RIDING THE YAK
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With over 6,000 users, BC is the 11th most popular campus in the country for Yik Yak, A10
The annual four-day festival highlights student artists in a variety of mediums, B1
Baseball earned its first series sweep of the season against the Maryland Terrapins, C1
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HEIGHTS
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The Independent Student Newspaper of Boston College
established
1919
Monday, April 28, 2014
Vol. XCV, No. 24
Live Entertainment -Director Concerts -Asst. Director -Coordinators
President
Trips and Excursions -Director
Special Events -Director
BC2Boston -Asst. Director -Coordinators
-Asst. Director -Coordinators
Campus Engagement -Director Arts&Culture -Asst. Director -Coordinators
Non-Music -Asst. Director -Coordinators
Community Building -Asst. Director -Coordinators
Interactive Outings -Asst. Director -Coordinators
Kara Bonneau, the registered runner whose number was used, were former athletes that he coached. “I don’t want to do anything that’s going to do anything to these two kids,” Ritchie told Fittish. Bonneau, of North Carolina, shared a photograph of four runners, all using her bib number during the race, with the blog Runner’s Breakfast. She found the images
The average Boston College student experiences the progression of the University’s Master Plan in trivial ways—the recurring realization that the fourth floor hallway of Maloney is narrower than it used to be, the need to speak a little louder when walking down Linden Lane in order to be heard over the St. Mary’s construction, the smell of paint in the first floor of Carney. Less than a year and a half after the opening of Stokes Hall, the memory of daily encounters with the towering skeleton of the halfway-constructed home to the humanities is fading, and with it, chatter about BC’s Master Plan and what it holds for future classes is becoming a rarity. The plan is very much alive, however, according to Executive Vice President Pat Keating, the project’s coordinator. The current construction, though not quite as conspicuous as the erection of Stokes, is evidence of that. After its renovation is completed at the end of this calendar year, St. Mary’s Hall will again house much of BC’s Jesuit community, as well as the communication and computer science departments. During this summer, the division of Student Affairs will relocate within Maloney Hall, and the following summer, the nursing school will claim the second floor and half of the third, while mathematics moves into the fifth. This summer will also bring the demolition of St. Thomas More Hall, which will then open the doors for construction of a new residence hall at 2150 Commonwealth Ave. and the eventual razing of Edmond’s to make room for a new recreational complex. “We’re right on the cusp now, in the next four years, of making some more significant progress,” Keating said. In addition to the new residence hall, the apartment building 2000 Commonwealth Ave. will be transformed into a dorm and, along with the new on-campus residence hall, will be ready for occupancy in the fall of 2016. Their simultaneous opening will add approximately 1,000 beds to campus housing, resulting in a net gain of about 200 beds after the destruction of Edmond’s in the summer of 2016. The next few years will also see the addition of intramural and varsity baseball fields installed on Brighton Campus, which will open up the possibility of building on Shea Field in the future.
See Marathon Bib Fraud, A3
See Master Plan, A3
BRECK WILLS / HEIGHTS GRAPHIC
Music -Asst. Director -Coordinators
Beyond Boston -Asst. Director -Coordinators
Task force finalizes new programming board BY CONNOR FARLEY News Editor A task force comprised of students and administrators that formed in December to create a new organization for University programming has reached a finalized structure for the future of campus entertainment and recreational student activities at Boston College. After serving as the traditional source
of funding and coordinating campus activities—including concerts like Modstock, discounted events in downtown Boston, and the Pub Series—UGBC announced in December that it would divest its programming department, eliminating nearly its entire role in programming. In response, two advisors from the Student Programs Office (SPO), Director Gus Burkett and Associate Director Mark Miceli; two student co-chairs,
Kendall Stemper, A&S ’15, and Alex Orfao, CSOM ’16; and a combination of nine undergraduate representatives from BC2Boston, Night on the Heights (NOTH), and Campus Entertainment, assembled a task force to outline the future of programming. Despite lacking a finalized structure until last week, the new programming board has now reached a definitive framework for the way it will fund, plan,
and conduct regular campus recreational activities and community interaction. The tiered system of leadership within the programming board, which has yet to be titled, begins with a president, followed by a vice president, and then four directors—one director for each department of the board. The departments include Live Entertainment, Trips and Excursions,
See Programming Board, A3
BC Ignites postponed to Fall 2014 semester Assoc. News Editor The fourth edition of BC Ignites will not take place this semester, straying from the initial plan set out by the event’s creator, Conor Sullivan, GLSOE ’14, who hoped to hold one forum each semester. BC Ignites, which Sullivan started to spark awareness and discussion on campus of controversial issues that foster a diverse array of viewpoints, was held twice during the 2012-13 academic year, once in September and again in April. The first forum featured students speaking on the issue of race, while the second centered around GLBTQ issues. In November, the third BC Ignites discussed body image and confidence issues in conjunction with Love Your Body Week. According to a Facebook event created by the Undergraduate Government of Boston College (UGBC) on April 13, this semester’s forum was set to take place on April 23 at 7 p.m. in the amphitheater behind Stokes Hall. The topic of discussion to be featured was
BY MARY ROSE FISSINGER Special Projects Editor
Vice President
BY JULIE ORENSTEIN
University advances Master Plan
socioeconomic issues and how they affect students on campus. No students were invited to the event, and only 12 people RSVP’d that they would be attending. The event, did not take place as the Facebook page indicated. According to UGBC vice president of student initiatives Emily Kaiser, CSOM ’14, promotional materials were not supposed to have been released, as the event was still being developed. “[I] was under the impression that the general student body was not aware of the event, therefore postponing wouldn’t be a problem as it was still in the planning stages,” Kaiser said in an email. Kaiser confirmed that this iteration of BC Ignites is not cancelled permanently, and will be postponed until early September so that organizers have more time to collect testaments from students and work out logistics. “The reason for postponing is that due to the time of the year and responses thus far, we had a great lack of
See BC Ignites, A3
EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR
Two BC students reportedly wore fraudulent bibs during the 2014 Boston Marathon.
BC students among runners reported for fraudulent bibs BY AUSTIN TEDESCO Heights Editor Two former runners from the Boston College men’s cross country team created fake bibs using a registered runner’s number and participated in the 2014 Boston Marathon, assistant BC cross country coach Tim Ritchie confirmed to the running blog Fittish. Ritchie would not identify the runners by name, but said that the two men who appeared in photographs shared by
UGBC, RHA host annual BC Boardwalk carnival in Mod Lot BY NATHAN MCGUIRE Asst. News Editor
The Mod Lot was emptied of all cars and an inflatable obstacle course, a mechanical bull ride, and bumper cars filled the space between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. Other attractions included a dunk tank, a bungee run, and a shooting game. Among the three food stations set up, the fried dough was the most popular—the line stretched from the middle of the lot to near the end at one point. Cotton candy, hot dogs, and hamburgers were also available for free. The event was not ticketed, so there is no way for UGBC to know for sure how many people ended up attending, but MacLellan said she estimates that close to 1,000 students came out to the
Boardwalk. “The fact that the fried dough and burger lines were never less than 30 people long is a good sign that hundreds of students—possibly over one thousand students—attended the event this year,” she said. I f th e e v e nt is to continue next year, it will be coordinated by a new programming board i n d e p e n d e nt o f UGBC.
BRECK WILLS / HEIGHTS GRAPHIC
The Mod Lot was transformed into a carnival-like atmosphere on Sunday afternoon, as the Residence Hall Association (RHA) and UGBC hosted their annual BC Boardwalk. Until last year, the event had been held in O’Neill Plaza. The event, one of the last ever to be sponsored by UGBC’s cur-
rent on-campus programming board before a new programming structure is inaugurated next year, included carnival rides, games, and lots of free food. RHA and UGBC split the costs associated with the event, which included ride rentals, food, and sunglasses as giveaways, said Melanie MacLellan, the programming manager of on-campus events and A&S ’14, in an email. Planning for the event began early in the semester and UGBC special events coordinators Karryn Christiansen, A&S ’16, and Matthew Mannella, A&S ’15, coordinated with BC Dining, BCPD, and the outside company that provided the rentals.
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On Tuesday from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m., the second annual Puppies in the Plaza will be held in O’Neill Plaza. Students can de-stress before finals begin by visiting with dogs, some of which belong to Boston College professors. The event is hosted by the BC Animal Alliance.
Monday, April 28, 2014
Notable traditional and contemporary Irish musician John Faulkner will perform in Walsh Hall on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. as part of the Gaelic Roots Program sponsored by the Center for Irish Programs and the Boston College University Libraries.
Assistant professor of history Rev. Jeremy Clarke, S.J. will be featured in the Americans for Informed Democracy’s Last Lecture Series on Tuesday at 8 p.m. in Devlin 008. This is Clarke’s final semester at BC, therefore the event will mark his last lecture on campus.
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Fall in love Sturken explains power of photography with life By Carolyn Freeman Heights Staff
Adriana Mariella When I wrote my admissions essay for Boston College, I used the last lines of my still most beloved book, Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which had captivated me the moment I read them. They read, “Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” I read these words now as I did then, with a nagging urgency in the pit of my stomach to find a vocation that still remains unfound, even after four years of relentless searching. I entered the college applications process with an eager and raw sense of purpose—I didn’t know the specifics of what or how, but I knew where I wanted this journey to begin. I knew it when I heard Peter Folan speak at my orientation. While everyone else seemed to be just listening, I was on a level of understanding all my own, secretly and wholeheartedly relishing the sense of rightness that I felt in that moment. Falling in love with BC was, for me, as instantaneous as hearing your name and understanding that it’s yours—they told me the heart of BC, and I knew a piece of it resided with me. I knew it when I cried during Fishbowl at 48 Hours, when I cried when I watched others leave this paper and then when I myself left, when I cried when they played “Shipping Up to Boston” at our last football game, when I cried in my best friend’s arms because I had my heart broken, when I cried writing this column because I, probably like you, am unreasonably in love with this place and I am scared to leave it. I am most scared to leave you, the people whose vitality makes this place move, who have made me believe in myself, with whom I drank too much on too many nights, who make up the family of the Class of 2014, who have made BC my home, whose outpouring of love over the past few weeks has shown me just how much we all truly mean to each other and that being an Eagle means more than just cheering for the same team. You are the people with whom I have shared the unbreakable bond of four years, years that have been the best of my life. When I think about May 19, I am filled with overwhelming gratitude for what it concludes. Standing now at the edge of the rest of my life, the gravity of goodbye is unignorable. What I leave behind now will belong to a past filled with people who once meant a lot to me and places to which I once belonged. Still, I know that being an Eagle is forever, and I’m filled with an overwhelming excitement for the future, for making memories with the people who will be a part of it, building a life all my own, and seeing what becomes of it. These fleeting weeks, momentarily suspended between what was and what will be, are the time to worry about nothing and everything, to know that everything will fall into place as it’s meant to, to have no idea what’s next and to cry, and hug, and help each other be okay with that. It’s the time to hold close that makes us happy and eager to live another day, to realize that the most important thing we can fall in love with is life.
Adriana Mariella is a senior staff columnist for The Heights. She can be reached at news@bcheights.com.
Photography, which once centered on capturing a single unique moment, has since become a medium to curate life as it is lived, said Marita Sturken at her lecture, entitled “Kodak, Polaroid, and Facebook: The Shaping of Memory, Family Pictures, and Photography of the Self,” in Cushing 001 last Thursday. Sturken, who is a professor at the New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, discussed how photography, from Kodak to Facebook, has shaped the history of personal and collective memor y. The American Studies Program and the Institute for the Liberal Arts sponsored the talk. Sturken has written two books: Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero, and Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. Sturken began by showing the Google Chrome advertisement “Dear Sophie,” which shows a father cultivating an online trove for his newborn daughter—he sends her emails and posts videos and pictures documenting her childhood. The video helped demonstrate Google’s market
dominance as well as its role in self-cultivation. Prior to delving into the effects of Google and social media on self-cultivation, however, Sturken backtracked and brought up several business principles to frame the cultural discussion. First, she noted, is that market dominance leads to creative stagnation. Second, corporations are often playing catch-up in both technological and market research to determine what their consumers want. Third, there is an important relationship between products and net profits, which is exemplified in the “razorblade strategy”—a razor is cheap, but razorblades are expensive, and these constitute much of the profit for a company. “The razorblade strategy refers to the way corporations sell consumers devices at low cost or give it to them it for free that then allows companies to sell overpriced products that are needed to use those original devices,” she said. “In ways, they are relatively hidden from the consumers, or at least they used to be.” One of the first industries to employ this strategy was the photography industry. Kodak and Polaroid sold very cheap cameras to consumers but made much of their money from film processing. This film processing became
largely irrelevant with the advent of the Internet, so social media takes the razorblade strategy further by selling personal data online, she said. “The razorblade strategy may seem quaint, but it’s proven a certain kind of longevity in the digital age,” she said. “Today, the free services of social media like Facebook, or the platform of Google with Google Chrome and Gmail take the razorblade further, redefining it not as the value of the secondary product, like film, but its the value of delivering users and their data to marketers and corporations.” Sturken then moved on to discuss Kodak and Polaroid and how they shaped self-cultivation. Kodak exemplified family photography: the “Kodak moment” refers to special events like birthdays and weddings. Polaroid, its “hip counterpart,” is a post-war company that is a marker of convenience and instant gratification—it is defined by art, hipsters, and sex, she said. “The equation of photography and memory is one that is dependent on the other,” she said. “The photographical Kodak moment is shadowed by the unphotographed forgettable moment. Both Kodak and Polaroid are influential in establishing a set of visual consumer practices.” Even now, when both compa-
nies have faced bankruptcy, the way in which they deal with their finances shows their differences, Sturken said. Kodak’s afterlife is based on the company’s intellectual property, whereas Polaroid has teamed up with Lady Gaga and has ultimately spawned a collector, DIY-type following—it is still attempting to be relevant to certain niches, she said. “Polaroid is actually a subject for nostalgia rather than simply a vehicle for it,” Sturken said. Ultimately, the legacy of selfcultivation lies with social media platforms, primarily Facebook, as opposed to cameras. Sturken showed an advertisement for Timeline that featured a man’s life viewed through pictures and videos on Facebook. The advertisement exemplifies how self-curating has changed: life is no longer a series of unique Kodak moments, but rather an accumulation of images, often of the mundane. The ease with which multiple images can be shared on platforms like Facebook and Instagram has created this change, she said. “Behind this practice is the notion that we are curating our activities for future viewers, including ourselves,” she said. “What we’re dealing with here is less about wanting to share ones past than it is about wanting to update who we are right now.” n
Ally training to support GLBTQ community By Carolyn Freeman Heights Staff Harvard, MIT, Tufts University, and Northeastern University all have GLBTQ resource centers, making Boston College one of few major universities in the Boston area that does not have a specific office for GLBTQ students and faculty. This Tuesday, an event for students and administrators aims to change that. Abigail Francis and Alana Hamlett of MIT’s GLBTQ student life office will host a GLBTQ Ally Training from 12 p.m. until 2 p.m. in Gasson 100. The interactive workshop is meant to help the BC community learn base-level skills to help the GLBTQ community feel supported and to establish goals going forward, like the creation of an GLBTQ resource center. At the training, participants are scheduled to learn how to be effective allies and to help identify support networks on campus. The event will start with a knowledge-sharing session led by Abigail Francis, director of LGBT Services at MIT. She will be talking about how to create safer spaces on campus and how to address homophobia and be supportive of friends. This is
a basic discussion that has not happened at BC yet, said Emilie Dubois, who is president of the Graduate Pride Alliance and GA&S ’17. “There are lots of small projects at BC that point to evidence that our university is going in that direction, but there hasn’t been that coordinated and formal effort,” she said. “I’d love for this to be the time for that.” After the initial talk, there will be a skills portion in which Francis will discuss, for example, how to support someone coming out. Finally, there will be a community discussion where the group will identify goals on campus and things that should change. In addition, the group will talk about resources available on campus. Underg raduate student s , graduate students, faculty, and administration members are all invited to attend the workshop. Dubois, a sociology Ph.D. student, designed the training. The Graduate Pride Alliance is leading the logistical side of the training and worked to get the participation of different student organizations, like UGBC and the Graduate Student Association. “A lot of our work was coordinating those different groups just to be sure because there have been some different reactions to
POLICE BLOTTER Wednesday, April 23 1:01 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a fire in the St. Ignatius lot. 3:26 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a suspicious person in O’Neill Library.
Thursday, April 24 6:57 a.m. - A report was filed regarding medical assistance provided to a BC student who was later transported to a medical facility from Ignacio Hall. 10:42 p.m. - A report was filed
LGBT visibility and advocacy in the fact,” she said. “We wanted to have a really broad network of support before going forward with the training.” Francis was brought in because she has a lot of experience doing this sort of training at MIT. Francis is the head of LGBT@MIT, a resource group that offers programming, education, and diversity training to students at MIT. She offers one-on-one student support and advises eight GLBTQ student groups. She also oversees the Rainbow Lounge, a support network and meeting space at MIT that is home to MIT’s several GLBTQ student groups. “We brought her in because
The Heights Boston College – McElroy 113 140 Commonwealth Ave. Chestnut Hill, Mass. 02467 Editor-in-Chief (617) 552-2223 Editorial General (617) 552-2221 Managing Editor (617) 552-4286 News Desk (617) 552-0172 Sports Desk (617) 552-0189 Metro Desk (617) 552-3548 Features Desk (617) 552-3548 Arts Desk (617) 552-0515 Photo (617) 552-1022 Fax (617) 552-4823 Business and Operations General Manager (617) 552-0169 Advertising (617) 552-2220 Business and Circulation (617) 552-0547 Classifieds and Collections (617) 552-0364 Fax (617) 552-1753 EDITORIAL RESOURCES News Tips Have a news tip or a good idea for a story? Call Connor Farley, News Editor, at (617) 552-0172, or email news@bcheights.com. For future events, email a detailed description of the event and contact information to the News Desk. Sports Scores Want to report the results of a game? Call Connor Mellas, Sports Editor, at (617) 552-0189, or email sports@ bcheights.com. Arts Events For future arts events, email a detailed description of the event and contact information to the Arts Desk. Call John Wiley, Arts and Review Editor, at (617) 552-0515, or email arts@bcheights.com. Clarifications / Corrections The Heights strives to provide its readers with complete, accurate, and balanced information. If you believe we have made a reporting error, have information that requires a clarification or correction, or questions about The Heights standards and practices, you may contact Eleanor Hildebrandt, Editor-inChief, at (617) 552-2223, or email eic@bcheights.com. CUSTOMER SERVICE Delivery To have The Heights delivered to your home each week or to report distribution problems on campus, contact Marc Francis, General Manager at (617) 552-0547. Advertising The Heights is one of the most effective ways to reach the BC community. To submit a classified, display, or online advertisement, call our advertising office at (617) 552-2220 Monday through Friday.
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Staffers from MIT’s GLBTQ student life office will hold ally training at BC.
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regarding a medical assistance provided to an underage intoxicated BC student in Keyes South Hall. The student was later transported to a medical facility by ambulance.
