The Heights, February 18, 2020

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Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Team Criticizes Elections Committee After Loss Sepe and Bracher lost after they were deducted 65 votes.

By Scott Baker News Editor

JESS RIVILIS / HEIGHTS EDITOR

UGBC Elects Start Work on Policy Plans Christian Guma and Kevork Atinizian will be sworn in on April 29.

By Scott Baker News Editor Since Christian Guma, CSOM ’21, and Kevork Atinizian, CSOM ’22, were elected Undergraduate Government of Boston College president and vice president last Tuesday, they have begun meeting with administrators and called Lyft to work on implementing discounted rides for students.

Guma and Atinizian will be sworn in on April 29, at which point they will have chosen a cabinet and begun working on some of their key policies.

Uber and Lyft discounts, transparency in UGBC, a University LGBTQ+ resource center, and improved mental health resources on campus are Guma and Atinizian’s top four policy areas.

Guma said he called Lyft again the day after he was elected to further discuss his proposed Uber/Lyft discounted ride program. The program, Guma and Atinizian said during the campaign, would be funded at least in part by the traditional executive

stipends that he and Atinizian are not accepting.

Guma and Atinizian doubled down on their promise to present a concrete plan for an LGBTQ+ resource center to Vice President of Student Affairs Joy Moore on day one of their administration.

“I think the BC administration will probably be hesitant at first, but, again, that’s where we come in,” Guma said. “We never thought this was gonna be easy. Our job is to come up with a clear plan and to push and push

See Policy, A3

Czar Sepe, MCAS ’21, and Jack Bracher, MCAS ’22, are arguing that policies set by the Elections Committee (EC) should be revised following their 18-vote loss in Tuesday’s Undergraduate Government of Boston College executive elections. Sepe and Bracher received the most votes but lost to Christian Guma, CSOM ’21, and Kevork Atinizian, CSOM ’22, due to vote deductions handed down by the EC for campaign violations.

The EC and Office of Student Involvement (OSI) said in an email that, per standard policy, the EC votes on and finalizes all sanctions before any members know the results of the election.

The EC is a group separate from UGBC that states it is “an unbiased group, comprised of undergraduate students representing all classes” that facilitates BC undergraduate elections. The EC does not publicly release the names of its members, and the EC and OSI declined several times in emails to The Heights to identify its members. The EC declined to be

interviewed, and OSI did not respond to requests for an interview.

The EC is distinct from UGBC, but Paul Murphy, associate director for student programming in OSI, oversees both UGBC and the EC. Murphy did not respond to a request for comment, and his role overseeing the EC is unclear.

Bracher submitted an appeal of a vote deduction for smear campaigning to the EC, which sent it to Murphy.

Bracher said that Murphy rejected the appeal due to a lack of evidence, and Murphy did not respond to a request for an explanation of his ruling.

Twenty-two fewer students voted for Guma and Atinizian than Sepe and Bracher, though after Guma’s team was deducted 25 votes and Sepe’s team was deducted 65 votes for campaign violations, Guma’s team ultimately won. The Sepe-Bracher ticket was deducted 40 and 25 votes for “smear campaigning” and receiving an unauthorized endorsement, respectively. Guma and Atinizian were deducted 25 votes for sending an unsolicited GroupMe message on the day of the election, though the Sepe campaign said they reported additional unsolicited messages to the EC after the reporting deadline.

The team of Dennis Wieboldt and

See EC, A3

Racist Epithet Written in Tape on Newton Sidewalk Mayor Fuller called on people with information to contact the police.

By Gavin Zhang Assoc. Metro Editor A racist epithet written in tape was found on the sidewalk at the intersection of Albemarle Road and Watertown Street on Sunday, according to Newton Police. The incident is currently under investigation by the Newton Police Department.

“This is not who we are as a community,” Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller said in a statement. “Newton stands united against racial discrimination and all forms of hate.

All residents should feel safe here. We reaffirm our core principles of respect, diversity and acceptance.”

The incident came after an anti-racism rally last Friday, held by students of Newton North High School. The rally was a response to students reportedly using racial epithets both in school and on social media, according to the Patch.

Principal Henry Turner emailed parents of Newton North students regarding the incident and addressed the school committee on students’ alleged use of racist epithets against both black and Asian students, according to the Patch.

Fuller’s statement also urged anyone with information regarding the incident to contact Lt. Bruce Apotheker, the civil rights officer at Newton Police, at 617-796-2103.

The Anti-Defamation League, the Newton Human Rights Commission, and Newton Public Schools have been notified of the incident, according to a tweet from Fuller’s office. n

KAITLIN DEVIR / HEIGHTS STAFF

Women’s Basketball Defeats Notre Dame In a narrow 56-55 victory over the Fighting Irish, the Eagles made program history by beating ND more than once in a single season.

Voter Turnout Rises in UGBC Election Student participation passed 30 percent for the first time since 2015.

By Scott Baker News Editor

ANEESA WERMERS / HEIGHTS STAFF

Johnny’s Luncheonette: Serving Newton Since ’93

Come for the shakes, stay for the matzo ball soup.

Voter turnout in the election for the 2020-2021 Undergraduate Government of Boston College presidential election was higher than it’s been in years, reaching the 30 percent threshold for the first time since 2015, at 32 percent. There was a 6 percentage point increase in turnout from last year, although twice as many teams competed in this election.

The Elections Committee (EC)

did not respond when asked why turnout has been low in recent years and whether it is working to raise turnout. The EC also did not provide voter demographics for school and year for the 2020 election when asked.

Elections turnout over the past four years has been low compared to previous elections, not climbing higher than the 29 percent in 2018.

Voter turnout in UGBC elections used to be higher, though. Between 2012 and 2015, turnout never dropped below 34 percent—three percentage points higher than this year’s election with four teams running—and was as high as 48 percent in 2014. The 2014 election featured two teams and was nearly uncontested, as the EC extend-

(UR)BANK ON IT

ARTS

Cara Urbank, a Tewaaraton Watch List selection, scored a career-best six goals to lead BC to a 15-12 win over Vanderbilt.

BC put on the 1996 play ‘The Vagina Monologues’ for Valentine’s Day and donated the proceeds to charity.

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THIS ISSUE

FEATURES: Liz McCartney

See Turnout, A3

...AND THAT’S THE V

SPORTS

INSIDE

ed the filing deadline to prevent the eventual winning team from running unopposed.

Before the 2014 election, the EC instituted a major change to presidential campaigning, shortening the campaigning season from two weeks to one week, and moving the election from late March to February so as to give more transition time between administrations and lower the toll campaig ning takes on student s .

UGBC said at the time that the earlier campaign timeline may have been the reason only one team originally filed to run.

While the 2014 election had the

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ARTS: Medusa’s Laughing Ladies

McCartney, BC ’94, started SBP in New The feminist journal is an accepting space for Orleans to provide disaster relief................A4 women and non-binary students.....................A10

INDEX

NEWS.........................A2 OPINIONS............ A6 Vol. CI, No. 5 © 2020, The Heights, Inc. MAGAZINE................ A4 ARTS...................... A9 www.bcheights.com METRO....................... A5 SPORTS.................. A12

The Heights

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TOP

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things to do on campus this week

1

In celebration of National Recreation Sports & Fitness Day, BC Rec and UGBC will be handing out UGBC merchandise, distributing T-shirts, and running fitness classes on Friday from 1 to 6 p.m. in the Margot Connell Recreation Center.

2

Thursday uesday, F , ebruary August 18, 29, 2020 2019

The AHANA+ Leadership Council will be hosting a Black History Month open mic night in Higgins 300 on Friday from 7 to 8:30 p.m. The event, featuring guest speakers and students, will center around the intersection of black and Muslim identities.

3

The Irish Studies program will be hosting its annual Comhfhios conference on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m at the Connolly House.

The conference theme is In Awe of all Mná: A Study on Irish Women and will concern the role of Irish women throughout history.

NEWS Student-Administrator Forum Focuses on Dining BRIEFS

By Eric Shea Editorial Assistant

Namesake of WCAS Scholarship Dies Elizabeth Ann Strain, who spent over half a decade working at Boston College, died in December at the age of 91, according to a University release.

During her time at BC, Strain received the Community Service Award and the Companion of Justice Award. She had also been named an honorary member of BC’s Jesuit honors society, Alpha Sigma Nu, and the namesake of a Wood’s College of Advancing Studies scholarship.

Speaking to the BC Chronicle after being honored with the Community Service Award, Strain discussed her philosophy of faith in action.

“I think it is essential to pray, but it is more important to put those prayers into action,” Strain said to the Chronicle. “I feel I have been blessed with the ability to go out and help others, so how can I not?”

Strain spent 58 years at BC, during which time she worked at the Office of the Registrar and WCAS, which was known as the Evening College when Strain arrived in 1952.

She was also the first director of the Boston College Experience, a summer enrichment program for high school seniors.

The WC A S Elizabeth Strain Scholarship, established in 2000, is intended to provide students “facing significant financial challenges with an opportunity to complete an undergraduate degree in the College of Advancing Studies,” according to the release.

“It’s a comforting thought to know that it will be here long after I am gone,” Strain said of the scholarship, according to the release.

“I guess this means that my name will go down in history … just like Rudolph!”

CSOM Faculty Ranked First The faculty of the Carroll School of Management was ranked first in teaching quality in a list of the nation’s best business schools, according to Poets&Quants (P&Q), an online platform covering the business school world. P&Q also ranked CSOM 13th in best business schools overall.

John Byrne, a former executive editor at BusinessWeek, founded P&Q in 2014. The site regularly reports on and analyzes business schools and full-time MBA programs for prospective students.

According to the report, CSOM earned a total score of 91.28 out of a possible 100. A score of 100 was earned only by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. When the question “Would you recommend the business program to a close friend or colleague?” was posed to alumni, CSOM score d si xth among the schools. Additionally, P&Q reported that almost 94 percent of CSOM graduates are employed within 90 days of graduation, placing CSOM in 15th place overall in employment.

P&Q ranked the 97 business schools in the list based on admissions standards, alumni surveys, and employee outcomes.

“Still, we believe generally, the quality of business education comes down to three core issues: the quality of the raw talent coming through the door, what a school does with that talent over four years, and finally how the marketplace responds to the graduates coming off campus,” reads P&Q’s website. “In other words, what’s the quality of the incoming students, what is their view of the academic experience, and what career outcomes are achieved by the graduating class.”

Representatives from Boston College Dining Services provided a general overview of their operations in the latest student-administrator forum on Wednesday.

They explained BC Dining’s self-operating business model and the rationale behind its payment options before addressing student concerns about various dining issues, such as the cost of meals.

There were seven attendees at Wednesday’s forum, in addition to Michael Osaghae, UGBC president and MCAS ’20.

The student-administrator forums are an initiative spearheaded by the Undergraduate Government of BC and Student Affairs in response to the 2018 incident in which former student Michael Sorkin vandalized Welch Hall with racist epithets.

Megan O’Neill, associate director of restaurant operations, reminded those in attendance that BC Dining is a self-operated dining service whose employees are employees of Boston College. She emphasized that BC Dining’s staff receive a competitive, fair wage, a guaranteed work week, and the same benefits as any other BC employee.

“We like to say that [BC Dining’s staff] gets the same benefits as your favorite professor on campus,” O’Neill said.

O’Neill said that BC Dining is the most diverse department on campus, with its employees representing 33 nationalities.

“It allows for a lot of opportunities for some culinary changes and opportunities,” O’Neill said. “A lot of our staff speak different languages to the students, and some of them who are homesick in the beginning really appreciate that.”

Addressing BC Dining’s current payment option, O’Neill explained that à la carte dining—which allows students to take individual food items to go—allows the dining halls to become social spaces. Access to the dining halls does not require a card swipe, O’Neill said, as it would if BC were on the swipe system.

The à la carte system also allows students to exercise more control over their money, O’Neill said, so that students can use their money in ways that best suit them.

“We say it’s your money—use it as you want,” O’Neill said.

The BC Dining business model is designed to break even, as it receives no

Aneesa Wermers / Heights Staff

Megan O’Neill and Beth Emer y spoke to a crowd of seven attendees at the student-administrator forum,

funding from tuition, O’Neill said. The need for an even bottom line has resulted in the two meal plans options: the mandatory residential meal plan—which is required for all on-campus students without kitchens—and the flex meal plan. O’Neill said that most of the money BC Dining relies on for its annual budget comes from the residential meal plan, because money in the flex plan rolls over annually before being returned to the student upon graduation.

“We have to pay all of the bills and all these other great things we talked about with the mandatory meal plan,” O’Neill said.

“We think it’s actually pretty fair because it’s 32 weeks, when you figure it out, is roughly $25 a day. It’s usually two meals and a snack give or take.”

O’Neill also explained the FRESH initiative—BC Dining’s latest commitment to sustainability and environmental awareness.

FRESH stands for fairly traded, regional, equitable, sustainable, and healthy. Through the initiative, BC Dining works with local farmers and vendors to promote sustainable and locally grown food, O’Neill said.

Carney’s Dining Room in McElroy Commons will see a slight renovation over Spring Break that will raise more awareness about the program, according to O’Neill.

“We care about sustainability,” O’Neill said. “We care about the environment, we care about the local person, the farmer, and

we work with a lot of our vendors and with different constituents across campus.”

Each year, BC Dining donates produce to a local food pantry, O’Neill said. It works with smaller charitable organizations and uses its purchasing power to donate large amounts of wholesale goods.

BC Dining usually asks for student input when picking the charity, according to O’Neill. Two years ago, BC Dining picked the Rosie’s Place women’s shelter, and last year it picked the St. Francis House homeless shelter.

“Instead of cash, which is what most people do when they donate, we have better purchasing power than some of these smaller charities, so we work with them directly and ask, ‘What do you need?’”

O’Neill said.

One student voiced a concern that some students have financial difficulties when it comes to purchasing food from the dining halls, but they also may have a hard time cooking on their own. The student asked if BC Dining has considered a food stipend that would allow low-income students more access to food.

Beth Emery, director of BC Dining, said that BC Dining is aware of this issue, but financial aid regulations prevent it from providing food stipends to students in need.

But, she added, BC Dining tries its best to provide resources for students who may be

suffering from food insecurity.

