well.

Editors-in-Chief Nate Quigley Isabel Tessier Managing News Shawna Chen Emma Swislow Assistant News Natalie De Rosa Managing Opinion Kelly Chian Diane Lee Managing Arts and Living Olivia Gieger Seoyeon Kim Managing Sports Connor Haugh Henry Newton Julia Turner S TA F F Head Publishers Nico Langlois, Mark Nathin Design Editors Katie Boback, Zehra Madhavan, Maria Mejia, Julia Shea Digital Director Dylan Momplaisir

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The Amherst Student • September 12, 2018

Opinion

5

Ain’t No Place Like Home: The Tales of a Southern Woman Caroline Seitz ’22 Contributing Writer “‘Cause a Mississippi girl don’t change her ways, just ’cause everybody knows her name.”

As I power-walk laps around the first-year quad to the sound of Faith Hill’s sappy twang in my earbuds, I realize I’m already having an identity crisis. I’ve only been at Amherst for two weeks. Most first years have to go through this kind of change when they arrive — trying to find the balance between keeping their identities from home while trying to fully embrace the new, exciting world of Amherst.

As a Nashville, Tennessee native, I’ve realized this transition can be particularly hard for Southerners. Coming from a culture with such a well-known sense of pride — a pride sometimes mistaken for ignorance—I have a lot to lose in terms of my identity as a Southern woman (yes, more than fried chicken and fishin’ and the like) as time distances me from home.

I’ve already had interactions where I had to

explain myself and my southern ways. Again, I have my earbuds in. I’m sitting next to a new friend I’ve made on my LEAP trip, so naturally the stakes are very high. I’m listening to my favorite playlist, self-titled “play somethin’ country,” so album cover after album cover of men with enormous cowboy hats and belt buckles, looking longingly off into the distance with guitars in their laps, flash on my screen.

I try to recede into the side of the bus, hoping no one can hear “I got that real good feel good stuff / up under the seat of my big black jacked up truck” through my earbuds. My face gets warmer as my friend looks over, she starts to giggle … and from there I have to explain myself.

Sitting on the stairs in front of North Hall, I’m having a casual chat with a couple of friends I just met. We’re bored and getting to know each other, and I reveal that my favorite band is The Dixie Chicks. As his eyes widen, one of my friends laughs sarcastically, saying, “That’s a charged name,” referencing the Confederate origins of the word.

It takes everything in me not to fire back and tell him how the band is actually the most outspoken liberal group in country music, how lost a huge chunk of its fan base when its members openly criticized President George W. Bush while playing overseas, how my mom and sister singing their words in the car got me through my parents’ divorce, but I remind myself that I shouldn’t take things so seriously. Yes, it is a charged name. It just seems that people think they know a lot about what’s important to me because I value basic Southern traditions and culture.

Other things that have been said to me in the short period of time I’ve been here: “What is a Southern belle? Are there a lot of Southern belles in Nashville? Like with big dresses? You kinda look like one.”

“Is history taught in a slanted way in the South? Like the Civil War?” “There must be a lot of fried food where you live. You must eat a lot of fried food.”

“It’s just funny to me that you like country music.”

“Have you ever shot a gun? What do you think about gun control?”

“Do you go muddin’ with your friends?

Like, I don’t know … driving trucks into mud puddles.”

“Music in L.A. is very different from music in Nashville!”

“Okay country girl, calm down.”

“I went to Indiana once. They had this big square-dancing party. It was kinda cool.”

“You’re the first Southern woman … I’ve ever met.”

All of this is to say that I’m thankful to be in a place where people do not know much about the South. I’m happy to challenge and strengthen my pride among a sea of voices and opinions. I hope myself and other students from the South can prove some people’s preconceptions wrong — or right. But I miss corn fields. I miss honky tonks and cigarette smoke.

I miss the whole room stopping in the middle of a party to belt Alabama’s “Song of the South” together. I miss the appreciation of the simple life I came to Amherst to leave behind.

John McCain’s (Deeply) Political Legacy Yannis Kalogiannis ’19 Contributing Writer On Aug. 25, a little more than two weeks ago, Senator John McCain passed away at the age of 81, succumbing to a devastating form of brain cancer. What followed on social media and in newspaper columns across the country was an overwhelming, albeit predictable, barrage of reactions to a life that, if nothing else, shaped modern American politics like few others.

The vast majority of the reactions I came across lauded McCain’s life as the epitome of service, courage and decency. Voiced by Democrats and Republicans alike, these came mostly from the so-called political establishment. Other reactions, while fewer in number, were highly critical of McCain’s legacy.

Some on the left denounced his foreign policy record, while others, from the “Make America Great Again” crowd, criticized his opposition to President Donald Trump.

Regardless of whether one considers his critics to be wrong — and I do —they are right to point out a certain hypocrisy on the part of some of his admirers, who pretend that praising McCain’s public life is an apolitical act. Criticizing McCain is as political as singing his praises. Neither position is objectively

true or offensive and that does not make either position right or wrong. Acknowledging that McCain’s praises are political in nature does not negate their validity. It merely asks that those voicing them reject their veneer of objectivity and argue their point without a priori silencing the other side.

McCain’s life was guided by certain core political principles about what America is and what its role in the world should be. Explaining those principles in his farewell statement, he asserted, “I lived and died a proud American. We are citizens of … a nation of ideals, not blood and soil. We are … a blessing to humanity when we uphold and advance those ideals at home and in the world.”

The ideals of which McCain speaks to are themselves inherently political and he, more than anyone else, knew that they need to be constantly reaffirmed. Democracy is one of those ideals. Liberal constitutionalism, which upholds the principle to respect the rights of all people and equality under the law, is another. Those who praised McCain after his death share those values, and that is why their statements were not politically neutral. Democrats like President Barack Obama said they admired McCain despite politics, but they actually admired him because of politics — not the everyday partisan politics of Washington,

but the core political ideals that are no less contestable and definitely more important.

To endorse McCain’s values and his view of America is to directly rebuke the current occupant of the White House. Their political choices are as different as they are telling. While President Trump defended some of the white nationalists who marched in Charlottesville as “very fine people,” McCain refused to fan the flames of the Republican base’s racism when he ran for President in 2008, even reprimanding his own supporters on multiple occasions. He also championed immigration reform in the Senate and maligned the “hardening resentment we see towards immigrants,” another sharp contrast with the current President, who has instituted policies separating immigrant children from their parents to pursue his nativist immigration agenda.

McCain also held a strong stance against torture — after experiencing its barbarity himself — whereas Trump campaigned on it. But, most of all, McCain resented the way Trump cozied up to despots like Putin, his warning against “flirting with authoritarianism and romanticizing it as our moral equivalent.” While Trump’s nationalism is based on culture and ethnicity, McCain’s patriotism rested on ideals.

However, the difference between the two men was not merely political, but one of character. The fact that one fought and was tortured for his country, while the other received five draft deferments (the last one for “bone spurs”) and called his effort to avoid STDs his “personal Vietnam” is, again, telling.