Friday, April 25 2:56 a.m. - A report was filed regarding medical treatment provided to a BC student who was transported by cruiser to a medical facility from the O’Connell House.
she is a really great resource for students at MIT,” Dubois said. “I think our community would really benefit from a staff member like her.” This is the first event of this kind on BC’s campus. There have been previous small efforts, but Dubois hopes this event will help to change the campus climate regarding GLBTQ students , she said. “I think that this first campaign is a really good, proactive, positive first step for a different change in the administration’s response and their care for GLBTQ students,” she said. “The campus climate is changing—it’s ready for events like this, it’s ready for campaigns for visibility, for advocacy.” n
A Guide to Your Newspaper
—Source: The Boston College Police Department
you feel Yikemployee? Yak? Who isHow yourdofavorite BCabout Dining “Really funny but it can get bad.” —Ashley Bryeans, CSOM ’16
“F—ing hilarious.” —Alex Alvarado, A&S ’17
“Super mean, I won’t download it.” —Grace Denny, A&S ’17
“As an Asian student, I’m not the biggest fan.” —Cherry Au, A&S ’17
THE HEIGHTS
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Planned (5 Years) Future (10 Years) Completed/Under Construction JORDAN PENTALERI / HEIGHTS GRAPHIC
Master Plan focuses on near, long term Master Plan, from A1 Although it was called the Ten Year Plan when it was first approved in 2007, the onset of the economic recession in 2008 and 2009 required the University to rethink the order, pace, and cost of the project. In addition, the strict permitting process in the city of Boston led to slower than expected implementation of portions of the plan. As a result, the plan is now referred to simply as the Master Plan, because it will not be completed within the initially intended time frame. This Master Plan is split into two sections—the Near Term Plan and the Long Term plan. The Near Term Plan includes those projects which have been completed, those that are in progress, a Phase One to begin this summer and be completed within five years, and a Phase Two to be implemented after completion of phase one. It was submitted to the city of Boston in 2009 and approved in 2011, after a series of neighborhood hearings and agreement on the part of BC to alter the order of the projects. For example, the city required that the construction of the new residence hall be the first part of Phase One implemented, and that renovations of 2000 Commonwealth Ave. not begin until after construction of the new residence hall is underway. Had the city not imposed these guidelines, the University would have most likely made the moving of sports fields to Brighton Campus the first priority, according to Keating. In addition to the residence halls, playing fields, and new recreation complex, Phase One includes the destruction of Carney Hall and erection of a new dining hall in its place, as well as the moving of the McMullen Museum to the renovated Cardinal’s residence on Brighton Campus. “[Phase One] takes us through 2018, at which point the Master Plan will have been 10 years old, and we’ll have essentially, in my mind, completed a significant aspect of the plan,” Keating said. During the construction of the new rec plex, which is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2016 and open in the fall of 2018, Keating plans to review phase two of the Near Term Plan to ensure that it still embodies the direction in which the University hopes to move. The current Phase Two includes a student center on Lower Campus built partially on the old location of the plex and partially on the Mod Lot, undergraduate housing on Shea Field and Brighton Campus, the replacement of a portion of the Mods with residence halls, an auditorium and parking garage on Brighton Campus, a recreational complex on Newton Campus, and an integrated science center in place of
Cushing Hall. The Long Term Plan, which looks 25-30 years in the future, contains plans such as replacing all the Mods with dorm buildings and green space and putting more undergraduate housing on College Road in hopes of moving all freshmen from Newton to Main Campus. Keating says that all plans in the Long Term Plan are tentative, however, and quite possibly will undergo modifications before they are executed. All projects in both the Near Term and the Long Term portions of the Master Plan adhere to principles that were drawn up in 2005 and 2006, when official discussion began about the physical future of the University. “We had completed a strategic plan, so the president asked me to organize the effort [to create an institutional Master Plan],” Keating said. “We hired an architectural firm, we created a committee of trustees, senior administrators, faculty and academics, key people from around the campus, that sat with the architects, and we took all of what we thought were our program needs, and worked with the architects to figure out how we could put them into the plan.” They also came up with five principles to guide the development of the plan. The first was a goal to create an integrated campus, in which dining, athletic, academic, and residential facilities are interspersed throughout the campus, rather than designated to separate areas. The second principle was the green quadrangles as a way to drive the organization of the campus. Keating pointed to the Stokes green, the main academic Quad, O’Neill Plaza, and the green that may one day replace the Mods as examples of this. Thirdly, they wanted to “reduce the competition between cars and pedestrians” by reducing the number of streets that cut through campus. Keating spoke of their desire to stop Campanella Way at the entrance to the Comm. Ave. garage, and make the remainder of the street, which now curls past Conte and Alumni, a service drive. The fourth principle was to respect the architectural heritage of the campus and create a cohesive-looking campus. Keating spoke of the strong Gothic language of Middle Campus and their hope to expand that more to Lower Campus and Brighton as well. Sustainability was the final principle, with the plan promising that all buildings built under it would be LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified. “Those are the principles we established, and then there were the needs from the strategic plans,” Keating said. “We had academic spaces we needed—we needed more humanities, we needed more nursing space, we needed
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a science building, a student life area, a new dining hall, new student center, rec plex. And we also wanted to achieve 100 percent University housing. So take the five principles and all those needs, it was a pretty interesting process to sit down and say, ‘Take this land, how do we make all that work?’” The purchasing of Brighton Campus from the archdiocese beginning in 2004 gave the committee much more freedom when envisioning the future of the University, and made possible the achievement of 100 percent on-campus housing, which they hope to accomplish within the Long Term Plan. The Brighton Campus was also the site of many of the Master Plan’s first projects, which have already been completed. The renovation of the now-Cadigan Alumni Center and 129 Lake St. enabled the relocation of Advancement, Finance, and Human Resources from St. Thomas More Hall. St. Williams Hall was also developed into the School of Theology and Ministry, and housing was erected for faculty and scholastic scholars of the School of Theology and Ministry on Foster St. The renovation of Gasson Hall and construction of Stokes are the two completed Master Plan projects to have taken place on Main Campus. “It’s a little bit of a challenge being in two municipalities because they have different processes,” Keating said. To build in Boston, the University must submit a Master Plan every 10 years, and then return to the city to get each individual project reapproved as they progress through the plan. The city of Newton, on the other hand, does not require a Master Plan, and simply evaluates proposed projects as they arise. BC’s relationship with Newton has not been entirely smooth, however. Plans created in 1990 for a student center to replace McElroy Commons resulted in the city of Newton filing a lawsuit against BC. Although BC eventually won the case, by the time it was settled, Brighton Campus had been purchased and the option of putting a student center on Lower Campus had opened up. The committee felt it made more sense to put it there, and the Long Term Plan includes academic buildings where McElroy currently stands. Although the University has not accomplished quite as much of the Plan as they had originally hoped back in 2007, Keating is proud of the progress that has been made, and believes that the end of Phase One of the Near Term Plan will mark the conclusion of a remarkably productive 10-year period of campus improvement. “I would say it’s a pretty active period of renovations, construction, and improvements, versus past 10-year periods,” he said. “If we can finish [Phase One] by 2018, we’ll have really made a big step.”
Special Events, and Campus Engagement. Each director-led department also features one or multiple assistant directors for subsections within each of the four departments, who oversee subsection coordinators. The Live Entertainment branch of the programming board consists of three subsections—concerts, music, and nonmusic—each to be headed by an assistant director that oversees coordinators. The department is tasked with recruiting and signing both musical and non-musical performers for live, on-campus events. The Trips and Excursions branch of the board will manage the transportation of students to off-campus events throughout the greater Boston area, much in the vein of the former and sole provider of off-campus entertainment, BC2Boston. Under the new programming board, BC2Boston will exist as a subsection within the Trips and Excursions department, to be headed by an assistant director, but the branch will now also include two other subsections—Interactive Outings and Beyond Boston. Both the Live Entertainment and Trips and Excursions branches of the programming board will consist of three assistant directors—one for each sub-department— who each oversee a group of coordinators. The third branch of the board, Special Events, features no sub-departments, but will still be comprised of a director, assistant director, and several coordinators. The goal of Special Events is “intended to draw and unite students of all ages and interests to foster a sense of community, celebrate milestones, and/or honor traditions,” according to a report released by Alex Orfao, a student member of the task force and CSOM ’16. The Campus Engagement branch of the new programming board was designed to promote interactive student events akin to
community dances or the Pub Series, and includes two sub-departments—Arts and Culture, and Community Building. According to the report, the branch aims to program “Participatory events that promote interactions through an array of outlets … Catered to various communities on campus while endeavoring to merge interests and encourage new experiences.” Under the new programming organization, the name Nights on the Heights (NOTH) will no longer exist, but the board may continue to program similar events if it chooses. “The NOTH name is no longer—however, many of the NOTH typical events will still be held,” Orfao said in an email. “I see a lot of them falling into the ‘campus engagement’ section of our structure but the benefit of this re-structure is that it leaves a lot of space for new ideas and allows for collaborations among all the subcommittees.” Now that UGBC and NOTH will no longer receive the funding for programming they previously did, those funds will be redistributed among the Student Programs Office’s (SPO) programs and services, including the new programming board, though it is yet to be determined how those funds will be allocated. The programming board will also not be subject to time constraints—unlike NOTH, the new programming structure will not be confined to events planned from 8-11 p.m between Thursdays and Saturdays. In total, the board will consist of 6070 members. Both the president and vice president have already been appointed by SPO, and interviews for director positions begin today. On Tuesday, the selected directors will join the panel to interview and select assistant directors. Once chosen, those assistant directors will join the panel to appoint coordinators at interviews scheduled to take place Thursday.
BC students reported wearing fraudulent bibs Marathon Bib Fraud, from A1 while searching for her race pictures online, which are sorted by bib number. “I was especially infuriated to see photos of those runners posing with finisher medals that really did not belong to them,” Bonneau told Runner’s Breakfast. “I also felt really naive because I made it pretty easy for them to do this by posting a photo of my bib on social media.” After sending a message to the Boston Marathon Facebook page, Bonneau received a response from BAA administrators stating, “Unfortunately, this is a habit of individuals who decided to go outside of the normal lines of registration. There is little we can do, other than to send a message of deterrence.” The BAA posted an official response on its Facebook page last Thursday stating, “As adjudication continues for the 2014 Boston Marathon, we have a review process for when questions arise. We take all matters related to participation and performance seriously. We rely upon our own information as well as reports from runners and the public. At the end of our review process, we will make determinations upon review and prior to results becoming official for our field of 32,000 finishers. A committee comprised of B.A.A. officials reviews all questions related to unofficial participation. This process takes several weeks, and results are unofficial until they appear in the Racers’ Record Book, which is due to be published during the summer. Among the B.A.A.’s clearly stated rules for
official participants in the Boston Marathon, runners receive instruction on multiple occasions that bibs may not be altered in any way, and they are not transferable or exchangeable. No one may wear the bib number belonging to another, official entrant.” Executive director Tom Griik spoke about the issue last Friday. “The adjudication committee will decide what action will be taken,” he told the Associated Press, “with full consideration to the impact of cheating on those who have worked so hard to qualify and those who give so much of themselves to raise money for our outstanding local charities.” Ritchie also told Fittish that the two BC runners were raising money for a friend’s charity, but resorted to counterfeit bibs after failing to apply for official bibs by the BAA’s deadline. After the bombings at last year’s Marathon, the BAA announced that it would expand the field to 36,000 runners, but also discouraged bandit runners from running, despite the long tradition of their participating in the race. “Fluids, medical care, and traffic safety, are provided based on the number of official entrants,” the BAA posted on its website. “Any addition to this by way of unofficial participants, adversely affects our ability to ensure a safe race for everyone.” A BAA spokesman told The Boston Globe that runners with counterfeit bibs went through the same security checkpoints to get onto the Marathon course as the official runners.
BC Ignites on socioeconomics postponed BC Ignites, from A1 student testament volunteers,” Kaiser said. Organizers felt that the circumstances surrounding the event would not allow it to live up to past BC Ignites forums. Kaiser said that organizers are extending the timeline to ensure that the diversity of the speakers and overall
reach of the event are up to par. “This event is not cancelled and we plan to qualitatively live out the legacy of what BC Ignites stands for,” she said. Kaiser indicated that the BC Ignites event on socioeconomic diversity would be held in September behind Stokes Hall—similarly to the event that was
supposed to have occurred last week— and would also include a talent showcase for added entertainment and audience draw. Both editions of BC Ignites that occurred in 2012-13 also featured performances from on-campus groups such as the Dance Organization of Boston College, Synergy Hip Hop Dance Company, and the Bostonians.
GRAHAM BECK / HEIGHTS SENIOR STAFF
Runner Kara Bonneau discovered that four other runners wore copies of her bib on race day.
The Heights
A4
Editorials
Monday, April 28, 2014
QUOTE OF THE DAY
Rushed launch leaves future of programming uncertain
In the midst of death, we are in life. Life is the only reality; what men call death is but a shadow.... -George MacDonald (1824 - 1905), Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister
Disparity in Plexapalooza figures reemphasizes need for effective, open new programming board Approximately one month after Plexapalooza, UGBC has released the final financial data from the concert, which was headlined by DJ Enferno. At the time, UGBC claimed that the concert broke even, but the recently released data calls into question the possibility of that statement. The reported expenses of the event totalled $21,506. Although UGBC did not report the revenue, it did report that 871 people attended the event. With tickets costing $15 apiece, this amounts to $13,605 in revenue, if all 871 attendees purchased tickets. Although there are almost always students who purchase concert tickets and do not attend, UGBC would need to have sold an additional 525 tickets, or an additional 60 percent of the number of people who attended, in order to have broken even. Melanie MacLellan, programming manager of on-campus events and A&S ’14, has declined to comment on this matter. Given the mathematical improbability of Plexapalooza breaking even, it is disconcerting that UGBC has failed to offer any explanation for its statements since the concert. It is unclear why, if it did not have the full financial data available in the week after the concert, it would claim that the event broke even, rather than wait until it had all of the data before commenting. The problem is not that the concert lost money—that is to be expected for a college concert. A loss is only problematic when very few students attend, because that signifies that the concert did not accomplish its goal—namely, to entertain the student body. This scenario was not the case for Plexapalooza—the 871 people who attended account for two-thirds of the Plex’s 1,300 person capacity. The problem is that UGBC has failed to live up to its promises regarding transparency by not offering an explanation for why it claimed the concert broke even when it did not yet have all the
data necessary to do so. Next year, programming events will no longer be the responsibility of UGBC, but will be under the purview of the new programming board. The structure of this organization will include a president, vice president, and four departments, each with a director, an assistant director, and coordinators. Applications for these positions were posted via Twitter and sent out in a Nights on the Heights (NOTH) email on Thursday and via Facebook on Friday. They were due Sunday night. This gave students four days at the end of the semester—a very busy time of year—to apply for positions about which they likely knew very little. Recruitment for the positions would have benefited from greater publicity, as well as an information session for students to learn about the new board. The president and the vice president have already been selected by SPO and will join SPO in filling the rest of the positions. One area in which the committee has achieved a measure of success is that it will not be constrained, in the way NOTH was, to holding events every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday between 8-11 p.m. This change will give the programming board more flexibility in how it allocates its funds, and is likely to be popular among the student body, but it is surprising that such a big change in the University’s policy toward weekend programming is passing without comment from the administration. The committee has also set out plans to engage freshmen in the fall, which is crucial for recruiting and training the future leadership of the programming board. As of now, there is still great uncertainty regarding the future of the programming board. While it is entirely possible that the programming board will be successful next year, the way matters have been handled thus far does not promote confidence.
Harassment of bandit runners unwarranted
Given lack of adverse effect on Marathon, bandit runners do not deserve aggressive backlash In years past, bandit runners have proven themselves to be an accepted part of the Boston Marathon. This year, however, the Boston Athletic Association (BAA) opted to crack down on unregistered runners as part of an effort to establish stronger security following the bombings at the 2013 Marathon. By restricting participation in a race that was already expected to include significantly higher numbers than usual, the BAA hoped to encourage a more manageable crowd. As a result, the BAA effectively barred a significant number of individuals who would traditionally have run unregistered, including the Campus School Volunteers of Boston College. In the days following the Marathon, however, it came to light that some aspiring runners found a way around the BAA’s stricter enforcement of the rules. When registered marathoners went online to view photos of themselves from race day, some of them found that other individuals—including, according to the running blog Fittish, two former runners from the BC men’s cross country team—had fraudulently worn the bib numbers that were registered under their names. As of now, there has been no indication that legal action will be taken against these bandit runners. The debate over whether the BAA should permit unregistered runners will likely continue for some time. Whatever the eventual outcome, the disrespectful and even hateful treatment exhibited toward this year’s bandit runners is a disturbing and unacceptable consequence. Those who opted to run with fraudulent marathon bibs have been made the victims
of public embarrassment and even violent threats, in article comments and elsewhere online, by those who consider their actions unjust and selfish. These reactions are disturbingly overzealous, not only because it is generally wrong to issue threats against individuals, but also because the participation of bandit runners in the Boston Marathon resulted in no apparent adverse effects. While the bandit runners certainly went against the BAA’s wishes to more strictly enforce its rules, the safety and organization of this year’s Marathon were largely uninterrupted. The BAA confirmed that runners with fake bibs underwent the same security measures as registered runners, and furthermore, while the BAA does base its plans for the day on the number of registered runners, there did not appear to be a shortage of water or other supplies, and the Marathon route did not seem overly congested or unsafe. The participation of bandit runners with fake bibs resulted in only one tangible negative impact—the tainting of some registered runners’ photo packages. This hardly seems cause for the criticism and threats that have been directed at this year’s bandit runners. In the spirit of the unity that the Boston Marathon is intended to foster, the BC student body and larger running community should recognize that there is nothing to be gained by harassing these individuals. Regardless of how one feels about the BAA’s rules, those who opted to participate in the 2014 Marathon as bandit runners ought to be treated with the basic human respect and dignity that they deserve.
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Letter to the Editor BC students for safer cosmetics When was the last time that you looked at the ingredients on your shampoo bottle? If you have recently, it probably didn’t mean much to you. With words like “methylisothiazolinone,” “dmdm hydantoin,” and “cocamidopropyl betaine,” it’s not easy to figure out what exactly you’re scrubbing into your hair. The fact of the matter is that too many of us assume that our personal care products are safe to use, simply because they’re sold in a store that we frequent. After all, shouldn’t we be able to assume that anything we buy from CVS, Target, or Shaw’s is safe? Shouldn’t someone be regulating the products that are put on those shelves? The answer is yes, we should be able to assume that. But unfortunately, the reality is that we absolutely cannot assume that. By federal law, the ingredients in cosmetics are not required to be Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved before going on the market. The term “cosmetics” refers to a number of products, such as shampoos, conditioners, body washes, lotions, mascaras, eyeliners, and nail polishes. This means that a company can use ingredients that are suspected of numerous health concerns in their products, and they aren’t required to put a warning on their labels. It is perfectly legal for a company to distribute makeup that contains lead and arsenic, chemicals that are widely known to cause death. Additionally, the company isn’t required to put lead and arsenic in the ingredients list, because they are simply “byproducts” and were not added intentionally. Companies are not even required to add warning labels to their products when their products contain ingredients that can cause toxic effects. A desperate need exists for the U.S. government to take action against this industry. Regulation needs to be significantly stricter in order to protect the health and safety of U.S. citizens. California is the only state to attempt counteracting this—the California Safe Cosmetics Program (CSCP) requires companies to submit a list of all products that contain ingredients that may cause cancer, birth defects, or damage to the reproductive system. The CSCP then compiled a searchable online database of these products, and strongly encourages consumers to make educated decisions when it comes to their personal care products. However, since the FDA has yet to set the necessary regulations on cosmetic products, it is necessary for the average consumer to be educated and aware of the ingredients in their personal care products. Two of the most common and most harmful chemicals that are frequently found in shampoos, body washes, and lotions are fragrance and parabens. Fragrance is a par-
ticularly scary term because it represents an undisclosed mixture of up to 200 chemicals; it could include ingredients that cause cancer and birth defects, and you would never know. One of the chemicals most commonly found in fragrance is phthalates. A recent Harvard study showed an association between exposure to phthalates and lowered sperm count in college-age males. Other chemicals found in fragrance are galaxolide and tonalide, which increase the growth of breast cancer cells. Neurotoxins have also been found in fragrance. Parabens are found more clearly on ingredient lists. The most harmful ones are propylparaben and butylparaben, followed closely by methylparaben and ethylparaben. Parabens have been linked in multiple studies to breast cancer. Additionally, parabens have been shown to mimic the hormone estrogen, which allows it to alter gene expression in your reproductive system, and lead to egg and sperm damage. This is especially scary, because reproductive harm has the potential to be passed on to your children, or even your grandchildren. Being aware of the ingredients in your personal care products is very important. Luckily, being informed is becoming much easier. In addition to the California Safe Cosmetics Program online database, there is also the Environmental Working Group’s online database. Both of these websites allow you to understand the potential hazards of the ingredients in your products, as well as helping you to find products that don’t contain harmful ingredients. By being informed about what ingredients to avoid, you can choose personal care products that aren’t a danger to your health. Avoiding products that contain fragrance and parabens is crucial, as well as checking the specific ingredients in your products of choice at one or both of the online cosmetic databases. It is too easy to assume that a product is safe or to be too lazy to find new shampoos, conditioners, body washes, etc., but by going slowly and trying to do something simple, such as replacing one product each month, leading a healthier life can be easy! Whole Foods is a great place to start; their 365 Everyday Value brand has great shampoos, conditioners, body washes, and lotions that are free of harmful chemicals. Lush is another great store with many all-natural, chemical free cosmetics. Both of these stores still have products that contain parabens, fragrance, and much more, so it’s important to always check the ingredients before buying anything.
