Vol. 145, Issue 6, Oct. 14, 2015

THE AMHERST

THE INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868

STUDENT VOLUME CXLV, ISSUE 6 l WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2015

Women’s Soccer Beats Keene State 3-0 See Sports, Page 9 AMHERSTSTUDENT.AMHERST.EDU

Students Vote Yes to Social Clubs Trial Period Jeff Szulc ’19 Staff Writer

Photo courtesy of Jingwen Zhang ’18

Students work in the Multicultural Resource Center on Oct. 13. The MRC increased its influence on campus during the tenure of Mariana Cruz, who abruptly resigned from her post as the center’s director on Oct. 6.

Mariana Cruz Resigns as MRC Director Dan Ahn ’17 Managing News Editor Mariana Cruz resigned from her position as interim chief diversity officer and director of the Multicultural Resource Center on Tuesday, Oct. 6. President Biddy Martin announced Cruz’s resignation in a campus-wide email.

Martin held an open meeting in the Multicultural Resource Center that evening to discuss the process of finding a replacement for Cruz and adding administrative support to the center in the interim period.

In her email, Martin wrote that Cruz resigned for “personal reasons.” Cruz did not respond to requests for further comment on her resignation. Adriana Turner ’14, the diversity and eq-

uity coordinator at the Multicultural Resource Center, declined to comment on the details of Cruz’s departure. Neither Martin nor Dean of Students Alex Vasquez responded to requests for comment.

Cruz became the interim director of the Multicultural Resource Center at the beginning of the fall semester of 2013. She had begun working at the college over the previous summer as a consultant to oversee significant changes to the center, including moving it into its current space on the first floor of Keefe Campus Center. She ended up staying with the college when she was appointed director of the center, working under the new office of the provost. At the beginning of this semester, Cruz assumed her role as the new interim chief diversity officer, a position that was

created after the departure of Provost Peter Uvin last semester.

Cruz worked throughout her time at Amherst to expand the presence of the center on campus. She raised the center’s budget, which had been significantly smaller than those of other multicultural centers in small schools in the region, such as Williams and Bowdoin. She also pioneered regular events such as “Café con Leche,” which gave students an opportunity to have conversations with high-level administrators on campus.

At Martin’s meeting in the Multicultural Resource Center, discussions focused first on immediate changes to the administration, such as

Continued on Page 3

Sixty-four percent of the student body voted on Oct. 5 in favor of holding a trial period for social clubs this spring semester.

Members of the Social Project Work Group, the organization responsible for writing the proposal, said the vote was intended to gauge student opinion of the proposal, but the results do not mean that Amherst is required to create social clubs.

The work group has yet to create an official plan for implementing and funding social clubs on campus. Tom Sommers ’16, a member of the work group, said that at this time, the major components of the social club proposal are unlikely to change, and that there are several preparations necessary for implementation to take place.

“More of our focus is going to be on implementation rather than refinement,” Sommers said. “We’re going to go ahead and talk with the administration and see where that goes in terms of their ideas for implementation.”

The work group plans to meet with administrators by next week to discuss and develop plans, as well as determine the administration’s role going forward.

A main goal of the work group this semester is seeking out diverse input on the proposal.

“One of the most important things as we move forward is to get feedback from the people who voted ‘no’ on the proposal, because if this is something that’s going to be implemented, we want to make sure that as many students as possible are happy with what we’re doing,” Sommers said.

In the coming months, the work group plans to hold several open-forum events for students to express their concerns about social clubs.

“The beauty of having a trial period is that it’ll give us time to work with the administra-

Continued on Page 3

Students Promote Environmental Sustainability in Athletics Jingwen Zhang ’18 Managing News Editor The Green Athletics committee, a student-led group aimed at increasing environmental sustainability in the Athletics Department, has begun carrying out plans to reduce athletics-related waste and energy consumption.

The committee, which first met on Sept. 23, has planned ways to make the Athletic Department more environmentally friendly by making changes in areas ranging from facilities to varsity team equipment. The students involved in the committee have proposed initiatives that could work toward the group’s goal.

“When people think about sustainability and environmentalism, they don’t usually think about athletics,” said Suhasini Ghosh ’16, the committee’s creator. “[But] sustainability is something that affects everybody.”

Laura Draucker, director of the Office of Environmental Sustainability, has been providing support to the committee. She said that increased

communication between teams and students involved in athletics has helped identify and target common issues.

“It’s great to see people embrace it, and different sports teams coming together and identifying common challenges,” Draucker said.

One of the committee’s long-term goals is to become a formal group within the Athletic Department.

“There are definite opportunities for our department to support the initiatives by Green Athletics and do more to support sustainability on campus,” said Don Faulstick, director of athletics.

“There is no doubt that Green Athletics can be an integral part of our department.”

Ghosh, an environmental studies major and member of the women’s tennis team, thought of the idea for Green Athletics last semester when she was enrolled in Footprints on the Earth, an environmental sociology class. For the final project, students were required to think of an idea for environmental change that could be implemented on campus or in a community meaningful to the

students.

“I was thinking about the little yellow things that I hit over the net every single day,” Ghosh said.

“I was like, well, where do those tennis balls go? …

I started doing some research and I found out that what’s in the tennis balls, none of it is recyclable — it’s all materials that go straight to landfills.”

After doing further research, Ghosh found a company that would repurpose tennis balls and decided to take her class project a step further.

Ghosh, who was working in the Office of Environmental Sustainability, showed the plan to Draucker, who provided support for the idea. She contacted her coach and Faulstick about the implementation of such a plan. At the beginning of this semester, recycling receptacles for tennis balls were set up at the tennis courts next to Hitchcock Field.

“It was super easy and it wasn’t like anyone was stopping me,” Ghosh said. “It was a matter of figuring out who to talk to and how to set it up.”

After the success of the tennis ball recycling system, Ghosh decided to form the Green Athlet-

ics committee to address other athletics-related waste. She reached out to interested friends on other sports teams and publicized the formation of the committee to the campus. Currently, the committee has 17 members, including students from nine varsity sports and several club sports, as well as some students who are not involved in athletics.

“We’ve had a few meetings, and we’ve divided up into different projects that we want to accomplish for the semester,” Ghosh said. “We’ve already heard so many different kinds of ideas and things that I just wouldn’t have thought of.”

Sam Schneider ’18, a member of the baseball team, was in Ghosh’s class last semester when she proposed the idea for the committee.

“We have been very happy with the turnout so far,” said Schneider, who was involved in recruitment for the committee. “As of now, we are still in the planning stages of many of our projects but we are very happy with the progress we have made.”

Continued on Page 3

News

Kunali Gurditta Oct. 5, 2015 - Oct. 12, 2015

>>Oct. 5, 2015 3:20 p.m., Woodside Day Care Center An officer responded to address a child custody concern. Matter was resolved.

5:27 p.m., Stone Dormitory A caller reported a person on the railroad tracks across from Stone.

No one was found when an officer investigated >>Oct. 7, 2015 1:30 p.m., Charles Pratt Dormitory A resident reported the theft of a detachable keyboard from a tablet that was left in the first-floor common room. It is valued at $120.

1:30 p.m., Keefe Campus Center A student reported the theft of a Leatherman Multi-Tool.

11:20 p.m., Morris Pratt Dormitory Officers responded to a complaint of loud music, and the volume was lowered upon the officer’s arrival. >>Oct. 9, 2015 4:12 a.m., South Amherst College Dr. An officer checked on a man sleeping on a bench. He had no association with the College and was asked to leave campus.

6:17 p.m., Stone Loading Dock An officer discovered unattended alcohol in the basement. It was confiscated. >>Oct. 10, 2015 12:06 a.m., Powerhouse Officers responded to the Powerhouse where an incident occurred between several people. The matter was investigated, and no further action was taken.

12:26 a.m., Powerhouse A man who was involved in an altercation at the Powerhouse was issued a written no-trespass order.

11:28 a.m., Newport House An officer investigated a smoke detector sounding in a secondfloor room. No cause was found.

Facilities was notified.

12:04 p.m., Coolidge Dormitory An officer checked on a student at the request of a concerned caller.

Thoughts on Theses

1:29 p.m., Wilson Admissions An officer investigated an intrusion alarm but no cause could be found.

Department of Psychology

Kunali Gurditta is a psychology major who is writing a two-part thesis involving a personality psychology survey dealing with personal narratives of sadness and connecting data to demographic factors. Her thesis adviser is Professor of Psychology Amy P. Demorest.

11:02 p.m., Amherst College Police Officers assisted a caller who was concerned about their friend. >>Oct. 11, 2015 12:31 a.m., Marsh House A town resident complained about loud music from a band. An officer responded and the band stopped playing after the final song.

12:57 a.m., Pond Dormitory An officer discovered five bottles of hard alcohol unattended outside the building. It was disposed of.

2:07 a.m., Morris Pratt Dormitory Officers responded to a report of a disturbance on the second floor and found that several people were being disruptive. One person also removed a fire extinguisher from the hall and placed it in his room. He was fined $100 for tampering with fire equipment.

3:47 a.m., King Dormitory Officers responded to a resident’s complaint that someone was banging on his door. The matter was resolved.

4:54 a.m., Hitchcock House An officer responded to a complaint of an uncooperative visitor.

The man left the building before officers arrived.

11:16 a.m., Leland House An officer and the Fire Department responded to an alarm and found it was activated by cooking.

10:51 p.m., Coolidge Dormitory An officer discovered a resident had a lit candle in his room. It was confiscated and the resident was fined $100 for the housing violation. >>Oct. 12, 2015 12:07 a.m., Coolidge Dormitory Officers responded to a complaint of loud music and issued a warning at a second-floor suite.

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

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

Q: What is your thesis about?

A: I’m writing a psychology thesis with Professor Demorest. First, we’re going to be looking at sad narratives, written by Intro to Psychology students. We’re going to look at how the ways in which people deal with sad narratives are related. We’re calling them “consequences,” so they’re basically defined as the way that people deal with their sad emotions. We’re first doing a cluster analysis to see which ones are more closely related to each other, and making a hierarchical list. We’re going to have a list of which ones are more closely related at one level, and then which groups of those are related to each other. After that, I’m going to do another analysis where I’ll be looking at the gender differences between the way people deal with their sad emotions, and I’ll also be looking at cultural differences. That’s the quick version of what my thesis is about.

Q: Where are you in the process?

A: We’re in the middle of the first part.

Q: What are some important milestones you’ve hit so far?

A: We first had a list of 371 consequences, which we had to go through first. We looked to see if there were some among them that may have been more than one consequence, and after splitting those further, we now have closer to 384.

Q: What is it about sadness that is particularly intellectually compelling?

A: Well, I didn’t specifically choose sadness, but my thesis adviser is interested in sadness, so she assigned that to us. And I think sadness is important just because dealing with sadness has more implications than dealing with something like happiness, you know?

Q: So there are 384 potential consequences?

A: Yes. We had about a hundred participants, and an average of about four consequences per person. In a sense, a lot of them are the same, a lot of them are like, ‘Oh, I cried,’ so there’s a somewhat universal kind of way that people deal with sadness. But there’s a wide range of things, and the point is to see our individual differences, because it’s a personality psych thesis. So we want to see if there are specific kinds of people who deal with certain problems in certain ways.