But to endorse McCain’s values is also to cast doubt on the beliefs of many on the left, who see no moral distinction between America and its foes and view all efforts to support liberal democratic institutions abroad as manifestations of cultural imperialism. McCain believed that America had a responsibility to liberate people from tyranny around the world. As a senator, he gave voice to freedom fighters from Russia to the Middle East and from Belarus to Myanmar. He also knew that America would not be able to protect her ideals without a strong military. Of course, that belief led him to want to use it too often, the Iraq War debacle being an obvious example.

McCain was imperfect, and he did at times cave to opportunism — but he often recognized his errors publicly, unlike most politicians. I wish America and the world had more leaders in John McCain’s mould. And I also wish those who admire him would embrace his legacy without forgetting that it is, in fact, political.

Grappling with Self-Segregation on Campus Jae Yun Ham ’22 Contributing Writer After growing up in Hawaii, a state full of racial diversity, I found myself excited at the prospect of joining a campus well-known for its commitment to finding students from across the globe. In its admissions brochures, Amherst touts itself as a champion of inclusion, with 45 percent of its student body identifying as students of color. As a first year, I looked forward to experiencing new cultures, learning about far-away places and even making lifelong connections with people I would never have interacted with had I not gone to Amherst. In the span of a few weeks, however, it became clear that my vision of Amherst as a diverse haven was false.

At first, I found myself naturally gravitating towards the Asian population at Amherst. Regardless of where we had grown up, our shared cultural experiences and obstacles had overlapped considerably. We bonded over our love of bubble tea, K-pop and our cultural identity. It seemed as though I had found the core friend group that I was always looking for.

These were the people that I wanted to engage with in college and beyond.

And then it hit me. I had specifically cho-

sen Amherst because I had wanted something more than a mere repeat of high school. Unlike many of my Asian peers, I had come from a place where I was in the ethnic majority.

Hawaii was a community where, as an Asian American, I naturally fit in. With a few notable exceptions, most of my friends back home identified as members of the Asian community. I had come to Amherst to break out of my comfort zone, to be proud of my heritage and to share it with my peers. How could I possibly do that when I was only interacting and connecting with other members of Amherst’s Asian community?

It quickly became clear that I was not alone in this dilemma. From casual glances in Frost or in first-year common rooms, I began to truly understand the problem of self-segregation at Amherst. Many first years, of all ethnic identities, have begun to self-segregate themselves into friend groups that shared their ethnicity.

With student organizations like the Asian Students Association (ASA) and the Black Students Union (BSU), it is easy for students, especially those who identify as people of color, to spend a large amount of time with peers who share their ethnicity. Even for white students, who still constitute more than half of the student body, self-segregation is still an issue. No

matter one’s race or ethnicity, the comfort of mingling with people who share the same cultural background is extremely tempting.

In the first few weeks, I was fortunate enough to interact with various students of different ethnic backgrounds from around the world. Most significantly, a conversation with a fellow first year, who came from America’s heartland, opened my eyes to the power of shared experiences. After talking for a few moments, I realized that even though she was white, our lives leading to our time at Amherst were marked by similar struggles. I easily found common ground with her despite the fact that we came from vastly different cultural backgrounds. In this moment I realized that experiences, unlike skin color or cultural identity, have the power to create bonds beyond the superficial. If a Korean-American male from Hawaii can make a meaningful connection and friendship with a white female from the Midwest, I am positive that everyone here on campus, regardless of their backgrounds, can do the same.

I am not saying that Amherst is at fault for the trend of self-segregation of its own student body. I am also not saying that student organizations, such as the BSU or ASA, are promoting the idea of self-segregation. With almost

half the student body identifying as people of color, it is clear that the administration and student groups are working on their end to promote a culturally, ethnically, geographically and ideologically diverse campus. However, both Amherst’s administration and its diverse student body should make a more concerted effort to promote student interaction between students of different cultural identities. How can a diverse student body be of any use in the context of self-segregation?

Although it may seem difficult, there are ways to fix this issue on campus. With the increasingly successful push for diversity on college campuses, colleges like Amherst must make efforts to promote cross-cultural interaction so that students of all backgrounds have opportunities to make their voices and experiences heard. The administration should strive to host events where students, regardless of their ethnic background, can share their stories with one another. Multicultural student organizations should plan and host community wide events where they can share their cultural background with the general student body. If students had more opportunities to share their experiences with each other, the problem of self-segregation would surely not be as prevalent as it is today.

Arts&Living

Unpacking What Summer 2018 Meant for the World of Hip Hop

Photo courtesy of onyxtruth.com

In the summer of 2018, Pusha T (pictured left) and Drake (pictured right) threw insults at each other on their new albums.

Jack Klein ’20 Staff Writer The hip hop industry, despite what many blogs or online publications may have you believe, did not experience a seismic shift this summer. Fans did not flock to a new digital platform or fawn over a new superstar. However, the summer was still filled with exciting and interesting musical events. A label revived itself under the watchful eye of its legendary founder, a star at the top of the mountain was knocked down by an OG (Original Gangster) rapper and

another star cemented his fame with a creative masterpiece.

The beginning of the summer was dominated by Drake and Pusha T’s rap beef. The conflict between the two has deep roots in the past, dating back to when Pusha attacked Birdman, the head of Drake’s label at the time, in a song. Over the years, both Drake and Pusha have insulted each other on various songs.

Pusha reignited this beef on his latest album, “Daytona,” released May 25 of this year. On the song “Infrared,” Pusha rehashes an accusation frequently leveled at Drake — that he

uses ghostwriters. He raps: “The lyric pennin’ equal the Trumps winnin’ / The bigger question is how the Russians did it / It was written like Nas, but it came from Quentin.” This Quentin is Quentin Miller, who has allegedly ghostwritten for Drake in the past.

Drake responded with “Duppy Freestyle,” released less than a day after the release of “Daytona.” “Duppy” responded directly to the ghostwriting allegations, insinuating that Drake only meant to help Miller and that Drake’s stardom and sound are what sells his records, not lyrics from a writer behind closed doors.

Pusha decided not to pull any punches, posting “The Story of Adidon” on his SoundCloud account on May 29, one of the most explosive diss tracks since Ice Cube’s “No Vaseline.” On the track, Pusha reveals that Drake had fathered a son with a former porn star and intended to announce his parenthood via a line of Adidas shoes and clothing.

He also mocks Drake’s longtime producer, Noah “40” Shebib, and his multiple sclerosis.

Not only were the lyrics damaging, but the cover art of the track — a picture of Drake in blackface — was deeply disturbing. Afterwards, Drake posted a response to the photo on Instagram explaining its existence, but the damage had been done.

However, even the beef with Pusha couldn’t dampen the release of Drake’s album, “Scorpion.” The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with over 732,000 copies or equivalents sold in its first week. It included an A side and a B side, which undoubtedly contributed to its massive streaming numbers, and featured hits such as “Nice for What” and “In My Feelings.” In the end, Drake had the summer of his life.

Pusha’s label, G.O.O.D. Music, attempted a comeback of its own during the summer. The label released five Kanye-produced albums on consecutive Fridays, starting with “Daytona.”

Next was “Ye” by Kanye, then “Kids See Ghosts,” a collaboration between Kanye and Kid Cudi, “Nasir” by Nas and “K.T.S.E.” by Teyana Taylor.