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Taylor Stiegler A&S ’14
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The Heights
Monday, April 28, 2014
A5
Hidden costs of graduating
Kimberly Crowley After Hours - This year was the first time we made our way to the Arts Fest tent late on Friday evening, but we must say that we were quite impressed. After Hours is a set of four 10-minute plays written, directed, and produced by students. It is all very low key, and the plays were quite humorous. Thumbs Up to the After Hours Board for putting on a great show. Grapefruit - We think this is an oftunderappreciated fruit. It’s true—this is not a fruit that you can eat at any time of the day. Grapefruit only tastes good if your palate is clean—otherwise, it tastes incredibly bitter. That is why we think of it as the perfect breakfast food. It’s also kind of awesome how culinary innovators developed a special spoon with a serrated edge for the sole purpose of eating this fruit, appropriately called a “grapefruit spoon.” As an added bonus, it reminds us of our grandparents’ house, where there was always a bountiful supply of grapefruits when we visited in the summer. We would all come downstairs for breakfast and our grandmother would have half grapefruits set out for each of us—our grandfather included. It was always such a nice start to those lazy summer days. Pump For The Chipotle Mayo - Boston College Dining Services has finally switched the Chipotle Mayo from a squeeze bottle into a pump mechanism like all of the rest of the condiments. As avid users of the Chipotle Mayo, we really appreciate this, since the miniscule squeeze bottles always seemed to run out.
As our college years are coming to a close, my friends and I have begun to learn what we think is a pretty well-kept secret about senior year, particularly regarding Senior Week and graduation—it’s incredibly expensive. We had listened over the past four years as our senior friends talked about senior week and watched as they posted photos of their fun on Facebook. We never heard them mention and never stopped to consider, however, the cost associated with all of these activities. Just off the top of my head, I can think of over $200 worth of charges that I have incurred in the past few weeks in an attempt to “make the most of Senior Week,” the most expensive of which were a $100 Commencement Ball ticket, a $50 “Decades Dance” ticket, a $30 dress to wear to one of these events, and a $30 boat cruise ticket. Moreover, I know I’m not the worst case of this. If I wanted to bring a date to Commencement Ball, that would have been another $100 charge. If I wanted to be part of a group renting a trolley or a limo to get to the event, that, too, would have been another $50 or more. If I wanted to go to all of the Senior Week events and not just the two dances, that would have cost another $50 or so. And, all of this doesn’t include any other events of which I am not yet aware or any other expenses I will incur on days when these events aren’t scheduled. Yet, while the expense may be frustrating, I know better than to write a column complaining about them. These are prices that my friends and I choose to pay. We clearly could make the decision not to go to these events—to spend time together doing cheaper, possibly equally fun activities on our own, independent of the senior class, the majority of which we
People Who Speed On Campus - This is not just annoying—it is downright irresponsible. Now, don’t get us wrong, we are not advocating that everyone always follow the speed limit down to the last mile per hour—after all, we have been known push 80 when driving down an empty President George Bush Turnpike, but that is simply not comparable. There are lots of students walking around this campus, and to this day we have not seen anyone walking on the highway portion of the PGBT. It’s even worse when this happens at night. This is a college campus! There are drunk kids walking around everywhere! Finals Due Before Finals Week - Professors who do this, you think you are doing us a favor, but we want to let you in on a little secret—you’re not. The last week of classes is already swamped with projects, presentations, and papers. The last thing we need is to have finals due on top of that. Now, having one final due then can be a nice benefit, but the problem is that these things tend to stack up. One thing leads to another and then, boom, we have four finals due in the last week of classes. If you don’t see us by next Saturday, you can find our bodies on the fourth floor of O’Neill. Please come and send them home to our families so that they can receive a proper burial. At this point, that is all that we hope for.
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Sunday. As many of these friends go to school across the country, I decided to Google commencement ceremonies in the Boston area, thinking that a Monday graduation might be a local phenomenon. I quickly learned that was not the case either. Boston University, Berklee, Brandeis, Emerson, MIT, Tufts, and Suffolk all hold graduation on either a Saturday or Sunday. I was a little relieved to find that we are not entirely alone in a weekday graduation, though, since Northeastern and Simmons both graduate on a Friday and Harvard on a Thursday. My relief quickly faded, however, and was once again replaced with confusion about why these schools, too, would choose to hold their Commencement ceremonies on a weekday. I have often heard the argument that it is to space out Boston-area ceremonies to make the city less crowded for parents, but that does not seem to be a concern for all three of these schools. In Boston, the most graduations occur over the weekend of May 16 to 18. Northeastern graduates on May 2, Simmons graduates on May 9, and Harvard graduates on May 29. Moving these ceremonies to a weekend would not seriously conflict with other graduations in the area. While we are competing with all of the other schools graduating between May 16 and 19, the fact that BC chooses to be the one school on that weekend to hold the undergraduate commencement ceremony on a weekday may not be the best message for a University which struggles with a reputation as overly privileged and entitled to send. Now, I don’t pretend to know all of the justifications behind holding graduation on a Monday. Given the inconvenience to parents and the potentially negative image it gives off to the rest of the Boston community, though, I would encourage the University to reevaluate the practicality of the Monday graduation date.
Kimberly Crowley is a staff columnist for The Heights. She can be reached at opinions@bcheights.com.
Every man for himself and BC against all
Nate Fisher
Rain On Admitted Eagle Day - By now, we’re sure you know where this is going….
don’t care if we spend time with anyway. Yes, an argument could be made that Senior Week is part of the senior year experience and that, as such, the cost-prohibitive nature of the tickets and the overwhelming assumption that we students will find a way to pay for them anyway feed into the criticisms surrounding privilege and entitlement on Boston College’s campus. In my opinion, however, people who seek to make this argument ignore an even more blatant example of the entitlement surrounding graduation—namely, that our seniors graduate and are required to move out of the dorms on a Monday. Initially, I did not think much of the fact that we graduate on a Monday. All days of the week are essentially the same for me when I don’t have classes or exams, and I’m sure many other students would agree. So, I would be perfectly content to graduate on any day of the week. It wasn’t until I was watching my mom stare at the calendar, trying to plan out how many days she could afford to take off from work, that I realized the inconvenience a Monday graduation poses for non-student attendees. Holding graduation and, on top of that, move-out on a Monday morning and afternoon, respectively, assumes that parents and other guests can afford to take off at least one day of work to come watch students graduate—most likely more than that if the guest is a parent of one of our many international students or of a student who comes from a distant part of the U.S. The odds that a parent who has any amount of travel involved in attending our graduation ceremony could attend the ceremony, move his or her student out, and get home in time for work Tuesday morning is slim. Even my parents can’t pull it off, and they only have a two-hour plane ride home to Ohio. I can’t imagine the annoyance for someone who has to try and get home to California. Confused by my new revelation, I began asking my friends about their graduation ceremonies. All of them responded saying they were graduating on either a Saturday or
There is nothing like Arts Fest to remind us of the administration’s great sham. Arts Fest is a bait-and-switch that the Boston College higher-ups put on to trick visiting families into thinking this school cares one iota about its clubs. BC’s lip service to the outside world about its thriving grassroots student organization community is the hollow-est smile this side of a strip club. Look at Middle Campus when the tents go away. They muscled all the banners out of the Quad. Try to put one up even when conforming to the draconian hanging guidelines (like my comedy group did) and it’ll be cut down without notice. Because these laws and regulations are neither beneficial toward student organizations nor even reasonable. They exist for different ends. The administration does what it wants, and what it wants is to silence independent voices. It wants control. So it makes laws that justify its own power. The bureaucracy feeds the bureaucracy. I recently made a film for my comedy group’s show. (I will not be naming said group due to fear of backlash for this article from the administration.) At no point did anybody affiliated with the administration make filming easier. The grunts in the BC Red Tape Brigade were out in full force to make it more difficult, waving their banners sewn together out of arbitrary rules and regulations. Here are two of many instances of institutional callousness my group has faced: In Fulton, I was ejected by a passing office worker from a room, which had recently been deemed “a private room now.” I was told that to film in Fulton I needed to obtain “expressed written permission” from some irrelevant dude who was the Vice Whatever of Somethingorother. Or I could just keep filming illegally, which I proudly did. Nuts to their
Bird Flew
laws. They are grounded on nothing but the self-justification of the lawgivers. The system makes illegal what it cannot control. In Corcoran Commons, my friend and I spent 90 minutes setting up a simple 10second shot by the door. A manager came, as I was seconds away from pressing the record button, to inform me I needed “expressed written permission” from another Vice Whatever of Somethingorother (how many people does this school need to hire to confiscate a kid’s camera?) He then told me, when I requested 100 seconds to get what I needed and leave, that he “would have to stand in front of the camera if I started recording.” Asking him why we needed permission to film, his entire response consisted of “The tables.” We had dragged two tables from the dining area. That was his only justification. “I’m sorry,” he smugly and unconvincingly sputtered. No Mr. Bureaucrat, you’re not sorry. If you were sorry, you’d be doing something to help. Your bureaucratic mind thinks, “How can I do as little as possible in this situation? How can I make less of a choice?” It’s reassuring to hide behind the law. The hassle of decisions and conscience conveniently evaporate. But, it’s not all bad. One man working in the Plex had the basic human decency to let me get the little footage I needed, albeit after explaining that I need “expressed written permission.” Some bureaucrats have feelings—or at least a sense of reason. He knew my illegal filming occurred to no one’s detriment. It was simply the creative expression of a student organization. But the laws exist to curb exactly that expression. The powers that be can’t tart it up and parade it like a trained monkey through Arts Fest, so they let the snide bureaucrats have at it. Many of the snide bureaucrats are emotionally numb from years as cogs in a self-purposive machine. But some are students like us. A note to all students involved in components of this system—you do not help. You are the veneer of student-administration cooperation that BC can hide behind while it skillfully evades helpfulness. I levy these suggestions: If you are a student member of SPO, you
should quit. If you are a student member of SOFC, you should quit. If you are a student member of NOTH, you should quit. If you are a student involved in Arts Fest, you should quit. If you are involved in UGBC and you shmooze and brownnose, colluding with and tacitly accepting the loathsome policies of this administration, you should quit. You can restart UGBC when you sign a pledge to use every meager power afforded to your office to throw some serious bricks. When I wrote a column about UGBC elections, I was positive about the direction and purpose of UGBC. That seems naive to me now. Why bother to take part in discourse when my involvement legitimizes the system that shackles its student body? At least now during election week I don’t have to lie to my friends campaigning. I know where I stand. Perhaps the lesson many of us in clubs will take from BC is to be Men and Women For Your Own Damn Selves, because the Vice Whatevers sure as hell aren’t for you. Student organizations take notice—the offices and bureaucracies that handle you were not raised up to assist your needs. They were brought down by the higher-ups to deal with you like a pesky nuisance. There’s no place for you in their BC, what with the way you force cracks of humanity through their whitewashed, corporate outer-coating. They’ll just make another law to cover up that crack. Surely they will disagree with this column. I hope they write a response. I genuinely hope to be proven wrong, to be shown one solitary thing they do that helps organizations rather than hinders them. But they don’t need to. They own their school, and we’re just lucky to visit. I’ve never felt less a part of this school. I’ve never felt less like this was a place I could call home. ‘Till next fall, BC.
Nate Fisher is a staff columnist for The Heights. He can be reached at opinions@ bcheights.com.
BY DOLAN BORTNER
The opinions and commentaries of the staff columnists and cartoonists appearing on this page represent the views of the author or artist of that particular piece, and not necessarily the views of The Heights. Any of the columnists and artists for the Opinions section of The Heights can be reached at opinions@bcheights.com.
A dichotomy of portrayal Mary Kate Nolan On Tuesday, we learned that Chelsea Clinton is expecting her first child sometime in the fall. On the same day, American society regressed about 50 years. Both conservative and liberal media stations launched stories about the implications the new baby would have on Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for the 2016 presidential election. “Would she forego the election to stay home and babysit?” they asked. Echoes of speculation in newspapers, online media, and television reports draw attention to the severe dichotomy between the portrayal of men and women in the media. First, speculation about Chelsea’s baby altering Hillary’s potential candidacy is inherently sexist. Since our country’s founding, 44 men have entered the Oval Office. Nearly all of them were fathers. Many were grandfathers. Yet, their paternity was never a point of contention. To put this in perspective, Mitt Romney has 18 grandchildren. Political satirist Jon Stewart jokingly jabbed, “[Romney] is the only [presidential candidate] in history whose Electoral College total is less than the number of chairs he has to put out at Thanksgiving.” Two of those grandchildren were born just six months before the 2012 presidential election. Ironically, no one questioned whether the birth of his grandchildren would interfere with his campaign. Rather, the 67-year-old candidate was revered as a “family man.” In addition, George H.W. Bush was grandfather to three kids while president. His predecessor, Ronald Reagan, had two grandchildren. Shockingly, being a grandpa had little to no effect on their actions in office. Yet, news media holds Clinton to a different standard because she is a woman. Further, President Barack Obama’s push to implement legislation that protects the Equal Pay Act demonstrates additional disparities between men and women in our society. Earlier this week, Republican State Representative Will Infantine of New Hampshire defended income inequality by claiming that women are “less willing to work long hours … and are less motivated by money [than men].” Several news sources interpreted his statement to mean women are lazier than men. When we examine recent statistics, however, we notice that women are increasingly becoming the breadwinners of their families. Thus, they are more motivated to pursue higher education as a means of attaining a job. There are currently more women enrolled in four-year universities around the country than men. Further, industries that were once male-dominated are being overrun with women. Law school enrollment for female students exceeds that of their male counterparts. Both the medical and engineering industries are seeing a rise in female workers. Yet, they still earn 77 cents to every dollar a man makes. This leads me to question whether this is an issue of correlation or causation. As the news media continues to belittle female professionals, will inequality in other facets of society persist? Most of this negative attention stems from the belief that there is a disconnect between motherhood and professionalism. In an article titled “An Open Letter to Chelsea Clinton’s Fetus,” Kyle Smith, columnist for the New York Post, condescendingly writes, “Grandma is not what us grown-ups call ‘maternal.’” He argues that Clinton‘s professional success prevents her from demonstrating the compassion and care expected from a mother. Similarly, news anchor Charlie Rose posed the question, “President or grandmother?” as though giving Clinton an ultimatum. He implies that she can only have one if she sacrifices the other. As a representative of American women, we look to Clinton to prove that females are capable of being mothers, grandmothers, and leaders all at the same time. Although she has not formally announced her bid for the 2016 presidential election, Clinton is arguably one of the most influential political leaders in American history. As former secretary of state and 2008 presidential candidate, she has climbed higher in political rank than any other woman in the U.S. She earned these accolades as a mother and wife. Her progress should not be minimized with the birth of her first grandchild. If anything, the new baby should encourage her to run for president and promote a future wherein men and women are treated as true equals.
Mary Kate Nolan is a staff columnist for The Heights. She can be reached at opinions@bcheights.com.
The Heights
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Monday, April 28, 2014
CLASSIFIEDS Thursday, January 17, 2014 Monday, April 28, 2014
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Directions: The Sudoku is played over a 9x9 grid. In each row there are 9 slots, some of which are empty and need to be filled. Each row, column and 3x3 box should contain the numbers 1 to 9. You must follow these rules: · Number can appear only once in each row · Number can appear only once in each column · Number can appear only once in each 3x3 box · The number should appear only once on row, column or area.
The Heights The Heights
B5 A7
THE HEIGHTS
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FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Monday, April 28, 2014
PROFESSOR PROFILE
Maps point Psychology, media studies converge for Ingram to Russia BY SAMANTHA MANCINI
SEAN KEELEY It was a brisk February day when I found myself running through a Russian park, making my way through muddy and unfamiliar terrain. Wearing various layers of Under Armour and some battered brown sneakers, I struggled to keep up, constantly glancing down at my compass and map to figure out where I was. All around me, Russians of all ages confidently jogged past, navigating the course with ease. And there I stood in the middle of it all, the only American at an orienteering competition on Yelagin Island, a sprawling woody park in St. Petersburg. In that moment, easily one of the strangest in my study abroad experience, I kept asking myself one question: how on earth did I get here? At that instant the question had an immediate, literal meaning: I was lost and trying to find my way. But after I found my bearings, finished the course successfully, and reunited with my host family (who had invited me along to this peculiar competition in the first place), I began to reflect on that question in a more existential way. How exactly had I ended up in Russia, of all places? The thing about study abroad is that no matter how acclimated you become to your surroundings, every once in a while there comes a moment that stops you dead in your tracks, reminding you how far you have come from home. But it is exactly these moments that have been most meaningful to me in Russia, marking my journey here just like the little points on an orienteering map. When I first arrived, my feeling of disorientation was at its peak. I remember first being introduced to my host family and thinking that my two and a half years of Russian had been for nothing: the language was coming at me way faster than I could process. I latched on to a word here or there to get the general meaning of what my host dad was saying, but I feared that the language barrier would be insurmountable. But my language skills improved gradually, thanks to my language classes, dinnertime conversations with my host family, and the everyday business of interacting with cashiers and coat-check ladies. By this point in the semester, I sometimes even find myself thinking in Russian. When that happens—perhaps as I am walking by the Winter Palace or admiring a St. Petersburg panorama from one of the city’s bridges—it’s a potent reminder of the progress I’ve made. At the same time, I have never been more acutely aware of my American-ness. As one of two American students in a Russian-language political history class, I am often singled out by the professor to comment on American politics. Such struggles with the language barrier have been alternately empowering and humbling, and this balance has helped me stay grounded. Thinking back on the past few months, plenty of other memories arise before me, unique little moments that have shaped my time here. There was my first concert in the Marinsky Theatre Concert Hall, where I got free seats to watch my host dad’s choir sing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. There was a whirlwind weekend trip to Riga, where I biked to the outskirts of the city and met a friendly old Latvian man who took me inside his church, eager to share his faith and culture with two Americans. There was a visit to a museum about the Siege of Leningrad, when I first came to understand the devastating toll that Russians suffered during World War II—a story that is too rarely told in America. And just last night, an impromptu night out turned into an evening of cross-cultural bonding, as a group of Russian football fans joined with our American group, and we all toasted to peace in Ukraine. I am not sure what these memorable moments have in common—some took place in the world of high culture and carefully guided museum tours, others occurred by chance, around a bar table. But none of them could have happened outside of Russia, and they have all validated my decision to spend a semester here. With over a month left before I head home, I’m not sure what other Russian adventures await. I still ask myself how I got to this point, and where I’m heading. But rather than worrying about what it all means, I’ve decided to live in the moment and enjoy the time that I have left—and just keep running this crazy race until the very end.
