The Heights 02/24/2014

For an inside look at BC baseball, softball, and lacrosse, see the Spring Sports Preview, B1 ‘CIRCLE MIRROR’

FIDDLE KID

ARTS & REVIEW

FEATURES Danny Gillis’ school spirit stems from century-long family tradition, C8

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BUMP IN THE ROAD SPORTS

The theatre department presented ‘Circle Mirror Transformation’ last weekend, A10

The men’s ice hockey team’s unbeaten streak is still alive, but its 11-game win streak ends, C1

HEIGHTS

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Monday, February 24, 2014

Vol. XCV, No. 11

BC AIDS Awareness Committee fundraises at ‘Acapelooza’

BY JENNIFER HEINE Heights Staff A cappella filled McGuinn on Thursday night as the Boston College AIDS Awareness Committee hosted its first annual Acapelooza.

Featuring musical groups The Dynamics, The Heightsmen of Boston College, Jammin’ Toast, The Sharps, and Against The Current, the event served as a fundraiser for Camp AmeriKids.

This foundation is a summer camp for young people aged eight to 16 who are living with HIV/AIDS and sickle cell disease.

Founded in 1995 by Robert C. Macauley, the eight-week program in Warwick, N.Y. allows inner-city children and teenagers living with these diseases to attend summer camp in a community with peers who understand their experiences.

In addition to traditional summer camp activities such as boating, arts and crafts, and even a talent show, Camp AmeriKids also provides medical care, with doctors and nurses who reside on the campgrounds, as well as a wellness team, which provides psychosocial support. Participants do not pay

for the program, which means that fundraisers are particularly important.

For the BC AIDS Awareness Committee, the event serves both to inform the BC community and address the struggles of those living with HIV/AIDS in the United States.

According to the organization’s president Ayman Bodair, A&S ’14, “HIV is a disease that affects 35 million people worldwide. Many people think that that disease can’t affect me here, in the BC bubble, in the United States of America. But the reality is 1.2 million people in the U.S. still have the disease today, even with the advent of medication and treatments.”

He and the e-board decided to focus on the plight of HIV-infected children for this particular fundraiser. “What HIV does is, it strips your body defenseless against pathogens,” Bodair said. “It leaves your immune system completely vulnerable, and unfortunately, it’s the most vulnerable among us who tend to get the disease, especially children.

“As a result, children born into families

See ‘Acapelooza,’ A4

EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR

A cappella groups filled McGuinn 101 last Thursday at Acapelooza, a musical performance hosted by the BC AIDS Awareness Committee.

Lowell Series continues to progress The Lowell Humanities Series at Boston College has showcased numerous internationally acclaimed writers and continues to host famous speakers

BY KENDRA KUMOR Heights Editor

GRAHAM BECK / HEIGHTS SENIOR STAFF

Poet Tracy K. Smith discussed her recent collection of poems ‘Life on Mars’ last Thursday.

For over half a century, the Lowell Humanities Series has brought famous writers from myriad backgrounds to Boston College. As one of the most successful lecture series on campus, the events have brought BC international attention.

With such acclaimed authors as Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, and Maya Angelou on the list of former speakers, attendees hold high expectations for future events.

“The emphasis at the beginning w a s m o r e h e av i l y o n p o e t s a n d fiction writers; over time the range of speakers has broadened into nonfiction, journalism, and other fields ,” said

Carlo Rotella, director of the Lowell Humanities Series and a professor in the English department in an email.

Rotella, in the first year of his three-year term as director of the series, hopes to continue to further the mission of the professor who created the program: Rev. Francis Sweeney, S.J. “Francis Sweeney knew a lot of prominent writers and wanted to bring them to campus,” Rotella said.

According to the Lowell Humanities Series’ website, Sweeney believed that “There is nothing like an author reading from his or her own works,” sparking the idea for the early installments of the series.

When actually planning an author’s event, there are several factors that determine the structure. “Poets and

Tracy K. Smith talks poetry, sci-fi literary inspiration

fiction writers will often read from their work, but I ask them to make sure to also talk about the work,” Rotella said.

“Some visitors really look forward to the Q and A , and they want to emphasize that. When Governor Patrick came a couple of years ago, he wanted to get to the Q and A as quickly as possible.”

A quick look at the series’ website will reveal the upcoming events for the entire semester.

“We also start planning well in advance to get our visitors’ work onto syllabi for that semester, so that there will be particular classes or other groups on campus who take a special interest in the visit,” he said.

See Lowell Series, B7

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Smith discussed her recent collection of poems ‘Life on Mars’

BY MICHELLE TOMASSI Heights Editor

Tracy K. Smith, a Pulitzer Prizewinning poet, proved Thursday evening that science fiction doesn’t just belong in the movies. Sponsored by Poetry Days and kicking off the Lowell Humanities Series this semester, Smith spoke about her most recent collection Life On Mars, which won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book. Smith has published two other books as well, and is currently a professor of creative writing at Princeton University.

The poems within Life On Mars experiment with imagination and space, both in a celestial and a metaphorical sense. Smith’s poems suggest a fascination with science fiction, but she admitted that the true sci-fi lover was her late father, a scientist who worked on the Hubble Telescope. His passing led her to explore questions of existence and reconciling the vast space of the universe with earthly experiences, resulting in a collection that bridges the limitless “out there” with the finite.

“I realized that being ‘out there’ helped in articulating the questions and anxieties that came as a result of grief,” she said. “It all came together in an eeri-

ly frightening way.” Smith explained that she never thought of herself as a sci-fi person, but her interest in science fiction movies combined with her father’s passion encouraged her translate those themes into poetry.

Smith began with a reading of poems that outwardly project that otherworldly experience, such as “SciFi,” “The Universe is a House Party,” and “The Weather in Space,” using metaphors of space in conjunction with human experience. Her poems ranged in form and subject matter, with some discussing questions of the intangible, such as “It&Co.,” with lines such as “We are a part of It. Not guests. / Is It us, or what contains us?” Smith recognized the “value and necessity of occasionally turning to form,” and as an example of formal structure, she read “The Speed of Belief ”—an elegy dedicated to her father.

Smith also look s to immediate sources for poetic motivation. “I often get a lot of inspiration to write from the news, and things that unsettle me, and things that challenge me,” she said. After reading stories about Somali pirates and realizing that mere acceptance of these events wasn’t enough, she decided to

See Smith, A4

PHOTO COURTESY OF BCPD

BCPD became the ninth college police department in the state to receive accreditation from the Massachusetts Police Accreditation Commission.

BCPD receives full MPAC accreditation

BY JULIE ORENSTEIN Assoc. News Editor The Boston College Police Department (BCPD) has formally received accreditation from the Massachusetts Police Accreditation Commission, becoming the ninth college police department in the state to achieve this status.

Three assessors from the commission reviewed BCPD’s policies in a two-day assessment in early November. The department was judged on whether it had

written complying policies and followed through with procedures that adhered to the policies. Following that review, the assessors suggested that the department receive accreditation, noting that BCPD had complied with more than 280 national standards and best practices.

An initial review last spring found that BCPD had already met more than 150 mandatory standards, and the department received certification. The 98 additional mandatory standards for accreditation were fulfilled by the time of the Novem-

ber review, along with 75 of 125 optional standards.

According to a press release from the department, areas that were assessed included patrol operations, administrative procedures, recruitment and selection, training and professional development, victim assistance, fiscal management, discipline, performance evaluation, crime prevention and investigations. The standards upon which the accreditation was based

See BCPD, A4

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Monday, February 24, 2014

things to do on campus this week

Digital Dubliners

1

Careers in Finance Panel

Today Time: 4:30 p.m.

Location: O’Neill Reading Room

The Arts & Sciences Dean’s Colloquium will feature English professor Joseph Nugent discussing a digital humanities project on James Joyce’s Dubliners, which was created by the 15 students in Nugent’s literature seminar on the book.

2

Tuesday Time: 7:30 p.m.

Location: Merkert 127

The Boston College Portfolio Challenge, Boston College Investment Club, and Finance Academy will host young BC alumni sharing their early experiences in the finance world working for firms such as Goldman Sachs and ABRY Partners.

“The Shadow of War” Wednesday Time: 5:30 p.m.

Location: Stokes S195

3

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times national security correspondent Mark Mazzetti will speak for the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy event. Mazzetti’s latest book on the CIA and U.S. special forces will be featured.

FEATURED EVENT

Horan examines relationships and ‘dating God’

BY CONNOR FARLEY News Editor “The core of a spiritual tradition is relationship,” said Daniel P. Horan, OFM. “Everything comes back to that.”

On Thursday night, the Church in the 21st Century Center of Boston College hosted Horan, a Franciscan priest and doctorate student at BC, to discuss intimacy and relationships in Catholic life through his talk Dating God. Horan—who has authored dozens of scholarly articles, published several books, and is a columnist for the national Catholic weekly America Magazine—has studied theology at both Boston University and Harvard University and is currently completing his Ph.D. in systematic theology at BC. The topic of Horan’s discussion centered on individual relationships with and contemplations of God for Christians, namely Catholics, and how human understanding has shaped the way people tend to communicate with God. “Every time we talk about or think about or contemplate our relationship with God, we have to think in human terms because that’s what we bring— our human experience,” he said. “I think God knows something about what it’s like to be a human being.”

Drawing from his own experiences as a Franciscan priest, Horan began the discussion on relating to God by refer-

GRAHAM BECK / HEIGHTS SENIOR STAFF

Horan’s talk focused on relationships and communicating with God in Catholic life. encing the works of Catholic philosopher St. Augustine of Hippo, and how his focus on God was adapted and varied by the Franciscan order.

“For St. Augustine the question was all about rightly-ordered loving—‘What do I love,’ ‘who do I love?’ I love my God,’” he said. “The switch in the Franciscan tradition I from the ‘what’ to the ‘how’—how do I love my God? It’s a question that’s really about relationship … it’s something that we share—something between God and us.”

According to Horan, all are in a relationship with God—a person’s mere existence, he said, can be interpreted as a sign

of God’s presence the lives of humans.

“Everybody—whether they’re conscious of it, whether they’re aware of it, whether they’re thinking about now or not—is in a relationship with God,” he said. “This idea of contingency is a sign of God’s love.

“Our relationship with God, whether we realize it or not, is always and everywhere a human relationship,” he said.

“Because just like everybody in your life, whether you’re really close to them or not … you bring your whole self. The same is true with God.” The way people view their relation-

POLICE BLOTTER

2/19/14-2/21/14

Wednesday, February 19

cident on Campanella Way.

8:56 a.m. - A report was filed regarding medical assistance provided to a BC employee in Maloney Hall.

5:13 p.m. - A report was filed regarding medical assistance provided to a BC student in the Quonset Hut. The student was later transported to a medical facility.

11:41 a.m. - A report was filed regarding a larceny from Corcoran Commons.

12:40 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a traffic accident on Brighton Campus.

6:14 p.m. - A report was filed regarding medical assistance provided to a BC student in the Lower Lots. The student was later transported to a medical facility by ambulance.

11:20 p.m. - A report was filed regarding the civil possession of marijuana in Keyes North Hall.

9:08 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a suspicious vehicle at 9 Lake Street.

2:46 a.m. - A report was filed regarding vandalism in Keyes Hall.

10:51 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a vehicle stop on Campanella Way.

Friday, February 21

Thursday, February 20

12:02 a.m. - A report was filed regarding an unsecured area at Hovey House.

1:35 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a traffic ac-

1:15 a.m. - A report was filed regarding medical

College Corner NEWS FROM UNIVERSITIES ACROSS THE COUNTRY

BY JULIE ORENSTEIN Assoc. News Editor Faculty members at the University of Illinois at Chicago initiated a two-day strike last Tuesday centered on the issue of higher salaries for non-tenured faculty.

Both tenured and non-tenured faculty joined together in 2012 to form the University of Illinois at Chicago United Faculty, a union that represents both groups. The union is asking the university to increase the minimum salary for non-tenured, full-time faculty members to $45,000 from the current $30,000.

They argue that the approximately 70 instructors who are currently earning $30,000 are earning less than a living wage in Chicago, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The university counters that the union’s demands are unaffordable for the state insitution, and is propsing a new contract that would include

ship with God, Horan noted, varies considerably.

While some regard God as a patriarchal figure, he said, others might interpret God as a friend or even a lover. The Franciscan tradition focuses on identifying and developing those relationships.

“The question, ‘How do I love when I love my God?’ presupposes that we have some sort of relationship with God, and I think that makes sense particularly if you take the Gospel seriously,” Horan said.

Horan also noted that throughout Christian tradition, God and other religious figures are often compared to parental images, with God representing the father and Mary the mother. This notion of a parental relationship with God, however, might not be ideal for those with who have had negative or abusive parental relationships.

“If you’ve had bad experience with family members—if you’ve been abandoned or abused—perhaps these images are not help when thinking about your relationship with God,” Horan said.

For Horan, the idea of “dating God” stems from a fundamentally human desire to know God in an alternatively intimate way. Though he noted the concept of dating God isn’t helpful for everyone, it provides Christians an opportunity to develop an understanding and bond with God in a nuanced way.

“I think the action, the dynamism of the verb ‘dating’ is helpful when thinking about God,” Horan said. 

a smaller increase in minimum pay for faculty.

Last week’s walkout—the first faculty-led strike in campus histor y—came after 18 months of prolonged contract negotiations that have shown an unusual level of unity between full-time faculty on the tenure track and those who work on a contingent basis.

The Huffington Post reported that while some classes were cancelled during the strike, others were taught by graduate students or teaching assistants, whose interests are represented by a separate union.

Joseph Persky, an economics professor at UIC, said that the heart of the issue is remedying inequities in how tenured and non-tenured faculty members are treated.

“We’re looking to make [nontenured faculty] real active members of their departments, as opposed to being treate d like academic gypsies,” Persky told the Chicago Sun-Times. 

assistance to a BC student in Campion Hall. The student was later transported by ambulance to a medical facility.

1:49 a.m. - A report was filed regarding an intoxicated non-BC affiliate of legal age in Walsh Hall.

1:50 a.m. - A report was filed regarding medical treatment provided to a BC student in Keyes North/South Hall. The student was later transported by ambulance to a medical facility.

2:30 a.m. - A report was filed regarding medical treatment provided to a BC student in Hardey House.

The student was later transported by ambulance to a medical facility.

—Source: The Boston College Police Department

A Guide to Your Newspaper 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) 5520189, or email sports@bcheights.com.

Arts Events The Heights covers a multitude of events both on and off campus – including concerts, movies, theatrical performances, and more. Call John Wiley, Arts and Review Editor, at (617) 552-0515, or email arts@bcheights.com. For future events, email a detailed description of the event and contact information to the Arts Desk.

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-in-Chief, 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.

The Heights is produced by BC undergraduates and is published on Mondays and Thursdays during the academic year by The Heights, Inc. (c) 2014. All rights reserved.

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

VOICES FROM THE DUSTBOWL “If you could tell an incoming student one thing, what would it be?”

“Flat Tops are overrated.”

—Danny Pimpinelli, A&S ’17

“Talk to your advisor as much as possible.”

—Sean Fisher, A&S ’17

“Quesadilla days are the best days.”

—James Zingarini, A&S ’17

“Wear an unnecessary amount of layers.

Always.”

—Nicole Sudano, A&S ’16

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Monday, February 24, 2014

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A shared Chorale repertoire showcases range of pieces humanity

By Jennifer Suh Heights Staff

Adriana Mariella So often we are called “men and women for others,” and it’s likely that most of the time, we are. We do service, we try to be good to those with whom we share a campus and a city, and we try to intellectually engage ourselves with the overt injustices that face us every day so that we might find a way to change them. This we do, and I am proud of that.

But this is like a switch that we turn on and off. One week we’re on a service trip in El Salvador being global citizens, but the next we’re walking right by the presumably homeless man who sits outside of Reservoir Liquors.

Even if we notice him, rarely do we do anything. Unlike most writing that starts like this, I’m not going to spend the rest of the column preaching that we should.

(We should, but that’s not what this is about.)

That man has a copy of Where Is God When It Hurts?, a book meant to help people understand and cope with their suffering.

I noticed it the other day when he had left his things on the sidewalk, a little reminder of his humanity that I’m sure he never thought anyone would stop to notice, yet one that left me both heartbroken and disoriented.

Not because I hadn’t seen him as a fellow human before, but because I saw him as a human who suffered along with me and who, like me, probably thought deeply about the world. No longer did he seem to me a charity case.

He wasn’t just sitting there all day suffering—here was a man grappling with the same fundamental frustrations of life that Bertrand Russell expressed in the prologue to his autobiography, the so-called “suffering of mankind.” Russell felt an overwhelming sense of helplessness because he “[longed] to alleviate this evil” but could not, so he, too, suffered.

We—those who help—are not the only men and women for others. So often we think of ourselves as the helpers, delighting in our ability to do that job. We make the world a better place. We give genuinely and without expectation because we know we have been put in the privileged position. This is what troubles me.

We, though safe and warm at night, are not the only ones able to give.

When I looked that book up on Google later on, I realized that it isn’t just about selfishly understanding our own struggles, but learning to cope with others’. He was not only looking inward at his own suffering, but also out at that of his fellow men.

He could give to me in a real and tangible way, not just because his situation could open my eyes to human suffering, but because the ability to give comes not only from financial privilege but also from simply trying to empathize with our fellow men and women.

So often we’re instructed to see others as equal to us because we’re all created equally, but then we’re missing part of the point.

We are also equal to each other because we all have something to give, even if it doesn’t always seem that way.

When we walk by that man, I hope that we will all first stop and do something, even if that means having a conversation. I hope second that we can start to think differently about our existences in relation to others by thinking not in terms of the seemingly positive power dynamic of helpers and receivers, but in terms of true parity.

We are not saviors. We all suffer in some way, and in that mutual suffering is the unfathomable kinship of mankind. We must give respect not because he without anything to give still deserves respect, but because he does have things to give, even if they might not be immediately obvious.

Adriana Mariella is a senior staff columnist for The Heights. She can be reached at news@bcheights.com.

Parents, grandparents, children, and students filled the pews of St. Ignatius Church to watch and listen to the University Chorale of Boston College perform at its annual winter concert on Saturday.

The hour-long concert began a few minutes after 7 p.m. inside the church, which was illuminated by yellow-hued lights hanging from the high ceiling. The chorale was conducted by John Finney, who is in his 21st year as the director of the Chorale.

The University Chorale’s vice president Sydney Barada, A&S ’14, gave an introduction, followed by a performance of “Tollite Hostias” from Oratorio de Noel by Camille Saint-Saens. It is “kind of a signature song of the University Chorale,” Finney said.

Organist Dexter Kennedy, who is a master of music candidate at the Yale School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music, accompanied the singers. Kennedy was also the organist for the Chorale during its tour in Rome last March.

“Having been trained as an organist myself, I know that what he’s doing is very, very tricky and very complicated,” Finney said while introducing Kennedy at the concert. “To take an orchestral score and make it sound as effortless as he does on the organ is a real skill.”

Finney has also been the conductor of the BC Symphony Orchestra since 1999 and is known as one of the most important musicians in the Boston area.

With approximately 160 male and female members, the entirely student-run chorale is the largest singing group and the secondlargest organization on campus.

Its repertoire is mostly classical

Emily Sadeghian / Heights Editor

The University Chorale’s annual winter concert included renditions of classical pieces, African-American spirituals, and modern American arrangements. but also includes modern pieces from film soundtracks, American folk songs, and traditional carols.

“I think the concert was fantastic,” said the Chorale’s president, Mariana Eizayaga, A&S ’14, in an email. Eizayaga was recovering from strep throat and sat with the audience during the concert.

“It was strange to be in the public and not singing with the chorale, but I got to hear the whole piece instead of just the part that my section sings, and that made it a very different experience,” Eizayaga said.

Other classical songs that were performed included “Exsultate Justi” by Lodovico Viadana, “Magnificat” by Francesco Du-

Thomas discusses violence in Jamaica

By Daniel Perea-Kane For The Heights The Coral Gardens Incident, the Green Bay Massacre, and the extradition of Christopher Coke are just some of the violent political incidents that have occurred in Jamaica over the last half-century.

Last Thursday, as part of a lecture series sponsored by the department of African and African diaspora studies, professor Deborah Thomas of the University of Pennsylvania gave a lecture to shed light on her research of these events.

Regine Jean-Charles, an assistant professor of French within the Romance languages department, introduced Thomas to the audience.

Thomas began her speech with preliminaries about her field of study.

“Archive-making is really important for African and African diaspora studies because it’s a means through which we unsettle colonial notions about what it means to be human,” she said.

She continued by saying that violence can open doors analytically even as it is devastating to communities worldwide. Thomas went deeper into this by focusing on one particular piece of history in Jamaica, the Coral Gardens Incident of 1963, in which hundreds of Rastafari were jailed and tortured by Jamaican police.

Thomas first learned about the incident as a graduate student at New York University. She decided that the events might be a compelling subject for her book Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica and later decided to turn that research into a film, Bad Friday: Rastafari After Coral Gardens.

Thomas’ work in Jamaica involved interviewing survivors of the incident. Although many now associate Rastafarians with universalism, according to Thomas, attitudes of fear and disdain directed toward them were more prevalent in the ’60s.

“They were seen as a threat to the consolidation of the new nation because they did not accept the authority of the Jamaican political leadership, instead seeing Africa as home,” she said.

Thomas also discussed how the once maligned Rasta identity has

become the most well-known symbol of Jamaican identity throughout the postcolonial world.

While in Jamaica researching her film, she interviewed Rastafari about how they came to the faith, what happened as a result of Coral Gardens, and about English injustice.

The documentary has already had an official run.

“Our primary agenda with the film was to create awareness of this history and, through doing so, to support the community in their efforts toward whatever reparative goals they identified,” Thomas said.

“We’ve been satisfied that these sorts of intergenerational dialogue have been fostered.”

She then focused on another incident on May 24, 2010, in which Jamaican forces launched an operation in Tivoli Gardens, West Kingston to fulfill the U.S. Department of State’s extradition order for drug lord Christopher Coke, resulting in an unknown number of causalities by the Jamaican army and police.

“Today I want to concern myself with how these narratives cause us to experience temporality,” she said.

“What I want to focus on in particular is how narrations of the state of emergency always contain the sediments of what has happened before.”

Thomas continued her speech by playing audio from oral histories she conducted on Jamaicans who lived in Tivoli Gardens in 2010, such as Nadine Sutherland, whose son died during an incident in 2008 and whose nephews died in 2010.

“The extreme violence of the state’s actions in 2010 produces a multiplicity in which the loss of Nadine’s son and the loss of her nephews become simultaneous events,” Thomas said. “By this I mean to suggest something different from the stories that many psychologists would tell [about post-traumatic stress].”

Thomas also briefly alluded to the Green Bay Massacre of 1978, which led to an extended discussion of garrison politics in Jamaica.

In response to an audience question, Thomas refined her motivation for making the film. “Our agenda with this is to make people uncomfortable and to squirm about their own complicity,” she said. “A mirror needs to be put back to the community.” n

rante, “Ave verum corpus” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and selections from “Missa Sancti Nicolai” by Franz Joseph Haydn.

The performances of the selections from Haydn featured a duet by sopranos Hannah Bowlin, A&S, ’17 and Jessica Letizia, A&S ’14.

“The winter concert is always wonderful since it’s the one time in the year we get to perform in St. Ignatius,” Barada said in an email. “Performing with just the organ, too, gives the concert a very special feel. We’ve been rehearsing three hours a week since the semester began, practicing new pieces, old favorites, and some selections from the fall concert.”

The singers and organist per-

formed American songs during the second half of the concert, beginning with “Hark, I Hear the Harps Eternal,” a hymn arranged

by Alice Parker. The song featured an exchange of the female and male voices in the choir.

The next song, “Alleluia” by Randall Thompson, was unique in that the only word sung was “alleluia” until the end when “amen” was sung once.

The last four pieces included two African-American spirituals written by Moses Hogan, who was a classmate of Finney at Oberlin College Conservatory of Music.

“He was a brilliant, brilliant pianist and a brilliant arranger of spiritual,” Finney said.

The concert ended with a

performance of “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” a hymn arranged by Mack Wilber.

As the only organization on campus that is allowed to travel internationally—besides those for service trips and athletics— the Chorale will tour and perform in Madrid and Barcelona during spring break from Mar. 3 to 7.

Its upcoming events include its spring concert in Trinity Chapel on Newton Campus on April 12 at 8 p.m. and the Arts Festival at O’Neill Plaza on April 24.

Other performances throughout the year include its annual Pops on the Heights concert during Parents’ Weekend, the fall concert, the Christmas concert series, the spring concert, and Arts Festival performances. n

The Heights

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Monday, February 24, 2014

BCPD named ninth college in Mass. to receive accreditation BCPD, from A1

emily fahey / heights editor

The BC AIDS Awareness Committee hosted a cappella groups to raise funds for Camp AmeriKids, a summer camp for children living with HIV/AIDS.

A cappella groups sing to promote awareness ‘Acapelooza,’ from A1 with mothers who are HIV positive tend to contract the disease within the first year of life, and many are left either to die or are orphaned,” he said. “As a result, when they get into childhood, or even adulthood, they are left with a stigma for nothing they did wrong.