“One of the things we’re really hoping to do for the future is put a teaching kitchen together where we can help people figure out, ‘How do I shop? How do I plan a menu?

How do I budget? And then, how do I cook it?’” Emery said.

When one student asked what BC Dining will be doing to provide more authentic food from various cultures, O’Neill explained the difficulties of making food that would be perceived by all as authentic.

Each cook has different preferences for how food is prepared, and most traditional food has multiple variations depending on the region, she said. O’Neill cited the pop-up ramen shop—hosted Thursday in conjunction with a ramen shop in Somerville, Mass.—in Walsh Hall as an example of its efforts in this direction.

Another student asked how BC Dining planned to communicate its programs such as the farmer’s market on Lower Campus, the FRESH Demos, and other initiatives.

Emery said that BC Dining is in the process of improving its communication efforts, noting that many students don’t want to follow a dining service on social media.

“We were always very careful about sending too many emails, and students told us that last time at the advisory board meeting that they would be totally comfortable if we sent one a month,” Emery said. n

BAIC Hosts Black History Month Ceremony

By Orlinka Kereere For The Heights The Thea Bowman AHANA Intercultural Center (BAIC) hosted its celebratory Black History Month opening ceremony, featuring various poems, talks, songs, and dances centering on the black culture and history in the United States, on Tuesday, Feb. 11, in Gasson 100.

Andy Petigny, associate director of the BAIC, delivered the opening words, describing the event’s purpose and importance. Events like these, Petigny said, add to the education students receive at BC, because some of the lessons that are taught about black history in the United States often fail to express the feelings of grief, triumph, despair, and pride mixed together.

Posters lined the wall highlighting black Americans who have made a profound impact on American history. Petigny joked that the posters “added to the decor of Gasson Hall,” which only features portraits of white men central to BC’s history.

The co-chairs of the committee orga-

nizing the ceremony, Teon Smith, CSOM ’23, and Edil Mohamed, Lynch ’22, said that the event was an opportunity to discuss the importance of black history.

The event, Mohamed said, enables “students in the community to express what Black History Month means to them.”

Joana Maynard, senior assistant director of the BAIC, delivered the opening prayer, in which she gave thanks to the “giants of black history whose shoulders we stand upon” while making something out of the legacy those figures left behind.

Following the prayer, B.E.A.T.S. (Black Experience in America Through Song), BC’s a cappella group dedicated to soul and R&B, sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” commonly known as the Black National Anthem. Originally a poem written by James Weldon Johnson in a posthumous celebration of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, the NAACP adopted it as its official song.

A hush fell over the crowd as Ja’Colby Freeman, MCAS ’23, stood at the microphone waiting for the audience’s attention to fall on him. Beginning by singing a few verses of the song “Glory” by Common and

John Legend, Freeman then moved into free-verse spoken words layered with the pain of being a black man in America.

Freeman lamented the need of “having to constantly prove yourself to a society that doesn’t want you.” But, Freeman said, being black is “a state of being, a state of grace.”

Stencia Bastien, CSOM ’23, then sang “Rise up” by Andra Day, followed by Grace Assogba, MCAS ’22, who gave a speech on what it means to her to show love. The chosen student speaker, Sydney Boyd, MCAS ’20, then gave the audience advice she said she wished she had been given as a freshman. Boyd emphasized the importance of self-advocacy, arguing, “If not you, who? If not now, when?”

The Voices of Imami then sang “I Need You to Survive,” a gospel song by Hezekiah Walker. Smith was at the front of the formation and sang a rendition of John Legend’s “Glory” with gospel undertones. They were followed by a performance from step group Sexual Chocolate.

Samara Kapurura, MCAS ’23, then asked the audience to think about the meaning of the word “blackness.” She

highlighted three themes representing what Black History Month means to her: empowerment, inclusion, and encouragement. Kapurura stressed the importance of emulating these three words when helping others because, as she said, “through feeling encouraged, I am empowered to achieve.”

F.I.S.T.S. (Females Incorporating Sisterhood Through Step) provided the last group performance of the evening.

Each member of the all-female step team recited a stanza of the poem “Still I Rise”

by Maya Angelou as they danced. As their pace gradually increased and their steps got louder, the audience grew louder and more excited.

Rev. Michael Davidson, S.J., director of the BAIC, then took the stage to encourage the audience members to appreciate BC for gifting them with a Jesuit education, telling them to use their education to change the world and make it better for following generations. Davidson closed by asking the crowd to return to class, because they cannot hope to be the drivers of change without getting their education. n

CORRECTIONS What is your favorite Girl Scout Cookie and why?

“Thin Mints, because I like them frozen.”

— Steve Amato, CSOM ’22

“I’m allergic to Girl Scout Cookies, sorry.”

— Anna Tierney, MCAS ’21

“Thin Mints—it’s the perfect dark chocolate combination.”

— Jardeen Samuels, MCAS ’20

“Probably Samoas, I just love the caramel and coconut combination.”

— Meghan Flinn, CSOM ’23

Please send corrections to eic@bcheights.com with ‘correction’ in the subject line.

The Heights

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

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Guma, Atinizian Lay Out Priorities After Election Victory Policy, from A1 and push as much as we can. I think the administration realizes that it’s something that a lot of students want, and I don’t think the administration is going to write it off, at least immediately.”

If the administration rejects the plan, however, Guma and Atinizian said they would look into establishing an LGBTQ+ resource center in a UGBC office in Carney Hall.

Guma and Atinizian have met with several senior administrators in the six days since their election to work on developing relationships and begin planning out their administrative priorities.

“I spoke with [Associate Vice President for University Communications] Jack Dunn and Dean [Tom] Mogan, Samantha Gordon with ResLife,” Atinizian said. “Just casually seeing people and saying, ‘We look forward to working with you over the course of this year.’”

Guma and Atinizian highlighted marketing as a major skill they will use to push their policies and engage the student body with UGBC. Guma specifically cited his team’s campaign, saying their marketing efforts—including videos, graphics, and general outreach—reached out to groups of people who UGBC hadn’t previously engaged.

“When I was walking around talking to people from the very beginning of the campaign to the very last day, the thing that I heard the most was ‘I’ve never voted before,’” Guma said.

“Our message, especially dealing with the stipends, was appealing to a group of people that had never been engaged in BC before.”

The marketing skills that helped Guma and Atinizian win the election, they said, will also help them with their roles in UGBC.

Molly Bankert / Heights Staff

Kevork Atinizian, lef t, and Christian Guma, right, informing their team of their victor y moments af ter hearing from the Elections Committee.

One of their top policy priorities, mental health, includes both increasing resources for University Counseling Services (UCS) and other initiatives as well as improving marketing for current resources, such as Lean On Me and WellTrack.

“If you were to go up to someone and say, ‘Do you know the mental health resource on campus,’ they would obviously know to call UCS, but they don’t know individual programs like WellTrack,” Atinizian said.

Guma added that he believes these marketing skills would be useful in addressing low attendance at student-administrator forums and other

UGBC events designed to encourage communication on campus.

“I think a lot of people are almost desensitized to all the stuff that they see,” Guma said.

“They get the UGBC email and they probably delete it or look through it quickly. So we want to make it engaging, make ourselves eminent as much as possible. And, again, that’s something that we did really well in the campaign. We were great with graphics, great with photos, great with videos.”

The UGBC budget traditionally allocates $19,500 to members of the executive branch—$4,000 to the

president, $3,500 to the vice president, and $2,000 for cabinet members. Defenders of the stipends have argued that this affords low-income students who would otherwise need to work the opportunity to serve in time-intensive roles.

Guma and Atinizian said that because they have the socioeconomic ability to not accept the stipends, they want to use this money for other UGBC initiatives.

Guma and Atinizian are also seeking other structural changes to the UGBC budget in addition to their policy priority of transparency within student government.

The fall UGBC retreat and UGBC apparel for its members, Atinizian said, are areas where UGBC could be spending less of its funds. UGBC recently put out a new webpage, Atinizian said, that includes senators’ voting records—a transparency policy Guma and Atinizian campaigned on. But they still think there are ways the organization could be more transparent—such as by publishing the budget.

“If you go in OSI, there’s boxes of extra sweatshirts and sweatpants,” Guma said.

“It’s things like that. It’s no disrespect, but we think we can probably do a little bit better.” n

EC, from A1

Lorenzo Leo—both MCAS ’23—and the team of John Gehman, MCAS ’21, and Leonardo Escobar, MCAS ’22, were both also deducted votes for an unsolicited GroupMe message on the day of the election.

In an interview with The Heights, Sepe stressed that the election was over and his team was not challenging the results—but, he added, he believes that the process in the future should be amended to be more fair and transparent.

“We’re trying to move forward from this,” Sepe said. “It’s over. It’s over. It’s done. But the EC, with OSI, needs to look at why things transpired.”

“The Elections Committee would like to be clear that all decisions were made in line with the Election’s Code,” the EC wrote in an email to The Heights. “Staff from OSI are present at every EC meeting to assure that no sanctions or decisions made by the EC are in violation of the code. These OSI staff members can attest that all sanctions applied by the Elections Committee were unbiased and within the boundaries of the code.”

Sepe’s team mainly takes issue with two points in the elections process, the first being the lack of transparency within the EC. Sepe also wants teams to have the ability to defend allegations such as smear campaigning before the EC votes on sanctions. Sepe said he is

speaking out because he doesn’t want any problems with the process in the future, and he wants campaign rules to be better advertised to students to increase reporting of violations.

In a Thursday interview with The Heights, Guma said that he perceived the EC to be fair and to operate without bias. He noted that when his own team was penalized, the EC provided a chance to appeal the decision. “[Our campaign] said from the outset, ‘We need to follow the rules strictly,’” Guma said. “I would just encourage teams in the future that run to make sure that they are careful because the rules are strict.”

In particular, Sepe and Bracher disagreed with the 40-vote deduction they received for “smear campaigning.” The Elections Code defines negative campaigning as “any personal attacks or insults that are not pertinent to the campaign. Objections to platform criteria are considered to be fair and are not considered negative campaigning.”

Sepe and Bracher’s team told The Heights that the smear campaign sanction was for a comment Bracher made during the final debate last Sunday night, criticizing Atinizian for one of his comments in a Heights feature.

The EC did not respond when asked what Sepe and Bracher were sanctioned for, and it declined to explain why this sanction was put in place after multiple requests.

“I would rather have [as vice president] someone who is a freshman,

than someone who in their Heights exposé said that anyone who wants this position should not be someone who loves BC,” Bracher said in the debate.

In the feature, Atinizian said students in UGBC shouldn’t love BC, because someone who loves BC and thinks it is perfect will think there is no room for improvement. Atinizian said that by omitting the word “perfect,” Bracher had misrepresented the context of his quote.

Bracher said to The Heights and in the appeal to OSI that he believed this comment was meant to highlight a difference between the two campaigns, and thus it does not meet the definition of “any personal attacks or insults that are not pertinent to the campaign.”

After the alleged violation was reported to the EC, the EC said that it voted on the violation and the sanction with the oversight of OSI, per current policy, at which point Sepe and Bracher appealed, and the appeal was denied.

Sepe’s team also said that the reporting deadline should be extended, such as with a 24-hour window.

They said they found other possible elections violations from other campaigns, but the EC could not rule on these because they were reported after the 5 p.m. election-day deadline. n Jack Miller contributed reporting to this article.

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EC Integral in 18-Vote UGBC Election

Meegan Minahan / Heights Editor

Elections Turnout Has Dropped Since 2014 Turnout, from A1 highest voter turnout in the past eight elections, turnout has declined since then.

In 2012, voter turnout was roughly 42 percent of the undergraduate population, falling to 34 percent in 2013 before reaching 48 percent in 2014 as a record 4,332 students voted. In 2015, 37 percent of students voted, but turnout would drop to 28 percent in 2016, and since then fewer than onethird of students have voted in each UGBC executive election. Twenty-six

percent of students voted in 2017, 29 percent voted in 2018, and 26 percent voted in 2019.

The turnout of recent years, while lower compared to the beginning of the decade, is still higher than it’s been in the past. In 2001, turnout in the presidential election was 23 percent, and in 2002, that number dropped to 14 percent.

Voting in these elections, however, was done in person and not online, and the EC reported problems working with UGBC to market voting times and places. n

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Tuesday, February 18, 2020

McCartney Picks up the Pieces in Recovering Communities

By Maddie Phelps Online Manager Pieces of houses floated like boats down the streets. Civilians waded through waist-high water to seek out their neighbors for help. Cars had suddenly become submarines. With over $70 billion worth of damage and 1,800 people dead, New Orleans in 2005 seemed like the bleakest place on earth.

Among the darkness, a ray of hope emerged. Liz McCartney, BC ’94, made helping as many people as she possibly could her mission in a time when many desperately needed it. This desire to make change soon became more than a passion.

It became her life.

Today, McCartney is the COO of the St. Bernard Project (SBP). Founded

by McCartney and her husband, Zack

ing in 1994, McCartney found herself teaching in classrooms far from the traditional ones she had adjusted to during her teaching experiences at BC. Fulfilling her lifelong dream of being in the Peace Corps, McCartney ventured to Lushoto, a town in Tanzania, on a teaching assignment. Being completely devoid of electricity and running water was not the biggest difficulty she faced, McCartney said—navigating how to build trust with a group of students she was unfamiliar with in overcrowded classrooms with limited resources was.

“I thought I knew a lot. This showed me how much there was to learn,” McCartney said. “Going to this life from my experience at BC was very eye-opening. It was humbling. I’m certain I learned more than I taught.”

After her assignment in the Peace

PHOTO COURTESY OF LIZ MCCARTNEY

McCartney works alongside her husband, Zack, who is the CEO of SBP. Rosenburg, the $35 million company has grown into a booming national nonprofit that rebuilds after natural disasters across the country. McCartney can attest to the fact, however, that SBP emerged from humble beginnings. Her story of wanting to help others began long before even those first developments. In fact, it began with a dream of being a teacher as a freshman living in Cheverus Hall.

Originally from Washington, D.C., McCartney came to Boston College to study education and become a teacher in some capacity. One of the most important parts of her college experience here, she said, was the friendships she was able to develop. In fact, the girls on her Cheverus floor have become lifelong friends. They attended each other’s weddings, got to know each other’s kids, and even reunited in both Nashville and London last year.