Sean Keeley is a senior staff writer for The Heights. He can be reached at features@bcheights.com
For The Heights
WHO: Brett Ingram
Brett Ingram is finishing his first year as a professor in the communication department. “I absolutely love Boston College,” Ingram said. “Working with the kind of students you get here is a professor’s dream come true.” Not only has BC as a university exceeded his expectations, but the students he teaches have exceeded his expectations as well. Ingram was born and raised in the very small and conservative town of Dover, Penn. Due to the constant abuse of power in local school systems, Ingram said he was unable to excel in his education. Dissatisfied with his teachers and classmates, he said that he “didn’t fit in very well in that environment.” Instead of succumbing to his surroundings, he decided to print out a list of the 100 best novels ever written and make an effort to read every single one of them. “I took control of my own education,” Ingram said, which he believes to have been good training for the life he now leads as a teacher. While attending Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, Ingram studied abroad in England. This led to a new fascination for cultural studies. “As soon as I could, I got out of Pennsylvania,” Ingram said. When he returned from England, he moved to Boston and earned his master’s degree at Northeastern University in English and cinema studies. Soon after, he continued on to UMass Amherst where he earned his Ph.D. in communication. His father was a psychologist who taught at the Pennsylvania State University Medical School. “I grew up in a house in which there were often human brains in the refrigerator,”
TEACHES: Media and Cultural Studies EXPERIENCE: Graduated from Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania and has a master’s in English and Cinema Studies, and a Ph. D. from UMass Amherst in communication.
SAMANTHA MANCINI / FOR THE HEIGHTS
Ingram said. Growing up in this type of household caused him to become particularly interested in the human brain and neuroscience. Likewise, his experiences at school within the Dover community led to his frustration with “close-mindedness and bigotry.” Both of these experiences were driving forces in his research, and he was soon able to converge the two. Ultimately, Ingram wrote a dissertation called “Critical Rhetoric in the Age of Neuroscience” that explores how media representations influence people’s minds as well as their physical bodies. “The research question I relentlessly pursue is: ‘What are the barriers to changing people’s minds, especially when it comes to political attitudes?’” Ingram said. “There is a long tradition in communication of assuming that if we simply provide people with whom we disagree with ‘better,’ more reasonable ideas by way of media representations, they will naturally come around to our way of thinking. We feel frustrated when this doesn’t work. I’m interested
FUN FACTS: Ingram wrote his dissertation on how media representations influence people’s minds and bodies.
in figuring out how media representations not only influence our ‘minds,’ but also reconfigure our brains, because we become physiologically addicted to the emotional rush they deliver. The challenge is to come up with effective rhetorical strategies of intervention.” Ingram finds his one-year-old son a “constant source of fascination.” Similarly, he finds teaching to be enticing. He believes that the key to teaching is to always stay ahead of emerging ideas and posing new questions. He explained that this profession “can’t get old or mundane, and if it does, you’re doing it wrong.” Ingram’s course, Media and Cultural Studies, is currently crosslisted with women’s and gender studies, and he is eager to increase his involvement within this department. The department is collaborating with Ingram in hopes of having him develop a course on masculinity and the body, which he is excited to work on. The drive to increase his role at BC is evident. “I will stay at BC as long as BC would like to have me,” he said.
Even in his short time at BC, Ingram has noticedunique attributes of BC students. “Students are driven and intelligent, and I found that no matter how complex the idea, students will not let it beat them,” he said. “They will fight and talk and struggle until they understand it, and for someone like me who is trying to introduce students to some of the foundational philosophies that form the basis of Western thought, you need students like that.” He did note that students at BC are exceptionally competitive with each other. Students tend to focus more on their test grades and GPAs than on their education in a larger sense, he said. While he feels this innate competitiveness can be motivational, he tries to emphasize that students have the rest of their lives to compete. “This isn’t a place to try and find answers, it’s the time to figure out what the right questions are,” he said. He encourages students to slow down and truly enjoy these four years, and to explore as many ideas and take advantage of as many opportunities as possible.
6,000 students use anonymous social network app From Yik Yak, A10
Since most of Yik Yak’s activity centers around college campuses, the cofounders have invented a new way to keep users on the app in the summer, when students are most likely away from campus. “‘Peeking ’ is our most exciting feature for college students,” Buffington said. “While everyone is at home thinking about life back on campus, the feature allows users to check in on their home campus to monitor what is happening. We also plan on introducing fun and creative ‘peek’ locations every week, ranging from Hogwarts and the Hunger Games to ESPN 8 The Ocho to keep our users entertained over summer.” Currently, Yik Yak has 11 “peek” locations listed, BC being the only university located in the north, while the
across the country. The cofounders have been commended by various parenting organizations for handling these situations in a timely fashion at the expense of losing one of their growing user bases. “We recognize that with any social app or network, there is the likelihood for misuse from a small group of users, so we have built specific tools to prevent this from happening,” Buffington said. “We have geo-fenced all primary and secondary schools and turned the app to 17-plus in stores to ensure the user base is age appropriate.” The app also uses self-regulation technologies that remove any user who posts negative or harmful content.
10 remaining universities are located in the southeast part of the U.S. and range from large state schools to small private ones. Peek locations are labeled when they reach a certain threshold of users, meaning that BC has surpassed this threshold and is in the top 11 universities in the world for Yik Yak use. About two-thirds of BC undergraduate students have downloaded the app so far, and the number is expected to continue increasing. In addition to “peeking,” the cofounders plan to further enhance users’ experiences by implementing advanced monitoring technology. “We continue to build out this technology to ensure positive interaction, but we are also finding that as more us-
CLUB SERIES
ers sign up and start using the app, each community begins to self-regulate itself in a positive way,” Buffington said. Furthermore, according to a Facebook post in late March, Yik Yak is looking not only to expand its range of features, but its team as well, as the app advertised summer internship opportunities in its Atlanta office. For aspiring app developers, the cofounders have some words of advice. “Get something out there quick—timing is everything in this space,” Buffington said. “A lot of people have great apps that are just idly sitting in the app store because their creators failed to execute. If you want to be a leader in your space, you have to be willing to do what everyone else isn’t—you have to be a grinder.”
FEATURING BC’S STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS
Committee for Creative Enactments performs murder mystery improv comedy shows BY CORINNE DUFFY Heights Editor
With My Mother’s Fleabag, Asinine Sketch and Improv Comedy, Hello… Shovelhead!, and other amusing groups entertaining students across campus, Boston College is home to a hilarious, diverse, and burgeoning comedy improv scene within its music, art, and performance category of over 300 registered clubs. One student organization stands out among the rest, however: the Committee for Creative Enactments (CCE) is unique in its non-cut, allaccepting nature as an improv and murder mystery affiliation, featuring both scripted and improvised characters in its shows and welcoming any interested individual to join, regardless of expertise. Founded in 1988, CCE is an organization of roughly 30-40 active members— varying in light of the comedic dichotomy of the group—that aims to utilize each individual’s talents in catering to the BC community’s sense of humor. The club is open to anyone on campus, and because it performs both comedy improv and murder mystery shows throughout the year, students are encouraged to participate in a
variety of ways—from attending a meeting and attempting improv for the first time to actively partaking in performances. “Our main goal is to bring laughter to the BC community,” said Shelby Massa, president of CCE and LSOE ’14, in an email. “We pride ourselves in creating an environment where people can feel comfortable trying comedy and really working to improve their improv skills. I think that’s really at the core of who we are and what we want to do.” Historically, CCE is known for its murder mystery shows, which take place once a semester in the O’Connell House and are written and produced by club members—for 2013-14, Kaitlyn Quaranta, A&S ’14, and John Kumcu, A&S ’15, have served as the directors. This past weekend, the spring murder mystery shows were held on Friday and Saturday night in O’Connell. By contrast, CCE holds improv shows several times each semester within various buildings on campus, and these tend to follow themes, such as Halloween or Valentine’s Day. Further, on April 11, CCE hosted its senior showcase to honor those graduating this spring. In addition to these on-campus events,
CCE has attended and participated in the annual College Comedy Festival and Beanpot Tournament—which is sponsored by Improv Boston as a showcase for New England’s high-quality, collegiate comedy and takes place in February—for the last several years. This year, the club members won first place in the competition, which was held from Feb. 20-22. “[Winning first] was very exciting for everyone, especially our improv coaches Kelsey Maher [A&S ’14] and Jill Lawler [CSON ’15],” Massa said. “They put together a great team, worked really hard, and it definitely showed.” Alongside them, Zander Weiss, A&S ’15, serves as vice president of house and props; Rachel Maillet, A&S ’15, is vice president of costumes; Starlin Shi, A&S ’16 is treasurer; Sara Daley, A&S ’15 is secretary; and Brendan Connelly, A&S ’14, is webmaster. From 7-10 p.m. every Tuesday and Thursday and 12-2 p.m. each Sunday, the group meets to practice improv, rehearse for the semester’s featured murder mystery, and discuss attending timely improv events such as the Improv Beanpot. Each gathering’s agenda centers on teaching and crafting improvisation skills. “At the meetings we do improv, or rehearse for
that semester’s murder mystery,” Massa said. “Sometimes, we have alumni who have gone on to professional improv groups who will come back to help us fine tune our improv skills.” For anyone interested in joining the CCE, the best way to get involved is to attend any of the club’s weekly practices and observe or take part in the hilarity personally, regardless of prior improv experience. “Our practices are open, so we encourage everyone to come, whether you’ve done improv for years, or you are looking for something new to try,” Massa said. Additionally, Massa added that going to CCE’s improv and murder mystery shows to cheer the club members on in their comedic endeavors is always beneficial—both for the observer and the performer. “We love it when we get a big crowd and it just makes everything more fun,” she said. In addition to these routes for involvement, “You can also like us on Facebook (The CCE) or follow us on Twitter (@WeAreCCE), where we post show and practice information,” Massa said. Especially due to its no-cut policy, the organization avidly welcomes and encourages any student to join at any time.
The Heights
Monday, April 28, 2014
Device set to mix up shots From Kickstick, A10 going off on a whole array of directions,” McNamara said. “I tried to make it as fun a product as possible.” Although the Kickstick can be used for taking shots or mixing drinks and powdered beverages, McNamara’s focus is on replacing mini bottles with something more functional. “From what I’ve read, a lot of the liquor companies use the mini bottles as a marketing tool,” McNamara said. “My idea was to separate my product from the rest of them to create more functionality and efficiency. It would be cool to have a product that serves more purposes.” In addition, he said, the sleek and modern design simply looks more interesting. “I’d buy the one that looks different, the coolest,” he said. After McNamara dropped out of Colgate University to play professional hockey in Europe, he had more time to dedicate to working on the Kickstick. His first team was based in Denmark, and the Copenhagen School of Entrepreneurship accepted him and his idea. He began researching the patent process in Slovakia and eventually had a few prototypes made while in Denmark, which were featured in his Kickstarter campaign video. “It was kind of a perfect plan for me,” McNamara said. “The project was a great way for me to keep my mind off the game. You only play hockey two hours a day.” McNamara said that he has not officially added anyone else to his design and marketing team, preferring to carry out his venture solo. He has, however, integrated as many comments and suggestions as possible. “I’ve had a lot of mentors,” he said. “For the video, the product, the website, sure it says my name, but everyone was involved. I tried to take as many ideas from other people to make one cool product.” After he had what he considered the final design in prototype form, McNamara found a company willing to make Kicksticks. Originally, McNamara had planned on marketing a finished product to liquor companies, which would then pre-fill the Kicksticks with their product and place them in liquor stores. He anticipated the products to cost about $1 or $2, the standard for mini bottles. Now that he is selling the patent instead of a physical product, however, he is hoping to penetrate other industries such as supplements or energy drinks. The seemingly unlimited options and flexibility that Kicksticks provide is reflective of McNamara’s creative process as well. “I love the design aspect of the whole thing and creating new products and innovating,” he said. “It’s fun to find those loopholes.” n
A9
The Heights throughout the century Commencement Speakers at Boston College
According to its website, HGRM is a “not-for-profit organization based in Acton, Mass., that provides household goods, free of charge, to people in need.” As Lorenz said, “They basically furnish homes for people who can’t otherwise furnish them.” The Society of St. Vincent de Paul donates items to various causes, such as food pantries, thrift stores, emergency financial aid, and disaster relief, as described on its website. “The textbook agency, More Than Words, they have a recycling program that benefits underprivileged, in-need students,” Darcy said. As the program’s mission statement described, these in-need students include children who are in the foster care system, court involved, homeless, or out of school. “To these agencies, I think they think everything is important,” Boyle said. Almost any item can be donated, as long as it is in usable condition. Darcy suggested coat hangers, picture frames, school supplies, laundry baskets, linens, and appliances as potential items that could be donated. “And really, if stuff is in good condition, we’ll take just about anything.” Lorenz added. Last year, BC Clean donated over 5,000 textbooks, 13,140 pounds of clothing, 2,100 pounds of food, 107 dorm fridges, and 26 microwaves, and the program is looking to collect even more donations this year. From May 10 to May 19, students will
Shared pain, future bonds
Commencement speakers of the past range from distinguished student orators to U.S. vice presidents By Caroline Hopkins Heights Staff In the final weeks of school, as seniors desperately attempt to scratch off the final points on their Boston College bucket lists, one thing lingers on their minds through it all: graduation. The all-consuming thought of May 19 has campus chattering with excitement, nerves, and disbelief. What’s more, just this past week, on April 24, BC announced that the 2014 commencement speaker will be U.S. Secretary of State and former Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. Although all of the thoughts this time of year regarding graduation and otherwise remain directed forward, past issues of The Heights provide seniors with an excuse to reverse their thoughts briefly as they look back upon BC graduation ceremonies of the past. Reflecting upon past choices for commencement speakers at BC allows seniors to contextualize the history of their soonto-be-alma mater. Chosen speakers reflect relevant trends in the culture, politics, and issues at the time of the graduation. Individuals range from authors to artists to political figures, providing us with insight into what once mattered. The first recorded commencement speaker was a full 90 years ago in a 1924 issue of The Heights. The chosen speaker was Joseph A. Turnbull, gold medal winner of the Fulton Debating Society who spoke on the issue of the Bok Peace Prize. “Turnbull’s main speech was a masterpiece showing careful preparation,” the 1924 article read. Interestingly enough, there is a distinct difference in graduation tradition nearly a century ago—that is, Turnbull was a BC student himself, graduating that spring. The following year, 1925, The Heights again announced the commencement day speaker as a medal winner in “fine oratory,” one Mr. Carr. These seemingly ancient choices speak to an emphasis on rhetoric and speech skills that pervaded academics and society at the time. This tradition of student commencement addresses continued for another decade, as in 1938, an April issue of The Heights read, “Tryouts for Commencement speakers will be held next Wednesday, April 6, at 3:15 p.m. in the Senior Assembly Hall … three judges, not yet completed, will make the final decision on the merits of the contestants.” Tradition changed the following year toward a more familiar trend of selecting an older, distinguished leader for commencement speaker. The 1939 speaker announced in The Heights was
Rev. Robert J. Gannon, S.J., president of Fordham University and a graduate of Cambridge University in England. Prior to his position as president at Fordham, Gannon was regarded as a “favorite” professor of Latin and English. Evidently, from the selections of speakers in the early 20th century, the University valued “close-to-home” academic prestige in the humanities over figures relevant in a national or international context. Jumping ahead to a 1964 issue of The Heights, there is a shift toward the more familiar tradition of political, military, or more nationally relevant speakers with the choice of Sargent Shriver, director of the Peace Corps and brother-in-law to the late President John F. Kennedy. Shriver was described by one writer as “a man who, at one and the same moment, manages to remind the dedicated that they can achieve the American vision only by immense personal sacrifice and to assure the indifferent that the American vision is theirs on a payment plan so easy that they will barely feel it.” As the first BC graduation to take place after the November 1963 assassination of Kennedy, the choice of commencement speaker was truly relevant to the current national issues. A little over a decade later, this tradition strengthened with the 1979 choice of U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale, who served under President Jimmy Carter. The 1982 graduation then brought George Bush Sr., then the vice president under President Ronald Regan. In 2006, the choice of commencement speaker sparked controversy as many students labeled Condeleezza Rice as too political of a selection in a Heights column reading, “The seniors are what commencement is all about. Not Condoleezza Rice. Not protests. Not honorary degrees. Not politics.” Yet the issue was responded to in a follow up column titled “Politics put aside, Rice is right choice.” Circling back to the present day trend of forward thinking, students can only guess what eminent speakers BC has in store for the future graduating classes. As time goes on, students will continue to look back on the choices of speakers to remind them of the times and experiences that students at BC have been a part of. If nothing else, students can be sure Kerry will compel and inspire the graduating seniors in the upcoming May 19 graduation ceremony. n
BC Clean donates students’ used items to charity From BC Clean, A10
Editor’s Column
be able to donate items via BC Clean. Designated drop-off areas will be set up for every residential building, and arrows and signs will be set up to direct students to the proper locations. This year there will also be a sticker campaign for the seniors, who can put the stickers on the items they want to donate and leave them outside for the agency trucks to collect. The trucks will come at various times throughout the twoweek period—generally once a day. On Commencement Day, the agency trucks will be stationed outside the senior areas for the whole day, so the seniors, who generally donate the most items, can easily donate what they don’t want to take home. “We try to make it as convenient as possible for everybody,” Boyle said. Besides the obvious benefits to the agencies and those who receive the donations, BC Clean has had a substantial influence on the BC community, particularly in improving the move-out process and the state of the residential areas after students leave. “It used to take us four to five days just to get the trash and whatever was left in the rooms out of the senior areas,” Boyle said. “And now, you can come back the next morning, and all the rooms are empty, all the hallways are empty.” Damages in the dorms have also decreased. “What [BC Clean] basically surround[s] is challenging our students to be respectful, responsible, and leaving their living, residential communities better than they found them,” Darcy said.
In the future, BC Clean would like to implement a program for BC students to get involved and be able to volunteer in the process. The organization wants to improve its ability to collect even more donations and to continue making people aware of the program. The representatives also mentioned looking into ways to provide BC Clean services to those students living off campus, but for now off-campus students can make use of any of the lounges or bring their items directly to the agency trucks. Lorenz also described becoming a model for other universities in the area to help the program spread.
“I think it’s important to point out that us being a Jesuit school and whatnot, this is one way to be a person for others, and one way to take care of those around you,” Lorenz said. “And, any little way helps, and I think this is one way to show it.” “I think it’s one way that we model what our mission is as a University,” Darcy said. “We’re just getting people to realize, ‘Hey, you are making a difference,’ when you go home. But, be respectful of your living environment, of course, but also be thinking about other people first. It’s ingrained in who we are as a community, as a Jesuit university.” n
Photo Courtesy of ChrIs Darcy
BC Clean extends the Jesuit mission of charity during move-out days on campus.