Maybe they can’t play with the other kids on the playground, due to medical issues, or even have a normal summer camp experience. And that’s why we’re here tonight.

“Camp AmeriKids was very excited to work with us, and we found them to be a fantastic cause for this event,” said AIDS Awareness Committee Vice President Shane Daugherty, also A&S ’14.

The committee showed a video that Camp AmeriKids made specifically for the Acapelooza event, which allowed the camp

executive director, Gabrielle Moss, to address BC directly. “Our mission is to enrich the lives of youth living with HIV and sickle cell disease,” she said. “I want to thank the AIDS Awareness Committee for having this wonderful event, I want to thank all the singing groups for coming out and participating in Acapelooza, and I want to thank the audience for coming out and showing your support.”

Ultimately, Acapelooza raised $670, meaning that the AIDS Awareness Committee is well on its way to its $1,000 goal, the cost of sending one child to camp. “We most definitely consider this an accomplishment,” Daugherty said.

In addition to helping Camp AmeriKids, they hope that the success of Acapelooza will help spur interest for other events this semester, including a speaker panel and a 5K run, co-sponsored by UGBC. “We’re a small

group, and we’re trying to really expand,” said organization treasurer Neal Shah, A&S ’14.

“The point was to raise awareness of who we are and what we do and to raise money for this cause. And I really think that we hit every goal that we had going into this show. That gives us motivation for our next event.”

“We’re looking to do big events this semester,” Bodair said.

Although much of the e-board will graduate this semester, the members expressed hope in the future of the organization. “We’re absolutely hoping that this event will help raise our visibility on campus,” Daughterty said. “We’re hoping people come here and see that this is a great event, and I look forward to seeing it again next year. Unfortunately, we’ll be gone, but we’re looking forward to coming back. We’re hoping that next year, it will be sold out. That’s the goal.” n

were adopted from the national Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA), Inc. Lt. Laurene Spiess, BCPD accreditation manager, said in November that the department had documentation indicating its compliance with some of the standards even before it officially adopted the standards.

“We took all of the optional standards for the Crime Prevention and Community Liaison Program and had a lot of the compliance documentation prior to adopting the standards, because we have a very strong community policing program and we’re already doing the things the standards required,” Spiess said.

BC Chief of Police and Director of Public Safety John King explained that BCPD was able to confirm its sound policies by comparing them to the accreditation standards.

“In many respects, we affirmed in writing many of the practices that were already in place at BCPD,” King said in an email. “In some cases, we established new policies and procedures. This process did require weekly dissemination of policies, many with associated tests. Staff are required to achieve a grade of 100 percent on all policy tests.”

Spiess said that BCPD volunteered for accreditation and would receive no money or grants upon receiving the distinction.

“We are committed to evaluate and reassess our policies and procedures on a regular basis and always strive to be better,”

Spiess said. “We do these things because we do care about our community. We are your police department, and we strive to be the benchmark for others in our industry to model after.”

King recognized Spiess’s comprehensive knowledge of accreditation requirements and credited her for preparing BCPD for review. He also noted the entire department’s commitment to the accreditation process.

“The journey to accreditation began over three years ago, and we achieved an earlier milestone of certification in April of 2013,” King said in the department’s press release. “Nearly every member of the BCPD staff contributed to the achievement of accreditation either through researching or writing policies or by providing important feedback during policy comment periods.”

“Achieving accreditation gives us a great sense of accomplishment that our department has been evaluated against a set of established standards recognized by our profession,” King said in an email.

“Our staff has done an outstanding job throughout this process.”

The accreditation will be in effect for three years, and the department’s policies and procedures will be reviewed on a scheduled basis throughout that period. In 2017, assessors will return for a three-day assessment to appraise BCPD’s adherence to both the 98 mandatory standards and 75 optional standards for accreditation.

More than 170 police departments in Massachusetts are participating in the accreditation process, with 40 departments being fully accredited. n

Folan to leave BC after appointment as president of Catholic Memorial

By Nathan McGuire Asst. News Editor

Catholic Memorial School, an allboys school in West Roxbury, Mass., announced on Friday, Feb. 14 that it has selected Peter Folan, BC ’97, as the school’s fourth president.

Folan, who earned a master’s degree from the Lynch School of Education (LSOE) and a doctorate in education from the University of Pennsylvania, has worked in secondary and higher education for 17 years. He has taught high school English, coached varsity wrestling, and worked as the assistant director of program management in the Office of First Year Experience at Boston College for the past six years.

Education had always been Folan’s calling in life. One of his earliest childhood memories was one of him playing on the campus of Belmont Hill School with his best friend, whose father was the school’s president. That was in kindergarten.

Folan went on to attend the school some seven years later as a student and then taught English there later in his life.

Although he always felt compelled by education, it was not until his sophomore year at BC that he decided on that path.

He recalled that Rev. Bill Lambert, S.J., a priest and then the volunteer coordinator within the Campus School, pushed him to consider a career in education.

“He pointed out to me something that I had already known, but I just didn’t listen to, so that’s been a big part of my life,” Folan said. “A calling toward

the education of young men and boys is something that has been a hallmark of what I have wanted to do.”

Folan listened to Lambert and started to take classes in LSOE his sophomore year, and he earne d a master’s degree in the school’s five-year program.

Catholic Memorial’s appointment of Folan was a culmination of a ninemonth long national search, in which 10 c andid ate s were s c re ene d and interviewed. The school’s committee charged with finding the next president unanimously agreed to hire Folan for the job.

“In Peter we have found a president who will be a powerful leadership presence in the CM community,” said the Catholic Memorial press release announcing the school’s decision. “Peter is an approachable leader with a passion for educational excellence, a belief in the Catholic Memorial mission, and a commitment to preparing boys for a global future.”

Catholic Memorial educates boys in grades seven through 12 and is part of the Christian Brothers Schools of Boston.

After earning his master’s at BC, Folan went on to teach English at Avon Old Farms School, a prestigious all-boys boarding school in Connecticut. He also coached the varsity wrestling team there.

After his first year at Avon, Folan’s mother was diagnosed with leukemia, so he returned home to Belmont to

be with her and started teaching in Belmont public schools. He taught there for a number of years and coached the varsity wrestling team at Lexington High School. The students of Belmont High School recognized him with a Teacher of the Year award, but he began to question his career path.

“I did that for a number of years and wasn’t so sure if I was going to stay in the educational field,” he said. “I think that third or fourth year teachers always start to wonder whether it’s the field [they] want.”

Just around that time, Belmont Hill—the high school Folan graduated from—called and offered him a job as an admissions officer, English teacher, and varsity wrestling coach. Folan accepted and enjoyed his time at Belmont. In 2006, BC called to offer him a job in the Office of First Year Experience.

Folan returned to his alma mater— the same school where his mother and wife graduated—and has since led programs such as the 48Hours retreat.

“I think I’ve learned more maybe than I have given to the students that have sat in my office, and that has given me such great confidence as I leave Boston College to know that there is nothing I would be uncomfortable with students and parents talking with me about,” he said.

For the past two years, Folan has taught a course about gender with Women’s Resource Center Director Katie Dalton. The course, titled “Thinking about Gender,” is part of the University’s

juseub yoon / heights staff

Folan, BC ’97, will leave BC to assume his new role as the president of Catholic Memorial.

Cross Currents Seminar program.

“In many ways, I noticed when I first came to Boston College, that I saw in freshmen that same look in the eyes that I saw in middle school [students],” he said. “They’re trying to figure out how they’re supposed to be and who they’re supposed to be.”

Folan said that he does not prefer one age group to the other, but that both offer exciting and unique experiences.

He hopes to take what he learned about students during his six years at BC to better prepare the students at Catholic Memorial, where he will begin in July.

Specifically, he said he will evaluate the school’s retreat programs to see how they

prepare the students for life.

“It’s been interesting for me to go through that discernment process that I’ve spent so much time helping students consider,” he said of his decision to accept the Catholic Memorial job. “I think the hard part is when you have two great options like I had.”

Fo l a n’s t i m e a t B C h a s b e e n formative for him—as a mentor for seniors who lead 48Hours and as a guide to all students who come knocking on his office door. His decision to take the Catholic Memorial job was a difficult one, but one that he believes will allow him to influence the impressionable lives of young men. n

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet discusses writing style at Lowell Series Smith, from A1

graham beck / heights senior staff

Last Thursday, Tracy K. Smith discussed the influences of science fiction on her writing and the development of her poetry.

play devil’s advocate and look through the lens of the opposing side in her poem “Ransom.” Smith spoke further of hate crimes that prompted her to consider the role of compassion in society, and imagined that her father would have a compassionate view of people currently on earth. She specifically addressed five hate crimes that later manifested themselves into her poem “They May Love All That He Has Chosen And Hate All That He Has Rejected.” The speakers of the poem are the victims of the crimes, who address their assailants in the form of postcards. This poem marks a break from the fantastical elements of science fiction, as Smith expressed her desire to give a voice to those who were silenced, and attempt to gain access into the minds of those who have suffered.

Her experimentation with style prompted a series of questions after the readings, focusing on her background and advice for aspiring writers. Place and setting played a significant role in some of Smith’s poems, so she addressed the need to settle in a location that will allow creative inclinations to thrive, and to surround oneself with supportive individuals.

“When I was a grad student, I just fell

in love with my classmates,” she said. “I fell in love with their poems and their desire to become poets. It’s necessary to find some way to connect with people, and to learn from them.” Smith spent her childhood in California, but ended up on the east coast after receiving her B.A. from Harvard University and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Columbia University. “I liked being in New York because I felt like I could disappear there,” she said. “I needed a new place to examine with courage and honesty the stuff that matters.”

Beginning writers may tend to think that their work needs to make an argument, or have a definitive point, but Smith noted that moving away from absolutes is an essential and liberating aspect of poetry. “It was only after I realized that I could start asking things and playing with the possibilities that it became fun,” she said.

That questioning nature connects with Smith’s final discussion of faith and spirituality in connection to poetry—she noted how a poem is often written by listening to the unconscious voices. “I feel like it is a matter of quieting down the other voices that we are enthralled to,” she said. For Smith, poetry is strongly connected to being—and accepting the poem as a sentient being itself. n

CLASSIFIEDS Thursday, January 17, 2014

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The Heights

A6

Editorials

Monday, February 24, 2014

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Gold Pass still has room to improve

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

-Steve Jobs (1955-2011), American entrepreneur, inventor, founder, CEO, and chairman of Apple Inc.

Athletics should continue to seek student input, resolve kinks in Gold Pass In past years, students received an email over the summer offering multiple season ticket packages for Boston College’s revenue sports.

Entrance into games was limited to those students who had purchased tickets before they ran out, and at the beginning of each season, student s would re ceive pr intable tickets via email. This year, however, only one package—the Gold Pass—was offered. It was made available to all students and included paperless ticketing and access to all BC sporting events for a single price.

While its price point of $175 is higher than the individual prices for the previous football, men’s basketball, and men’s ice hockey packages, the cost of the Gold Pass is still a better deal considering the access that it grants. Although some fans expressed disappointment at the beginning of the year that they could not buy season tickets to a single sport, the extra cost is more than made up for in the extra access that students receive.

Perhaps the most important element of the Gold Pass is the new points system that accompanied it. This system, which awards students points for attending sporting events, incentivized students to attend traditionally under-attended games. Usually, the demand for games was low enough that the system allowed for everyone who wanted to attend a game to do so.

There were certain events, however, such as the men’s ice hockey game versus Boston University, which required students to have accumulated a certain number of points in order to attend.

This ticketing system for highdemand games was beneficial in two ways. First, it increased attendance at most sporting events, and second, it created a way to decide which students got to attend high-demand games. In the past, the first students to purchase tickets over the summer were the ones who got to go to these games—hardly an equitable way to make such a decision.

Although the Gold Pass was a success overall, like any new system, it has its kinks. Some students studying abroad complained that the points system was unfair to them, since they had no opportunity to accumulate points during the fall semester. The athletic department has stated that it has a method for dealing with this problem, however, it was not clear whether students returning from abroad were aware of this.

Another problem that has

emerged is the lack of guidelines for exactly how points can be earned. While it is clear that attendance at games is necessary, there are details that are unclear, such as when students can show up to a game and how long they have to stay to receive points. With the current system, some students simply show up to a game, swipe in, and then immediately leave, which hardly seems fair to the students who come and watch the whole game.

One way to address this would be to require students to swipe in by a certain time—for instance, before halftime at a basketball game—and then to have students swipe their IDs as they are leaving the game as well. While this is not necessarily the most convenient way to make sure people are not simply checking in and then checking out, it is one way to stop what has become a noticeable phenomenon at games.

Additionally, problems with IDs not swiping correctly, and a policy for what happens if a student shows up to a game and has forgotten his or her ID, should be addressed.

Finally, a major issue currently facing the Gold Pass is how it can promote attendance at spr ing sports. While giving games with low expected turnout high point values, offering bonus points for showing up early, and designating some games as “double point” games has helped boost student appearance, with the last high-demand game having passed, there is little incentive to go to any more games. Assuming that points do not carry over from year to year, there is not currently a reason to gain more points other than the desire to appear on the “Top 10” leaderboard on the Rewards website. Offering a 10 percent carryover of points from year to year, which amounts to no more than five points for most Gold Pass holders, could solve this problem by allowing students to gain a modest head start for next semester. It also addresses the issue of senior priority, which was raised during the year.

Another way to encourage attendance at spring sports would be to offer perks to the students with the most points, such as bus rides to Hockey East games, trips to away football games, or the opportunity to watch a game with Athletic Director Brad Bates. These are currently only a fe w enticements that would surely motivate more students to come out to the spring sports, and the athletic department should look into even more creative ways to incentivize these games.

Folan’s departure marks loss for FYE

Peter Folan has prestigious opportunity to bring BC-style mentoring to high school students Peter Folan, BC ’97, was tapped

by Catholic Memorial School last week to serve as its fourth president. For the past six years, Folan has served as the assistant director of program management in the Office of First Year Experience (FYE), having worked in education since he graduated from Boston College with a master’s degree in education in 1999. Catholic Memorial is a Christian Brothers school in Boston that educates boys in grades seven through 12.

During his time at BC, Folan has been instrumental in the development of 48Hours, a freshman retreat offered by F YE. In that capacity, he has worked especially

with seniors, preparing them to be leaders of the retreat. He has also contributed significantly to FYE, even beyond his work with 48Hours, through the mentoring he offers freshmen. Outside of that office, he has co-taught a course on gender as a part of the University’s Cross Currents Seminar program.

While Folan’s departure marks a loss for FYE and the University, it is also a prestigious opportunity for which Folan deserves recognition. It speaks very highly of both Folan and the University that he was selected to serve as Catholic Memorial’s president. BC should ensure that his successor in FYE is equally capable.

Heights

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The Independent Student Newspaper of Boston College Established 1919 Eleanor Hildebrandt, Editor-in-Chief Marc Francis, General Manager Joseph Castlen, Managing Editor

Editorial

Kayla Famolare, Copy Editor Connor Farley, News Editor Connor Mellas, Sports Editor Kendra Kumor, Features Editor John Wiley, Arts & Review Editor Ryan Towey, Metro Editor Andrew Skaras, Opinions Editor Mary Rose Fissinger, Special Projects Editor Emily Fahey, Photo Editor Maggie Powers, Layout Editor

emily devlin / Heights Illustration

Letter to the Editor BC sees alums as income stream It’s approaching two years (shudder) since I graduated from Boston College, a fact with which I have finally come to terms. This process has been helped along by return visits to campus where Stokes Hall has finally been completed, where O’Neill Plaza is no longer a cement fortress, and where our once beautiful Quad has been rendered unrecognizable and utterly characterless. When you graduate, BC moves on, preparing itself for the future and the next class of Eagles. You will always carry your memories of BC, but BC will march forward without even noticing that you are gone.

However, there is one exception. BC will always remember you as a source of money. I can’t even begin to tell you how many emails I have received from BC asking for a donation. Do you want a BC calendar? Donate. BC is in the Beanpot! Donate. The Beanpot is tonight! Donate.

I get it. Donations are important. They help to fund the things we love about BC, as well as giving BC the chance to move up in college ranking surveys, thereby enabling us to feel ever more proud of our degrees. But I’ve finally reached the point where BC’s never-ending quest to squeeze every last dime out of us has disgusted me.

Recently, I received an email from my local alumni chapter informing me of a Mass to be

celebrated at Georgetown with Dean Joseph O’Keefe. Realizing that it has been quite some time since I’ve attended Mass, I thought this would be a great opportunity to reconnect with my Catholic self.

But this being BC, there’s a catch—you have to pay to attend this Mass. Really? I have to pay to attend a Mass being held for alumni? Granted, the cost is only $15 dollars, but is BC really so money-hungry that it needs to ask us to pay to go to Mass? While there is a reception being held afterward, I don’t feel the need to gorge myself on free food and drink (assuming it is even free).

It would be lovely to share time in the BC and religious communities, but I don’t feel compelled to pay to do so.

Perhaps it was naive of me to believe that I would ever be anything more to Boston College than a dollar sign—a source of income for four years and then hopefully a donor until death.

I write this as a warning to the Class of 2014.

I wish I had known that once I walked across the stage at Alumni Stadium, I’d be nothing more than a stream of income to the place I love so much.

Janine A. Hanrahan BC ’12

The following letter is in response to “University, parents aim to keep Campus School at BC,” an article by Connor Farley, originally published on 2/13/14:

Gratitude for Campus School decision Thank you so much for keeping the Campus School. This means so much to our family since our sweet grandson, Jack, is a student there. We are so happy for Jack but we are also so happy for all of the students this wonderful school

has touched, is touching, and will touch in the future.

Diane Dillow Grandmother of Campus School student

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The Heights

Monday, February 24, 2014

A7

The classics major

Ben Olcott Medals of Honor - Recently the White House announced that it would be awarding Medals of Honor to 24 Army veterans from WWII, and the Korean and Vietnam wars that may have been overlooked for the most prestigious decoration in the U.S. military because of their race, ethnicity, and/or religious affiliation. The Department of Defense conducted a rigorous review of veterans honored in that time period to ascertain how many soldiers were overlooked for discriminatory reasons. Out of the 24, three are still living and will attend a ceremony at the White House on Mar. 18. Though a little belated, it’s still good to see them getting the recognition they deserve.

BC Nurses - It has come to our attention that this weekend was a particularly rough one on the Boston College campus. For some studetns, Spring Break just cannot come soon enough, and they took it upon themselves to begin celebrating this weekend. As a result, the Infirmary saw an increased influx of students, as some people could not contain themselves and partied just a little bit too hard.

Luckily, the nurses in the infirmary stepped up their game to attend to the many patients they saw that night.

We would like to extend to them a Thumbs Up for all of their hard work this weekend.

The classics major, one of the last, is staring into the black depths of UIS. People say it’s ancient, UIS, but he knows that word. The word itself, the construction of it, he knows, too. Latin roots are more than just SAT tips in his eyes— they’re how he sees the world. Anyway, he loves that so much of English is the great-great-great-etc.-grandchild of Latin and Greek. How many times were these words spoken, in how many different lips belonging to what unfathomable assortment of people? Ante. How did “ancient” spring forth Athena-like from that? Every word is its own little story—an epic one, he believes, and he sees it as just about divinely fitting that the records of its best usage are epic themselves, such profound and human tales. Odysseus and the triumph of human spirit! Achilles and the sacking of Troy! Aeneas and the founding of Rome! Grand histories, panegyrics, encomia! Sometimes he looks at the world speeding past him at megabytes/second and asks, “Where has that vitality gone?”

The ancient is more present than the present. Yet, what is presently going on is the classics major is staring into the black depths of UIS, about to type “7”, hit enter, and sign up for macroeconomics, then search four more times, twice for econ courses, twice for accounting courses and, finding them, hit enter four more times.

Because, despite all that he had just been thinking about, the beauty of language, the profundity of spirit, the joy of knowledge, he has been consumed recently with the notion that he, classics major, isn’t exactly employee material.

What he means is this—What good is a classics major? What is the practical

value of knowing Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations in the original? Plutarch’s Lives?

What good is “in the original” when translations are readily available? The world around him tells him one thing. It says, “The world is in translation, man, welcome to the world-wide culture; the power of connection, man; translation in action, man.” Which he sees the merit of, in a sense, he really does. After all, that’s how he first got interested in classics. But translation for the sake of translation is what he used to do, when he was in high school just trying to figure out what the hell was going on. No question, he translates like that now, but it’s just the first step, and he feels, with every new text he reads, like that first step is disappearing— he doesn’t need it anymore, the words themselves come to him as they are. The world of the text opens up, then. There’s a connection. Sensations—it’s almost physical. It’s that moment of almost-telekinetic communication for which he burns. But when he thinks about this, he sighs. Telecommunication is so different. It’s just different. What about the original?

Let’s go back to where he is—he’s sitting there, and he’s about to type “7”, hit enter, etc., etc. He’s just been thinking about language, and now his mind turns to something else. If indeed he commits to his new two majors, what is he committing to? What for? It isn’t the thought of econ or accounting in themselves that make his stomach turn a little. The Latin vomitorium flashes. He has friends who genuinely care about the subjects, find them intellectually stimulating, and treat them seriously. He has no problem with that, and god, if only everyone felt that way about what he or she does. And sure, they’re practical, but practical in itself isn’t bad either. Somebody has to do things to run this place. It’s just that the term practical value skeezes him out.

It makes things black and white, or, it makes any value a function of practical.

He dislikes that he sees it like this, but he does—if practical, then valuable, if not,

then invaluable. Which doesn’t seem fair, because what the hell does “practical” mean anyway? Never mind that the word “poetry” (what he feels he’s intimately taking part in in so many ways) means “a making” in ancient Greek, he gets the feeling that “practical” doesn’t mean what “practical” means. He gets the feeling that “practical” is just some concept someone with leverage uses to rope young innocent people into doing something for them on the cheap. So, he thinks, by transitive property, getting taken advantage of is valuable? It doesn’t make sense. But what choice does he have?

He has five choices, he realizes. Five choices available to him right now. UIS stares. He plays the game he’s played so many times before. What if he didn’t switch from classics? He goes to the portal and checks his GPA, remembers it is rock solid. Which, why? He wonders.

It’s not like the material is easy. By Jupiter, it is not. He thinks of times he spent up late studying, and how, amid The Clouds, or Horace’s Odes, his mind becomes some sort of whirring thinking-feeling machine but better—a human, in other words—and how the library walls seem to drip away and he’s just lost, but lost as in Waldeinsamkeit or Wordsworth, not lost as in searching for value in something meaningless. What a pleasure that is, he thinks. He thinks about how important that is to him. How valuable that is.

He returns to an earlier question.

What for? Because someone told him this is the way, he realizes, someone who might actually believe it’s the way, someone whose way this actually is, but for damn sure didn’t know what he, the classics major, was about. And what is he about? What are his values? What matters to him?

Isn’t this the time to find out, he thinks? Bravely he makes his five decisions.

Mock Trial Kids - Yesterday, there were a bunch of outsiders infiltrating our home turf on the Heights and they were in the form of participants in a BC-run mock trial. While we recognize the value in opening up the campus for events—it does bring prestige to BC, after all—we would really like it if we did not have to wait in excruciatingly long lines in Mac to get a lunch-time omelet.

Hell Week - Without fail, there are always the same crunch times every single year—the two days before Thanksgiving, the three days before Easter, both weeks before finals, and the week before Spring Break. Well, folks, today marks the beginning of one of those times. When all we can think of are our impending trips to somewhere warmer, it seems as if all of the professors in the University have conspired to make this week miserable. Look, we understand that the concept of the “mid-term” ontologically dictates that said exams be in the middle of the term, but come on, that can be a flexible range of dates.

There is really no reason that every mid-term needs to converge in the one-week period before break. Some could be in the one-week period after break, and that would still be roughly the middle of the term.

Sheets of Ice - These are dangerous, conniving creations. They are surreptitiously hidden around the vicinity of BC just waiting to trip us up. As things seem to be thawing these days, we just can’t wait for these sheets of ice to turn into nasty puddles into which we will likely fall.

Canada - You have thwarted us yet again, Canada! We are angry and bitter that our Olympic dreams have been crushed by you eh-saying, maple syrup chugging, Canadian-bacon eating, Justin Bieber-producing Canucks.

We would be more angry, but we can’t bring ourselves to do anything about it because you are so damn nice about it.

We wouldn’t be surprised if you were up there north of the border apologizing to your local neighborhood American for beating us.

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Jaclyn Susskind As the 2014 Winter Olympics have now come to a close, we have the privilege of reflecting on this year’s games. The biggest question I have come to ask myself is, was Sochi the right choice? How did it even get chosen in the first place?

In 2007, after two years of debates, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) made the executive decision to host the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. President of the IOC Jacques Rogge has previously declared on the Olympic website that the Committee takes two years to make its selection “to ensure that the city that is elected is capable of hosting the Games and that the process is transparent for all involved.” And so, naturally, it seems that Russia is the most entitled of options, with its heaping pile of transparency.

While there have been many uncontrollable factors that have caused these Games to be extremely strenuous to host, we have simultaneously been given more insight to the mysterious world of Russia.