The albums were successful on the whole, with only “Nasir” universally panned; the other four were received fairly well at worst and fantastically at best.

Another major event in the rap world this summer was XXXTentacion’s death. The 20-year-old rapper was shot and killed outside of a motorcycle dealership in Florida. He was a controversial figure, having both presented mental health issues in his work in questionable terms and been accused of domestic abuse. Despite his rocky moral standing, many celebrities and internet personalities mourned his passing.

Finally, one of the most highly anticipated albums of the summer debuted on Aug. 3. Travis Scott’s “Astroworld” featured verses from the crème de la crème of hip hop, including The Weeknd, Drake, Nav, Quavo and 21 Savage.

Combined with flawless production and a creative theme, “Astroworld” took fans on a ride inside Scott’s musical psyche.

Most recently, the hip hop community, and the music world at large, felt the loss of rapper, singer and producer Mac Miller. His death was a painful reminder of the importance of attention to mental health issues and drug addiction in the music industry, as Miller struggled with addiction throughout his life.

Although there were countless other releases and newsworthy events from the summer, the stories above truly defined the summer of 2018.

Blood Orange Explores Self-Acceptance Over Buoyant Beats Hugh Ford ’20 Staff Writer On Aug. 24, British singer and instrumentalist Dev Hynes, who uses the stage name Blood Orange, released his fourth LP “Negro Swan.” Over the past nine years Hynes has steadily created a name for himself in the electronic R&B niche that exists in today’s music landscape, and “Negro Swan” serves as testament to his talent for seamlessly weaving together virtuoso instrumentation, electronic production and R&B singing.

As the brand of UK electronic R&B grows with contemporaries like James Blake, The xx and Sampha garnering mainstream appeal, Blood Orange has attempted to secure his spot in this brave new world. On “Negro Swan” he sets himself apart from his moodier colleagues by demonstrating the ability of hope to override melancholy to create a buoyant sound. The album fluctuates between despair and hope as Blood Orange crafts a narrative of self-acceptance in the face of marginalization and depression.

On the opening track, “Orlando,” Hynes wastes no time introducing the listener to his tribulations. Gently singing over subtle, funky production, he describes his experience being bullied in school. He tenderly disguises his pain through metaphor, recalling his “first kiss is the floor.” In the face of this pain, however, “Orlando” concludes with narration from transgender-rights activist Janet Mock that sets the tone of the next track, “Saint.”

Mock’s narration guides the theme of selfacceptance throughout the album. Mock, an American transgender-rights advocate and an editor for “Marie Claire” magazine, gained acclaim for her book “Redefining Realness,” a memoir of her life as a trans woman of color.

She appears on the album four times, discussing the issue of being oneself even in unwel-

coming spaces and posing the question of who is included in “family.”

Thematically, “Negro Swan” ventures intimately into Hynes’ feelings and personal identity, and the resulting product is a powerful tribute to resilience. At the same time, “Negro Swan” once again showcases Hyne’s amazing ear for melodies. Highlights include “Charcoal Baby,” the first Blood Orange track to feature guitar. Blood Orange makes the instrument his own by distorting and detuning it to the cusp of discomfort before rescuing the listener with drums and synths. Another standout, “Saint,” treats the listener to the soft and sweet tenor of Hynes singing while celebrating finding joy in being black. The joy spills over to the instrumental as a bright saxophone fills in the gaps between verses.

Hynes also enlists the help of several notable features for “Negro Swan.” On the track “Hope”, Puff Daddy provides a feel-good chorus and a surprisingly heartfelt spoken interlude about being afraid to be loved.

Meanwhile, up-and-coming popsinger Tei Shi counterbalances the established rapper, intermingling her silky voice with Diddy’s deeper one.

Meanwhile, the song “Chewing Gum” features a signature verse from A$AP Rocky. In order to conform to the melody, Rocky’s flow blurs the line between singing and rapping, and the overt sexuality in his verse contrasts the subtler sensuality present in other parts of the album. Southern rapper Project Pat handles the outro with a few quick bars in deep chopped-and-screwed vocal effects.

Other prominent features include Georgia Anne Muldrow on “Runnin’” and Steve Lacy on “Out of Your League.” Hynes’ quiet, reserved verses about anxiety and loneliness on “Runnin’” are contrasted with Muldrow’s reverberating voice, as she assures him “You’re gonna be alright.” Lacy — who recently re-

leased an album as part of The Internet — and Blood Orange complement each other on “Out of Your League,” with soulful vocals over funky instrumental performances.

On his fourth album, Hynes continues to grow his electronic R&B sound. Despite the

sometimes-dark subject matter, Blood Orange’s signature jazzy instrumentals and tender vocals always underscore hope bubbling up through despair. The final product, “Negro Swan,” is a conflicted yet touching LP on selfacceptance.

Photos courtesy of en.wikipedia.org

Dev Hynes, who released “Negro Swan” under the stage name Blood Orange, performs at Way Out West in 2014.

The Amherst Student • September 12, 2018

Arts & Living 7

“BlacKkKlansman” Promises Radicalism, But Fails to Deliver Youngkwang Shin ’19 Staff Writer For a brief moment in the final stretch, “BlacKkKlansman” sheds the infiltration shenanigans and the tired cop camaraderie. The audience sit down with the Colorado College Black Student Union to hear an older individual’s whispered account of horrifying crimes, who speaks of what he saw on a particularly hot day of 1916.

They castrated Jesse Washington. Then they burned him alive. The students sob even without proof, but the old sufferer shows them anyway: how they cut him, how they killed him. The camera pushes in from his face to his hands, shuffling the colorless photographs one by one.

The effect is a movie of sorts, one picture following another. Eisenstein once described his theory of montage in cinema in this way: there was to be an image followed by another image. There would be only two images, but we would see three: a third, invisible image to shock, hurt, teach and empower.

In a sense, this unassuming gesture captures 20th-century American race relations with Soviet film techniques; as the speaker slides from one photograph to another, we witness the red between the black and white.

Of course, Spike Lee’s filmmaker of interest is not Eisenstein, but D.W. Griffith, whose acclaimed opus “Birth of a Nation” is referenced on occasion as Ron Stallworth (Jon David Washington) drives Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver).

And the technique of interest is not montage but cross-cutting, a montage of event.

“Birth of a Nation” infamously cut between stereotyped black men’s raids on innocent maidens and the charge of the white brigade to imply two possible third events: miscegenation or deliverance.

When that tension resolved as the latter, Griffith cuts between a marriage and voting suppression to imply a hopeful inevitability: the white race will rebound from the Civil War. Lee’s Klansmen, who are watching the film at the same time the witness is giving his testimony, probably do not understand its cinematic intricacy. But they nonetheless cheer as the “villains” are torn away to be castrated and burned.

This moment is the heart of “BlacKkKlansman,” and it is by far its most impressive scene. Lee homages Griffith by also crosscutting between scenes involving different races.

The aging eyewitness also remembers the national popularity of “Birth of a Nation” and how the meekest citizen found entertainment in the torching of a black teenager. His hands, still shuffling and at times shaking, hold the images that must replace Griffith’s. And when we cut back to the Klan crew seeking to remake “Birth of a Nation,” “BlacKkKlansman” is a tremendously clever rebuttal that fights form with form.