Kendra Kumor With the end of the year comes a whole lot of nostalgia. Seniors make trips back to Newton Campus to eat dinner at Stuart and bother the current residents in their freshman rooms. I even heard a few seniors on the Comm. Ave. bus the other day planning to make a Facebook group for Gonzaga floor 1 so they could all meet in the bathroom and shotgun beers on Friday night. Like the end of senior year, nostalgia brings both sadness and joy to those experiencing it. In fact, “nostos” literally means return, and “algia” literally means a pain. So where does the happiness come in? Ironically, many current freshmen eating dinner at Stuart feel a lot of pain, at least for the first few weeks of freshman year. They feel the pain of being separated from their friends on Upper Campus, and the pain of waiting for the bus every morning. Yet, the seniors returning to Newton Campus after three years are happy and excited to come back to that once-painful place. It’s difficult to feel nostalgic by yourself. In my experience, nostalgia is something to be shared, and I think that is where the happiness comes in. It doesn’t make many people happy to sit alone and remember the hundreds of crowded bus rides between Newton and Main Campus. It does, however, bring great happiness to talk to old hallmates about the experience. It even brings people joy to talk to strangers who have shared the same experiences. For example, I met a Boston College alumna of the Class of 1985 at a reception a few weeks ago. Of course we had the everyday BC experiences in common, but when we found out that we both lived on Newton Campus, we had something special to talk about. The shared pain served as a connection that enriched an otherwise standard conversation. The “algia,” or pain, that we might experience as a freshman can only make us more closely bonded as seniors and even alumni, making us happy to look back on the memories that may have seemed less than enjoyable at the time. But nostalgia delves even deeper than just recalling sometimes-painful experiences. Whether seniors realize it or not, the reason they are recalling the trials of freshman year is to solidify bonds for years to come. That’s why commencement speeches are always filled with jokes about bad cafeteria food or cranky professors— it brings people closer together than if the speech were about how easy it was to pass a certain class or how great the food was. At the heart of the strongest nostalgic feelings is some kind of shared struggle or challenge, because pain unites people a lot more than happiness. This idea is proven in the amount of people lined along this year’s Marathon route. United in the pain of last year’s bombing, the city came together to share more joy and spirit than was ever present before the tragedy. Nostalgia is a device used to change the course of the future just as much as it is used to remember the past. Every story told about Mod-walking or eating too much Late Night carries a deeper meaning. If you take the time to distill the nostalgic story, there will always be some underlying message about the strength of friendship—how you sat outside in the freezing cold with your guy friends who weren’t allowed in the Mod, or how you paid for all of their chicken tenders and mozzarella sticks afterward. Although nostalgia literally means a return to pain, the word has a joyful connotation. It allows classmates, best friends, and strangers to unite through a surface memory that carries a deeper meaning of struggle and triumph. Nostalgia uses the past to reshape the future into a less painful experience by creating lasting emotional bonds. As the Class of 2014 enjoys its last meals in Stuart or its beers in the first floor bathroom of Gonzaga, it reveals the power of shared experience that will transcend the years it will spend apart.
Kendra Kumor is the Features Editor for The Heights. She can be reached at features@bcheights.com.
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FEATURES MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2014
Kickstick combines straw, flask
The b Sund est thing ays is ab not w out pants earing rsuit u p e nd th room a , y t tudy liber Life, th floor s of a 5
BC student plans to sell patent to beverage industries BY SAMANTHA COSTANZO Asst. Features Editor
When Jack McNamara, WCAS ’15, brought his Kickstick mini bottle idea to Bacardi, the people he met with had a lot more questions for him than he had anticipated. “It was more of an idea than anything else,” McNamara said. The idea for his liquid-filled straws originally started out as something to be marketed to vitamin companies. The idea was to put powdered vitamins in a container with a screw-off lid on either side, mix the vitamins up with some water, and sip through the container. After talking over the idea with his mother and brother, however, McNamara decided that there was more of a market for his idea in the liquor industry. “It’s the best industry for it,” McNamara said. “That’s where a lot of the money is.” In addition to the financial potential, McNamara said that there are similar products already designed for vitamins, but not for liquor. He started a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the molds the company would use before cancelling the campaign on Saturday. It had earned $6,228 out of his $10,000 goal and was trending toward over $16,000. He has decided to sell the patent for the Kickstick rather than try to market the product himself. “I cancelled it because I realized that the Kickstarter had already helped me prove that this concept was sound,” he said. “I don’t need a manufacturer to sell a patent … I am going to sell the patent to any of the beverage industries interested.” McNamara said that he will be returning all of the money that backers had originally pledged but is still grateful for their support. “Thanks to all the generous backers, I think this product is ready to go,” he said. “Kickstick would never have gotten this far without them.” The Kickstick is reusable and recyclable and holds the standard 50 milliliters required for mini bottles. To make sure he hit that minimum number, McNamara changed the shape from a cylinder to a longer, skinnier cube. The twist-off caps on either end have dice on them, and McNamara is working on a connector piece that would make it even easier to mix drinks or take shots with a chaser. “The whole idea started off with something extremely basic, and now it’s
Eagles join the herd
and . s m oble :59 p.m r p t 99 at 11 o g I’ve all due ’re they
By Kendra Kumor | Features Editor
How am I supposed to plan my love life without Classmate Roster...?
Riding the yak has become an everyday activity for over 6,000 Boston College students. After the closure of the BC Confessions Facebook page last October, BC students went months without an outlet for anonymous posting. Yik Yak, a free app that uses geo-fencing technology to provide anonymous posts from users within a 1.5-mile radius of their current location, has provided BC students with a platform to express their achievements, complaints, and secrets with no username, password, or identification necessary. “Yik Yak creates a local community without prior relationships or friendships that provides mature, responsible users with an outlet to interact with their peers in real-time at a hyper-local level,” said co-founder and COO Brooks Buffington in an email. Buffington and Tyler Droll, recent graduates of Furman University in Greenville, S.C., launched the app in early 2013. “In just five months since the app was launched, we were already on more than 100 campuses, and many of those have over half the student bodies,” Buffington said. Now, Yik Yak’s herd is over 100,000 users strong, with hopes of expansion. Since graduation, Buffington and Droll have moved to Atlanta, Ga. to work on the app full time. The pair received $20,000 in initial funding from Atlanta Ventures, and since then, other angel investors include Vaizra Investments, DCM, and Azure Capital Partners. Yik Yak now boasts over $1.5 million in total funds. Yik Yak seeks to ensure that all voices are heard on every campus. “We felt as though a few select people held the campus
See Kickstick, A9
ng the i t a n i m is do wer. CSOM o L f o s upstair jectgrind pro #group BRECK WILLS / HEIGHTS GRAPHIC
voice and not everyone had a chance to be heard,” Buffington said. “We wanted to give the shy guy in your biology class the opportunity to be the funniest person on campus—other forms of social media didn’t really allow that.” Users now also have the ability to post under handles such as “Campus Squirrels” or “Stokes Lawn” to ensure that particular campus voices are heard. Even if users don’t feel comfortable posting actual messages, they still have the opportunity to participate in the conversation and make their voices heard by up-voting or down-voting other people’s posts. Additionally, a new feature, Yakarma, provides students with a running tally of their individual up-votes and down-votes, as well as the up-votes and down-votes that they assign to others’ posts. Although Yik Yak’s primary use is on college campuses in the U.S., its founders have seen its purpose expand to communities that are centered around life-changing situations. “Whether it’s attendees at a specific event or citizens in Ukraine during the current crisis, we see many positive uses for individuals to receive important, real-time information from those around them,” Buffington said. The app, however, has not always been well received. While Yik Yak’s intended target demographic is college students, thousands of high school and middle school students have begun to ride the yak, causing misuse in the form of cyber bullying and bomb threats that have upset many parents and administrators
See Yik Yak, A8
BC Clean aids in move-out process BY CAITLIN SLOTTER Heights Staff
PHOTO COURTESY OF CHRIS DARCY
BC Clean will have drop off stations for used items in each dorm through finals week.
I NSIDE FEATUR E S THIS ISSUE
At the end of each academic year, hundreds of students look for a way to get rid of their clothes, non-perishables, furniture, textbooks, microwaves, cube refrigerators, or other items that they can’t squeeze into their cars to take home on move-out day. BC Clean, run by the Office of Residential Life and Facilities Management, provides a way for Boston College students to donate items they no longer want or need when moving out, making the process more efficient and providing aid to local charities. “Basically we were charged, four years ago, with changing our move-out structure,” said Chris Darcy, associate director of Residential Life and Campus Ministry.
“The students, we found, were leaving trash, were leaving personal belongings, not fully moving out, especially in our senior areas.” In 2001, a mandate came from Facilities Management and Student Affairs to improve upon the move-out program at the time, Clean Sweep, wherein BC student volunteers went door-to-door, asking for donations. “We wanted to come up with a program that we felt would benefit our offices for move-out, but also to still keep the spirit, that Ignatian spirit of being able to give to others,” Darcy said. Six people make up the core functioning group of the program: Darcy and Gerard Boyle, associate director of Facilities Management, are co-directors; Mike Lorenz, assistant director of Residential Life, works on operations and promotion;
Heights Through the Centuries BC’s commencement speakers have ranged from students to worldly diplomats........................................................ A9
Robert Pion, project director of Facilities Management, works on promotion and program structuring; Joseph Simonetti, associate director of Residential Life and Catherine O’Conner, assistant director of Residential Life oversee the coordination of the entire program. In addition, the residential staff helps with promotion, and the Facilities Management housekeeping, utilities, and groundskeeping staffs help manage the areas during the donation period. BC Clean is currently partnered with three agencies that collect the donated items: Household Goods Recycling of Massachusetts (HGRM), The Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and More Than Words (MTW).
See BC Clean, A9
Foreign Affairs.........................A8 Editor’s Column............................A9
e d i s In
BC UNDERGROUND SEE PAGE b3
LAUGHING MEDUSA SEE PAGE b5
BC’S BEST SEE PAGE b2
DANCE & A CAPPELLA SEE PAGE b4
HELLO... SHOVELHEAD! SEE PAGE b5
ANNE GAREFINO SEE PAGE b3
lSTUDENT SHORTS SEE PAGE b5
DROWSY CHAPERONE SEE PAGE b6
JORDAN PENTALERI / HEIGHTS PHOTO ILLUSTRATION
2 THE HEIGHTS APRIL 28, 2014
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B E S T Juice, Terry Peng take top honors in music competition
BC bands, singer-songwriters compete in annual music contest BY MAGDALENA LACHOWICZ Heights Staff
As the sun set over O’Neill Plaza, the main tent served up its last event of the night, the aptly named BC’s Best. Starting at 8 p.m., the two-part, two-hour-long event featured a singer-songwriter competition, as well as the final round of this year’s BC Battle of the Bands, with Lou Wilson and Ceara O’Sullivan, both A&S ’14, serving as emcees for the show. Representatives from the Music Guild, Nights on the Heights, and the UGBC acted as judges, and a three-track, professionally mixed and mastered EP for the singer-songwriters and the chance to open for Hoodie Allen at Modstock for the winner of Battle of the Bands were offered as prizes. Nick Benevenia, A&S ’14, led the singer-songwriter competition, opening with a song titled “There’s Poison in the Ice Cream.” Following this, his friend Louis Fantini, A&S ’14, joined the stage to sing along on a song Benevenia wrote for his sister, explaining why he was seriously considering moving to the middle of nowhere in Alaska. Benevenia’s songs were heartfelt and raw, his voice matching the emotion loaded into every word—there was no denying the power behind his lyricism and his exemplary ability as a musician. As the opener for BC’s Best, Benevenia gave the audience a taste for what was in store. Up next, Alex Navarro, A&S ’17, took the stage, making a quip about the emcees’ calling out his missed sound check. Despite being unchecked, Navarro pulled off a great set, singing in a warm and soulful tone. He even premiered a song that was written just the night before and, though still a tad unrefined, it carried the same spirit of the previous song—the songs enveloped the audience in their homey feel and in the soft rasp of his voice. His set left a warm impression upon the tent, setting the bar high for the next performer. Taking the stage third was Terry Peng, A&S ’14, who wooed the audience with his musical swagger and jazzy style. Sporting his signature sunglasses and bright green earplug, Peng’s sound was classy, polished, and showed off his skills on the guitar and keyboard. His three-song set exuded confidence even amid lyrics that voiced uncertainty, such as on “Self Made Man.” Peng left the stage to the sounds of a very responsive crowd. Mike Lapointe, CSOM ’14, finished off the singer-songwriter portion, giving the audience a taste of his musical range with two songs. His first song exemplified his feelings about what’s next for him and was framed by his acoustic guitar and calm voice. He employed a loop machine to show off some beatboxing skills (as well as picking skills) to give an added build-up to the end of the song, which matched the emotional content of the lyrics well. His second song, “Believe Me,” was a straight blues tune, in which Lapointe traded in for an electric bass. Lapointe let
the blues pour out of him, closing the first half of BC’s Best with a raw energy hanging in the air. Kicking off the Battle of the Bands was Juice—an eight-piece band whose funk and soul brought the crowd to its feet. Juice’s energy was infectious. Songs were seamlessly blended into one another, and the structure of each was skillfully crafted, with soulful vocals, clever raps, and even an a cappella section. For a band that is so young (seven of eight of the members are freshmen), Juice owned the entire tent with the certainty and confidence of seasoned performers. The group is fronted by violinist Christian Rougeau, A&S ’17, who also raps. The band has a funky, yet soul-filled sound and is deeply talented. Juice finished off its set to a well-deserved standing ovation. Up next was Seaver’s Express, a four-piece band who dished out a full helping of good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll. The group kept up the energy in the tent created by Juice, not shying away from taking chances on stage. Toes were tapping and heads were bobbing along to all four of Seaver’s Express’ songs, which included recently-released single “A Different Gravity.” Sporting a bowtie and a big red guitar, front-man Brian Seaver’s crisp voice carried spirit and energy through each song, from the rowdier “2x2” to the blues-tinged “A Different Gravity.” Despite the stiff competition, Seaver’s Express seemed not to break even a sweat and earned itself a title as one of the crowd favorites. Rounding out the Battle of the Bands competition was Bobnoxious and the Master Craftsmen—a fivepiece band that looks just as eccentric as it sounds. The band’s musical style called to mind laid-back, ’70s era rock a la Pink Floyd. Of the three bands, it was the most experimental in sound, with keyboardist Bobby Scheuch, A&S ’14, providing a refined electronic sound that went beyond the traditional key tones. Despite the group’s laid-back feel, drummer Ryan Moore, CSOM ’14, provided some hardcore drums fills, which pushed the band more toward a hard rock sound at times. The band’s last number, however, took on a classic rock feel, with Jimi Hendrix-esque vocals and a slick guitar solo. After a few minutes of deliberation, the judges had made a decision and the results were in. The winners were Peng for the singer-songwriters and Juice for the Battle of the Bands. Given the title, BC’s Best set the bar high for expectation—yet, the event did not fail to deliver in giving the audience the best. The potential presented was undeniable. As Wilson put it, “I shook Terry Peng’s hand!”
DREW HOO / HEIGHTS STAFF
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BC alum, executive producer of ‘South Park’ reflects on award-winning career in comedy BY GRACE GODVIN For The Heights This year’s Alumni Arts Award recipient, Anne Garefino, BC ’81, made her first appearance of the weekend on Thursday, taking part in an “Inside the Actor’s Studio”-esque interview in the temporary tent erected outside Stokes Hall. A well-known philosophy professor on campus and a good friend to Garefino, Kerry Cronin played interviewer, which made for a highly entertaining and also informative afternoon. Garefino, an executive producer on hit projects including South Park and Book of Mormon,, was by far this year’s most notable Arts Fest attendee. Cronin and Garefino began their banter by introducing Garefino’s background. As she told the unexpectedly sparse crowd, after graduating from BC with a major in finance, Garefino went on to work at a theater in Washington, D.C. before attending film school at the American Film Institute in L.A. It was in L.A. where she started work on a “forgettable” Comedy Central series, Comics on Delivery. This series, however, led her to South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, thus launching her successful career in the entertainment industry. Speaking of her introduction with Parker and Stone, Garefino humorously noted that she “turned them down five times,” wanting to do a simple romantic comedy and not an animated television show—something she knew nothing about—before finally caving in because she “felt sorry for them.” Especially interesting in her rise to the top was Garefino’s reflection on her time at BC. She spoke on her regrets, telling the audience that she spent too much time studying something she wasn’t interested in, and not enough on what she was. Garefino also said she wished she had taken advantage of the arts and academic diversity that BC offers, instead of staying cooped up in CSOM. In her time onstage, Garefino not only reflected on her career path, but also doled out wisdom to the students in attendance. After a student asked what the most valuable asset she had in her success was, Garefino responded with a common, but heartfelt message: “Do what you love.” Whatever path is chosen, Garefino said, requires hard work and making oneself invaluable to others. Garefino also touched on how her persistent, “type-A” nature allowed her advantages, and her shamelessness made it easier for her to overcome challenges. When Parker and Stone decided to write Book of Mormon, they asked Garefino to join them again as the executive producer. At the time, Garefino had never produced a stage production and she
attributed her success to “asking questions” and staying involved at every level of the process, from the casting to the theater location. Not once did she feel compelled to mention her presence as a woman on a mostly male-dominated show, a testament to her grounded and hard-working nature. It’s no wonder that she has won five Emmys, nine Tonys, and a Grammy, or that Elle Magazine named her one of TV’s “Wonder Women.” Garefino’s confidence and humor shone through in her 45 minutes on stage. To those theatre and film students in attendance, she also remarked on her regret in focusing all her time during her summer hiatuses doing things like “mowing lawns,” and instead wished she had spent her time taking part in internships or programs that could have helped her in her career path. In her time on the Stokes lawn, Garefino geared her words toward the students, doing her best to give them helpful and honest advice. Garefino’s impressive performance proved why she stands as a force to be reckoned with on BC’s most notable alumni list.
‘Underground’ performers diversify BC arts scene BY JOHN WILEY Arts & Review Editor
Viewer discretion was advised for Friday’s BC Underground event. “You were supposed to discress before you arrived,” Lou Wilson, A&S ’14, warned the crowd. Wilson emceed the event alongside Ceara O’Sullivan, A&S ’14—the two added a touch of humor to the otherwise “discretionary” evening, warning the crowd about the “coldblooded killers” about to overtake the O’Neill Art Tent. When these murderous “underground” artists finally made a showing, the audience hadn’t much to fear. Events like BC Underground signify a shift in the arts offerings at Boston College. Friday’s event offered a venue for performance types historically underrepresented at the University: spoken word artists, B-Boy dancers, rappers, and electronic music producers. Introduced as an annual showcase last year, BC Underground has been one of the most influential recent additions to the Arts Fest tradition. “In the four years that I’ve been at BC, the spoken word community has really grown and developed,” said Alex Li, the first poet to speak at Friday’s event and A&S ’14. “My freshman year, there were two events in the entire year. This week alone, I’ve performed in two events.” Li was one of eight spoken word artists to perform at BC Underground this year. The artists opened discussion on a host of topics: social media, masculinity, race, fatherhood, sexuality, and body image. The range of content featured
proved the open-ended nature of spoken art as a medium. Several artists opted to address more serious matters with a grain of humor. Billy McEntee, A&S ’14, for example, delivered an op-ed-style monologue on online dating in the nation’s farming community. Li also showed his comedic sensibilities with “10 Responses To The Statement ‘Alex, You Are A Hipster.’” The next portion of the evening was a dance performance by Conspiracy Theory, BC’s only B-Boy dance crew. The extensive dance performance was largely improvised, the troupe standing on stage in a semicircle as individual members risked life and limb, working nearly acrobatic stunts into the spontaneous routine. The BlackHearted (Daniel Imahiyerobo, A&S ’16, and Daniel Suarez, from Wheelock College) was the first of three hip-hop crews showcased at Underground. Imahiyerobo and Suarez rapped in a throwback hip-hop style, over tight beats and heavy bass. The two paired together nicely, performing in classic style, rapping atop each other. Sha-lee Flavius, CSOM ’14, was an integral part of Underground last year, performing under the pseudonym Mr. WakeUpp. With his signature shades and white gloves, Flavius returned to the Arts Fest main stage with a full crew this year. Verging on performance art, WakeUpp’s set mystified crowds. Breaking the fourth wall, Flavius and friends ventured into the crowd, at times speaking in conversational tones over a musical backdrop. The performance culminated in Flavius personally giving a shout-out to each of
BC’s schools. A CSOM student himself, Flavius spread the love, thanking his fans from A&S, LSOE, CSON, and CSOM—no word from Flavius on his supporters from BC Law, WCAS, STM, and GSSW just yet. The penultimate act of the night was a performance by Daniel Almonte, CSOM ’14, featuring Aaron Carrillo, A&S ’14, and Daniel Lyle, A&S ’16. Almonte did the mixing for his set on stage, before leaving the mixing board and rapping alongside Carrillo and Lyle. Beginning in a more traditional mode of performance, Almonte included a quick change into suits midway through the performance. Holding nooses around their necks, the performers declared that classism is the new racism, commenting on the exclusivity of BC culture (“Watch out for the WASP culture / Don’t let it sting you”). Underground was rounded out by an individual performance from Lyle, rapping and singing under the moniker The Island. Lyle performed with a long-nosed masquerade mask, resembling those worn by doctors during the Black Plague epidemic. Performing in a style switching between Kanye West-esque and Frank Ocean-esque vocal rifts, The Island’s versatility and taste in theatrics tied up Underground quite nicely. The evening was characterized by smart commentary and artistic breakthrough. The artists were, admittedly, far from the “coldblooded killers” O’Sullivan and Wilson joking introduced them to be. While there was little reason for worry at Friday’s event, it did introduce several artists to look out for in the months to come.