The IOC chose Sochi over Salzburg, Austria. But why? For a Committee that strives for a location that is both capable and transparent, Salzburg, to me, is clearly the right answer. This year’s Olympiad has continuously struggled from weather conditions, with temperatures never dropping below 40 degrees Fahrenheit and reaching 60 degrees Fahrenheit on several days. Those in Sochi had prayed for snow prior to the beginning of the Games, but were forced to resort to artificially producing snow. As a result, they have produced enough snow to cover 500 football fields, according to The New York Times.

While the IOC could obviously not predict these weather conditions years in advance, these temperatures are not too abnormal, says National Geographic. Sochi will most likely be the warmest winter Olympic event in history.

While the increasing warmth is some what at-

Bird Flew

Tiffany Ashtoncourt

President Boris Yeltsin, under whom Putin was responsible for relations with regional governments. Suddenly, in August of 1999, Yeltsin replaced his Prime Minister with Putin.

By December of the same year, Yeltsin gave up his presidential office and put Putin in charge instead. Since then, Putin has weaved through the powerful seats of the executive—switching with Dmitri Medvedev to serve as prime minister and then returning to presidential office again.

While Putin seeks to place Russia as a leading nation once again, is a life free of corruption and misdoings forever impossible in the Russian world? USA Today announced that a study by the Global Financial Integrity in February of 2013 had discovered that over $200 billion had been lost to “illicit financial outflows stemming from crime, corruption and tax evasion from 1994 to 2011.” This proves a problem for the people of Russia, for such money could be used to better their own lives and state of their country. A country starved of its financial wealth does not seem to have a promising future of global leadership, especially when it has corruption rooted in its system.

The $50 billion that was apparently spent on this year’s Games did not prevent a variety of problems from occurring, as images of bizarre toilets to brown water to malfunctioning door locks spread across the web. Many have been astounded to discover the conditions of the event, especially when it is the most costly Winter Olympics in the history of the Olympics. A country that declares itself a democracy fails to live up to the democratic promise of transparency, as truckloads of money constantly disappear from the nation.

Where is all of this money going, and what does the future hold for Russia? Being a host of an Olympic event is a position worthy of respect and attention for every city that has been granted the opportunity. But perhaps this is a platform the Russians should have avoided, as now the world has focused so much attention on the country that its mysterious mishaps are in the spotlight.

The classic adage, “Never talk about religion, politics, or football” exists because, as polite, mild-mannered citizens, we are taught that it is not proper to start a conversation that might create conflict, awkward silence, or a back-and-forth that might not end. So, what do we do?

We comment on the weather, the endless drudge of exams, and how terrible BU is—in short, everything upon which we can agree. Yet, there is still something else that perhaps gets talked about even more than any of these topics. It is something that affects everyone and is universally lamented—time. Time is one of the few things that every sentient creature on Earth experiences equally, in the sense that every minute and day is the same for all and more can’t be bought. In addition, it is the only state of being that we experience that is totally ours to do with as we wish, for time is what the events of our life are made of.

With these conditions, it is safe to say that time should be our friend, but mostly it seems to be working against us, and that is definitely something that everyone has felt.

Time usually has a good pace when we are young. It never seems to fly by too quickly or go by too slowly, but somehow, once we become older, it seems that time is never on our side. I mean, I’m still trying to grapple with the fact that midterms are happening and Spring Break is next week.

What’s even worse is that, after Spring Break, we are practically at the middle of the entire year. Didn’t 2014 just begin? Now it’s almost over? And even when times are great, it seems to go by way too quickly as well. As a senior, I began this academic year with the intent of living it to the fullest, and even though I have had a great time, I am already in the middle of my last semester as a college student. Yet, time is also slow.

Everyone has had a moment that felt like an eternity and usually it’s an incident that was either completely embarrassing or just plain boring. Maybe you recall a time when you had a presentation and as soon as you got up there you forgot everything that you were supposed to say. Or maybe you’re stuck in a Calculus class and everything just sounds like Chinese to you. When seen under this light, there is very little to be thankful for with regard to time. Happiness and fun fly by and the dull moments drag on. We seem to be just enslaved to a treadmill that runs at various paces over which we have absolutely no control.

That may be what we feel, but when we really look at what time is, then it seems impossible for it to work against us. Time is the canvas on which we paint our lives, so it can’t fight us—it is there for us to experience love, joy, perseverance, and everything in between. Thinking about how long or how short time is only distances ourselves from the reality that time has given us the present moment to fulfill our dreams, and that’s happening right now. Probably our best moments have been experienced when we actually realize this and it can be in the most mundane moments. For example, I was sitting outside in O’Neill Plaza in late April watching people walk by to class (more like run), hearing the bell ring above the chatter of some students passing out pamphlets or coupons, and smelling the scent of spring in the air (which, at BC, smells like freshly fallen rain, flowers, and outdoor burgers!), and it seemed as if time had stood still. I could simply enjoy the moment by not thinking about the daily task list, not being glued to the iPad, and not wondering how long this feeling would last. So, when we feel tempted to curse at that damn clock for ringing, or feel like you can’t catch up with the day, thank that feeling, because when we feel time is slipping through our hands, it reminds us that time is in our hands. So here’s to time!

As a senior I’ve learned to appreciate and respect it, (and not complain about how soon midterms have appeared!).

Jaclyn Susskind is a staff columnist for The Heights. She can be reached at opinions@bcheights.com.

Tiffany Ashtoncourt is a staff columnist for The Heights. She can be reached at opinions@bcheights.com.

Ben Olcott is a staff columnist for The Heights. He can be reached at opinions@ bcheights.com.

The Olympics in review tributed to global warming, many have started to question how changing temperatures will now affect the feasibility of the Winter Games in the years to come. For Vancouver in 2010, 300 truckloads of snow were brought to the event to make up for the lack of snow and rising temperature. However, temperatures have always (obviously) been of main concern when hosting the winter event.

When reading an article in National Geographic about the climate change and its effect on the Winter Olympics, I was introduced to the studies of Daniel Scott. Scott and his team have analyzed the locations of the past 19 Games, ultimately determining that all previous host cities would, at the moment, be capable of still hosting the Winter Olympics.

However, Scott has proclaimed that by the “midcentury” only half of these cities will be capable, and by the “late century,” only six would be able. As many of us look forward to the winter events, and as it has become a tradition of nationalistic, friendly competition, perhaps we are all now forced to question what the future holds. While I could be called somewhat of a “greenie” and have already often feared the future implications of the world’s current disregard for the environment, perhaps these Games have now opened the eyes to many who previously did not really pay attention. What if we could never again hold the Winter Olympics?

In addition to the unpredictable warmth that competitors have endured in Sochi, why would the IOC pick Sochi if they sought a city that could promise transparency? Reporters covering the Games have continually brought up their confusion and have been unable to discern where all of the money is going.

Costing at least $50 billion, according to USA Today, a third of this total amount has been lost. Talk about transparency … but, in Russia, this is no anomaly.

The topic of Russia, and what seems to be Vladimir Putin’s never-ending reign, has been brought up for years. During my senior year in high school, I took a Comparative Politics class in which we studied Russia. My study of the country has taught me about the questionable goals of Putin, an ex-officer of the KGB who then moved into the political realm.

Things started to grow fishy in 1999 with

Time is in our hands

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.

THE HEIGHTS

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Monday, February 24, 2014

Trapped in ‘House of Cards’: the isolating effects of Netflix programs RYAN DOWD The second season of Netflix’s House of Cards premiered Friday, Feb. 14, a little more than a week ago. And when I say premiered, I mean Netflix unleashed all 13 episodes of its “prestige” drama into the wild to be devoured by a legion of couch potatoes.

What could have been a quiet or even a wild Friday and Saturday night became a stressful one. Should I click Play Next? It’s 1 a.m. and I could sure use some sleep, but another hour wouldn’t hurt too much. Shoot, here comes the countdown. Fifteen seconds until Netflix plays the next one for me.

What’s another hour of mood lighting and Frank Underwood’s deep baritone?

Fine, you win, Netflix.

This isn’t a phenomenon exclusive to House of Cards. Netflix releases all of its television in this format. But House of Cards is one of the only shows

Netflix produces on its own. It was the first—the flagship with the marque executive producer (David Fincher) and marque star (Kevin Spacey). And it’s a show cut and processed for just this splurging format. Watching House of Cards washes over you in a way that doesn’t particularly feel all that great, but by the time you begin to question how the show makes you feel or if you even like the show the next episode has already started itself.

If House of Cards premiered every week like any other network, cable, or premium show, I think we’d have enough time to think about how the show makes us feel. We’d have to time to surf the message boards or discuss the show on Twitter and Facebook.

We’d be able to interact with the greater watching community, because whether we all watch it at its exact air time or not, we’d all be on the same general schedule. And we’d be able to realize that House of Cards isn’t that

great of a show after all, that most of its characters are one-dimensional—including Frank Underwood. Those are perhaps loaded statements, because the show was conceived and produced for just this format—a format where one episode bleeds into the next, and the next, until we’re left with a pulpy mess at the end of the night that sure seemed good, just like the bags of chips that lay at your feet. It’s a format that feeds on and even creates loneliness.

That’s tough to swallow. Because there’ve been times when Netflix has been one of the more important things in my life. Who needs friends when you have a Netflix account? Or more so, because Netflix accounts aren’t cheap, who needs more friends after you’ve found one with a Netflix account? Within the industry, Netflix has also proved invaluable. Without Netflix, Breaking Bad wouldn’t have had its thundering conclusion. Without Netflix, Scandal wouldn’t be set to

blow up next fall. But here, Netflix was the tool, not the nucleus. It helped get us all caught up. It helped finally connect us, so that after each weekly episode we could come together and commiserate.

But House of Cards isn’t bringing us together. You can’t tweet about the show, or you’ll be stoned for spoiling the plot for lethargic viewers. You can’t talk to your friends about it—assuming you still have some after spending seven consecutive hours watching the show—because they’re either behind or ahead of you.

Television, more than other vehicles of pop culture, is supposed to bring us together. It’s for families—or college friends—to snuggle into a reclining couch and let the small screen whisk us away. But that’s just not how it is anymore. With laptops and DVRs galore, watching television is something we do alone, or when we get lonely to pass the time. Netflix isn’t

going to change, and why should it?

Why purposefully make life less convenient? So this is our fate, for television to get better and better and for us to draw farther and farther apart.

Maybe Her has had it right all along.

Maybe if Netflix had Scarlett Johansson talk to us while we watched House of Cards or Scandal we’d feel better about ourselves. But maybe if we found other human beings to watch Netflix with, we’d feel even better.

Does it have to be this way? Do we have to waste away alone but delightfully entertained? No, I don’t think so, because while Netflix may be conspiring to coax and trap us in our rooms and basements so it can take over the world, it’s not that hard to escape. All you have to do is close your laptop—or better yet, open it with someone.

Ryan Dowd is a staff columnist for The Heights. He can be reached at arts@bcheights.com.

‘3 Days To Kill’ thriller is poorly executed

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WEEKEND BOX OFFICE REPORT TITLE

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McGinty’s ‘3 Days To Kill’ is a confused compilation of comedy and drama elements, with meager characters and an unimpressive action plot.

BY CAMERON HARDING For The Heights

3 Days To Kill is nothing short of an incoherent disaster—unworthy of even the most modest ticket price. Directed

by Joseph McGinty and written by Luc Besson and Adi Hasak , this action thriller follows the story of Ethan Renner (Kevin Costner), a former CIA operative trying desperately to win back the affection 3 DAYS TO KILL of his esJoseph McGinty tranged daughter, Zoey. After being diagnosed with brain cancer, Ethan is approached by Vivi (Amber Heard), a “sassy” (though “promiscuous” and “witless” may be better descriptors) secret agent who offers Ethan an “experimental drug” to alleviate his condition.

In exchange, Ethan must help Vivi hunt down two of the most forgettable villains in recent film: “The Albino” and “The Wolf.”

There are simply too many issues with this film to compact in one review, but let’s start with the cast. To his credit, Costner gives a solid effort in portraying Ethan. If nothing else, Costner makes the film almost tolerable. Zoey (Hailee Steinfeld) is everything you’d expect in a stereotypical 16-year-old brat with daddy issues: she’s moody, annoying, and utterly unlikeable. Vivi is a complete anomaly. It’s hard to fathom how bizarre, obnoxious, and uninteresting this char-

acter is. She resembles a 12-year-old boy’s impression of what a strong, sexy, international spy would be. In all likelihood, Heard was probably cast just to fulfill the “hot chick” quota. The other characters barely do anything and aren’t even worth mentioning.

The action plot is simply ridiculous.

Why Vivi relies so heavily on Ethan, what the Wolf ’s and the Albino’s plans are, and why any of it matters remain a mystery.

Vivi mentions how Ethan is qualified because he is dying and therefore has nothing to lose (except of course his daughter). While Ethan may be a great shot, the ailing cancer patient hallucinating on experimental drugs who collapses every time his target is within his sights and passes out may not be the best man for the job. Sure, this is a big action film, no one expects total realism, but the lapses in logic are so profound that the result is a convoluted catastrophe.

3 Days to Kill is a surprisingly strange blend of comedy, family drama, and action. It’s fairly pathetic how McGinty poorly integrates these elements in a cluttered mess of “what am I even watching?” For example, McGinty likes to use cheap humor during multiple torture/ interrogation scenes. It’s impossible to determine if Ethan is supposed to be a badass or just a quirky father. The jokes are bland, awkward, redundant, and forced—crickets will probably have a heyday with this movie.

The father-daughter relationship is riddled with endless cliches. The same

conflict is hammered into the audience again and again: Ethan wasn’t around for Zoey because he was too busy shooting bad guys. Ethan’s redemption manifests in boring scenes involving flying swings, drinking cocoa, and teaching Zoey how to ride a bike. McGinty relies heavily on painfully generic and schmaltzy music to convey every single emotion. The biggest problem with the family drama element is that it consumes so much of the twohour runtime that it’s easy to forget that 3 Days to Kill is an “action thriller.”

The biggest irony of 3 Days to Kill is that the action sequences, which are the least terrible part of the film, unfortunately coerce the movie into an absolute tonal nightmare. Aside from shoot-outs and chase scenes, all of which leaned more toward realism, nearly everything else in McGinty’s film suggests it was meant to be somewhere between a goofy comedy and family drama. We go so quickly from Ethan and Zoey sipping cocoa to Ethan taking a shotgun shell to the chest: the effect is dizzying.

The editing seems noticeably jumpy and the tone shifts so dramatically back and forth throughout the entire film that it’s unclear if 3 Days to Kill was even meant to be taken seriously.

Overall, there is absolutely no reason to waste time and money on this movie.

3 Days to Kill’s biggest fault is that it’s not even bad enough to be entertaining. Some movies are terrible but can still be thoroughly enjoyable—this isn’t one of them. 

WEEKEND GROSS

WEEKS IN RELEASE

1. THE LEGO MOVIE

31.5

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2. 3 DAYS TO KILL

12.3

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3. POMPEII

10.0

1

4. ROBOCOP

9.4

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5. THE MONUMENTS MEN

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6. ABOUT LAST NIGHT

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7. RIDE ALONG

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8. FROZEN

4.4

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9. ENDLESS LOVE

4.3

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10. WINTER’S TALE

2.1

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BESTSELLERS OF HARDCOVER FICTION 1. PRIVATE L.A. James Patterson and Mark Sullivan 2. THE GOLDFINCH Donna Tartt 3. KILLER Jonathan Kellerman 4. THE INVENTION OF WINGS Sue Monk Kidd 5. STILL LIFE WITH BREADCRUMBS Anna Quindlen

6. ONE MORE THING B.J. Novak 7. SYCAMORE ROW John Grisham 8. THE COUNTERFEIT AGENT Alex Berenson 9. GONE GIRL Gillian Flynn 10. THE FIRST PHONE CALL FROM HEAVEN Mitch Albom

The Heights

Monday, February 24, 2014

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BC acts hold ‘Acapelooza’ charity event for Camp AmeriKids ‘Acapelooza,’ from A10 performers offered beautiful contrast to the sole male voice, while the guitarists provided a complementary layer that made up for the group’s small number of vocalists. The first song was followed by another popular one—Maroon 5’s “This Love”—for which percussion was added. By the end of the song, the entire audience was clapping along with the beat.

Up next was the non-denominational, co-ed Christian a cappella group, Against The Current. The ensemble opened with a powerful and exciting rendition of “Shake It Out” by Florence + The Machine. The lead vocalist probably could have gone without a microphone as her voice rang mightily throughout the lecture hall, demanding

the crowd’s attention. Her commanding voice, paired wonderfully with the well-practiced background singers of the group, brought great energy to the performance. The group continued with the soulful rock ballad “Praise You In The Storm” by Casting Crowns and finished with the spirited and enthusiastic “Joyful Joyful” (originally from Sister Act 2). The song featured a riveting call and response rap verse: the group questioned the audience, “You down with G-O-D?” to which every person in attendance was instructed to respond, “Yeah, you know me.” The excitement in the atmosphere was greatly apparent after the performance.

While the energy level in the lecture hall was high, the all-female ensemble The Sharps, wearing mostly red for AIDS awareness, took over for a short

performance. Starting with their own rendition of “Locked Out Of Heaven”

by Bruno Mars, The Sharps captured the attention of the audience with a well-choreographed performance, featuring a powerful layer of background vocals and striking lead performance.

The group followed with one of the most appreciated songs of the night, its own take on Lynyrd Skynyrd’s classic “Sweet Home Alabama.” “Sweet Home Boston College” included references to the basketball team’s recent win over the No. 1-ranked Syracuse Orange, the overall dreadfulness of South Bend, and BC’s most recent famous visitors, Kobe Bryant and Liam Neeson. The original and witty song drew laughter from all corners of the room.

Following The Sharps was the allmale group The Heightsmen, who—

upon taking hold of the microphones— was already receiving a round of cheers and applause from the audience. The cheers continued to emerge from the back right corner of the hall throughout their opening song, “Colder Weather” by Zac Brown Band and endured throughout the performance. The Heightsmen continued to rouse the crowd through songs like Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” and R. Kelly’s “Ignition.” The final song received perhaps the most praise, as the lead vocalists’ microphone failed just seconds into the song. He didn’t seem rattled at all as he dropped the mic on the floor and continued the song with even more energy, drawing an extremely positive reaction from the crowd. Once the technical difficulties were resolved, the final group prepared to give one of the leading performances

of the night.

The Dynamics, a co-ed group, began with a rendition of “Give Me Love” by Ed Sheeran—its interpretation was absolutely incredible. The audience responded accordingly with thunderous applause and praise. The collaborative continued to rock the lecture hall with “You Know I’m No Good” by Amy Winehouse and—perhaps the greatest single piece of the night—“The Cave”

by Mumford & Sons. The complicated yet beautiful layers of background vocals supplemented the powerful and smooth lead vocals. The final words of the song triggered a wild reaction from the audience, eliciting a standing ovation from some members of the audience. “The Cave” proved to be a fitting finale for a well-produced event for a great cause. n

Baker’s ‘Circle Mirror Transformation’ comes to Bonn Studio Theatre ‘Circle Mirror,’ from A10 of an acting studio, playing a counting game.

Feeling out each other’s pauses, the five characters collectively try to count to 10, breaking silence with the next number in the sequence.

Inevitably, the actors count over each other, and the exercise begins again.

At face, Circle Mirror Transformation is a narrative on failure—these characters are bound to fall short of what they set out to do, necessarily colliding along the way.

Playwright Annie Baker, however, is eager to look beyond that. For her, it never especially matters what the characters are counting up to, or why they’re trying to get there—even the class itself never seems to fully understand the reasons for these games. Since there’s little motivation for the actors in the activities themselves, the focus is moved to the interaction in these seemingly trite classes.

Circle Mirror Transformation is the story of the collisions along the way.

Director Maggie Kearnan, A&S ’14, paid particular attention to bringing out these small collisions hidden in the script. Audience members sat on three sides of the stage and were positioned remarkably close to the action. There was a lot less potential to trick the audience when it sat at such a broad angle.

The actors moved very organically about the stage—the show wasn’t blocked with any strong sense of geometric order. Even foundational ideas of movement didn’t seem to apply in Kearnan’s production. Movement had less to do with plot motives and an awful lot to

Emily Sadeghian / Heights Editor

Alexandra Lewis, A&S ’14, plays Marty, the teacher of an adult acting class in Shirley, Vt., whose relationships are challenged by her work. do with objects that incidentally fascinated, or had some simple functional purpose for the characters—an exercise ball, a mirror, an outlet to plug in an iPhone, a cubby for a backpack, a water bottle.

Lauren (Julia James, A&S ’17) is the youngest member of Marty’s acting class, a high school girl taking the class with the hope of preparing herself for the role of Maria in her high school’s upcoming production of West Side Story. As the class goes on, Lauren grows increasingly skeptical of Marty’s act-

ing games. Her role is particularly important to the play in that she carries many of the viewer’s doubts.

Lauren’s impatient, immature attitude toward the class mirrors the careless decision-making of the adults around her. In one theater game, each member of the class is instructed to write down a secret no one has ever heard. The secrets are then shuffled and read anonymously in the circle. While Lauren’s silly response manages to draw a disapproving look from Marty, it’s a secret

presumably belonging to Marty’s husband James (Colin O’Neill, CSOM ’14) that proves to destroy a marriage.

Schultz (Ben Halter, A&S ’16) and Theresa (Sarah Devisio, LSOE ’14) strike up a romance in the class, only to have it complicated and then cast aside over the course of the summer.

Schultz, perhaps the most visibly moved by Marty’s teaching, is a middle-aged carpenter, recently divorced but still wearing a wedding ring at the show’s start. Devisio and Halter have undeniable chemistry on stage, and

much of the show’s plot is driven by Schultz’ unwavering hopefulness—and hopeless pursuit of Theresa.

Throughout the show, actors would incrementally drag open a curtain covering a giant mirror along the backside of the classroom.

At first, the mirror seems to represent the growing self-awareness of the characters very neatly, but by the shows end, it becomes clear that these characters aren’t “developing” so much as colliding and falling apart again.

The Circle Mirror Transformation suggests that the nature of people isn’t so open to change, but that circumstances are. It would take more than a summertime course to make Lauren a great actress, and more than a summer romance to heal the wounds of Schultz’ divorce.

In a cast of five, there’s no room for weak performances. Fortunately, the actors seemed to prop each other up. This was an unusual production in that no one took away or stole from the energy of it, a testament to Kearnan’s focus on the smallness of the show.

By the end of the show, the mirror at the back of the stage was reflecting more the audience than the actors themselves. Fittingly, the play ends as it starts: with a theater game, but this one transforms into a real-life encounter.

Schultz and Lauren are first just playing themselves 10 years from the end of the class, but in time, it becomes clear they are themselves 10 years from the end of the class. It’s Baker’s reminder that theater, at its truest, is more than an abstraction of life—it is life, and it’s ever ready to start again. n

MFA surveys Boston’s taste for Impressionism in new exhibit ‘Impressionism,’ from A10 never diminished, but their taste for works within this category has been evolving. In the ongoing MFA exhibition, voters’ top three favorites—which hold “a place of honor” near the entrance—reflect the preferences of art lovers nowadays. With 4,464 votes, Van Gogh’s Houses at Auvers (1890) beat out all other works in the collection, while Monet’s famous Water Lilies (1907) came in second with 3543 votes. Edgar Degas’ Little FourteenYear-Old Dancer (original model 1878–81, cast after 1921) was ranked third with 2,869 votes. As the only sculpture on display, the young ballerina stands proudly between the houses and the water lilies.

The captions for the top three are also evidence of what Bostonians think about the artworks they picked. If one is curious as to why the Van Gogh piece received more votes than Monet’s more famous works, he can find voter Jordan Spiers’ explanation in the caption—“Monet painted looking outward.

Van Gogh, looking inward.” Meanwhile, it is interesting to see how present day voters’ views differed from the Impressionists’ contemporary critics. For instance, Degas’ sculpture was seen as a “grimly realistic portrayal of a scrawny teenager” in his time, while voter Kelly Knight, who grew up in Revere, Mass., expressed her childhood attachment to it. She remembers that, as a little girl, the Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer was one of the first artworks that she “ever completely fell head over heels in love with.”

Even though the three favorites help to characterize the city’s taste for Impressionism, the diversity of the rest of the collection reveals more details about the art movement itself and its connections to Boston. For example, the snow scene in Monet’s Boulevard Saint-Denis, Argenteuil, in Winter (1875) (“an unusually raw and somewhat unlovely glimpse of Argenteuil”) reminds visitors of what they see as they walk down the streets of Boston in the snow. Entrance to the Village of Vetheuil in Winter (1879), another painting

by Monet, shows the more “lovely” side of a snowy day—as noted in the caption, “Monet’s rendering of freshly fallen snow appealed to New England audiences.”

The only American and the only female artist to appear in the exhibition with the French Impressionists is Mary Cassatt. Many of her works were images of modern women in everyday social scenes. Cassatt’s In the Loge (1878) is on display in the exhibit. It features a woman holding her opera glasses and looking not at the stage, but across at someone else. The question of what or at whom she is gazing triggers great curiosity in the observer, and this makes Cassatt’s piece stand out among the 30 Impressionist pictures.