“Black Power,” one side chants. “White Power!” the other side responds. The war has

begun, and the third event will be the triumph of either black or white.

In some corner of David Duke’s (Topher Grace) frothing gathering is Detective Stallworth, sending signs through his shades to Detective Zimmerman. That corner is where they belong.

It is a massive letdown that the actual content of “BlacKkKlansman” does not consist of the formal infiltration of black image in white, but rather the far more mundane double-agent, buddy-cop businesses that went bankrupt in the time of Denzel Washington, John David’s father.

And with such little intrigue, Washington and Driver must split its impoverished portions. Driver, delivering every line as a grumble, has physical presence and nothing else.

Ron suggests the operation because his encounter with Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins) and his radical girlfriend Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier) awakens a vague fire inside his heart.

Flip is a machine powered by another man’s heat: the struggle never becomes anything personal to him. From beginning to end, he is Ron’s proxy with a gift for improvisation.

Once or twice, he brings up his Jewish identity and his unease at the precarious position of his people in the white community. Every other time, Flip busies himself concocting some funny and racist answer to a suspicious Klansman looking at his jeans, interrogating whether he had been “circumstanced.”

Ron is cut down by the opposite problem.

Because he himself cannot roam amongst the Klansmen, Ron has little to no weight in the story.

Over the phone, he speaks in an exaggerated white accent to David Duke, and the Grand Wizard is fooled by it, letting his racist intuition get in his way of identifying and discriminating against an actual black man, who fakes the white accent to get his way. For the audience, this may result in a chuckle or two.

In short, Ron as a vocal presence is a joke.

When he is not on the phone, he spends time with Flip and Patrice. Interactions with his partner never progress beyond the operation, thus letting down even the most rudimentary expectations of the tired buddy-cop genre.

Ron is markedly livelier with Patrice, mostly because she offers the few opportunities for Washington to inhabit a scene with another actor.

But it is here that “BlacKkKlansman” relinquishes the radical potential of its highest moment. He laughs, he orbits, he flirts and he spins. In the meanwhile, he challenges Patrice’s radicalism, and even as he conceals his identity as a cop (or to Patrice, a “pig”), he remains steadfast in his belief that the system can be changed from the inside.

This is a bizarre step for Lee, one that lets down not only the best part of this film, but the best film of his career.

Lee’s 1989 masterpiece, “Do the Right Thing,” portrayed a scorched landscape of racial animosity and misunderstanding with no clear idea about what the right thing was.

But the wrong thing was clear enough: the police and their insensitivity, addiction to

Photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Spike Lee’s film premeired Aug. 10 and has since received much critical acclaim.

Photos courtesy of liveforfilm.com

Although praised as a return to form for its director, Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman” falls short of expectations, with its supposed radicalism only superficial in reality. force and propensity for extrajudicial murders.

Stallworth is a cop, but in “BlacKkKlansman,” Lee sides with him and his institution, and this picture composes a curious montage that seems to be missing an image between the old and the young.

That image may be the New York Police Department’s $200,000 grant to the director, made with the expressed purpose of “improving relationships between the police and the community” and the implied purpose of something, at best, related.

At his best, Lee fights form with form; at his worst, he fights back with similar tactics.

After the cross-cutting between black power and white power, Stallworth’s dealings with Patrice and Lee’s dealing with the police delivers a third image of compromise and disappointment.

That image is the general impression of the canonical filmmaker’s supposed return

to form. The end of “BlacKkKlansman” tries to revive the excitement of its highlight, by situating the film in the broader montage of history.

It cuts from the 1970s to the present day — to Trump and Charlottesville, the grain of the witness’ photographs replaced with the crisp colors of cable news. But this is too little, too late. The relationship between the film’s contents and Charlottesville is simple equivalence.

By the end, the film forgets its own subversive formalism and can only repeat the most basic liberal credo that Trump and his people are old-timey racists.

This cut from past to present is neither prophecy nor insight, but catch-up: a sorry state for an American master.

As it is, “BlacKkKlansman” masquerades as a radical film politically and aesthetically.

But underneath, it is just a boring picture wearing a radical mask.

The Amherst Student • September 12, 2018

Arts & Living 8

Environmentally-Friendly Brands to Consider Buying This Year Emmy Sohn ’22 Contributing Writer Study Snacks Numi Tea If you’re looking for caffeinated or herbal organic tea, Numi is a great choice. Its packaging is 85 percent recycled material and is printed using soy-based ink. The brand also offsets its carbon emissions by supporting renewable energy efforts in China and India.

Bare Snacks Bare makes fruit and veggie chips without preservatives, chemicals or GMOs. These healthy and yummy snacks are perfect for grabbing in between classes and meals.

Tony’s Chocolonely The perfect addition to your dorm room chocolate stash, you can snack (or binge) on Tony’s Chocolonely knowing that it is packaged using recycled paper and produced with minimal pesticides. In addition to being environmentally friendly, Tony’s is also a fair-trade product, meaning that the company is committed to a slavery-free supply chain.

Comfy Clothes Patagonia Stay warm this winter with Patagonia products. Part of Patagonia’s mission is to “take responsibility for the entire lifecycle” of their clothes. This means repairing and recycling old merchandise, increasing supply chain efficiency, using organic cotton, repairing and recycling old merchandise and donating one percent of all their sales to restoration projects.

Reformation Reformation is committed to a more sustainable future for the fashion industry. It lists the environmental impact of each clothing item on its website, and it is dedicated to reducing and offsetting their carbon emissions. Reformation makes trendy, high quality, and long-lasting clothes, the perfect addition to your school year wardrobe.

Everlane Everlane is a relatively more affordable sustainable fashion brand that focuses on offering high-quality classic pieces and silhouettes in addition to clothes and accessories inspired by current trends. The brand’s website includes profiles of each of its factories around the world, and this transparency is especially refreshing in

the fashion industry.

Prana Prana makes leggings and workout gear perfect for gym weattirear or athleisure. The comapny uses organic cotton, recycled wool and down, which is harvested without animal cruelty to make more sustainably processed clothing.

ThredUp Buying environmentally conscious brands often comes at a cost too high for many, but ThredUp facilitates sustainable consumption at prices realistic for a college student’s budget. The online-only retailer hosts a platform for secondhand clothing on a world-wide scale, making sustainable buying easier than ever. Consumers can buy from an vast selection of once-worn brand names at a fraction of the price.

Everyday Essentials Fresko Water Bottles Stay hydrated this year with Fresko’s reusable water bottles. Fresko’s products are made of bamboo, glass and stainless steel, as well as being completely BPA-free. With water fountains all over campus, it’s easy to reduce consumption of single-use plastic bottles and support an environmentally-friendly brand.

Pela Phone Cases Take care of your phone and the environment with Pela phone cases. Instead of plastic, these cases are made of a protective and shock-absorbent, plant-based material. Pela cases come in all shapes and sizes for any type of phone.

Photo courtesy of the earlgreyaddict.blogspot.com

Lush Lush pushes the boundaries on the standard for sustainable beauty products, using vegetarian, ethical formulas. The brand has innovated ways to produce package-less soaps, simulating shower gel and shampoo in bars that foam as if they were liquid.