JOHN WILEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR
BC Underground, in its second year at Arts Fest, featured a variety of talent from underrepresented artists on campus, including break dancers, hip-hop crews, spoken word artists, rappers, and electronic music producers.
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EMILY SADEGHIAN / HEIGHTS EDITOR
Showcase highlights distinguished singing groups BY MICHELLE TOMASSI Asst. Arts & Review Editor A sizable audience trudged through the rain on Saturday afternoon to see the final a cappella showcase of Arts Fest—the Critics’ Choice edition. Five groups were selected by local professionals and members of the Arts Council to be featured in the final showcase, giving audience members the chance to hear some of their signature songs and compilations. The Heightsmen, with some members noticeably absent, were the first to take the stage with their brief performance of “Come Fly With Me.” The boys snapped their way through a mellow rendition of the song and harmonized as well as usual, but seemed to be lacking the traditional Heightsmen charm. Perhaps they were all sung-out after their Spring Cafe on Friday evening—nonetheless, they set a comfortable mood for the following groups. An upbeat Bollywood rhythm quickly filled the tent at O’Neill Plaza with the arrival of Boston College’s South Asian a cappella group Shaan. The group performed “Zara Zara Touch Me”—a sensual song from the 2008 Bollywood film Race. Soloist Priyasha Chaturvedi, A&S ’14, alternated between Hindi verses and English choruses, resulting in a dynamic performance that lifted the energy in the atmosphere.
In contrast to the other groups, the B.E.A.T.S. (Black Experience in America Through Song) had a three-song set, performing John Legend’s “Who Did That to You,” featured in Django Unchained; “I Believe I Can Fly,” by R.Kelly; and Luther Vandross’ “Never Too Much.” The first two sets of soloists impressed with their smooth vocals and balanced choruses, although there were moments of disconnect—one seemed to be looking back at the group behind him, unsure of when to deliver his final line of the song. “Never Too Much” was the strength of the set—the soloists danced along to the catchy “ooh na nas” of the group and played off each other’s vibes quite well. The final song showcased the soulful talent that B.E.A.T.S. is known for, making up for any minor missteps along the way. Vandross and the ’80s were left behind as the Sharps came to stage with the 2001 girlpower song “Hit ‘Em Up Style (Oops).” The Sharps, BC’s only all-female a cappella group, tried to do a little too much with their performance—instead of using a simpler song to show off their vocal capabilities, they continued making the set unnecessarily complex. The singers layered in more female-revenge hits—Destiny’s Child’s “Jumpin’ Jumpin’,” followed by JoJo’s “Leave (Get Out)”—all while incorporating jumping, charade bits, and dialogues between group members. It
Dancers step up their game for Critics’ Choice BY ARIANA IGNERI
Assoc. Arts & Review Editor Chosen by The Arts Council as well as by professionals within the community, the routines of Friday’s Critic’s Choice Dance Showcase highlighted the talents of nine different Boston College dance groups. The event was held in the O’Neill Plaza Arts Fest tent and celebrated distinguished pieces of choreography from MASTI, PATU, the BC Irish Dance club, the Dance Organization of Boston College, Sexual Chocolate, Fuego del Corazon, Dance Ensemble, The Golden Eagle Dance Team, and Synergy. Because the purpose of the showcase was to present the most outstanding work, many of the afternoon’s featured dances were performed earlier during the year at other shows, particularly at the Annual Showdown competition, which takes place every April and is the biggest dance event on campus. Indian dance group MASTI opened, performing the routine that won it first place in the cultural category at Showdown—an honor that the team has received twice in a row. In ruffled blue skirts and silver tunics, MASTI danced to a mash-up of traditional bhangra beats and contemporary pop and electronic sounds. Jason Derulo’s hit single “Talk Dirty” even made it into the medley. Its ability to deftly mesh these Eastern and Western elements is, in large part, what makes MASTI’s choreography so fresh and appealing, no matter how many times viewers see the group perform. Although a majority of the other groups in the Dance Showcase also repeated what they had planned for Showdown, including PATU, Synergy, and Fuego del Corazon, they all managed to step up their game and perfect their dances, given the extra few weeks to practice and rehearse. PATU’s set was alive and spirited, with the seven leopard-print and fringe-clad dancers furiously moving their hips, flipping their hair, and clapping their hands to the sounds of drums. While PATU’s performance at Showdown at the beginning of the month was noteworthy, Friday’s was even better, as the team tapped into and
exhibited energy that it hadn’t before. Fuego—BC’s Latino dance team and the champions of this year’s Showdown in the dance category—flaunted the hot moves, daring stunts, and vibrant flair it has become known for, but with even more precision and intensity. As the male dancers flipped the girls over their heads, swung them under their legs, and twirled them in the air, the crowd couldn’t resist cheering. The routine allowed Fuego to prove not only its authentic flair, but also its sense of technical professionalism and ability to consistently raise the bar. Sexual Chocolate and BCID both presented the audience with something other than they had at Showdown. Wearing t-shirts printed with their team nicknames—of which Dulce Delicious and Boston Cream are two examples—the boys of Sexual Chocolate stomped on the stage with so much force that someone in the crowd shouted jokingly, “Don’t break it!” While Sexual Chocolate is usually known for its funny, clever skits framing its choreography, the team performed at the Dance Showcase without one, allowing it to emphasize the power, exactitude, and originality of its steps. BCID similarly benefitted from the opportunity to display its talent with a stripped down routine. Although the group opened to a brief, heavily percussive intro, BCID mostly let its tapping speak for itself by dancing without a music track in the background. Although a majority of the groups featured at the Dance Showcase competed at Showdown, both DOBC and The Golden Eagles Dance Team did not. The latter did a dark, Maleficent-esque routine to Lorde’s “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” The theme of the dance worked well for DOBC, enabling it to be creative not only with its black tulle costumes, but also with its evocative choreography—the dancers centered their moves around a single gold crown, which they all fought over, commanding attention. Every group that took the stage successfully owned it, proving the physical talent and the personal drive of BC’s dancers. With skill and enthusiasm, they presented their routines. After the hour’s end, it was clear that the dancers earned not only the critics’ approval but also the crowd’s.
was hard to discern what exactly the soloists were saying, making for an awkward and somewhat disconnected ending. The Sharps, however, did have the most fun with their performance, making a commendable effort to engage with the audience. Finishing off the Critics’ Choice showcase were the Bostonians with a unique combination of Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love” and “Brave/Roar.” The mashup of Sara Bareilles and Katy Perry was an apt way to end the showcase, as both songs fit seamlessly together—thematically and melodically. The Bostonians’ crisp delivery of poppy verses was maintained throughout, right down to the “Hey!” of “You held me down but I got up (Hey!).” Keely Bartram, A&S ’16, hit the high notes of the “Brave” chorus perfectly, garnering a thundering applause from the audience with her commanding vocals. One of the most memorable moments of the performance was the buildup of “Roar” repetitions leading up to the final chorus of “I wanna see you be brave.” Her resounding voice lightened the mood of the otherwise dreary space, and many audience members were still buzzing about the performance after exiting the tent. The song marked a surprising and definitive ending to the a cappella showcase as a whole, and it re-energized visitors caught in a mid-afternoon slump for the following Arts Fest performances.
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Although many of the dance groups had already performed at Showdown, they were able to perfect their routines for Friday’s showcase.
TATIANA PETROVICK / HEIGHTS STAFF
April 28, 2014 THE HEIGHTS 5
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Two students document personal stories of strength By Emily Sadeghian Heights Editor As part of the Annual Arts Fest itinerary, there was a public screening held for two documentary shorts by Boston College student directors Emily Mervosh and Katlyn Prentice, both A&S ’14, on Friday night. Mervosh’s short, titled “Genesis,” is the story of 11-year-old Genesis who has recently discovered a passion for playing the clarinet through the BC Music Outreach Program. Genesis’ newfound interest acts as a lens, exposing new layers of her situation—she emigrates to the U.S. from El Salvador, only to find very little meaning in her new lifestyle. Faced with the cold reality of the isolating New England weather, Genesis embraces the clarinet as a source of comfort and hope. Mervosh exposes an interesting dialectic by juxtaposing the mother’s grounded and realistic perspective with Genesis’ sweet and romantic outlook on life. Genesis talks about “improving” and “getting notes that sound like little bubbles,” while her mother feels very grateful and happy that her daughter is using her time to make music instead of spending her time on other activities. Genesis
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acknowledges that her current house “doesn’t have that much, but it’s very roomful,” a remark followed by a wide shot of Genesis dancing in an empty living space. Her mother equates San Vicente to freedom and her life in the U.S. to a jail. “Genesis” culminates with the BC Outreach Program’s final recital, an event at which all the kids involved in the program get to present what they have learned to a large audience. Genesis goes on stage with her teacher (Josie Bearden, A&S ’16) and is cheered on by a proud mother and father as she plays “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” Prentice’s film “Mile 21” is an account of the Boston Marathon Bombing framed within the confines of BC and its community. The film begins with a montage of downtown Boston, the Public Library decorated for the event of the Marathon, the finish line, flowers, and sneakers from the memorial. Although the shots (many of them stills) were taken from this year’s marathon, they have a nostalgic and chilling undertone reminiscent of last year’s tragedy. By concentrating solely on Mile 21, the viewer can look beyond the magnitude of the events that took place the day of bombing
and empathize with runners and with a community at a more intimate level. The film follows the runners as they approach the finish line and begin to notice that there is something off. “Mile 21” stitches together the testimonies of the BC students who ran the 2013 marathon. The opening explores that shared feeling of confusion at the crude contrast between catastrophe and achievement. Tension and intensity rise as runners begin to process their proximity to death and the gravity of the event. One testimonial makes a reference to the silent and haunted Mods and a feeling that it was as if all at once, everyone had discovered what had happened. The film documents the Bandit Marathon, which serves
as closure and a resolution, with BC students running to raise funds for the Campus School. There is a notion that films tend to flatten and compress reality, yet, there is also a social responsibility to documenting and portraying someone’s story. In an interview with the LA Times, American director David Lynch (Mulholland Drive, The Elephant Man) said, “Life is very, very complicated, and so films should be, too.” Both of these documentary shorts manage to focus and compress without ignoring the complexity of human reality. “Genesis” and “Mile 21” preserve the little details, giving texture to the stories of the people in them, while ultimately shedding light on the heavier issues they’re geared to address. n
For The Heights As the punctuation in its title would suggest, Hello … Shovelhead! is awfully good at standing out. On Friday evening, the sketch comedy troupe took to the stage in the Stokes Art Tent to perform a mix of new and old sketches. Several were taken from sketches in their shows this semester, but others were cast favorites from earlier shows. Cast members showed off their versatility through a range of impressions and characters. The show started strong with a Boston College-themed sketch. The segment follows a student who mistakenly uses a tray in the dining hall. Inevitably, when friends and strangers see him using the tray, they turned on him. Even the character’s ailing grandmother comes into the scene to share her disapproval, all because he put food on a tray. The act scored laughs among the mostly student crowd, familiar with the phenomenon of the lunch tray in BC dining halls. Shovelhead! quickly moved beyond the walls of BC’s campus, exploring pop culture at large. The next sketch was a parody of the popular Food Network show, Chopped. The act parodied the judges on the show, presenting a fictional panel including Nicolas Cage, “the celebrity guest,” “every white chick,” the sushi specialist, and Guy Fieri. The group made
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Photo Courtesy of Katlyn Prentice
Female writers share poetry, prose at reading event By Kwesi Aaron For The Heights If you found yourself in Fulton Honor’s Library on Saturday, you would have been in the presence of the “Who’s who” of BC’s literary community. About 40 people showed up to hear readings of poetry and prose representative of The Laughing Medusa’s ninth edition. The Laughing Medusa is a BC literary journal that exclusively publishes the work of female students, and has returned from a brief hiatus in the 2000s. The supporters at Saturday’s event were treated to complimentary brownies, cookies, and cupcakes, which they enjoyed throughout the readings. The main event opened with an exce r p t r e a d i n g of “Secrets” by Francesca McC a f f r e y, A & S ’14. The stor y follows a conversation about Korean names, Drew Hoo / Heights Staff
made tense by the memory of a war veteran’s secret romance overseas. McCaffrey’s voice came softly through the microphone as she revealed to the listeners: “He had never heard Korean without the sharp pitter patter of war beneath it.” Among the many notable moments that night was a reading by Christine Degenaars, CSOM ’15. She first explained that the poem was inspired by a mysterious and informative encounter with a man covered in pigeons. This man volunteered random facts about the notorious city birds, whose ugly gray feathers are apparently an evolutionary response to the city streets they reside in. The strange anecdote gave context to the images of the poem that followed “Sunday in Greenwich.” She read: “Tonight I imagine they reminded him of city doves that have fallen from the wintry white of convenience store awnings and have turned speckled and gone gray like the sidewalk.” Many of the readings that night seemed to refer to everyday strangeness, a subtle theme that continued through the reading by Patricia Owens, A&S ’15. One of
her works, “Omaha World Herald: Voice of the People,” was not submitted to the magazine, but was nonetheless a crowd favorite. It featured “found lines” from her local newspaper’s website, placing snippets of news stories among notable reader comments. One of the stories in question reported on a man arrested for murder shortly after a Miley Cyrus concert. It was paired with a user comment: “Miley Cyrus has nothing to do with it, cut the sensationalism!” You had to be there to get the full effect. One of the liveliest readings came in the form of a short story called, “WHAT YOUR BLOWJOB STYLE SAYS ABOUT YOU.” The title is notable for obvious reasons, but the author, Abigail Farr, A&S ’16, does an excellent job of surprising the audience with a well paced, organic tale of two girls with starkly contrasting views on feminism and dating. Farr dodges the common mistake of being thematically heavyhanded and allows the readers to make up their own minds about the issues at play. When the readers were finished, attention was drawn to-
‘Shovelhead!’ delivers well punctuated performance By Abigail Farr
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fun of the ridiculous ingredients on the show, giving the contestants odd items like loaded guns to incorporate into dishes. The strong impressions of Cage and Fieri carried the sketch, and the premise itself certainly was compelling. Politics were also fair game at Friday’s show. One of the finer moments of the evening was “Bedtimes Stories with The Bush Family.” The performance was chock full of strong impressions, with George W. Bush (known in this sketch as Captain America), Jeb Bush, Laura Bush, and Jenna Bush as featured characters in the act. The former president read children’s bedtime stories with his own twists. Where The Wild Things Are, Bush remarked, “is the Middle East.” Other books included Goodnight Moon, Oh, The Places You’ll Go, and The Giving Tree. Captain America, as G.W. insisted his brother call him, also explained the concept of drones to daughter Jenna. “They’re guardian angels,” he told her while inadvertently revealing he’d used them to spy on her when she was on dates with men. Not all of the sketches revolved around celebrity impressions. The evening also showed off the group’s ability with original character work, particularly in a sketch starring parents that talked and behaved like teens—they texted each other from
different rooms and sought advice from their teenaged son about their relationship. They used “okay like” to start nearly every sentence and used “literally” very liberally. In the end, it was revealed to be an act to scare off their son’s friends. One of the funniest moments of the night came from a sketch titled “That 2010s Show.” The imaginary future television show incorrectly used contemporary slang like “turnt up” and “ratchet” in inappropriate ways. The future narrator shared ironic jokes with the intended future audience—the segment played with nostalgia, remarking how simple times were before war with Russia. The troupe also joked about how there were still fish in the ocean. The family had their friends “Mrs. and Mrs. Lesbian” over for dinner, and
commented on how quaint a time it was before gays had equal rights. The final sketch of the night also dealt with the issue of equal rights. Set on an army base, the sketch dealt with the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in the military. The performance followed a truly exceptional soldier whose skills ranged from flying planes to sharpshooting as a master sniper, who also happened to be gay. While it took a while, his commanding officers accepted his sexuality and they shared a hug. The 40-minute show was packed with ideas, showing off the range of the group. The comedy group showed off a nuanced understanding of its craft, working tactfully with impressions and original characters, making it funny, while keeping it smart. n
Emily Fahey / Heights Editor
ward the magazine in question. The book’s white cover features a quote on the back, from which the magazine’s name is derived, “You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she’s not deadly. She’s beautiful, and she’s laughing.” Gracing the front cover is a beautiful painting by Elizabeth Connaughton, A&S ’14. The “Symbolic SelfPortrait,” an image of a woman holding two children gleefully, is accompanied by more intriguing artwork inside. This edition is the largest to date, a continuation of recent developmental trends. According to the editor-in-chief, Ericka Schubert, A&S ’14, The Laughing Medusa is intended to be a safe space in which the work of female writers can be celebrated. Over the years the magazine has gained greater exposure. As a result, the 13 councilwomen who determine which submissions are accepted have the luxury of including more qualified works as the frequency of their submission increases. The magazines are currently distributed throughout campus, in places where other publications can be found. n
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6 THE HEIGHTS APRIL 28, 2014
By d, w o D Ryan ts Heigh Staff
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he Drowsy Chaperone is one big wink. It’s a show within a show. It’s a commentary on musicals and memory, and it just so happens to be really funny. The show, directed by Stuart Hecht of the theatre department, starts with Man in Chair, played by Andrew Gaffney, A&S ’16, with an inviting twitch. He knows the audience is looking right at him, and he looks , or more often talks, back. This man has the blues, for no particular reason he admits. His sure cure is a bit of nostalgia. He harkens back to Broadway in the roaring ’20s and his favorite musical, The Drowsy Chaperone. So, he sets the needle to the famed and fictitious LP of Gable and Stein’s 1928 Broadway hit The Drowsy Chaperone. The cozy little kitchen set where the show begins opens up into a wide, bright space. It’s what a room in Jay Gatsby’s house might have looked like, with a rising grand staircase and colorful columns. The Man toting the audience along is whipped away from the dreary present into the world of The Drowsy Chaperone, filled with characters and show-stopping numbers. The Man introduces this new cast and the fairly straightforward plot. Broadway starlet Janet van de Graaf (Sarah Winglass, A&S ’14) is set to give up performing and marry the suave and filthy rich Robert Martin (David Makransky, A&S ’17). Of course, things fall apart and unexpected developments arise along the way. The show proceeds with its colorful cast of characters. The Drowsy Chaperone herself is played by Samantha Goober, A&S ’15. The goofy hostess Mrs. Tottendale is played by Caroline Portu, A&S ’16, alongside Jake Alexander, A&S ’14, who plays her stiff butler Underling. Andrew Troum, A&S ’16, plays the groom’s excitable yet forgetful best man George, while Kyle Brown, A&S ’14, plays a dim Eu ro p e a n l o th a r i o Adolpho. Ryan Cooper, A&S ’16, stars as
a gruff Broadway producer played and the role of Kitty is played by Karalyn Hutton, A&S ’16. The fictional ‘Drowsy’ unfolds with fun notes and annotations from the Man as he stops and starts the record player to give the audience inside info on the fictional actors who originated the Broadway ensemble. The Drowsy Chaperone doesn’t just break the fourth wall, but builds it back up then delights in smashing it again. This only makes the performances of the ensemble that more impressive. Each isn’t playing a character, but the actor who plays the character. And in a show full of fun musical numbers, everyone gets in on the action. Winglass, as Janet van de Graaf, is every bit the starlet in “Show Off.” Goober as the Drowsy Chaperone is hilarious in her bumbling, rousing anthem “As We Stumble Along.” The Drowsy Chaperone is the often misunderstood, ever-ambitious NBC sitcom Community as a musical. Like that reference, not all the show’s jokes hit the roof. Some sail over heads. Some go straight to the gut. And the performers play the jokes with a knowing wink. They let the audience in on the joke, which only makes it more enjoyable. It’s easy to get caught up in ‘The Drowsy Chaperone’ within the actual Drowsy Chaperone. The musical numbers proceed at a brisk pace, and that’s the point: that the audience members continually forget that they’re not really watching a musical, but what one lonely Man imagines it might look like. The issue in The Drowsy Chaperone isn’t whether Robert Martin and Janet van de Graaf will get married or not. The Drowsy Chaperone is about a man with the blues, who refuses to answer his phone and deal with real life. Instead, he
takes the audience into the world of the musical. That’s where the heart of the show lies, and it rests on the performance of Gaffney as Man in Chair. Gaffney with his clever annotations carries the play. He’s the eccentric gatekeeper of the stage. He’s always in the action, sometimes to the side, sometimes behind but always there, visibly delighted as his favorite characters play out his favorite musical. In the back of their minds, the audience members know the show is building to the moment when The Drowsy Chaperone will end, leaving Gaffney sitting alone in that tiny little room. Gaffney owns the moment like he has all night as he searches and stumbles for the words to make sense of his ever present blues. The Drowsy Chaperone finds itself in a difficult place between the musical’s optimism and the Man’s blues. The Man stumbles in his little kitchen for some reconciliation. He begins a reprisal of “As We Stumble Along.” But then his little room splits apart again, and Makransky as Robert Martin pokes his head out with a wicked grin. Out comes the rest of the ensemble, and for the first time in the show, the players don’t ignore their delightful narrator, to his evident delight. They join in on his reprisal.It may not solve all the blues with which the Man is plagued, but it’s just the right message to send off. Sure, life is hard and musicals are silly, but sometimes they come together just right.