The MFA’s Assistant Curator of European Paintings, Emily Beeny, wrote to visitors, “We must acknowledge that our tastes—why we like the things that we like—have a history.”

This exhibition explores the history of Bostonians’ appreciation for Impressionist art and offers a snapshot of their views today. n

John Wiley / Heights Editor

Degas’ ‘Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer’ greets guests entering ‘Boston Loves Impressionism.’

John Wiley / Heights Editor

Daniel de Leon, A&S ’15, explored darker themes with his performance Saturday night, speaking from the persona of a ‘suicidal thought.’

SLAMnesty event focuses on tragedy, taboo ‘SLAMnesty,’ from A10 “Hope Killed The Ice Phoenix.”

Lauren Audi, A&S ’14, centered some of her work on femaleness, handling the subject with rich metaphoric language just as Kerr’s did. Her poem “Lady Bird” was her most intense—she spoke about feeling trapped in her body, saying, “I did not ask for this cage,” while wishing she could “fly away liberated from the perch.”

Audi’s writing was striking in and of itself.

It wasn’t interested “in preaching,” she said, but more “about beauty.” This focus on beauty was apparent throughout her entire performance—in a piece she delivered half in Spanish and half in English, as well as in “Cherry Blossom,” a piece about coming to terms with senseless deaths, like Jordan Davis’s, Trayvon Martin’s, and her close friend’s from BC. Death was a prevalent theme in many of the poems. Reading a short story that tried to tackle a number of big issues, including abuse, bullying, and suicide, freshman Karina Herrera ended her recitation with the startling image of a woman killing herself with a bullet to the head.

The last student performer of the night, Daniel de Leon, A&S ’15, also spoke on suicide, but in a much more direct way.

He shared two poems that he hadn’t let

many people hear before, but he explained why he felt it was necessary they were heard now. “We don’t like to think about death,” he said. “We find things that make us happy instead.” His first piece, “Suicide Thoughts,” personified these thoughts by relating them through a first person speaker. The technique had a bold effect on the poem, arresting the audience’s attention as he ended with the provocative line, “I am a suicidal thought—that has become another suicide.”

Whether they spoke about death and depression, beauty and femininity, or something else entirely, the poets possessed a close connections to their works.

Fatin Yousif, A&S ’15, for example, read something she had written for her father.

Her eloquent and personal ode was one of separation, loss, and redemption—of how although her father left his home in Sudan, he still “harbors his country’s music in his lungs.” She described how she and her brother sometimes forget to ask their father about his past, but also how they try to keep it alive. “Our father’s stories,” she said poignantly, “are not foreign to us.”

Jovani Hernandez, A&S ’16, also read a poem about immigration, dedicating it to his brother, who had come to visit and was sitting in the audience. Tentatively

titled, “His Story,” his poem was one of the strongest of the evening. It dealt with the obstacles a family faces when it leaves its home to live in America. He spoke about being placed in ESL classes, for example, and being discriminated against “because we read a little slower—I write slow,” he said. “But I write at the speed a Latino’s heart starts racing when they see their loved ones / Or the movement of their feet when their favorite song comes on / Or their willingness to pack everything and leave to a foreign country.” Closing the poem off, he said intently, “I can write fast / It just has to be our story.”

In addition to the spoken word pieces, SLAMnesty also featured a dance performance by female step team F.I.S.T.S. and The Black Hearted, a pair of student rappers featured on the recently released Chorduroy album. They sang three songs—one about vices, one about loss, and their single “Drunken Poets.”

Showcasing the breadth of talent at BC, SLAMnesty offered students an opportunity to explore hard issues in a welcoming environment. It proved students’ willingness not only to speak about and but also to listen to things that aren’t often discussed openly—it proved the power of the spoken word. n

ARTS&REVIEW THE HEIGHTS

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Monday, February 3, 2014

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2014

THE FINER THINGS

Transformer: a new LaBeouf

‘Acapelooza’ hosted as benefit for Camp AmeriKids Jammin’ Toast, Against the Current, Sharps, Heightsmen, and Dynamics hold charity concert

BY HARRY MITCHELL Heights Staff

ARIANA IGNERI Shia LaBeouf has been issuing quite a few apologies lately, but instead of clearing things up, he seems to have been confusing people even more—so much so that James Franco wrote a New York Times Op-Ed piece this week trying to defend and explain the Transformers star’s behavior.

At the end of December, LaBeouf was accused of basing his film Howard Cantour.com not so loosely on a story by graphic novelist Daniel Clowes. He apologized on Twitter, admitting that he had “neglected to follow proper accreditation,” but the odd thing is, the tweet itself was plagiarized too. Now, there’s a mistake no form of remorse and no number of hashtags could ever fix.

LaBeouf claimed, in an attempt to justify his actions, that the whole thing was for the sake of performance art—as if calling plagiarism art makes it acceptable (that’s an argument for another column, though).

Pushing the boundaries of art even further, LaBeouf arrived at the premier of his movie Nymphomaniac in Germany at the beginning of the month wearing a brown paper bag on his head. The words “I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE” were scrawled on it in sharpie and two holes were cut out for his eyes.

Getting caught plagiarizing is humiliating, but accessorizing with an oversized lunch bag at a black tie affair is neither a smart “critique,” like Franco called it, nor a wise solution. So, if this was LaBeouf’s way of proclaiming his aversion to, or his attempt to separate himself from celebrity culture, it failed miserably—because, ironically, LaBeouf is more “famous” now than he ever was before. Had he really wanted to “show up the media” and had the lifestyle he led truly bothered him, he would have been more successful if he just left Hollywood, rather than making a scene—talk about counterproductive.

The most recent of LaBeouf’s stunts, however, took place a week later when he opened a controversial gallery in LA. Titled #IAMSORRY, the exhibit featured him sitting silently in a chair with the now infamous bag covering his face. Viewers were allowed to sit before him and stare.

Like LaBeouf’s actions leading up to this performance project, #IAMSORRY begs the question: What is LaBeouf trying to do? And like his statement on the red carpet, it seems to be a giant, perplexing contradiction. After all, what is he apologizing for? For plagiarism? For his poor red carpet manners? For the project itself, which some argue rips off of someone else’s artwork? If LaBeouf’s purpose was any of the above suggestions, the exhibit seems to stand opposed to all of them.

If it wasn’t a social critique or an apology, maybe #IAMSORRY was actually a work of art. But that’s debatable, too, since it could be plagiarizing Marina Abramovic’s The Artist is Present, a piece in which Abramovic sat in the Museum of Modern Art for 750 hours—a living, human exhibition. For art to be art, it should be more or less original. Where does that leave #IAMSORRY, then?

While he supports it, even Franco isn’t 100 percent certain. “I think Mr. LaBeouf’s project, if it is a project,” he wrote, “is a worthy one.” He believes it’s LaBeouf’s effort to “reclaim his public persona,” but he doesn’t eliminate the possibility that the actor could be plain reckless or simply crazy. He’s no Louis Stevens anymore. Like former child stars Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears, he’s grown up, and retrospectively, his actions don’t seem to be too different from theirs.

Look at Cyrus’s provocative performance at the VMAs last year or Spears’ decision to shave her hair off in the 2000s. How is the public supposed to interpret these things—as art, commentary, or insanity? Or were these celebrities just taking back their “personas?”

Whether LaBeouf’s #IAMSORRY signals a psychological breakdown or an artistic breakthrough is still a contested topic—if nothing else, though, it proves that LaBeouf should’ve been clear about his intentions, at least if he wanted the public to take him seriously. If LaBeouf meant to apologize for his plagiarism, well, then he should’ve done that, but if he meant to make art, he should’ve made art. As of now, no one really knows what LaBeouf did, or has been doing, these last few months, but whatever the point of it all was—he should’ve left the hashtags out. #sorryiamnotsorry.

Ariana Igneri is the Assoc. Arts & Review editor of The Heights. She can be reached at arts@bcheights.com.

A few minutes after the scheduled starting time, a crowd began to roll into McGuinn 121, the intimate setting for “Acapelooza.” The performance featured five Boston College musical acts—they provided two hours of incredibly wellperformed and choreographed music, all for the benefit of Camp AmeriKids, a non-profit organization whose mission is to enhance the lives of youth living with HIV/AIDS and sickle cell anemia by offering a traditional summer camp experience. BC’s AIDS Awareness Committee charged a $5 entry fee for

“Acapelooza” and successfully raised over $1,000 to send a child to camp for one week.

Once the audience settled in and opening remarks were delivered, the not-so-a-cappella group Jammin’ Toast took the stage. With two guitar players, a percussionist, and three main vocalists, Jammin’ Toast provided some exciting cuts, playing a set that resonated well with audience. The group started with the song “Daughters” by John Mayer, a catchy and meaningful song on fatherhood that had the audience captivated. The voices of the female

See ‘Acapelooza,’ A9

EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR

The Sharps performed parody ‘Sweet Home Boston College’ at ‘Acapelooza’ on Thursday.

CIRCLE MIRROR

BY JOHN WILEY Arts & Review Editor One. Two. A pause. Three. A longer pause.

Four! Start again.

Circle Mirror Transformation starts as it ends: with a theater game. Set in a summertime adult acting course, the play follows five residents of Shirley, Vt. as they learn arguably little about traditional theater, but a remarkable bit about themselves. Circle Mirror Transformation, presented by the Boston College Theatre Department, brought a living realist portrait to the Bonn Studio Theatre this weekend. It was a rare production that kept itself acutely concerned with character, avoiding traditional plot points and instead developing relationships through awkward and seemingly slight dialogue. Much of the plot kept entirely to the subtext—and many of the show’s most telling moments were silences.

The show begins in medias res, with the four students and their teacher, Marty (Alexandra Lewis, A&S ’14), lying on the wood floor EMILY SADEGHIAN / HEIGHTS EDITOR

See ‘Circle Mirror,’ A9

‘SLAMnesty’ confronts social taboo with poetry Amnesty International hosts evening featuring slam poets, rap artists, and F.I.S.T.S. dance group

BY ARIANA IGNERI Assoc. Arts & Review Editor

JOHN WILEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Monet’s ‘Ravine of the Petite Creuse’ was one of the pieces Bostonians voted into the exhibit.

MFA opens crowdsourced ‘Boston Loves Impressionism’

BY BETTY WANG For The Heights The incredible power of technology and the Internet makes crowdsourcing a widely popular and effective method of decisionmaking. Recently, it has contributed to the organization of the exhibition Boston Loves Impressionism at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston—which will be open until May 26. For the first time, the museum invited the public to choose their favorite Impressionist masterpieces, voting online during the month of January. Thirty were selected from a list of 50 Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works, to be put on display in the Lois and Michael Torf Gallery.

The exhibition is exclusively Bostonian in

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‘3 Days To Kill’

the way that it not only presents artworks by main Impressionists such as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Edgar Degas, but also sheds light on the history of Boston’s taste for Impressionism. Encouraged by American painters, particularly J. Foxcroft Cole and Lilla Cabot Perry, Bostonians began to purchase large numbers of Impressionist paintings in the late 19th century, when many critics in Paris still laughed at them.

As more and more of these works appeared in exhibitions, such as the 1892 show of 21 Monet paintings by the Saint Botolph Club on Newbury Street, Impressionist artists captured the heart of the city of Boston.

Bostonians’ love for Impressionism

See ‘Impressionism,’ A9

Kevin Costner’s latest action thriller has 100 minutes to entertain, but fails to do so, A8

Snaps and applause echoed in Gasson 100 on Saturday evening, as eight of Boston College’s slam poets performed for SLAMnesty: Uncensored.

Sponsored by Amnesty International, the event’s goal was “exercising the right to freedom of expression through spoken word.” Each piece focused on different themes, such as feminism, suicide, and immigration, but collectively, the poetry of the night sought to “bring topics not normally talked about to light,” as Genie Han, A&S ’15, said in her introduction.

The atmosphere encouraged honesty and intimacy, while the poets spoke about deeply personal issues and made themselves vulnerable to an unknown but eager audience.

Guards were down—ears, minds, and hearts were open.

Amanda Espiritu, A&S ’14, was the first to take the mic. Her opening poem, dealing with abuse, was sincere and raw. It was created from pieces of real interviews she had conducted. “No one dares draw attention to it / It’s not talked about,”

‘House of Cards’: Man vs. Netflix

Popular Netflix shows such as ‘House of Cards’ make TV viewing less of a bonding experience, A8

she said. “We have to act to make a change … We’re worth more than they say …

Verbal or physical it’s not okay—abuse will never be okay.”

Espiritu’s second poem possessed the same quality of candor. She argued that the media fails to portray beauty correctly, making women obsess over things such as “bad hair days,” make-up, and thigh gaps. “Your beauty is in your actions … Be sugar, be spice / Be more than everything nice,” she concluded.

Like Espiritu, other students were also concerned with issues of self-image and femininity.

Haley Kerr, A&S ’17, shared three of her poems, one of which, titled, “Chocolate Chip Banana Bread,” had to do with her understanding of her sister’s anorexia. It was “written about beauty when I was 14,” she said, “when my idea of beauty was very skewed.” Kerr’s poetry dealt with heavy topics but explored them through captivating language and vivid images—her other pieces were “Fireflies and Liberation” and

See ‘SLAMnesty,’ A9

Bestsellers...............................A8 Box Office Report........................A8

THE HEIGHTS 2014

SPRING SPORTS PREVIEW

WOMEN’S LACROSSE, SEE B8 The women’s lacrosse team is back with a couple of powerful offensive and defensive weapons, looking for its first NCAA tournament win.

FEB. 24, 2014

SOFTBALL, SEE B6 After a difficult season, the Eagles are back with new pitching depth, hoping to build on last year’s offensive high notes and seeking a more successful year.

COMING INTO

FOCUS

In his fourth year as head coach, Mike Gambino’s vision for BC Baseball is reaching a turning point. See B4

GRAHAM BECK / HEIGHTS SENIOR STAFF

B2 THE HEIGHTS FEB. 24, 2014

SPRING SPORTS PREVIEW STATS

NUMBERS DON’T LIE Last season, the Eagles finished at the bottom of the ACC, and their stats show it. Illustrated below are BC’s season totals, shown in comparison to the ACC average.

Hits ACC BC

586

359

Runs ACC BC

368.8

174

Slugging ACC percent BC

39.7%

27.9%

Walks ACC taken BC

265

198

Strike outs ACC taken BC

365

Batting ACC average BC

.281

.209

Fielding ACC percent BC

96.9% 96% 74

Errors ACC BC

Wins ACC BC

22

BC BC

Loss streak ACC BC

82 38

12

Losses ACC Win streak ACC

378

40 9.69

2 4.8

15

Pitched ACC strikeouts BC

299 3.8

ERA ACC BC

428

5.4 213 208

Pitched walks ACC BC

FEATURED PLAYERS

LUKE FERNANDES Year: 2017 2016 2015 2014

CHRIS SHAW Year: 2017 2016 2015 2014

ANDREW CHIN Year: 2017 2016 2015 2014

Elliott, Maine

Lexington, Mass.

Newton, Mass.

Position: RHP

Position: OF / IB

Position: LHP

27 hits in 2013

2013 ERA: 3.88

RS in 2013 due to injury

FEB. 24, 2014 THE HEIGHTS B3

SPRING SPORTS PREVIEW PROJECTIONS

SEASON PROJECTIONS With veteran leadership, young talent, and bullpen depth, Boston College baseball has the potential to navigate conference play and make it to the ACC tournament in May.

Tom Bourdon

Logan Hoggarth Nick Colucci

Chris Shaw Johnny Adams Joe Cronin

Joe Cronin Johnny Adams Gabriel Hernandez

Blake Butera

John Hennessy

Jesse Adams Justin Dunn Eric Stone John Nicklas Bobby Skogsbergh

}T ra vi ity til

Tyler Hinchliffe Luke Fernandes Nick Poore Mike King Michael Strem Jeff Burke

Nick Sciortino Stephen Sauter

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IN THE BULLPEN

sF er

ric

k

Eric Stevens Andrew Chin John Gorman

2014 SCHEDULE CHESTNUT HILL, MA

Opponent Nevada Santa Clara Nevada Santa Clara

DELAND, FL Date 2/21 2/22 2/23

Opponent Stetson Stetson Stetson

FORT MEYERS, FL Date 2/27

Opponent Red Sox (Exhib.)

MARCH

PORT CHARLOTTE, FL Date 2/28 3/1 3/2

Opponent Central Michigan Villanova Western Michigan

BOCA RATON, FL Date 3/4 3/5

Opponent Florida Atlantic Florida Atlantic

CORAL GABLES, FL Date 3/7 3/8 3/9

Opponent Miami* Miami* Miami*

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA Date 3/14 3/15 3/16

Opponent Virginia* Virginia* Virginia*

Date 3/18 3/21 3/22 3/23 3/25 3/28 3/29 3/30 4/1 4/2 4/4 4/5 4/6 4/8

CAMBRIDGE, MA Date 4/9

Opponent Harvard

NOTRE DAME, IN Date 4/11 4/12 4/13

Opponent Notre Dame* Notre Dame* Notre Dame*

CHESTNUT HILL, MA Date 4/15

Opponent Rhode Island

RALEIGH, NC Date 4/18 4/19 4/20

Opponent NC State* NC State* NC State*

BROOKLINE, MA Date 4/21

NORWICH, CT

Opponent Holy Cross Wake Forest* Wake Forest* Wake Forest* Northeastern Florida State* Florida State* Florida State* Connecticut Massachusetts North Carolina* North Carolina* North Carolina* Dartmouth

Opponent Northeastern/Massachusetts

Date 4/23

Opponent St. John’s

CHESTNUT HILL, MA Date 4/25 4/26 4/27

Opponent Maryland* Maryland* Maryland*

KINGSTON, RI Date 4/29

Opponent Rhode Island

CHESTNUT HILL, MA

MAY

Date 2/14 2/15 2/15 2/16

APRIL

FEBRUARY

SANTA CLARA, CA

Date 5/2 5/3 5/4 5/10 5/11

Opponent Pittsburgh* Pittsburgh* Pittsburgh* Binghamton Binghamton

PORTLAND, ME Date 5/13

Opponent Maine

CLEMSON, SC Date 5/15 5/16 5/17

Opponent Clemson* Clemson* Clemson*

2014 ACC TOURNAMENT 5/20-25 * Conference Event Home

B4 THE HEIGHTS FEB. 24, 2014

FEB. 24, 2014 THE HEIGHTS B5

SPRING SPORTS PREVIEW FEATURE

CHASING A

VISION After one of the worst seasons in the history of Boston College baseball, head coach Mike Gambino believes his team has the character and talent to win.

CONNOR MELLAS | SPORTS EDITOR

SO NN Y FO R 8

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF

GRAHAM BECK / HEIGHTS SENIOR STAFF

8

EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Bourdon makes the switch from No. 7 to No. 8.

Four years ago, in his first season in charge of BC baseball, Gambino began a tradition of bestowing the No. 8 jersey to the player that best exemplifies the spirit of BC baseball and handles adversity well.

The No. 8 Jersey honors Peter “Sonny” Nictakis, a former BC player and two-time captain who died of Hodgkin’s disease in 2000.

On Wednesday night at practice in the bubble, Travis Ferrick, a newly established utility man, Nick Sciortino, a high school short stop turned catcher, and Stephen Sauter, a sophomore catcher, took

EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR

rep after rep from behind the plate, simulating a throw down to second. LaPointe stood on crutches a few feet away, watching on, offering criticism, advice, and encouragement.

“For a kid that got some not-so-great news that his season’s over—at best his season is over, at worst his career might be over, and we’re still kind of waiting on that—and to completely put himself on the back burner and say, ‘Well, now what can I do to help the team?’—his leadership has grown since that injury,” Gambino said.

“Our three captains are guys that we know lead and we know are great leaders, and Nate has jumped right in there as well.”

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s practice wound down and everyone else cleared the field, Ferrick stuck around for extra reps from assistant coach Scott Friedholm as LaPointe watched on. Again and again he took the flip from Friedholm, hopped out of his stance, tossed his mask, and gunned the ball to second. At one point, after hurling a ball that trailed to the right, Ferrick yelled “thank you,” and motioned as if to wrap it up. It was a simple moment but a strangely telling one. Friedholm fired back “you’re not done yet,” and without a complaint or grimace—with only a chuckle, Ferrick yelled, “I was just saying thank you,” and dropped back into the stance to go back to work.

Gambino has had teams filled with character and hard workers before, but this Birdball edition is somehow different: There’s a new level of togetherness, a feeling of levity and focus, and a willingness to work being felt by the coaches and players. So far, BC has shown an ability to win, but has lost games in a frustrating fashion as well.

During the first weekend of games, BC went down to Santa Clara early but fought back for the comeback win.

“We didn’t play great in the first couple of innings [of the Santa Clara game],” Gambino said. “In the past, you could just feel it in the past, when things went wrong like that it might have just gone away.”

This past weekend, that resilience was missing. BC went 1-2 in its series against Stetson, failing twice in comeback bids against the Hatters.

Gambino’s teams have had character and lost before. They’ve worked hard and lost before, too. At the end of a season, a team isn’t judged on its camaraderie—it’s remembered by its record. Whether success is the result of clubhouse chemistry and character or new talent, in the end, success—or lack of it—is what defines a season, and so far it’s been up and down for the Eagles.

While BC has a somewhat intangible and overwhelming feeling of togetherness, this team does have three visible things that have been sorely lacking in the past: depth, talent, and confidence.

Last year, Birdball was an extremely young team. BC dropped a lot of games and lost Bourdon to a hand injury for the last third of the season. The Eagles started the season losing early and often, at one point suffering 15 losses in a row. The coaches and team leaders couldn’t pull it together, and there was too much youth and not I told my staff when we took enough depth to right the ship. the job year three was going to be “I told my staff when we took the job, year three was going to be our our hardest. We knew what the hardest,” Gambino said. “We knew what the roster was going to be, we roster was going to be, we knew knew how young we were going to be, we knew all those things.” how young we were going to be, we knew all those things.”

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eflecting on last season, Gambino said one of his mistakes was failing to truly prepare such a young team for how hard the ACC schedule would be. BC finished a dismal 4-25 in conference play, with all four of those victories coming at the end of the season when his team was seasoned by relentless play and lessons of defeat.

“For a group of kids who haven’t lost a lot of baseball games in their lives—all those freshmen and sophomores coming in—for them to realize that if you’re 15-15 in our conference then you’re a top-10 if not top-15 team,” Gambino said. “You might get swept on a weekend. You don’t want to, but you might get swept.”

By the end of the season, though, Gambino said the team was able to look ahead to next year, and the silver linings buried in loss after loss were emerging quickly.

“As discouraging as that record was—and none of us were happy about that record—there were a lot of really encouraging things at the end of last year,” Gambino said. “We sort of left last year, and everybody kind of looked around saying, ‘This year stunk, but this program, we’re okay right now, and there’s some pretty good things going on.’”

One of those takeaways was the performance of Andrew Chin. Chin started 13 games and made 14 total appearances for BC, finishing the season with 45 strikeouts and a 3.88 ERA. The redshirt sophomore has continued to improve this year, going 2-0 in his first two starts with a .84 ERA and striking out seven batters in 10.2 innings pitched.

As a whole, right from the start the pitching staff looks much improved from last year. Stevens, Chin, and John Gorman round out the starting rotation, but an influx of freshman talent has provided the bullpen with much-needed depth. Mike King, Michael Strem, Bobby Skogsbergh, Justin Dunn, and redshirt freshman Luke Fernandes have emerged as viable relief options for the Eagles, as well as sophomores Jesse Adams and John Nicklas.

“The freshman arms are going to have big roles, big roles out of our bullpen, and they’ve already earned trust about how they handle things right away,” Gambino said.

Behind the plate, the battle is wide open between Sauter and Sciortino—either of the catchers could make a push for it—and Gambino said he believes they both have the ability to be very good ACC catchers.

One of the emerging talents on offense last year was Chris Shaw, who led the team with six homeruns. The 6-foot-3, 248-pound sophomore has quickly shown he can be the Eagles’ power hitter this year, batting .370 with a .667 slugging percentage and one homerun through seven games played.

After two weekends of games, BC is 4-3 , and has been, at times, resilient, dominant, and disappointing, winning big at Stetson but also failing in a ninth inning comeback.

Over the past few years, Gambino has faced a lot of challenges and a lot of problems. Now, with things looking up, he has a new hurdle: making his players believe that their success is real, not just a fluke.

“I think one of our weaknesses could be an unfamiliarity with winning and being a really good team,” Hennessy said. “I think we have the potential to be a very good ACC team and make a run to the postseason. But just the fact that the last three years we haven’t made the postseason, so kind of building on that, is kind of like that fear of being really good—once we start making a run and becoming a really good team, it’s like ‘Wow, look at what we’ve done, what do we do now?’ I think that kind of works with our theme of not getting complacent and getting better every day.”

After three years of toiling through the regular season with no payoff in the end, the Eagles’ goal this season is to get to the postseason, to make it through the ACC tournament and to get to regionals. It’s not going to be an easy path. BC faces early away series at Miami and the University of Virginia, and then shortly after that, Florida State comes to town.