Klean Kanteen Now that Schwemm’s has followed Starbucks’ lead in ditching its plastic straws, a reusable straw is a worthwhile purchase for any Amherst student. The market has recently been flooded with selection, but Klean Kanteen offers some of the best options, with metal and silicone tips to prevent burning from hot beverages. The company also offers durable, reuable waterbottles and mugs, which are an important staple to have in the classroom.

Photo courtesy of flickr.com

When purchasing dorm snacks and supplies, students should consider buying brands that use ethical practices and create sustainable products.

The Amherst Student • September 12, 2018

Sports

9

Volleyball Stacks Up Three Wins Women’s Soccer Starts Season In Opening Week of Season With Multiple Clean Sheets Nat De Jonge ’21 Staff Writer

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Sophomore Pearl Accord has a perfect hitting percentage through her first three matches, despite playing in all but one of Amherst’s sets.

Dan Papa ’20 Staff Writer The volleyball team started the season strong, defeating Pioneer Valley foe Smith on Friday night and following up this performance with back-to-back wins at the Western New England Invitational on Saturday, sept. 8th.

The Firedogs dropped just one set in the three matches, giving them a perfect 3-0 record after the first weekend.

On Friday, the Firedogs traveled to Northampton for their first contest of the season.

Amherst jumped out to a 7-0 lead in the first set and didn’t look back, cruising to a dominant 25-4 first-set win.

The Pioneers made the second and third sets more competitive, but Amherst held off several runs to win the final sets, 25-18 and 25-19.

Sophomore Jamie Dailey led the team with three aces, 10 digs and 15 kills, while juniors Emily Kolsky and Claire Dennis contributed with eight and five kills, respectively.

Setter Charlotte Duran ’20 finished with 31 assists and Candace Chung ’20 had 17 digs.

The Firedogs had a quick turnaround, traveling to the Western New England Invitational on saturday, they were scheduled to play familiar opponents Western New England University and Emerson College.

Amherst defeated both teams last season and looked to repeat their success this campaign. Western New England entered the weekend looking for their first win, while Emerson arrived previously unbeaten.

In their first match, the Firedogs pulled off another sweep, this time against host Western New England.

Amherst found its footing in a tough first set, edging out the Golden Bears, 2517.

The momentum stayed with Amherst, as the team easily took the final two sets (2512, 25-14) and won the match.

Both Dailey and Kolsky had double-digit kills, while first-year Sophie Launsbach tallied seven kills and junior Cam Hendricks notched six.

Co-captain Hayes Honea ’19 led the team with 18 digs, and Duran had 37 assists.

In the second match, it took a full team effort from Amherst to defeat Emerson. The two teams traded the lead in the first set before Amherst pulled away for a 25-17 win.

Amherst dropped its first set of the weekend and the season in the next frame, as the Lions needed an extra point to win 26-24.

However, the Firedogs remained focused, and with the help of first-year Sky-

leur Savage’s 24 digs, captured the third and fourth sets, 25-19 and 25-15.

The result was the Lions’ first loss on the season and propelled Amherst to 3-0.

Duran and Dailey each boasted impressive statistics, finishing with a team-high 55 assists and 28 kills, respectively.

Honea had 12 digs for Amherst, while Kolsky contributed 10 kills and Launsbach finished with nine of her own.

After this weekend’s performance, head coach Sue Everden sits just one win away from her 700th career victory.

Amherst will have an opportunity to achieve this milestone for its coach on Friday when the team travels to Middlebury, Vermont to take on the Panthers and open NESCAC play.

Last season, Amherst dropped a 2-1 lead to Middlebury in an exciting five-set match.

After the match against Panthers, Amherst returns on Saturday for its home opener in LeFrak Gymnasium.

The doubleheader features matchups against Newbury College and Sage University.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Senior captain Hayes Honea led the team in digs against Western New England University with 18.

Over the past week, the women’s soccer team began its season with a series of impressive showings.

The first three games of their season have instilled confidence in the squad, which has seemingly overcome the graduation of last season’s key leaders with the emergence of first-year talent and energy from returning players.

In addition, in either a stroke of skilled recruiting, head coach Jen Hughes secured the addition of two Division I transfer players.

These include sophomore midfielder Jordan Bailey from Boston University and sophomore goalkeeper Antonia Tammaro from St John’s University.

As the full-time whistle blew last Thursday night, the scoreboard read 8-0 in the Mammoths’ favor over their local rivals Mount Holyoke.

This traditional opening game has been dominated by Amherst in recent years, and the 2018 contest was no different.

The scoring began eight minutes after the opening whistle and did not stop until the 68th minute.

A trigger-happy Amherst side outshot their opponents 37-0.

Rubii Tamen ’19 opened Amherst’s account on the season with two unassisted efforts, followed by a 25-yard screamer by Cassie Chin ’21 and two consecutive goals by Navva Sedigh ’21.

Meanwhile, Lexy Cook ’21, Hayley Roy ’19 and Natalie Landau ’21 each netted their own in the second half.

“We take pride in our defense, both individual and collective, so to keep a clean sheet was important to us,” sophomore standout Sedigh said.

24 hours later in central Maine, the Amherst team eked out a 1-0 nail-biter against NESCAC rival Bowdoin.

Unlike the opener against Mount Holyoke, this was a game of few chances, with Amherst taking only six shots to Bowdoin’s eight.

The first and only goal of the game came in the 13th minute on a penalty kick taken by first-year Alexa Juarez.

The defense held strong for the remain-

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Rubii Tamen ’19 has already scored three goals thus far this season. ing 77 minutes, weathering the Polar Bears’ attacks until the final whistle blew.

Finally, on Sunday afternoon, to cap off the first weekend of fall sports, the Mammoths sent a message with a decisive 4-0 victory over the Lasell College Explorers.

In its third game in four days, the Amherst squad showed few signs of fatigue or complacency.

Once again, Amherst went up early, taking a 3-0 lead by the 33rd minute thanks to the efforts of Tamen, Maeve McNamara ’19 and Chin. In its third shutout in a row, the team proved its grit and commitment to playing as a team.

The Mammoths will travel to Vermont to face NESCAC foes Middlebury on Saturday, Sept. 15 at noon.

The Panthers, also boasting a perfect record over three games, will surely provide a test of the Mammoths’ mettle.

10

Sports

The Amherst Student • September 12, 2018

Sophomores Pace Women’s Cross Country at Little Threes Jamie Mazzola ’21 Staff Writer Facing strong competition from Williams and Wesleyan, the Amherst women’s cross country team placed third at the annual Little Three Championships, scoring 54 points as a team. Tallying a mere 33 points, Williams defeated Wesleyan (36 points) in a hard-fought battle.

Entering the meet, Williams ranked third in the New England region. Amherst and Wesleyan ranked seventh and eighth, respectively. “Hats off to the other teams, especially to Wesleyan, who had probably their best showing in the last seven or eight years,” head coach Cassie Funke-Harris said.

Amherst’s newly redesigned four-kilometer home cross country course features a large range of terrains, including sections on the soccer field, technical trails and a loop of the bird sanctuary, making for a grueling race. Fortunately, after a brutal heat wave throughout the preseason, the temperature in the mid-60s and calm skies represented ideal weather conditions.