Beyond the lifelong friends she made at BC, McCartney noted the importance of the teaching opportunities she had in shaping her desire to help others. Getting to roll up her sleeves and gain real life experience in a classroom was an especially valuable part of her BC journey.

“Having the opportunity to work alongside mentor teachers and have exposure to different schools, communities, and challenges helped me understand what classrooms I would be most effective in beyond college,” McCartney said.

Just a couple months after graduat-

Corps, McCartney taught in San Francisco for a few years before finally returning to her hometown in D.C. While living there, McCartney continued teaching, this time at a community center that focused on working with economically disadvantaged children. Rosenburg, her boyfriend at the time, was a lawyer who represented clients who were criminals.

Knowing that his clients came from similar backgrounds as the children she taught instilled an even stronger desire within her to do anything she could to ensure they wouldn’t end up on the same path, she said.

McCartney’s education at BC, and her subsequent masters at George Washington University, had prepared her thoroughly for a life in the education field, she said. With her secure job in D.C., it seemed that she would continue pursuing similar jobs throughout her life. But when Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans in 2005 and produced unimaginable destruction, she put her life on hold. While the hurricane upended millions by force, McCartney decided to upend her whole life by choice to help them.

In 2006, McCartney traveled down to New Orleans with her mother and Rosenburg, turning their once predictable careers into ones shrouded in uncertainty. McCartney’s experience in teaching and Rosenburg’s experience as a

lawyer prepared them little for a world of rebuilding from disaster. So they started from square one.

The couple began volunteering in St. Bernard’s Parish, located just outside of New Orleans, which was flooded to the point of inhabitability. For one month, they watched a recovery process plagued with inefficiencies. After returning home briefly to D.C., McCartney and Rosenburg made the bold decision to move to New Orleans permanently. From that flooded parish and the goal of helping as many people as they could, SBP was born.

“We didn’t have some great business plan, we didn’t have much money or resources,” McCartney said. “We had a pick-up truck we bought used and a bunch of tools we begged and borrowed from family and friends. And that was our very humble beginning.”

McCartney also owes SBP’s creation to the memorable people she met and helped while in New Orleans. She recalled a strong-willed World War II veteran she saw often, who walked assisted by a walker but was adamant about carrying his own lunch tray.

Watching him break down sobbing one day at lunch, asking hopelessly why no one was willing to help him, was a moment McCartney said she’ll never forget. He was the first of many people she has seen break down, but it was this veteran in particular, McCartney said, who inspired her to move down to New Orleans permanently.

“We were totally unprepared for what we saw and who we met,” McCartney said.

“It was so far from what could happen in our country. We couldn’t get our heads around it. What really inspired and motivated us to start SBP was meeting people who were affected by Katrina, for the first time in their lives, had to wait in line for food. Their lives were in complete turmoil. And there was no clear path to get home.”

From those simple beginnings in New Orleans, SBP took off and grew exponentially. The nonprofit’s budget for the first year was just $169,000. The next year, it shot up to $1.5 million. The following year it reached $2.5 million.

With an increased budget, the extent of SBP’s reach in touching the lives of others increased. In addition to more funds to fuel its efforts, SBP began partnering with AmeriCorps, training and hiring its staff to assist in rebuilding areas affected by natural disasters.

Today, 50 percent of the SBP staff is comprised of AmeriCorps members, a statistic that McCartney takes great pride in.

“Watching people grow and helping folks on their professional journey is very rewarding,” McCartney said.

In addition to its profound natural disaster recovery efforts, SBP has now expanded its endeavors largely on prevention efforts. They have also prioritized instruction of others to adopt better recovery processes.

“For us, we can’t just react after,” McCartney said. “A big thing for us is getting

PHOTO COURTESY OF LIZ MCCARTNEY

Liz McCartney quit her job to begin work in disaster relief in New Orleans. ahead of it and identifying communities at risk. If we’re doing our work well, there shouldn’t be a need for SBP. I believe that all of us working in the nonprofit sector should have that in mind.”

Living by its mission of shrinking the time between disaster and recovery, SBP not only trains AmeriCorps members, but it also educates government leaders on how to assist in the recovery process, which has become essential to its mission.

“We’re always advocating for change in the [public] sector,” McCartney said. “In a lot of disaster impact areas, [the communities] are awarded federal funds. The problem we’ve seen is that these states will get the money, but they have trouble spending it efficiently. People who need it have to wait a long time.”

Today, with McCartney and Rosenburg’s guidance, SBP has been able to assist 11 disaster-impacted communities since its creation. Most recently, SBP has been working in the Bahamas, focusing on home repair and collaborating with several children’s homes that were damaged by the hurricane. It’s also aiming to

help rebuild the facilities in smarter ways in the hopes of providing better services for the kids.

McCartney’s work has not gone unnoticed. In 2008, she was named CNN’s Hero of the Year, and was a nominee for CNN’s Superhero of the Decade award— the latter prompted The Heights to feature McCartney in 2018.

It’s been nearly 14 years since McCartney first made her move down south, but she still continues her efforts in the birthplace of SBP. In New Orleans, SBP has been developing affordable housing.

It has recently finished an apartment building that became the first net-zero energy building in New Orleans, equipped with solar panels that would have no power bill.

While SBP has blossomed from a simple goal of helping others after disaster to the booming nonprofit it is today, McCartney emphasized that the organization hasn’t strayed from its original mission.

With the extensive efforts they have under their belts, McCartney and the SBP team have been recognized by CNN,

PHOTO COURTESY OF LIZ MCCARTNEY

In 2008, Liz McCartney was recognized by CNN as the Hero of the Year. former Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, and even then-President Barack Obama.

Nevertheless, McCartney remains adamant that SBP’s success had little to do with the guidance of her and Rosenburg.

“People came out of the woodworks to help the [New Orleans] community,” McCartney said. “It didn’t have a whole lot to do with us. We simply cared and were coming from the right place.”

The journey to reach her career in

disaster relief was far from conventional, but being willing to take a risk allowed her to discover this field.

“Be open. I had no idea that I would ever live in New Orleans and do this kind of work,” McCartney said. “On one hand, it’s terrible that we have to do this work because it means people are suffering.

But it has been a tremendous learning experience. Had I not been open to it, I don’t know what I’d be doing today.” n

In Flatbush, Wintanna Abai Provides New Paths to Success

By Chloe Pingeon For The Heights At Success Academy Flatbush, dropoff is between 7:15 and 7:45 a.m. Wintanna Abai, BC ’11, is there every day to watch the approximately 500 students, grades kindergarten through fourth, arrive at school. Though the drop-off is consistent, no two days are the same for Abai. As the principal of Success Acade-

my Flatbush, the fast-paced environment of working in a school gives her new challenges every day.

Founded by Abai herself, Success Academy Flatbush opened its doors in 2016.

Since then, 100 percent of students who have attended the academy have passed the Math and English Language Arts exam that New York City administers. This has only been accomplished

PHOTO COURTESY OF WINTANNA ABAI

Abai has expanded SA Flatbush from just kindergarten and first grade to K-4.

by two other schools since 2013—Special Music School and P.S. 303.

During her time at Boston College, Abai realized her passions lay in education.

A few months out of college, she moved to New York and began working as an associate teacher at Success Academy Harlem. She was promoted to lead teacher, and she taught both first and third grade before being promoted again—this time to assistant principal of a branch of Success Academy in the South Bronx. After one year in the Bronx, Abai founded a new branch of Success Academy in Flatbush, Brooklyn, where she remains today.

Abai grew up in west Los Angeles.

Her family stressed the importance of a well-rounded education, she said. Abai attended Windward High School, a competitive private school that she said provided her with encompassing intellectual opportunities. Abai said that she was fortunate to receive this education, and acknowledged the sacrifices her family made to afford her those opportunities.

Abai came to BC in the fall of 2007 after touring a number of East Coast schools.

She picked BC because she had deeply connected with a high school teacher who was a BC alumna and because she resonated with the school’s ideologies, she said.

“I appreciated BC’s mission a lot in terms of thinking about other people and men and women for others … because I think that’s always something I’ve felt very passionate about,” Abai said.

Abai majored in philosophy and sociology at BC, and she was involved with the Undergraduate Government of BC as the director of programing. Being able to work with other students was an opportunity for her to further her own leadership skills and make connections with other student leaders at BC, she said.

Abai noted that the most influential aspect of her time at BC was her involvement with the PULSE Program, which she said was hugely instrumental in her ultimate career path, influencing her desire to work in education.

Her placement was at the Bird Street Community Center in Dorchester—which aims to foster intellectual and social leadership skills in the children and young adults at the center.

“I cared so much for the kids,” she said.

“Actually getting to put a face and feelings to the students I had in my groups was incredible. I think that was a big part of me figuring out what I wanted to do. I felt happiest when I was doing that kind of work.”

The center’s mission contributed to Abai’s goals, she said, and ultimately inspired the work she would do with the Success Academy. At BC, Abai was surrounded by peers she described as determined and hardworking. Working with them showed that hard work usually pays off, Abai said. Through her work in Dorchester at her PULSE placement, though, she was able to see that intelligence and competence couldn’t always

guarantee success.

“All of the people I was working with [in Dorchester] were also hardworking and gritty, but they were not afforded the same opportunities as me,” Abai said. “I think that inspired me a lot as well.”

Abai’s experience in PULSE and with the other students she worked with directly impacted where she ended up.

Not only did she discover her passion for education, but she also learned how to better serve others in all aspects of life, she said.

“That’s also very much aligned with Success Academy as well, which is about giving kids—no matter what their socioeconomic background is—quality world-class education,” Abai said.

During Abai’s four years as principal of Success Academy Flatbush, the school has grown from kindergarten and first grade to kindergarten through fourth grade with around 500 students. Abai said that she attributes her success to her absolute faith in her students.

“Of course I’m a competitive person,” she said. “But more than anything I feel moved by the mission, and I do think it is my responsibility, as well as others, to make sure that all children are getting quality education. My kids have shown that, with determination, with people believing in them, they are able to do it.”

See Abai, A8

The Heights

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

A5

Bouncing Through Boston

By Julia Remick Asst. Metro Editor

As the temperature continues to drop, it may seem better to stay bundled and on campus this weekend. But with a chilly and stressful midterm season almost upon us, some time with friends spent away from campus is needed now more than ever. Whether it’s a real slice of pizza or live music, Boston has it all this weekend. These places are worth bearing the cold and venturing into

Boston with some friends.

Grab a Slice at Rina’s Pizza Rina’s is the real deal. With customers speaking in Italian and the smell of fresh pizza wafting through the restaurant, Rina’s is the place to go for a slice this weekend. The margherita pizza is a must and the pizzeria is counter style, so the food is served quickly. Rina’s is located in the North End on Hanover Street, but is not over priced. For those with a sweet tooth, give the nutella pizza a try.

It’s Always Valentine’s Day at the Tunnel of Love Located in Christopher Columbus Park, the Tunnel of Love can be a magical experience with a date or some friends. As you walk through the tunnel, admire the sparkling lights and be serenaded by music. The Tunnel of Love is only a short walk away from a variety of restaurants. Some of these restaurants, such as the Marriott Long Wharf Waterline Restaurant and Joe’s Bar and Grill, will give you a 15 percent

discount on your food when you say, “I Love the Tunnel of Love.” Although Valentine’s Day has passed, there is still time to celebrate love, as the tunnel is open until Feb. 29.

Jam with Juice Support a band of BC alumni when Juice plays at the Paradise Rock Club on Feb. 22 at 7 p.m. The group, formed at BC in 2013, will be playing this weekend as part of their “Hands of the Van Tour.” For $18, enjoy great live music in Boston and support members of the

BC community.

Skate in Fenway Head over to the 401 Park on Friday night and enjoy ice skating from 5 to 7 p.m. while you listen to DJ Frank White.

This Boston DJ has opened for artists like Kendrick Lamar and Snoop Dogg.

This new ice rink is between Time Out Market Boston and Trillium Fenway.

Time Out Market is lively with 15 different eateries such as Monti and Craigie Burger, so make sure you grab a bite to eat after all that skating. n

A Neighborhood Spot: Johnny’s Makes Everyone Feel at Home

By Julia Kiersznowski Copy Editor

On any given day, Johnny’s Luncheonette could have Boston College students slurping on milkshakes, an old married couple splitting the famous matzo ball soup, or a Newton resident reading a book by themselves while feasting on a burger. Owner Karen Masterson says that’s what makes Johnny’s such a great place to be.

For Karen, owning Johnny’s has never just been a business endeavor. When she and her husband Kevin purchased Johnny’s in 2014, they knew they had a unique opportunity to foster a haven of community for the greater Boston area.

She always knew she wanted Johnny’s to be a place where anyone and everyone is welcome.

“People run into each other—run into friends, run into colleagues and coworkers,” Karen said. “It just feels like that good place to be, where we can kind of be our best in community together.”

For Kevin Masterson, the diverse population that comes to Johnny’s was one of the biggest appeals of purchasing the diner.

“We liked the appeal of the demographics of the clientele—it appealed to a lot of different people, whether it’s high school, college, or affluent people,” Kevin said. “It crossed a lot of boundaries, so I think that was appealing.”

Johnny’s was opened in 1993, though the space had a long history in Newton before that—Johnny’s used to be Langley’s Deli, which was open for 30 years until John Furst and Neil Solomon bought it and transformed it into Johnny’s. “[Furst and Solomon] had been there 20 years. We brought experience and evolved the menu to be probably a little more healthier,” Kevin said. “They did a great job, and it was just time for new energy to be in there. When we stepped in, it was the right time for both parties, but I do want to stress the previous owners did a fantastic job of building that restaurant.”

Something that’s never changed is the institution’s importance to the community.

“It goes back a long ways with people having a lot of memories here,” Karen said. “I mean, kids have come as children with their families and ended up working here, so it’s got a lot of history.”

Karen has been in the restaurant business most of her life.

Growing up in Canada, she was a part-time waitress as a teenager and started working for Four Seasons in her 20s as a catering manager. When she met her husband, he was also in the

restaurant business.