Despite the talent this team possesses, it’s going to lose games, and in order to make the postseason, it must respond better to losses than it did last time around.

“It was pretty hard last year, going through a certain skid, but this year it’s just a different makeup,” Stevens said. “I think we have the guys that

will surround each other and will pull together and be able to go through a tough time like that and be able to rebound and put something together. Hopefully that’s only one or two games, but you try and nip that in the bud early on.”

Gambino sits in his office as the hellish mix of ice rain and snow continues in torrents outside his window. He refuses to use the northeast weather as an excuse—he says with the kids he’s recruited, adversity is that is the reason they’ll win, not the reason they’ll lose.

The collection of objects arranged on Gambino’s desk is a testament to his coaching style. Among the assemblage is a framed photo of his friend and teammate Sonny, a money clip given to him by a member of the last BC baseball team to make the College World Series, the St. Ignacius cup—an honor awarded yearly to one men’s and one women’s team that scores the highest in athletic performance, academic performance, overall citizen, and Baldwin points—a medal given to him by a BC graduate and Navy Seal team three member, and a plaque from his father, who passed away last year.

The plaque faces outward so anyone sitting in front of his desk can see it. It reads: “There is no limit to what Gambino’s fourth season begins a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind Gambino graduated from Boston College in 2000 after starting 166 who gets the credit.” games in the middle infield and batting .313 over his career. In his Gambino’s vision of BC baseball is spread across three seasons at the helm of BC baseball, Gambino’s teams have his desk, represented in the monuments he’s collected: struggled, going 17-33, 22-33 and 12-40. 2014 has been a more Build a team of closely-knit, hard-working, high-charpositive start for Gambino, as his Eagles are 4-3 after two weekends. acter people and let them play for each other and their school—the wins will come as a result.

Gambino’s goal for the season is aligned with that of his team—to make the postseason—but on a broader scale, he wants to bring respect back for the program he loves and success for the senior class he loves.

They came into a spot, I don’t know that they realized “They came into a spot, I don’t know that they realized they were they were coming into a rebuild, and have been through coming into a rebuild, and have been through the struggles and have the struggles and have worked so hard to get this thing worked so hard to get this thing going in the right direction,” Gambino going in the right direction. I’m excited for them to get paid said. “I’m excited for them to get paid off. I want nothing more than to off. I want nothing more than to watch these kids perform watch these kids perform in a regional and for them to know how big in a regional and for them to know how big of a part they of a part they had in getting us back to playing Birdball.” had in getting us back to playing Birdball.”

For Gambino, much is riding on his fourth season. Achieve the goal of making the postseason, and his vision for a winning BC baseball program built on character and work ethic is one step closer to a reality. Lose like last season, and that vision could fail with him.

He’s made mistakes and learned a lot over the past few seasons, and he’s smart enough to know that while this team has the potential to become great, it won’t happen overnight, and it’s going to require constant improvement.

It’s going to take time, and there are going to be failed comebacks and series sweeps along the way. A vision doesn’t reach fruition simply from desire—it comes together game by game, individual wins and losses at a time.

“I tell the boys this and same for myself: Our job is to keep getting better every day,” Gambino said. “I definitely look back at some things I did over the first couple of years and some mistakes I made and things that I would do differently, absolutely—and learning how to communicate better to a group of guys and learning how to develop guys. I hope I’m GRAHAM BECK / HEIGHTS SENIOR STAFF always getting better.” 

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even since I took over, knowing it was going to be a rebuild, and knowing it was going to take a couple years, and also knowing the character of what is now our senior class.”

Gambino’s vision for success is based around character and hard work, both in baseball and life. He’s built the core of his team around those ideals—his three captains, center fielder Tom Bourdon, infielder John Hennessy, and pitcher Eric Stevens have been through the ACC wringer over the past few seasons but espouse nothing but faith in the system, the team, and belief in what unrelenting effort can bring.

In his first season as head coach, Gambino brought the No. 8 jersey back into BC baseball.

Before losing his battle with Hodgkin’s disease in the summer of 2000, Peter “Sonny” Nictakis—a two-year captain—had worn No. 8, and Gambino began a tradition of giving Sonny’s number to the player who best exemplified the spirit of BC baseball and handled adversity well.

Returning as a captain, Bourdon is wearing Sonny’s number for the Eagles this season.

“To see the number of votes he got last year [for captain] as a junior was unbelievable,” Gambino said. “And then [he] did it again this year. The team also has a say in who wears No. 8, and to see how many votes he got for that, it’s amazing to see.”

Bourdon, Hennessy, and Stevens are the official ambassadors of Gambino’s team, but in the face of early adversity, the widespread accountability Gambino has worked to build into his squad is becoming apparent. In the first weekend of regular-season play, senior catcher Nate LaPointe blew out his knee. With the starting catcher’s job thrown into question, LaPointe abandoned any allowances of self-pity and shifted immediately into a player-manager role.

GA M BI NO

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t a young 36 years old, Mike Gambino looks like a baseball player. Sitting at his desk wearing a maroonand-gold Eagles baseball cap and a grey Boston College sweatshirt, it’s not hard to picture Gambino fielding grounders in the infield or taking at bats for the Eagles—the player is still very much a part of the coach.

Gambino the manager has struggled far harder than Gambino the Birdballer ever did, though.

Fourteen years ago, Gambino finished his college baseball career in Chestnut Hill. After 166 starts in the middle infield, a career batting average of .313, and first-team All Big East, All-New England and All-Northeast region honors his senior year, he graduated and headed for the Red Sox minor league system.

Fast forward to 2010. After stints scouting for Detroit and coaching at Virginia Tech, Gambino was chosen as the new head coach of the BC baseball team. Charged with a daunting rebuilding assignment, he knew it would be a difficult challenge, one that would take time—his goal was long-term program success, not short-term team accomplishment.

History has shown that time is a commodity coaches can scant afford, and after three years, 51 wins, and 106 losses, many on the outside have lost faith in Gambino’s vision and the end game.

Last year’s seemingly endless downward spiral led to calls for his job and spawned frustrated pleas for an intervention to stop the program’s bleeding.

Yet after three seasons with very little to show for his effort and even less to celebrate, Gambino sits in his office filled with confidence. As frigid, rain-sopped snow pounded Alumni Stadium outside his window, he smiled, unable to contain his enthusiasm for the season ahead and the team he’s built. Gambino hasn’t lost faith.

“I don’t—I sort of want to be cautious about sounding too optimistic, but I love where this team is right now,” Gambino said last week. “I love our leadership, I love how the boys are working, I love our depth. This is a year that I’ve sort of been looking toward really

MIKE GAMBINO: SEASON 4

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B6 THE HEIGHTS FEB. 24, 2014

SPRING SPORTS PREVIEW FEATURE

Jessie Daulton Chelsea Dimon The Eagles struggled with pitching last year due to depth, but are regaining that skill this year (L). Jessie Daulton (R) will be part of the strong hitting core that hopes to improve on last year’s results.

Alana DiMaso One of three captains for the 2014 season, DiMaso (R) came in third on the team in batting average for the 2013 season with a .307 average.

MOVING FORWARD The Boston College softball team had a rough 2013 season, but with senior leadership returning to the pitching staff and the retention of its three top hitters, the Eagles are gearing up to put the past behind them.

MARLY MORGUS | ASSOC. SPORTS EDITOR

she relies on five years of experience on the BC team, where, she has seen its ups and downs to calm her.

“It’s kind of a blessing that [D’Argento] got hurt, because this year we’re coming back even stronger, and now we have our ace pitcher,” Speer said. “It’s just going to make for that much better of a season this year.”

With 10 games under their belts this season, the Eagles have already leapt out of their rut and won six of them. With a long season ahead of them, the Eagles already have a goal on their mind—to make the ACC tournament, which no longer invites all of the conference’s members.

“Making it to the ACC tournament is going to be big,” Obrest said. “Not everybody gets in this year, and if you look at our records, we always finish in the bottom spot.”

It’s a long road ahead—the building blocks of hitting in place will need to get stronger, and the freshman pitchers will need to come into form if the Eagles wish to meet their goal, but the first step—putting the past behind them—is already complete. 

HITS 489

ERA 6.82

338

NT S NE

ES PO

OP

NE PO

EA GL

NT S

3.81

ES

it was two games,” Obrest said. “We’re putting it in the books and moving forward, because she had been throwing the ball really well in scrimmages, so I think we’re going to have two aces.”

With another addition of freshman Taylor Coroneos, the Eagles are hoping that they will achieve the depth on the mound that was so sorely missing last season. Weed and Coroneos are two members of a large five-player freshman class.

“We’re all there for each other, and with the big freshman class, I think we’ve done a great job connecting the two age groups together, and it’s just nice to play with both friends and teammates at the same time,” said senior captain Alana DiMaso, who returns to the lineup as an offensive weapon after batting .307 last year with eight home runs.

With so many new players entering their college careers, and learning from last year’s lessons, the Eagles are placing a new, stronger emphasis on the community within their team.

“With last year, not winning a lot of games is going to create some sort of rift because people aren’t going to be happy. I feel like this year we made it a point to say that no matter what happens, we’re all going to be there for each other,” Speer said. “Whether you get a start or whether you get benched a game, we’re still going to have your back.”

Last year, Speer led the team in batting average (.331), home runs (15), and RBIs (38). With all three of the top offensive contributors—Speer, Dimaso, and sophomore Megan Cooley—returning, the Eagles have a chance to fall into a rhythm as the pitching and defense develops in support of their offensive output.

“I think it’s going to be pitching, and she’s sitting here right now,” Obrest said, referring to the return of D’Argento. “I think everybody in the game of softball knows that. If you have a good one-two punch, or two good aces, you’re going to go far.

The hitters find a way to get on base and put runs on the board.”

Even, with so much emphasis put on that side of the ball, D’Argento isn’t feeling the pressure as

OP

She watched as the Eagles suffered through 15 games that were cut short by the mercy rule, and as they were outscored by their opponents by a score of 371-221 on the season.

“I think our pitching wasn’t where we needed it to be, especially when you play top-25 teams,” Obrest said. “With that being said, our hitters did a really good job putting runs on the board, but sometimes seven runs wasn’t enough for us. Injuries really hurt us. That’s not an excuse. We should have done a better job, but that certainly played a big role in it.”

With the coming of spring, though, the Eagles have a chance to put all of that behind them, building off of the bright spots from last season and rebuilding their depth in what they hope will be a season with a vastly different tone from the last one.

Among those bright spots will be the leadership of a now fifth year grad student, D’Argento, who will be back on the mound for the Eagles. As a junior, D’Argento had an ERA of 3.77 in her 10 wins and 13 losses on the mound, leading the team in strikeouts with 114.

Joining D’Argento on the pitching staff is freshman Jordan Weed.

“We have three healthy pitchers right now, and I think with Nic and Jordan especially, they both have been throwing the ball really well … I don’t think we’re going to have to use Nic for 14 innings when we play a double header, but if she’s rolling we’re going to stick with her, but I think Jordan’s going to be able to throw if we need her to,” Obrest said.

Weed made two appearances in the Eagles’ first weekend of play, starting against Memphis only to be pulled after two thirds of an inning after giving up three hits and three runs, and the next day against the Tigers once again, only to give up seven runs and seven hits in one and two thirds innings.

Obrest is still confident in Weed, though, as her performance in practice and scrimmages has shown her potential on the mound.

“I think that a lot of people probably looked at Jordan’s numbers from the opening weekend, but

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e all have things that we would like to put behind us. For some, it’s something as small as a badly timed joke or a wrong answer in class. For others, it’s larger, such as a phase in their life or an engrained habit. For the softball team, it’s last season.

“It was a tough situation for everybody. It sucks losing that many games, but I think that coming out of it, we just realized that we have all the pieces, we just have to put it together,” said senior captain Tory Speer.

Last spring, the Eagles finished in the bottom of the ACC after a season of 38 losses and just 14 wins, only two of them coming in conference play. With a clean slate and an entire season of games ahead of them, however, Boston College has already begun to build off of the issues that plagued it during the 2012-2013 season.

“I think we had a lot of big injuries last year, and we didn’t have the depth in order to get us through the year,” said head coach Ashley Obrest.

One of the biggest holes in the lineup was the one that senior captain Nicole D’Argento left for the entirety of last season as she was forced to redshirt because of injury. Watching from the sidelines as her team struggled, D’Argento became an asset on the sidelines, watching closely during every game and providing analysis and advice. That kind of support can only go so far, though.

While the Eagles’ hitting did not suffer as much as their defense did, the lack of depth in the pitching staff left the Eagles at a severe disadvantage, to the point that putting up five, six, even seven runs wasn’t enough.

“It was tough because you kind of really don’t have any control over what’s going on,” D’Argento said. “I think I made the best out of my situation and helped out when I could and tried to be another set of eyes for the coaches and for the team and tried to keep everybody together as much as I could, but like [Obrest] said, I think injuries did plague us.”

D’Argento watched as the pitching staff of Chelsea Dimon, Stephanie Lord, and Andrea Filler put up an earned run average of 6.82—three points higher than the Eagles’ opponents’ average of 3.81.

The Eagles saw their hitting as a strong point last year, while their pitching suffered. Above are the Eagles’ season totals compared to their opponents’.

Tory Speer, Megan Cooley Tory Speer (R) was the Eagles’ biggest offensive weapon last season, while Cooley (L) was a menace to defenses with her baserunning skills.

EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR

FEB. 24, 2014 THE HEIGHTS B7

SPRING SPORTS PREVIEW PROJECTIONS

ONE STEP FURTHER After qualifying for the NCAA tournament for the second time in three years, women’s lacrosse is looking to advance for the first time.

CRUSHING DEFEATS The Eagles earned tournament berths in 2011 and 2013, with at-large bids, but suffered losses to No. 2 Northwestern and unranked Dartmouth.

2011

2013

Northwestern L, 11-8 Record: 12-7

Dartmouth L, 11-8 Record: 12-8

ALEX TRAUTWIG / HEIGHTS SENIOR STAFF

THE ATTACK

Brooke Blue

Covie Stanwick

Moira Barry

Appeared in just four games in 2013 due to injury

Scored 65 goals last season, a BC singleseason record

Took 34 shots last season, scoring goals on 20 of them

THE THEMIDFIELD ATTACK

Mikaela Rix

Cali Ceglarski

Sarah Mannelly

Her 71 draw controls led the team in that category

Tallied 18 points and 28 draw controls in 19 games

Scored 34 goals and had 12 assists in 20 appearances

THE THEDEFENSE ATTACK

Stephanie Sabatini

Claire Blohm

Kate McCarthy

Won seven ground balls and caused three turnovers

Controlled 16 draws and collected 21 ground balls

Scooped up 31 ground balls and caused 22 turnovers

“

Coach Acacia Walker has created a more relaxed atomosphere for the women’s lacrosse team.

The most important thing is that the girls are loose when they play, because I think a lot of the time they are nervous, and when you’re nervous, you can’t play good lacrosse.

”

B8 THE HEIGHTS FEB. 24, 2014

SPRING SPORTS PREVIEW FEATURE

Covie Stanwick is the women’s lacrosse team’s offensive juggernaut—but without teammate Kate McCarthy on defense, some of the attacks would not start.

CONNECTING THE DOTS

BY ALEX FAIRCHILD | ASST. SPORTS EDITOR

Stanwick paced the Eagles’ offense last year and returns this spring hungry for more wins

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hen the ball finds its way to the stick of Covie Stanwick, the defense of the opposition locks in on the Boston College junior. Normally operating behind the goal, the attacker is a sensational talent with a high lacrosse IQ. Her intelligence on the field is overwhelming at first, as she has a nose for goal and an eye out for her open teammates.

Stanwick’s lacrosse mind shows up on the stat sheet as well. Tallying 65 goals and 22 assists in just 20 games as a sophomore last season, Stanwick became one of college lacrosse’s most potent offensive threats.

But none of this would come as a surprise if you look into Stanwick’s past. Her last name is synonymous with the game. Her grandfather, Tad Stanwick, wrote the first book on the 10-man game of lacrosse, which was simply titled Lacrosse. Stanwick’s father, Wells, picked up the knowledge and taught his eight children about the sport. Each of them went onto play at a high level.

“It was awesome,” Stanwick said. “It’s just really competitive. Still, to this day, we’re all trying to outdo each other in everything.”

While competitive, the family is tightly knit. Stanwick received seven texts wishing her luck before her game against New Hampshire, although the matchup was postponed until the next day.

Stanwick’s family lived just down the road from one of the most coveted grounds in the college game.

When the kids were not playing in the backyard, their father would bring them to play at Johns Hopkins University.

“With each other, we kind of just mess around in the backyard and play,” Stanwick said. “We put my youngest brother in the goal and play with tennis balls and shoot on him.”

Those games have developed into miniature scrimmages.

“Now, we actually play a fiddlestick game, 2-on-2 or 3-on-3, we play just to mess around in the backyard,” Stanwick said.

One of the most prominent features of her game is her stickwork, which can be improved upon by spending time on a lacrosse wall. She still spends time practicing by herself and with others, but she grew up playing on a wall in her family’s garage.

“I used to call it my study break,” Stanwick said. “But it’s just nice to go out there and mess around. You have freedom to throw on the music and just hang out there.”

Her father originally had her on a routine which, depending on the day, consisted of 250 left-handed throws, 100 tosses with her right, and 100 switches.

“I had a routine when I was growing up, but then when I got to high school, I just kind of stopped counting and I would just to go until I felt good,” said Stanwick.

While each of the Stanwicks participated in multiple sports, including basketball and soccer, they gravitated toward lacrosse.

“I think we were the best at lacrosse,” Stanwick said. “We were all pretty good at the other sports, but best at lacrosse. It’s the most fun. It takes you the farthest.”

Stanwick grew up with one of the best to play the college game in recent years. Her brother, Steele, became the only member of the esteemed clan to win a national championship. His Virginia team took the Division I crown in 2011—the same season in which Stanwick won the Tewaaraton award, which is given to the nation’s best player.

Steele now plays professionally for the Ohio Machine.

“He’s really creative,” Stanwick said of her brother. “He’s really athletic. He’s the only one out of all eight of us that’s won EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR a national championship so far.”

Stanwick’s upbringing also helped learn about the complexities of the game’s tactics. In fact, Stanwick worked with Walker to develop a new motion offense to run against a zone defense.

Stanwick is not quick to mention herself, though. She was concerned, not only with improving every aspect of her game, but also with the welfare of her team. While she wants to get better at everything from dodging to finding her teammates, she just wants to win more.

“Getting a first tournament win is what I really want to do,” Stanwick said.

Having lost to Dartmouth in the first round of last year’s NCAA tournament, Stanwick and the Eagles are without an NCAA tournament victory in program history. Come the postseason in mid-May, whether or not the team lives up to that goal will depend on Stanwick’s ability to have another record-setting campaign. 

McCarthy, the team’s workhorse, brings a high level of intensity to BC’s stout defense

I

n high school, Kate McCarthy travelled across the country—as far as California—and out of the U.S. to Costa Rica to play a sport. But that sport wasn’t lacrosse. McCarthy is a senior at Boston College who features as a midfielder for head coach Alison Foley’s women’s soccer team and Acacia Walker’s women’s lacrosse team.

“It isn’t as hard as everyone makes it out to be,” McCarthy said. “I get way more credit than I should.”

The humble Longmeadow, Mass. native is faced with the toll each sport takes on her body.

“I’m always in season,” McCarthy said. “Out of season sports are way worse than in season. The lifts are much easier and everything like that.”

Constantly active, her coaches are lenient with her duties fot both teams. Each gives her a break whenever she needs it.

“It’s kind of tough,” McCarthy said. “It’s different on my body too.

Right now, I have a knee injury that I never have in soccer, but I get it because there’s way more cutting in lacrosse, so that’s tough for me. But I play midfield for both of them, so I run a lot.”

Before coming to BC, McCarthy played basketball, soccer, and lacrosse.

Without physical education in the school’s curriculum, students played sports. Additionally, the senior took on club lacrosse and club soccer, the latter of which was a more serious commitment. With her soccer career at BC concluding after a run to the Elite Eight last fall, McCarthy is looking to extend EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR her time at Chestnut Hill by adding on an extra year. She did not play for the lacrosse team in her freshman year, as she was recruited to play for BC’s soccer team.

“I was more of a vocal leader for soccer, definitely,” McCarthy said, “We made it to the Elite Eight for soccer, but we barely made the NCAA Tournament.”

In the two-sport athlete’s first year in college, her roommate, a member of the lacrosse team, who she played against in high school, told her to come out for the team. After a two-week trial, McCarthy was told she was welcome to join the now No. 13 Eagles. Her supportive parents travel to all of her games.

Since becoming a member of the lacrosse team, McCarthy has functioned as a midfielder, linking the team’s defense with its attack, though she is now being played more toward the defensive end.

“I’m big in transition, so when our goalie makes a save, I’ll try to get it up and then I’ll get it to Covie and she’ll set it up,” McCarthy said.

Not having a stick in her hands for nearly half of a year sets McCarthy back a bit, though. After missing out on the lacrosse team’s fall schedule, a period when McCarthy has a ball at her feet, it takes practice to get back into the groove of cradling.

“My stickwork gets really rusty though, in lacrosse,” McCarthy said. “During soccer, I never touch my stick or anything.”

Covie Stanwick and McCarthy go to the wall to work on their ball-handling, aiming for the same brick over and over again to improve their accuracy.

“It’s mostly left hand,” McCarthy said. “She [Covie] harps on that.”

According to Stanwick, the senior’s skills are improving, though her true importance to the team comes when she is collecting the ball.

“If she’s in a five-foot radius, she’s going to get the ball, and that’s just such a nice thing to have on our team,” Stanwick said.

Although not a captain for the lacrosse team, McCarthy’s presence in the team’s defense gives her teammates an extra boost.

“I think they’re more confident with her back there,” Stanwick said, “She just brings a tenacity that not everyone has and she’s just all over the ball, she’s so aggressive. She just wants to win more than a lot of people. She wants the ball. She wants to do her job. She wants to do it well and I think that translates to everybody else on the defensive end.”

McCarthy’s prowess and hunger on defense, which includes her scooping up ground-balls and winning draws for the Eagles, is what allows what McCarthy called the team’s “quarterback,” Stanwick, to get the ball. With the two playing in tandem and in sync with the rest of the team, the Eagles will have the chance to make program history. 

SPORTS THE HEIGHTS

C2

Monday, February 24, 2014

C1

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2014

The Heights Spring Sports Preview The spring season means new starts for the Boston College baseball, softball, and lacrosse teams. The Heights is there to fill you in on what to expect.

See B1

FIGHT TO THE FINISH

EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Riverhawks fight back in weekend series with Saturday night tie

BY MICHAEL HOFF Heights Staff

The Boston College men’s hockey team took three out of four points from the No. 7 team in the country and extended its unbeaten streak to 19 games over the weekend, but given the Eagles’ high expectations, it didn’t feel like it 2 UMass Lowell after the final horn of BC’s 2-2 tie with Boston College 2 UMass Lowell on Saturday. The Eagles’ struggles Saturday may have taught them a lesson that will help BC reach those expectations, though: Other elite teams, while maybe not at the Eagles’ level, are elite for a reason, and they won’t fold like so many have in the 18 games previous to this one.

For most of the game, the Eagles played like they have for most of the year. Both sides were held scoreless in the first period as the Eagles outshot the Riverhawks 11-5 and killed off a late Ian McCoshen penalty. In the second, after Riverhawk forward A.J. White got sent off for tripping, Johnny Gaudreau, as he is wont to do, got himself in the right place at a similar time and, after a short delay, deposited the rebound from Kevin Hayes’ point shot past

See Men’s Hockey Saturday, C2

28 +57 141 .937 .912

Consecutive games in which Gaudreau has scored at least one point BC’s current +/- rating after 33 games played

Goals scored by the Eagles so far this season

Thatcher Demko’s save percentage

BC’s team penalty kill percentage

In a battle of best defense vs. best offense, Eagles emerged victorious

BY MARLY MORGUS Assoc. Sports Editor

Going into the third period, the Eagles were in an unfamiliar, uncomfortable position. Only Johnny Gaudreau’s goal separated the nation’s top offense from one of the nation’s top defenses in a tight, physical matchup with both 0 UMass Lowell goalies making save after save. It was a Boston College 3 situation that the Eagles weren’t used to, but it was one that they thrived in.

The Boston College men’s hockey team has the most productive offense in all of Division I college hockey through 31 of its 34 regular season games. Led by the prolific Gaudreau, Kevin Hayes and Bill Arnold line, which has combined for a total of 62 goals so far this season, the Eagles have scored an average of 4.34 goals per game.

On Friday night, however, the nation’s best offense came head to head with UMass Lowell, whose 1.97 goals allowed per game comes in at a three-way tie for first in the nation. The defensive prowess would show, as the Eagles were held to just one goal through the first two periods.

See Men’s Hockey Friday, C3

Stanwick, Eagles drop Ohio State

BY TOMMY MELORO Heights Staff

It was the worst of halves, it was the best of halves. That was the story of the Boston College women’s lacrosse team on Saturday against 7 Ohio State Ohio State. The Boston College 9 most important thing in any sport, though, is the ability to finish strong. Despite a less-than-desirable start, BC was able to defend its home turf with a 9-7 victory over the Buckeyes.