Due to illness and injury, only eight Mammoths competed in the 39-person field. Sophomore Olivia Polischeck paced the Mammoths with a sixth-place finish in 15:52. After placing 34th at last year’s edition of the Little Three Championships, sophomore Paige Reddington made a huge jump to secure ninth place in 16:05. Following close behind, senior captain Lela Walter (16:06) and junior Kristin Ratliff (16:11) placed 10th and 12th, respectively. In her first race as a Mammoth, first-year Francis Margaret Gehrke (16:49) placed 20th.

Sophomore Sarah Gayer (26th, 17:11), firstyear Eline Laurent (27th, 17:17) and first year Julia Doubson (30th, 17:25) rounded out the competing

Mammoths.

Speaking on the performances by the first years, Funke-Harris said, “I was really pleased with all of our rookies getting out there, running without nerves, and executing really well in their first collegiate races.”

“I think this race is a really good starting point for the rest of the season for us to build off of and only get even stronger,” Reddington said.

The Mammoths return to action in two weeks at the Purple Valley Classic, hosted by rival Williams. Amherst placed 11th in a 26-team field last year.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Paige Reddington ’21 placed ninth out of all runners at the Little Three race.

ATHLETE SPOTLIGHT

Dane Lind ’20

Navva Sedigh ’21

Favorite Team Memory: Winning the 2016 NESCAC Championship Favorite Pro Athlete: LeBron James Favorite Vacation Spot: Orange County, California Something on Your Bucket List: Going skydiving Guilty Pleasure: “Avatar: The Last Airbender” Favorite Thing About Amherst: The fantastic balance between academics and athletics How He Earned It: Lind was the driving force behind the men’s soccer team’s first two wins of the season over Wentworth and Bowdoin last week that saw the Mammoths win 7-0 and 1-0, respectively. Lind was instrumental in securing Amherst’s biggest win since 2010 in the first contest, picking up three assists and scoring one of his own. Against Bowdoin, despite the tougher competition, Lind still managed to affect the outcome of the game, providing the critical assist on the only goal of the game. For his play, Lind was named NESCAC player of the week.

Favorite Team Memory: The ropes course we did for team bonding - especially the tire swings Favorite Pro Athlete: Lionel Messi Favorite Vacation Spot: Los Angeles, California Something on Your Bucket List: Visit every US National Park Guilty Pleasure: The Bachelor Favorite Thing About Amherst: The people How She Earned It: During women’s soccer’s dominant opening performance against Mount Holyoke, Sedigh stood out for her consistent play at the front of the Mammoths’ offense. Sedigh scored two goals against the Lyons on four shots, for what were her first collegiate points.

Following that game, Sedigh put in two more shifts for the women’s soccer team against Bowdoin, recording one shot in the 1-0 win, and Lasell College, against whom she registered an additional two shots on goal. Sedigh currently leads the team in shots. She and the rest of the Mammoths’ squad will return to action in a conference matchup against Middlebury on Saturday, Sept. 15.

Field Hockey Beats Mount Holyoke, But Loses to Bowdoin Sarah Melanson ’20 Staff Writer The Amherst Mammoths opened their season in a promising fashion at home Thursday against the Mount Holyoke Lyons. The Mammoths wasted no time and just seven minutes into the game, Natalie Hobbs ’22 fed senior captain Megan Shea a beautiful pass through two defenders. Shea rifled a shot past the Lyons goalkeeper to record the Mammoths’ first goal of the season.

The Lyons responded less than a minute later to tie the game at 1-1, when Mount Holyoke’s Kristina Ramsden tipped a shot past Amherst goalie Katie Savage ’19.

In a fast, back-and-forth half, both teams created several scoring opportunities. Despite these chances, none were capitalized upon until the Mammoths won a penalty corner, in which Laura Schwartzman ’20 beautifully sent a pass to Kendall Codey ’19, who rocketed a shot straight through the back of the net to give the Mammoths a 2-1 lead going into the half.

The Mammoths then crushed any hopes the Lyons had of a comeback by tallying two goals in the first 20 minutes of the second half. Hobbs deflected a shot from Schwartzman to score her first goal as a Mammoth, while the second goal came on another penalty corner, as Schwartzman again connected with Codey to make the score 4-1.

Other notable performances came from midfield powerhouse Anna Agathis ’21, who tallied a game-high four shots on goal. The defensive line of Grace Johnson ’22, Codey, and Beth Williamson ’22 was a dominating force that helped the Mammoths open the season 1-0.

After this impressive display, the Mammoths trekked to NESCAC powerhouse Bowdoin on Saturday hoping to build off their momentum from Thursday night.

Despite their best efforts, the Mammoths were dealt their first loss of the season by a final score of 6-2. Going down 2-0 within the first 10 minutes, Amherst never gave up. Williamson blasted her first

collegiate goal past the Bowdoin goalkeeper off an assist from Agathis during a penalty corner.

However, midway through the second half, the Mammoths found themselves in a 5-1 deficit. This did not prevent Emery Sorvino ’19 from battling hard to pick off a pass and send Franny Daniels ’21 flying through the defenders on a break-a-way.

Daniels capitalized to make the score 5-2 with 10 minutes left in regulation play. Bowdoin, however, had the last say with a goal that made the final score 6-2 with just seconds remaining on the clock.

Shea remains optimistic despite Saturday’s loss.

“Playing difficult competition at the beginning of the season helps us figure out what we need to work on as a team,” said Shea. “Now we have a strong sense of what we need to do as individuals and as a team during practice this week in order to go into our Middlebury game on Saturday feeling confident.”

Amherst will hope to rebound from this tough loss on Saturday, when the Mammoths will travel to take on Middlebury at 11 a.m.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Junior goalkeeper Emilie Flamme recorded six saves against Bowdoin on Saturday.

The Amherst Student • September 12, 2018

Sports

Men’s Soccer Takes First Two Games in Convincing Fashion

11

The Hot Corner Jack Malague ’19 Columnist Jack Malague examines the recent debate in Major League Baseball over its “unwritten rules” after one of the game’s bright young stars was forced to leave a game after being intentionally hit during an at-bat.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Dane Lind ’20 was named NESCAC player of the week for his three assists and one goal in the 7-0 and 1-0 victories against Wentworth and Bowdoin.

Jordan Rhodeman ’21 Staff Writer Travelling to Boston for its first match of the year, Amherst men’s soccer faced off against Wentworth Institute of Technology in a nonconference matchup before its NESCAC opener against Bowdoin.

Doing the lion’s share of their damage in the first half of the contests, the Mammoths jumped out to an early 5-0 lead by halftime against Wentworth. Six different players scored goals for Amherst, German Giammattei ’22 scoring two.

The player of the game, however, would prove to be Dane Lind ’20 who registered a goal and three assists in the rout.

Amherst outshot the Wentworth Leopards 32-3, with the Mammoths managing to place an astounding 18 of those shots on goal in what was the most sizable and impressive offensive outburst for the men’s soccer team since 2010.

Michael Stone ’21 and Bernie White ’22 combined for the shutout.