“When I first went into the business, it wasn’t really a profession, it was more of a fallback if you were waiting to get a career,” Kevin said. “I found I love the restaurant business. I love the energy of it. [I loved] that everything was different on a daily basis. It’s a very social business, whether it’s with customers or employees.”

Karen said her favorite part about the restaurant business is how much potential there is to do good.

“I’ve always been drawn to it, even though it’s a hard business, just because there’s so much good we can do,” she said. “And I really, really believe we need spaces where we can gather as humans and just be our human selves together and not have all these boundaries that we put up around the differences that we have. So I always go back to it.”

In the summer of 1997, Karen and her husband decided to leave Canada and come to the United States. They settled in Sherborn, Mass., where they decided to raise their kids. The two opened Big Fresh Cafe in 2003, which was the first fast-casual farm-to-table restaurant in the region, and they owned Nourish in Lexington from 2009 to 2014. But when a restaurant broker approached them with an offer for them to buy Johnny’s, Karen said there were many signs that they should take the opportunity and run with it.

“Nobody was interested in maintaining the concept—there were some people who were just interested in the space,” she said. “But we have some funny kind of connections in that many years ago, I worked across the street at a place called Placewares when I was pregnant with my first child, my son.”

Karen also described another connection she had to Johnny’s, this one a little bit more unique. Karen’s sister, Wendel Meldrum, played the Low Talker on Seinfeld, a character memorable for her extremely quiet voice. Karen said Seinfeld’s infamous diner, where countless scenes are shot, is part of what inspired Furst to open Johnny’s.

“So I asked the previous owner why he decided to open a diner at the age of 40, because usually people aren’t jumping into the restaurant business at 40,” she said. “He said he was such a Seinfeld fan that he wanted to open a diner. And I said well this is perfect, because … my sister was the actress that played the Low Talker. And I thought, what are the chances that we have this bizarre Seinfeld connection?”

When the Mastersons took over, Karen felt it important to make necessary changes to the diner while not taking away what people loved.

To her, one of the most important changes she made at the beginning was sourcing.

“When you buy an existing business, it’s important to be very respectful of what people are coming for,” she said.

“So I definitely wanted to maintain what people loved about Johnny’s and a lot of the items that they come here for but then, over time, change up some of the sourcing.”

Karen came from a farm-to-table background, so she wanted to bring some of her expertise in that field to Johnny’s. They started sourcing white fish from Red’s Best, a supplier of about 1,000 local fishermen. Johnny’s also started sourcing meat from Pineland Beef, a Massachusetts supplier, and offered customers an organic maple syrup from Charlemont, Mass. for a 75-cent upcharge.

“Some of these are more costly decisions to make, but I feel really, really passionate about getting the best source that you can at whatever price point works,” she said. “So we can’t do everything that I’ve done in other restaurants, but I would say for a diner space, we’re doing really well.”

For Karen, the greatest reward of owning Johnny’s is being able to facilitate an environment where all of her customers feel welcomed and supported.

“I think it’s so important these days to have spaces that everyone is welcome at,” she said. “And I love that. I love every day seeing the most diverse clientele you could ever have—age-wise, income, culture, and gender. And that just gives me hope for humanity, really, because it’s just everybody coming together to share a meal.”

Karen said she views Johnny’s diverse clientele as one of the largest signs of success for the luncheonette. Having a place where anyone, no matter the challenges life is throwing at them, can gather is her ultimate goal, she said.

“We get everybody here,” Karen said.

“Sometimes people are isolated because they have mental health challenges.

Sometimes they’re isolated because they have health challenges in other ways, or they may be new to the area and just don’t always meet people. Life transitions can create that. So I just love having a place where people truly feel welcome, whether you’re on your own, whether you’re with friends, colleagues.

That to me is the sign of success.”

At Johnny’s, getting to know the customers is a regular occurrence for Karen—Johnny’s has more regulars than any restaurant she’s ever owned.

Karen said there are many customers who she gets concerned for when they don’t appear for some time.

PHOTO COURTESY OF KAREN MASTERSON

Karen Masterson bought Johnny’s from the previous owners of over 20 years.

“There’s a lovely woman who’s away for the winter, and her last meal was with us before she went to the airport, and her first meal back will be with us,” she said.

Karen said one of her favorite customer stories is about an elderly gentleman named Leo. Leo was a customer who came to Johnny’s on a regular basis—over time, he started coming in with a nurse, and Karen said it was clear that there were some health changes happening. One day, she said, she noticed something off about Leo. “It was a spring day, and it was nice outside, and he was in a downfield coat, which flagged me a little bit,” Karen said.

“He was by himself, and he came up to the front and asked me to call him a Veteran’s Taxi, and I said, ‘Absolutely.’”

Leo told Karen he had a number she could call for the taxi. He pulled out a piece of small cardboard from his jacket, which he had written his most important contacts on: The Veteran’s taxi, the YMCA, a doctor’s address, his daughter’s number, and, written at the bottom, Johnny’s.

Though she never knew exactly what was wrong with Leo, after confirming with his daughter an address to send him to, Karen called him a taxi and Leo was safely delivered to his destination.

“It’s those little points of matter and knowing that you matter to people—so we definitely have a lot of that here

where people know that we want to know that they’re well and okay,” Karen said.

Karen also told stories of local celebrities coming to visit Johnny’s. She explained one instance in which she didn’t recognize Boston Bruins goaltender Tuukka Rask when he came for dinner.

“In my defense, it’s hard to recognize goalies when they’re out of their mask,” she said. “On a busy weekend, we were running a waitlist, and this gentleman comes up to me and I said, ‘There’s a bit of a wait, can I take your name?’ And he said, ‘Tuukka.’ And I said, ‘Can you spell that for me?’ … A few minutes later someone came running in the door and said, ‘Is it true? Is Tuukka Rask here?’

And I was like, ‘Oh! That’s who that is!’”

You never know who you’re going to run into at Johnny’s, and for Karen, that’s one of the most gratifying parts of owning a diner.

“On any given day, you could have students who had a half day, you could have a senior and a caregiver, you could have a business meeting, you could have two women who just had babies meeting for the first time, you could have parents and their grown child, you could have parents with their kids heading off to BC and they’ve come on break,” she said.

“It’s mind-boggling. I think it’s just the nature of the place—everybody feels like it’s their spot.” n

THE HEIGHTS

A6

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2020

EDITORIAL

Elections Committee Should Increase Transparency and Clarify Sanctioning Guidelines The Elections Committee’s sanctions changed the outcome of the 2020 Undergraduate Government of Boston College election. The EC handed down seemingly inconsistent punishments for campaign violations, but it has refused to publicly share how it decides sanctions, who comprises the EC, or even how many members it has.The EC has denied multiple requests from The Heights to name its members. This lack of transparency is unacceptable for a group making decisions that directly impact the student body.

Journalists cannot investigate any potential conflicts of interest from a group with the capacity—and demonstrated willingness—to alter elections if that group will not release the identities of its members. The anonymity raises issues of potential bias: Because it is not publicly known who is on the EC, there is potential for its members to be friends or roommates of candidates, or related to them in some other capacity. The EC states that it is fully separate from UGBC, but both are overseen by Paul Murphy, the associate director for student programming in the Office of Student Involvement.

In order to be fully separate, they need to be managed by two different BC staff members.

EC must ensure that its guidelines are updated to reflect all of the policies it practices for future elections.

The team of Dennis Wieboldt and Lorenzo Leo, both MCAS

’23, was deducted 25 votes for sending an unsolicited GroupMe message. Under EC guidelines, that sanction—the first and only applied to their campaign— would have simply been a warning and counted as a Level 1 or 2 sanction during regular campaigning. Instead, it was treated as a Level 3 sanction, which results in the deduction of votes. While the EC said in an email to The Heights that this is routine practice for electionday violations, and this practice is communicated to teams, it is not in the official elections guidelines.

The deadline to submit campaign violations should also be extended to 24 hours after the voting deadline. The current deadline to submit campaign violation complaints is 5 p.m. on election day—meaning that election day is essentially a freefor-all, as it is unlikely that many same-day complaints can be handled by the EC. Teams should be given the right to defend their actions before sanctions are handed down, especially given the seemingly arbitrary nature of the EC’s sanctions. After multiple requests from The Heights, the EC did not explain how or why it came to election-altering decisions.

The EC must also reevaluate its guidelines. The EC should explicitly state that bribery is prohibited—which is not outlined in the current campaign guidelines.

The sanctions themselves

need to be reconsidered. In an email to The Heights, the EC said it did not want to influence the results of the election, yet by taking away votes in order to sanction teams, it ended up doing exactly that.

L o w e r i n g th e a m o u nt o f money permitted to be spent on a campaign, social media privileges, or campaigning time would be a better method of sanctioning.

To address the issue of punishing election day campaign violations—for which it would not make sense to penalize candidates by placing limits on their campaign methods—the EC should prohibit campaigning on election day. Such a guideline would make the distinction clearer in regard to what constitutes a violation: Any action encouraging people to vote, whether physically or digitally, would result in sanctioning. This guideline would also diminish the problem of students voting for certain candidates because these candidates sent them a direct message or stopped them on their way home from class on election day.

The E C ha s an immens e amount of responsibility in ensuring that campaigns are run fairly, and it did not rise to the challenge during the 2020 UGBC election. The committee must be sure to increase its transparency and implement the above changes before a future election, or it risks repeating the same mistakes.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”

- Les Brown

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THE HEIGHTS

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2020

Budgeting for a Roman Holiday of 2022, a number of students have already had to reconsider their plans because of the unexpected. And while many have been fortunate in their placements, everyone still has to figure out their finances.

OIP doesn’t offer any help with that part.

69

There are a number of ways to go

MARY WILKIE

about changing currency. Existing

In hindsight, a group of six finding a

credit or debit cards tend to be the most

sit-down restaurant on a Saturday in a

convenient for many people. If you’re

tourist destination such as Venice—dur-

getting ready to go abroad, call your bank

ing a festival season, no less—should

to see how much it charges in exchange

have been nearly impossible. It would

fees and ATM withdrawal fees and to

have been, probably, for a meal that was

tell them you’ll be leaving the country.

worthwhile. We had been looking for not

First, though, look into the services your

10 minutes when a friendly Italian woman

program might offer. At my campus, the

beckoned us into her restaurant, a clas-

business office will exchange U.S. dollars

sic trattoria with old prints on the walls

for Euros at the day’s exchange rate with

where the waiters wear button-downs. An

no additional charges. Where you’re going

unassuming group of naive Americans, we

will determine the most cost-effective way

took her friendliness at face value.

to exchange currency as long as you look

By the time we walked out, we realized

into all of the options.

we’d been swindled. The woman standing

No matter how you get the currency,

outside the restaurant wasn’t a friendly

your financial practices are bound to

Italian woman. She was a businesswoman

change when you’re abroad. People spend

who duped a group of young tourists into

their money differently—some would

wasting an evening on small portions

rather spend more on clothes, others food,

of mediocre food offered at steep prices

others lodging. I’m learning to preemp-

riddled with extra charges.

tively delegate my spending to different

To my dismay, I don’t have an inex-

aspects of the semester, from shopping

haustible amount of money to spend here.

and traveling to museums and food. For

More often than I anticipated, I’ve had to

every trip I’ve taken, unexpected dilem-

choose which things I’d rather delegate my

mas have arisen. Would I rather take a

budget toward. Before Ieft, I had realized

high-speed train to cut travel time down

that I’d have to make choices, but I hadn’t

or save money taking an overnight bus

understood the extent to which I would

from one city to the next? Do I want to be

struggle with them.

close to the city center and pay more for

Much of studying abroad is about being adaptable. Considering that the Office

lodging, or stay far away but have to figure out public transit?

of International Programs (OIP) recently

I’ve spent a lot more on travel than I

released abroad placements for the Class

had anticipated. I knew that I would be

taking trips often, but I hadn’t taken into account the cost of transit within my own city, or getting to and from airports and train stations. International flights within Europe are generally less expensive than even domestic flights within the United States, but it’s certainly not pocket change.

I should have looked into the cost of traveling further in advance. In an ideal world, I would have made a tentative calendar of where I wanted to visit and the weekends I wanted to go. I would have tracked the prices for flights and trains on the aforementioned websites and applications. From there, I would have had a better idea of what prices are reasonable and what prices are not.

My friend Luke announced his semester’s temporary credo: “I’ll get the money back eventually, but these experiences won’t come again.” In other words, when in Rome..

Saturday evening, I wasted my time on a meal that emptied my wallet more than it satiated my stomach. That’s an experience I’ll never forget. Later that night, though, we found solace in the side streets of Venice, the ones that cars couldn’t drive down even if cars were allowed in the city. In the post-parade delight, little local restaurants remained open and full of young people chattering in Italian. Sitting on the bank of a canal, I had a late-night snack bigger than my dinner at a fraction of the price. That’s an experience I’ll never regret.

The queen of Girl Straight fire; Scout Cookies. unbelieveable.

When God made Strong burnt Earth, she made coconut with Thin Mints first. subtle, delicate Adam and Eve notes of caramel, and their snake chocolate, and followed soon sweet, sweet after. childhood.

Thumbs Down

Timmy Facciola is an op-ed columnist for The Heights. He can be reached at opinions@bcheights.com.

Grace Christenson is an op-ed columnist for The Heights. She can be reached at opinions@bcheights.com.

Yes to the cook- They taste like the cookies your ies. No to the grandma would name.

Who calls them keep in a blue tin.

But they’re so this? Canbland and shortcel yourself. bread-y.

Respect the tagBoringggggg. alongs, please.

UGBC Just Ain’t That Special TIMMY FACCIOLA The populist tides have washed ashore Chestnut Hill, delivering to the cronies of Carney Hall a historical renunciation of the hysterical, reactionary policies that have become endemic to the Undergraduate Student Government of Boston College—Trump, Brexit, Christian and Kevork, the textbooks will read.

On Tuesday, the student body voted to reject the old guard of UGBC in favor of an outsider. The establishment ticket, run by John Gehman, offered the student body nothing more than opportunities to atone for the systemic transgressions of American life.

Gehman told The Heights that he oriented his campaign to prioritize condemning systems of oppression.

And students rejected his strategy by a margin of more than 2-1, opting instead for Czar Sepe or Guma.