On defense, BC looked sluggish at the get-go, as the Buckeyes scored on their first possession, less than 40 seconds into the game. By the time eight-and-a-half minutes had passed, OSU had taken a 3-0 lead. At that point, however, the Eagles became manic on defense. They didn’t give up a goal in the remaining 20 minutes and 30 seconds, forcing eight total turnovers in the first half. Although the Buckeyes were able to generate a few chances offensively, they were no longer able to continuously

keep possession in the attacking zone. The Eagles did a good job keeping their sticks active, relentlessly hounding whichever OSU player had the ball. At a critical juncture of the game, BC was able to elevate its performance in order to keep itself in contention.

On the other end of the field, OSU’s defense completely stymied the Eagles’ offense in the first half, as BC only managed one goal on 11 shots as Ohio State goalie Tori DeScenza saved six of the seven shots on goal. Ohio State played an interesting style of defense, opting to condense its defenders around the crease and attacking area. This meant that, while BC was free to handle the ball outside the perimeter and behind the crease, any attempt to drive on net was instantly met with a wall of Buckeye defenders.

“They were running a really strong defense,” said head coach Acacia Walker after the game. “It felt a little unorthodox, so it was a little foreign to our girls.”

When BC was able to decipher the OSU

I NSIDE SPORTS THIS ISSUE

defense, however, the tides began to turn.

The second half of the game went very differently from the first. This time, it was BC scoring three times in the first sevenand-a-half minutes of the half, taking a 4-3 lead. The scoring did not slow down. Both teams seemed to embrace the ideology that the best defense is a good offense, as both teams traded scoring streaks. BC’s offense was led by junior attacker Covie Stanwick, who managed to score six goals, all in the second half, to bring her season total up to seven. “I think as soon as we figured it out, we ran the right offense and the girls made the plays happen, and that’s what it takes to win,” Walker said.

The biggest difference, though, was the Eagles’ ability to finish. DeScenza was only able to make one save on nine shots, as BC began to find the back of the net with regularity. During a particularly clutch sequence, Stanwick scored three unassisted goals in 2:30 to turn a 5-4 OSU lead into EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR

See Lacrosse, C3

Men’s Basketball: BC falls to Miami The Eagles were forced back down to earth with a loss at Miami............................C2

The Eagles have had a successful start to the season, jumping out right away to 3-0.

Softball: Eagles pull off 4-1 weekend

BC continued its strong start in Tempe, Arizona with five games this weekend........C3

Men’s Hockey Notebook..........C3 Roundup..............................C3

THE HEIGHTS

C2

Monday, February 24, 2014

UMass Lowell nearly finds revenge for loss in Saturday night tie Men’s Hockey Saturday, from C1 Riverhawk goalie Doug Ward, making it 1-0 Eagles at 10:56. The goal marked the fourth straight game with a power play goal for Gaudreau and extended his point streak—this time to 28 games. Senior Patrick Brown picked up the other assist, extending his own scoring streak to six games, impressive in itself while illustrating the absurdity of Gaudreau’s tear.

Less than two minutes later, Brown added another secondary helper when Ryan Fitzgerald redirected Isaac Macleod’s shot pass from the point to double the lead. The goal highlighted what makes BC so frustrating for opponents in a few ways. If the Eagles are tied, or even down, their offense is so potent, deep, and tends to score in clusters—all factors that combine to make any game perpetually capable of turning from competitive to blowout.

Scoring consecutively, as BC did in this sequence, wouldn’t be possible without that depth. Gaudreau’s line, while it is historic and the best in the country, doesn’t score every goal, and it can’t play every shift. They took to the

bench after their goal, and Brown, MacLeod, and Fitzgerald doubled the score.

MacLeod, a stay-at-home defenseman, powered down to the inside hashmark from the point and fed Fitzgerald on the tape for the freshman’s 10th goal of the year. Brown’s assist was his 10th point in six games.

After BC strikes like this, most teams either concede or can’t stop the scoring train—or both. Riverhawks coach Norm Bazin’s team isn’t most teams, though, and he must have reminded his players of that when he called a timeout roughly three minutes after Fitzgerald’s goal.

From that point forward, the Riverhawks defended like their nation-best goalsper-game average indicates they can, and punched back. BC outshot UMassLowell by just two in the third, and the Riverhawks had all the best chances.

Thirty seconds into the third period, UMass-Lowell forward Derek Arnold beat Scott Savage and almost did the same to Eagles’ goalie Thatcher Demko, but his sharp-angled shot hit the crossbar and didn’t go down, leaving the Riverhawks scoreless despite Arnold’s misguided celebration.

Six minutes later, after Chris Calnan was called for high sticking, Riverhawk forward Adam Chapie skated from the left wall to the face-off dot and beat Demko short-side with the help of Josh Holmstrom’s screen to halve the score.

The goal was only the second given up on the penalty kill in the last 33 tries against BC. UMass Lowell tied the game at 9:09 after the BC defense let the rebound from Riverhawk defenseman Zach Kamrass’ point shot skitter all the way into the slot, and A.J. White swooped in and ripped a wrister by Demko. BC head coach Jerry York called a timeout of his own with 2:33 left, but aside from a McCoshen shot catching iron early in overtime, BC didn’t come close to a deciding lead.

A game like this one may help York’s team in the long game, and it wasn’t as if the Eagles left their hearts and minds in Chesnut Hill—they played well.

That, even for the number one team in the country, isn’t always enough, but it’s a lesson easier learned now than in Boston or Philadelphia, where the trophies York and his players work for will be awarded. 

Baseball wins one, drops two in weekend at Stetson

Eagles fall back down to Earth

BY JOHNNY CAREY Heights Staff

BY STEFAN TODOROVIC For The Heights The Boston College men’s basketball team was back on the road this weekend, as it traveled to Coral Gables, Fla. to take on the University of Miami 69 Miami Hurricanes in an Boston College 42 ACC matchup.

Coming off of a miraculous overtime win against Syracuse last Wednesday night in front of 26,716 fans in the Carrier Dome, the Eagles enjoyed a confidence boost heading into their game against the ’Canes. BC’s win over the Orange snapped a five-game losing streak, giving the Eagles an opportunity to turn their season around. Steve Donahue’s club was not able to hit enough open looks, though, and Miami breezed by the Eagles with a 69-42 victory.

BC was hoping to stop another streak for Miami, who had emerged victorious from the past seven meetings between the two ACC programs headed into Saturday.

The two sides were competitive for the first 10 minutes of play, before a couple of short runs by the Hurricanes created a sevenpoint lead for the hosts with 10:24 left in the first. The burst was capped by a layup from Miami sophomore center Tonye Jeriki.

The Eagles were able to cut the lead to one with free throws from sophomore guard Joe Rahon, but Miami was able to create high percentage opportunities throughout the first half and took a five-point lead headed into the break.

The Hurricanes started the second half with a missed jumpshot by forward Kirk Donnavan, but guard Garrius Adams followed up by hitting a 3-pointer to increase their lead to eight.

Shots from outside the arc were not falling for the Eagles in the second half. Donahue’s

GRAHAM BECK / HEIGHTS SENIOR STAFF

Junior Patrick Heckmann was the leading contributor in the Eagles’ 69-42 loss to Miami. team missed all eight of its 3-pointers after halftime, making just four of 20 on the night.

Patrick Heckmann knocked down three triples in the first half, before going cold.

With five minutes of the second half played, BC needed to capitalize on its missed shots if it was to win consecutive games for the first time since November, but the Eagles failed to do so. Anderson’s put-back from a Heckmann attempt from distance accounted for just two of BC’s four secondchance points.

At the 15:42 mark, two free throws from senior guard Rion Brown gave Miami an 11point lead on which they would build.

Anderson missed a jumper and junior guard Lonnie Jackson failed to hit another three, paving the way for a jumpshot from Brown to increase the Hurricane’s lead to 13.

The game was still within grasp for the Eagles, who were striving to mount another comeback. A monster dunk from Miami’s Jeriki kept was able to bolster the home team’s advantage. After 10 minutes of play in the

BC sweeps weekend series

BY STEFAN TODOROVIC For The Heights

Saturday’s game was the final regular season home matchup for the No. 6 Boston College women’s hockey team, marking the last time that seven seniors would play in Conte Forum’s Kelley Rink as the team took on BU. “These seniors have done a tremendous amount of work for our program, college, and community,” said head coach Katie King Crowley. “It will be sad when they are gone, but we still have plenty of games to play.”

The local rivalry was evident from the start as the first period was extremely physical. Both teams were playing for more than just the win—they had their city on the line.

From the high intensity came a penalty issued to BU’s Maddie Elia at 10:32 for tripping, but the Eagles were unable to covert for that power play was killed.

While the Terriers’ attack was strong late in the first period with some challenging shots, Boyles was at her best, keeping the Eagles’ deficit at one. In net for BU was Kerrin Sperry, who ended the period with 15 saves while Boyles tallied seven.

Around the 10-minute mark of the second period, another penalty from BU’s Maddie Elia led to a man advantage for BC. The Eagles were able to capitalize on this powerplay, as freshman Andie Anastos got a shot passed Sperry in the ninth minute tying the game at 1-1. While trying to close out the second period with a tie score and a bit of momentum, though, BC’s pressure led to a penalty issued on Kate Leary for tripping.

EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Johnny Gaudreau scored a powerplay goal for the fourth straight game on Saturday.

BU was able to benefit from the penalty as Louise Warren scored with less than a minute left in the period, bringing the final tally after the second to BC 1, BU 2.

BU didn’t relent during the third period, and high attack in the 13th minute led to an important save by Boyles to keep the Eagles in the game. The BC attack was able to acquire some potential opportunities as well, and at the 8:14 mark in the third period, Lexi Bender hit a blistering slapshot in the top left corner, tying up the score once more.

As the final moments of the game were quickly approaching, BC was looking for any chance that could get it the win and avoid the game going into overtime. With five seconds left in the game, Anastos was able to find salvation for the Eagles by scoring her second goal of the day.

“They scored first and sometimes that can set you back, but I’m proud of how our girls kept with it and the seniors were able to get the win for their last game here in Kelley Rink,” Crowley said.

With seven seniors leaving after this season, Anastos’ performance gives supporters a sign of reassurance that the future will continue to be successful for the BC women’s ice hockey program.

On Sunday, the Eagles took on Boston University in Agganis Arena, earning their second win of the weekend over the Terriers by a score of 5-1. Leary, Anastos, Taylor Wasylk, Haley Skarupa, and Emily Phalzer each scored for the Eagles in the complete team effort, and Boyles continued her solid performance in net with 26 saves. 

second half, the game seemed to get out of hand for the Eagles as their missed shots and turnovers handed Miami multiple chances to further its lead.

Freshman guard Manu Lecomte’s layup and jumpshot, in addition to a deuce from senior forward Erik Swoope, extended the Hurricane’s lead to 17.

As the game waned into its final five minutes, the Eagles could not find a way back into the game. A layup from Brown increased the lead to 20 with 4:50 to play.

A scoreless two minutes from both teams kept the lead at 20 until Heckmann added two to the board with a simple layup.

The closing moments of the game consisted of a desperate attempt to make something of a dissatisfying performance. Olivier Hanlan, Sam Donahue, and Steve Perpiglia missed three shots from behind the arc.

Heckmann led the Eagles with 15 points while Miami’s Rion Brown picked up 22.

Brown scored the 1,000th point of his career, becoming the 35th player in school history to tally that many points. 

Down two runs with nobody out and runners on first and second in the top of the ninth, the Boston College Eagles looked poised for a late comeback Sunday afternoon. After a successful sacrifice bunt by sophomore Joe Cronin moved the runners over to second and third, the Eagles were only one base knock away from tying the rubber match of a three-game series against the Stetson University Hatters. That clutch hit never came for BC, however.

Stetson’s Tyler Warmouth was able to shut the door on the Eagles and close out a series win for the Hatters with two huge strikeouts.

Jesse Gorman started the game on the mound for BC, tossing five innings of one run baseball while allowing only four hits. Despite his strong performance, the junior was pegged with the loss as BC’s bats were unable to break through. Stetson’s John Powers dazzled over seven and two-thirds innings, in which the Eagles were only able to muster up five hits and one run.

The scoring got underway in the bottom of the second as Stetson catcher Garrett Russini scored on a sacrifice fly after leading off the inning with a triple. Both pitchers cruised from that point forward, as the scoreboard remained unchanged until the bottom of the sixth.

Stetson jumped out 2-0 in the sixth as Patrick Mazeika rocketed an RBI double, scoring Tyler Bocock. Mazeika then scored again on an error, giving the Hatters a three-run lead.

The Eagles finally got on the board in the top of the eighth, as freshman Johnny Adams singled home Blake Butera, cutting the lead to two. That lone run was all BC would be able to muster at

the plate, however, as the Eagles fell by a score of 3-1.

Sunday’s win earned Stetson a series win over BC. The two teams squared off three times over the weekend, which included a Stetson win on Friday and a BC win on Saturday. Stetson entered the series 0-4 on the season, while the Eagles began the weekend sporting a 3-2 record.

The series loss boiled down to inconsistent hitting and sloppy defensive play for the Eagles. In Friday night’s loss, BC actually out hit the Hatters. The Eagles registered nine hits as opposed to seven for Stetson, but what made the difference was timely Stetson hitting and sloppy BC fielding.

The Hatters were able to score four times on three hits in the fourth inning, as the Eagles committed two errors and simply could not get a clutch out. From there, Steston cruised, winning by a score of 5-3.

On Saturday, the Eagles’ bats proved to be alive and well, mashing 12 hits and scoring eight runs. Chris Shaw led the way for the Eagles, going two for four and knocking in three runs. Five players touched home plate for BC, while three were able to score twice.

Pitching was excellent for the Eagles as well, as Andrew Chin threw 5.2 innings of shutout baseball. The bullpen finished off the shutout, as BC earned its most convincing win of the season by a final of 8-0.

While the end result of the series was disappointing for the Eagles, there were moments of promise both offensively and on the mound. How BC fares from here on out, starting with its annual exhibition in Fort Myers against the Red Sox on Thursday, will be determined by a level of consistent play which was lacking over the weekend. 

WOMEN’S HOCKEY NOTEBOOK

Eagles honor seven seniors’ BC careers

BY ALEX STANLEY Heights Staff Melissa Bizzari, Taylor Wasylk, Danielle Doherty, Meagan Mangene, Jackie Young, and Corinne Boyles stepped onto the ice for their last regular season game at Conte Forum.

It was senior day for Boston College women’s hockey. The five seniors and one graduate student comprised the starting lineup against Boston University on Saturday, a game in which the Eagles edged out the Terriers 3-2 in the last five seconds.

Senior Amanda Movsessian also saw her last regular season game as a member of the team—she has not been able to play due to injury.

“These seniors have done a tremendous amount for our program, and they’re all tremendous kids,” said head coach Katie King Crowley. “I’m really proud of who they have all become and what they have done for Boston College women’s hockey.”

In a team often defined by speed, Bizzari is a mainstay in the side. She took seven shots against BU, tied for the second most on the team. The alternate captain has been efficient for BC over the years, recording 22 points in her freshman season, and she has kept that productivity alive for the four years that she has played at BC. After the Eagles scored their first goal, Wasylk came close to adding another.

The senior forward charged through the middle of the slot and almost converted a cross into the back of the net, but the puck barely missed her stick. That is the hole that Wasylk will leave—a physical 5-foot10 frame, in addition to her aggressive play and powerful left-handed shot. Wasylk is an efficient scorer, netting 36 total in her first three seasons. This season she was awarded Beanpot MVP for her two goals and one assist in the tournament.

Doherty is a forward who does not typically bask in the limelight. She has played any role that Crowley has asked her to fill this season, whether that means playing on her off-wing, at center, or even at defense.

“She has taken on a role that is very difficult, and I think she has done a tremendous job with it, and the kids have a lot of respect for her,” Crowley said.

Mangene is a controlling presence in the Eagles’ back line. The captain and defender is just as good tracking back on defense as she is picking out the right pass to set the offense in motion.

In her first three seasons with the Eagles, Mangene logged 35 points, 30 of those coming from assists. Her composure on the ice is clear, and it gives no doubt as to who should be wearing the “C” on her jersey.

Young’s heroics helped BC score its first goal on Saturday. As BU forward Sarah Lefort drove down the right wing,

she attempted to cross the puck into the slot—Young dove head first, however, blocking the puck with her body. Seconds later, Andie Anastos netted for the Eagles, leveling the score at one.

“Jackie is super, super energetic,” Crowley said. “She always has a smile on her face and she makes everybody laugh. She’s the jokester of the group. She keeps it light in the locker room.”

Boyles has been a model of consistency throughout her career at BC. The graduate student made 24 saves against BU, notching 71 career wins in the process.

In fact, just last week, Boyles was named one of the “Eagles of the Week” for her performance in two games, in which she managed to save 47 of 48 shots.

After the game, she was mobbed by all of her teammates.

Amanda Movsessian’s role has been contained to factors off of the ice, due to injury.

Movsessian played 11 games in her BC career, nine in her freshman year and two in her sophomore year. She has not touched the ice since.

“Amanda wasn’t able to finish playing but has been a great off-the-ice kid,” Crowley said. “She has been a kid that will keep the team together off the ice. She is a kid that takes the younger kids under her wing and tries to show them the ropes here at BC and within our program.” 

THE HEIGHTS

Monday, February 24, 2014

C3

Eagles blank Riverhawks Penalty kill, Demko pull through for BC in Friday night matchup MEN’S HOCKEY NOTEBOOK

BY ALEX FAIRCHILD

Men’s Hockey Friday, from C1 In the third, though, BC opened it up in a more characteristic style, and with help from Thatcher Demko’s shutout, the Eagles came away with their 25th win of the season by a final score of three goals to none.

“I thought tonight may have been as solid an effort for 60 minutes, from the goaltending to the defense to the forwards, that we’ve had this year,” said head coach Jerry York.

Both teams came out guns blazing in the first period, with the Eagles firing off a total of 19 shots, 14 of which went on goal to challenge Riverhawk goaltender Connor Hellebuyck. UMass Lowell came in just behind BC with 16 shots, 11 on goal.

Hellebuyck was the only net minder to falter, however, when Gaudreau took a noangle shot to the right from a position next to the left post. The shot hit Hellebuyck in the shoulders, bouncing back for a power play goal and giving the Eagles the 1-0 lead.

The goal extended Gaudreau’s point streak to 27 games.

“The first goal was an incredible play by Johnny Gaudreau,” York said. “I think he was almost on the goal line. Then to go top shelf, short side—that’s unbelievable skill.”

The Riverhawks kept pressuring on defense, though, as Gaudreau’s goal came off of one of the only shots in the first two periods from inside the triangle in front of the net between the goal and the two faceoff circles. Of 29 attempted shots by the Eagles in the first two frames of play, just three were from deep in the zone. With UMass Lowell dominating in front of the net, the Eagles were forced to take shots from further out, giving Hellebuyck and the rest of the Riverhawks time to stop all but one through 40 minutes of play.

“We had to earn our goals,” York said.

“They don’t give you many chances.”

On the other end, Demko faced his fair

Asst. Sports Editor share of shots as well, amassing 33 saves on the way to his second shutout as an Eagle. He also had a lot of help from the BC defense, which blocked nine shots on the night.

“I thought all our D stepped up to the plate when we needed them,” Demko said.

“I know it’s hard to do, and they just battled through it and they just played really strong throughout the entire game.”

As time went on and the margin stayed at just one goal, the game got more and more physical. Neither team is a stranger to the penalty box—the Riverhawks average 4.6 penalties per game, and the Eagles 5.3 per game—and this game was no exception as the Riverhawks were sent to the box on three occasions and the Eagles were penalized three times as well, one of them a five minute major when Isaac MacLeod earned a game misconduct for contact to the head.

“Issac’s probably our best penalty killer over the course of the season, you know, to kill a five minute major without our best PK guy … that was pretty impressive for us blocking shots and getting clears,” York said.

The nation’s best penalty kill came through on all three occasions for the Eagles, but the Riverhawks’ early penalty allowed for Gaudreau’s goal.

Going into the third period, though, it remained close. Just as it appeared that UMass Lowell’s defense was staving off BC, the floodgates opened up as they so often have this season, and BC’s depth showed with goals in quick succession from Adam Gilmour and Austin Cangelosi.

In the matchup of top defense vs. top offense, the Eagles had to fire on all cylinders but survived the test and left the evening with their 18th straight unbeaten game.

“We weren’t content to just play out the regular season and wait for the playoffs,” York said. “Let’s keep improving and let’s keep getting better.” 

Penalty killing is an art. It takes an army of four men to block shots and sacrifice their bodies for the good of their team. No team in college hockey has killed penalties better than Boston College this season. Keeping the opposition from capitalizing on its man advantage requires an effort from the entire team, whether it’s Johnny Gaudreau or Steve Santini. Head coach Jerry York has gotten an exceptional effort out of his team in this campaign, and one of the keys has been defenseman Isaac MacLeod. With 10:15 remaining in the second period of the team’s 3-0 win against No. 7 UMassLowell on Friday night, though, the Eagles lost MacLeod to a five-minute major and game misconduct after he toppled a Riverhawk who was away from.

The penalty put the Eagles in a hole during the middle of a crucial second stanza, but BC pulled together to stop the away team’s attack. Patrick Brown took a shot off the inside of his leg before being called to block another attempt.

Gaudreau took a shot for the team at the start of the kill as well, while Kevin Hayes worked hard to pressure the Riverhawks when they moved into BC’s zone.

Hayes bolstered the team’s offense, getting multiple shots off in the game’s opening minutes, but the senior forward did not accumulate any points on the night. His play was based more on tracking back to help break up play.

“It was Kevin Hayes’ best all-around performance,” York said. “Playing defense, playing forward, and just the jump Kevin had tonight was really good to see, but I think he’s versatile, you know, he’ll go back and play defense like that. He made some good clears from where he was. That was important for us.”

As the Riverhawks dominated the Eagles in their zone, the shots kept coming at freshman Thatcher Demko, though they were stopped by a defense that totaled nine blocks on the evening.

“We had guys through the rotation just eating pucks the entire time,” Demko said of his power play, which, as of Friday night, had killed 91.7 percent of the penalties it faced this season.

During the five-minute major, BC was able to break forward on two occasions.

Gaudreau tried to fool goaltender Connor Hellebuyck, but his breakaway was thwarted by the away team’s defense.

Quinn Smith had a similar opportunity moments later, but was stopped by Hellebuyck.

Demko then came up huge on a missed opportunity by Evan Campbell, who had the net at his mercy with 7:31 to play in the second period. The angle was difficult for the Riverhawk to thread, and Demko was able to keep the Eagles’ side of the sheet clean.

Toward the end of the five minute major, Gaudreau, Santini, McCoshen, and Arnold all took to the ice, clearing their zone to keep the visitors from further peppering Demko.

“That was pretty impressive for us— blocking shots and getting clears, because they have a pretty good power play,” York said.

Shortly after the Eagles killed the five minute major, Matthew Gaudreau went to the penalty box for hooking. The kill came up with another stout performance to keep the Eagles’ 1-0 lead intact. Losing Santini for another penalty with less than five minutes to go in the third period produced the same result. Hayes was instrumental in killing the final penalty BC gave up on the evening.

Losing MacLeod was quite the blow for the Eagles, who entered the game

without injured sophomore defenseman Michael Matheson.

“It’s tough to have four or five guys back there, but I thought all our D stepped up to the plate when we needed them,” Demko said. “I know that’s hard to do.

They just battled through it. They played really strong throughout the game.”

Demko’s play between the pipes was strong as well.

“Thatcher played extremely well and continues to get better over the course of the year,” York said.

The freshman stopped all 33 shots (11 in each period) he faced from UMassLowell.

Demko stopped one grade-A opportunity in the first period, as his team pressed the visitors in their own zone. The Riverhawks were limited to shots from long distance on counter attacks, each of which headed straight for the gut of the goaltender. As the game continued, UMass-Lowell had opportunities to attack Demko’s crease more often. The penalties played a part in the offensive uptick of the Riverhawks, and by the time the game came to a close, Demko stopped six more chances from close range, a few of which came from potentially lethal redirects in front of goal.

“Our D did a great job of boxing guys out, so they didn’t get very many second opportunities, which makes my job a little bit easier,” Demko said.

During the winter break, it looked as if junior Brian Billett was a lock to keep the starting job in goal. At the time, Demko was overseas representing the U.S at the World Junior Championship, but since arriving back on campus, the 18-year-old has put in several solid displays, including one in the Beanpot championship game against Northeastern.

“Right now, he’s on top of his game,” York said. 

Softball finds success in 4-1 weekend

BY ALEX FAIRCHILD Asst. Sports Editor Coming off two victories at the University of Louisiana Lafayette Tournament, the Boston College softball team looked to improve on its second road trip of the season in Tempe, Ariz.

The Eagles started off their weekend with a double-header against Idaho State and Drake. Solo shots from Speer and Dimaso in the second inning gave the Eagles a two-run advantage on which they built through a three-run third. Cortez supplied the homer that scored Daulton, Speer, and herself. But the Bengals cut into BC’s advantage in the fourth, as they made it 5-1. Pitcher D’Argento was pulled and relieved by Jordan Weed.