Q: And the second part of the thesis you said you were working on, would you mind going a little deeper into that?

A: Basically, we’re gonna have each participant’s gender and their self-identified race, and we’re comparing them to the consequences they had written in their narratives and see if there are certain consequences that were more commonly used by men or women and or by specific cultures. Right now we’re thinking of separating the cultures — so using their self-identified race, we want to look at collectivistic versus individualistic cultures.

Q: What sort of consequences are collectivistic versus individualistic?

A: Collectivistic cultures are more group oriented while individualist cultures are more individualistic. Intuitively, based on just that, I would think that collectivistic cultures are more

inclined to seek support from others, whereas those from individualistic cultures would kind of just deal with it on their own. That may or may or not be true. As I was doing research a couple of years ago, I was looking at the mental health stigma in the Asian community, and a lot of literature showed that Asian-Americans in general don’t tend to seek help for depression and mental health disorders, because of the stigma. So I guess they would be more likely to seek help from those who are close to them but they would be less likely to seek professional help. I’m trying to see if that’ll play any role in what I find.

Q: What drew you to this topic?

A: For me it was because I’m interested in mental health in general. I potentially want to go into psychiatry, so I thought it would be interesting to look at how men and women deal with their sadness and how that could have implications for therapy, and getting mental health resources accessible to them. That’s where I’m coming from. I had the option of picking what I wanted to do for the second part of the analysis, so I chose gender and culture.

Q: So you chose the second topic, but not the first?

A: Yeah, but I think if I had been opposed to choosing sadness, my adviser would have let me choose. She collected narratives in happiness, sadness, fear, love and anger. I thought sadness was the most insightful, probably, of the five.

Q: What was your motivation for writing a thesis?

A: I like the idea of working on a project for a long amount of time. I like research in general, I like focusing on things. It’s just something I kind of felt I should do.

Q: You did mention previous experience doing research. Was that related?

A: I was a research assistant for my thesis adviser last spring. I’ve also done clinical research, and I was doing suicide prevention research over this past summer.

Q: You said that the volunteers for the survey were from on campus. Is there anything specific about Amherst that relates to this thesis topic?

A: I don’t think I can say. We haven’t really done a full analysis yet. You’ve probably seen the surveys that say some high percentage of Amherst students reported feeling lonely. I think it’s above the national average. That might play some role in how Amherst is a unique subject, but I don’t know if I can say much else.

Q: What advice would you have for someone going into a thesis?

A: Definitely budget time for your thesis, because if you don’t — because it’s not a scheduled class — it’s easy to say ‘Oh, I don’t really have to do this right now, so I can put it off and work on it later.’ So I’ve done this thing where I scheduled three-hour blocks, on three days of the week, and I have a thesis meeting one to two hours per week. Those are basically the times I devote to my thesis, and if I have extra time, I’ll also be working on it. That’s probably my biggest advice.

— Dan Ahn ‘17

The Amherst Student • October 14, 2015

News

3

Students Form Green Athletics Committee Continued from Page 1 One of the student-led projects aims to reduce wasteful energy consumption in athletic facilities. The committee is investigating how to reduce lighting in the Coolidge Cage and other areas of Alumni Gym, possibly by installing sensor-operated lighting. Students are also investigating ways to make exercise machines more energetically efficient and to reduce waste and to promote recycling throughout the building.

“The athletics buildings consume a significant amount of energy due to their relative size and also their age,” said Tom Davies, the college’s director of design and construction. According to Davies, a building improvement project is required in order to reduce the energy footprint of the buildings by a significant amount. The goal of achieving a carbon-neutral footprint from a statement by the board of trustees in February may include such a project.

Other projects that the committee is tackling include reducing plastic and food waste in the meals that athletes receive from Valentine for away games and expanding a shoe donation pro-

gram, initiated by the women’s track team last semester, to all sports.

Another initiative aims to recycle the plastic Solo cups used on campus. These plastic cups currently cannot be recycled because the college’s recycling stream does not process these plastics. The committee hopes to implement the project by this year’s homecoming.

“We figured out a program that will take the cups and recycle them for us. The issue is that we need to clean them and stack them,” Ghosh said. “We’re going to make it a community service thing.” Ghosh said that she plans to work with Athletics Team Engagement Leaders, who are students selected from varsity and club sports teams to organize community engagement events for their teams, so that teams can gather the cups from specialized receptacles in the socials, clean and stack them, and ship them to the separate recycling facility.

“No matter what your interests are, it affects everybody,” Ghosh said, “and I think that the point of this committee is to show how you can help be sustainable in all aspects of life.”

Photo courtesy of Jingwen Zhang ‘18

Following Suhasini Ghosh ‘16’s successful initiative to recycle tennis balls this semester, students formed the Green Athletics committee.

Counseling Center Plans Student Advisory Board

Photo courtesy of Katherine Hague ‘18

The counseling center will form a student advisory board this semester.

Carlos Rivero ’18 Assistant News Editor This semester the counseling center plans to create an advisory board comprised of students that will serve as a liaison between the center and the student body.

Jacqueline Alvarez, director of the counseling center, said she decided to create the board because she wanted to work with a group of

students who were representative of the student body as a whole. The students will in turn represent the counseling center to the rest of the student community and will be responsible for collecting and providing feedback on the counseling center’s services.

“As the counseling center thinks about how we would want to grow and develop our services, we would have a group of invested students who could give us their feedback about

Student Body Votes in Favor of Social Club Trial Period Continued from Page 1

tion and also to get feedback from students to see what works,” said Virginia Hassell ’16, another member of the work group.

The work group is also looking for a representative from the college administration to sit on the Social Club Oversight Committee. They plan to reach out to computer science departments in the Five College area to work on an algorithm for assigning students to clubs.

One issue that has attracted campus-wide attention following the vote is how the implementation of social clubs will be funded.

“It would seem like an obvious choice for them to use AAS funding because this was a student initiative, and we are the student government,” said Paul Gramieri ’17, treasurer of the AAS. Gramieri has been a vocal opponent of using the Budgetary Committee to fund social clubs.

“We don’t have the funding for it, and if we were to fund this, money would be taken away from other established clubs on campus,” Gramieri said. “The cost of the social clubs would basically be getting rid of the discretionary fund. The only way to prevent that would be to increase the student activities fee, and tuition.”

According to Gramieri, the work group has not yet contacted the AAS about funding.

A disclaimer on the website for the vote states that the AAS has not taken an official stance on social clubs.

The work group plans to collect feedback and discuss plans over the course of the semester. They will work on creating a finalized plan over interterm that they hope will be implemented in the spring.

Dan Ahn ’17 contributed reporting.

how they perceive our growth and development going,” Alvarez said.

By creating the board, Alvarez said she hopes to to find students who want to understand more about the counseling center’s work and to give them a meaningful way to be involved in the counseling center’s decisionmaking and operations.

“These are stakeholders who value mental health and who value the kind of work that we’re doing,” Alvarez said. “I had this experience with a student advisory board at another institution, and it was really a positive experience to have students who care about the work and who could be those ambassadors who represented us really well in conversations.”

The initiative is intended to mirror the successes of organizations with similar student advisory boards, including the office of student affairs. Those boards worked on issues such as budgeting and collaboration with student organizations.

Alvarez said she wants to publicize the advisory board at the counseling center open house in November.

Despite setbacks this semester, including adjusting to the new counseling center building and getting new staff adjusted to the center, Alvarez said that there is support for the creation of the advisory board, including among members of the administration.

“I checked with the Chief Student Affairs Officer Suzanne Coffey, and the Dean of Stu-

dents Alex Vasquez,” Alvarez said. “They’re the ones who have the Office of Student Affairs Board. They’ve had a really positive experience themselves and they’re very supportive of this model and moving something like that forward.”

Alvarez said that the relationship between the counseling center and the student body has seen difficulty in the past, and that the the counseling center has been working to expand the services it provides. The board would serve as a more direct means of improving this relationship.

“We have been working very hard to do reputational repair,” Alvarez said. “We came under fire for a few years and we’ve really worked to professionalize our services to really increase the breadth of the work that we do.”

In addition, the Student Advisory Board is intended to encourage students to seek help from mental health services.

“I think that it can really help to decrease stigma around mental health issues or mental health illness, because when you hear your peers talking about it, it normalizes it and it puts it into language that everyone really understands and gets,” Alvarez said. “We see thirty percent of students every year. People who come in generally have really positive experiences. Folks think that it’s really for if you’re really struggling, but most folks are like you who come in and have little things to work on.”

Mariana Cruz Resigns as Director of Amherst MRC Continued from Page 1 seeking out candidates to replace Cruz. However, the conversations, which continued for over an hour, shifted to more general on-campus issues, such as loneliness and the role of faculty and staff of color at the college.

Several students at the meeting expressed their distress at Cruz’s sudden departure.

Irisdelia Garcia ’18 was involved in the Multicultural Resource Center and was close with Cruz. Garcia said the community needed “someone who can be there, who understands students of color, who know about how much we struggle here, who know about our background and culture — someone who can be a voice for that.”

Andrew Lindsay ’16 was another student who worked with the center and attended the meeting.

“I think one of the big effects of her leaving is that a lot of the students who were told, ‘It’s going to be okay,’ or ‘Maybe the environment isn’t

as hostile as we thought it was,’ now may say ‘I won’t make it,’” Lindsay said. “And that was why her mentorship for minority students was just so crucial, because you had a senior figure who ‘made it,’ sitting there and talking to you.”

After the meeting, Martin sent the attendees a list of the administration’s upcoming projects and tentative deadlines to address Cruz’s resignation. She said that an interim director of the center would be appointed by the end of this week, and the center will temporarily report to Vasquez. According to Martin, a search committee will begin looking for a new chief diversity officer within two months, and a separate committee will start seeking a new director of the center by next semester.

“I really expect the burden of coordinating programs out of the MRC, as well as out of diversity initiatives, to fall heavier now on our remaining staff of color and students of color,” said Kali Robinson ’17, a volunteer for the center.

Opinion

THE AMHERST

STUDENT

Let’s Actually Talk About Guns Editorial

Last week, a 26-year-old student at Umpqua Community College shot an assistant professor and eight students with automatic weapons and, after being wounded by police, fatally shot himself. In his statement to the press, President Obama acknowledged that this is becoming all too common in America. “Somehow this has become routine,” he said. After the attacks at Columbine and Sandy Hook, two of the most famous of school shootings in this country, this was the latest shooting to shock the nation into a state of sadness, unease and frustration. Yet, as always, the national conversation about common sense gun control remains stuck, fumbling behind massive NRA lobbying efforts, logical fallacies and the increasingly ridiculous comments of talking heads.

In the wake of the shooting, the president made a remark more strongly worded than ever before, calling for common sense gun laws. The debate is often distracted by calls for mental health reform or for even more guns in schools. The evidence for stricter gun regulation, however, is overwhelming. In Australia, after the Port Arthur massacre of 1996, the conservative government banned all automatic shotguns and rifles. Since then, the number of annual gun deaths in Australia has gone down dramatically.

Despite that relevant example, calls to arms against arms, such as President Obama’s, are routinely ignored in favor

of televised idiocy.