To be fair, Sepe told The Heights that his main policy platform was “respect,” and said that it extended to respecting marginalized voices, the environment, and the fact that they have to work with the administration. His platform was full of bureaucratic fluff too, but just not quite as fluffy as Gehman.

Sepe won the popular vote by 15 votes. But the populist powers that be led to the deduction of enough votes from Sepe’s campaign to give Guma the edge.

The Elections Committee, for some reason, punishes campaign violations by taking votes away from the candidates, which, in effect, punishes the voters.

It’s especially foolish considering the

actions that were punished—unsolicited GroupMe messages, a podcast endorsement, and negative campaigning.

If I supported Sepe or Gehman, I might be upset. But I don’t really care because I like the outcome of the election. I may have argued for the freshmen last week in hopes of disrupting the tired status quo of UGBC, but this is the second-best option. And besides, I’m not principled enough to believe in bipartisan procedures for UGBC to ensure fairness.

I think sovereign countries should have legitimate, fair procedures for elections.

But this is UGBC we’re talking about.

The vote wasn’t a landslide in Guma’s favor. But that an outsider with such little experience could galvanize enough voters to compete with the mainstays demonstrates how willing BC students are for a change.

Tuesday forced UGBC to reckon with a sizable portion of the populous and hear their commands: Start bringing some tangible change to the student body, stop lecturing us, and if you can’t manage to run a campaign without doing these things, we’ll vote for someone else.

The vote also served as a referendum on whether the president and vice president should receive stipends of thousands of dollars for serving their roles.

Hopefully, this humbles the organization and highlights the reality that UGBC is just another club, funded by the Office of Student Involvement.

This past week, UGBC members have spoken out on social media, denouncing Guma’s initiative. They insist that without the stipend, low-income students wouldn’t be able to dedicate their time to leadership roles because they’d have to do work-study.

But the stipend grants UGBC an undue status that projects its works to be superior to other student organizations.

UGBC members do not deserve special treatment simply because their club

GRACE CHRISTENSON

with a single word penned on each: Sanjana.

Then, at the center, a pair of notes: “You know what you did” and “We take our door decs v. seriously.”

Finally, to top it all off, a polaroid of all of us in front of our prank signed, dated, and taped beneath.

After all, if I’ve learned anything from crime/thief/prank movies, it’s that a true genius always leaves some sort of calling card.

At 5:30 a.m. on Sunday my alarm went off (if you don’t wake up to Lizzo’s “Good as Hell,” you’re doing it wrong), and I aggressively poked Molly to wake her up. She groaned, having gone to bed only three hours earlier, and whined about it being too early.

I told her she could stay in bed but then whispered “FOMO” sinisterly in her ear. She got up. Together, we burst into Ivana and Christina’s room (the only other roommates willing to tolerate my early morning shenanigans), grabbed our sticky notes, and got to work.

After a few snafus (at one point my alarm went off at full volume, which sent Molly panic-sprinting down the hallway), we got the job done.

The final project was an utter masterpiece.

We then went back to bed because it’s college and 5:30 a.m. is an ungodly hour.

Over the next few days our other neighbors—including one of the mythical Ryans—complimented our handiwork. We were pleased, but more than that, we were eager for the retaliation of The Long Island Boys. The burned sticky note showed creativity. Our hopes were high.

They should not have been.

The boys never pranked us back.

They left the ultimate high-five hanging in the air, hand unslapped, satisfaction unattained. We expected friendship—instead, we were ghosted by eight men at the same time.

That has to be some kind of record.

Or so we think. We aren’t entirely sure. Because as you may recall, we pranked The Long Island Boys on a whim and the Sanjana business very well could have been the work of The Ryans.

So our understanding of exactly which group was down to be friends and actually wanted to be in a prank war may have been warped.

That is neither here nor there, though.

Upon reflection, I realized that this is about reciprocity.

Reciprocity is the foundation of survival in college.

If the girl who sits behind you in class asks you for the notes she missed, you give her the notes. If you ask, she’ll do the same. If I ordered the Friday night Domino’s last week, it’s your turn this week. If you woke up at 4 a.m. to get a Stokes classroom for the squad during finals, I’ll hand you a coffee when I get there.

Our lives are built on the understanding that this whole thing is one big give-and-take. That’s how the world goes ’round.

I didn’t realize how fundamental this expectation was until our prank fell flat.

Knowing that we’re in this together is how we get through the highs and the lows. So while our shenanigans were a baller enough meme that we eventually moved past our disappointment and extended an olive branch (in the form of donuts) to the boys across the hall, I feel that it rests on my shoulders to remind the great people of Boston College: Don’t leave a sister hanging.

Reciprocity, boys.

Reciprocity.

has the word “government” in it. And their work is no more valuable for the participants or the beneficiaries than the work done by scores of other organizations and clubs on this campus whose members do not receive stipends. At the end of the day, UGBC is a student club that passes resolutions that have zero consequences when disobeyed.

Students who organize APPA send hundreds of kids to 32 cities to provide aid and shelter to countless families.

They don’t get stipends.

Students who volunteer with the Innocence Project aid some of Boston’s most vulnerable in their legal battles.

They don’t get stipends.

Students who edit The Heights are in Mac 113 until the wee hours of Monday morning to fulfill their role as the paper of record for the University. They don’t get stipends.

Just because UGBC has managed to create an aura of self-importance doesn’t mean we have to be guilted into affirming it.

Students struggle to make ends meet every day at BC. Sacrifice is an unfortunate reality of life. There are all kinds of impactful extracurriculars students can’t partake in because they have to work.

If work-study students are struggling to find a job that works with the UGBC schedule, then perhaps Monserrat or the administration can step in to ensure job opportunities with flexible schedules.

But there’s no way to rectify socioeconomic inequality at BC with a UGBC stipend and no reason to believe that the work done by UGBC is any more important or irreplaceable than the many other organizations on this working toward a just world.

Tuesday was an affirmation that UGBC just ain’t that special.

Mary Wilkie is an op-ed columnist for The Heights. She can be reached at opinions@bcheights.com.

Trefoils Peanut Butter Patties Sure, they’re fine.

Samoas

How to Start a Prank War in Walsh

Last column, I opined about the beauty of meeting one’s neighbors.

It was embarrassing. It was awkward.

It was incredible. I would argue, though, that the most fruitful interaction my roommates and I had with our neighbors—the one that taught me the most about college—happened before they knew our names.

It happened in one of those only-at-college moments where everything falls into place and then completely falls apart. It happened because I am an asinine idea machine.

You see, my bias toward actions means that I am always somewhat of a nuisance.

I become an exponentially spicier liability, though, if you put me in close proximity to people who match my specific genre of lunacy.

My roommates are exactly those people.

Normally, if I were at home and thought “I should really start a prank war” at 1 in the morning, no one would be awake to listen, much less care and act on it.

Right before Thanksgiving last semester, though, while lounging on one of our endearingly gross couches in the common room, I spoke that thought into existence and it fell upon the ears of my roommates Ivana and Christina.

Christina didn’t even hesitate before leaping out of our charmingly decrepit chair to grab a Sharpie and a sticky note.

She scrawled “Let the prank war begin” across the front and ran, cackling, out of the room to stick it on the door of the boys across the hall. Ivana, for her part, stood in the corner, laughed, and yelled “I’m DEAD!!” as is her wont.

[Crucial context: There are two sets of boys across the hall: “The Long Island Boys” (They’re all from Long Island) and “The Ryans” (Three (3) boys named Ryan live there).]

While we had never interacted face-to-face with either set of men, our actions were not completely unprompted. One of them—and we could not for the life of us figure out which—took my roommate, Sanjana’s, door dec.

Big. Mistake.

This started a door-dec-stealing war, which we of course took far too seriously and won by acquiring virtually every door dec from both boys’ doors.

We never did get Sanjana’s back, though, which made our victory bittersweet.

Anyways, Christina called an audible and decided that The Long Island Boys were to blame, so she slapped the note on their door, and we all went to bed.

The next morning, I was folding my laundry when my direct, Molly, poked her head in and asked, “What the hell is on the door?”

At first confused, I just stared at her blankly and waited for an explanation.

Then, the night before came flooding back to me.I dropped the jeans I was folding, skidded in my socks, Risky Business-style to the door, and yanked it open.

The boys had burned our sticky note and stuck it back on our door along with an additional note asking, “What did we do?”

The war was officially on.

Not one to half-send anything, I went full Ocean’s 11 and texted the eight-man group chat to give my crew the rundown of the plan: a 5:30 a.m. Sunday morning wake-up call to cover their door in sticky notes

Thumbs Up Thin Mints

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The opinions and commentaries of the op-ed columnists appearing on this page represent the views of the author of that particular piece, and not necessarily the views of The Heights.

The Heights

A8

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

In the Information Age, Newton Free Library Adapts

By Gretchen Haga

Social Media Director

Even though 96 percent of Americans now own cell phones—up from 35 percent in 2011, according to the Pew Research Center—the Newton Free Library has maintained cardholders, visitors, and book circulation. Library cardholders have been borrowing more and more library books every year since 2013, according to library data. An increase in programming, technology, and classes has helped the library attract visitors on a regular basis.

“While print circulation has softened, readers are checking out even more ebook titles than ever before,” Jill Mercurio, library director of the Newton Free Library, told The Heights in an email.

The Newton Free Library patrons borrowed more books from the library in 2019 than any past year, with a significant increase in rentals of e-books every year since 2013. The library circulated 588,449 books in 2019, marking a 4.7 percent

increase from the last fiscal year. 95,808 of these were e-books, with the other 492,641 being print books. E-book rental has increased every year since 2013—in 2018, 76,606 e-books were rented. Cardholder data has also remained steady over the years. There was an increase in 2019, however, as the library recorded 49,123 cardholders, the largest total since 2014.

The Newton Free Library has introduced a variety of programs and measures to ensure that the library is adapting to cultural changes.

Royce McGrath, Newton Free Library’s supervisor for public services, outlined some of the products the library offers. The library has been using the service Overdrive for many years, which has a wide selection of e-books, digital audio books, and magazines. Users simply sign in to the Overdrive website with their library card information, and the content is available on all tablets, computers, smartphones, and Kindles.

Another available digital product is Hoopla, which offers streaming of movies,

TV shows, and current music, as well as graphic novels and digital audio books available for download. McGrath noted that digital audio books are especially popular among users.

The library also provides a product called Kanopy, which has independent and foreign films that people can download at home to view even when the library is closed. Like Overdrive, Kanopy and Hoopla require users to have a library card with the Newton Free Library.

Programming has helped the library draw more crowds and make up for those who no longer come in for the borrowing of physical books, according to McGrath.

“We have Sunday concerts every Sunday where people may never even check out a book, but they just come for the free concert,” McGrath said.

All events hosted by the Newton Free Library are featured on the library’s website. Events include forums, book discussion groups, clubs, classes, and more. There are also special events geared specifically towards kids, tweens, and

teens such as sing-a-longs, yoga classes, and holiday celebrations.

An area of focus for the library has been programming that focuses on technology, noted McGrath.

“We have been trying to add a lot of tech help programming to help people set up emails and learn about different apps, and another thing that people are very interested in is Makerspaces,” McGrath said.

A Makerspace allows people to collaborate, connect, learn, build, and create projects, according to the Newton Free Library website. Makerspaces feature specific programs as well as scheduled DIY Studio Hours. Some examples of Makerspace events include decorating pillows, building rubber band cars, making chocolate, and creating nail art.

There are also repair days, where people can bring in broken items and learn how to fix them themselves. Additionally, the Makerspace includes a 3D printing service. A large number of public computers, scanners, printers, and copiers are also located throughout the library, all free of

charge to the public.

Another area of programming is the English Language Learning and Literacy Program, which provides volunteer tutors to adult English language learners, as well as adults whose first language is English, to help them improve their reading skills. Around 500 volunteer tutors are currently assisting more than 700 learners, according to the library’s website.

Services such as museum passes and free home delivery to Newton residents who are unable to visit the library are also offered.

“It’s also a community space where people can come, they can see their neighbors, and they can meet other people,” said McGrath. “They can have free programming. They can have free internet access. They can get free help.

They can get free classes. They can check out musical instruments. So it’s become much more of a community space and less about just coming to check out a book, per se.” n

‘Boston’s Apollo’ Exhibit Explores Racial and Sexual Identity

By Francesca Giangiulio For The Heights The rotunda at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) is easily recognizable and identifiable by many Boston residents and art enthusiasts. The massive murals, painted

by John Singer Sargent, depict beautiful scenes and figures from Greek mythology.

For a project of this scale, however, Sargent had to compose pre-drawings to test different styles and ideas before painting the final product. These charcoal sketches were just recently discovered in January 2017 in the Gardner collection storage and are the center for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s (ISG) newest exhibit, Boston’s Apollo.

The exhibit features the preparatory drawings of Sargent for the rotunda murals. An in-gallery video explains that what intrigued curators about these drawings, however, was the model: a young, black man identified as Thomas McKeller.

While these sketches star a black man, Sargent’s final works portray white gods and goddesses.

According to signs at the exhibit, McKeller was born in North Carolina in 1890 and joined the Great Migration as a teenager. This journey led him to Boston, where he worked as an elevator attendant at the Hotel Vendome. In 1916, he met Sargent by chance and became his principal model for nearly a decade. Sargent transformed McKeller into countless Greek gods and goddesses, allegories, soldiers, and more in many of his portrait works from 1916 to 1928. The exhibit at the ISG showcases these drawings to explore the model’s life in conjunction with Sargent’s. Its goal is to show how their hidden romance and, furthermore, their art was influenced by social standards and prejudices of the time.

Boston’s Apollo raises questions about racial and sexual identity, as well as the social statuses that came with those identities in the early 20th century. The exhibit also includes installations from contemporary artists and poets and comments from art

ANEESA WERMERS / HEIGHTS STAFF

The exhibit by John Singer Sargent, modeled by Thomas McKeller, opened at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Feb. 13 and closes on May 17. historians alongside Sargent and McKeller’s pieces—placing modern questions alongside past works.