While she blanked the Bengals in the fifth, she allowed the Bengals to tie the game at five in the sixth. D’Argento was put back into the circle to close out the game. Idaho State took a one-run lead in the top of the eighth, but the Eagles broke the tie in the eight when

Weed batted in the equalizer, before Megan Cooley’s game-winning single to left gave BC the 7-6 win.

BC dug itself a 7-0 deficit in the second inning against Drake in the second game of its Friday double-header. The Eagles were able to cut into the lead come the next frame, but the Bulldogs responded by scoring in the bottom half of the inning. DiMasio’s three-run homer and run was batted in by Speer, pulling the Eagles within two. Cortez homered in the top of the seventh, after an RBI single by D’Argento helped to power BC to another five runs to give the Eagles 11-8 advantage, which it would hold onto for the win.

On Saturday, the Eagles started off another double-header with another meeting with Drake. The second competition between the two had a similar result, with the Eagles pulling off an 8-4 win. Speer had a hit and three RBIs, while three Eagles—Cooley, Daulton, and DiMaso—had multiple hits.

Jordan Week pitched two innings, allowing seven hits and four runs, while D’Argento

pitched five, allowing just one hit and tallying seven strikeouts.

The Eagles took on the hosts, the Arizona State Sun Devils, for the first time on Saturday and found themselves quickly behind in the bottom of the second when the Sun Devils jumped out to a 2-0 lead. The team had a chance to make a comeback in the fifth inning, but Arizona State’s defense came through with two runners on base, holding the Eagles scoreless. Cooley had two hits for the Eagles, while D’Argento, Speer, Dimaso, and Corneos each had one. D’Argento pitched all seven innings, allowing just eight hits.

For their final game of the weekend, the Eagles took on Seton Hall. In what was by far BC’s most prolific offensive outing of the season so far, the Eagles scored 16 runs to Seton Hall’s one to bring their record on the weekend to 4-1. Daulton had four hits and an RBI, and Speer and Tatiana Cortez had two hits. D’Argento pitched all five innings, and the game ended early because of BC’s wide margin after five innings played. 

Boudreau’s 25 fall short at Clemson

BY STEFAN TODOROVIC For The Heights Returning from a four-game delay due to concussion symptoms, senior forward Kristen Doherty was back in the starting lineup for the 72 Clemson Boston College Boston College 67 women’s basketball team on Thursday in hopes of bringing some much-needed energy to the Eagles as they looked to break their three-game losing streak.

A career-high 25 points from Nicole Boudreau was not enough, as the Clemson Tigers were able to get the home win by a score of 72-67.

Despite an entertaining performance from both teams, this ACC matchup featured two struggling teams in the conference with Boston College seating in 14th place, Clemson in 12th.

This was the 11th meeting between Boston College and Clemson, and BC is winning the series with a 7-4 edge.

BC shot 46 percent from the floor and 67 percent from the 3-point line, but it was the 17 turnovers that hurt the most. Clemson scored 20 points off turnovers.

Clemson and BC were both supporting the PLAY4KAY campaign by sporting their pink colored jerseys. The Eagles have supported former BC guard Clare Droesch ’05, who was diagnosed with cancer two

EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Covie Stanwick led the Eagles’ scoring effort with six goals against Ohio State University.

Stanwick hits six vs. OSU Lacrosse, from C1 a 7-5 BC advantage. When Ohio State scored twice more to tie the game with just 1:30 left in the game, it was time for the Eagles to answer the call. They needed a defensive stand to send it to overtime or a quick goal to put the team in position for the regulation win. Calling a timeout with BC entering the attacking zone, Walker drew up a play. Covie Stanwick passed to sophomore middie Sarah Mannelly.

Mannelly, who had already scored to open the second half, spun around a defender and fired low at the goal, scoring with just 18 seconds left in the game.

An encouraging sign, this game showcased the depth of scoring that BC possesses. Leading point scorer Mikaela Rix didn’t record a single point Saturday, though she was clearly a focal point of the OSU defensive scheme. With the outburst from Stanwick, though, the Eagles showed they are not just a one-woman team. Mannelly scored twice, sophomore Caroline Margolis scored BC’s first goal, and grad student Brooke Blue assisted on BC’s final goal. Through just three games, BC already has five players with at least

five points.

Mannelly’s late goal certainly doesn’t erase the memories of an anemic first half, but it does assuage any fears that this is a team that can’t finish strong, even when faced with adversity. Not only did BC overcome its poor start, it was able to withstand a late charge from the Buckeyes to ensure that, at least until Wednesday when they take on No. 2 ranked Syracuse, this is the best of times.

Notes: Two days earlier, BC defeated New Hampshire at home, notching a 17-8 victory. In the first half, BC went up 6-1, then 9-4 by halftime, and then cruised the rest of the way. Rix and Blue tallied four goals each, with Rix adding two assists to lead the attack, while Mata made seven saves on 15 shots.

Scoring started quickly for BC, with senior attack Moira Barry finding the net just 1:45 in, and Blue following up less than a minute later. After a UNH goal cut the lead in half, BC proceeded to score four goals in under four minutes, and UNH would never really get close again.

BC is now 3-0-0 on the season. 

ROUNDUP

Swim sets records at ACCs

BY ROB SHEEHAN EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR

For The Heights

Nicole Boudreau posted a career-high 25 points, but the Eagles fell to Clemson 72-67.

AND SCOTT HILL

years ago.

The Tigers were able to score early by creating a 7-2 run at the 17-minute mark, but shortly after, the Eagles brought the score back level after a 3-point shot from Boudreau produced a one-point lead making the score 8-7.

The Eagles used their most lethal threat, shooting from outside the arc, to gain a 2514 lead over the Tigers. Clemson didn’t let this lead last for long before the half ended, though, as a strong effort by the Tiger offense had the Eagles trailing by five.

At the half, the score was BC, 36, Clemson, 41.

The second half started with baskets from both teams, and at nine minutes, the score

The women’s swimming team competed in the ACC Championship meet this weekend in Greensboro, N.C. The highlight of the meet for the Eagles was a new school record in the 200 yard medley relay. Madeline Mailliard, Samantha Couillard, Jordan Parry, and Maureen Barron teamed up on the relay to produce the Boston College best time of 1:46.09. Junior Allie Manning had a big meet for the Eagles, setting three personal bests over the weekend. The team finished in 11th place overall for the meet with 132 points.

The women’s tennis team traveled to University of North Carolina on Friday to take on the Tar Heels. The Eagles dropped the close-fought match by a score of 6-1.

was BC 45, Clemson, 50.

The Eagles had a chance to tie the game on two fast breaks but were spoiled.

Two jumpers by Zenevitch cut the lead to three points with less than two minutes to play. After a jump ball, Clemson had possession and was fouled. Dixon hit one shot, making the score BC 61, Clemson 65.

In the end, the BC women’s basketball team was unable to come back and left South Carolina with the loss.

University of Maryland will square off against the Eagles in Conte Forum on Thursday at 7 p.m. for the last home game of the women’s basketball 2013-14 regular season.

It will be the final home game for seniors Kristen Doherty and Katie Zenevitch. 

Heights Staff

Sophomore Katya Vasilyev led the way for BC, winning her No. 3 singles match.

The BC women’s golf team struggled to a second-to-last place finish (14th) in the Jim West Tournament, despite the strong play of junior Katie Joo. Joo posted a score of 235, +22, which was good for 30th out the 79 players in the field. The team as a whole registered a score of 968, +116 in three rounds at the Bandit, a par-71, 6,178-yard course.

The Eagles also received strong performances from freshman Christina Wang (239, +26) and junior Cristina McQuiston (240, +27), who finished second and third, respectively. The Eagles’ scoring effort was rounded out by sophomore Regan Simeone (256, +43) and freshman Lelesse Mocio (272, +59).

The Eagles will look to avenge their tough weekend in Texas by bouncing back in the Kiawah Island Classic in South Carolina from Mar. 2-4. 

C4

THE HEIGHTS

Monday, February 24, 2014

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THE HEIGHTS

Monday, February 24, 2014

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Lessons from the language barrier DEVON SANFORD The Boston College study-abroad experience is often recounted in a short, fervent shout of joy. The newly-stateside student gushes about his trip in rapid motion. His hands move wildly and his eyes light up as he sums up his semester with the repetitive use of “amazing,” “incredible,” or “best time of my life.” After this brief, episodic reaction, the student develops a glazedover expression. His eyes drift away and he smiles longingly for his time abroad.

The student might describe his weekend traveling along the coast of Greece or that time he met the French Ambassador to India in a club. He will remember the food, the locals, the iconic sights. He will tell of the moments that are captured in postcards.

Yet rarely are the smaller moments mentioned—the moments that are not beautiful, surreal, or life-altering, but just as authentic to the abroad experience. The metro ride to class when a student feels a sudden pang of longing for home. The quiet moments in an apartment that feels foreign and isolating. The frustration of restarting, trying to find comfort in a new city.

This past weekend marked the end of my first month in Madrid. I stumbled into the study abroad program with a longing to immerse myself in a new culture, an abundance of confidence, and just two years of Spanish and a Pass/Fail CCR course under my belt. I understood that the adjustment would be difficult, but I wanted to experience something entirely outside of my comfort zone, and I was prepared to figure the rest out along the way.

As I stepped into my host mom’s cozy flat in the heart of Salamanca, I was given a rude awakening. Angelique spoke in rapid Spanish and I followed behind her, alternating my responses between “si, si” and “oh … lo siento.”

Although I can say that my conversational skills have vastly improved since that first morning, it has by no means been easy.

I have found myself in a foreign city with the mind of a college student and the verbal skills of a six-year-old. While I want nothing more than to be receptive, warm, and attentive to those around me, my inability to offhandedly converse in Spanish has left me feeling hesitant and uncharacteristically shy.

Since being in Madrid, I’ve made all the mistakes—I have assertively told my host mom that today is my sister’s birthday, only to realize I had told her it was my sister’s “feliz navidad.” I have walked into a store and, not once but twice, blanched at the store owner as he offered me a friendly greeting. I have difficulties keeping up in Spanish lectures because sometimes, I just have no idea what the professor is talking about. From these and other experiences, I have learned to speak slowly, conjugating verbs and reordering phrases in my head before I expose them to the world.

As an English major, I rely on words to express my thoughts in a coherent, persuasive manner. And as most of my friends can attest, I am not a woman of few words.

Spain has, in some ways, altered that. The characteristics I am most confident in—my conversational skills, affability, poise—are now a mere fraction of what they were in the States. I am often frustrated with myself, pissed that I can’t have a friendly conversation with the woman sitting next to me at a cafe. I feel exhausted and, though those around me are patient and welcoming, I am quick to beat myself up for my continuous mistakes.

Since being in Spain, I have seen sights worthy of a postcard. I have traveled to other countries for the weekend, and I have eaten paella that has left me in a state of pure bliss. But I have also missed home, I have felt defeated, and I have sat on a metro car wishing I were back on the Comm. Ave. bus.

I do not mean to say that these moments take away from the abroad experience. In fact, I mean just the opposite. I chose to study abroad to immerse myself in a new culture. The difficulties I have experienced—the most frequent being the language barrier—will not be solved with a study guide and a few nights of cramming.

I will not be able to fix this overnight, in a week, or even a month. This is a different type of challenge. This is a day-in-and-dayout process, in which I will most likely never find perfection. And, I’ve come to realize, that is even more important to the abroad experience than a weekend in Rome.

Perhaps these smaller, less romantic moments do not fit the idealized notion of a semester abroad. But I am confident that through these moments, I will gain patience, temperament, and humility—and I will carry these lessons home with me, alongside my stack of European postcards.

Devon Sanford is a senior staff writer for The Heights. She can be reached at features@bcheights.com.

C5

Fiddle Kid Danny Gillis embraces BC celebrity status Fiddle Kid, from C8 family, Danny Gillis, after whom our son is named, was given a hockey scholarship to BC and would have graduated with the class of 1978,” Michael said. “However, he died in a tragic car accident the first week of school during his freshman year.”

Danny would have been a goalie for the team.

All three brothers grew up not only attending BC hockey and football games from a young age, Michael said, but also attending the Snooks Kelley Hockey School, after whom BC’s rink is named.

Danny’s mother, Julie, worked in BC’s development office for years and helped establish the annual “Pops on the Heights” concert, and all three of the Gillis children have been attending BC games before they could even talk.

With so much hocke y running through his veins, it’s no surprise that despite his own loyal fans, Danny is still there to just watch the game. His favorite part of BC hockey games is simply getting to be a fan of the team himself.

“I get to cheer them on and see them win a lot, and since I play hockey I learn a lot of stuff from them,” he said.

In addition to hockey, Danny also plays baseball and soccer.

Like a true BC fan, Danny’s admiration for head coach Jerry York is limitless. “Jerry York is the greatest coach!” he said.

Danny’s fame shows no signs of fading out anytime soon. He went to his first Beanpot tournament this year and recently starred in a video for BC that, according to his Twitter page, will debut on YouTube later this week.

“He’s having a lot of fun with it, his sisters and the family are having a lot of fun with it,” Michael said. “As long as it remains that way, I’m having fun.”

Danny himself isn’t quite sure what to make of his sudden stardom. “It’s very hard to be very famous,” he said over the phone, before a burst of giggles from his sisters in the background led to a change of heart. “I guess it’s not that hard,” he said.

Demanding celebrity status aside, Danny has already begun thinking about continuing his family’s tradition of graduating from BC. “Going to BC is like, on my bucket list,” Danny said.

If that dream comes tr ue, he’ll graduate as part of the class of 2028, exactly 50 years after the uncle for whom he was named would have received his own diploma. 

PHOTO COURTESY OF DANNY GILLIS

Gillis became famous for his rinkside performances during “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.”

Plex provides unique fitness options for BC students Fitness, from C8

PHOTO COURTESY OF BC RECREATION

The Plex staff’s goal is to provide fitness classes and activities to suit every BC student.

fun, and motivating activities offered through BC Campus Recreation. Always wanted to try out martial arts?

The beginner Jiu-Jitsu program gives students the opportunity to “learn how to out-maneuver their adversary by applying technique over speed, strength, and size.” And for the more experienced martial arts students, the advanced Jiu-Jitsu class offers the opportunity to “develop mental and physical exercises that emphasize endurance, strength, coordination and flexibility.” As for the Salsa classes, be it for fun, stress relief, exercise, or simply to pick up on the latest moves, Campus Recreation encourages students to come out and learn the dance. “Social interaction is promoted but no dancing partner is required,” so even those alone in his or her pursuit of the cha-cha can learn.

For both Jiu-Jitsu and Salsa dancing, students are encouraged to email campusrec@bc.edu to register or learn more information.

These fun, inspiring, avant-garde classes only scratch the surface of the plethora of lesser known fitness opportunities offered at our very own Plex.

Ice skating, tennis, rowing, spinning, kickboxing, yoga, pilates, zumba, XFIT, TBC Step, barre fitness, and countless other classes confirm the fact that, though we may not have known it, BC Campus Recreation truly does offer “something for everyone.” 

program, offering high quality outdoor equipment to the BC community,” Crispell said. Interested in signing up for one of the OA programs? It’s as simple as stopping by member services at the Plex.

Another underappreciated aspect of BC’s Plex is without a doubt the pool. For those aquatically inclined students out there looking for something outside of the realm of redundant freestyle laps, Campus Recreation offers a multitude of water activities, such as aqua jogging, aqua bootcamp, lifeguarding and CPR courses, and various private and group swim lessons. Both water fitness classes are described as “high- energy, low impact, and highly innovative.” Both are perfect for anyone with a joint discomfort or injury.

Campus Recreation has also launched the motivating “swim incentive,” a goal to “swim the Boston Marathon course” before the actual marathon this April.

Moving your “running shoe” icon as you swim the distances between each mile marker, you can keep track of your distance and email plexaqua@bc.edu every time you reach another mile. Word on the streets is that the top two finishers will receive a pretty cool prize. Swim on, BC! Salsa dancing and Jiu-Jitsu have also earned a place on the list of unique,

CLUB SERIES FEATURING BC’S STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS

BC Soars mentorship program helps bring college experience to elementary school kids

BY CAROLINE KIRKWOOD Heights Staff

Constantly surrounded by a community of fellow college students balancing academic work with clubs and extra curricular activities, a Boston College student may forget that a college education is not the fate for every 18- to 22-year-old.

BC Soars, a mentoring organization on campus, strives to help bring the dream and later the reality of a college education to elementary school students at James Otis Elementary School in East Boston.

BC Soars is in its inaugural academic year as an organization on campus , as it was just started in September 2013. Through the larger organization of ESS (Education for Student s by Student s) that r uns programs like BC Splash, BCTalks, and BC Nests, BC Soars attempts to excite the young students of James Otis about the possibility of a college education.

Inspired by their own placement at James Otis while taking PULSE as well as by their experience with BC Splash, co-founders Brittany Burke, LSOE ’15, and Traea Vaillancourt, A&S ’15, wanted to help these young elementary school students understand what

a college experience is like.

“We were meeting these great kids at James Otis who didn’t understand college or what the experience was all about,” Vaillancourt said. “They didn’t have family members or friends to advise them on it. So the idea was to take the concept of educating students

by BC students and apply that to a different demographic that is a little less privileged.”

BC Soars set itself up with a twosemester plan. The fall semester focused on fostering relationships with the students at James Otis at the school, while the spring semester aims to bring these students to BC’s campus to give them a taste of what college life is like. “The first semester focused on, ‘what does it mean to live in East Boston?’” Burke said. “[How to] immerse ourselves and understand that situation better before we bring the students here and teach them about what we find valuable as a college student.”

During the fall, members of BC Soars went into James Otis once a week during the lunch and recess block to work with a small group of fourth grade students toward a project that they presented at a final event at the end of the semester.

The BC members could also work

with first grade students in a literacy buddy program. BC students work one-on-one with first graders to improve their literacy skills, especially because most students’ first language is not English.

BC Soars added this literacy buddy program that runs throughout the school day as a way to integrate BC students who may not have been able to meet the lunch and recess time restrictions of their fourth grade program.

Although first and fourth grade may seem early to start promoting college education, BC Soars believes that it is this early push that can most affect students. “Starting young and planting that idea can help these students make decisions now that will help set them up in the future,” Vaillancourt said.

The f inal a sp e ct of B C S oars involves weekly reflection groups consisting of e-board members and mentors. “The groups would talk about issues of social justice,” Burke said. “So the idea was to incorporate personal development with an understanding of, what does it mean to serve.”

According to Burke, the theme of this second semester for BC Soars centers on what it means to be a college student.

The organization will host an event similar to that of BC Splash wherein James Otis fourth graders will spend the day on BC’s campus. “ We will have BC students teach classes that they are passionate about, ranging from academic to extracurricular subjects,” Burke said.

“The idea for the final event is college in a day,” Vaillancourt said.

“We want to makes sure the students come and get the full experience.

They will get a letter of acceptance that has their mentor’s picture on it.

We want to try to get everything that we experience in our four years here and try to pack it into one day.”

BC Soars wants the James Otis students to leave with a fuller understanding of what a college experience could look like. “We are going to top the day off with a graduation at the end and give them something to take home,” Vaillancourt said. “Something that they will keep and remember until it is high school and time for them to be looking at options for college.”

As a new organization on campus, BC Soars will continue to welcome new and interested mentors until the middle of March. “We really embrace this idea of inclusivity,” Burke said.

“Our goal is to include as many people as we can.” 

THE HEIGHTS

C6

AN OPEN LETTER

Where have all the bubblers gone?

CORINNE DUFFY Note: To clarify, “bubbler” is another term for “drinking fountain” and, while it is also used in areas of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, it was originally coined in 1889 in Kohler, Wis. with the novel—and ultimately unsanitary—establishment of the bubbling faucet. I know, trivial detail, but what can I say, I’ve got to take pride in my humble state’s accomplishments, especially when I cannot legally consume or am intolerant to its leading commodities—beer and cheese. Also, S/O to Wikipedia for helping a girl out.

Bubblers? … Bubblers? … Bubblers?

From your complete absence in several residence halls to your scarcity in dining halls and many older administrative buildings, one might assume that you’ve been skipping class at Boston College for some time now. But I promise, the BC campus needs you more than Sloane and Cameron ever will in terms of both convenience and sustainability, and I’m sure it’ll prove itself a far better influence in the long haul, too—and with a far less ’80s approach.

You’re being replaced: $10.99 Dasani 24-packs from On-the-Fly mini-marts all across campus are usurping your entire existence, one wasteful, 12-fluid-ounce plastic bottle at a time. You’ve got to stop this, or before long, there will be absolutely no reason to buy the multi-colored, overpriced BC Nalgene and Camelbak water bottles from the Bookstore—and then what will become of the vast and intimidating world of Plex accessorizing?!

How will BC biddies ever match their precious Lululemon attire tastefully?!

How will BC bros ever get swole?! And how on earth will the students learn to cope in the face of such an aquapocalypse?! Now almost completely undeterred, God only knows whether Diet Coke—the enemy—will strengthen its addictive hold on the student body, faculty, and staff in lieu of adequate water sources….

We’re disappointed in you, Bubblers— you’ve really let the BC community down.

With this in mind, however, I do realize that installing you and your fellow water fountains in many of the older residence halls would be exceedingly expensive given the plumbing systems already in place. But the fact remains that, because you are nowhere to be found, the only sources for drinking water are the bathroom sinks, and this then causes many students to buy their own costly, purified bottled water from on- and offcampus sites at the environment’s great expense. (Truth be told, the restroom tap water is perfectly consumable, but a multitude of individuals pursues filtered water, which thus fosters neglect for the advantageous reduce-reuse-recycle mentality with widespread purchasing of plastic liquid containers from companies like Dasani, Aquafina, and Poland Spring.)

Within BC’s top campus initiatives— including recycling, energy usage, multifarious departmental policies, and “green” buildings—water conservation proves a significant sustainability challenge. In attempts to reduce water consumption and thereby preserve a sufficient amount of water in the Quabbin and Wachusett Reservoirs—supplies that provide for all of the campus’ and a lot of greater Boston’s aqua needs—the BC administration advocates for taking shorter showers, leaving the water running for less time while brushing teeth, rinsing razors in the sink rather than under running water, refraining from using the toilet as a garbage disposal, and plugging the sink when washing dishes rather than letting the water run. (Please refer to the “Water Conservation Tips” stickers that bedeck each residence hall’s bathroom mirror.)

While all of these tactics might help “slow the flow” and should certainly be employed, campus could definitely use your help, Bubblers, in honestly and adamantly conveying that “BC Conserves.”

Anyway, I thought that writing this letter to you at least might be timely, considering the recent UGBC presidential and executive vice presidential elections and each team’s respective platform. On the campaign trail, both sets of candidates—Fiore-Chettiar-Marchese and Levine-Vergara—advocated for implementing greater “green” policies across campus to increase BC’s overall sustainability and reduce its waste. What better place to start, therefore, than with you, Bubblers!

Therefore, on that note, stop faking sick, get out of bed, and pull yourself together, Bubblers, for the sake of the entire BC community. We all understand how effective your wise-guy, clammy hands-antics are—yes, even the exceptionally obtuse Ed Rooney—but enough is enough—the jig is up. Water is essential, and you are to be our generous benefactor. Your nonexistence is childish, stupid, borderline unhealthy, and incredibly wasteful, and we’re not in high school anymore, after all.

Corinne Duffy is an editor for The Heights. She can be reached at features@bcheights.com.

Monday, February 24, 2014

Fulton Prize winner attests to debate’s value Debate, from C8 most difficult competitors in the Northeast are Harvard, Dartmouth, and Cornell, Katsulas said.

Sullivan McCormick, A&S ‘15 won the Fulton Prize in 2013. He joined the team as a freshman after doing policy debate in high school because of Katsulas’ dedication to the Society and to the development of policy debate, he said. “When I won the award, I was extremely humbled to be a part of BC debate history and at the same time felt validated for the amount of time spent focusing on debate,” he said.

“A large part of the humility stemmed from having the opportunity to debate under the leadership of John Katsulas. I debated for Boston College because of Mr. Katsulas, and it’s impossible not to be inspired by his passion for the activity.”

McCormick’s favorite part of debate is the unlimited potential for self-improvement. There is always room to improve in research, strategy, and rhetoric, McCormick said. The Fulton Award gives student debaters something to strive for. The wall in Gasson 305 is an example of the tradition of BC debate, he said.

“The award is one that sets BC debate apart from other collegiate programs,” Mc-

Cormick said. “No other program has the legacy and tradition attached to a debate program.”

In the 114 years since the first Fulton Debate, only five women have won the award.

This is partially because there are far fewer women on the debate team—there are 20 members of the Fulton Society this year, and only three are women.

There’s a much higher rate of attrition among women in college debate than men.

There are many theories for this trend: Some people say the style is too combative, Katsulas said.

The first woman to win the Fulton Prize was Jane Osborne McKnight in 1973, when she was a sophomore. She thought preparation was key to her win, in addition to the fact that being a woman was a novelty, she said.

“It is a very intense activity and not traditionally feminine,” McKnight said. “I was very proud to win.”