This time, presidential candidate Ben Carson led the idiocy by saying that armed Jews could have prevented the Holocaust. Despite how offensive, ridiculous and historically inaccurate that statement is, it marks an important part of the gun control debate routine. Whether we like it or not, Ben Carson is a presidential frontrunner in the Republican Party and has completely sidetracked any realistic debate on the issue. Instead, students who are actually affected by gun safety and regulation are stuck debating how ridiculous this man can get.

In recent years, Amherst College police have demonstrated their preparedness to handle potential shooter threats. Last year, the police ran a campus-wide shooter drill, and we have all received emails with instructions for dealing with an active shooter threat. Due to these efforts, this is an incredibly safe campus. Yet we shouldn’t get complacent, and the issue of gun control is far too important to be ignored by the student body.

The Amherst Student’s editorial board believes that a conversation must happen on campus and that students should collectively demand better, common sense gun control. It has become increasingly clear that campuses are not impenetrable. Students have to take action to stop violence in this country.

Relationships or Fifth Courses?

Mohamed Ramy ’18 Staff Writer A great woman once told me, “Love is co-existence and not co-dependence.” I firmly believe that one of the fundamentals of any healthy relationship is allowing your partner to exist independently of the relationship; otherwise, it would never amount to love, but would rather be a battle for power. Fortunately, many Amherst students share my opinion.

Nevertheless, I often hear my peers at Amherst make the following statement: “Well, relationships are like fifth courses.” Whenever I hear this, I cringe: Why would anyone think of a relationship as a burden? Allow me to explain myself.

Throughout my years, I have heard many times that romantic movies are not realistic.

However, if you watch “Stuck in Love,” you realize how easy it is for a romantic movie to be cynical about love.

Undeniably, being in a relationship is difficult, but you get from it what you put into it. If I were in a relationship that was making me miserable or too tired, to the point of furiousness, then I made a fault somewhere — relationships are bound to make you explore the human urge for intimacy, not desperation. Understandably, some people take more time to adapt to relationships than others do, but one should go into a relationship knowing so and should be ready to be patient — in fact, one should choose to be persistent. It is unfathomable to me why some people rush into relationships simply because of physical attraction or “chemistry.” Making hasty decisions usually results in complicated relationships. I am not telling people to excessively overthink everything, but rather to sometimes allow reason to topple emotions. If

I think of my relationship as a class, then I am probably in the wrong relationship.

Moreover, I have heard many times that relationships tie down a person to one place; indeed, some people find the ultimate thrill in traveling and being outdoors. That is sometimes the case, but not always; it actually depends on your significant other. Notably, the greatest deterrent of a successful relationship

“If

I think of my realtionship as a class, then I am probably in the wrong relationship ... it is much better to be able to say, ‘I am not ready for a relationship right now, and I’m okay with waiting and focusing on academics’ than to say, ‘Relationships are like fifth courses.’

Euphemizing anything does not help self-reflection - honesty does.

”

is the lack of communication. If you are dissatisfied with something, you should simply verbalize it rather than bottle it. Indeed, secretiveness has rarely enriched a relationship.

Relationships are supposed to be something you are willing to invest in, not some course requirement for the major of a happier life. If people constantly think of relationships as classes, then we will become less willing to

enter into new relationships for fear that they will be “an extra load.” However, it is much better to be able to say, “I am not ready for a relationship right now, and I’m okay with waiting and focusing on academics” than to say, “Relationships are like fifth courses.” Euphemizing anything does not help self-reflection — honesty does.

Besides, it is true that you do not know who you will become over your four years at Amherst College. Everyone is still working on what it really means to love friends and family and finding the best way to show them the kind of affection that they merit in your life. Since it is much easier to find someone to hook up with than someone to love — at least from what I have seen in college — then it certainly takes great dedication to select a significant other.

Still, I received criticism from friends for disagreeing: “Why is it a bad thing to say that relationships are like fifth courses?” they said.

“Isn’t it true that you have to dedicate a block of your time for a relationship?”

Now, the reason why relationships are not like fifth courses is that courses are already scheduled and have a syllabus — they actually require less effort. Figuring out how a relationship works takes time and commitment, and there will always be unexpected incidents. While a course has a particular syllabus and rules of conduct, a relationship is unique and the parties involved create its rules (and it may last more than four months, unlike any course you may take).

If any relationship is thought of as an encumbrance or a “course” rather than an escape or a relief from the pressure of Amherst, then an honest re-evaluation is needed. I can only hope that people choose to be in relationships because they want to.

E X E C U T I V E B OA R D Editor-in-Chief Sophie Murguia Assistant Editor-in-Chief Elaine Jeon Managing News Dan Ahn, Jingwen Zhang Managing Opinion Johnathan Appel, Sunna Juhn Managing Arts and Living Paola Garcia-Prieto, Alida Mitau, Julia Pretsfelder Managing Sports Lauren Tuiskula, Jason Darell, Drew Kiley Managing Design Gabby Bishop S TA F F

Publishers Emily Ratte, Tia Robinson Design Editors Katherine Chen, Megan Do, Adele Loomis, Zavi Sheldon, Yrenly Yuan Assistant News Editors Ryan Cenek, Carlos Rivero Assistant Sports Editors Jeremy Kesselhaut, Jason Stein Photography Editor Kyra Gardner

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The Amherst Student • October 14, 2015

Opinion

5

The Problem of Minority Retention Andrew Lindsay ’16 Columnist For many at Amherst College, without an institution like a sports team, prominent club, fraternity or group with great social capital, it is not uncommon to feel naked and constantly exposed to the elements. More often than not for people of color on this campus, this exposure feels especially acute. Subtle erasures of our bodies, slight yet sharp jabs from the ignorant, interrogations of whether or not we are deserving, a continuous feeling of homelessness — “Are you sure this space is really mine?” we ask. “They tell me that it is, but I feel so uncomfortable.”

These erasures can feel like the loss of home to natural disaster, and similar to loss from an earthquake or hurricane, it’s hard to place blame on a single will. Individual losses hurt, but we are expected to be tough and weather those storms. But collective ones, the catastrophic disasters, are especially difficult to cope with. Unlike more natural catastrophes, however, they are generally predictable. In my time as a student here, one has occurred each year without fail.

My first year, computer components and furniture were stolen from the health center and spray paint was used to damage the room and to draw swastikas. Three months later, an unidentified offender carved the word “nigger” in the snow on top of a car parked on the street just north of the Lord Jeffery Inn. That same year, two-thirds of the student body voted against the relocation of the game room to make room for the Multicultural Resource Center on the first floor of Keefe. My sophomore year, swastikas and a racial epithet targeting black people were drawn outside a dorm. My junior year, a group of students hijacked the well-intentioned “Black Lives Matter Awareness Week” for an “All Lives Matter” campaign, in which participating students defaced posters and equated black lives to fetuses.

This year, many of our minority faculty and staff have left the campus for personal or professional reasons. These losses take place in the blink of an eye and hit students of color the most haphazardly and unremittingly, like great sheets of rain. Most prominently, Mariana Cruz, director of the Multicultural Resource Center and Chief Diversity Officer, resigned last week, citing personal reasons.

There are very few faculty and staff members that reflect the diversity of the student body. As a result, the access to mentorship that many of our more privileged counterparts have on campus is not there for us. Minority role models with similar life experiences are far and few in between.

Perhaps when compared to the race-based tragedies of the past, the most recent tragedy of minority faculty and staff retention proves to be the most catastrophic because it sends the message that maybe everything won’t be OK. The importance of mentors with similar life experienc-

“The

racial chasm only deepens when we ignore the poor retention of minority exemplars in a school that prides itself on diversity. We cannot continue to avert our gaze as minority exemplars continue to be erased. We cannot keep reducing these losses to mere personal or professional reasons, nor can we continue to accept them as costs of business.

”

es should not be discounted. Minority mentors attempt to comfort us. They challenge us to make homes out of homelessness. Often they tell us what their mentors told them, or if they didn’t have one, minority mentors share what they had to find out the hard way: That this is our world, that this is our country, that this is your body and that despite the confusion that may come from self-doubt we must find some way to live within it all.

But what message does the loss of a minority mentor send? Perhaps the environment was too hostile after all?

Maybe the hope of living free and safe from the elements was a pipe dream? Maybe the distance between the world of the elite, littered with seemingly endless opportunities, and the galaxies that many of us come from is too vast?

Minority mentors are the guides that help us to overcome this cosmic distance, the tenacious gravity of a world that shackles our bodies.

The Friday before Mariana Cruz tendered her resignation, about a dozen minority students gathered in the Multicultural Resource Center to hear her life story. In the question-and-answer session that followed, Mariana recounted that one of her greatest failures was not having a mentor to offer her the guidance and help that she was able to give to students. Mariana wasn’t as fortunate as many of us were. On this campus barren of minority exemplars, there remain a few, and they must be safeguarded. As a community, we have an obligation to provide the resources and mentorship that minorities need to thrive. Everything must be done to retain the diverse faculty and staff that we have and to find more.

As Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in “Between the World and Me,” “In all our phrasing — race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land with great violence upon the body.”

The racial chasm only deepens when we ignore the poor retention of minority exemplars in a school that prides itself on diversity. We cannot continue to avert our gaze as minority exemplars continue to be erased. We cannot keep reducing these losses to mere personal or professional reasons, nor can we continue to accept them as costs of business. At the end of the day, these losses affect the vulnerable bodies on campus the most, the same bodies on which this institution built its foundations, the same bodies that this institution uses as fuel to thrive today. Minorities cannot continue on as diverse bricks in Amherst College’s road to redemption or preeminence. We are real people with needs that must be prioritized.

Putting “Mental” Back in Health Sharline Dominguez ’17E Contributing Writer I have experienced situations that dramatically altered my perception of more than one thing. I have experienced the marvelous “aha!” moments, the “I screwed up, big time” moments and the “I wish this never ended” moments. I have even looked death in the eye.

But at the end of any of my days, what matters the most is that I impacted someone in a positive or small way, whether it was through making that person smile, laugh or reconsider their established ideas about the world they believe in.

I say this not to feign the confidence of a motivational or inspirational speaker, but in order to express to you my passion for learning and seeking truth in situations and in people. I also do not claim to know everything that is good or bad in this world we live in, but what I do know is that love has and always will conquer all, even in moments I did not believe in it and its transformative power. Sometimes, all I had to do was take a deep breath and realize that: I still have a beating heart, a pair of lungs and moving limbs to get me up and going in the morning for coffee. That despite it all, there is someone else in the world, right now, who is living in worse conditions than I am, but still manages to wake up every day and continue battling this thing we call life.

To restrain from dangerously delving into cliched nothings, I have learned how to believe that the universe is always ready to conspire in my favor because everything is naturally interconnected. That beautifully wicked understanding of interconnectedness, without the

need for meditation and analysis of Buddhist sutras, is what can set even the most imprisoned of minds, free.

But when I consider the attitudes that many in our society today have towards those who suffer from mental health issues, I am appalled. It was not until I was diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder that I realized how fragile a mind is, and the extent to which such minds are manipulated by institutions who are presumably in power over “diseased” and weakened individuals.