Upon entering the exhibit, visitors are immediately greeted by a timeline spanning the entire length of the front wall. The timeline spans from 1884, when Sargent met Isabella Gardner, to 1964, when the Civil Rights Act was passed. The timeline provides a cultural context for what was happening in Boston when Sargent was drawing McKeller and emphasizes how significant the social situation at the time was for both the artist’s and model’s lives.

Almost every portrait on display in the exhibit is accompanied by two plaques on either side: one giving a description

of the picture with a side by side of the final product, and the other displaying a reaction, comment, or work of poetry written by a community collaborator, local artist, or scholar chosen by the museum to provide a new perspective on the art.

This multifacetedness marries the voices of the modern Boston art scene with those of the past.

One of the walls in the exhibit is solely devoted to Sargent’s Atlas, a Greek titan condemned to hold up the heavens for eternity, which is displayed with a quote from McKeller that reads, “Atlas, with the world on his shoulders, this was my body.”

On the adjacent wall is a circular pendant covered with pegs where visitors can write

down the story of any individual that they believe deserves to be told and add it to the exhibit. Boston’s Apollo emphasizes interaction between the art and its viewer.

McKeller’s great-niece, Deidre McKeller O’Bryant, was present for the exhibit’s opening last Thursday.

“It’s not a matter of whether or not I had pride in my family, I always did, but [the exhibit] just makes a whole new world.

This has opened up my pride, I suppose, more,” O’Bryant said. “I’m so glad to see the attention, and I think that was what was deserved from this. I’m so glad that the attention is focused not only on the artist because certainly the artist couldn’t do his work without the models. I hope [McK-

eller] would be pleased with the exhibit.”

The printed versions of the MFA murals displayed next to portraits of McKeller in the exhibit emphasize the contrast between the model and the finished works.

“It has made me want to learn more about art,” O’Bryant said. “Every time I come back and see something here or look at a sketch, I’m seeing something a little bit different that I hadn’t noticed before.

I suppose you could study it for years and still find something different every time.”

Boston’s Apollo is on display at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the Hostetter Gallery from now until May 17.

Admission to the museum is free with an Eagle ID. n

Success Academy Flatbush Sees Perfect Pass Rate Abai, from A4 Abai emphasized her desire to immerse herself within the community.

She always makes sure to live in the same neighborhood as the school she’s serving—she is working not to serve a community in which she is an outsider,

but to better a community of which she is a member, she said.

Abai is conscious of involving families in the education system at Success Academy Flatbush, stressing the significant role the school’s Parent Council has played, both in organizing events and facilitating opportunities

PHOTO COURTESY OF WINTANNA ABAI

Before Flatbush, Wintanna Abai worked at Success Academy Harlem.

for students to spend quality time with parents and teachers.

Things that fall within this category of quality time include class cheers, games, awards, and a “Drop Everything and Read Day,” in which students and parents bring blankets and pillows to school and read together for the day. Abai explained that the students’ parents have often been subject to an unequal education system themselves, so it is part of Success Academy’s mission to build trust and to acknowledge that it serves not just the kids, but their whole families.

Recognizing that students from lower-income families are often ignored in the U.S. educational system, Abai said that she is very conscious when choosing staff for Success Academy Flatbush.

“I sort of think of this work of [our staff ] is part of a revolution,” she said.

“This country is failing so many kids, and everybody seems to turn the other way. I find that people who feel really passionate about that and feel determined to make it better and determined to give our kids exactly what they deserve end up doing really well.”

Abai said that her biggest challenge

is learning how to cope with the circumstances that some of the children in the community face. By elementary school, many of her students have experienced homelessness or other hardships beyond what she and most of the staff members have ever dealt with, she said.

In spite of her impact on the community and families within Success Academy Flatbush, Abai reflected on her work with a sense of gratitude rather than triumph.

“Some of the kids live in shelters, some of them don’t have much, and they still come in excited and passionate to learn,” Abai said.

“I think that’s inspiring as an adult. ... When you look into the eyes of our kids and see they can’t wait to tell you what book they read over the weekend, they can’t wait to go back to class to learn, they run up to school everyday ... you become a better, smarter, more thoughtful person just by working with kids who are so kind and pure and gracious and loving and resilient,” she said.

Looking into the future, Abai said she wants to see continued growth at her school—there is a waiting list of students who hope to be enrolled in

Success Academy Flatbush. In contrast to so many surrounding school systems that Abai sees struggling, she is grateful to be a part of something that has continued to grow.

“My kids feel so proud to be at our school,” she said. “The point of our school is that they’ll flourish in Flatbush, and maybe they’ll go away to college, but they’ll come back to Flatbush because this neighborhood is just so special and has so much to give.”

For current students who feel inspired by the mission toward equal education and who want to get involved in the effort, Abai says that the most important step is to try.

She described how she didn’t think she was a good teacher at the beginning of her career—but through being reflective and giving and receiving feedback, she has reached the point where she stands now.

“The expectation is that every day we are showing up better than we were the day before because we need to make a positive impact on kids,” she said. “I think [we] come in with a hunger and a passion to do well—and do better every day.” n

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The heighTs

TuesdAy, FebruAry 18, 2020

‘The Vagina Monologues’ Strip Down Stigmas Songs That Speak to Us

BY MAGGIE CHIPMAN

For The Heights

“We were worried about vaginas.”

And so begins the annual Vagina Monologues, a 1996 play written by Eve Ensler based on her interviews

with over 200 women surrounding the topics of sexuality, body image, and, well, vaginas. Worldwide, the month of February is dedicated to performing the Monologues and fundraising for the V-Day Foundation, an organization dedicated to eradicating violence against

LEO WANG / HEIGHTS STAFF

LEO WANG / HEIGHTS STAFF

Students Courtney Magee (above) and Cat Tobia (below) performed in the ‘Monologues.’

women. At Boston College, the show was held from Thursday, Feb. 13 to Saturday, Feb. 15, with all proceeds going to the V-Day Foundation and Rosie’s Place women’s shelter. The monologue series was co-directed by Meg Ellis and Anabel Johnson, both MCAS ’20.

The mood in McGuinn 121 quickly lightened from the opening line as five cast members switched off sharing various quirky, regional terminologies for the vagina. They even shared a few central to BC, teasing the audience with “Lower Live,” “Eagle All Stops,” and “Agora Portal.” This comedic tone underscored many of the scenes throughout the show.

In “Hair,” performed by Lexie Slotterback, Lynch ’22, a woman raises the discussion of pubic hair as she takes the audience through the story of her marriage to her “first and only” husband. An oversized wine glass and a German-accented therapist added particular flair to Slotterback’s performance. Similarly, “Because He Liked to Look At It” both pokes fun at and acknowledges the male population as a woman, played

by Adrienne Vanderhooft, MCAS ’20, explains how an incredibly average man named Bob helped her to appreciate her sexuality as a beautiful part of herself.

Vanderhooft demonstrated a gift for the dramatic pause as well as comedic timing, and she served as a standout performer in this year’s cast.

The comedic climax of the evening, however, lay in Catherine Marra’s, MCAS ’22, performance as a female sex worker. Marra’s unfettered theatrics

forced the audience into laughter, ending with a particularly impressive full split.

The very confidence that Marra—costumed in heeled boots, a leotard, and fishnet stockings—projected is the same confidence the cast was asking its audience to place in the female body.

The Vagina Monologues is as much a piece of theatre as it is social commentary on the role and treatment of women in society. “Beat” addresses violence against transgender women.

Daniela Poulat, Lynch ’20, performed the empowering “My Short Skirt,” which denounces rape culture. Debbie Aboaba, the show’s assistant director and MCAS ’21, gave a heartbreaking portrayal of a Bosnian woman routinely assaulted by military officers. A single tear rolled down Aboaba’s face as she rejected any sense of ownership over her body. These skits in particular reminded the audience why exactly The Vagina Monologues must be performed: Those who identify as women are persecuted all over the world merely for being women.

In the show’s finale, “I Was There in the Room,” Holly-Anne Grell, MCAS ’21, portrayed Ensler herself as she describes the miracle of watching her daughter give birth. She remarked, “We forget [about childbirth]. ... How else could we not be in awe [of the female body]?”

The scene reminded the audience members, both male and female, of how connected they are to the stories that were presented. An emotional performance designed to educate and empower, all 35 actresses were “Vagina Warriors” this V-Day. n

SASA Culture Show Blends Tradition With Hip-Hop

BY ADAM MEHAL For The Heights

Boston College’s South Asian Student Association (SASA) held its 23rd annual culture show titled Kismat: A Story of Luck which celebrated tradition through performance. Held in Robsham Theater on Feb. 9, the sold-out show had an extremely lively and energetic vibe. The culture show is often considered to be the highlight of the year for student organizations, and audience members clearly could not wait to see what their friends had prepared.

The performance consisted of mainly dancing, with a short singing act, skit, and fashion show each interspersed within. With a total of 19 events, the show featured a huge variety of cultural traditions and displays from across South Asia.

The dance routines in particular highlighted the diversity of South Asian culture, such as Bhangra, a traditional style native to the Punjab region of Pakistan and India. The choreographers didn’t keep the dances completely traditional, however, infusing some modern hip-hop inspired elements into the performances, which could be seen most acutely in the “All-Boys” dance.

It was clear that the members of SASA had put plenty of time and practice into the routines. Hours of rehearsals translated into a group of confident dancers, which in turn led to a powerful and engaging stage presence throughout the entire night. One section of the culture show that stood

out as particularly well-executed was the “Garba” dance, which according to the program, “is a form of dance that originated in the state of Gujarat and is typically performed during the festival of Navaratri.”

The performers put on a display of irresistible energy and impeccable choreography. The visuals were gorgeous as well, as the stage seemed to erupt in an explosion of different colors the moment the dancers walked out.

Special attention should also be given to the group of performances given by the four different classes— freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors.

The four groups each performed engaging dances, and it was especially impressive to see how well they were in sync, even though these performances featured the largest amount of dancers on the stage at one time—the junior class had more than 50 performers.

The senior dance was especially impressive, as for many of those performers, this was their fourth and final year in the culture show so they made sure to send themselves off with style and flair.

The special effects onstage contributed to the celebratory mood.

The technicians used a variety of different lighting techniques to create a dazzling display of colors and shadows, the perfect complement to the dancers’ movements.

At certain times, only the silhouettes of the performers were visible to the audience, an impressive display

AMAN SINHA / FOR THE HEIGHTS

Dance routines from various traditions showcased the breadth of South Asian culture.

that contributed much to the depth and visual complexity of some of the performances.

The 23rd annual SASA culture show was undoubtedly a memorable experience. The production itself was stellar, but the impact of the event was heightened by the connection

between the performers and the audience members.

This night wasn’t only about celebrating different cultures, but also recognizing the students who bring diversity to Boston College. In that facet, the event was a tremendous success. n

iEdit

The Playlist “You’ve Got The Love” Florence + The Machine

Grace Mayer, Assoc. Arts Editor

“Tiny Dancer” Elton John

BY NATHAN RHIND Asst. Arts Editor

“Norman f—ing Rockwell” Lana Del Rey “The greatest” Lana Del Rey “Idle Town” Conan Gray “Hey Jude” The Beatles “Ribs” Lorde “I Like That” Janelle Monáe “I Feel the Earth Move” Carole King “In Bloom” Sturgill Simpson

AMAN SINHA / FOR THE HEIGHTS

GRAPHICS BY MEEGAN MINAHAN AND IKRAM ALI / HEIGHTS EDITORS

Although hailing from the Midwest, Grace Mayer has the polished sophistication and fashion know-how of a New York socialite paired with the passive nonchalance of a rebellious Los Angeles teen who wastes away the days critiquing society with a piercing eye for artificiality.

Watching the red carpet coverage of the Oscars and the Grammys, she could barely hide her disgust as she scrolled down the page, occasionally shaking her head and muttering “Why? Just why?” when she saw a particularly horrid pattern or fabric color.

It is these contradictions that make Mayer such an enigmatic colleague, at once both friendly and mysterious. With edgy anti-heroines such as Lana Del Rey and Lorde featured prominently on the

playlist, it would be criminal for her not to wear Doc Martens.

The playlist starts with “You’ve Got the Love” by Florence + The Machine, a rousing indie deep cut that assures you that she knows her stuff. “The greatest” and “Norman f—ing Rockwell” by Lana Del Rey and “Ribs” by Lorde appear on the playlist instead of perhaps “Mariners Apartment Complex” or “Royals,” as Mayer shuns the commercial hits in favor of what the “true” fans consider the best tracks.

In a similar vein, she prefers the Sturgill Simpson version of Nirvana’s “In Bloom,’’ even though you can rest assured she has a Kurt Cobain poster occupying pride of place in her dorm room alongside a banner that reads “Resist” in all caps.

Overall, the self-indulgent musings of her fellow arts critic cannot hide the fact that it is, in fact, a pretty solid playlist.

NATHAN RHIND For a song to be considered “good,” it often has to check three boxes: instrumentation, vocals, and lyrics. Most of the songs beloved by myself and the listening community as a whole will pass this threepronged test with flying colors. Yet, when painting with broad strokes, there are always exceptions to the rule.

What if a song only checks off the third box? What if it has meaningful, heartfelt lyrics yet sparse instrumentals and not-quite-Mariah-Carey vocals?

Now, it is important to note that songs by some of the most beloved artists of all time—Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen—would perhaps fit this description. These singer-songwriters straddle the line between poetry and song, acting as modern-day troubadours telling stories of love found and love lost to dear friends as well as packed arenas of fans. They’re regarded as some of the greatest artists of the modern era.

But what about the other singer-songwriters, the lesser-known ones who embody this ideal of confessional, sharp-witted lyricism yet never receive the acclaim afforded to their peers? I am as big a Dylan fan as the next person, but hopefully I can shine a light on a lesser-known songwriter who also embodies the spirit of simple elegance perfected by the previously named canonical figures and whose songs have meant a great deal to me personally.

I can remember the time I first listened to the song “Random Rules” on the Silver Jews’ album American Water. It took me five or six tries to make it through the song, and a fair dose of self-discipline, as I kept restarting the song to hear the first line echo in my head over and over.

It goes, “In 1984, I was hospitalized for approaching perfection.” It’s simple—in fact, it’s just a statement of fact, a recounting of events—yet I find the subtext both beautiful and devastatingly sad.