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Twenties-inspired musical brings laughs to Robsham
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EMILY SADEGHIAN / HEIGHTS EDITOR
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MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2014
Enjoy the World Cup sans shock
CONNOR MELLAS On Saturday night, or more accurately, during one of those murky hours between Saturday night and Sunday morning, my friend—cough, cough—got moderately electrocuted. It happened in a basement—naturally, as basements are largely just pits of despair filled with danger, spiders, and crushed Solo cups after midnight—and wide-eyed, youthlike curiosity and New England weather patterns were to blame. My friend, soaking wet thanks to another beautiful night of 40-degree spring monsooning, spied a giant, beckoning lever, and pulled said instrument of terror to see what would happen. Out went the power and numb went his arm. It took a bit of time, but the right side of his body started moving at full speed again eventually, and as the pins and needles faded, an important message lingered in my—er, his—slightly singed brain: electricity is no joke, safety haters be damned. So, because I am a servant of the public good, and because this is a sports column, I’ve created a very thin link between two mostly unrelated phenomena, with the intent to better the world we live in through a simple dos and don’ts manual. Without further ado, I present the first ever Haters’ Guide To Electrical Safety And The World Cup. (The World Cup electrifies people in a figurative sense. It’s pretty weak, I know.) DO: Shamelessly embrace The World Cup. On Thursday, June 12, 32 national teams will compete in the biggest single-event sporting competition and Coca Cola marketing binge in the world. Regardless of whether or not you know Cristiano Ronaldo from Ronaldinho or a sweeper from a keeper, hop on the Rio bandwagon—FIFA.com estimates that 715.1 million people watched the final match of the 2006 FIFA World Cup, so you’ll be in good company. The World Cup unites countries from the far reaches of the world in the pursuit of soccer’s greatest prize, creating heartbreak, legends, villains, and heroes every four years. Key phrase to fake your way through a conversation: “Obviously Spain has the talent to make a run, but don’t you think that Del Bosque’s system has been figured out by now?” DON’T: Tamper with a wall outlet. According to Electrical Safety Foundation International, nearly seven children are treated in hospital emergency rooms each day as a result of injuries sustained from tampering with a wall outlet. DO: Prep for the tournament by spending an inhumane number of hours playing FIFA 14. If you’re new to international soccer and want to find an easy way to get caught up, download roster updates, disregard your family, friends, and personal health, and play FIFA for hours on end. It’s scientifically proven that via osmosis and mind-numbing repetition, you will learn player names and gain the ability to produce a weird quasi-British accent. Key phrase: “Five minutes of stoppage time? What, is Sir Alex Ferguson the ref?” DON’T: Approach high-voltage wires unless you know for certain that the power is off. DO: Pledge your allegiance to the stars and stripes. The U.S. has been cast into the Sarlacc pit of tournament pairings—the infamous group of death with Germany, Portugal, and Ghana—but it’s not an entirely hopeless fate. Jurgen Klinsmann’s boys can take a loss to Germany and still make it through if they can scrap a draw with their nemesis Ghana and beat Portugal—but that will mean stopping Ronaldo, and the only easy way to do that
See Haters’ Guide, C2
Learning To Win GRAHAM BECK / HEIGHTS SENIOR STAFF
The Eagles pulled off their first three-game sweep of an ACC opponent this season over Maryland BY JOHNNY CAREY Heights Staff After sweeping Friday’s doubleheader, the Boston College baseball team looked for its first ACC series sweep in two years on Sunday. It was a special day at Shea Boston College 5 Field, as the Eagles Maryland 2 h o n o re d A m e r i c a’s finest in the team’s second annual Wounded Warrior Game. The team sported red, white, and blue American flag jerseys, honoring New Hampshire native and retired Army Staff Sgt. Erick Millette, who threw out the first pitch alongside retired Marine Ryan Casavant. BC baseball’s military ties run deep, as the team’s home, Shea Field, is named after longtime Naval Commander John Joseph Shea, for whom the USS Shea was also named.
Jeff Burke got the nod for the Eagles, still searching for his first win of the season in his 11th start. Maryland’s starter Jake Drossner on the other hand, entered Sunday with an unblemished 4-0 record in seven starts. On paper, it should have been pretty clear the direction in which this pitching matchup would go. No one told Burke, apparently. Both pitchers looked strong early on, inducing a seemingly endless string of ground balls. The Eagles broke through briefly in the second inning, however, thanks to some sloppy fielding by the Terrapins. With two outs in the inning, Tom Bourdon ripped a line drive down the right field line, reaching second base easily on a standup double. With Bourdon on second, Drossner was able to induce what should have been an inning-ending ground ball to first base—as a few fans in Boston of all places pointed out, however, LaMonte
Wade “Buckner’d” and saw the ball trickle through his legs into right. Bourdon, hustling all the way, gave BC an early 1-0 lead. In the fourth inning, BC managed to push across another run to take a 2-0 lead. Joe Cronin led off the inning with a groundball single through the hole between short shop and third base. Chris Shaw, who has been on an absolute tear as of late, followed up Cronin’s single, reaching second on a single and an error. With runners on second and third with no outs, Michael Strem scored Cronin on a chopper to the shortstop. Burke was without a doubt the story of the game for the Eagles. He was exceptional on the mound for the Eagles, finishing with only two hits allowed over eight innings. Maryland hitters looked confused at the plate all afternoon, constantly getting on top of the ball and weakly spraying the ball in the infield. Heading into
See Baseball, C3
BC can easily afford the upcoming NCAA reforms
AUSTIN TEDESCO The NCAA did something smart last week. It was desperate, sure, and incredibly overdue, but smart nonetheless. Its board of directors endorsed a plan that would give the five power conferences—The ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, and SEC—the autonomy to implement their own unique rules based on the significantly larger amount of revenue generated primarily by their football and basketball programs, according to the Associated Press. If the plan is approved by college
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presidents and athletics directors via a two-thirds vote later this year, then some of the larger concerns posed by the unionization movement at Northwestern and the efforts of organizations like the National Collegiate Players Association (NCPA) might finally be addressed. Most notably, the five conferences can decide to allow schools to cover the full cost of attendance for scholarship athletes—which current athletic scholarships fall short of by only providing aid for tuition and fees, room and board, and books—and require guaranteed medical coverage for sportsrelated injuries, even if the injury continues to affect the player after exhaustion of eligibility. That’s going to cost a lot of money. The question is inevitably going to arise if schools, especially power five schools with relatively smaller revenue totals like Boston College, can afford those kinds of
Lacrosse: Tar Heels knock out BC UNC bounced the Eagles out of the first round of the ACC Tournament.............................C4
costs. The answer is absolutely yes. BC athletic director Brad Bates was asked around this time last year, as Ed O’Bannon’s lawsuit against the NCAA was picking up steam, if he saw a way in which proposed changes to the current system to better compensate college athletes could work. “I think anything is on the table depending on what the outcome of the lawsuit is,” Bates said. “The challenge, of course, is there’s only a very small handful of athletic departments across the country that generate a profit every year, very few. So, the rest of the schools are heavily reliant on institutional subsidies, and so anything that increases the institutional subsidies is obviously problematic.” And that’s true. While the athletic department stated in its 2011-12 Equity in Athletics Data Report that it broke
Softball: Eagles cruise past Cavaliers
The Eagles swept Virginia convincingly in their weekend series...........................................C2
even, with revenues and expenses totaling around $66 million, those revenue numbers include an unknown but likely significant amount of institutional subsidies from the University. So, if BC has to rely on institutional subsidies to keep the athletic department running, how is it going to afford an extra $3,500-a-year cost of attendance hit for full-scholarship athletes as well as whatever the cost will be to guarantee medical coverage? Well, the system needs to change. College athletics is the only major American institution wherein the workforce (the players) start off with a miniscule amount of rights, and then the people in charge slowly add benefits and improvements when they think it’s appropriate. Schools have argued for years
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The Heights
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Monday, April 28, 2014
University begins project to replace Newton turf By Marly Morgus Assoc. Sports Editor After nine years of use, the playing surface on Newton Campus’ field hockey field is being replaced. The project is a routine one, as the projected life of a turf field is usually between eight and 10 years, with this year’s replacement coming right in the middle of that window. While the surface is used by the varsity field hockey team as its home field, the space is used by several other organizations on campus, including but not limited to club field hockey and lacrosse as well as intramural sports. While the old turf was not overdue for replacement, there were quality concerns that encouraged the University to act when it did. “It had definitely come to the point where the seams were kind of starting to
spread, there had started to be gaps, so it was really starting to becoming a danger for any students or athletes on the field,” said field hockey head coach Ainslee Lamb. “So I think that was a motivating factor, just that it was becoming to be dangerous to be on the field.” Over the course of a turf ’s useful life, it can be expected that the surface will harden, as the one on Newton Campus did, providing an extra element of risk for students and athletes using the facility. “We’re definitely more aware of it,” Lamb said. “I, as a coach, am more aware that as the turf gets older that it’s harder on their shins. We’re fortunate that we haven’t had any major injuries. The other thing is, because we water the turf before we play on it, it does soften it a little bit, but the other kids going on there, that’s probably harder on them than it is on us.” The University, rather than the ath-
The dangers of pulling the elusive lever From Haters’ Guide, C1 Emily Fahey / Heights Editor
The turf field on Newton Campus that hosts the field hockey team is being replaced. letic department, is sponsoring the project, likely because of the wide use outside of varsity athletics that the field sees. The turf and the additional layer of padding is being ripped up, leaving the original layer of asphalt below to be covered by new, fresher padding and Astroturf. On top of the surface being replaced, the project includes an upgrade to the watering system that is used by the field hockey team to wet the turf before practices and games. “The company before only put four in, and at times the field was half wet and half dry, that’s really bad and that increases the
danger for athletes, because you have different shoes for wet turf than you would a dry turf, and if you’re going through a wet turf with a lot of cleats on the bottom of your shoe and you step onto dry turf, it can really increase your potential to get injured because you’re going to grab a lot,” Lamb said. While the old watering system had just four sprinkler heads, the upgrade will double that number with six major heads and two smaller ones. n Asst. Sports Editor Alex Fairchild contributed to this story.
Eagles complete sweep of Virginia on Senior Day By Alex Fairchild Asst. Sports Editor After Nicole D’Argento’s pitch made contact with Tory Speer’s glove, a pop rang out, and the pitcher ran down to meet her catcher just in front of home plate. The two exchanged words of motivation in between batters, and once Speer turned to head back behind the plate, she yelled, “Nice pitch!” Boston College softball’s source of senior leadership came to the forefront for the Eagles on Senior Day. Speer is one of those players who does things that cannot be recorded on a stat sheet, though her contribution to the team is noted there. Her 33 runs, 10 homers, and 42 RBIs led the team coming into Sunday’s contest. Speer is also the type of catcher that looks to pick off a runner at first on a 1-1 count in the top of the second inning. “She’s the loudest kid in the dugout—captain, a leader, a good person, so she kind of gets everybody rallied up and making sure their energy is up,” said head coach Ashley Obrest after the team’s 4-1 win over Virginia. While the Eagles lagged for most of
matchup, everything changed when Speer led off the bottom of the sixth inning. Down by a run, she was able to get on base. Jordon Weed followed up with a trickler that was fielded by Virginia pitcher Aimee Chapdelaine. The righty swiveled her hips to rush a throw to second base looking to get Speer out, but her throw missed everything. When Speer rounded second, the ball was rolling into center field. The senior kept on trucking through the infield to score with ease. Her run leveled the game at 1-1 and swung the momentum in the Eagles’ favor. Jessie Daulton followed up the run with a sacrifice bunt that advanced Weed to third. Taylor Coroneos was walked and Tatiana Cortez stepped into the batter’s box. While the freshman is hitting just .220 this season, nine of her 26 hits have been home runs. With runners on first and second, Cortez worked her magic again, blasting a screamer to left-center field that cleared the fences. Her three-run shot gave the Eagles an advantage they would not relinquish, ensuring a sweep of the Cavaliers. The implosion of Chapdelaine, who had been lights out before the game entered its sixth frame was key, as the Eagles began to
break her down. “I think we kind of knew what she was going to throw us—same thing as yesterday,” Speer said. “We watched some film this morning.” While Speer’s team was able to make contact with Chapdelaine’s pitches for the first few innings, BC found it hard to get runners in scoring position. “Finally, the balls that we were hitting finally dropped and they made a few errors here or there and that kind of gave us the momentum and we ran away with it,” Speer said. The sweep was the Eagles’ first of the year, and it means three more victories to boost BC’s progression as a squad. “It’s a hard thing to do,” Obrest said. “Our pitchers are essentially facing their batters maybe 12 times, so you only have so many pitches and so many different ways you can set up hitters, so by the third game you really gotta get creative and keep them on their toes.” D’Argento had a bit of difficulty in the early going, but was able to lock down after the Eagles conceded Virginia’s only run in the top of the fourth inning. Lindsay Mayer’s blast
over the head of Megan Cooley was enough for the shortstop to get second, before she advanced to third on a fielder’s choice. Megan Harris popped out to deep right field, and Mayer tagged up on third before plating. The senior pitcher recovered, though, throwing smoke to Speer to down the Cavaliers 1, 2, 3. BC’s sweep started on Saturday when it beat the Cavaliers 5-1 in the first game of the doubleheader. D’Argento struck out six of the first eight opponents she faced, before Speer became the all-time program leader in home runs, with 38. Three singles from Daulton, Cortez, and Madison Paulson earned the Eagles three runs to build their advantage. Weed picked up her 10th victory of the year in the second meeting between the two sides, which BC won 9-1. Eleven hits from the Eagles’ offense helped them dominate the `Hoos. A two-run homer from Speer got BC’s bats going in the first inning, before the Eagles extended their lead on a two-run double from Daulton. A four-run sixth for BC was highlighted by a three-run blast by Weed. Having won their last four three-game series in ACC play, the victories put the Eagles in sixth place in the conference. n
is to lock him in a refrigerator and drop it in the Mediterranean Sea. Key Phrase: “What ever happened to Freddy Adu?” DON’T: Use a fork or a knife to remove a piece of bread from the toaster or toaster oven. Metal is an infamous conductor of electricity. DO: Laugh. Laugh wholeheartedly when England crashes out of the group stages in some hilarious or frustrating fashion despite the fact that this, like every other World Cup year since 1966, is the Three Lions’ year. Phrase to know: “Poor Wayne Rooney.” DON’T: Leave a motor vehicle if a power line falls on it, unless there is a fire hazard. DO: Remember that anyone who picks Belgium to win the tournament is basing their opinion off of one friendly match, Eden Hazard, their admiration of waffles, FIFA 14, and a misplaced trust in Marouane Fellaini’s absurd hair cut. Additionally, it’s worth noting that anyone who picks France to win the World Cup is from France. Phrase to know: “How about that Lukaku guy? Everton sure wants to hang on to him.” DON’T: Seek shelter under a tree during a lightning storm. Trees and other tall objects are commonly struck by lightning. DO: Observe the similarities between FIFA President Sepp Blatter and Emperor Palpatine—Blatter may be building a Death Star in Qatar. Phrase to know: “Corruption, corruption, corruption.” There you have it, simple rules for taking on two electrifying parts of life. Observe the don’ts so you can make it to the dos, and of course, you will enjoy the World Cup most if you remember the most obvious don’t of all: DON’T: Pull mysterious basement levers while soaking wet.