Through the use of pharmaceutical drugs, talk therapy and even electric brain treatments believed to correct deficiencies and chemical imbalances, the mental health system in this country has become a way to imprison minds in their own constructed jail cells. The paradox in seeking “professional help” is that in doing so, the “patient” becomes trapped in his imagined or real issues. With or without the aid of psychologists and “doctors” who claim to comprehend the intricacies of the mind better than the general population, “patients” become prisoners to the offices, institutions and hospitals they enter once they are branded as “mentally ill.”

The fundamental problem I discern here is that there is not enough respect being expressed towards those who are not “mentally ill,” but rather completely human. Throughout the time I felt like I was trapped in a system that did not adequately serve me, my mind played games with me as frequently as did the doctors who claimed they wanted to help. At some point, I became suspicious of those volunteering first to help me solve the messes and confusion I kept finding myself in. When I

then think about the different instances at Amherst and beyond where I have made errors or practiced poor judgment, never did I also stop to think that I am only a human being. And like a cog in a machine, I need oiling now and then. This is precisely the argument I am trying to make as I grapple with how to take care of myself at this school and for the rest of my life. I’m arguing that before we can feel justified, as the thriving (and not so thriving) students we are, in attending mental health and wellness activites, going to the gym, visiting the counseling center, practicing yoga, having safe sex, committing to relationships that are either not good or too bad for us, studying for hours on end without a break, saying yes to an antidepressant or antipsychotic, admit that we have issues to our family, friends and mentors or attending empowerment/ support groups, we must know that we are only human beings first, and everything else second. I challenge you to take about five minutes of your day to reach out to a person you care for on this campus, acquaintance or not, and ask, “Be honest with me, how are you really doing today, and for this past week?” before passing judgment on those who may or may not live up to your own standards around being physically, mentally, spiritually and socially healthy.

Along the same vein, I have considered how it is that we can all rely a little on institutions like and within Amherst to do the important work for us, and it was at this moment that I realized how much more liberated we can all be as long as we decide, for ourselves, what the “mental” in our collective health means for this community and those beyond it.

Do you have opinions about issues on campus?

Join the ff! a t s n o i Opin

If you want to write for us, email jappel16@ amherst.edu

Arts&Living

Photos courtesy of Julia Pretsfelder

Spencer Quong ‘18 reads the first words of Miles Wronkovich’s public art project on the sidewalk leading to the door of Marsh Arts House, “How temporary chalk is.”

Artist Spotlight: Miles Wronkovich’s Stream of Conscious on the Street Q: What arts do you do?

A: My main art I do is play guitar, which I’ve been playing since sixth grade and for the most part self-taught. But I do enjoy writing poetry, which led to me to this project.

Q: Describe your current project.

A: The project I’m working on now is using chalk to create long stream-of-consciousness poems along the pavement leading up to Marsh. Each color represents a new topic, so someone walking up can see the change in my thoughts.

Photo courtesy of Miles Wronkovich

Miles Wronkovich ’17 brings the art outside of the Marsh Arts House.

Julia Pretsfelder ’18 Managing A&L Editor The subject of our first artist spotlight, Miles Wronkovich ’17 is a chemistry and religion double major. He has lived in the Marsh Arts House for two years. You may have seen his and his housemates’ stream of consciousness chalk writing on the sidewalk of the hill leading up to Marsh before it was washed away by a recent rain storm.

Q: How did you come up with your project originally?

A: I was walking into town and saw this chalk drawing on the brick wall by Bueno and I said to myself, “Yeah, that’d be cool to bring to Marsh.” That was pretty much it.

But the chalk stood out to me because it’s temporary. Once the rain came, all the thoughts I wrote would be washed away with it. No damage, little consequence, but large impact.

Q: Do you think you entered your project with an intention? If so what? Did this intention change?

A: Originally, I never really had an intention, but as I started to work on it, I began to notice a theme or purpose developing behind it.

In my opinion, society, the world, whatever you call it, is kind of like a Tootsie Pop. People

work at the sweet, candy layer for a long time until they get to the Tootsie Roll center.

I feel like the intention behind the project is to give onlookers an impression of what I feel is the candy of the world, just what people take for face value or are yet to understand, and have them hit the Tootsie Roll more quickly.

Q: How do you feel about people’s responses to your project?

A: I’m fairly proud of the response that it’s been getting, and it has been a great motivator that people are taking notice.

What’s surprising to me is many non-students are reading it, taking pictures of it, what have you. I was about to start another verse when a woman saw me and wanted to talk about a section she read.

Q: Your work is very interactive and, as you mentioned, open for all to see. Did living in an arts house influence this project?

A: Honestly, if it weren’t for the arts house, I probably would never have done it. I ran the idea past everyone, and they welcomed it with open arms and looked forward to it.

I think that because Marsh is a community on the inside of the house, we needed an external way to portray it, and this was the perfect way to do it.

Other house members have also expressed their thoughts on the sidewalk, and we are going to keep a box of chalk in the libary for the rest of the year.

Q: Where do you hope to see this project go?

A: Ideally, I want to take this to main campus to see how other students react. There has been a large use of chalk on campus pavements the last couple weeks, which showed me that it is possible.

However, I would modify the project to one-sentence aphorisms or thinking points to get people to talk about otherwise unmentioned topics they come face to face with not only as a person, but an Amherst student.

Q: What do you think about the status of public art on Amherst’s campus?

A: I think having public art displays like these are the only way for students to absorb art on campus. The Mead is a wonderful resource and has beautiful works of art, but a lot of students not only don’t have the time to go, but they will only go if they have to, which is somewhat sad.

Being exposed to new and different disciplines of art on a daily basis is so important, in my opinion, for the wellbeing of an Amherst student and a person in general. I think it’s sad that people don’t get enough exposure to art, but by bringing a public form where students can’t avoid it, we can foster new outlooks and opinions to Amherst as a whole.

This interview has been lightly edited for clairty.

Arts & Living 7

The Amherst Student • October 14, 2015

Amherst Cinema Presents: The Strange Perceptions of Pat O’Neill Shahruz Ghaemi ’19 Staff Writer On Wednesday, Oct. 7, Amherst Cinema screened four of experimental filmmaker Pat O’Neill’s works: “Coreopsis” (1998), “Trouble in the Image” (1996), “Squirtgun/Stepprint” (1998) and “Horizontal Boundaries” (2008).

The screening was organized and curated

by Professor of English and Film and Media Studies Josh Guilford as the first in a twopart series on avant-garde film titled “X (The Unknown Quantity.” Even as an avant-garde neophyte, becoming immersed in the visual complexity of O’Neill’s films was an incredible experience for me. I highly encourage you to look out for the second screening in Nov. 16.

Created on 33mm film, these works don’t exist in digital form and were shipped by O’Neill from California. O’Neill himself was also supposed to be in attendance but was thwarted by the vagaries of modern air travel.

He did, however, send a playbill containing some information and explanations of the films, which are fascinating explorations of place, perception and the physicality of the film medium itself.

The first work, “Coreopsis,” presents a series of doodles drawn on film instead of in the margins of a notebook. According to O’Neill’s notes, he quite literally scratched on a roll of film over the course of a year to make the images. The first thing that hit me was their visual complexity. Short lines, long lines, small rings, oblong shapes all flew by, defying conclusion. Trying to follow their progression was trying to grasp at straws. What might be a flower blooming was covered up in a hail of random jabs across the screen, or maybe it was a ball exploding in the first place.

“Coreopsis” is not totally random; there are distinct sections to the seven minute movie, with their own themes. But any attempt at definition is confounded by the reigning chaos and shapeshifting nature of the artist’s own

Photo courtesy of amherst.edu

A still from famed avant-garde director, Pat O’Neill, who experiments with the dimensions of medium in his work. expression.

The screening continued with “Trouble in the Image,” a 38 minute, feature-length film produced from 1978-1995. “Trouble” dislocates random images and sounds — a flock of birds, clips from an old Western, a howling opera singer, a rumbling cargo train underpass, instructional videos from the 1950s — and juxtaposes them in time through continuous sequences and also in space by layering them on top of each other. It draws attention to perhaps underappreciated aspects of the shots such as the barely restrained violence of human interaction.

O’Neill also alters images using colors or overlaid animations, abstracting the objects represented. Drawing connections between the images is impossible and unadvisable.

Immersed in a visual world without any center of reference, I felt increasingly disoriented and powerless as the film progressed. Though “Trouble” presents many new ways of understanding images, I must confess my relief when it ended.

“Squirtgun/Stepprint,” the next piece, was very similar to “Coreopsis.” This time, marks were made by splattering film with darkroom developer in broad daylight. Thanks to the caprices of squirtgun painting, the images were even more abstract than in “Coreopsis.”

Observing the progression of the marks over several frames revealed O’Neill’s editing process - a subject more interesting than the marks themselves. He explained in his handbill that he copied sequences and then repeated them, moving one frame further each time — a sort of “two steps forward, one step back” approach.

This sort of circular repetition juxtaposed with development pervades these films. But the last one used those tools to not only deconstruct but also to reconstruct in mesmerizing ways.

For 23 minutes, “Horizontal Boundaries” explores place in a way that calls into question the very nature of it. For instance, what is a beach? A boardwalk, gulls, the sound of waves, cargo ships, silhouetted people walking by the water? “Horizontal Boundaries” smashes these sensations and characteristics together

to create locations that are not necessarily one place in particular. Later on, disconnected locales are composited on top of one another in dense collages. Like “Trouble in the Image,” the film’s discombobulating vision exposes the inner workings of our conceptions of place. Or maybe it suggests that we should throw up our hands in attempting to understand anything.

It seemed to me that O’Neill makes music out of film, articulated through the rhythms and repetition of his production process, which involves heavy use of optical printing, copying and altering the film itself.

These films are a part of O’Neill’s explorations of the boundary between representation and abstraction. Guilford said after the screenings.

I thought of the doodles of “Coreopsis,” always on the verge of solidifying into recognizable shapes. In between the tangible and the theoretical, the point is not necessarily what the artist creates but what you understand of its perplexing effect on your perceptions. Though these revelations were not immediately obvious to me, it was a rare pleasure to see these works.

Becca Stevens Band Stirs Crowd at Northampton’s Iron Horse Samantha O’Brien ’18 Staff Writer By sheer chance, my sister, my mother and I stumbled into the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton last Sunday night for a concert by the Becca Stevens Band.

A quick Google search informed me that the “Becca Stevens band expands and blurs the boundaries of folk, jazz and pop while engaging the listener through keen poetic observation, rich musical language and beguiling singing.”

Plus, admission was only 15 dollars at the door, so we reasoned that it was the “Pioneer Valley” thing to do and decided

to give it a shot.

The Iron Horse’s dingy, unremarkable storefront is easily overlooked and has the clandestine aura of a speakeasy-only the complicit few shall enter.

We entered the narrow and dimly lit main room, and sat at a charmingly antiquated bar at the back. As we ordered drinks, the pretty-faced Becca Stevens chugged a cup of whiskey and unleashed her fierce vocal chords.

Stevens is accompanied by Liam Robinson on the keyboard and accordion, Chris Tordini on the bass and Jordon Perlson on the percussions. Together, they produce a folksy, poignant sound, evoking

Photo courtesy of wikipedia.org

The vibrant Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton seems dull at first glance.

the essence of the Pioneer Valley. Somewhat reminiscent of The Decemberists, their faded jeans and subdued demeanors invoke the desire to drink beer and be nostalgic.