Why do I find it so moving? Well, for starters, the specific date of 1984 grounds it in a real place and time so that I take his words that follow as the truth, as a record of his life. It’s as if the songwriter David Berman is recalling 1984 just as he would his birthday or anniversary, as a date with immense personal significance.

In addition, the simple use of cause and effect to chalk up his hospitalization as being due to his pursuit of perfection is insightful. It captures the way artists often sacrifice their entire lives for their work, destroying themselves in the process with self-destructive behavior and self-criticism. With the knowledge that Berman died by suicide in 2019, the self-loathing embedded in the lines becomes much more visceral and immediate. The monotonous delivery and subdued guitar strumming suggest an acceptance of defeat that is absolutely tragic.

The third stanza of the song is overwhelming in its poetic brilliance. It goes, “I asked the painter why the roads are colored black / He said, ‘Steve, it’s because people leave and no highway will bring them back’ / So if you don’t want me I promise not to linger / But before I go I gotta ask you dear about the tan line on your ring finger.” Much like Ernest Hemingway’s six-word memoirs or William Carlos Williams’ famous poem “The Red Wheelbarrow,” Berman weaves a layered, deep narrative into these few, short lines.

A rather dark attitude of resigned acceptance pervades the entire song both lyrically and sonically, yet never is it more readily heard than in the line about highways. More than anything, I love that the road’s color is black, as if the highway is a coffin holding all past dreams or hopes that have turned into missed opportunities or regrets, and now they are beyond the veil and will never return.

Yes, many singer-songwriters of the past have adopted a similar approach, and by no means is Berman the greatest lyricist of all time, but perhaps it is important to continue searching for new voices to add to the singer-songwriter canon. While some songs have the soaring melodies of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” others like “Random Rules” are simple yet still stay with us long after listening. While some artists are great singers and musicians, others are great poets.

Nathan Rhind is the assistant arts editor for The Heights. He can be reached on Twitter @NathanRhind24.

ARTS

A10 @bCheighTsArTs

BY GRACE MAYER

Assoc. Arts Editor

As the myth goes, one glimpse of Medusa will turn you to stone. But The Laughing Medusa deserves a second glance.

D e spite it s daunting logo—a Medusa head coiled with snakes and bursting with manic laughter—the 14 council members of The Laughing Medusa are not to be misconstrued as 14 angry women.

These writers and editors of introspective poetry, prose, and art, in fact, describe themselves as rather “happy and excited” advocates of the female experience—a term, they say, encompasses a broad range of definitions and personal meanings.

The ladies of the The Laughing Medusa, the only feminist literature and arts journal on Boston College’s campus, stand for spaces for women.

They defend and foster a platform for female-indentifying and non-binary individuals to be unabashedly expressive in their submissions to the organization’s annual publications—a zine, a smaller literary journal, released in the fall, and a magazine in the spring—featuring poetry, prose, art, photography, as well as any and every other dimension of artistry.

Historically, women’s voices have been drowned out, silenced, and often overshadowed by men’s—especially in the art world.

While the past is full of stories of women being overlooked for their work and men stealing credit for female creations (take Margaret Keane’s “Big Eyes” portraits for example), The Laughing Medusa aims to reclaim female authorship and ownership.

Yet the council members never have to stop explaining why there is a need for a female-ensemble literar y magazine o n c a m p u s . I t ’s a common question that Celia Smithmier, editor-in-chief of The Laughing Medusa and MCAS ’20, said she and her fellow council members are often asked.

“Why not have a space for women to share their experiences?” Smithmier said.

“It gives [women] an elevated space to truly feel comfortable and to be able to put their stuff out there in a really unique way and not be overshadowed by the achievements

TuesdAy, FebruAry 18, 2020

Medusa’s Laughing Ladies of men.”

Smithmier, who first got involved with the journal during her freshman year, responded enthusiastically to this space. She was drawn to The Laughing Medusa because it was a

publication for women and by women, an atmosphere that she felt fostered creative liberty.

Maggie McQuade, director of submissions and MC A S ’20, got involved with the journal during her sophomore year because it was the perfect hybrid of her interests in English and women’s issues.

McQuade joined the council in 2017, branding herself a “s n a ke ,” th e playful label that Laughing Medusa members embrace. “ We a r e a community of people who are all about raising awareness of women’s experiences through writing and art, and allowing [women] in that space to be vulnerable,” said McQuade.

The council wants to make clear that although they may be an all-female feminist publication, they don’t consider themselves “man-haters,” said Smithmier. Much like the myth of Medusa, the ladies of The Laughing Medusa are often misunderstood.

People commonly miscast Medusa as a man-hating villain, one who upon first glance turns onlookers into stone.

Yet the tale explains why this mythological figure has such a power—she is actually a victim of assault, and her appearance turns deadly to ward off potential future attacks.

“If you read the myth of Medusa, [you learn] she was a woman who was raped, and Athena turned her into [Medusa] to protect her from male predators,” McQuade explained.

The Medusa myth, and a 1975 essay from feminist writer Hélène Cixous called “The Laugh of the Medusa,’’ are

hugely influential materials that have shaped The Laughing Medusa council, even inspiring the publication’s name. Medusa has been their heroine since the very beginning, and, like the misinterpreted myth they hope to reintroduce, they also aim to re create female narratives and challenge assumptions people have ab out women, McQuade said.

To these “s n a k e l a d i e s ,” a s Smithmier explained, Medusa is not just a feminist trope. She is an empowering symbol for women who, upon closer inspec-

FEATURED GRAPHICS BY: MEEGAN MINAHAN / HEIGHTS EDITOR

tion, isn’t laughing out of mockery, but rather out of elation.

Along with Medusa, the council members take inspiration from otherGreek mythologies—the Greek warrior Achilles being one of them, said Genevieve Robins, a freshman council member and MCAS ’23. Robins also mentioned that Sylivia Plath, a poet commended for her raw and turbulent prose, is another literary figure the council admires.

The council members sport their snake insignias proudly—Smithmier even has a jeweled snake cuff slithering through her cartilage piercing, and their sticker paraphernalia displaying the snake-riddled head of Medusa are proud badges of honor.

Although the women of T he Laughing Medusa may come off as intimidating, Smithmier insists “passionate” is a better way to describe its members. “[In the past], we were a little rough around the edges and a bit more intimidating, but I think over the past couple of years we’ve really just tried to broaden our horizons,” Smithmier said.

Created in 1992 by the formerly existing Undergraduate Government of Boston College Department of Women’s Issues, The Laughing Medusa council originally published magazine issues twice a year, until

1998 when the club went on hiatus.

Since returning to the BC scene in 2006, the group has p a r t n e re d w i th other clubs on campus, namely The Stylu s literary magazine, SLAM poetry, and the BC Music Guild, to promote its pre s ence on B C ’s c ampu s .

It’s hosted open mic nig ht s with live music and poetry readings, and it volunteers at the BC Strong Women Strong Girls 5k fundraiser in the spring.

The Laughing Medusa’s initiatives alw ays strive to highl i g ht a n d convey the female experience. In 2015, it expande d thi s mi ssion by additionally publishing a zine in the fall, which they ’ve continu e d to p u bl i sh since. Smithmier admits a lot of their “angstier” pieces go into these issues.

“Women’s writing doesn’t necessarily have to be about women’s issues,” McQuade said.

“I don’t think that would be an authentic celebration of women’s expression.”

Both McQuade and Smithmier explained these selections, which come from both council members and student submitors, range from themes of trauma to censorship and growth. “[The Laughing Medusa] has really had to push to establish our ground and take up space … which is kind of reflective of every woman’s struggle in the modern world. You really have to make a claim on your space,” Smithmier said.

The Laughing Medusa has always flown a little under the radar, said Smithmier, a perk that has allowed the publication to be more experimental and edgy with its piece selections.

But its underdog status is beginning to change.

Ever since The Race Against Racism challenge that took place last year, an initiative organized in the aftermath of former student Michael Sorkin vandalizing Welch Hall with racist epithets, The Laughing Medusa made it its mission to explicitly state that the publication was open to more than just female-identifying students.

In February 2018, BC R.E.A.C.T. nominated The Laughing Medusa for #TheRaceAgainstRacism challenge.

In response, the council stated on Facebook that it wanted to further the conversations centered around racism and discrimination on BC’s campus by promoting diverse voices and stories.

“If you feel you have something to say about issues related to race,

gender, and/or the intersectional experience, we encourage you to pick up a pen, paintbrush, camera, etc. and submit,” the post read.

To enact its mission, The Laughing Medusa hosted an open mic night— an event the club regularly puts on to share poetry and prose—welcoming all Boston College students, not just women, to share their experiences with racism, discrimination, and diversity on BC’s campus.

To further spread the initiative, The Laughing Medusa nominated Stylus and Music Guild to take up the challenge and combat discrimination.

In addition, The Laughing Medusa set short-term goals actively encouraging students from divers e b ackgrounds to submit work expressing issues related to race and intersectional experiences to The Laughing Medusa and promoted diverse authors and artists on its social media.

The Laughing Medusa is not a literary journal for only women—it also accepts submissions and council members who are non-binar y and gender non-comforming, Robins said.

“Laughing Medusa isn’t just a women’s magazine, it’s also a very queer space,” Robins said. “And it’s a space where gender non-conforming, non-binary individuals are more than welcome to submit and are on the council.”

The council finally executed one of its long-term goals this past fall: The theme for the zine, titled The Vexing Medusa, was centered around poems and art that promoted diversity and intersectionality. Smithmier said the journal received more submissions than ever before—45 written pieces along with 21 art and photography pieces.

She said this outcome was largely a result of The Laughing Medusa expressly calling for non-binary and gender-noncomforming student submissions.

This was a huge accomplishment for the publication, considering in 2017, the council had to publish its own work in the zine, The Biting Medusa, because it didn’t receive enough submissions, Smithmier said.

Partnering with Stylus, The Laughing Medusa celebrated its zine release at Fuel America for their “Fuel Your Fire” event in December. The event featured music from BC campus band Faxi Moto, free coffee and pastries, and poetry readings from Stylus and Medusa members.

The council is currently preparing the spring magazine issue, which it will debut during Arts Fest. It is still accepting submissions from female and non-binary students until March 26.

“I think the best way to get to know Medusa for what it is and for what we are, is to just come out to events … come out, read some poetry, just spend the day with us,” Robins said.

The only way to truly get to know The Laughing Medusa is to look at its members straight on—Medusa’s ladies are laughing, but they’re laughing in celebration of their own resilience. n

The Heights

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

A11

Hafley’s Social Media Brings BC Football to the Modern Age Social Media, from A12 team tremendous access to the team, which allows for better content,” Jason Baum, BC football’s sports information director, said in an email to The Heights.

Many people, college football coaches included, love to rag on technology and social media. Last season, Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald blamed declining attendance at Northwestern football games on cell phones. Still, social media is one of the most critical elements of

the college football world. College football has always been an arms race, with programs endlessly requiring more money, recruits, coaches, and facilities. As schools seek to out-graphic each other in an effort to reach fans and recruits, Twitter and Instagram have become some of the most important battlegrounds.

Nowhere is the importance of social media more clear than at Clemson. The university’s director of new and creative media, Jonathan Gantt, described the school’s social media presence when he was hired in 2013

as “basic.” Now, the school employs three full-time graphic designers and a dozen or more students to create content for the university’s sports teams.

Clemson’s dominance on the field has established it as one of the most prominent college football teams, but its success at marketing that dominance, which social media plays a large part in, has made the team one of college football’s biggest brands. In a sport where recruiting is king, that brand is everything.

Hafley’s efforts to open up access and bring more attention to the

program are not just limited to social media. BC recently announced that its football program will adopt an open locker room policy, meaning that media members can access the locker room after games. While prevalent in professional leagues, this level of access is very uncommon in college football.

The open locker room policy is a smart decision as it will make it easier for reporters to cover the program.

Given BC’s secondary status in the Boston sports landscape, anything that makes covering the Eagles more attractive is a good idea.

Increasing the exposure of the football program is particularly important for BC given the school’s geographic limitations. The relative lack of high school football talent in Massachusetts and New England means that BC has to recruit on a national level.

BC needs a strong brand to gain that national recognition, and an effective social media presence is going to be a critical piece of that effort.

Asa Ackerly is the assistant sports editor for The Heights. He can be reached on Twitter @HeightsSports.

Soule’s Career Night Delivers Eagles Eighth ACC Win WBB, from A12

Meanwhile, Leah Church netted her second triple of the day, and Muhammad joined in on the fun with a 3-pointer of her own. A big piece was missing from the UNC offense, though.

Janelle Bailey, the Tar Heels’ leading scorer, was held scoreless until the 3:04 mark in the second frame.

In fact, the 6-foot-4 center only had

three turnovers to her name before that point—not even a single field goal attempt. But a couple jumpers and a pair of free throws got the junior onto the scorecard. Taylor Ortlepp and Muhammad traded 3-pointers in the last moments of the half, with BC entering intermission up, 36-33.

Soule came out of halftime with renewed energy. It was noticeable as soon as she stepped back on the floor.

The sophomore drove inside for the

ikram ali / Heights editor

Taylor Soule and her teammates huddle together following a stoppage in play.

first points of the third quarter and then, seconds later, batted a UNC pass out of bounds.

“We haven’t always been a third quarter team,” Soule said. “It’s really important for us to come out firing.

And so, if I can do my part and do that, hopefully everyone else will follow behind—and we did that today.”

Soule’s effort level was contagious, as was her offensive efficiency.

The Eagles started the third quarter on a 13-6 run and notched 30 points in the period on 11-of-19 shooting.

Three of their seven triples came in the frame, while they continued to clamp down on the perimeter on the other side of the hardwood.

UNC, which came into the weekend as the fourth-best 3-point shooting team in the ACC, shot 25 percent from deep in the quarter and 27 percent (6-of-22) from downtown on the day. BC, on the other hand, made a home for itself on the interior.

Soule, of course, led the charge with a pair of and-one conversions in the quarter, the second resulting from a move in the post.

BC began the fourth quarter with a 66-54 lead. All of a sudden, however, it appeared as if the momentum was shifting. The Tar Heels kickstarted the period with back-to-back jumpers.