After winning its first game of the season, Amherst was looking to build on its historic start and was able to do so in a tight victory against Bowdoin. For the fifth consecutive year, the Amherst’s men’s soccer team dominated its first NESCAC game of the season, defeating the Polar Bears 1-0 in Brunswick, Maine.

“Every NESCAC game is a battle and today was no different,” head coach Justin Serpone said. “History told us it was likely going to be decided by a set piece and that’s exactly what happened… Bowdoin is a good team and I’m sure we’ll see them again. What I liked about today is that for the second game in a row, everyone contributed to the win. It’s hard to win games and we’re going to need all 25 guys brining that sort of energy all season.”

The game was played at a fast pace from the opening kick-off and the Mammoths and Polar Bears fought for every pass, shot and minute of possession. The game proved physical and fast, with only one goal scored but 31 fouls committed by the two physical sides. The Mammoths managed to notch a total of 17 fouls during the duration of the game, whereas the Polar Bears comitted only 14.

With only a little over 14 minutes remaining in the first half, Amherst won a free kick 35-yards out from the Bowdoin goal. Lind opted for a quick restart, passing the ball inside the box to Luke Nguyen ’19, who managed to chip a shot over the goalkeeper’s head before being tackled to the grass. Despite the collision, the ball sailed into the back of the net for the sole goal of the game.

With a 1-0 lead in hand, the Mammoths turned their attention to the defensive side of the ball and maintaining the slim advantage.

With less than 22 minutes remaining, Bowdoin won a corner kick, which the Polar Bears’ Harry Cooper redirected right on target. However, Stone managed to get a punch to the ball, preserving the Amherst lead.

Bowdoin’s Moctar Niang was able to put the ball into the back of the net with his head after, but the score was rendered invalid due to a foul called on the Polar Bears prior to Niang’s chance.

The Mammoths’ determination was clearly evident, as the defense only allowed the single shot on goal, while the Mammoths’ offense managed six total attempts on target, forcing the Bowdoin keeper into a string of fine saves.

Amherst now stands at 2-0 on the season and 1-0 in conference, a solid start to the season. Next up, the Mammoths will travel to Vermont to take on Middlebury at noon on Saturday, Sept. 15.

Men’s Golf Finishes Third at Trinity’s Detrick Invitational Connor Haugh ’21 Managing Sports Editor This past weekend, the men’s golf team traveled to Newington, Connecticut to compete in the Bill Detrick Invitational, a tournament hosted by conference-rival Trinity.

There, the Mammoths competed against nine teams, including NESCAC foes Tufts and Wesleyan and other foes such as Babson College and Manhattanville College.

After the first day’s competition, the Mammoths sat in fourth place with a team score of 16-over-par.

Trinity’s first squad played exceptionally well, notching a combined score of 1-overpar on the tournament’s first 18 holes, while Babson and Tufts were second and third, respectively.

The Jumbos sat just three strokes ahead of the Mammoths.

Leading the squad, Will Lonnquist ’20 finished the day on the course with 73 strokes,

putting him in fourth place in the individual competition. The next three scorers for the Mammoths finished the day with scores of 77, five-over-par. This trio was comprised of Jack Burlison ’19, Jeffery Herr ’20 and Nicholas Kumamoto ’20.

On the second day, however, the Mammoths improved their standing, edging out Tufts to claim bronze.

Amherst posted a team total of 304 strokes, the exact same as Saturday’s tally, with Lonnquist scoring 74 on Sunday and the fifth scorer, Cameron Clark ’20, improving his score by two strokes to 80.

Overall, Amherst’s consecutive rounds of 304 showcased both the squad’s overall consistency as well as the continued development of the junior class, which comprises half of the Mammoth’s roster.

Next week, the Mammoths will travel to Middlebury, Vermont to compete in the Duke Nelson Invitational, a two-day event beginning on Saturday, Sept. 15.

There’s a reason that rules are usually written.

We learned this last month, when Atlanta Braves left-fielder Ronald Acuña stepped into the box to lead off during a home game against the Miami Marlins. The 20-year-old Acuña, who is about the age of a college junior, has torn up the National League East in his rookie season. He is hitting .290 with 24 homers since being called up in late April, and is the favorite to win the National League’s Rookie of the Year award.

The game on Aug. 15 was the last of a fourgame series between the Braves and Marlins. Acuña had hit a leadoff home run and was 7-for-13 with nine RBIs in each of the three previous games. On the first pitch of the fourth game, Marlins starter Jose Ureña drilled him in the elbow.

The hit-by-pitch looked just about as intentional as it gets. It was a 97.5 mile-per-hour four-seam fastball, the fastest pitch Ureña has ever thrown in his MLB career. And it was aimed, in classic bean ball fashion, at Acuña’s side. It would not have done much damage had Acuña not clenched up and pinched his elbow toward his hip. He dropped to the ground and was tended to by the trainer, as his teammates flooded out of the dugout so they could stand on the field for a few minutes with their chests puffed out. The umpire crew decided to eject Ureña, and Acuña left the game soon thereafter for precautionary reasons. X-rays were negative, and Acuña played the next day.

Ureña could not have received a harsher treatment had he shot Acuña in the middle of Fifth Avenue. For the next week, baseball writers dedicated just about every last column inch at their disposal to excoriating Ureña. The word “cowardly” was a favorite of Ureña’s critics, who often glibly commented that Acuña was “punished for being good.”

One columnist, Gabe Lacques, wrote, “removing an opponent through physical harm when you cannot vanquish him within the game’s rules is the lowest of sportsmanship.”

Among Ureña’s few defenders was Keith Hernandez, who does color commentary for New York Mets broadcasts on SportsNet New York (SNY).

Hernandez himself had a fine career, playing first for the Cardinals and Mets during the 1970s and 1980s. He won the NL MVP once, two World Series (including one with the legendarily dysfunctional 1986 Mets) and ended up earning 11 Gold Gloves — all this to say, Hernandez is no slouch. However, Hernandez didn’t just think it was okay for Ureña to throw at Acuña: in fact, he thought he was obliged to do so. “They’re killing you,” Hernandez said.

“You lost three games. He’s hit three home runs.

You got to hit him…knock him down. I mean, seriously knock him down if you don’t hit him.”

Another New York baseball legend agreed.

Willie Randolph, who spent an 18-year career primarily with the New York Yankees, said, “Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Harmon Killebrew, those guys knew that if they were hot, they were getting plunked, and they would just walk to first base, and maybe the other team would retaliate without the umpire getting involved, but we kind of accepted that, back in the day.”

What Randolph and Hernandez pointed out is that what Ureña did was not punitive. He did not hit the youngster out of anger. He hit him because Acuña had become too comfortable in the batter’s box. There was no Tonya Harding-esque intention to injure: the point was not to remove him from the game, it was to make him easier to get out the next time around.

Brush-back pitches and bean ball used to be a much more common part of the game. Bob Gibson, considered the master of the pitcher-batter chess match, would throw at hitters if he didn’t like the way they looked at him. The idea was that if the possibility of getting drilled was in the back of hitters’ minds, they would be less confident in the box.

Batters had their ways of flipping the script: when Billy Martin, a journeyman second baseman (and, later, an eight-times-fired manager) noticed that he

was bailing out in the box, he told his batting practice pitcher to fire balls at his head until he became desensitized to it.