Stevens’ voice is the band’s “edge” — the crucial factor that transforms their casual nostalgia into a more urgent sense of yearning. It is smooth, pleasant and polished, yet it also carries an ache of love and pain.

To accompany her vocals, she alternates between playing a ukulele and a charango (a charango, as she briefly informs the audience, is a tiny Bolivian-stringed instrument).

Stevens is quite unlike the typical emotionally distant, self-important band front-runner that I have become accustomed to in the past. She has an awkward, nervous sense of humor that manifests itself in talking a bit too much and telling hilariously bad puns. (“Can I ask you guys to follow me on Instagram? Is that weird? Yes that’s totally weird. I’m so sorry.”)

She quips about her fellow band members and is self-consciously vulnerable — no grandiose sense of self and no allusions to any highbrow deeper-meanings. The effect is refreshingly endearing.

The band performed mostly original songs, one of the most remarkable being “Imperfect Animals,” which was the featured song on their latest album “Perfect Animal.” The band is clearly willing to take risks in their songs; they often lack consistent patterns and tend to end each track rather abruptly.

However, something rather magical about their music is that Stevens metaphorically takes your hand and guides you through her stream-of-consciousness lyrics.

Also, the covers that the band performed at the concert were fresh takes on current R&B hits, including Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin’ Bout You” and Usher’s “You Make Me Wanna.” Stevens’ vocals are a welcome alterative to these originally male-sung songs.

Stevens is of musical blood. Originally from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, she has been performing music since the age of four in her family band “the Tune Animals,” lead by her father.

She later received her degree in classical guitar from the North Carolina School of the Arts and went on to pursue her Bachelor of Fine Arts in vocal jazz and composition from The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York. It was there, in Brooklyn, that her self-titled band was formed and the band currently resides there.

As of now, they are on the East Coast tour. Afterward, they will perform in North Carolina and then continue down the coast.

The Iron Horse Music Hall is an ideal venue for promoting promising artists. The patronage is generally quiet, engaged and genuinely interested in music.

They host performances several nights a week, and their full schedule can be found at iheg.com. I highly recommend planning a night out to discover new music and support artists that are under the radar.

Becca Stevens Band far exceeded my expectations. They are perfect to listen to for a good, nostalgic cry or a cozy, campfire gathering.

For anyone interested in some innovative takes on the intersection between folk, jazz and R&B, I recommend checking out the Becca Stevens Band.

Arts & Living 8

The Amherst Student • October 14, 2015

Amherst Presents “Dora”: Mixing Together Memory, Ecology and Landscapes environments that were constantly shifting.

After that, I started doing research on different female World War II resistance fighters in the French and Australian undergrounds. It was a lot of very random research, but all these stories stuck in my imagination.

Another thing that caught me in Australia and in the United States was the power of landscape, which brought me to the understanding of ecology as an incredible network of collaboration. All these threads of influence went a long way in creating “Dora.”

Q: Where did the title of the play come from?

Who is Dora?

A: That’s exactly the question I want the audience to ask. Many years ago, I did a piece that was called “We Need Room for Dora” and that name stuck with me. I’d like to take a moment to clarify that this is NOT Dora the Explorer, who I didn’t even know existed. The name is a reference to Freud’s Dora, which was a famous case concerning female hysteria.

I don’t want to get too much into detail, but for the women of my generation, this case was a real bone of contention because of Freud’s interpretation of this so called female hysteria. This female character that I play is being interrogated by a man who has a bit of a military/psychiatry relationship persona, so there’s a connection there.

Image courtesy of Amherst College

Posters advertising upcoming play “Dora” are displayed throughout campus.

Mark Simonitis ’19 Staff Writer You’ve probably seen some of the advertisements around campus for a production called “Dora.” And no, it’s not a new portrayal of Dora the Explorer. “Dora” is a play by theater and dance chair Wendy Woodson. In Woodson’s words, it “blends together ecology, resistance fighters, a story of hidden love, and Freud’s Dora.”

The Amherst Student sat down with Woodson to learn more about her upcoming production. She will be performing in the play alongside Visiting Resident Artist Peter Schmitz in the Holden Theatre of Webster Hall from October 15 to 17 at 8 p.m. each night. Tickets are free, but reservations are recommended. To make a reservation, call 413-542-2277.

Q: Let’s start off with the question that I had

when I first saw the posters. What is “Dora”?

A: Dora is a two-person, three-act play composed of several little scenes. Normally, I don’t call my works “plays,” but Dora is an exception. Even though Dora is a play, the mapping of the space and the language itself is choreographic, meaning it’s more in the realm of poetic.

It is not a realistic, linear or characterdriven play. It has a lot of imagery in it that comes from the stylized words and gestures that we use.

Q: What inspired you to write Dora?

A: In the past 10 years, I’ve taken five sabbaticals to Australia where I’ve been developing several projects. Back in 2011, I did a project for their National Immigration Museum. During my research, I interviewed about 40 immigrants and refugees that were living in Australia. I collected these interviews in the movements of crowds, transportation and in other

Q: Can you briefly describe what the play is about?

A: Ultimately, it is a story about the man and the woman. Having said all that, there is a kind of under-story to this play, which goes back to that thread of influence concerning resistance fighters. There’s plenty of hints that the two characters were on a mission together and their memories of that is what the play is about.

The power dynamic between the two is constantly shifting as each tries to draw memories out of the other. Of course, these two characters both have flawed memories and perceive events differently. They need to strive towards some kind of agreement and recover this landscape, if you will. I’m not going to give you the message of the story though. I want the audience to go on a journey to find that out, just like the characters are going on a journey.

Q: What was the development process like?

A: When I came back from Australia, I wrote all kinds of bits and pieces of text until I completed it on a residency in Italy. I had hundreds of pages of possibilities and I put the text all over the walls and organized it from

there. When I came back to Amherst, I got in touch with Peter Schmitz, who was living in New York at the time. We’ve worked together many times in the past and I trust him. We work in a similar vein, so I asked him to come up here for a couple of months so I could try out some of the text. I wasn’t sure about the final format just yet. Together, we collaborated on it here and then we went to Australia to try it out.

While we were there, I performed it with an Australian actor while Peter directed. In the version we’re showing here, Peter and I are performing the play without a director.

We basically directed ourselves, which was a new experience for me. Of course, we’ve had several outsiders come in and step in to a kind of directorial role for a few days, but it was curious to not have a constant director.

It was actually very hard for me to let go of the director role, since I typically write and direct all of my work because I want to be in complete control.

Q: What was it like performing and writing a two-person play?

A: I really enjoy being in the space with Peter.

It’s a challenge also, because I usually don’t perform with other people myself. In fact, I usually don’t perform at all. I like to direct other people. I feel like I’ve learned a lot through this experience. Sharing a space with another actor has sensitized me to what the dilemmas are for the people I direct.

I have to say that I’ve had a lot of fun experiencing the surprises that can happen and the attentiveness that is required to play off one another in the moment. Being able to inhabit the same world as another person takes a lot of effort, but is ultimately worth it. It’s almost addictive. It’s also very tricky because you never know if you and your partner are going to be in completely different zones and it can throw you off, especially as a playwright.

Since I write everything I perform in, I know exactly how the action is supposed to go, so I need to deal with that conflict.

Q: What would you tell the Amherst community that would convince them to see “Dora”?

A: “Dora” blends together ecology, resistance fighters, a story of hidden love, and Freud’s Dora (not the Explorer!) in a performance that features two characters who meet and lose one another repeatedly against continually shifting landscapes of history and memory.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Straight Outta Conformity: What Makes “Straight Outta Compton” Special Youngkwang Shin ’19 Staff Writer The appeal of the recent biopic “Straight Outta Compton” comes from its momentum.

“Straight Outta Compton” is unlike typical frenzied biographical movies that jump from one event to the next in order to showcase the subject’s entire life within a limited timeframe.

Unfortunately, these films often sacrifice depth for breadth, leaving many moviegoers entertained but unsatisfied.

There are exceptions, of course — “Malcolm X” effectively summarized the events of the activist’s life and “Schindler’s List” wisely zoomed in on Schindler’s life during the height of Nazi Germany’s atrocities. While “Straight Outta Compton” is not an exception to the hectic nature of biopics, it manages to maintain originality and ingenuity through its high energy and impressive execution.

“Straight Outta Compton” tracks the rise and fall of the highly influential gangster rap group N.W.A., focusing on its three most enduring members: Eazy E, Dr. Dre and Ice Cube. The movie is undeniably unpolished, and its pacing is erratic, both spatially and temporally. The movie constantly jumps

between the perspectives of the three characters, which is worsened by the fact that they are not physically together during the majority of the movie. Months and years zip by in minutes, and by the time the movie is over, so is N.W.A. Structurally speaking, “Straight Outta Compton” is nothing special.

Then, what makes this otherwise mundane biopic stand out? The answer lies in its sheer energy. It’s an energy found first in the actors and then in the movie’s presentation. The main actors — and a few cameos — are able to synchronize completely with their characters.

They are invested in their roles, so much that when the movie cuts back to Ice Cube’s studio troubles after having just portrayed Dr. Dre’s issues at home, we don’t question the odd pacing of the movie. Instead, due to the actors’ genuine skills, we simply assume that we haven’t seen Ice Cube for a while.

In my opinion, actor O’Shea Jackson Jr., who plays Ice Cube, is the standout star of the film. The praise may be slightly unfair because after all, O’Shea Jackson Jr.’s father is none other than Ice Cube himself. Not only does he look the part, but he also has had his entire lifetime to prepare for this role.

Also, Ice Cube co-produced the film with

Dr. Dre and spent extra time to coach his son on his own mannerisms, and O’Shea Jackson Jr.’s explosive fidelity to his role clearly demonstrates this.

In the movie, there are particular moments that are filled with extra energy. For instance, there is a concert in the middle of the plot that evokes pure vitality. It is the convergence of the racial tensions that have been brewing in the area, the N.W.A.’s trouble with the law enforcement and the peak of the group’s solidarity. Through what must have been a costly and painstaking effort to bring realism to this scene, the producers allow the scene to truly come to life. Each actor is lost to the pure energy of the audience in the venue and it is as if there are no actors, but only N.W.A. Although the scene is ultimately cut short for the movie to progress, it hits all the right emotional beats, and the rest of the film is colored by a longing for that magical moment to return. It’s this scene that holds the movie together, and it does so with the same energy that burns in each of the characters.

“Straight Outta Compton” is far from a perfect film. However, by its brute force of energy, the movie overcomes its problems and comes alive.

Photo courtesy of wikipedia.org

“Straight Outta Compton,” coproduced by Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, tells the origin story of N.W.A.

The Amherst Student • October 14, 2015

Sports 9

Women’s Soccer Draws With Hamilton, Defeats Keene State 3-0 Virginia Hassell ’16 Staff Writer

A scoreless second half and double-overtime resulted in a draw for the 19th-ranked women’s soccer team (6-2-1 overall, 3-2-1 in conference) in its matchup against NESCAC opponent Hamilton (3-4-1, 2-3-1).