The best way to attract female college debaters is to recruit them in junior high and high school, said McKnight, who debated in high school for four years before coming to BC. Her experience on the debate team propelled her to master’s program at Harvard and an over 30-year legal career, she said.

“I am fond of saying that nearly everything I learned in higher education I learned in debate,” McKnight said. 

EMILY SADEGHIAN / HEIGHTS EDITOR

McCormick, 2013 Fulton Prize winner, said debate allows for unlimited self improvement.

PROFESSOR PROFILE

Gareau takes sociological approach to environmentalism

BY SARAH MOORE

WHO: Brian Gareau

Heights Editor Boston College’s Brian Gareau didn’t always plan on being a professor. Now specializing in the sociology of global environmental governance and teaching classes ranging from Society and Environmental Transformations to an international studies senior seminar, the decision to pursue a career in academia came both later and abruptly for the now BC faculty member.

Growing up in the suburbs of Hartford, Conn., Gareau had a different route in mind than the one that led him to his current career, an assistant professor in BC’s sociology and international studies departments.

The only childhood precursor to the countless environmental sociology publications he has now authored was the amount of time he spent outside exploring his hometown of Glastonbury, Conn.

“There was lots of hiking and playing,” Gareau said. “I would get in trouble for collecting snakes and trying to store them in my garage, lots of that kind of stuff.”

More than time spent attempting to tap neighbors’ maple trees or building forts, Gareau was outside playing soccer.

Starting at the age of four and continuing to play on multiple teams today, the sport was not only an example of time spent outside but something that heavily influenced Gareau’s decisions.

“That’s where the question about how I got involved in sociology is funny, because I basically went to college to play soccer,” said the assistant professor, who has now been involved with environmental science or sociology programs in at least four major research universities.

Gareau enrolled at Providence College in the early 1990s to continue playing the sport he so much enjoyed. “That’s what my goal was, to play division one soccer in

TEACHES: Sociology of global environmental governance EXPERIENCE: Has a degree in social science, minor in environmental studies

EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR

the Big East,” he said. “I had to take classes to play soccer and that’s how I treated college, which probably looks pretty strange at this point.”

Before he graduated in 1996, Gareau took an environmental biology class that changed both his perspective and his career path. Similar to Society and Environmental Transformations, which he teaches at BC, the course focused on a natural science perspective of how human beings are changing their environment.

“It totally blew my mind,” he said.

“It really opened me up to a whole new world—I had always enjoyed hiking and backpacking and things outside, but I had never really thought about the impact people are having on their surroundings until I took that class.”

Graduating in 1996 with a degree in social science and a minor in environmental studies, Gareau looks to that class as a point that “transformed” what he wanted to do with his life. “It was the start of my career,” he said. “Becoming a professional soccer player seemed less and less inter-

esting than a job that would allow me to find a way to make humans conduct their affairs more sustainably.”

Upon graduating Gareau applied to both environmental science master’s programs as well as the Peace Corps, hoping to be accepted into one of them in order to further his study and involvement in the new career path he had chosen. Getting in to both options, Gareau decided to pursue the Master’s International Program with the Peace Corps through Washington State University, in which he received a Master’s degree in environmental science and regional planning after studying both in the U.S. and for two years in Honduras.

“Before I went into the Peace Corps I thought I wanted to be an environmental scientist, I went to study shade coffee production and sustainability,” he said. “I came out very disgruntled with the way that sustainable development was happening all over the world, and decided I wanted to focus on sociology in order to learn more about the social relationships

FUN FACT: Received his Master’s degree through a Peace Corps program that are embedded in these environmental problems.”

After writing a master’s thesis critiquing sustainable development, Gareau headed to the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he received a doctoral degree in sociology with a focus in environmental science and soon after was offered his current job at BC. “I chose BC for a couple of reasons,” Gareau said. “First, the sociology program is well known for its emphasis on social justice, critical sociology, and devotion to public sociology. But it was also important for me that this is a Jesuit institution and their concerns with social justice and educating the whole person—wanting their professors to be more than just lecturers in a really deliberate kind of way.”

Now conducting research as well as teaching multiple classes each semester in a department that includes his wife, Tara Pisani, Gareau has found a career much different than he ever expected, rooted in society and environmental relationships. 

HE SAID, SHE SAID I am a sophomore who’s not happy with my major, but I’m afraid to switch because I might not have enough time to finish my requirements if I start all over again. How can I know if I should stick to what I started with or take a leap of faith?

Firstly, evaluate how many Advanced Placement credits you have and how much of the University core you still have left to complete. You have completed three semesters at Boston College—37.5 percent of your undergraduate life. If you have not done so already, prepare a four-year trajectory chart that delineates all of your requirements and list of completed classes. Make sure you know that if you were to switch majors, you would be able to MARC FRANCIS complete your requirements on time. Also, keep in mind that you will have to live with the idea that you wasted time and valuable credits on a major you will not be completing.

Most importantly, make sure you are not making a rash decision because you are intimidated by a difficult course or some motivational speaker convinced you to “follow your heart.” Take all of Spring Break to think about the repercussions of your decision, both in the short and long runs. Your decision is also highly dependent on the major you are looking to switch to. Ask yourself if that major will afford you with a more profitable career in the future and try to predict your academic success in that major. It is highly important to strike a balance between finding a subject you are passionate about, but one that is also worth the BC tuition rate. Talk with your parents, your peers, and your academic advisor. Personally, I hold my parents’ opinions in the highest regard because they are paying for my education and always look out for my best interests. College is about both self-discovery and academic success—do not compromise one for the other, but be sure to leave BC with a practical degree.

When it comes to academics at BC, I’ve found there is no such thing as an easy answer.

You can look to others for guidance on which professors take attendance or to find the perfect history core, but that’s about it. Each student’s path is entirely his or her own.

That being said, the decision to change majors is a highly individualized one. You must take into account all you have accomplished in TRICIA TIEDT your academic career thus far, and how much you can carry over should you decide to take the “leap of faith.” How much of the core have you completed? Have you nearly finished the first major you seek to drop, or have you barely started? Have you considered picking up a minor instead of switching majors, or making your current major a minor instead? How different are the two subjects—could you combine what you have already done with what it is you actually want to do?

This final question is important in terms of factoring in your quality of life moving forward. Changing majors is absolutely feasible—if you’re willing to put in the extra effort. Will the change mean you have no room in your schedule for the next two years? Will you have to overload? Are you willing to take the extra courses in order to study what you love, not just fulfill a degree?

Take the first step: Meet with your advisor. In addition, I would suggest meeting with an advisor or a contact in the department in which you now wish to pick up a major. If you’re willing and able, take that leap of faith. You will not regret doing what you love.

Marc Francis is an editor for The Heights. He can be reached at features@bcheights.com.

Tricia Tiedt is an editor for The Heights. She can be reached at features@bcheights.com.

The Heights

Monday, February 24, 2014

Lowell Series continues its literary legacy Lowell Series, from A1

“We’re already thinking about next year’s series, and we’ll lock in our slate of speakers over the summer.”

In terms of choosing authors for the next semester’s events, Rotella and the graduate assistant for the program, Katie Daily, GA&S ’17 are always open to new ideas for speakers.

“We definitely take suggestions and recommendations, and often the way it works is that a colleague or a department will come to us and say, ‘Here’s a famous person you could invite for us, and we’ll make sure her work is on a lot of our syllabi that semester,’” Rotella said. “Those partnerships work very well for everybody, and we rely on them.”

Another main consideration in planning an event is who the intended audience might be. “Our target audience includes students, faculty, staff, and people from off campus,” he said.

“One thing I’m very pleased about is that we increasingly have a core of regulars who come from on and off campus no matter who’s speaking.”

Cultivating an engaged and educated audience is key to the experience of the author as well as those in attendance at the lectures.

“When the novelist Chang-rae Lee came … we had students getting up and saying, ‘In your earlier novels you were interested in this theme, but in your more recent work you seem to have turned away from it,’ and so on, and afterward he asked me, ‘Who are these people? Usually I’m lucky if somebody in the audience has read one of my books, and they’ve read them all!’” Rotella said.

Over the years, the events have begun to cater to more specific audiences in the form of “Poetry Days” and “Fiction Days,” events that are put together in conjunction with a certain professor or class.

“We collaborate to bring in that person and schedule multiple events— not just a Lowell lecture, but also a more informal event with students and faculty in the afternoon,” Rotella said. Events are not always coordinated within the English department, though, as the series looks to broaden its scope.

Looking to the future, Rotella hopes to continue building on the acclaimed reputation the series already boasts. In order to continue attracting this quality of authors to the events, it is important that the series remain in good standing with the University and its sponsors, which include the Lowell Institute, Boston College’s Institute for the Liberal Arts, and the Provost’s Office. Without the support of these institutions, it would be impossible for the series to bring such well-known speakers to campus, he said.

“We’ve built up stronger funding support from the University over time, which we appreciate, so we can bring even more prominent speakers to campus,” Rotella said.

“We’ve also built up a strong regular constituency and a pretty reliable model for reaching the right audience for a speaker, so we’re more confident about taking a chance on a speaker—either one who’s new to our audience or one who costs a little more—and being pretty sure that we can give that speaker the turnout heor she deserves,” he said n

C7

The Heights throughout the century Spring Break at Boston College

From mission trips to exotic beaches, no two Spring Breaks are the same

By Samantha Costanzo Asst. Features Editor Everyone at Boston College is thinking of the same thing this week: Spring Break—that infamous, carefree week when college kids across the country stop hitting the books and hit the beaches instead. While we may all be thinking about the same thing, we’re thinking about it in different ways and have been for a long time. It’s safe to say that no two BC students have ever really had the same vacation.

For many of us, Spring Break can’t come soon enough, but in 1988, students complained that it was in fact a bit too early.

That year, it began the week of Feb. 29.

“I’m just getting into the swing of classes right now, and boom—we’re on break again,” said Denise Carron, BC ’89.

Writer Eric Marcos attributed the early break to an exceptionally early Easter on April 3 and the University’s tradition of putting spring break in the middle of this holiday and the beginning of the semester.

Heights writer Nick Tambakeras offered some alternative Spring Break options that even the most unconventional college student might laugh at. “Take a drive to Arkansas and go see the childhood home of former president Bill Clinton,” he suggested. “You’ll learn something and you’ll see the true source of America’s current media woes.”

Tambakeras also suggested taking a trip to Minnesota for ice fishing, or for the warm-weather seeker on a budget, simply buying a bottle of tequila and a session at a tanning salon for the perfect Spring Break fake-out.

A large number of BC students, both in the past and today, opt for service-minded Spring Break trips instead of the more traditional, tropical venues.

The most obvious Spring Break service trip choice is the Appalachia Volunteers program, which, in 1981, was offered during students’ “February Break.”

Other wise, the trip remains similar today to its original roots. Students in the ’80s still volunteered in rural parts of the U.S. and fundraised throughout the year for the trip.

The Urban Immersion program, a service trip that focuses on impoverished areas in Boston, is now offered only in the winter but began in 1987 and was expanded to a spring trip as well for a few years beginning in 1990.

“Urban Immersion is not an isolated week,” said student facilitator Ray Vaillancourt, BC ’91, in the article. “It’s not something where you go in, help a lot of

people, and then leave.” Several weekend immersion experiences were also planned throughout the spring semester.

In October 1999, The Heights reported that the Natchez Immersion Trip, during which BC students volunteer at Holy Family Catholic School in Natchez, Miss., would be expanding to two trips: one over Winter Break, and a second over Spring Break. The trip continues in the same format today.

Writers, however, have still been sympathetic to the needs of traditional spring breakers as well. In 2003, Michele Frangella gave students some helpful hints on identifying random people and places in their vacation photos. Among them: “Look at the previous three pictures in the roll to identify familiar surroundings and/or alcoholic beverages that may be the cause of your amnesia” and “give the strange people names and turn them into movie stars.”

Heights editor Julia Wilson wrote about UGBC’s Safe Spring Break initiative in 2008. Over 150 students that year received kits that contained information on safe drinking practices, sun safety, travel tips, lip balm, granola bars, and sunscreen. “ The kits allow students to pause for a minute before Spring Break and think about the choices they’re going to make on Spring Break,” said Robyn Priest, then-assistant dean of the Alcohol Education Program.

Regardless of their destinations, students in 1992 were not hesitant to spend on their trips.

Margie Tyler reported that everyone, from seniors to freshmen, was purchasing expensive hotel stays in Cancun and cheap tickets to Paris through B C Travel, the University’s very own travel agency.

The agency also arranged students’ trips home or to New York and other major cities for job interviews during the break, Tyler wrote.

A 2001 “ Voices from the Dustbowl” question asked students about their Spring Break mantras for that year. The six who stopped to answer the question showed a somewhat surprising sense of practicality, for college students. “Relax and be safe!” answered grad student Julie Marie Brown. Cristin Frederick, BC ’03, offered a similar bit of advice: “Don’t get too drunk, because you’ve got the next day ahead of you.”

For Lauren Whitney and Jen Bailey, both BC ’03, Spring Break meant one thing: “Naptime!”

That’s one much-longed-for feature of Spring Break that students still crave and likely will for years to come. n

On weekend mornings this semester, Commonwealth Ave. has been transformed by teams of runners training for the Boston Marathon. Hundreds of people have been running by Boston College every weekend and, unless you’re a morning runner or happen to live on Comm. Ave., you would have no idea this is going on.

This semester, I am training for the Boston Marathon and hope I’ll be able to bandit the race with the Campus School marathon team. Due to a time conflict that made me unable to attend the regular Sunday long run with the rest of the marathon team, I set out to run the 7.5 miles of the route before BC, and back, by myself.

Unknowingly, I had run into a team also training for the marathon. Hordes of runners were coming up and down Comm. Ave. Cars and tents were set up at various points along the route, with tables of water in cups

passing two women: one close to my age, the other older, maybe in her 40s or 50s. Despite the vast age difference, there was an equal determination in both runners that I found so inspiring. They were only halfway done, but they weren’t about to give up.

The camaraderie among runners is unparalleled. As I ran down Washington Street and back up Comm Ave, I was encouraged by the second and then third marathon teams that were following me. All of us shared a common purpose. Around mile eight or nine (the most discouraging miles in a half marathon), a runner coming toward me shouted out “Yeah, go Eagles!” after noticing my BC headband and jacket.

Maybe he was a recent alum, maybe he was just a fan of BC, or maybe he was just trying to spread some motivation. Either way, he made me smile and gave me the encouragement to keep on running.

As I came up Heartbreak Hill, I felt honored to be able to share this incredible journey of training for a marathon with other

Kendra Kumor

runners. No, I don’t know these people, and probably won’t ever see them again, but we shared a special struggle and achievement that morning that in some ways is deeper than any sort of relationship.

And I had something more. The sight of Bapst, rising up at the top of Heartbreak Hill, was the final motivation I needed to know that I was home—and I know BC will be my main motivation during the full Boston Marathon.

There is so much struggle, elation, and camaraderie on Comm. Ave. every weekend, and the majority of BC students miss it. Even BC students training for the marathon, who only run with the Campus School team on Sunday mornings, are perpetuating the BC bubble. I encourage all students training to do one long run by themselves—you never know who you’ll see and what you’ll learn.

Caitlin Slotter is a staff writer for The Heights. She welcomes comments at features@bcheights.com.

Kendra Kumor is the Features Editor for The Heights. She welcomes comments at features@bcheights.com.

Running in the marathon and out of the BC bubble for the runners. The Heartbreak Hill Running Company’s mascot, a man in a gorilla costume, was standing on the corner outside the store giving runners high-fives.

As I started my run, most of the runners were already heading back up Comm. Ave. as I was heading down it. I saw their struggle mixed with fierce determination as they battled Heartbreak Hill. I saw the optimism of knowing they were almost done with their half-marathon.

What struck me most was the diversity.

Being on such a homogenous campus, it’s always shocking to break the “BC bubble” and witness the vast differences in a normal, population. I saw runners that ranged from guys who looked like they just stepped out of an Under Armour catalogue, to the younger girls who were training at a slower pace and just having fun, to the older runners who clearly had families of their own at home.

As I turned left onto Washington Street, I began to catch up with the stragglers of the first marathon team. I remember

Marathon training becomes game of mind over matter

“Mind over matter” has been my personal mantra ever since I can remember.

I think someone must have repeated the phrase to me when I was little as I was complaining about not being able to jump high enough to reach the monkey bars, and coincidently, the next time I tried, I was able to grab them and clamber across. Needless to say, I have believed in it ever since, as some kind of magic phrase.

When I say this phrase I do not mean telepathy or moving things with your mind. (Although I do think this phrase, when used correctly, can be just that powerful.) I do mean that if you think you can do something, you are much more likely to complete your goals.

There have even been scientific findings that prove my little mantra actually works. A Self-fulfilling prophecy is the idea that if you or the people around you believe (or don’t believe) you will achieve a goal, then it is more likely that you will (or won’t). This is all proof that you really can do anything you put your mind to.

Recently, though, I have discovered “mind over matter” in its purest form through my marathon training.

Let me preface this by saying I am by no means an avid runner, a health freak, a morning person, or any other image that pops into your head when you think of a marathon runner.

My mom is buying the over-priced Easter break plane ticket to watch me run the marathon, not necessarily to support me, but because she doesn’t believe I am actually going to do it.

Throughout the past 10 weeks of training, I’ve had to repeat my mantra to myself more times than I have in the past 10 years.

But one thing I’ve realized is that training has been a battle between my mind and the matter that is my body (more specifically my poor legs), not between my body and the pavement underneath my feet. It has always been a contest to see how long my mind can hold out, not how much my muscles can handle.

Because in the end, my mind—and nothing else—is controlling my muscles.

The cold temperatures and snow that have drastically hindered my enthusiasm over the past few weeks don’t really control my muscles. It’s my mind telling me it’s too cold to walk to the Plex or run down Comm. Ave. The fact that I read “16 miles” in this Saturday’s box in my training schedule doesn’t control my muscles either. It’s my mind trying to convince me it’s probably not even healthy for me to run that far a distance.

I’ve noticed the power of my mind and its effect on my body through my long runs versus my short runs. For example, when my training schedule calls for three miles, I struggle just as much between mile two and three as I do when the schedule calls for 16 miles and I reach mile 15—proof that if you tell yourself you are going to run three miles, you are only going to make it to three.

If anything, my past 10 weeks of training have reassured me that when I tell myself I am going to run 26.2 miles on the morning of April 21, I will be able to do it (but probably not a step more, unless, of course, I told myself I could).

Some trainers say running is 75 percent mental and 25 percent physical. The first woman to win the gold medal in the Olympic marathon event was quoted saying running is 80 percent mental. I’d go so far as to skew the ratio even more, because really, a long-distance runner is nothing without will power.

Maybe it was a coincidence that I was able to jump high enough to reach the monkey bars as soon as I was told that if I believed I could do it I could.

What I do know is that it won’t be a coincidence when I cross the finish line in eight weeks to see my mom standing there in utter shock.

It will be because I did not let the power of my muscles get in the way of the power of my brain.

campus quirks

Caitlin Slotter

Editor’s column

FEATURES THE HEIGHTS

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Monday, February 24, 2014

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2014

SOMETHING Fitness : for Everybody

FOR ALL

BC Recreation provides alternative fitness options in salsa, jiu-jitsu, and aquatics

BY CAROLINE HOPKINS Heights Staff

To many Boston College students, the “Plex” is simply a synonym for “overheated, unpleasant-looking building with an insufficient number of treadmills.” On cold, snowy winter days, when the prospect of outdoor activity may as well be impossible, some students lack the motivation to journey to the Plex in order to stay active.

Particularly for those with a distaste for cardio machinery, conventional medicine balls, and waiting in aggressive lines, the choice to “Plex it” just might not seem worth it. Little do these students know of the unique, unconventional, and actually fun opportunities for fitness and activity that the underrated, underappreciated Plex offers.

The very first thing that appears upon visiting BC’s “BC Campus Recreation” website is a headline banner in bold, BC-colored capital letters, reading “SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE.” From “Aqua Bootcamp” to salsa dancing to rock climbing and ice skating classes, this mantra doesn’t lie. Truth be told, the Plex actually has a world to offer in terms of catering to all kinds of fitness preferences.

For those adventurous, outdoorsy types who find indoor exercise claustrophobic and uninspiring, or for those simply looking to take advantage of beautiful New England, Campus Recreation’s new Outdoor

Adventures Program is here for the taking. The Outdoor Adventures Program offers several day-long trips and clinics while also providing opportunities for various training and certificates such as Wilderness First Aid and Wilderness First Responder.

Trips and clinics include snow shoeing in the Bluehill Mountains, cross country skiing in New Ipswich, N.H., rock climbing at Hammond Pond, or even paddleboard yoga in the Plex itself. Extended, more rigorous programs are offered as well, such as this year’s Southwest Spring Break rock climbing trip in St. George, Utah. “We travel to some of the most exciting parts of New England for adventures of a lifetime,” said Eli Crispell, the assistant director of the Outdoor Adventure Program (OA).

All of the outdoor adventures are open to beginners and people of all experience levels. “Our trips are predominantly staffed by our excellent student instructors,” said Crispell, who explained that “student instructors go through an intensive training program and have a passion for taking others into the wilderness.” Individual programs range in price, requiring small fees usually around $15 to $20 with a BC ID. “In addition to the trips, the OA program has a top-notch rental

See Fitness, C5

PHOTOS COURTESY OF BC RECREATION

Fulton Debating Society remains part of BC history The prestigious team teaches persuasion, public speaking skills

BY CAROLYN FREEMAN For The Heights

PHOTO COURTESY OF DANNY GILLIS

Danny Gillis, center, poses with Baldwin and a crowd of fans during this year’s Beanpot championship game at TD Garden.

Fiddle Kid carries family hockey tradition

BY SAMANTHA COSTANZO Asst. Features Editor

The student section at Kelley Rink is screaming, but not for Boston College’s hockey team. In fact, the team isn’t even on the ice. It’s the second intermission, and the players are hidden away in the locker room to talk strategy for the final period. No, BC fans are roaring for their favorite little celebrity: Danny Gillis, the red-headed second grader better known simply as “Fiddle Kid.” What began as a few minutes of fame every game from adorably fiddling along with the rest of the crowd whenever “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” was played at games during

the second intermission quickly transformed into something much larger.

Somewhere in the middle of the season, people began to pay more attention to the little boy with the big smile as he played away on his imaginary fiddle, and Danny’s hockey experience hasn’t been the same since.

Now, he happily runs through the stands during games to take photos with his fans and has over 600 followers on a Twitter account run by his sisters, Michaela and Erin Gillis, and cousin, Liam Gillis.

But Danny’s rapid rise to stardom doesn’t come as a surprise to his family.

“He’s one of the most joyful, outgoing kids you’ve e ver seen,” said his father, Michael Gillis. “His smile

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just makes him friends.” Perhaps, he speculated, that played a key role in Danny’s recent election to his class’ student council.

BC and its hockey team run deep in the Gillis family. Danny’s greatgrandfather, grandfather, and father all graduated from BC 30 years apart: in 1919, 1949, and 1979, respectively.

His uncle Joe, BC ’75, played hockey all four years at BC, and his father played from 1975 to 1977. His father also played varsity lacrosse during his time at BC and eventually went on to coach the team from 1990 to 1994, before it became a club sport.

“The best [hockey] player in the

See Fiddle Kid, C5

Heights Through the Centuries

Every year, when spring comes to the Heights, the warmer weather and hordes of prospective students are joined by a 114-year-old tradition: the Fulton Debate.

The Fulton Debate is a showcase event between four members of the Fulton Debating Society, two on the affirmative side and two on the negative.

It follows a policy debate format, but with shortened constructive speeches.

The whole event runs about 50 minutes.

In recent years, the topic has been related to current events, said Director of Debate John Katsulas.

The debaters can win the gold Fulton Prize or the silver Gargan Medal based on their speaking ability. The winner has his name painted on the wall of Gasson 305, the Fulton Debate room.

However, there is a disparity between the names on the wall and the official winners. In the early 1980s, when Dale Herbeck coached the team, he decided that if the same person won the Fulton Prize two years in a row, the winner of the Gargan Medal should have his name painted on the wall. Herbeck thought it

The spring break tradition grants students a much-needed break to pursue nonacademic paths.................................

would be better to have more medals on the wall, Katsulas said.

“It’s prestigious to be in the debate, but it’s more prestigious to win the debate and get your name on the wall,” Katsulas said. “That’s even more attractive than winning the gold medal.”

The debate generally consists of at least one debater from each division— novice, junior varsity, and varsity—and is slower and less technical than a typical policy debate because the judges are often professors with no prior debate experience, Katsulas said.

This is done intentionally so that the debaters are forced to speak persuasively. In this regard, novices often have a leg-up because they can be more skilled at judge adaptation and are less used to the rapid-fire style of policy debates, he said.

“They try to throw in some jokes, and they’re more animated since they’re trying to appeal to the judges and the students,” he said. “The debate is a lot more entertaining to watch than a regular debate just because there’s more pathos and humor in the debate.”

The Fulton Debating Society debates against other schools through three debate organizations—the American Debate Association, the Crossfire Association, and the National Debate Tournament Committee—all of which debate the same topic. The Society’s

See Debate, C6

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