As time has gone on, this element of the game has started to fade away. Most hitters now wear elbow pads so sturdy they look quasi-bionic. In recent years, plastic chin-guard helmet attachments have become surprisingly common. All of this has been a sign of a philosophy that hitters should not be afraid to crowd the plate. Part of this, as Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Passan pointed out, has something to do with the fact that the average MLB fastball is thrown several miles-per-hour faster than it was in the 1970s and 1980s, dramatically increasing the chance of injury.

Still, some of this remains, and baseball seems very unsure of the place of bean ball in accepted strategy. Hernandez was thoroughly mocked for his defense of Ureña: former Braves reliever Peter Moylan called him a “clown,” while Hall of Fame inductee Chipper Jones tweeted, “So by this way of thinking, Jacob deGrom should get drilled [because] he is the hottest pitcher on the planet?... I’m old-school like this broadcaster, but these comments are [way] off base!” Of course, hitting a pitcher as he bats would not do much to affect his confidence on the mound. But the point of what Jones, Moylan and most of the sportswriters were saying was that drilling hot hitters is not at all an accepted part of the game.

Yet, recent memory suggests that this is a more questionable proposition than many seem to think.

The fact that Ureña thought it was appropriate to drill Acuña suggests that remnants of Hernandez and Randolph’s unwritten rules still linger. We can find more evidence in a game between the Yankees and Detroit Tigers that played in August of last year. Gary Sanchez — though these days incapable of hitting his way out of a paper bag — had hammered the Tigers’ pitching in the previous two games of the three-game set. He was 5-for-11 with three home runs and seven RBIs. During his first at-bat against Michael Fulmer, Sanchez hit a long home run over Comerica Park’s “triples alley” left field. On the first pitch of Sanchez’s next at-bat, Fulmer hit him squarely in the hip with a four-seam fastball.

Sanchez, though visibly annoyed, dropped his bat and walked to first base without any further fanfare, although Fulmer claimed that he just-so-happened to have had a finger spasm on that particular pitch. In the form that Randolph described, the Yankees retaliated later in the game when reliever Tommy Kahnle threw behind Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera.

None of this is to say that it’s a good idea for pitchers to throw at batters, really for any reason.

It’s not. Even though batters rarely become seriously injured by intentional drillings, the possibility still remains. In recent years, Jason Heyward and Giancarlo Stanton suffered broken jaws at the hands of inside pitches. Famously, Ray Chapman passed away in 1920 after taking a pitch squarely to the skull. An errant fastball ended the career of Adam Greenberg, a promising Chicago Cubs’ prospect, on the first pitch he ever saw in the big leagues.

As many have pointed out, the MLB league office needs to be much tougher on pitchers if they want to stop bean ball.

What this odd saga does show, however, is that sportswriters have a much weaker feel for the pulse of the game than they would like us to think. And, different players seem to have strongly-held, yet very different, views of the “unwritten rules” of baseball, while reporters, at best, have a loose grasp of what those different understandings are. It should be a lesson to the baseball media that something does not need to be nonsensical for it to be bad. It makes perfect sense why a pitcher would hit a batter, and it has nothing to do with either punitive motivations or a desire to remove someone from the game. One can accept that reality and still think pitchers should abstain from this gruesome strategy.

Sports

Photos courtesy of Clarus Studios

The men’s cross country team placed three runners inside the top four at the Little Three Championships, with the runners finishing less than six seconds apart.

Men’s Cross Country Defends Little Three Title on Home Turf Veronica Rocco ’19 Staff Writer

Going into the 2017 cross country season, the Williams men’s cross country team had held a 29-year winning streak at the Little Three Championships meet. However, the 2017 iteration of the Mammoths was the best in school history, and they defeated the Ephs at Little Threes, won its first NESCAC Championship and placed fourth at the Division III National Cross Country Championships.

The Mammoths look poised for a great season after this weekend’s win over the Ephs at the 2018 edition of the Little Three Championships, defeating Williams 32-27 at home in the Pioneer Valley.

The 6k course took harriers across Amherst’s baseball and soccer fields, then out on the cinder

road leading to the Book & Plow farm and later to the rolling hills of the Bird Sanctuary.

While Aidan Ryan of Williams opened up a large lead at the start of the race, the Mammoths trio of Cosmo Brossy ’19, Clark Ricciardelli ’20E and Spencer Ferguson-Dryden ’20 worked together to close the gap.

Behind these three, a larger pack of Mammoths gritted their teeth to pass a deep pack of Ephs to win the meet.

Unfortunately, Ryan’s lead proved to be too much, as Ricciardelli was unable to catch him, crossing the line in second place, just two seconds behind Ryan.

However, the Mammoths front running was critical, as Brossy, last year’s Little Three individual champion, was only two seconds behind Ricciardelli in third, and Ferguson-Dryden followed in fourth.

FRI GAME SCHE DULE

Volleyball @ Middlebury, 7 p.m.

“I think everyone showed their strength after a summer of hard work and the past couple weeks of training on campus,” said Ferguson-Dryden.

Tucker Meijer ’19 crossed the line for the Mammoths in fifth, ahead of a strong pack of Williams runners. Needing a fifth runner to seal victory, Matthew Bradley ’22 stepped up in his first race as a Mammoth and crossed the line in 12th place to clinch Amherst’s second straight title.

Just 10 seconds behind Bradley in 16th place was transfer Ajay Sarathy ’21, who arrived to Amherst from the University of Pennsylvania. Sarathy was the team’s sixth runner across the line, and Kristian Sogaard ’19, a middle-distance track specialist, was the team’s seventh runner, finishing in 18th place.

“Lining up for the team as a Mammoth was definitely a great experience,” Sarathy said. “When

it got really rough, it helped having Kristian and Matthew with me to help keep moving.”

Beyond the team’s top seven runners, sophomores Braxton Schuldt and Jamie Mazzola worked together throughout the race to finish 22nd and 23rd, respectively, while Jack Malague ’19 was right behind the sophomore duo in 24th.

Majd Rouhana ’22 ran a well-executed race, as he slowly picked off runners to finish 38th. Also making his Amherst debut was first-year Lev Robertson, who placed 58th.

The team will take the upcoming weekend off from racing to train in preparation for two big races in the following weeks, the Williams Purple Valley Invitational and the Paul Short Run. In both races, the Mammoths will face top Division III teams and will look to defend and potentially improve upon their national ranking of No. 2 among Division III schools.

SAT

SUN

Field Hockey @ Middlebury, 11 a.m.

Men’s Soccer @ Middlebury, noon

Volleyball vs. Newbury College, 11 a.m.

Women’s Soccer @ Middlebury, noon

Women’s Golf Ann S. Batchelder Invitational, 11 a.m.

Football @ Bates, 1 p.m.

Men’s Golf Duke Nelson Invitational @ Middlebury, 1p.m.

Women’s Golf Ann S. Batchelder Invitational, 11 a.m.

Volleyball vs. Sage University , 3 p.m.

Men’s Golf Duke Nelson Invitational @ Middlebury, 1 p.m.

Women’s Soccer vs. Smith, 2 p.m.