The Continentals, who are tied for fifth in the NESCAC, jumped out to an early 1-0 lead. Just 18 minutes into action, Hamilton’s Ali Clark collected the ball inside the box and blasted a shot between the posts.

In the 31st minute of play, down by one, the Amherst offense struck, converting a corner kick opportunity. Ashlyn Heller ’17 connected with Emily Masten ’17, who headed the ball into the back corner of the net.

The duo’s effort marked Heller’s first assist and Masten’s first goal of the season.

Two minutes into overtime, Hamilton gave Amherst a scare; but senior and fouryear starting goalkeeper Holly Burwick was there to make a miraculous save. Hannah Withiam of Hamilton corralled a pass inside the penalty hash, but Burwick, dashed out of goal, making a heroic effort to deflect the shot and register the improbable save.

Burwick, who has the third highest save percentage in the NESCAC, tallied nine saves in the tie.

Hamilton topped the Jeffs in most statistical categories, outshooting the Jeffs 9-1 in the first and 6-1 in the second.

The Continentals posted a 7-6 advantage in corner kicks. Both teams tallied 2 shots in the first overtime and one-shot the second respectively.

After the hardfought draw against Hamilton, Amherst battled to a 3-0 victory over Keene State on Tuesday night.

Emily Hester ’17 tallied two goals in the victory, including her fourth game-winning goal of the season.

Photo by Peter Connolly ’18

Senior captain Holly Burwick boasts the third highest save percentage in the NESCAC this season.

The first half of the non-conference match was largely uneventful, as the two teams combined for only four shots on goal in the first half.

Hester’s first goal did come on one of these few shot opportunities as she was assisted by both Maeve McNamara ’19 and Megan Kim ’16.

McNamara tallied her third goal of the year in the 62nd minute of play, volleying the rebound from a header by first-year Eden Charles.

Hester added her second goal of the game

just over a minute later, corralling the pass from Ashlyn Heller ’17 and finding the back of the net.

Burwick registered three saves over the span of 78 minutes before first-year Charlie Cutler took over for the 11 minutes of action in relief. She saw a game-high two shots on net.

This weekend Amherst travels to Maine to resume NESCAC action against last-ranked Colby.

On Sunday, the Jeffs will wrap up the double-header weekend in a contest versus

eighth-ranked Bates.

Last year, the Jeffs scored in overtime, downing Colby 3-2. Emily Hester ’17, Hannah Guzzi ’18 and Delancey King ’18 chipped in one apiece in the winning effort, while Meredith Manley tallied two assists.

Amherst also prevailed 2-1 against Bates with goals from Guzzi and Rachael Abernethy ’16.

The weeked will be crucial for the Jeffs as look to capture two wins on the road before senior day on Saturday, Oct. 24, when they will face Wesleyan.

Men’s Golf Wraps Up Fall Season Field Hockey Gains Momentum, While Women’s Golf Finishes Fourth Earns Two Conference Wins Jason Darell ’18 Managing Sports Editor Men The Amherst men’s golf team had a strong showing this past weekend at the 2015 ECAC New England Division III championship, finishing with a score of 648 over the two-day tournament.

This performance earned the purple and white sixth place out of 14 teams. Middlebury placed first in the tournament while fellow NESCAC competitor Trinity took second place overall. The Jeffs finished in third place among the competing NESCAC teams.

Leading the way for the Jeffs was sophomore Danny Langa, who finished with a 154 on the weekend. This two-day score earned him a share of 13th place overall at the tournament.

Finishing in second place for the Jeffs was fellow sophomore Sam Proctor. He scored a 158 over the two-day tournament, which was good for 23rd overall.

First-year Jack Burlison was seven strokes behind him, carding a 165 to place in 33rd place on the weekend.

James Line ’16 finished in 46th place with a weekend-score of 171.

Rounding out the top four for the Jeffs was sophomore Justin Henriksen. He finished with a 173, which earned him 48th place overall in the tournament.

With the conclusion of the 2015 ECAC championships, the Jeffs’ fall season comes to a close.

They will resume action in the spring and hope to use the strengths spotlighted in their fall season to propel them to more victory in 2016.

Women

Kelly Karczewski ’18 Staff Writer

For their second-to-last tournament of the fall season, the Amherst women’s golf team traveled to Williamstown in order to participate in the Williams Fall Invitational.

The Jeffs put in a strong performance, finishing fourth in the 15-team field.

Williams took first place at the tournament, New York University finished in second, and Middlebury finished in third. The Jeffs final score of 672 earned them third place out of the six NESCAC schools competing at the tournament.

The Jeffs’ good result at the tournament was largely a result of the underclassmen on the team stepping up in a big way.

First-year Katie Rosenberg led the way with a score of 155, which earned her second place overall.

Behind her was fellow first-year Kate Weiss, who finished in 25th place with a score of 170 on the weekend.

Right behind these two first-years was senior co-captain Sarah Ressler, who shot 172 on the weekend to earn a share of 28th place.

Zoe Wong ’18 and Maggie Schoeller ’19 rounded out the top five for the Jeffs with scores of 175 and 178.

These scores earned them 37th place and 41st place, respectively.

The purple and white finish their fall season next weekend at the Wellesley Invitational.

The Jeffs finished in fifth place at last year’s Wellesley Invitational. Their main contributor in 2014 was junior Jamie Gracie, who is now abroad. They’ll look for the experienced senior leadership and underclassmen to step up and fill the void in their final tournament of the fall.

It was an exciting week for the Amherst College field hockey team, which — after a heartbreaking 1-0 loss to rival Tufts — was able to shut down both Connecticut College and Hamilton to boost its conference record to an even 3-3.

After Monday’s tough loss to the Jumbos, the Jeffs fired back on Wednesday by launching an impressive shutout victory over the Camels on home turf. Senior Katie Paolano provided a highlight performance with the first goal of the match as well as an assist to fellow tri-captain Annika Nygren ’16, who netted two to seal the win. Junior goalie Emily Horwitz earned her fifth shutout of the season and added eight more saves to her career stats. The win gave the purple and white a much needed confidence boost to take on the Continentals.

On Saturday, despite the disadvantages of a long trek to Clinton, New York and an early 2-0 deficit, Amherst fought back to end up one-upping the Continentals 5-4. Sarah Culhane ’17 found the back of the net four times to lead the Jeffs to the important overtime victory that they hope will stand as a turning point in their season.

Hamilton came into the game strong, scoring two goals within four minutes to take a 2-0 lead with 15 minutes still to play in the first half.

Paolano struck back before the halftime whistle, firing a pass from Culhane past goalkeeper Julia Booth to narrow the score.

Hamilton started with the momentum in the second half, and after pressuring the Amherst goal for the first four minutes of the game finally put one away past Horwitz.

Just seconds later, Amherst sophomore Caroline Feeley traveled up-field and sent a pass into the middle which was finished

by Culhane to make the score 3-2. Culhane struck again less than 20 minutes later with an assist by Nygren, tying the game at three.

Culhane fired another one in the back of the net at the 61st minute mark, making it her third of the game and giving the Jeffs a onegoal advantage.

Unwilling to go down after such a hefty early lead, the Continentals fought to even the score and eventually found the net with 10 seconds remaining in the match.

The overtime period ended with a pass from sophomore Elizabeth Turnbull into the stick of Culhane, who snuck one by the left side of the Hamilton keeper to decide the game.

It was Culhane’s fourth goal of the match and her team-leading 11th goal of the 2015 season.

Up next, the purple and white match up in an away battle against NESCAC rival Colby on Saturday, Oct. 17 at noon.

Last year’s game needed extra time to be decided, and Elizabeth Turnbull ’18 eventually netted the game winner to lift the Jeffs to a 2-1 victory.

Colby will enter the matchup with a 6-5 overall record but a mere 1-5 in conference play. They most recently fell narrowly, 1-0, to Wesleyan.

Amherst will round out the weekend with a visit to Bates on Sunday, Oct. 18.

The Bobcats are just a tick above .500 this season, with a 5-4 record, but have a 2-4 mark in conference. They are coming off a 1-0 loss to Conn. College. Amherst won last year’s game by a decisive 3-0 score. This year’s contest is set to start at 1 p.m.

10

Sports

The Amherst Student • October 14, 2015

Football Continues to Roll, Extends Win Streak to 14 Consecutive Games Devin O’Connor ’16 Staff Writer The Amherst College football team sealed another win on Pratt Field Saturday afternoon, improving to 3-0 on the season and extending its winning streak to 14 consecutive games.

The Jeffs shut down NESCAC rival Middlebury in a 24-7 win that involved strong efforts all over the field.

Contributing to the big win over the Panthers was junior inside linebacker Evan Boynton, who was named the NESCAC Defensive Player of the Week on Sunday. Boynton amassed a career-high 12 tackles, contributed two of the team’s five sacks and picked off the Panthers’ quarterback in an all-around stellar performance.

Boynton helped the Amherst defense hold the NESCAC’s top passing offense to only 270 total yards. The purple and white offense collected 426 yards in the air and on the ground, building off an impressive offensive showing so far this season.

After an unsuccessful drive by the Panthers, Amherst received the ball off a punt at its own 23-yard line less than three minutes into the game. After nine more plays, two of which included a 33-yard pass from Reece Foy ’18 to Rob Thoma ’17 and a 35-yard pass by Foy to Nick Widen ’17, the Jeffs found themselves at the Middlebury 11-yard line. The home team brought in Charlie Wall ’18 to kick the 29-yard field goal and take the lead, 3-0.

The visitors were quick to respond. Middlebury quarterback Matt Milano, a 2014 NESCAC Co-Offensive Player of the Year, found a teammate in the end zone to give the Panthers a 7-3 lead.

The remainder of the first quarter and most of the second was back and forth between the two NESCAC powerhouses. While the Amherst offense was repeatedly forced to punt, the defense kept the Panthers at bay and forced them to do the same. Midway through the second quarter, the Jeffs had a drive that seemed as though it could give Amherst the lead. At third-and-25 at the Amherst 28-yard line, Foy threw to Devin Boehm ’17 for a beautiful 30 yards. The catch was one of six that contributed to Boehm’s strong offensive performance.

Although the drive fell short, Amherst was able to put numbers on the board on its next possession. Foy led the offensive effort with five consecutive completions to get the Jeffs to the Middlebury-31-yard line. With only 33 seconds left in the half, Kenny Adrinkra ’16 rushed for three yards into the end zone to give the purple and white the lead. The score was 10-7, Amherst, at the close of the first half.

With the opening of the second half it looked like Middlebury was going to take the

lead. The Panthers had a few opportunities in the third quarter, but the Amherst defense wouldn’t let up. Late in the third, back-toback sacks by Boynton and Parker Chapman ’17 caused a Middlebury three-and-out. The Panthers recovered the ball on an Amherst fumble, but were again shut down by Boynton and the home team’s defense.

After a scoreless third quarter, the Jeffs put numbers on the board early in the fourth. Jack Drew ’16 forced a Middlebury fumble after a 57-yard punt by Jackson McGonagle ’16. Jake Hines ’18 recovered the ball at the Middlebury 3-yard line. First-year Jack Hickey rushed for one yard to get the Jeffs to the Middlebury 2-yard line on the first play of the drive. On fourth down, Foy found McGonagle in the back of the end zone to push the Amherst lead to 17-7.

