summer vacation
undrafted
features
sports
arts & review
Faculty look forward to summer plans complete with family time and research, C1
What should BC’s cancer surviving linebacker, Mark Herzlich, do now, B1
Razor-sharp comedic timing, and lively musical numbers stop Robsham cold, C8
‘Dirty rotten scoundrels’
Monday, May 2, 2011
Vol. XCII, No. 24
MOB STORMS CAMPUS
daniel lee / heights staff
Students celebrating the death of Osama Bin Laden charge from Mods to Bapst Library By adriana Mariella, David Cote, Elise Taylor, & Brennan Carley | heights editors
O
n Sept. 17, 2001, former United States president George W. Bush made a bold statement: “I want justice. There’s an old poster out West, as I recall, that said ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.’” Last night, nearly 10 years later, President Barack Obama finally announced the achievement of that justice. In a momentous and historic raid on an al-Qaida encampment in Abbottabad, Pakistan, U.S. military forces have killed Osama bin Laden, mastermind
of the attacks of Sept. 11 and one of the FBI’s most wanted criminals. In what the President called a “courageous” raid, U.S. military forces engaged al-Qaida soldiers, killing bin Laden and detaining numerous al-Qaida associates. There were no American casualties. Bin Laden gained international notoriety as the architect of the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S., a day that has been denoted by many as the most devastating in American history. Throughout the subsequent
See Mob, A4 daniel ottaunick / heights editor
Arts Festival revamped
Baldwin Awards not held due to change in leadership
Tryouts, workshops integrated into Fest
Newly responsible for the awards, film studies unable to harness manpower
By Elise Taylor
By Taylour Kumpf
Boston College’s annual Arts Festival consists of an impressive three days dedicated to showings and performances, 1,000 students and faculty broadcasting their talents, and over 16,500 attendees in 2010 – statistics that are a testament to the festivals enormity and influence. However, for this year’s Arts Fest, the Arts Council decided to revamp and intensify the festival by introducing a series of competitive tryouts, workshops, critiques given by professionals, and exclusive showcases in an attempt to maintain and improve the quality of work that enters the festival. The changes follow Art Council reports of rocky performances and underpar visual art, especially by student-run groups with no professional or faculty leadership. According to a recent release from the Arts Council, “Quality in the
The Baldwin Awards, honoring outstanding student achievement in film and video, noticeably did not take place this year. Formerly sponsored by the Office of Marketing Communications (OMC), the awards would have celebrated their seventh year this year. Organizational responsibility of the awards was assumed by the film studies program however, which was unable to get the event off the ground, reportedly due to a lack of manpower and time. “It was an issue of manpower, and it seemed like everyone was just too busy,” said Sean Meehan, a senior film studies major and A&S ’11, who helped look into the feasibility of this year’s Baldwins. “As of now, there will be no Baldwins, but there will be some kind of departmentwide awards [ceremony] to recognize student work.”
Heights Editor
News Editor
kevin hou / heights editor
arts, like any other discipline on campus, takes considerable training, diligence, mentoring, and critical feedback. Student-led activities, on the other hand, may vary considerably in the amount of due diligence they exercise toward refining their talents.” The new selectivity of Arts Fest has manifested itself differently in each of the artistic fields that are represented – namely music, dance, and some theater groups. In the music field, a capella
groups have particularly become a center of reform. In the 2011 Arts Festival a cappella program, the Arts Council said that a capella performances had been steadily declining and unprofessional. “A capella groups in particular have had a festival history of uneven performances,” read the recent statement. “The artistic quality of the groups has varied
See ArtsFest, A4
Meehan said that after last year, the OMC told John Michalczyk, co-chair of the film studies program, that they were no longer the best people to handle the Baldwins. Ben Birnbaum, executive director of the OMC, said he felt that the Baldwins had become an established tradition that could best be directed by the film studies faculty. “They know more about film and their students than we’ll ever know, and I’d like to turn back to developing something that still needs to be born,” he said in an e-mail. “It’s our job to help build and develop BC where we see we can help,” Birnbaum said. “But I always thought of the [Baldwins] as something temporarily mine. At some point they had to go to the film studies program. That’s where they belong.” “It had to be rooted in film studies
See Baldwins, A4