Connor Mellas is the Sports Editor for The Heights. He can be reached at sports@bcheights.com
Deflated coaching salaries could provide relief for student athletes From NCAA, C1
SPORTS in SHORT
that there just isn’t money in their budgets to compensate athletes any more than they already get, even though coaching salaries balloon every year, television contracts get fatter, and facilities upgrades happen left and right. It would be like your boss telling you that, although your specific performance had led to a 30 percent increase in revenue, the money was going to a new office space for the company and a new Porsche for him, while your minimum wage salary wouldn’t be increasing. But for some reason, this same process is okay in college sports. Just to clarify, BC is not explicitly making this argument or openly fighting against these measures. Based on all accounts, BC is actually very good about covering medical costs for its athletes when they are injured in sports-related activities. Anyway, back to the money. In 2012, BC spent more than $3.9 million on salaries for then-head football coach Frank Spaziani, then-basket-
ball coach Steve Donahue, hockey coach Jerry York, then-Director of Athletics Gene DeFilippo, and former basketball coach Al Skinner. Really, schools can’t find enough money for the athletes? Look right here. This would, in all likelihood, never happen, but if BC were to cut these salaries by 20 percent—essentially implementing a Players Fairness Tax—and stopped terminating contracts long before their completion (BC paid Skinner $1.77 million from 2010-2012 while also paying Donahue $2.73 million, even though I’m pretty sure only one of them can be the head basketball coach at a time), then it would’ve had more than $1.236 million to spend on its athletes. How much would it have cost to provide BC’s 164 male scholarships athletes and 187 female scholarship athletes with a $3,500 cost of attendance stipend? $1.229 million. If you run the same exercise for 2011, BC would have $1.22 million to spend and would need $1.172 million to give every scholarship athlete the $3,500 cost
ACC Women’s Lacrosse Standings Team
Conference
Overall
Maryland
6-1
18-1
Syracuse
6-1
17-1
North Carolina
5-2
14-4
Duke
3-4
9-7
Virginia
3-4
10-8
Boston College
3-4
12-5
Notre Dame
2-5
9-8
Virginia Tech
0-7
7-10
of attendance. And, that’s if you use this relatively high $3,500 cost of attendance figure and include male and female athletes from all sports, even the ones that don’t generate revenue, while also assuming every athlete receiving aid is on a full scholarship and would qualify for the cost of attendance money, which is most certainly not the case. Now, I know, I sound insane. If BC instituted a Players Fairness Tax, it would never be able to hire coaches competitively again. And if it never terminated contracts early, the men’s basketball team would only make the first or second round of the NCAA Tournament rather than finishing with an 8-24 record (sorry, low blow). But this is exactly how backwards the system is. Do these coaches and athletic directors really need to make between $600,000 and $1 million instead of between $480,000 and $800,000, when their labor force is asking for a few thousand extra dollars that essentially amount to cost of living expenses? Why did we decide that paying Al
Skinner more than $550,000 a year for three years not to work at BC is perfectly understandable, but guaranteeing lifetime medical coverage for athletes injured in Alumni Stadium or Conte Forum just doesn’t work? Why is the market value of these highly paid men determined with their, uh, what’s the word—oh yeah, employees—being capped at a minimum wage? No, BC could not cavalierly institute this policy on its own. It would get crushed in the market for coaches and athletic directors if it was the only school with a Players Fairness Tax, and, yes, a tax like that is not even legal. But it shows that, when these decisions are eventually put to a vote, affordability is a horrible argument. Affordability is only an issue because the market is completely and unfairly skewed. And if you don’t want to take the money away from the coaches and ADs, take it from the television revenue. In its new TV deal with ESPN, which went into effect July 1 of 2012, the ACC secured a revenue increase of about $4
Austin Tedesco is an editor for The Heights. He can be reached at sports@ bcheights.com
Quote of the Week
Numbers to Know
10
million per school per year. But that was two years ago. BC might need that money to keep paying Skinner, or to keep paying Spaziani after his contract was terminated early, or to keep paying Donahue after his contract was also terminated early, or to pay the reported $500,000 buyout it took to get new basketball coach Jim Christian to Chestnut Hill. Yeah, that makes sense. I’m glad our priorities are straight. I cut Bates a little short in that earlier quote. Here’s the second half of it: “How are we taking the revenue we’re generating and reinvesting it back in our students? That’s really the critical question that needs to be answered because the bulk of that money should be invested in ways that maximize the development of our students while they’re on our campus.” Am I still the one who sounds insane?
“He changes our lineup. He changes our team ... I never lost faith in who that kid is and who he’s going to become as a player.”
The number of games in Chris Shaw’s Emily Fahey / Heights Editor current hitting streak. Emily Fahey / Heights EditorCupicatuidet L. Fulessedo, querfecta, nihilicii ineri fic
39 Tory Speer’s school record for number of home runs as an Eagle, set this weekend.
70 The number of points that Covie Stanwick has in 16 games played this season, leading the Eagles in that category.
Mike Gambino on Chris Shaw and his contributions. —
THE HEIGHTS
Monday, April 28, 2014
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Eagles take doubleheader on back of dominant first-inning performance BY MARLY MORGUS Assoc. Sports Editor As Chris Shaw stepped into the batter’s box, the Maryland Terrapins made a choice that you hardly ever see in Boston College baseball. The Boston College 7 catcher extendMaryland 4 ed his arm way out to the side, far clear of the strike zone, and played catch with Mike Shawaryn for four straight pitches, intentionally walking Shaw and advancing a runner into scoring position. That was the way it was going for the Terps—with Shaw coming up to bat holding two home runs under his belt in the doubleheader, they needed to slow his damage. Ultimately, it was to no avail, as Shaw ended up four for seven on the day, and the Eagles took the second game of Friday’s doubleheader by a score of 7-4, completing their sweep of the day and guaranteeing the series win. The doubleheader, though not originally scheduled, came as a result of forecasted rain on Saturday. The Eagles did not have to change their game plan, though. “We keep our pitching the same, our guys do a good job,” said head coach Mike Gambino. “We keep our starters the same, trust that bullpen, and play game one then play game two.” Andrew Chin started on the mound for the Eagles, but looked shaky at first, hitting Maryland’s first batter. The Eagles escaped the top of the first without giving up a hit or
a run, though, and their defensive effort was rewarded in the bottom of the first. Five straight batters at the top of the order for BC had hits, Gabriel Hernandez, Shaw, and Michael Strem each had doubles, while Joe Cronin and Blake Butera had singles of their own. The half-inning was reminiscent of its game one counterpart, when the Eagles scored four runs on four hits. “I think it was guys going up and being aggressive and attacking fastballs,” Gambino said. “And in both first innings, they got fastballs to hit and hammer them.” It was not until the sixth batter came up to the plate that Maryland recorded its first out, but then it had three straight, and the Eagles left one on base. The Terrapins had their first hit of the game when leadoff batter Jose Cuas made it to first on the first at-bat of the second, but Maryland would exit the inning with two left on base after Chin walked Anthony Papio. The Eagles were hitless in the bottom of the second and left the score at 4-0, BC. In the top of the third, Maryland got on the board, scoring two and cutting the Eagles’ lead in half. Shaw had a single-shot home run in the bottom of the third to make it 5-2. It was his second home run of the day before being intentionally walked in his next at-bat in the bottom of the fifth and was left on base at the end of the inning. “He’s fun to watch hit right now, isn’t he,” Gambino said. “He changes our lineup. He changes our team … [He] didn’t have the
year last year that he would have like to have, and he had a little slump in the middle, but I never lost faith in who that kid is and who he’s going to become as a player.” In the top of the sixth, southpaw Jesse Adams replaced Chin on the mound, Chin’s totals for the game finishing at two runs, five hits, and four strikeouts. The Terrapins quickly took advantage of the pitching change, putting up three hits and two runs and cutting the deficit to one on Adams before he was taken out in favor of Luke Fernandes after two-thirds of an inning. Fernandes closed out the half inning stranding two Terrapin runners on base. In the bottom of the sixth, the Eagles extended their lead once again, when Hernandez drove in Hennessy, and then Butera brought home designated hitter Johnny Adams before the side was retired, bringing the game to its final score of 7-4. Fernandes finished his two and one third innings, allowing a total of two hits and no runs, before John Nicklas came in to close in the top of the ninth. The Terrapins put three runners on base in the ninth, as one was hit by Nicklas’ pitch and two others singled, but the Eagles escaped the inning unscathed. “It’s a team learning to close out games… They didn’t really barrel anything, [Nicklas] was throwing the ball great,” Gambino said. “It’s a young team that’s really playing well, that’s learning how to win baseball games, like we saw today, and also learning how to sweep a team,” Gambino said. “And that’s what you’re going for.”
EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR
Andrew Chin started and pitched five innings, giving up just two runs on five hits.
BC finishes off first series sweep of season From Baseball, C1
EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR
BC’s sweep of Maryland marked the Eagles’ first series sweep since April of 2012, when the Eagles beat conference rival Wake Forest.
the seventh inning, Burke even had a no-hitter intact. Drossner exited after 6.2 strong innings. Maryland’s bullpen proved ineffective, however, allowing BC all the extra cushion it would need. The big lefty was relieved by Kevin Mooney, who was on the mound for the beginning of a big BC inning in the bottom of the eighth. He exited after loading the bases, making way for lefty Alex Robinson to face Shaw. Shaw delivered once again, scorching a single into center field, plating two Eagles and upping the team’s lead to 4-0. After Shaw’s clutch hit, Robinson appeared shaken on the mound, allowing two consecutive walks and gifting BC another run. He exited after failing to record an out, once again with the bases loaded with Eagles. The Eagles couldn’t capitalize, but the damage was already done. The way Burke was throwing the ball, insurance runs appeared to be of little
consequence. In the top of the ninth, Burke finally proved to be human, allowing a leadoff walk and a long double to the first two batters of the inning. With Burke exiting to a standing ovation from the crowd at Shea Field, Adams looked to finish what his teammate started. The Terrapins wouldn’t go quietly, however, as Brandon Lowe roped a single into right, scoring their first run of the day. With no outs, it quickly became 5-1 with the bases loaded and the tying run at the plate. After a strikeout of the cleanup hitter, Shaw made a nice running catch in foul territory on a sacrifice fly to secure the second out. Still with the tying runner at the plate, Adams got him to line out to Bourdon in center, securing the first series sweep of the season for the Eagles. Until Friday, May 9, the BC baseball team will auction off their Stars and Stripes jerseys, with all proceeds from the sales benefitting the Wounded Warrior Project.
Eagles snap loss streak with win over Maryland BY AMANDA MEIER For The Heights After two consecutive losses to Northeastern and St. John’s, Boston College baseball arrived at the diamond ready to take a win against Maryland. Also a member of the ACC, Boston College 5 Maryland’s 9Maryland 1 12 conference record displayed more favorably compared to the Eagles’ 6-16. This did not stop BC from earning seven hits for five runs in the 5-1 victory over the Terrapins. Led by sophomore right fielder Chris Shaw, the Eagles took an early lead over Maryland, scoring four runs in just the first inning. After Gabriel Hernandez reached on a hit-by-pitch, shortstop Joe Cronin doubled to left-center field to get things going. With two men on base, the hard-hitting Shaw smacked a three-run home run, increasing his hitting streak to eight games. The Eagles scored yet another run on a wild pitch, bringing in Michael Strem for the fourth run of the inning. Pitcher John Gorman took the mound in the top of the second with a comfortable 4-0 lead. Maryland went three-and-out after giving up four runs to the Eagles. Terrapins’ pitcher Jake Stinnett continued to struggle in the bottom of the second. After walking the first man, Hernandez, Stinnett
nailed Cronin in the head with a high pitch. Nevertheless, the Eagles could not use these extra bases to their advantage, and they left the inning with two men stranded. This inability to work the bases was a pattern for the Eagles—with the exception of two brilliant homers, BC failed to advance many of its runners. Both teams went three-and-out in the third inning. Gorman walked two men in the fourth inning, and with a fielder’s choice to first base, these two advanced to second and third base, setting them up in scoring position. With two outs, Maryland batter Jose Cuas reached first base on a dropped third strike, allowing a runner from third to score. This was the first and final run scored for the Terrapins. The Eagles responded fruitlessly in the bottom of the fourth as Hernandez had a clean line drive single up the middle. He managed to reach second on a ground-out, followed by third base on a wild pitch, but he was stranded on base with the close of the inning. Maryland came close to making a comeback in the fifth inning, starting off with a walk and then a single by Anthony Papio. The next batter succeeded in advancing runners to second and third base with a sac bunt, but the inning ended with a fielder’s choice tagging out the scoring runner at home and Gorman striking out the final
EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR
Sophomore Chris Shaw (No. 24) had two home runs and was six for 11 with seven RBIs in the Eagles’ three games over the weekend. batter, preventing the Eagles from giving up any more runs. Shaw and his hot bat struck again in the bottom of the fifth as he hit a long double to right field. As the story seemed to go all day, though, the Eagles could not advance him further—three consecutive strikeouts ended the inning with Shaw stranded on second. BC allowed a man to steal second after walking in the top of the sixth, ending Gorman’s job for the day. Righty pitcher Mike King came in to close the game for the Eagles.
In the bottom of the sixth, Hernandez continued his busy day at the plate with a single up the middle—he later stole second with ease. Once again, BC ended the inning with one man stranded on base and no new runs on the board. Maryland’s offense was less impressive, as it went three-and-out again against King. Maryland put left-handed pitcher Tayler Stiles on the mound, and Cronin greeted him with a home run to left-center field. This was Cronin’s first home run of the season, putting the Eagles up 5-1. King allowed one hit in the top of the
eighth inning, but this was followed by a double play to end the inning scoreless for Maryland. Maryland failed to come back in its next attempt at the plate despite a hard ground ball single up the middle and fielding error by BC. The game ended with a textbook double play by the Eagles, resulting in a 5-1 victory over Maryland and a save for King. The Eagles finished the game with seven hits, five runs, two home runs, and only one error—they could confidently enter game two of the doubleheader with a solid win under their belt.
THE HEIGHTS
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Monday, April 28, 2014
EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR
KEY STATS
4 7 4
QUOTE OF THE DAY
The number of goals scored by Mikaela Rix The combined goal total in the first 10 minutes of play The total number of saves by the two BC goalies
“The season’s not over, and there’s a lot to look forward to and a lot of time to get better, so I told my girls that you can be disappointed, but tomorrow we have to get back on our feet and learn how to be better.”
- Acacia Walker, Women’s Lacrosse Head Coach
UNC crushes BC’s ACC Tournament run BY CONNOR MELLAS Sports Editor There was a chance, but time was slipping away. The scant warmth of the sun had yielded to the bitter 14 UNC darkness fringBoston College 10 ing Alumni Stadium, but under the blazing Thursday night lights, the Boston College women’s lacrosse team was relentless, desperately trying to scrape back into its game against the University of North Carolina. After falling into a six-goal fissure in the second half, BC had scored three unanswered goals in less than three minutes to make the score 13-10. And so, with just a few minutes remaining, the Eagles had a free position shot and the chance to pull the game within two goals. The BC bench huddled and hopped, their excitement palpable, and junior Covie Stanwick stared at the net, focused, and took the shot. Stanwick already had two goals on the night, but the hat trick wasn’t meant to be—she couldn’t find twine, and it was over for the Eagles: The Tar Heels ran out the clock and buried an empty-netter to knock BC out of the first round of the ACC Tournament 14-10. “It was a tough loss for us—I think we were pretty prepared for the game, but Carolina’s just very, very strong,” said BC head coach Acacia Walker. “They have so many threats,
they have so much speed, and we have to put a 60-minute game together to beat a team like that.” The battle between the maroon and blue jerseys began as a run-and-gun shootout—seven goals were scored in the first 10 minutes—but settled into a possession-heavy game determined by defensive ability. While both teams scored dynamic goals highlighted by ankle-crushing spin moves and basketballesque alley-oop put downs, UNC’s defense and goaltending proved superior to BC’s. “We won the little battles, like the ground balls, [we] didn’t have too many turnovers, and [we] capitalized on our opportunities,” said UNC head coach Jenny Levy. “I thought on the offensive end we controlled the tempo, we played the way we wanted to play. On the defensive end I thought we did a great job playing a team game, and between the lines we cleared the ball effectively.” BC dominated the early moments of the game, scoring three of the first four goals before UNC stormed back with a pair of goals from senior Abbey Friend and a score from freshman Maggie Bill. As the game settled into a steadier rhythm, UNC began to build an edge. The Eagles were patient in the zone, but the Tar Heels’ defense was excellent, sticking like glue as BC worked the ball around time and time again, methodologically taking away shooting lanes and limiting clear-cut opportunities. “Like any game, you’ve got to get into it,
ROUND U P
and both teams are feeling each other out, what the defensive game plan looks like, and then settling in,” Levy said. “The first couple of goals I wasn’t really concerned, I thought we just needed to settle down and make some adjustments.” Freshman goalie Caylee Waters played the first half in net for UNC, making two saves on nine shots, and sophomore Megan Ward had a dominant second frame for the Tar Heels, making six saves on 12 BC shots, a few of which came from point-blank. Junior Mikaela Rix led the Eagles’ offense, scoring four times and assisting once, and her UNC counterpoint was Friend, who took BC for five goals and a helper. The BC defense struggled throughout the game, and BC’s five second period turnovers didn’t help the cause. UNC’s attackers shredded BC defensively, and both Eagles goalies struggled—Emily Mata and Zoe Ochoa combined to make four saves on the night. When the clock reached zero, the Eagles were 12-5 and had fallen victim to the conference death trap again. BC’s hopes of becoming ACC champions are over, but despite the loss, the Eagles’ campaign will continue when the NCAA Tournament comes around. “The season’s not over, and there’s a lot to look forward to and a lot of time to get better,” Walker said. “So I told my girls that you can be disappointed, but tomorrow we have to get back on our feet and learn how to be better.”
EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR
Mikaela Rix had four goals and one assist in the Eagles’ eventual 14-10 loss to UNC.
BY ALEX FAIRCHILD | ASST. SPORTS EDITOR
TENNIS
TRACK
ROWING
M. GOLF
SAILING
Af ter defeating P i tt sb u rg h i n th e first round of the ACC Tournament, the Boston College women’s tennis team crashed out of its conference competition in a 4-0 defeat to Notre Dame. The Eagles were handicapped from the start, as head coach Nigel Bentley did not have a complete lineup, which gave Julie Vrabel a victory by default. Lexi Borr and Jessica Wacnik had a lead against the No. 15 doubles pairing in the country, though the match went unfinished. Men’s tennis failed to get out of the first round of its ACC Tournament battle with Clemson. The Tigers beat the Eagles in both singles and doubles play.
The men’s track team placed fifth at Stonehill College’s Skyhawk invitational. Freshman Joseph Arquillo’s win in the 3000-meter steeplechase highlighted the team’s day, while freshman Brian McDavitt finished third in the 5000-meter. Jack Hennessy’s second-place finish in the 500-meter was just three-tenths of second shy of a victory. Freshman Darren James finished just behind his senior teammate. BC’s women’s track team finished in second place. Sophomore Carly Daniel won the 100-meter dash, finishing with a personal record time of 12.4 seconds. Freshman Fallyn Boich won the javelin throw, hitting the 41.79meter mark on her throw.
The women’s rowing team’s varsity four beat out Northeastern and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by 15.1 seconds to win at the Eastern Sprints. BC’s tri-team regatta was held on the Charles River with calm water at the start, though it become choppy throughout the course with a 7-9 mph cross tailwind. The Eagles’ varsity eight lost out by 9.2 seconds to Northeastern, though the second varsity eight defeated both the Huskies and Engineers. BC’s varsity four B defeated Northeastern, finishing with a 4.9-second advantage. The team put out two boats, which beat MIT in the 3rd varsity eight race.
John Jackopsic led the way for the men’s golf team at the ACC Golf Championship, where he placed 21st. After shooting two over on the first day of the tournament, Jackopsic bounced back to shoot four under in the second round. The round consisted of six birdies, including three consecutive on holes 15, 16, and 17, as well as just two bogeys. The junior finished two over par in the third round to be par for the course in the tournament. BC came in last place out of the 12 teams. Georgia Tech won the tournament, and Ollie Schneiderjans won the tournament, shooting 12 under par.
The Eagles posted a third place finish at the New England Dinghy Championship. Yale won the conference championship regatta handily, with a score of 111. Dartmouth beat out the Eagles by one point in the standings. The Eagles’ finish qualifies them for the Coed National Championship in June. BC’s A division team of Raul Rios, Shelby Hamilton, and Christopher D wyer tallied 67 points for the team in the regatta, while William Bailey, Erika Reineke, Katherine Wysocki, Kathleen Driscoll, and Elizabeth Barnard sailed for the squad’s B division side.