The purple and white scored again on the next drive. Amherst forced a Middlebury punt and recovered the ball at the Amherst 38-yard line. Hickey rushed for a 30-yard touchdown to give the Jeffs a 17-point cushion with seven minutes to play.

Middlebury was unable to capitalize on its possessions, and the Amherst defense shut the Panthers down on two more possessions.

Boynton and Chris Gow ’16 each picked off Milano on the two drives following the purple and white touchdown, and Amherst secured the win.

“Middlebury had a very strong offense and it took a full team effort on the defensive side to slow them down,” Boynton said. “The coaches were able to make adjustments that helped us and at the end of the day, everyone doing their job allowed us to be successful.”

In addition to the NESCAC Player of the Week’s impressive defensive effort, Jimmy Fairfield-Sonn ’16 caused two incomplete passes and amassed eight tackles, while Chapman added six tackles and a sack.

For the offense, Foy had a strong presence in the air and on the ground, going 22 of 39 for 246 yards and a touchdown and adding nine carries for 34 yards. Boehm had 72 yards on six catches, while running backs Adinkra and Hickey put up strong numbers and a touchdown each, collecting 62 yards and 53 yards, respectively.

Although the win was a big one for the Jeffs, they still have some tough competition lying ahead. Wesleyan comes to Pratt Field in two weeks for the Amherst homecoming game, and the Jeffs face Trinity and Williams in November.

The purple and white will return to play next Saturday, Oct. 17 when they travel to Colby. Last season, the Jeffs bested the Mules at Pratt Field, 35-10. The game is scheduled for 1 p.m.

Photo courtesy of Mark Box

Sophomore Reece Foy has handled starting quarterback duties well this year, amassing 730 total yards in just three games.

ATHLETE SPOTLIGHT

Evan Boynton ’17 Favorite Team Memory: Even though I was injured last year, going 8-0 was stilll awesome and cool to be a part of Favorite Pro Athlete: Matt Ryan Dream Job: GM of an NFL team Pet Peeve: Asking someone to pass the salt shaker and they give the pepper shaker as well Favorite Vacation Spot: Nantucket Something on Your Bucket List: Traveling throughout Asia, specifically Japan Guilty Pleasure: Listening to soundtracks from movies Favorite Food: My mom’s pasta with broccolli and garlic Favorite Thing About Amherst: The people and the close-knit community How He Earned It: Boynton was named the NESCAC Defensive football Player of the Week as he was crucial to the Jeffs’ win over Middlebury on Saturday. He posted a game and career-high 12 tackles (7 of them solo). He added two sacks, totaling a loss of 21 yards. Boynton also added an interception to his slew of impressive defensive stats on the day.

Sara Culhane ’18E Favorite Team Memory: Hosting NESCACs freshman year Favorite Pro Athlete: Erik Karlsson Dream Job: Anything with the NHL Pet Peeve: Watch on wrong wrist Favorite Vacation Spot: Maui Something on Your Bucket List: See a bullfight in Spain Guilty Pleasure: Chocolate covered Oreos Favorite Food: Sushi Favorite Thing About Amherst: Watching the sun rise on Merrill beach How She Earned It: Culhane scored four goals to lift Amherst field hockey to a 5-4 victory over Hamilton. After notching the hat trick, Culhane also registered the game-winner in overtime. Culhane now boasts a team-high 11 goals this season to accompany four assists, good for 26 total points. She also boasts an average of 2.60 points per game. The victory was crucial for the Jeffs, helping them improve 3-3 in conference play before heading into a tough slate of NESCAC matchups. Culhane was named NESCAC Player of the Week for her performance.

Men’s and Women’s Cross Country Compete at NEICAA Championships Lauren Tuiskula ’17 Managing Sports Editor Men The men’s cross country team raced to a second-place finish at the NEICAAA cross country championships this past weekend.

As they have been all season, the team was again led by the efforts of Mohamed Hussein ’18, who crossed the finish line in second place overall in a field of 252 runners. The sophomore standout was named the U.S. Track & Field Association NCAA Division III Athlete of the Week for the third time in as many chances this season.

While Hussein was the indisputable star of the race, the Jeffs performed well as a unit as well, placing all seven of the team’s runners in the top 80.

Dan Crowley ’16 also continued to enjoy an impressive fall campaign. He placed second among the purple and white runners, crossing the line with a time of 24:55 to finish 10th overall.

Craig Nelson ’18 placed 40th overall with a time of 25:30. Raymond Meijer ’17 finished just 10 seconds behind him, placing 60th in the field.

Tucker Meijer ’19, Jeff Seelaus ’16 and Steven Lucey ’17 rounded out the scoring for the Jeffs. They finished with times of 25:47, 25:48 and 25:51 good for 71st, 74th and 80th, respectively.

Amherst returns to action when they host rivals Wesleyan and Williams for the Little Three Cross Country Championship this Saturday, Oct. 17. The meet will start promptly at 1 p.m.

Last year, Amherst placed second in the meet, falling to the then host school, Williams.

Hussein looks to improve upon his fourthplace mark as a first-year, while Crowley and Raymond Meijer will also hope to factor largely into the scoring again this season.

Women Junior Savanna Gornisiewicz placed 36th overall at the NEICAAA championships to help lead Amherst to a 20th place team finish among 39 competing teams. The Jeffs improved five spots from the mark they posted back in 2013 at the same tournament, scoring 74 fewer points.

First-year Lizzie Lacy cross the line in second among the Jeff runners, notching a time of 18:34. It placed her at 45th overall in the field of 263 runners.

Senior captain Besty Black placed 152nd overall, crossing the line in 19:36. This was a full four seconds faster than the time she posted back in 2013.

Tess Frenzel ’17 ran to a 164th place finish with a time of 19:40. She saw a significant improvement from her time in the race as a first-year, shaving off a whopping 1:16.

First-year Veronica Rocco continued to impress in her debut campaign, placing fourth among Jeff runners and 168th overall with a time of 19:44.

Junior Cat Lowdon rounded out the top five for the Jeffs, finishing three seconds after Rocco with a time of 19:47.

Amherst plays host to rivals Wesleyan and Williams for the Little Three Championships this Saturday, Oct. 17.

Last year Amherst raced to a second-place team finish at the meet. Gornisiewicz paced the team, finishing second place overall and finishing just four seconds behind the firstplace runner.

Williams has won the meet seven consecutive times and holds the majority of victories with 28 total.

With many of their top five from last year lost to graduation or studying abroad, the Jeffs will look to their experienced junior runners and strong core of underclassmen to help boost them to a home course victory.

The Amherst Student • October 14, 2015

Sports

11

Women’s Tennis Earns Promising Volleyball Splits NESCAC Victories at Middlebury Invitational Action, Moves to 13-2 On Season Raymond Meijer ’17 Staff Writer The Amherst women’s tennis team traveled to Vermont this weekend for the Middlebury Invitational, a tournament that promised strong competition from NESCAC rivals. After a dual match loss to Williams last weekend, the team bounced back in its penultimate tournament of the fall season. Amherst earned a series of convincing victories along with a few narrow losses across singles and doubles action.

The invitational featured competition from the Middlebury hosts as well as Williams and Army West Point. The tournament had an unusual setup, with teams playing in a series of dual matches with either six singles or three doubles matches consisting of each dual match. Additionally, in order to speed up the action of play, there was no advantage scoring, meaning that when a score reached deuce, players only had to win the succeeding point to win the set, rather than having to win by two points through advantage and then game points. The singles matches featured best twoof-three formats with a tiebreaker in the third set, and doubles matches followed a pro-set format in which the winning team would be the first to win eight games with a minimum advantage of two games.

The Jeffs completed a full weekend of play with many strong victories. On Saturday, the team played Army West Point in singles and doubles, Middlebury in doubles and Williams in doubles. Against Army, Amherst took two of the six matchups, with the captain duo of Sarah Monteagudo ’16 and Sue Ghosh ’16 and the pair of Kelsey Chen ’19 and Vickie Ip ’18 winning games of 8-5 and 8-3, respectively. In their singles matchups, the Jeffs were able to evenly split the six singles matches with their Division I foe. Ghosh battled to a tough threeset victory over Army’s Carolyn Pitman 7-6 (4), 7-6 (5), 10-7, before Jackie Calla ’17 and Monteagudo took their matchups in convincing two-set wins.

The team also faced some more familiar competition in matchups with Middlebury and Williams. Amherst came away with two of three victories in its doubles dual match with

Middlebury, with Amherst’s lone loss coming in an incredibly tight competition in which Calla and Chen were just edged by their Middlebury opponents 9-8 (2). The Monteagudo/ Ghosh and Chen/Ip pairs continued their winning ways in the weekend with convincing 8-5 and 8-0 victories, jumpstarting Amherst’s dominance in their singles dual match against the Panthers on Sunday. The Jeffs took five of six matchups, with four of the five victories taking only two sets. Ip, Chen and Monteagudo won their matchups in resounding fashion, 6-3, 6-3 for Ip; 6-1, 6-1 for Chen and 6-2, 6-2 for Monteagudo.

After their loss to Williams in last weekend’s dual match, the Jeffs were looking to make inroads this tournament against their main rival. They managed to chip away at the Ephs and come away with some stronger performances, a promising signs of close battles to come in the spring season. The team managed to garner a victory in one of the three matchups in doubles play: First-years Camilla Trapness and Joanna Booth were unfazed by the older Williams duo of Alex Stone and Carmen Saab, and they stormed to a strong 8-4 victory.

Amherst did even better in singles actions on Sunday, taking three of the six matchups. Williams couldn’t stop Trapness throughout the weekend; even after dropping the first set 5-7, Trapness fought back and dominated the next set 6-0 before taking the tiebreaking third set 10-6. Avery Wagman ’18 and Kelly Yang ’19 won their matchups in only two sets to account for the other victories. In nine matchups against the Ephs, the Jeffs lost just 5-4, significantly closing the gap from their 9-0 defeat last weekend. This score matches the result of the two teams’ fall dual match last season, and may be a sign of tough battles to come.

“We changed up our pairing for doubles and still managed to do well which was great,” Ip said. “Everyone cheered each other on and we had some great wins against Midd and Army with Jackie Calla defeating Christina Puccinelli despite losing against her during the ITA tournament 2 weeks ago.”

After a successful weekend, the team will conclude the fall portion of its year at the three-day NEWITT Tournament hosted by Mt. Holyoke this weekend.

Men’s Tennis Plays In Split Squad Competition At Dartmouth and Bates Drew Kiley ’18 Managing Sports Editor The Amherst College men’s tennis team split their squad for fall break, with four players competing at the Dartmouth Invitational on Friday-Sunday, Oct. 9-11, and eight members of the team travelling to Bates College for the Wallach Invitational on Saturday, Oct. 10.

At the three-day Dartmouth Invitational, seniors Aaron Revzin, Ben Fife, Michael Solimano and Andrew Yaraghi competed against players from NESCAC rivals Williams College and Middlebury College as well as Division I programs Yale, Brown, Dartmouth and Brown.