Then, thanks to a Garraud turnover, a Koenen layup, and a Shayla Bennett 3-pointer, UNC found itself only down 70-64.

Before things got too close for comfort, the Eagles, who assisted on 17 of their 35 field goals, went back to Soule.

First Garraud, then Dickens—the two guards pushed the ball in transition on two separate possessions, drawing Tar Heel defenders before whipping a pass to a wide-open Soule in the paint.

Soule cashed in, and soon enough BC’s double-digit advantage was restored.

No matter the lead, the Eagles never slowed down.

“We keep a ‘lack of hustle’ chart,” Bernabei-McNamee said, “and it was the lowest it’s ever been all year today.

And the last game it was the lowest it’s ever been to that point.”

In the game’s waning minutes, Guy piled on the Eagles’ final points

in the post. BC ended up outscoring UNC in the paint, 46-22, and rounding out the day with a total of 93 points.

To put that in perspective, that mark matches the Eagles’ most points ever scored against an ACC opponent, a record originally set back in 2010-11 in the Eagles’ loss to No. 17 Florida State.

While impressive, the scoreboard plays second fiddle to BC’s recordbreaking eighth ACC win. During the seniors’ first three years with the program, the Eagles won a total of seven conference games. This year alone, they’ve won eight. But Bernabei-McNamee knows that that’s not all they’re looking for.

“The celebration, especially [for] the three seniors—this is their program to be proud of,” Bernabei-McNamee said. “But again, you can’t be too proud, and you can’t get too excited. … Starting tomorrow, it’s go time. And we’ve got to focus now on the next one.”

With four regular season games remaining, BC has a shot at a postseason berth. That’s something that hasn’t been said in about a decade. n

Eagles Rally to Shut Down Late-Game Efforts by NC State

By Asa Ackerly Asst. Sports Editor

With just over a minute to go in the game, Steffon Mitchell poked the ball away from Markell Johnson, diving to the floor as the ball rattled between Johnson’s legs. Gaining NC State 68 control of the Boston College 71 ball, Johnson tossed it backward to Jay Heath. Heath flicked it ahead to Jairus Hamilton, who sent Conte Forum to its feet with a thunderous slam. Mitchell came up with another steal 40 seconds later, passing to Hamilton, who gave the Eagles a threepoint lead with another huge slam.

NC State botched its final play, tossing up a desperate 3-pointer at the buzzer, and the Eagles escaped with a 7168 victory over the Wolfpack. BC led the game for 36 out of 40 minutes, rebounding from its 27-point loss to Miami last week.

The Eagles got off to a hot start, jumping out to a 10-4 lead after three minutes and going into halftime with a 40-33 lead. BC shot over 50 percent from the field in the half and connected on five 3-pointers in 20 minutes.

“Offensively, it is the best we’ve executed—30, 40 points at halftime,” Eagles head coach Jim Christian said.

The Wolfpack pressed BC for most

of the game, but Heath and Derryck Thornton handled the pressure well and only coughed the ball up twice apiece.

Thornton turned in a huge performance, deftly facilitating BC’s offense for 39 minutes on the floor and scoring 22 points—one shy of a career-high. He made clutch free throw after clutch free throw and finished the night a perfect 11-of-11 from the stripe.

With Jared Hamilton out due to a foot injury, Christian was forced to play his starters nearly the entire game.

Steffon Mitchell was the only exception because he had to sit for large stretches of the second half after picking up four fouls.

Only CJ Felder and Kamari Williams saw more than 10 minutes of action off the bench. Julian Rishwain only played for five minutes, and Christian explained after the game that he is dealing with a nagging lower body injury. Injuries continue to plague the Eagles game after game, including Nik Popovic, who recently returned from a back injury.

“We’d like to have more, healthier bodies,” Christian said. “Julian has tried, he’s really banged up, he can’t even move, but he’s giving us what he can give us.”

NC State began to press into BC’s lead around the halfway mark of the second half. Jericole Hellems muscled his way to an and-one with 11:39 left, and

michael dwyer / ap photo

Derryck Thornton moves to block an NC State guard during the Eagles’ victory in Conte Forum on Sunday night.

Devon Daniels got another and-one on the next possession. Both players connected on their free throws, cutting BC’s lead to just four points. Johnson used a beautiful crossover to get to the basket with 3:12 left, putting the Wolfpack up 66-64 and giving his team its first lead since the opening minutes of the game.

While Popovic only shot 6-of-17 on the night, he was decisive with his moves

and constantly aggressive in his drives to the basket. His confident play was a sharp departure from the tepidness that he has demonstrated at many times this season, particularly since his return from injury.

Apart from the Eagles’ destruction at the hands of Miami, BC has put together a string of impressive performances over the last eight contests, and

Sunday’s showing added another game to their tally.

“Minus the Miami game for about five minutes in the first half, I think we have done that for about seven straight games,” Christian said. “We played really well, home or away, except that game.

We bounced back tonight: Guys who played poorly against Miami played well tonight, and that’s all I care about.” n

SPORTS in SHORT men’s hockey east standings Conference overall

Boston College Massachusetts Boston University UMass Lowell Maine Northeastern Providence UConn New Hampshire Merrimack Vermont

12-6-0 11-6-2 9-5-5 9-6-4 10-8-2 10-7-1 9-8-3 9-8-2 9-10-1 5-13-3 0-16-3

19-8-1 18-9-2 12-9-8 15-9-5 16-10-4 17-8-3 15-9-6 12-13-4 15-13-2 7-21-3 3-21-5

Numbers to know

29

Runs in four games for BC baseball during its opening weekend series against Northern Illinois University.

8

Wins by BC women’s basketball in the ACC so far this season, a record for the program.

6

Overtime games this season for BC women’s hockey, including two back-to-back overtime contests against Maine this past weekend.

QUote of the week

“We want to be fighters. We want to come out and say we’re gonna give everything we have and leave everything on the floor.”

— Head women’s basketball coach Joanna Bernabei-McNamee, on what she expects from her team.

A12 Tuesday, February 18, 2020

SPORTS

SOULE FAR SOULE GOOD

@HeightsSports

Hafley’s Social Buzz Asa Ackerly

a sequence of four straight turnovers, three of which were consecutive travel violations. BC struggled without Guy on the court, and Madinah Muhammad gave UNC a 15-14 lead at the free throw line before the end of the period.

Following a tribute to the late Clare Droesch, BC ’05—a former Eagles guard who died of breast cancer in May 2018— BC and the Tar Heels reestablished their offensive rhythm. Running the break and shooting at a high clip, the ACC foes went from one end of the floor to the other, converting field goal attempts at will.

Cameron Swartz drilled a 3-pointer, Soule got an acrobatic tip-in to fall, and Georgia Pineau scored or assisted on six of BC’s first 15 points of the quarter.

There was a time when Boston College was at the forefront of college football’s social media arms race. In 2013, Steve Addazio took to Vine to post seven videos, including the now famous “Guys Being Dudes” clip. The video went viral, drawing over 30 million views, and earned the program plaudits from national journalists for its innovative use of social media.

Despite Addazio’s success early in his tenure at using social media to market the program, BC football’s online presence has been behind the times. Last season, the team’s Instagram account celebrated the new recruiting class by posting cartoon mock-ups of the new players, followed by clips of their high school highlights. As other schools were creating complex graphics packages for their new signees, it seemed as though the Eagles just threw together a cartoon and some Hudl tape. Addazio’s online presence was also limited and mainly consisted of reposting images from the team account on Instagram.

Jeff Hafley has already begun to run the program differently than Addazio did, and the changes in his program’s social media usage has fulfilled a piece of that commitment. BC football’s social media presence has improved markedly since Hafley’s arrival on the Heights. Whereas the team’s accounts were fairly quiet at this time last offseason, followers of the team’s Instagram account have been treated to daily videos of the team going through winter workouts. The clips are highly edited and overlaid with motivational text, similar to workout videos posted by top football programs such as Clemson, and are a far cry from the unedited practice footage that adorned BC’s accounts last season. BC Athletics has even created a TikTok account, and the football team is frequently featured.

Hafley too uses his accounts more actively and passionately than Addazio, frequently tweeting about recruiting and celebrating the accomplishments of other BC teams.

“Coach Hafley and his staff have been awesome to work with and allowing our communications and creative content

See WBB, A11

See Social Media, A11

Maggie dipatri / Heights Editor

Taylor Soule recorded a career-high 29 points to lead the Eagles to their program-record eighth conference victory with a double-digit win over North Carolina on Sunday.

By Andy Backstrom Heights Senior Staff

Emma Guy dominated headlines on Thursday, and understandably so. Her buzzer beater capped a 15-point Boston College women’s North Carolina 75 basketball Boston College 93 comeback , as well as the program’s first-ever season sweep of Notre Dame. But the highlight-reel play overshadowed the performance of Taylor Soule, whose 20 points and 10 rebounds put BC in position to complete the come-frombehind victory. On Sunday, though, no one forgot about Soule—well, except the North Carolina defense.

Time and time again, the sophomore slipped past the Tar Heels in transition, locating a pocket of space inside the paint.

From there, the rest was history. Soule, who

logged 14 points, six rebounds, and one assist in the third quarter alone, shot 11-of13 from the floor en route to a career-high 29 points. The 5-foot-11 forward also pulled down 12 rebounds, including five offensive boards, tallying her eighth double-double of the year.

Soule helped the Eagles turn a threepoint halftime lead into a double-digit victory. BC gassed UNC in the second half, totaling 57 points in the final two quarters, the third-most the Eagles have ever scored in a half. And head coach Joanna BernabeiMcNamee’s team walked away with a 93-75 win, BC’s eighth ACC victory of the year: a single-season program record.

For most of Thursday’s game against the Irish, the Eagles were scraping the bucket on the offensive end of the court.

Yet things couldn’t have been more different on Saturday. Sporting their breast cancer

awareness jerseys for what was their annual “Pink Game,” the Eagles (15-10, 8-6 Atlantic Coast) jumped out to a 12-5 lead, making five of their first seven shots.

Makayla Dickens knocked down a baseline jumper, Marnelle Garraud hit a 3-pointer from the top of the arc, and both Guy and Soule found success underneath the basket. Unfortunately for BC, it was only a matter of time before the Tar Heels (16-10, 7-8)—who came in with the highest-scoring offense in the conference—started to see the ball go into the bucket. Two quick field goals from Taylor Koenen, and UNC was back within three.

The rest of the half took the shape of a back-and-forth affair. When both teams were on, they were on, and when they were off, things got ugly. The final minutes of the opening quarter featured

Eagles Secure Victory Over Vanderbilt in Their Home Opener

By Jeremy Khangi Heights Staff After a heartbreaking loss to UMass in Boston College lacrosse’s season-opener two weeks ago, the Eagles desperately needed to reVanderbilt 12 turn above .500.

Boston College 15 So it came as no surprise that Cara Urbank was hungry for a win—­­the senior captain’s career-best six-goal performance allowed BC to take control of what ended up being a tight battle against Vanderbilt.

From start to finish, the No. 5 Eagles (2-1) kept their home crowd on the edge of their seats for the season’s home opener.

Neither BC nor the Commodores (1-1) could develop a lead of more than two goals until the very final minutes of the match.

That final stretch, however, became the deciding factor of the matchup, as BC went on a dominant 6-2 run following its earlier 9-10 deficit highlighted by three of Urbank’s six goals. Add in tallies from Jenn Medjid, Hollie Schleicher, and North, and the Eagles’ strong finish provided them with a 15-12 victory, one that marks the program’s 28th-straight home win.

The first frame of play was a rather streaky one, with the Eagles and Commodores alike scoring in lump sums.

After Brianne Gross drew first blood three minutes into the first frame for Vanderbilt, the Eagles responded with three strikes of their own—two from Urbank and one from Annie Walsh, both unassisted.

Then, a 4-0 scoring run from Vanderbilt saw the opponents redevelop a lead.

Over a 10-minute span, the Commodores took advantage of some softer defensive play from the Eagles, with Gross, Emily Matthewson, and Callie Sundin regaining control of the game.

Three quick goals—two from Jordan Lappin and another one from Schleicher— killed that lead before Vanderbilt could get too comfortable.

Lappin’s sixth and seventh goals of the season came just inside the final five minutes of the frame when BC needed it the most. Her unassisted back-to-back strikes came less than a minute apart.

Then, a free-position opportunity with just 60 seconds left on the clock allowed Schleicher to tally her first career goal as an Eagle, giving her team a one-goal edge over the Commodores heading into the locker room. In a half that seemed to be controlled more so by the opponent, the Eagles relied on their go-to fast-paced offense to keep the game from getting out of their reach.

Vanderbilt opened up the second half with a goal from Griffin Gearhardt, but the Eagles top two goal scorers for the evening—Urbank and Medjid—both found the back of the net to further push BC’s lead. The two teams found themselves trading an equal amount of back-and-forth opportunities, with several lead changes throughout.

Midway through the second frame, however, a pair of Vanderbilt goals allowed it to regain a temporary 10-9 lead.

But the Eagles made sure the lead would

molly bankert / heights staff

Kate Taylor, Cara Urbank, and Hollie Schleicher celebrate a goal in the Eagles’ 15-12 home victory on Sunday.

be short-lived—a mere 20 seconds long, to be exact.

Urbank’s fifth goal of the evening provided the spark for a dominant 6-0 scoring run for the closing half of the match. Her tally was coupled by the offensive power of teammates Medjid and Schleicher, who all collectively contributed to the scoring run that locked in the victory.

During that final stretch of the game, the Eagles saw five different players register points. Charlotte North’s 12th goal of

the season iced things up for the Eagles, making the Commodores’ final two strikes rather meaningless. In total, seven Eagles were able to submit their names onto the scoresheet by the time the final buzzer rang.

Adding onto all of the aforementioned offensive power would be an 11-save performance in between the pipes from Rachel Hall, as the Oregon transfer’s strong presence fended off the Commodores’ offense en route to the

15-12 win. Hall tallied double-digit save performances for the second straight contest, proving vital to BC’s recent success.

BC will look to carry the momentum from its pair of victories all the way over to the West Coast, as it hits the road for a draw against No. 16 USC. Facing its first ranked opponent of the season will provide BC with the opportunity to prove itself as a top-tier competitor. n