In singles action, Revzin led the purple and white with a 2-1 record on the weekend while the Jeffs recorded a 3-7 overall record.

He defeated Buffalo’s Akhil Mehta in straight sets (6-2, 7-5) on Friday and came back from a set down to defeat Williams’ Jordan Sadowsky (3-6, 6-2, 6-4) on Saturday.

Amherst also compiled a 2-3 overall record in doubles play, with the pairing of Fife and Yaraghi going 2-1 for the weekend. The two seniors fell in their first match (8-5) on Saturday to Buffalo’s Ethan Nittolo and Pablo Alvarez.

However, they defeated the Williams pairing of Sadowsky and Deepak Indrakanti in a close, 9-7 match later on Saturday, and beat Yale’s Jason Brown and Stefan Doehler handily (8-1).

In singles action at the Wallach Invita-

tional, the Jeffs compiled a 6-8 record. In ‘A’ flight action, Zach Bessette ’19 moved past the opening round with a 6-2, 6-2 victory over Rex Glickman of Trinity, but then fell 2-6, 6-2, 10-4 in the quarterfinals to Luke Tercek of Bowdoin. Justin Sun ’19 defeated Kit Sanderson of Skidmore 6-0, 2-6, 20-7 in round one, but also fell in the quarterfinals to Ben Rosen of Bates 6-3, 6-0.

In ‘B’ flight action, Ben Birkenfeld ’18 reached the quarterfinals with a 5-7, 6-2, 10-6 victory over Trinity’s Aaron Segel but was ousted by Zain Ali of Tufts 6-4, 6-1. Birkenfeld was ousted by Zain Ali of Tufts 6-4, 6-1, and Levitin fell 6-0, 3-6, 12-10 to Rob Jacobson of Tufts.

In ‘C’ flight action, Cameron Raglin ’19 lost in the quarterfinals, and Brik Mitau ’16 lost in round one. In the ‘D’ flight, Carlos de Bracamonte ’16 fell in the quarterfinals, while Russell Einbinder ’16 was ousted in round one.

The doubles pairing of Raglin and Birkenfeld was able to move past the opening round of the ‘A’ flight with an 8-4 victory over Middlebury’s Kyle Schlanger and Allen Jackson, but they fell 8-6 in the quarterfinals to Kai Yuen Leung and Nick Tong of Skidmore.

Elsewhere in doubles, Bessette and Sun were unable to make it past the first round in the ‘A’ flight, while the pairings of Mitau/Levitin and Einbinder/de Bracamonte lost in the first round of the ‘B’ flight.

Photo by Peter Connolly ’18

Katie Warshaw ’18 led the team with 17 digs against Middlebury.

Julia Turner ’19 Staff Writer Amherst women’s volleyball went 2-1 this week, with one win and one loss in NESCAC play. The Firedogs were on the road all weekend, after rolling over Westfield State on Wednesday night in non-conference play in LeFrak Gymnasium. Amherst bounced back from their loss to an undefeated Middlebury team on Friday night with a sweep of Hamilton the next morning.

Wednesday night saw a break from NESCAC action when the Jeffs faced a 7-9 Westfield State squad. The offensive highlights from a dominating performance included Nicole Carter ’16 and Kate Bres ’17 who dished out 18 and 12 assists respectively. Leading a nicely balanced offensive attack, Nicole Gould ’17 had yet another impressive match, leading the team with eight kills, with Lizzie Ahern ’16 and Marialexa Natsis ’18 following with six apiece.

Sophomores Jennifer Mackinnon-Krems and Annika Reczek and first-year Lauren Reppert contributed five kills each. Sophomore Asha Walker also had a standout game, serving up three aces and adding six digs, following up Carter’s eight.

With the Jeffs winning the first point in each of their three sets, the momentum hardly shifted from their hands, allowing the Firedogs to hold Westfield to under 10 points in the first two sets and still win by an impressive nine in the third. The purple and white shut down the Owls’ offense, with Westfield posting negative hitting percentages for all three sets.

In one of Amherst’s toughest matches of the year, the Firedogs traveled to Middlebury to face the previously undefeated Panthers on Friday night. Both teams put up impressive numbers in four close sets, but the Jeffs just couldn’t stifle a dominant Middlebury offense and tough defense at the net. All four sets saw numerous lead changes, with both teams rallying for comebacks. The Jeffs fells behind in the first set after forcing a 5-5 tie by allowing Middlebury 13 of the ensuing 16 points. Several strong kills by Maggie Danner ’17 allowed Amherst to come within three, but a pair of

Panther kills sealed the set for Middlebury.

The second set saw a deadlock at 19-19 before another pair of Danner kills and several attacking errors by the Panthers allowed Amherst a 5-0 run that, combined with a service error from Middlebury, secured the match for the Jeffs. Amherst fell to a tough 16-9 handicap in the third set before rallying to within three at 17-20. Unfortunately the Jeffs couldn’t handle a couple tough kills from the Panthers and fell 25-17. Middlebury began the fourth set with a 6-1 lead before a rally from the Jeffs and a stellar kill by Gould managed to tie it up 11-11. Neither team could manage more than a 3-point lead until Middlebury’s chance for a set point at 24-21.

The Amherst squad managed to hold off the Panthers and tie up the set at 24-24. Despite a Gould kill, the Panthers came out on top after a pair of kills that Amherst failed to handle.

Highlights from the Middlebury match included Danner’s 17 kills, Katie Warshaw ’16 with 17 digs and Walker with 13 digs. Carter led the Amherst squad with 28 assists, and Samantha Newby ’16 finished with 12 assists and five assisted blocks.

After their tough loss on Friday, Amherst bounced right back against Hamilton the next morning, sweeping the match led by a 20-kill effort from Maggie Danner followed with 11 from Gould. Danner and Gould both had a standout statistical match, with both hitting over .450 — Danner at an unstoppable .576 — and keeping it clean with only combined three total errors. Carter had an impressive 37 assists and six digs, while Warshaw and Walker added 14 digs and two service aces apiece. The Amherst offense was simply too much for the 3-12 Hamilton squad to handle, with the Jeffs taking the sweep 25-20, 25-26 and 25-13.

This week provides ample opportunity to watch the 13-2 Jeffs in some exciting homecourt advantage matches.

Amherst is back for non-conference action on Wednesday, Oct. 13 night hosting ColbySawyer College at 7 p.m. in LeFrak and again Friday, Oct. 16 and Saturday, Oct. 17 against Bowdoin and UMass Boston, respectively.

Photo by Peter Connolly ’18

Asha Walker ’18 contributed 14 digs in Amherst’s win over Hamilton.

Sports

Photo courtesy of Mark Box

The Jeffs have outscored their opponents 27-2 so far this season, posting a NESCAC-high nine shutouts over the course of their 11 contests.

Men’s Soccer Dominates in Three Game Slate, Now 11-0 On the Season Drew Kiley ’18 Managing Sports Editor After the fireworks of three straight double overtime victories, the No. 2-ranked Amherst College men’s soccer teamed enjoyed a less dramatic but equally impressive week. In three games this week, the Jeffs defeated NESCAC foes Connecticut College and Hamilton as well as non-conference opponent Mount Saint Mary in lopsided victories.

With the wins, the purple and white keep their undefeated record intact at 11-0-0 (6-0-0 NESCAC).

The Jeffs’ offense thrived throughout the week with 10 goals in three games, while the defense, directed by senior goalkeeper Thomas Bull ’16 extended its shutout streak to four games, totalling over 490 minutes.

Traveling to New York for a game against Mount Saint Mary on Wednesday, Oct. 7, Amherst posted a solid 3-0 victory over their hosts.

The Jeffs opened brightly, pinning Mount Saint Mary in its half and claiming three corners within the first 20 minutes.

Junior defender Cameron Bean hit the post in the 18th minute, but despite its dominant play, Amherst struggled to finish its opportunities.

The breakthrough came just before the half, when senior midfielder Tommy Haskel sent in a 45th-minute corner kick. Sophomore defender Cameron Hardington pounced on the loose ball at the top of the box and finished for his first goal of the season.

Still in control of the game, the Jeffs doubled their lead soon after the break. In the 57th minute, senior forward Nico Pascual-Leone received a through ball from Milton Rico ’16, cleverly chipping the ball over Peluso and into the net.

Amherst added another in the 75th minute when junior forward Jackson Lehnhart put in a corner and Aziz Khan ’18 finished from the scramble in the Mount Saint Mary box.

On Saturday, the purple and white took down NESCAC rivals Hamilton 3-0 with three goals within a ten-minute span during the second half.

Amherst struggled to assert their dominance in the first-half and the team created few oppor-

Photo courtesy of Mark Box

GAME SCHE DULE

tunities.

The Continentals matched the Jeffs in shots on target with three.

Amherst’s best chance to take the lead came in the 22nd minute, when sophomore midfielder Sam Malnik saw his effort cleared off the line by Hamilton’s Mike Lubelczyk.

The Jeffs took the lead in the second half. In the 54th minute, junior forward Chris Martin saw his direct free kick saved, but senior forward Greg Singer put the rebound into the net.

Martin scored a goal himself just three minutes later. After junior defender Justin Aoyama found him on a long ball, Martin beat his defended and slid the ball past the goalkeeper at the near post.

In the 63rd minute, Bryce Ciambella ’17 linked up with Aidan Murray ’18, whose cross to Andrew Orozco ’17 finished inside the far post to make the match 3-0.

Amherst then defeated NESCAC foes Connecticut College 4-0 on Tuesday. Pascual-Leone led the Jeffs with two goals and an assist, while first-year midfielder Luke Nguyen added a goal

Photo courtesy of Mark Box

WED THU

FRI

SAT

Men’s Tennis Volleyball vs. Colby-Sawyer, 7 p.m. @ USA/ITA National Small College Championships, TBA

Women’s Tennis @ NEWITT, TBA

Women’s Soccer @ Colby, 11 a.m.

Men’s Tennis @ USA/ITA National Small College Championships, TBA

Field Hockey @ Colby, noon

and an assist as well.

The Jeffs scored within the first minute, when Nguyen met a Pascual-Leone corner at the far post for his first goal of the season.

The first-year and senior then switched places in the 35th minute. Nguyen swung in a corner that Pascual-Leone settled and fired into the back of the net to make it 2-0.

Early in the second half, Singer found Rico, who finished into the right corner to give Amherst a three-goal advantage in the 48th minute. Pascual-Leone made it 4-0 in the 61st minute when he finished Martin’s cross for his sixth goal of the season.

Bull made seven saves to keep his ninth clean sheet of the year, and the defense has only given up two goals through 12 games this season.

The Jeffs now have only four games, all against NESCAC competition, left this season. They travel to Maine for a game at Colby this Saturday, Oct. 17 at 1:30 p.m. The purple and white then face travel to Bates on Sunday for another conference showdown on Sunday, Oct. 18 at 3 p.m.

Photo courtesy of Mark Box

SUN Football Women’s Cross Women’s Golf @ Colby, 1 p.m.

Country @ Wellesley College @ Little III Championship, Invitational, TBA Volleyball noon vs. UMass Boston, 1 p.m.

Men’s Cross Country Men’s Soccer @ Little III Championship, @ Colby, 1:30 p.m.

1 p.m.